I thought I was awake!

I just dug through the shelves in the corner of my room where I thought I'd put the zipper for my dress. I bought it along with the pattern and thread, and I thought I'd left it in the bag and stuck it on a shelf. I looked all over the shelves, considered that I may have to pull them out and look behind them, wondered if it was in the pile of clean laundry at the foot of my bed, stood up straight before tackling looking through that pile....and saw the bag sitting on the dresser behind me.

*smacks head*

Oh well, the good news is at least I found it! Now I can go work on sewing my dress...I've got all the main pieces put together.

The bad news? Smacking my head didn't get this song out of my head: Killer Queen ~Queen

Mom and I both had this stuck in our heads after hearing it first on the radio and then on American Idol Tuesday. I tried to replace it with this song, that I like better: Somebody To Love ~Queen, but now I just have both of them in my head intermittently. Even after listening to my iPod.

Cameras and stitching

Dad brought this home for me earlier this week:












"Don't salivate too much," he said. Yeah, good warning... there are so many neat cameras in there. A bunch of digital SLR cameras that are all too expensive for me. :( And if I got something like that I would have to figure out have Dad show me how to use all the different settings...but I could get some good photos! Once I knew how to use it...

One thing I really liked was this awesome little Nikon CoolPix in Ruby Red. I love the color, plus it's got twice the megapixels of my current camera and an anti-shake mode. However, it's not really enough different from what I've got to make it worth getting, so I'll just wait and get an SLR sometime. I'll wait till they come down in price maybe. You can get an 8G iPod Nano now for the same price the 4G used to be. If Apple products go down in price, I'm sure a camera will eventually. Or perhaps they already have.

Oh yes, I was going to post a picture of my cross-stitching!












That's how much I've gotten done on it. There are other colors to be filled in on the border, so that's not even completely done! Here's what it's going to look like when it's finished: Celtic Banner
I was hoping to get it done this year, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do that!

Some engineers had time on their hands

We've been researching washing machines because ours is probably about to die! Dad has fixed it several times already. He replaced the agitator dogs once, and he's also replaced the springs that the tub is suspended by. I think that's what's going again, and it's not going to be fixable another time. Last time when he replaced them he had to drill new holes, because the old ones were rusted, and I don't think there's anyplace left to drill more holes. It hasn't completely broken yet, last time when it broke the whole tub was slopping around....it's not doing that yet, but it's definitely listing to the side in an alarming way! :)

Anyway, it sounds like we'll probably try to get a Speed Queen washer. We were looking at stuff about the Fisher Paykel washers though to see what the deal was with them, and we found this:

Can Your Washer Do This?


It has an easter egg in it!

So while that's pretty cool, I don't think we're getting one of those...for one thing it wouldn't be very easy to get replacement parts for it and that's pretty important to us. Along with it being a top-loader if possible, and being able to make it use enough water to rinse properly. Stupid water regulations...really there are so many other things they could put the regulations on! Like gas-guzzling SUVs for starters...but I digress...

Colin photography

I did a little bit of gardening on Monday, and I let Colin use my camera to take pictures. Sadly, he got better results with it than I do sometimes! :D Here are some of the pictures he took. He wandered around the whole time I was out there, watching through the "live view" screen on the camera. In other news, the battery in my camera is running low...

Gracie considering what to do:









So much for that bath:









Gracie hunting lizards:









Gracie has about had enough:









Raised beds:









Me:









I had a headache:









Valances drying on the line:









Colin was very frustrated that I wasn't doing anything...I was trying to think:









Planting:









Our friendly neighborhood cat, Lucy:









Lucy getting peeved:









Our house:









Grandparent's house (check out their neighbor's side door, it's bright blue):







Gracie out front (I really liked this one):









Frightening self-portrait:









Kooshball!!!:









Me turning the compost bin:









Gracie & me:

I'm NOT happy

I got my hair cut yesterday, by the same lady who cut it last time. Last time she cut it perfectly! And the hair cut lasted almost two months, which is great.

Not this time.

It doesn't really show up in the pictures, but she cut the layers all over the place. On the left side it's all chopped up and different lengths.












I could say that this is partially my fault (I wanted it long, but with layers, so I asked her to leave it long but re-cut the layers up by my face) if she hadn't done such a horrible job of cutting it. Whether or not what I wanted works, she chopped my hair up!

The back has this sort of...pleat (for lack of a better way to describe it):



It's straight and then it all flips out. (And why does my hair always look red if I take pictures in the bathroom mirror?)

I somehow have almost two different hairstyles, because the layers on top are completely separate from the length. In fact, if I pull the length back, I have a short hairstyle. The short style doesn't look good though. Which is unfortunate, because that's about the only thing I could do to fix this hair cut...get it cut short.




Well, guess who will be waiting for her hair to grow out? :( And it doesn't even stay in a pony-tail very well...

Ugh...on so many levels

1. I'm not quite awake yet, I drank my coffee while I did my Bible reading, and I think my brain's starting to come back online. Oh bother, I just thought of something...

2. I'm tired because I got up really early yesterday and then was on the go practically the whole day, and I didn't sleep enough last night to make up for that.

3. It was rainy and cloudy all day yesterday, which made it even more fun to be out and about (not). I don't like driving in rain.

4. I had a dentist appointment to see the oral surgeon and get my wisdom teeth removal scheduled and he had me watch a little video about wisdom teeth removal that made me more nervous than I would have been if he'd just told me about it.

5. I'm getting my wisdom teeth taken out April 22, at 8:20. Big ugh.

6. I can't eat or drink anything for six hours prior to the surgery, it just dawned on me that I won't be able to have my coffee that morning. :(

Okay, so they have this video about the wisdom teeth removal, and what with the "soothing" music in the background, and the angry serious looking "patients" in the video, and all that, I really wish he'd just told me about the surgery. Videos like that make me nervous.
I did a search on them to see if I could find them online...not that they would be on YouTube or anything... but hey, I might as well look. Well, they are on YouTube. Does that seem slightly strange to anyone else? Perhaps not. Anyway, here's the link for them: Informed Consent Videos if you want to see them! :)

Yeah, watch the videos, and then see the marketing ploy behind them: Marketing. Our dentist isn't charging the $900+ that it would take to actually make the $50,000 more per year that they mention, but the price has gone up since last time we talked to them about it, and it's not a whole lot less than that. :( This is the dental office connected with the school of medicine, and since Dad works for the school we get a little bit of a discount, I think. So it would probably cost the $900+ at other places.

You know, actually the going without coffee might not be too bad...I'll just be sleepy, and then I'm be taking pain medication afterward, so any caffeine withdrawal headache would be taken care of anyway. Yeah, I think I'll survive that. But I'm still not looking forward to this. All the more so because my teeth aren't giving me any problems...if I was already in pain from them I'd be happy to get them out of there.

I'm glad I'm getting it done after Easter, because I'll be able to actually eat...and not just mashed potatoes. ;)

Medieval Monday

Medieval Tech Support


Hey, at least the tech support guy wasn't in India! :)

Randomness

Ah, I'm tired. We had a fellowship after church this morning, so we were at somebody's house for quite a while, and then we came home, and then Mom and I went to Aldi. We just got back a little while ago, and I'm about ready to crash. After I write this though, I think I might get the sewing machine set up and do some sewing. I got all the fabric cut out last night, so I just have to sew it all together! Just sew it together...that's all! :P

Actually... my friend just called and I'm going to go babysit at 7! :D But I've still got some time to do something. I think I might still do some sewing, if I get this written quickly.

I didn't get quite as much done this Saturday as I did last week, but I feel like I accomplished a fair amount...and I slept in! Sleep, sleep, glorious sleep...ah, yes, you can probably tell I'm running on caffeine right now! ;) Anyway, I dusted, and vacuumed, and cut out fabric, and cleaned my room...all good stuff! I think I've said before that with the new, hard floor it has to be cleaned more often because the dust collects in big dust bunnies, but when you get it clean you can be sure it's clean. Well, it wasn't looking to great (especially in my room around the piles of library books on the floor) but I got it all clean yesterday. And dusted. I don't like dusting, but I did it, and it looks so nice now. I do like things clean, it's just so hard to keep them that way. *sigh*

Here's my dusted and tidied dresser...I got all the collected junk off of it:

Hmm...you know for someone who rarely wears a necklace, and almost never wears perfume...I have an awful lot of both! What's up with that? I have a lot earrings too, but I do wear those.

Check out my sheep/cow:










I wish I could remember where I got that, or if someone gave it to me! I guess it's kind of like a koosh ball...but it's stiffer plastic. Maybe those don't count as koosh balls. Does anyone even know what I'm talking about? These things...I didn't realize they were a trend when they came out. I have one...at least I think I still have it. I hope I do!

Here's a picture of Gracie relaxing:
Oh, and lest you think that little sleepy cat, or the wet cat with the skinny little legs is always a sweet, delicate little fuzz-ball...that little fuzz-ball gave me a bloody nose one time! She's got strong little arms!

Ah, caffeine...lovely stuff, even if it makes me hyper! And even if somebody accused me of twitching this afternoon. I was not "twitching"...I was tapping my fingers from sitting still for too long!

Plus I had this weird pain in my fingers this morning. It went away, but it was really hurting during the service. Ouch. It was my left hand, so it's probably arthritis from when I used to try to play guitar. :p Good excuse anyway, right? "I can't play guitar, I have arthritis in my hand...oh wait, I'm not really old enough to have arthritis."

Okay, I think I'd better shut up before everyone thinks I've gone crazy! It's just the caffeine. Or rather, no, it's the caffeine plus not enough sleep. Because the caffeine on it's own doesn't usually make me hyper.

By the way, the word "caffeine" breaks the rule for which order to put the "i" and "e". You know,

i before e

except after c

or when sounding like "a"

like in neighbor or weigh

And I noticed this because I was spelling caffeine like "caffiene" and the spell-check caught all of them.

I'm not a designer

Which is why I'm having trouble designing my own crocheted shrug. :( Because of course I can't find a pattern that I like, so I'm trying to make my own.

I've figured out the stitch pattern I'm going to use, and I've made a little sample of it...that's it at the corner of the paper. Now I'm trying to figure out what sort of shape I want the actual shrug to be. I sketched a few examples...not that they'll be very clear to anyone else. I know what I was trying to draw, no one else does! Plus I can't draw very well.
So, what looks best? You can click on the picture to see it bigger.

Edited to add: This is the dress I'm going to make...except longer, and I'm going to make the straps wider:

Oof

I'm glad I don't have to do that very often! First thing, clear the sink of all soap, sponges, dishrags...and take the spigot off the water filter!
I haven't bathed Petunia for over a year. She's an indoor cat, but she does eventually get kind of smelly, plus it helps keep the dust down if we bathe her every once in a while. She's getting old and has arthritis, so I had to be careful to keep her warm and get her dry fast. She really didn't like the hairdryer though! Here she is after I got done drying her:

She's the hard one to bathe, she wiggles and howls non-stop. "Whow. Woa. Woo. Woooow!" And while I bathed her, our other cat Gracie sat on the floor looking at her and bathing herself. In fact, she kept bathing herself up until I put her in the water...I think she was trying to convince me that she was perfectly clean and didn't need a bath!
She did though. She's an indoor/outdoor cat, so while we have to smell her after she's been who knows where outside, if we bathed her every time she smelled we'd have to do it once a week. So she needed it, but she won't get another for a while.

Gracie is really easy to bathe. It's rather like bathing a stiff stuffed animal. She didn't even say anything until near the end, and by then she was just mad. She doesn't particularly mind the water, she just hated being messed with. And to prove how good she is, I got pictures of her without holding on to her!
And a dry cat...she was even more scared of the hair-dryer...but then she's got issues with that sort of thing!

Wish me luck

I'm going to go bathe our two cats...or perhaps only one. One of them really needs a bath, and unfortunately it's the uncooperative one. :( So if I get done with her, I really might as well bathe the other one while I'm at it.

I'll let y'all know how it goes.

I won't have pictures except for afterwards...for obvious reasons. Namely, I only have two arms, and I'll really be needing more than that. :)

Time to start crocheting

I got my yarn in the mail today...the yarn I'm going use for a shrug. Here's the fabric for the dress and the yarn for the shrug.
I don't know why I can't photograph that fabric properly...it's coming out looking like a sort of coral-pink. Normally that's the shade of pink I go for, but this is actually not coral-colored at all! I was just planning to get started on the dress when the yarn came today, but I think I'll work on them both at the same time. I can sew during the day, and then crochet while watching TV at night.

Unfortunately, I have other things I'd like to work on too! I just saw this hat pattern today, and I want to knit one: Button-Tab Hat
Plus I've been working on my big cross-stitch project and I'm finally actually making some progress on it. Wow, it's been a long time since I posted about that, that was 2006! I have stitched since then, but I guess I need to take a picture! :D
And I have other things to knit too...like maybe a sweater if the yarn I've got will work, and I'd like another pair of fingerless gloves for myself. It's been long enough since all those gloves for Christmas, that I think I can work on a pair for myself!

Well, that's all for today...I'll try to get a picture taken of my cross-stitching and post it soon.

(Yay, Blogger spell-check is working again!!!)

My brother also amuses me

We were finishing up lunch a little while ago and Colin says: "I just discovered something!"
"What?" we ask. "I was looking at the calendar on my bulletin board, and all of the pages are 2008!" "That's good," I say. "Why," he continues, "I don't know!"

Then when he was eating a piece of chocolate after lunch, I hear him saying, "Come on, come on..." while tapping the wrapper of the chocolate. Pausing in the middle of loading the dishwasher, I look at him. "Are you talking to your chocolate?" "I'm trying to get it to come out of the wrapper." "You ARE talking to it!"

Six-year-olds...

My friends amuse me

My friend (who comments as Mandolinartist) gave this to me last night at prayer meeting:
She doesn't believe me when I say I'm shy...in fact, a lot of people don't seem to believe me...I must hide it well!

I guess it's sort of a monkey? It's a little, shy, yellow critter. And it fell off my monitor after I took the picture. :p It took a purposeful somersault right onto my keyboard and it typed "m".

For whatever that's worth. ;)

I need suggestions!

Or maybe I should say I don't need suggestions and people will offer all sorts of advice, seeing as Mom asked for suggestions and didn't get very many! ;)

Anyway, I was bagging up some bread this afternoon and sticking labels to it. My current method of labeling is to write the name of the bread on a label-sized piece of paper and tape it to the bag with a piece of packing tape. In other words, my method leaves something to be desired in the way of professionalism! So I was thinking about my various options for labels:

• Buy ordinary packing labels for right now and continue to write on them by hand
• Find some sort of scrap-booking labels that have pretty borders on them and write on them by hand
  
• Buy a pack of printable labels and come up with some sort of design that can be printed with our black & white printer
• Order some labels from a printing company (like VistaPrint? They also have business cards.)

So there are my options, now what I want suggestions on is what to call my bread-baking business, because if I order or print labels I want the business name on them. I'm really not very good at coming up with things like that, so I kind of need some help! Even if I don't end up using any of your suggestions exactly, I'm sure they will help me come up with something!

Basically I'm looking for something that sounds...well, like a bread company, and nothing too cutesy. I'm not real big on cutesy, unless it really seems like it fits!

By the way, does anyone have any recommendations on printing sites?

How I feel sometimes

Click to enlarge.

It's Monday!

This seemed like a good video for a Monday. And now you can get Daniel Powter's song "Bad Day" stuck in your head! Or Daniel "Powder-puff" as one of my friends called him once! :D

My favorites were the older guy with the bubble wrap, and the guy who tackles his co-worker who has been throwing pens at him!



Unrelated to this, something is going seriously wrong with my ShinyStat counter. I took it off earlier and replaced it with Sitemeter, because it was keeping the page from loading properly. Well, they fixed that, so I put it back on and now it's showing 446 visits! Aahhh, what's going on?! I don't need this on a Monday! *grits teeth, and exhales slowly*

I can't think of a title Saturday

Wow, it's only 4? I feel like I've gotten a lot done today then!

I got up early: 8 (that's early for a Saturday) and went to the farmer's market. We have a farmer's market only about 15-20 minutes from us, so that's nice. Unfortunately there were only three vendors there today! I was actually going to scope out what competition I would have if I wanted to sell bread there. ;) And I thought I'd buy something if there was anything that looked good.

Well, there wasn't anything I wanted, and none of the vendors who sell bread were there. I didn't really think there would be much going on in the winter, but it's open year-round so I thought maybe I was mistaken. I wasn't. Hmm. I guess I'll go back in couple months and see what's going on...I'd have more time for selling in the summertime anyway.

I also avoided getting hit (that's always good!) on the way to the farmer's market when some guy went half-way through a red light. He really wasn't paying attention because I wasn't off the line the minute my light turned green or anything, so his light had been definitely red for a while! If I hadn't been turning in front of him, he probably would have gone all the way through and never known it.

After that I went to Target to get some stuff and try on some coats. For summer. No, I'm not crazy. :p I want a really light-weight coat to take with me to church and wear when the air-conditioning is blowing super-cold. I usually like air-conditioning, but in the hotel where we meet, the air is either on full-blast and very cold, or it's not on and it gets hot really fast. So really the only good option is to have a coat or sweater with you! I have a basic white cardigan that I've been wearing, but I kind of wanted something different.

Anyway, I was thinking about sewing a coat, but I wanted to try on one of a similar style to see how it looked. It didn't look good. I was looking at a sort of trench coat style, which I would think should work on me. I'm tall and thin, but apparently that just doesn't work with trench coats! Seriously, I put on a trench coat, tie the belt, and it bunches up and I look like I should have a deerstalker hat and a magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes. Except I look more like the bumbling wannabe detective in some old movie! :D So that idea's out. I'm thinking now that maybe I'll knit a sweater coat or something, or just forget about it and stick with the sweater I've got. Whatever. Just no trench coats!

My next project is going to be the dress I just got the pattern for. I had the fabric already, and the patterns were on sale this weekend so I went and got one.

Which reminds me...do people ever really buy the full-priced patterns? Because they cost about $15 regularly, but I get them on sale for 99 cents or sometimes $1.50. Personally I would never spend $15 for a pattern, but maybe some people do? Anyway, my point is: why don't they just sell them for the lower price all the time?

Anyway, I got the stuff to sew the dress and I think I'll get started on it fairly soon, because I'd like to get it done before Easter. And it's going to be a sleeveless dress, so I'm crocheting a shrug to go over it and I have to get that done also.

I also got a package mailed today, and stopped at Lowes and got fertilizer for our Ficus tree and some Swiss Chard seeds. Ficuses drop leaves all the time, but this time it's really looking sad...I'm hoping the fertilizer will help until we can put it outside in the Spring.

So I feel like I've accomplished a lot today! I even cleaned my bathroom today...and it really needed it. I hadn't had time to clean it since sometime last week, and my little brother shares the bathroom with me...so it needed cleaning! ;) But that's done, so I think I'll go get the clothes ironed for tomorrow and then read some!

Oh, I just wanted to thank everybody for their comments yesterday...even though they bordered on the the overly-congratulatory! I mean, what would y'all do if I really did something spectacular?! :D Seriously though, thank you, and it was pretty cool to be in the paper! If I've got some new readers I hope you find it interesting!

By the way, for anyone who doesn't know, you can leave comments even if you don't have a Blogger account. Just choose "name/url" and put in your name (and address if you have a blog) or just your name, or choose "anonymous" and sign your name. I love getting comments! :)

I'm in the paper!

Web Sightings

Thursday's over!

Okay...I'm back from babysitting and I'm SO tired now! :) I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night, so I took time to take a short little nap this afternoon, but it didn't help much... I'm going to need a lot of coffee tomorrow...

*Yaaaawn*

So, anyways...
Our paper has this feature called "Web Sightings" where they feature local blogs. They tell a little bit about the blogger. Things like why they blog, and what they blog about... Anyway, to make a long story short, my blog and Mom's are going to be featured in there. Mine's supposed to be in the paper tomorrow, and then Mom's will be in about two weeks. So that's exciting! It's kind of weird at the same time, because I'm thinking "Who do I know who's going to see it?" I think most of the people I know already know that I have a blog though. Well, it should be interesting.

Colin drew a picture of a hedgehog for me today. He was sitting at his desk while I was working on the cookies.
Colin (to Mom): I'm going to make a hedgehog for Natalie.
Mom: Okay.
Me: Hopefully that wasn't supposed to be a surprise...
Colin: Just forget it!

I wasn't sure at first if he meant that he wasn't going to make me a hedgehog if I made annoying remarks like that, or if he wanted me to forget he said that... it was the latter. :)

And here it is. It wasn't so scary looking before he colored it in...he said hedgehogs' faces were supposed to be a different color. I'm guessing he was aiming for more of a pink color...
I don't know if you can see the music notes up by his nose, but he's supposed to be humming. Apparently that's why it says "Trinity Hymnal" up at the top also. And it's supposed to say "Spiny Norman" on it's stomach, but it actually says "SPINE NooMIN"...not bad really! :)
I still think it looked better without color, although something about the way he'd drawn it made it look like the hedgehog needed to shave! :D Which I thought was rather funny...or maybe that was just because I'm a smidge sleep-deprived today.

Just my opinion

I have a short announcement to make. I do not hate Valentine's Day, nor do I really celebrate it...this seems to be unusual. Edit to add: I wrote this earlier, I see now that Rebecca apparently looks at this the same way I do. I was going to say it was because I'm part German and I just don't find it a practical holiday, but she's not German! ;) It's generally accepted that you either wish Valentine's Day to be completely removed from the calendar or you absolutely love it.

I just don't really see the point of giving your friends (girls) valentines. If I had a guy to give a valentine to I would, but I'd be taking it fairly seriously, so I think that's the basis of my feeling about Valentine's Day. I take it more seriously than when I was little, in which case it's not a relevant holiday for me right now. *shrug* If that made any sense... :)

There.

Having said that, I did enjoy the chocolate Dad gave me this morning. Also, I'm babysitting for a friend of mine tonight, so she and her husband can go out...and I made cookies to take to the kids. I'd say Valentine's Day is a good excuse for making cookies! ;) And they are pink... I half-way thought about making some with blue icing, because one of the kids I'm babysitting is a boy, but then I figured that a three year-old isn't going to care what color the cookies are because, hey! they're cookies! :D Right?

Anyways, I don't "celebrate" Valentine's Day, but have a happy Valentine's Day anyway! :)

I have something to post about later, too... if I have time.

I have other things to be doing...

...but try this!

How Well Do You Know Me?

Or, for people who don't know me in person, how well can you guess? ;)

It's sort of random, some of the stuff you might know from reading my blog, and some you'll just have to guess. Good luck!

Now I need to get to work on other things...

It's melting :(

Well, to everyone who was jealous of the snow...it's melting now, so it didn't really last very long. :( It looked really pretty last night, but it was too dark to get a really good picture, so I took a few this morning. It was already melting even then.
I was just saying the other day that I wished it would just get warm since it isn't snowing any! Well, it snowed, but not enough to do anything with...I'd kind of like to go sledding again sometime! I haven't been sledding for years and not just because I'm "too old"! :)
There's a really steep hill in our neighborhood that my friends and I used to sled on, but you had to have good coating of snow or turned to mud pretty fast...it's probably grown over with little pine trees though because nobody has sledded down it recently...

Hey look!!!

It's snowing!!!
I saw on Life in Forsyth that Esbee said it was snowing, but I have to admit that I didn't believe her! Sorry!
It's snowing, still coming down in big flakes, and best of all it's sticking!!! I didn't know it was supposed to snow, and I definitely didn't think it was cold enough. It's 34 outside.

Wrong numbers

Mentioning wrong numbers on my cell phone made me think about all the wrong numbers we get on our home phone. Of course there are the usual mis-dialed numbers that happen every once in a while, but then there are also the ones we get all the time.

We haven't gotten this one for a while, but we used to get calls for the people who had our number before. The phone book had their new number listed, but it also continued to list them as having our number. I think it's only been in the past year or two that they got the phone book printed properly. Only around...oh, nine years, I think! :)

What we get now is the old guy who really needs speed-dial. We would answer the phone and hear, "DAVE!!!" "Uh, I'm sorry you have the wrong number..." "Oh."
We're not sure if he's calling Dave because he needs a ride home from the bar (it generally sounds from him and the background noise like that could be the case!) or if he's bored and poor Dave is the one who gets called, or what.
More recently he's realized that he always gets us, and when we answer the phone we get:
Guy: "Oh, I dialed the wrong number again, didn't I?"
Us: "Yes."
Guy: "Yeah, see the number I'm trying to dial is this, and I get it mixed up, and... I'm sorry!"
Us: "That's okay."
Guy: "You have a good day!"
Us: "Yeah...you too..."

Of course, you'd have to hear him to really understand...he generally converses in a fairly loud tone that's not exactly yelling, and which I thought about showing with exclamation points, except it's not really excited either...

Then we get the calls for "Perfection Exhaust" because the number is one digit different from ours.

We haven't gotten any text messages meant for other people, but we got a message on our answering machine. We usually have a recorded greeting, but the power had gone out or something, so we lost the greeting and Dad hadn't had time to record another. So we get home one evening and find this big long message from some lady who thought she called her boyfriend, and it was very long and complicated. It sounded like they'd had a fight and she was trying to apologize, and he was supposed to call her back. I'm afraid it might have caused some misunderstandings if he didn't call her back, but we really didn't want to call her and explain to her that we'd heard her phone message!

Yep, we probably get more wrong numbers and things than real phone calls!

Oh and I got another call on my cell phone the other day! It was the number that I knew was somewhere at Forsyth Hospital, but this time the lady said it was the dentistry something or other department... they want Lucas Landing, Blanding, or quite possibly Sanding... some last name that I think ends with "anding"! I couldn't find anything like that in the phone book, but then he obviously doesn't want to be found, seeing as he gave them the wrong number. I wonder if the bill collectors were calling for him too? I wish he would pay his bills or at the very least give these people a different number! :D

"I think you have a customer"...

...Or: Monday Miscellanea

Dad took today off so he and Mom could go out to eat this evening, instead of actually on Valentine's Day, when everyone is eating out!

Since he was off today, we went a few places this afternoon. We saw this guy on the highway...it's probably not as funny as seeing it in person, but he was driving a tiny little Mazda Miata, and he hardly had room to turn his head with the big hat he was wearing!
One of the places we went was a consignment furniture store where I saw this:
I don't know if it was for sale, or what the deal was with it. There was a roped-off area with things they were saving for something. This wasn't in there, but I couldn't get any closer to it because it was on the other side of the ropes. I was able to get this shot of it through the back of a desk though! :D

If I'm going to keep carrying my camera around all the time, I'm going to have to get a thinner, smaller one! I have the Kodak EasyShare CX7430 and it's not real thin. Actually what I need it a small camera to fit in my purse, and a nice big one that works really well and has a super fast shutter. If I get a new camera sometime, I'll definitely be looking for one that has whatever functions necessary to compensate for my inability to hold the camera perfectly steady! :p I think a fast shutter would go a long way towards solving that problem, because this one is really slow. I don't remember if it has always been this slow, or if it's just developed this problem lately...or if I've just now noticed because before it was just so much better than my 20 dollar point-and-shoot film camera! I have *shudder* dropped it a few times, so that very well may have messed it up a bit, though it seems to work fine other than being slow. So, that's that...if I have the money and I feel like investing it in a really good camera, I'll start researching them, but it's not a big priority right now. I don't have time to do the research, for one thing. I wonder if I could find a camera store and trust them to recommend a good camera, and not just the most expensive one in the store? It would be so nice to be able to do that, instead of all the research online, where everybody disagrees about how well a thing works, and there are twenty million reviews for one camera. Before the internet, you would have had to ask the camera store for recommendations, but I don't know if there's any place (around here at least) with anyone who really knows anything about cameras, and isn't just trained to read the specs on the box, and sell an expensive camera?

And finally, the brownies I made for Sunday. We went over to someone's house for lunch, so I made these cappuccino brownies:
The recipe is here. They don't really taste very much like coffee...I'm not sure if instant espresso powder is maybe even stronger than I thought? I didn't have any, so I used double the amount of regular instant coffee. So they had a very, very faint coffee flavor. It was so faint a flavor that my non-coffee-drinking parents could stand to eat them even! ;) I'll definitely make these again, and I highly recommend the recipe. They taste rather like cheesecake, but with not too much cream cheese...just right!

Monday Meme

Anna Leigh posted this on Life from the Toaster, and I thought I'd do it... some of the songs fit well, and some of them crack me up because they really don't fit! And I realized once again that what's on my ipod is only about 1/3 of what I listen to...I need an iTunes giftcard! And why did I get these ones? Usually it shuffles better than this!


Opening Credits: It's Still Rock And Roll To Me ~Billy Joel

Waking Up: Scarborough Fair ~Simon & Garfunkle

First Day of School: Take It Easy ~The Eagles

Falling in Love: Such A Thing As Glory ~Rich Mullins

Fight Song: Early Morning Rain ~Eva Cassidy

Breaking Up: Ready For The Storm ~Rich Mullins

Prom: Wayfaring Stranger ~Eva Cassidy

Life's Ok: Feeling Groovy ~Simon & Garfunkle

Mental Breakdown: I Boast No More ~Caedmon's Call

Driving: It Ought To Be Easier ~Lyle Lovett

Flashback: He Is The One ~Wes King

Getting Back Together: Love And Peace Or Else ~U2

Wedding: The End Of The World ~John Mellencamp

The Night Before the War: To Keep Love Alive ~Out of the Grey

Final Battle: You Done Me Wrong ~Robin & Linda Williams

Moment of Triumph: Fields Of Gold ~Eva Cassidy

Death Scene: Private Conversation ~Lyle Lovett

Funeral Song: Only Living Boy in New York ~Simon & Garfunkle

End Credits: Light Gives Heat ~Jars of Clay

What about you?

1. Turn on your Ipod (or mp3 player, or playlist.)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button

That was fun! :D

I need to set up my voicemail!

I thought I heard my phone ringing at church after the service tonight, but I was talking to someone and I thought "No, I'm hearing things, why would my phone be ringing?"

I just remembered to look at it and I did miss a call...I just looked it up on Google and it was the number for the Food Lion grocery store in Walnut Cove, NC. Weird. Very strange.

I'm just glad it was after the service since I forgot to put the phone on vibrate. I hardly ever get any real calls, and anyone who would call me would know when I was in church, but I better remember to turn it off because of all these wrong numbers! Wrong numbers, or someone else had my cell phone number before....so far I've gotten bill collectors, the hospital, and a couple random people. And now Food Lion!

Could somebody really call me once in while?? :D Or maybe I'll just start talking to the people who call! ...or maybe not. Yeah, on second thought, I don't want to talk to bill collectors. ;) Food Lion might be interesting though...

One thing down

I called the dentist's office and got an appointment set up with the dental surgeon for a consultation. His secretary was really nice and easy to talk to, so that wasn't too bad. Usually secretaries are very professional and efficient, and then I get all nervous and completely forget what I need to say! :)
So that will be on the 26th, and I don't know how soon after that the actual surgery will be. I've really got to calm down about this though...I've had teeth taken out before (just ones that were in the way of where adult teeth needed to come it) and it wasn't too bad. I just have a really low pain tolerance, and I don't really want to eat soup for a week, much less pudding. I don't like pudding for some reason...I know, I'm crazy, everyone likes pudding, right?

Oh well, the oral surgeon, Dr. Kretzschmar is really nice (probably German with that name) and he has a daughter named Natalie... So it's not the people making me nervous, just the pain! Better now than later I guess! And after all this stuff: teeth pulled, braces, retainers, wisdom teeth extraction, if I take care of my teeth there shouldn't be anything else major to do to them for quite a while!

Busy day

I haven't gotten around to blogging about how to sew French seams...I don't think I will after all! If someone was terribly interested, let me know, but otherwise I think I'll just forget about it.

I had a busy day yesterday. I took Dad to work in the morning because I had a dentists appointment to get my retainers tightened. I talked to the dentist about my wisdom teeth and it sounds like I will definitely have to get them taken out, so I guess I need to get that scheduled. Fun. I need to get it done before my birthday, so sometime between now and September I'll have to get that done.

So I got done at the dentist, stopped at Walgreens to look for valentine's themed sprinkles (which they didn't have). Mom wanted to make a cake for prayer meeting, but she wanted something to put on the top of it. They didn't have any Valentine's sprinkles at either of the grocery stores either! I finally got some at A.C. Moore later.

I had made plans with one of my friends to take her and her kids to the mall and hang out for a while, so I went and picked them up and we went to the mall. There's a play area at our mall, so the kids got to play on that, which was nice because it was nasty and raining outside. We ate lunch at the mall, I stopped by the craft store to get the sprinkles, and then I took them back home. I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things we needed, and then I headed home. I was going to take a nap, but I couldn't get to sleep, so I read some and got my chores done, then left to pick Dad up from work. I was getting pretty tired by the time we got to prayer meeting last night, I think my coffee was finally wearing off. I just managed to stay awake though. ;)

Oh yeah, coffee. I've decided I'm just going to have to drink caffeine to keep going. I very rarely can get the 9 1/4 hours of sleep that I need, and I have to be able to get things done. So coffee it is! I have been able to get more done because, 1. I'm not falling asleep and 2. I'm slightly hyper, and therefore more energetic. It's working well so far, except that I need to figure out what I can do to keep my face from breaking out too much. I know the caffeine isn't good for that, but it hasn't been too bad yet. Does anyone my age who drinks caffeine all the time have any suggestions? :)

So that's what I did yesterday!

It's really bugging me that the Blogger spell-check isn't working. Firefox does have a built-in spell check, so I think that's catching most everything.

Spicy barbecue

Ooo, I'm stuffed! This is what I made for supper tonight:
Asian barbecue, I'm calling it. I got the idea from this: Roujiamo

I got a nice pork shoulder roast on sale at the grocery store last week, and I marinated it in soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, white wine, brown sugar, ginger, garlic, and salt. Then I cooked it on low heat in the oven for 4 hours.

I shredded it up and put some of this stuff on it: Sweet Chili Sauce (third product), along with some brown sugar and soy sauce.

For the bread I made pizza dough and brushed the rounds with olive oil, so they sort of fried in the oven.

So we ate that on the bread with onions, lettuce, and sour cream...and it was really good! Not quite how I expected it to taste, but probably fairly accurate.

It's the Chinese New Year today, so I guess this was good timing! :)

But what if I spelled it differently?

What Natalie Means

You are very intuitive and wise. You understand the world better than most people. You also have a very active imagination. You often get carried away with your thoughts. You are prone to a little paranoia and jealousy. You sometimes go overboard in interpreting signals. You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality. You are a seeker. You often find yourself restless - and you have a lot of questions about life. You tend to travel often, to fairly random locations. You're most comfortable when you're far away from home. You are quite passionate and easily tempted. Your impulses sometimes get you into trouble. You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow. You are light hearted and accepting. You don't get worked up easily. Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is. You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing. You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long. You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start. You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone. You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together. At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

It looks like this has a few sentences for each letter of the alphabet and you get what matches the letters in your name. If you look it has N-a-t-l-i-e. It couldn't put the "a" in twice! That's the first Blogthing that I've been able to figure out how it works.

Ten Things Tuesday

Rebecca posted this on her blog.

Ten things for the home that I love:

1. Vacuum cleaner
2. KitchenAid stand mixer
3. Cast iron Dutch oven
4. Zojirushi bread machine
5. Cotton sheets
6. Electric knife
7. White towels
8. Upright freezer
9. Bookshelves, preferably in a library
10. Storage space!!!

Write or link to your list in the comments!

Can you spot the mistakes???

I saw this at the grocery store last night... the really sad thing is that they wrote it with pencil before they inked it in.