Category Archives: Everyday Stuff

Just an area for what I’m doing on an everyday basis.

Pauline’s Daily Tweets

  • Got 90% of the payroll ordered, I’ll do the rest tomorrow….I’m a exhausted..
  • @mdcbrat Lets see if you can get online =)
  • Worked too late, could not get myself to go to the gym, still have so much payroll and servers are not cooperating….ggeezz…fun
  • Still being working payroll, looks like a 2-3 day project this round, getting ready to head out of an appt.
  • @mdcbrat unless down pouring go for a walk. You aren’t sugar and won’t melt =}
  • RT @todayspolitics
    Sarah Palin is insulated from the media in a way that other politicians can only dream about. #politics http://bit.ly/dAIJY0
  • RT @RepWeiner
    True fact over here: Every Republican member of Congress voted against the largest middle class tax cut in US history.
  • RT @jaketapper
    Whatever your opinion of @SarahPalinUSA, it must be said that she is difficult to RT for sheer length reasons. #YeahISaidIt
  • Back home, hubby has fish in the oven….totally starving…once we eat, back to work….fun, fun Much better, got dinner in…I was starving….had baked salmon, potato and some veggies.
  • Just got done reading what was left of my paper, since a certain cat got to and left holes in…..the evil thing
  • Rats, Indiana Fever lost. =(
  • Sarah’s Amazing Race – http://nyti.ms/cQnWaQ
  • My brain is totally fried…feel exhausted….need to figure out my work goals for tomorrow….time to chill

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.  =)

Summer Time

I hope everyone has had a good summer beginning.  Ours has been below average on temps and way over on rain…icks….still waiting for summer weather…dry and comfortable.  We were in the 60s this pass Wed/Thurs and we are suppose to be hitting the 90s this upcoming Wed/Thurs.  Lets just say I’ll believe it when I see it.  I really don’t want it to hit the 90s…I want mid 80s, that is perfect.  Then our house doesn’t have that chill and we can wear shorts and tank tops.  =)

I did finally vacuum out my poor truck in about a year today.  Those spiders get into everything and left cobwebs everywhere….lol

We haven’t been up to much other then work and the normal.  We do need to get a hike in, that I would like.  Not sure where, at this time of the year the mountains and Crater Lake still have a bit of snow.  If it melting you have higher rivers/creeks to deal with when crossing.  So we have to balance that.

We will be heading up to Canada sometime this month for a bbq with our sister-in-law  Eliza and our nephews.  It will be to in remembrance of Diesel, since it has been a year that we lost him.  But it will be great to see how our nephews have grown, they are so young that they grow so fast.  I miss seeing them.

We are still doing the gym.  I know it sounds annoyingly repetitive, but considering it is so easy to fall into bad habits the fact that we are still doing a good one….I’m grateful and proud of.  It has been over 2yrs and I’ll take it.  I will say that I didn’t end the week on a good note.  I did good Mon-Wed, but Thurs and Fri I was not mentally in it at all.  I did get my cardio and weights in, but didn’t get my 20mins on abs.  It didn’t help that I didn’t do very well on my eating habits this past week.  Went over my normal daily 2k a day, so I need to do better this week. My sweet tooth and munch urges just kicked in big time….drove me nuts.

I spent the week doing my normal….working, what else?  LOL  Which is partly why I died at the gym Thurs and Fri, my brain was on that and won’t stop.

Last weekend I couldn’t get a hold of my extra sister, Sandi.  Her dad isn’t doing very well at all and is in hospice and I knew that she would be visiting and dealing with the drama that is her siblings.  I knew that they would be totally, totally stressing her out and a few of siblings are good for tearing her down……and totally negate the ones that are supportive of her..ggrrr  So I was totally stressing about getting a hold of her and checking in.  Anything to make her feel better and let her vent.

Well, that didn’t happen, so I sent her encouraging texts and my sister Melinda actually got lucky and got a hold of her.  Since I wasn’t doing to good on making contact to her, I googled her parents and got their number and made a call.  She wasn’t there, but I was able to find out what was going on and let Ma vent some.  Between me trying to get a hold of her, texting and Melinda actually making contact, it was a help to her and made her feel better.

I was not happy to hear what her siblings was putting Ma though and I knew if Ma was going through hell, then Sandi wasn’t doing too well.  =(  I let mom know that I was in her corner and whenever she needed to talk, she can vent at me.

Sandi’s siblings were totally surprised to hear that I even called Ma just to make contact, that I wasn’t too happy about what Ma was going through and then turn around and my little sister called her.  Sad, that we give her more emotional support then her some of own drama selfish siblings.  If her husband Ed wasn’t there for support, she would’ve totally lost it…no idea how he puts up with her family sometimes.  Tries and keeps peace just for her and her parents sake.

Sandi is finally back home (a state away…which is a good thing when dealing with them) and eating, trying to get a sense of her self back, I spent 3 hours on the phone with her last night.  She couldn’t hold anything down while dealing with them.  I’m going to try and give Ma a call tomorrow to check in.  I just suck at it due to the 3hr difference.  I wish I could be there to help Ma and her, those are the 2 that I really care and worry about.

My god daughter Cassie has made me feel old.  She graduated from HS, turned 19 and is now expecting her baby in Dec….wow.  I remember when Sandi was pregnant with her at my HS graduation.  I was so totally afraid that she was going to have her right there…..lol  Ended up having her a few weeks later.  I was looking at some pictures that were just taken barely 10yrs ago….damn, she has grown.

I found some paper where I can make my own postcards.  If you didn’t know, when we travel I love getting postcards and sending it to my family.  =)  So now, unless we are doing a bunch of traveling and I want to get them postmarked from that location, I can just use the pictures that we take for them.  I totally love that.  Especially when we are doing hiking around here in OR.  I spent time figuring out how to the line up everything and even printing out the addresses and messages on the back.  With my horrible handwriting I’m doing the post office a favor…..lol  I already sent out postcards from our visit to the coast in May…..grin

Our kitties are doing good. Drew and Sakura are now 2yrs old.  Drew is such a long cat and is still in the over energetic teen stage that drives his sister Sakura nuts.  Sakura has become a chunk bugger that is addicted to brushing…..grin  She is such a spoiled daddy’s girl and Drew is very much a momma boy when it comes to bedtime.  Alexis is going to be 16 this coming Oct and tries her best to ignore Drew and Sakura….lol

I’m currently half way through President Bill Clinton autobiography, My Life.  It is huge with a lot of policy thoughts and stories on where they came from.  You can tell that he likes to show where an idea came from.  It is interesting.  I have Audition by Barbara Walters and My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House by Lillian Rogers Parks that I would love to get into next.

It is amazing how long it takes to right just a few things…..lol….but that is what is going on so far around here.  =)

My Happenings…..so Far. =)

Holy cow….it has almost been a month since my last actual post.  Welllll……what to say and where to start?

We finally have gotten our May spring weather.  Got into the 60s for the 1st time since April 18th.  It was so nice to have some sunshine and was actually able to have the house open for some of the day.  We picked up 2 tomato plants and got 1 topsy turvy set up for one of them to try this year.  We also picked up a new finch feeder and seed, since the squirrels broke the other one.  Felt good to do some outdoor stuff, even if wasn’t much of anything.  Well, we don’t have much of a back yard…pretty much just a deck, so we never have as much to do as our impulses would like.  =)

I’m so hoping that the weekend gets even nicer so I can sit outside to read or work on my macbook.  I just want to get fresh air.

Well, I’m ok at the gym.  I have being doing 30min on cardio and 30min on abs as my routine.  But this last week, I’m trying to take out 10min from my abs and do 10min on weights first.  If I don’t do the weights first, by the time I’m done with my abs I’m thinking of what I need to at home. And I really need to get my weights back in.  I tried to do what I use to on a regular basis and I couldn’t, I had to go down on the weight.  =(  Not good and didn’t make me happy.  So I need to get my weights back….strengthening is great for metabolism, stamina and toning.

I finally finished True Compass By Senator Edward M. Kennedy, I really enjoyed it.  It went into some of the politics and policies (well, he was a long serving senator…..lol) but it wasn’t done in a dry statistics overkill way.  His autobiography was very personally and insightful.  It was like sitting down with an old great uncle and just getting them to share their life.

I just started Presidential Courage by Michael Beschloss last night.  It starting out interesting, already got more insight into the public uproar over the treaty Washington signed trying to keep us out of war with England, knowing that we needed time to get our resources built back up.  In the 3 books I’ve read about Washington they never really showed how it cost him politically and publicly.  Makes our partisan fights look weak…..lol

Otherwise, I’ve been totally bombard in my work….by the end of the day, my brain is totally wiped out and swimming.  I have other projects that I need to get back to after making some head way on them.  I really need/want to get back to it.

We have been watching The Pacific on HBO. Read a blog post about it The Daily Beast and what the guy wrote bothered me.  He was upset that it didn’t go into the objectives and reasons behind the war.  He totally missed the point of the series…..it is about the men and what they went through.  I don’t think that when men and women are in a war that they are that concerned about it, I would think that they are more worried about staying alive….duh  What would you be worried about, our policies and reasoning of the war or staying alive?

This post took much longer then I expected…..lol  Time to get my butt to bed.

Flying Cat, Police & SCOTUS

Well, this time I remembered to put subjects down when I thought of them to remind myself of what I wanted to write about.  =)

Today we actually got a few things done, hubby got the place vacuumed of all the cat fur…not a fun job. We did some outside work.  Hubby got it done much faster then I thought it would take. I got #8 of strawberries cleaned and frozen, shortcake made, laundry done & a blog post.  Tomorrow, debating on making up some egg salad and need to finalize our taxes….fun, fun….  I really need to get back focused on our project….need to get that done.  What I need to do, is put on my ipod to my classical music and just tunnel vision myself.

I finished the Secret Lives of the Supreme Court last week. That was a very interest for a SCOTUS geek like me….grin I’m now reading True Compass by Edward M. Kennedy.  I’m really enjoying how he wrote it.  It is filled with humor, personal insight…..telling a story without it being dry.  So far you get to know people like he knew them….  I have been trying to give myself reading time…it really helps for chilling out and keeping my sanity.  =)

I so can’t wait for more hiking weather…just to get out of the house more.  The gym is getting ho-hum…I think I’m getting restless with it.  I don’t want stop it, just want to get more drive again and less boredom.  Changing between the treadmill & elliptical is helping.  But by the time I get my abs in, I don’t feel like getting my weights in….not good.  But as long as I’m maintaining for now, it is a good thing.  Once we get out more, it won’t be so bad.

We discovered that our other cat, Sakura, can fly….grin  But unlike her brother, she didn’t care that we saw her.  We have a black leather chair that spins with a foot stool about 5-6ft away from the end table.  As we were watching a Ron White stand up, I saw out of the corner of my eye a chunky furry body flying through the air from the end table to the chair….she landed on the top of the chair and it went spinning around in circles.  LMAO  She just looked at us like “What? I do this all the time”  Holy cow…..we just lost it…  I don’t get these 2 cats….we’ve never had cats act like they don’t give a rats ass about us correcting them and don’t care if they do things in front us that they are not allowed to do.  They are something else…we have never had cats fly before….LOL

There is one thing that I find very different to me here in Portland.  I guess there is a history of police brutality from the PDX police.  And from the news reports it sounds like they have taken a lot of steps to correct the actions of the past.  But there have been a few deaths from police shootings in the last year or so.  One of the shooting, sounds like the cop totally screwed up, but unfortunately we had one a few weeks ago and there has been protests….but this one doesn’t sound like a screw up.

This last shooting, the guy was covered in blood, had a knife and was acting crazy.  A knife is a deadly weapon, I would prefer and would hope that they could find another way to disarmed them….but a knife is not something that you play with when it comes to the public and your safety.  So with the info that has been released, at this time I feel it was more like a justified shooting….but I like to hear the all the info.

I hate the arm chair “cops” that act like they know what should’ve been done without being in that situation and knowing all the facts.

Now yes, I know that there are cops that abuse their authority….ever dealt with a small town cop on a power trip?  Not fun.

But now a days, in most places (there are some cites that are nothing but corruption…..not going to name the ones I won’t trust) most cops are just doing their job, trying to keep the public safe.

Maybe I just have been lucky with my dealing with cops, especially the county and state cops in IN, even when I’ve gotten pulled a lot when I was younger and dumber (very well deserved pull overs, 90% of the time). I’ve only had one bad experience, it was in FL and that was due his attitude and talking to others…this cop was known for being an ass….so I don’t actually count him.  Every other cop I’ve dealt with has always been professional.  I treated them with respect and it has always been returned.

My first two jobs were in food service and when cops and emergency responders came in they got 50% off. There are two main reasons for that.  One you know their jobs don’t pay…..so two, if you take care of them and they keep coming back they keep even a better eye on your place.  One of places I worked, it was the only location in all of Lake Country that hadn’t been robbed, because we had cops there all the time. And when they saw cars that they didn’t recognized in our parking lot after hours, they called us to check on us to make sure that everything was ok.  So it is a win-win situation.

So, even though I know that PDX police’s history has been spotty, I’m very uncomfortable with how quickly that they “burned at the stake” no matter what the info is….like the knife and the threats.  It so ties the hands of the good cops that are putting their lives on the line to do a thankless job.

Well, if you follow my tweets with all the links, you know that I’ve totally tied up in the retirement of Justice Stevens.  When you are addicted to politics, history and social issues you know that the Supreme Court is a huge part of our advancement in society, ie Civil Rights…women being allowed to control their own bodies.  What is really sad about Justice Stevens retirement is that he is seen as the force on the liberal side when he is actually old republican moderate.  It is the court that has changed.

The right-wing-nuts rally against “activist judges” (which is code for liberal judges) but their hypocrisy shows because the actual activist judges on the bench are the conservatives.  They are always rolling back our rights…..I feel as if they are going to throw us back to segregation and back alley abortions.  Screw our rights as long as corporations are allowed to do what they want and the white men keeps their power…..ggrrrr No ONE tells me what I can or can’t do with my body, my husband respects that.

Time to do a little bit of reading.  =)