Category Archives: Everyday Stuff

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

What Is Happening This Month

Boy, it has been a long while since for a true blog entry.

Well, gym wise I got up to 4 incline at 8.0 speed for 25.5 and still got up to 3.76miles in 30min.  Hubby had me use a 25# weight when doing sit ups instead of my 12# medicine ball, while holding it away from my chest.  My arms and abs are feeling it.  I’m still going between 150-154 weight wise, so I think I’m at my weight.

We’ve picked up and seen Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince and The Hangover.  I need to see how the last 2 installments of the HP series….to really see how it plays out.  The Hangover was funny, but weird.  Saw Love Guru last night….wow, that was bad….lol Watching Super Troopers now…this is really bad.  Netflixs comes in handy…don’t make the mistake of buying 90% of them.  =)

What have I been doing other then working and the gym…well, not much.

I spent a few days printing up my 5 page holiday letter.  It was about 7 pages, but I played around with fonts, margins and sizing down pictures. I also reworked where I put the pictures so I could print front and back and got it down to 3 pages.  Otherwise I won’t be able to fit it into the cards….lol  I didn’t think I had that many cards to send out, maybe 60 but ended up back up to my 80.

I wasn’t planning on a tree this year, since the wonder twins climb and bent the heck out of my artifical one. I was going to get one from Living Trees….but they don’t deliver out here.  I wasn’t sure about a cut tree because I didn’t know about whether the cats would be able to knock it down.  I also did some research and fresh cut trees are carbon neutral, especially here in the NW, tree farms are everywhere and this is their crop, that mattered a lot to me.

Since I was totally down and feeling out about not having a tree, I had to get one.  I was worried about the old metal ones that I remembered from my youth.  Today’s tree stands are much better then the ones I remembered.  And a farmer was selling them not even a mile from us and had the added bonus that they were donating $2 for every tree to the local HS.  Picking out a tree was hard, they all looked good.  But I finally picked out a beautiful 6ft douglas fir that they threw in the back of my tree. Boy did it smell great in the house.  =)

The wonder twins love messing with it, but it seems too dense for them to climb it…big plus.  Drew has a thing for checking the water and digging the sheet away from the stand that I have there….lol  The goof….especially when they are playing with the toy mice.  But the bottom of my tree doesn’t look nearly as good and balanced as the top half, that lasted may be 1 day  I’m hoping that they are getting bored with the tree….they aren’t knocking the balls off as much and when we are downstairs I do spray them with the water bottle to discourage them.  I’m also wondering if it has anything with the fact that I’m unplugging the tree at night so they aren’t being drawn to the the shinny stuff.

I don’t think I’ll be using my artifical tree again.  If I don’t use it next year, I’ll probably drop it off at Good Will or Salvation Army.

I’m getting anxious for the 25th.  Can’t wait for hubby to open his gift…..driving me nuts…..lol

I ordered ice cream cake for my birthday for pick up Thurs.  Got a mini roll with mint chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake with fudge topping.  My mouth can’t wait to have some.  =)

We had some wacky cold for our area a few weeks ago……icks.  But we are now back to normal 40s-50s and rainy.  That is life in the valley.  Now if we were on Mt Hood, as you saw that 3 hikers were sadly lost, they were getting up to 30in a day in snow.  Don’t ever underestimate the power of the mountain and mother nature.

Hello World!

Well, been a long while since I updated last.  I’m not even sure if I want to go back and look……lol

Lets start with the gym.  Still hitting it Mon-Fri….so that is good.  =)  I’ve hit 3.75 within 30min and maxed out at 8.0 in speed for 25.5 min.  I’m no longer trying to push the distance/speed other then maintaining it.  I want to work on my back thigh muscles so I’m working on the inclines.  So if I can increase those while maintaining speed/distance it would be a good thing.

I’m still getting my abs in, needing to push it more.  I haven’t been pushing it much due to me somehow pulling/twisting my back on the 8th.  I have no idea how I did it. I was in bed, just woke up and was sat up to adjust my pillows….doesn’t make sense.  My back is feeling better, but still get twings.

We picked up new Star Trek Tues.  Took a bit to get to the different actors playing the main characters, but they did really good on the casting.  The actors really picked up the mannerism of Spock, Kirk, Scotty, Sulu, Chekov, Uhura, and specially Bones.  I don’t want to give up the story line, but it did throw me for a loop.  I need to see it again a few more times for it all to sink in, but I did enjoy it.

We also got X-Men Origins : Wolverine….that was really good.  =)

We also watched Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson & The Great White Hope, the fictional account of Jack Johnson. I know that we have progressed, but it really hasn’t been that long since that time.  Those stories happened about 100yrs ago, but even 30yrs ago it was extremely in your face. And there are still people out there with those racist attitudes in this country.  Then, of course, the rest of the world still has those attitudes when it comes to different races and even tribes.  I will never understand it.  But I don’t know what is worst an in your face racist or a closet one?

I like to watch historical things, but I when I watch things like that I wonder about the human race. I don’t understand how people can’t see each other’s humanity and how they can treat people like that.  Why and how can they do that, since it still happens?

Hubby’s jeep got egged last weekend…….gggrrr  That do pisses us off.  Luckily it has been raining, but we did get paint damage.  =(  Called the police and made a report for insurance.

If you’ve been following my tweets, we now have Verizon FIOS.  It is sweet!  We have 4 Big Ten channels, no reason for us to miss another Purdue game. =)  We got the highest internet speed that they offered in the resident bundle and with our load on it, it still maintains above average speed and haven’t had the connection issues that we have had in the past when we had 2 different internets.  So the TV and internet speed I’m totally enjoying.

The issues that we are having is that their registration SUCKS!!!!  They offer FIOS TV Central, were you can program your dvrs from online and it forces you to download some software that is OUTDATED!  Because it won’t load on to my mac snow leopard.  It SUCKS!  Then you have to deal with 2 different sites…. dot net and dot com…make up your damn mind.  I’m so frustrated and pissed at their lack of support.

I said screw it and got my vaio out and did it through there.  All the crap that it wanted to install was stuff I didn’t need anyway.  So we are registered for the TV Central, now waiting on the verification email for using it to get to me….it has already been about 2 hrs…ggeeezz

The only good support we did get was when I called to get our phone number (it came with the bundle) unlisted since we were getting sale calls and they were really pissing us off.  So they switched the number for free since they didn’t offer the unlisted when we placed the order and got us unlisted.  I also got us registered on the do not call list while on the phone getting the new number.

We have no plans what so ever to give our number out, we got it cause it made the bundle cheaper over all and I can use the unlimited US/Canada calls for business.  So I can save our anytime minutes on our cell for our own use.

Workwise, I’ve been busy as usual.  The payroll no where near as bad as it was few months ago.  We worked on a few of the issues that was increasing the size.  But it is still a beast and I get tied up in for a few days before and a few days after.

Our babies are doing good.  Alexis still likes to yell.  But the vet confirmed that cats get louder when they lose their hearing, so now we know why she is so loud….ouch….it does hurt the ears. =)  We took the wonder twin, Drew Brees & Sakura, in for their annual.  They are now updated on all their shots  and their licenses renewed.  The wonder twins are feisty as normal.  Sakura seems to like nibbling on me when she walks by and they both take over my office chair as soon as I get up….I swear, no respect…..lol  The other day Sakura walked up to me, bit my foot and calmly walked away, like it was nothing…..she is just plain evil….grin

We given up on trimming their claws after they lost some to freaking out in bags.  Our leather furniture is already marked up from them jumping on and off it, so what do you do?  So their claws are now long and evil looking.

Not sure if I’m going to put a tree this holiday.  I love having a tree and all the sparkles on it.  But I can’t use my artifical tree because, unlike all the other cats we have ever had, the wonder twins LOVE to climb.  And their big butts bend the wire branches…Sakura is over 10# and Drew is over 11#.  I was trying to get a tree from The Living Christmas Tree, but I have yet to ever get a response from them…which is annoying the hell out of me.  I’ve even played around with getting a small table top, but with those 2 it will end up knocked over and destroyed.  =(

I’m even debating on giving up on a tree this year.  But it is so hard to break from something that I enjoy so much.  =(  I just don’t know what I’m going to do.

Been watching games all day.  At least Purdue won the Oaken Bucket for another year.  Been a rough year for us, all of our own doing….int, dropped balls….gggrrr But our team shows a lot of potential for next year.

We are in our winter weather, rain and chilly.  Nearly all of our leaves are off of the back trees.  So we’ve lost our illusion of privacy.  And it gets dark by 5pm…by 6pm it feels like it should be 10pm……lol

So I’m downstairs as I write this, just wanted out of the office.  I need to work on the holiday letter since I want to get the cards done in the next few weeks.

We get the Colts game tomorrow…..grin  But not the Saints, hopefully we’ll get them online.

Well, I’m going to close this….took me much longer then expected to write it……lol

Life

**I originally started this on Saturday…well it is currently Monday evening….lol

I hope everyone is having a good weekend and is doing good in football (unless it is against my teams…lol)

So far, Purdue, Iowa, Penn St and Oregon won.  =)

The 3 undefeated teams in the NFL, Colts, Saints & Broncos all have former Purdue QBs, 2 of them are leading the teams.  BOILER UP!  Always a good thing.  =)

We got ourselves out of the office Sat. evening.  Just got tired of being in there and since I got my work caught up, I really didn’t need to be in there. I actually got caught up on some of my magazine reading, still have some more but hopefully be able to catch up this week while on the treadmill.

Lets see….where to begin….

We went out to Minnesota to visit hubby’s folks during the first full week of Oct.  We had a nice visit playing catch up.  The weather turned chilly and wet but still warmer then it was projecting.  Luckily we left the day before they got snow….lol  We weren’t ready for that.

We had a normal flight out, an okay flight back.  But one of our luggage missed the connecting flight in MN. Now I wasn’t happy about it, but wasn’t too worried.  This happened to my family years ago when we flew up to Alaska and they delivered the luggage to our door when it was found.

But when they called us stating that they found it, we found out that the girl who took our info screwed up and left the previous person’s name/info in ours and she did that to another girl. Which made no sense to me because she took our tag number and that should’ve pulled up OUR info.   So now they had to tracked down 3 different pieces of luggage and figured out which went to who.  Because we didn’t know until we got it, but they removed our old claim tag and put a new on there with the other person’s info?!?!  That was stupid!  Couldn’t they see that the names didn’t match?

So after different calls through the day from airline as they try to figure out what the previous person did, they finally found our luggage and got it out to us.  Which was a good thing, it had our flash for our camera in and a lot of clothes that adds up fast if it needed to be replaced.

When we got home, I pretty much spent most of my time just playing catch up.  We didn’t have the best connection or enough time for me to get that much work done while visiting.  I did enough that I wasn’t drowning or totally neglecting my duties.  After I finally caught up, which took less time then I thought, I had to get into my payroll prep.

It finally got somewhat reduced on the amount of accounts I need to take care of.  And didn’t have to do no where near the amount of fraud checks we had to in the last few rounds.  So that was a big plus.  Still had a lot to do, but much less intense.  Actually got through it all without losing my mind……..lol

Got enough done that we drove down to Silver Falls Creek State Park on Wed the 21st. It took us 2hrs to get there and it was rainy but still not a bad fall day.  We only did about 5-6miles of the Ten Falls Hike (skipped the 2-3mi loop with 3 of the fall) since we started later then we originally planned.  It the hike only took us about 2.5 hours since there wasn’t a lot of elevation change.  Amazing how much better our time is with out it. =)

Thursday we were just mentally wiped out, the flannel shirts on the bed felt so good and it was chilly out….so we stayed in bed and skipped the gym.  Didn’t feel that guilty about it since we did good on our hike the day before.  But Friday was another day that we stayed in bed…not good.  That past week I had been doing ok on the treadmill, but my abs was just tedious and I was annoyed by it.  So that just didn’t help me mentally. =(

Today I did pretty good and I’m happy about that.  I did good on my abs, just need to do more weights.

I was just blah those days. I forced myself to get my work done.  I didn’t actually start getting any motivation until Sat evening/Sunday. Today I got some work done ok and without an issue.  What I really need to start on is payroll prep.  If I get a good head start on it that would my life so much easier in this round.  Especially since I won’t be working that much on the 31st evening so I can give out candy.  =)

I was going to post this with pictures, but it is taking me longer then I thought to edit them.  So I’ll post them later.

Silver Falls State Park

Mt_Hood

Pauline and I decided at the last moment to go for a day hike so we decided to go to Silver Falls State Park since we have seen so many people post pictures of the park, we wanted to see the Fall colors.

So we left home around 9am and arrived 11am area and hiked the circle which is about 6 miles and took us just under 3 hours to hike.

http://www.nwhiker.com/SilverCreekHike.html

As we headed to the trailhead about 50′ from the bathrooms we was talking and getting snack food when I looked up and saw 2 deer staring at us in the bushes not 4 feet away… I just grabbed Pauline since she was digging in her bag as we walked and pointed. The deer were pretty small, I got some video of them, but have no idea what is actually seen yet as I am capturing the video now.

Overall this was a pretty easy hike, it rained for the first hour and we found out the hard way our jackets and back packs are not nearly as water resistant as we thought, lucky for me my iPhone still works, it was pretty damp. I had a small water proof box that i point important things in like batteries, and other less than $40 total items. iPhone cost what… $400?

It was great having the tails to ourselves for the most part, we ran into 6 or so people early into the hike and didn’t see any other human for 5 miles. The elevation change wasn’t too much but it did make us breath hard a few times. The weather was almost perfect, wet as hell at first but some sun at the end and we didn’t over heat or get chilled. I look forward to going back to this park, I will be taking my parents here since this trail was pretty easy to do.

Video whenever I get around to it…

What’s Happening In My Life

We are here on the plane, heading to Minnesota. So not use to getting up at 5 am, but then we didn’t crash until midnight. Too busy trying to get things done, watch the games and catch up on shows.

It has been another very busy and stressful week trying to keep up with payroll. I’m hoping the next round is nowhere near as big as this one. But we are going to be making some changes, so it should be slowing down….at least by Nov 1st round.

We still went to the gym 5 days this week, even though Thursday wasn’t very good. I got the treadmill in and my floor abs, but not my sit up bench and weights. I’m always challenging myself on the treadmill, that is easy….just watch the distance and time…I log it. But it harder to challenge myself in the other areas…that is where I need a trainer. I’m getting a work out in, but we just need to stay at the gym longer then 60-80 min, but by then we are thinking about all that we want to get done and want to get home.

My weight is finally got below 154. It moves between 152-154. I’m aiming for 150, realistically don’t see hitting the 140/145 from HS….too old for that…lol This week is probably not going to be a good one for me without the gym. But I do have a neat application on my iphone that lets me log my eating that helps. It is easier then carrying my small notebook writing everything down.

I’m hoping to be able to fly out and visit my family this spring. I was thinking of April due to the weather, but my sister reminded me that there are 3 birthdays in March. My mom, a niece and nephew….from the 23-31. If I do that I’ll probably end up missing one of them, but that would be cool to be there for 2 of them.

And then somehow I would need to work it that I head up to Michigan to visit my best friend…..it is going to take some thinking and planning if I’m able to head out in the spring.

If you saw my tweets, one of my toenails was very sore from the hike. It was from the too long nail continuously hitting my boot and being pulled up. I found out later that hikers are known for losing toenails…yuck. So far mine isn’t hurting anymore. But later that evening after my pedicure I stubbed my toe….ouch. Well, I can’t see my toe nail since it is covered in nail polish. But when I look in front under the nail….it is black….icks. A few of hubby’s toe nails are black, but I don’t think that the are as black as that one….lol So I’m been trying to be careful as heck with it

I am hoping that we find time to get one more hike in. Since we finally hiked on Mt. Hood I would love it if we can do one at Crater Lake. The pictures of it are stunning and the lake is the deepest blue. I have to look up what elevation it is at. Because Oct is cutting it close snow wise. Not even a week after our hike is 70degree weather that area of Mt Hood received 2in of snow. So hopefully we won’t have that issue there at Crater.

But then we do have other options for hikes, such as the coast. We’ve visited the coast but haven’t hiked anywhere on it. So that would be really neat to do. So we’ll have to go over our options.

We have been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the National Parks…very neat info and stunning footage. Damn, I just wish we can take off and spend a year visiting them all.

I’m going to close this session for now…I can no longer think of what else to share. I’ll post this when I get the chance. =)