Saturday, January 19, 2008

So cold.

Cold, cold, cold. It is just plain cold. Not wilds of Canada or Alaska cold, but still below zero freezing cold. Bleh. Need to go into work and have no motivation to go out into the cold. Don't want to warm up the car, put on coat, hats, and gloves, try not to fall on my ass on the icy sidewalk. I want none of it. I want comfy jammies, warm blanket, staying at home.


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Monday, January 14, 2008

The best christmas card ever


This is my grandma. We found this picture when we were planning her 80th birthday party this last September. My sister and I had it blown up especially for the party.

My mom took it further. She made it into a Christmas card and on the back she wrote Bah Humbug. Is it not the epitomy of how every woman feels on a super busy holiday?

My grandma shared with us that this picture was taken by my grandpa-supposedly of the tree, which is what we're sure he told her but really wanted to get a picture of her because he was a very funny man. They had both sets of parents visiting, and other family showed up on their doorstep, along with some friends. She said a neighbor was out of town and offered up her house for family to stay in. My grandma had four children, and along with the normal holiday craziness a house full to the brim with visitors. No wonder she was exhausted.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

What's that I hear?

Is that the oh so quiet and soft sound of freshly washed blankets being tumbled around in glorious heat in my brand, spanking, new dryer?

Why YES, YES IT IS!

Ahhhhhhhhh. Sigggghhhh.


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Monday, January 07, 2008

Almost blew a gasket

Today a message was left on my answering machine stating the dryer was STILL not in and might not be delivered tomorrow. Folks, I was not happy. Let me preface this by saying that I think today we expect too many things in such a fast time frame because of the availability and immediacy of just about everything and I was more than happy to wait a reasonable amount of time for my new dryer to be delivered. Even after waiting and hearing the people in front of me be told their new dryer would be delivered the very next day. But, mine wasn't in stock in the store. I understood. I was surprised it would be there on Thursday given it wasn't in stock but was assured it would be. Then it wasn't.

The message today almost sent me over the edge. I am normally a reasonable person, but some things will set me off. Air-drying laundry for six people in the winter in the midwest for three weeks is one of those things. As I stood last night hanging and smoothing numerous small people shirts, socks, pants, and underwear and laying them across the drying rack in the best way to dry them as quickly as possible, I thought to myself "This should be the last time I have to do this for a good long while." It made the chore a tad more bearable.

Until the message today.

Instead of calling back right away, I decided to wait. There was still a possibility it could come in on a later shipment today. It would also be good to wait until I was more able to stay calm, especially since the poor guy leaving the message sounded like he was worried about the return call and really had tried all he could.

Thank goodness when I did call back that the dryer had come in! They will be able to deliver it tomorrow. Tomorrow I will either post in giddy happiness after using my brand, spanking, new dryer or be carted off to the nuthouse in a straitjacket mumbling about scratchy towels and impossible wrinkles and that farking drying rack.


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Thursday, January 03, 2008

We have Caucus!

Tonight was the Iowa Caucus and the whole Blue family was there. Originally I wasn't sure about bringing the kids, but the husband was there and said others had brought so the kids and I headed over. As both Mr. Blue and I get into politics and they've seen us campaign in elections past they've heard bits and pieces about the caucus and candidates.

Apparently at the 2004 caucus for my city there were roughly 40 people total. Tonight there were over 300. About 80 of those were part of the county precinct, we were in the city precinct.

This was the first caucus my husband or I have been a part of it and it was pretty cool. There was much standing around and some boredom, but overall an interesting experience and good to get out there and represent ourselves. The kids were great, only a slight teeny tiny bit of whine or unrest and none of it was bothersome to anyone, which is a small miracle considering we were there for almost a few hours. They were able to be with us through the whole thing. It's pretty neat to have them learning these things and experiencing them at such young ages.

Both my husband and I were for Obama, unfortunately Hilary took my city. Obama came in second and Edwards was third. I was very happy to see Obama taking the state when we got home and saw the news.

There were two rounds of counts, the first where everyone went to their preferred candidate's area or to the undecided area. In our city with the turnout each candidate needed at least 31 votes to be considered viable. Biden, Kucinich, Dodd, and Gravel were out after the first round. At this point each side tries to get these votes to come over to the remaining three viable candidates. There were two undecided holdouts who ended up not choosing a candidate. I thought this was strange, but maybe there were hoping to be swayed and weren't or were just there to see how it works.

One of the common topics was that we were voting by choice this year and not by the lesser of evils, or the better of two but not optimum. There were ton of people who had never caucused before, from the young, to the old and it was really great to see so many invested in this. It was also really interesting to see how different people talked about or campaigned for their candidate either by being very vocal or quietly giving opinions, with facts or emotions. It was also a lot of fun to see the attempts to bring people over to each side and the hollering and cheering (which we were fully a part of) when someone was won over.

All in all a great experience and the kids really picked up on more and were more interested than I would've imagined. Although the five year old with his short attention span was really only excited about the cookies and the Biden sign he was convinced was an Obama sign that he brought home.


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Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Obligatory New Year's Post

Surprisingly we ended up going out for New Year's and celebrating with some friends of ours at one of their houses. Kid-friendly, lots of food, and some imbibing-I had a bit of champagne at midnight-and games. The kids had fun and we played a game called Loaded Questions. My mom had given it to us for Christmas and it turned out to be really a lot of fun.

From my earlier post you know that we had been fairly lame in our New Year's celebration planning and I haven't been feeling well, so we were going to stay low-key. Instead we were invited out and went and ended up having a really good time and brought the New Year in with a bang. I tend to be a homebody, but it was good to get out and be with others.

The kids go back to school tomorrow, they are excited to see their friends but not to have to get up early in the morning and out into the cold right away.

My new dryer was SUPPOSED to be delivered in the morning, instead we had a message saying it was not in stock and will not be delivered until TUESDAY, but if they get it in earlier they will call. I was not happy about this at all as I have not had a working dryer for a few weeks now and air-dryed towels in a dry winter house are very scratchy. Plus the kids go back to school and will need regularly washed clothes as they can't wear shorts and pajamas out of the house in the freezing cold Iowa weather. And there are SIX of us in this house and that is a lot of laundry. I am suspicious that the person who sold it to me knew it might not be here in time to be delivered tomorrow by the time it took him to look it up on the computer system, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt when I call tomorrow.

The good side is that I did not have to hurry to finish cleaning the laundry room out tonight. Work is crazy busy right now, but there is a lot of good things happening. We're hitting the big time as the computers are getting updated, networks set up correctly, and my office is being spruced up to be painted and reorganized. At the moment it is bare and sanded and things are piled in various other rooms and I'm working from all sorts of places but I'll take it as things are getting DONE! I'm also told I might be getting a new graphics type publishing program, probably nothing fancy but it'll be much nicer than creating everything in Word. GAH.






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Oh my goodness I am on a podcast!

I was a guest on It's Not Us, It's You! and the episode is finally out. Number 26. I am listening to it as I type and so far I think my voice is very ghey and I laugh a lot and talk a lot. I am also typing this on the newly downloaded Scribefire, so we'll see how that goes. I tried to add the INUIY link but I do not see it and have no idea where it went. So, this is what you get.


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My link did not show so here you go: INUIY