Tag Archives: Outside Work

Spring Colors

I really should be doing some work, but it is the weekend and I try to take time for my own things.  I’ll do it later.  =)

We actually got a few dry days this last week and some sunny days and we totally enjoyed them.  Got our 1st 74 degree day this year…..LOVED that.  Now if we can finally get to the 80s I would be totally stoked.

On a dry day two weeks ago, we went out and picked up 5 tomato plants and dirt.  So looking forward to when they start producing.

We don’t have much of back yard, if you can call it.  The things we really like about it makes it hard to grow things.  It is a deck with some dirt and bushes.  We love that on the other side of the fence there are trees, that once the leaves are on it that it gives us privacy from the surrounding buildings and keeps the house cooler on the really, really hot days (no a/c).  BUT that also prevents us from growing things in the ground, due to lack of sunlight and on even a mid-70 day, it feels like 50/60 in the house….bbrrrr

So when we do tomatoes we use pots and have one topsy-turvy….our 2nd year on trying that one.  But we are always moving them around to get the best sunlight.

Tomatoes 2011

Hanging Tomato 2011 & Fuschia

We really did enjoy our 74 sunny day, went and sat on the deck for a time….just getting as much sun and warmth that we could…watching the birds.

Fuschias are so colorful and awesome on attracting humming birds. =)

When it is winter, the gray, damp and cold, even if annoying, is not a big deal.  It is winter, you expect it and you are happy that it is actually much milder then some places you’ve lived and without the snow.  But come Mar/Apr/May it gets on your nerves and you are so ready for a change of weather and color.

We have all these pots from our house plants that we no longer have due to lack of indoor sunlight and plant eating/digging cats so I decided that we should get some flowers for outside.  Just to get some color and my planting bug out of me.  I really have a LOT to learn about judging root systems…..lol  I thought I would be able to plant 2 of them per pot, nope…didn’t happen.  I thought I would only use 4 pots, nope…..9….good thing we had all those extras….lol  Good thing I had hubby helping me, I would taken all day to do them…..grin

Now we have some color leading up to our front door and we have some on our bedroom balcony.  They smell so good when the door is open.

Just watered flowers =)

 

Up the stairs, covering the gas meter. =)

A few flowers on the balcony.

They aren’t much, but it feels so good to have some bright colors and spring smells.  =)  I’m waiting for strawberries to start showing up at our local fruit stands that open for the summer.  We get some of the juiciest and sweetest here in Oregon….mmmm

We even heard and saw a set of Anna’s Humming birds mate.  That was cool and boy, they are noisy…..lol  We’ve had humming bird feeders up for about 3yrs plus the fuschias, so they know where to come for food.  Some of our birds are back for the season, the Golden American Finch, House Sparrow and Black-headed Grosbeaks….including our noisy Scrub Jays…lol  We even saw a Falcon get chased off by a couple of Ravens…that was neat.

Ah….but I had a fun time last week…..lol  Last Sunday my mac was constantly backing up……well, the external that it went to was full.  It is suppose to delete the oldest back ups once it filled up.  Instead of doing that, totally locked up and damaged it.  So I had to hook up to our main external, the Drobo, and try and put over 300 GBs of music, files and pictures on to it from the locked up one.  You could still copy things off of it, but not delete or add.  So that took a few days, I got a few more WD externals, one a MyBook…didn’t meant to, meant to get a MyPassport and a few MyPassports.  Finally got everything moved, took a bit, but was able to reformat my old 500 GB external MyPassport and that is now nothing BUT mac back ups.

What was so frustrating is that the new MyPassports don’t let you use it like a simple flash drive, they were locked…I couldn’t write on them.  The old ones were so simple and nice. I had to learn how to partition them.  I didn’t want them all to be formatted for mac, because it wouldn’t be recognized by a pc.  We need at least one that was writable for both mac and pc.  So we can transfer files from pc and mac to the other…..more for music files.  It was driving me nuts, because I know it could be done.  And when I know that it can be done, I will keep working at it…..I hate giving up when I know the solution is there.  But I did it….grin  Very happy about that.

Thought I was in the free and clear…nope.  Issues with getting my itunes music to line up with the new location.  When we brought my mac I didn’t up the hard drive like I should’ve, so my music/movies will not fit.  That will change next time.  So it was saying that there where about 3000 missing files out of over 15,000…icks.  Took a long while, but it got down to 300 files missing.  Then I had to go searching for them, most was due to me editing them.  Had to rip about 4 cds, get files off of hubby’s mac, in the end only lost about 50 of my songs.  But those were Kid Rock from my MI sister.  So I’ll get them eventually to re-rip.  So much happier that I got that fixed.  And have already backed up my music, other then what we’ve purchased today.  Going to do that a bit more often.  =)

I started this post hours ago, but between chatting, surfing and playing in itunes….lol….so going to watch the evening news and start some work.

 

Trying to Organizing My Life

A lot of my updates have been through tweets most of the time.  Mainly since nothing really major normally goes on, unless it is our cats.  But I’ll try and sum up what I have been doing.

I still keep looking for Alexis, but getting better, it helps that we have her ashes back.  Weird not to have her yelling at me in the bathroom to pet her. =(  I still need to organize all of the pictures we took during the last few days that she was with us.  Drew and Sakura are great distractions, they are so young, feisty and so full of personality….not a day goes by that I’m not grateful that hubby brought them home.

Last month my extra mom lost her husband of 50+yrs  =(  And there was family drama.  I tried to call to give support to her and my sister.  With all the drama, I was hoping it would help to give them someone to vent to.  I really wish I would’ve been able to fly out and be there from them.  Even if I would just be the bad guy for them and tell the other family members off.  The rest of the family is no skin off of my back, there are only 2 that matter to me.  =)

This summer we now have 2 hummingbird feeders and 2 blooming fuchsias…finally started to get more the one hummingbird.  We have at least 3 of them hanging around.  They will hover above our heads while outside…love it!  It is really cool, didn’t know that they could be so vocal.  Last year we had at least 1 scrub blue jay, this year at least 4 and holy cow are they noisy as heck.  They are pretty, but so annoying ear wise…..ggeezzz

We brought 2 tomato plants this spring, then it rain way above normal and we thought it killed them. At the time, we thought we did something wrong or brought bad plants until they ran a story on the news and a lot of people were having the same problem.   So we brought 2 more, planted those into our planters and put the others in the ground, really not expecting them to live much less produce any tomatoes.  Well, they actually have tomatoes on them and other 2 are going nuts. We’ve already had 1 tomato off of the early girl bush and and about 5 off of the oregon spring. They have been so sweet and tasty.  They are great on french bread with tillamook extra sharp white cheddar cheese…wow.

Work wise, I’m getting more responsibility added, which is good thing.  Still working out the details to see what I can do to help out.  Looking forward to that.  I do a bit of everything at work, I really can’t even describe what I do….I guess I’m the catch all and what I don’t know or do, I know who does…..lol

Only issue that has been driving me nuts work wise is a wire that I sent out on the July 30th still has not been received!  What the heck?!?  I’ve been ordering a wire to this account info for 2yrs now and never had an issue before.

Now I do everything online or by phone, the only time I go to our local branch is make a deposit through the drive thru.  Well, due to this issue everything needs to be done at the branch…it is to the point that they now know me by my first name….ggeezz  I wouldn’t mind going in so much if it wasn’t for the same issue.  Gave up on getting the wire delivered and did a recall, fingers crossed, I will have it back in a few days and I can take care of the contractor by another and faster method.

I have finally taken the time to go through all of my stuff.  For those who don’t know me, I’m a pack rat in for sentimental stuff…..  I still have a stuffed pillow that I was given when I was about 2 in Germany, if that tells you anything, my Baltimore Orioles shirt from when I was about 9….lol.  Well, I have  bunch of pictures, every note/letter/card my parents ever gave me and nearly every card/letter/note since junior HS.  And it was all over the place, location wise….including under the bed.  I have every little note my hubby has ever given me….lol…I know nuts. =)

Now when I tweet about going under the bed, it is really a project.  This is what we have in king size : http://www.storagebedstore.com/IVG2/N/ProductID-8593.htm

So you have to move the mattress and then the plywood that the mattress sits on.  There is a big space between the drawers under there that is excellent for storage, but a pain to get to it on a regular basis and with it being king size, one person can’t do it.  So I have to pester my hubby for help….grin  But I totally love our bed set, just don’t want to have to move it….icks…

A few weeks ago I started going through everything.  I went through all the pictures I’ve ever taken (mainly from Alaska) and all the pictures that were my grandmothers’, brought some photo albums (weren’t even sure they still made those…lol)  Luckily one of my grandma’s photo album wasn’t full so I was able to put a bunch of pictures in there.

I also finally got all of hubby & my ticket stubs to rock concerts, football games and other memorabilia organized and out of our photo album.  I went through and organized every letter by who sent it and postmark date, even organized the notes that I passed in school….lol Got all my cards organized, HS grad, college grad, wedding, holidays…..ect

I went through every newspaper and magazine that I kept to see if I still wanted, even found the Daily News Miner from Fairbanks, AK that I kept from the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded when I was in 7th grade.

I cleaned out my cedar hope chest and got as many of the photo albums stored in there.  Made sure that older the pictures got in there, ones that are from my grandparents and are about 50-100yrs old.

So now instead of everything all over, everything has it’s one or two container and is in one area.  I put so much stuff into the recycling and trash…..I’m hoping that if we do move from this house in 2012, that it’ll make our lives a bit easier for packing and such.

Been trying to attack my closet, especially since I lost weight there is a lot that doesn’t fit.  Some of that I’ve been shipping off to family members who may be able to use it.  The stuff is perfectly good and I normally donate it, but I like to try and help out my loved ones before anyone else.  You have to take care of family when you can, even when it is not much.  =)

We are having issues with my truck……ggrrr…  I went to do errands last Thursday and it wouldn’t start after I got out of the post office.  I had to call hubby for a jump.  We weren’t sure if it was the battery or the alternator.   I kind of was hoping for the battery, much easier to switch out and a little bit cheaper.  But as I laid in bed at night this weekend, I remembered that we just got a new one before we left FL in ’07 and it was a diehard.  (I’m a big believer in diehard batteries, once I have one I rarely worry about it.)  And the fact that we rarely drive the truck, may be 3k miles a year now….. I just felt in my gut it wasn’t the battery…plus our lives are never that easy.

We took the battery in for testing today and confirmed it wasn’t the battery….good that our diehard purchase was a good one and bad for it being more complicated.  Hubby took the alternator out of it today and we’ll take it in to get it tested tomorrow.  I’m hoping that is the issue, because for a ’97 I really don’t want to spend a ton of money….at least the truck is paid for.  But I’m really thinking that it is the alternator, we’ve had the truck since 2000 and haven’t had an alternator issue and it is over 100k mile, so it sounds about right.

Doesn’t seem like we got much of a summer…feel cheated, it was rainy and chilly through June and even at the beginning of July.  And that was after having an unusual warm winter and spring like weather that we went hiking in mid March to Smith Rock….weird.  We had a few hot days and stayed downstairs during those (no central air).  Only used the portable ac in the bedroom for one night and that was only due to someone throwing a beeping fire detector out…..that continued to beep…icks  We are suppose to get 2 more days of 90s this week and we our high Sunday was 68….lol  We did have a beautiful day today, after being chilly yesterday.

We are planning on heading to Crater Lake sometime next month.  Only the real good time to do so for us, school will be back in, less crowds and before it starts to snow (Oct).  Hubby found a bunch a little hikes, 2-5miles, but they will be steep.  Because it is about 6hrs away, we’ll be spending 2 nights camping.  And it is going to have some cold nights….extra blankets are in order.  Just going to take our MREs and some snickers, oatmeal and such…maybe some hotdogs, but no where the amount of food we took last time for camping.  Need to do a reminder practice on setting up our tent before we go….been a while and practice makes it much easier and faster when you need it and if it is raining.  =)

Been seeing some preseason football games on, nothing but a tease.  So looking forward to the kick off to the college season.  Even if a boring game is on, I’m so use to having it playing in the background that it always feels weird when the season is over.  That is from years of conditioning from my dad and my hubby….grin  I tell hubby that he needs to thank dad for his wife’s enjoyment of sports.  I know he couldn’t handle it if he had a wife that didn’t enjoy sports with him…..grin

Well, when I started this I was in the bedroom, moved myself out on the porch off of the bedroom to get some fresh air.  It is now about 2130 hours, dark with a few bugs….lol  This ended up longer then I expected.  But I think I’m going to go in, have me some wine with some extra sharp white tillamook cheese, crackers and some of our home grown tomatoes…..tasty.  =)

Sunday morning rambling…

Zion National Park

Not too much to say, we slept in as we usually do on weekends, well I should say we slept in as much as we can with 3 cats and neighbors who think its normal to talk/yell outside at 6:00 am which Im sure is ok since no one ever sleeps past 5:30 am right? Anyway its nice to have a iPhone so we can stay in bed and surf the net as we normally do when we get out of bed, so I feel like I am multi tasking.

Today we are just doing our normal Sunday routine, we hit Starbucks and grabbed some much needed caffeine and breakfast sandwich’s that are way over priced but still more convenient than making something on our own.

I really like where we live, but we really need a diner within walking distance, some place that we can get a decent breakfast and caffeine without having to drive to get it. If we ever move into/closer to Portland this would be the main reason, we both love the idea of walking a few blocks to get a bite to eat and maybe, dare I say, socialize with the commoners.

Right now we are just watching our Sunday talk shows (“Meet the Press” and “This Week”) as we surf the internets of tubes.

We made yet another trip to REI Friday night and spent yet more $ getting yet more crap for camping/hiking which we will be making our first trip in 2 weeks to the Redwoods National Park in the Northern California coast.

We get to go back to REI this week since they screwed up our bill and gave us the 20% discount on the cheap item and not the expensive item like they was suppose to do, and I need to get a $8 adapter that I read online that I didn’t need, but actually do need, so that is another 20-30 min drive there and back that I am looking forward to.

We leave here on a Monday and either will come back on Wednesday or Friday, all depending on the weather and the mood. We will stay 2 nights in California and the idea is to drive back to Portland via the 101 which I am told is the greatest drive ever.

Our main reason to go camping is to celebrate what will be our 12th anniversary but it will be 6 days early since, back in 1997 we didnt think about the fact that our wedding date is on a holiday weekend which hindsite is the worse thing ever, you can never go anywhere without a million people all over, so this year we are going after the holiday on a Monday so hopefully everyone will be back to work.

Last year we drove to Seaside and Cannon Beach and we drove to Astoria and back to Portland via the Washington side of the Columbia river, this year we will drive the Oregon side of the Columbia. Unless of course the weather hates us and/or we want to get home sooner than later, we are pretty much just taking this as we go.

Today we will do another test run with the tent and go over our gear once again to make sure we have everything we need or think we need.

The kittens will be staying home for at least 2 days on their own and as much as 4 days which will be the longest amount of time of being alone ever for them. Alexis has been left (with Reggie) as long as a week on their own and she didn’t really seem to care too much. The wonder twins will be a different story since they are so incredibly spoiled and demanding.

Yesterday we planted yet more plants and cleaned up the backyard some more but of course we have 1 large yard waste bin that is completely full so it will be at least another week before we can finish getting rid of that huge pile of yard waste that has been rotting back there for at least 5 years since the owner didn’t seem to want to improve anything she has.

Spring Fever

We headed up to Canada Wednesday to visit D in the hospital.  He is doing well as expected.  There was an issue with his meds that made his brain swell and made him lose feeling in his left side.  He is back home with his family.

We actually had a decent drive there and back.  The best that we ever had on hitting Seattle.  We worked hard to avoid the rush hours.  It was weird that we were stop by the US side on when we were leaving.  Used to only one stop, the country that you were entering, in this case Canada.  We only had to do 1 stop on the way in, US side.  The only thing that I can think of, which doesn’t apply to CA, is the US trying to stop the flow of cash & weapons from leaving because the 2 main questions was if we were carrying weapons and if we had more then 1k in cash.  I do think getting the passports made it so much more easier on getting into both countries.  They just scanned the electronic chip, asked a few questions and let us threw.

It has been raining all day, which with it being spring, drives me batty since I want to be outside.  I have spring fever.  Of course, I was already restless, because I want to pick up more flowers and plant them, but can’t do it all at once.  I have figured out what I want pot wise.  I want one big traditional rose bush in a big colorful pot, one smaller rose bush, and 1 more very colorful annuals potted and one perennial.  Then I want about 4 flower boxes to hang on the deck, just for annuals.  Overall, I prefer perennials, but for those, I can change out with something brightly different each spring.

Purple Annuals

Purple Annuals

We did get some more work done outside.  We decided to rock up the rest of the front patch.  It will help to bring out the color of the flowers.

I loved the colors of this one

I loved the colors of this one

Right after we got done with it.

Right after we got done with it.

I can’t wait for the flowers to really take hold and start getting bigger and fuller.  They will really pop.

The rain brings out the colors of the river rock.

The rain brings out the colors of the river rock.

We got some fuchsias.  We hung one in back on the deck and one on the bedroom balcony.  They attract hummingbirds and I love the colors.

Bright pink & white fuchsias on the balcony.

Bright pink & white fuchsias on the balcony.

Bright pink purple fuchsias on the deck.

Bright pink purple fuchsias on the deck.

We really need to get a new grill.  The other one is so worn that it is hard to control the flames.

I have discovered that I’m addicted to twitter and facebook, not so much in posting myself.  But in following news/political organizations/personalities, it fits my news surfing addiction.  =)  Which I don’t need any help in……..lol

I did get our fed taxes filed and paid, need to mail off our state once it is accepted electronically.  Then I need to send off our quarterly taxes….yuck.  And I did get our books taken care of.  But overall, felt totally lazy today.  I need to get to all my messages tomorrow and start on payroll prep (yes, it is that time again….feels like I just did it…..icks)