Monday Mojo: Altered Project (Late, but Better Late than...)

Whew! This past week has been super duper crazy!

School started for the kids last week, and I've been working in the kindergarten classroom, helping ease the newbie kinder parents of their seperation anxiety (translation: pulling the kids from their parents' arms and pushing said parents OUT the door). It's been a week now, and yes... we're still having to deal with it. Apparently, this year is the worst ever. I won't go into too much detail, but ugh! It's been wild.

On top of that... if you've noticed, I haven't been posting as much as I'd hoped/promised. But that's all about to change!!! I've been having problems with my internet loading, with each page loading, with photos loading, etc. So, I finally got tired of it all and called Time Warner. Today, my newest friend (bow down to Jaime!!!), came over and fixed it all for me. New modem, new router, a splitter change, (input all the time to find the issues, as the splitter wasn't inside, but outside), and voila! I am BACK!

The issues had been driving me nuts and freezing the system, and now there are no problems, whatsoever. So... here's hoping Blogger won't give me any problems, either!

And on to Monday's Late Post! This week, we (at Queen of My Craftroom DT) were to do an altered project. Um... I had in mind I was going to refurbish and paint and decoupage a tray that I had long-ago given to my girls, only to have them never use it and donate it to a yard sale when they finally cleaned their room this past weekend (um, yeah... I did imply their room is clean!!! Which, YAY!!!! It really IS!!!). So... I took it back! But...

A beloved group called "Paper Hoarders" (um, gee... I wonder WHY I'm in that sort of group... *snicker*) had a challenge for an altered project also, which was... again... due Monday. The other part of the challenge was it had to be round. Round meant any way, shape or form of being round, not including my belly, because well... who the heck wants to see a decorated flabby round-shaped belly? And so... began with this little containter that my good friend was tossing. (Don't know what it had in it previously, but the sticker said $18.)

Marissa (my 6yo) is changing daily. She is finally letting me put "things" in her hair and lets me put it in different formats nowadays. (Yay! sooo different from last year where she had to wear it down every. single. day.) And I thought I could put hair bands, ribbons and bows in this great tin and she'd know what it was because, YEAH! you can see right in there!

And so... I measured, cut, glued, and all that jazz and started to wrap the tin. Oops! totally forgot abou the window. So... I measured, cut, and glued a frame, inked it up a tad, to blend in with the blue leopard print (I don't care for it, but Marissa sure does...), Cut a topper piece, a band, added a beautiful blue satin ribbon, and we were good to go! (Don't worry... the purple inside won't be seen, there are enough hair things to fill that sucker up!)

Unfortunately, because of the internet fiasco, and the not loading of it, and all the business, when I rushed home on Monday, I couldn't load it to the group's contest. So, I texted it, knowing it was late. I still wanted it to be known that I did do it. I felt accomplished! Whew! I wouldn't have won a prize anyway, seeing as it was simple, easy, and not a whole lotta thought about it, but... it was on my to-do list for my daughter's room, and... ta-da! Two challenges completed and one happy little girl is a success to me!

And so... If you'd like to get in on Queen of My Craftroom's challenge this week, you can join us over here. Just post an altered project, and you're good to go, too! Michelle and the rest of us would be glad to have you!

I'm a Junkie. I'm Pathetic.

If you look at the right-hand column, you will see I tape/watch a heck of a lot of television shows. I am guilty. I am an addict. And I'm not proud. I'm not ashamed, either. But... I am pathetic.

I have got to be the worst tv-watcher ever. I have/had a couple of months' worth of certain shows to catch up on. And I "tried" to do that last night. Only... I didn't set the TiVo correctly or didn't watch them soon enough, as there were only 5 episodes of certain shows left... not all of the episodes that I needed to see, as it is my crack... well one of the forms of my mental crack, anyway.

Trying to find them all last night (online) was a tv-crack addicts dilemma. Did you know... that if you are watching regular cable series, you only get a certain few episodes to watch online? Uh... yeah. That is, if you want to watch them for FREE! And so... since I only had 5 epi's of each of the following:

Burn Notice,

Terriers,

and Sons of Anarchy

(which if you watch anything on FX, you know that some of the "episodes" are 3 minute replays... waste of an episode taping!), I was on the search for freebie episodes.

Didn't get to watch them. Except for 3 Sons of Anarchy and 4 Terriers episodes, the rest is unavailable, unless I want to pay premium fees. Or watch them on Amazon at $1.99 or $2.99 each episode. Burn Notice is all paid.

And these aren't even for paid channels!!!! I'm not talking about Showtime or HBO series! I'm talking about FX and USA channels! WTHeck?

So, as a junkie... I guess I'm not truly a junkie, because I won't pay for them. First off... I can't afford to pay for them. Secondly... I'm not that addicted. At least I guess I'm not. I won't pay to feed my habit. So... what am I to do?

Uh... note to self: Change the frickin' TiVo setup to KEEP all episodes until deleted. AND watch them on a more regular basis. If it's a cable channel... watch QUICKLY! they might disappear!

As for my other crack-habits... I'm still a-craftin' and computin' away... Dunno what to do about those...

Once again, as a junkie... in anything, I'm pretty pathetic. There are just some things I refuse to pay for. What about you?

The Santa Curse? - Is it REALLY, or Just a Lesson Learned?

On Monday morning (YES! This past Monday!), my life shattered and fell into multiple pieces... Pieces that I don't know if they can be restored or not.

What happened? My external hard drive crashed. I know this might not be a big deal for some of you... But it totally is/was for me. You see... my WHOLE life was on that drive. Every document that I've written and/or wanted to save, scanned (instead of copied!) items to keep on record, a 1000-page cookbook that I've been copying/pasting recipes to (AND making changes with notations), my kids' school papers, my school (college) papers, and pictures. Did you catch that last one? I said "PICTURES!!!"

That is over 8 years' worth of digital photographs, since I got my first digital camera! That is half of my older girls' lives and my 5-year-old's whole life. Sure... I have some printed, but that is nothing in comparison as to what was stored there.

What? Didn't I have them on CD? Uh... no.  Didn't I have them on my original hard drive and use my external as my back-up? Uh... no, again. Look, there are so many questions you could ask me... but in the end, the answer is going to be the same. Yes! I was S-T-U-P-I-D, stupid. Yes! I now know all of these things that I coulda/shoulda/didn't do. Can it be restored? That we shall see.

Currently, our most recent computer dude checked it out and said that he couldn't do it, that it wasn't a simple fix like a cable or something, that we would have to be referred to someone else, and it could cost a lot of money, that it depended how important it was to me. REALLY? How important is this to me? It was my whole frickin' LIFE!

And so... we're going to get a couple of estimates and hope/pray someone (anyone) can fix it/restore it for us long enough to make (SEVERAL) backups.

But in the end, we need to ask ourselves... Is this the Santa Curse?

"Huh?" you ask. Yep. I said it. The Santa Curse. Last year, hubs (who wasn't too experienced with ANY camera, let alone digital), got a new Canon PowerShot. We had just taken Santa photos and I had him take sneaky set-up photos (you know... the kind where they're all candid and fun and stuff), because, well... those are the kind that I really like.  Cute pics they were, too. We got home, and before he had me download the pics... he decided to see what "format the card" meant. Yep... you guessed it. New Santa pics wiped out. Needless to say, he learned his lesson.

Enter this past Sunday (the day before the doomed Monday when I lost all my pics). I downloaded this year's candid Santa set-up photos (click on this to see that story and the final pic story here) on Sunday.

Did you catch that? Last year I didn't get to even download the candid pics, and they were gone. This year, I got to download them, and do nothing with them, because... Enter "Monday". and Woosh! while trying to upload pics onto a photo site (you know... to print them for a Christmas present or two...), all of a sudden, the stupid computer/site doesn't recognize or even register the external hard drive. Uh, oh!

Panic set in... and I tried to do everything/anything I could think of to recognize it. And I mean everything. I even cried, and that didn't work. Didn't work. Nothing worked. And like I said before, the current computer dude can do nothing. So, we'll wait.

Patience is hard for me. And I have to breathe in slowly and deeply. But, I cried. I still tear up. And this is why I wonder if it's a curse... The Santa Curse... or just Fate. Fate telling me that I need to shut the hell up and quit procrastinating and taking things for granted, because... well, ya know! I do that.

*Note to the above: There are no pictures to describe how the hell I feel... words cannot describe them. My lesson learned: Always have back-up to any method of photo and/or document storage you use. That is all.

Everybody Has a Bug!

Yikes! I didn't feel well last night and didn't sleep well at all... didn't get anything done, either. What a way to spend the night. I couldn't sleep, just tossed and turned, and got up, paid my respects to the throne room, came back and went through the whole routine again.

I know friends of mine have been ill, and I know I was ill (and still partially feeling it this morning), but... did you guys have to pass it on to my computer?

I think it's sick, too! Yesterday, items weren't going to the printer. It (the printer) kept "refreshing" itself. I mean, come on! How much does the printer have to primp to make things come out pretty? Pretty much, it took forever to print something, then took forever to cancel it.

Then, I tried to "crop" a photo. I had accidentally left Rey's full name in the photo (see Wednesday's entry) and had to take that out. Silly me. I know better than to put that kind of information in a post, don't I? And I preach so much to my girls about internet safety... You would think I would've thought of that before I posted the picture... Nevertheless, it is fixed, now. However, it wouldn't "fix" at first. The ill thing (the computer) kept telling me I did not have enough memory, and shut down the program. "You've got to be kidding!" ran through my mind. So, I did a system clean out and freed up enough space to fix the photo. Posted it (everything ran extremely slow), and moved on to more tasks.

I consider myself fairly computer savvy. Mind you, I'm no tech-y, just a normal average "joe-ette", who can do a lot, but not everything. So, I thought I'd clean out my system even more and ran some bot checks. Something that usually only takes a half hour to an hour took over four! Since this binds up the system a lot, needless to say, I didn't get much done on the computer yesterday. The bot checks got done, and I restarted the computer, only to have...

THE PRINTER GO BERSERK AGAIN! Hey! I just deleted and cancelled every pending document in that thing. It just started doing what I call "the slug." It prints out a little bit on one page, pauses (for a long time), then prints out a little, and on and on. And the stupid thing keeps blinking, like it's actually working! P-shaw! Ugh!

So... I shut everything down. Then I felt ill.

This morning, I try a different tactic. I am (tired and grumpy) but trying to "act" like I'm calm and serene. It's really easy when you are very tired... So I calmly walk to the computer and turn it on. "There, now, baby... you've had a long night's rest..." (Sigh...) It decides to wake up slowly and takes its time to boot. (Sigh...) Log in... (Sigh...) "My this is taking a long time!" The hour glass (cursor) seems to be in that position for much longer than normal, and most of the Desktop icons are still in their larval state.

Some things just never started. Skype didn't start up automatically, neither did Yahoo Messenger, or the WeatherChannel (but hey! I already know it's cold outside!), or Smilebox... then what happens?

THE PRINTER WENT BERSERK AGAIN! What the heck? It starts spitting out stuff I could swear (but I won't) that I deleted yesterday. And guess what... I had even turned off the printer to clean out the cache. Yikes!

Hmm... let's review the symptoms. When did they start? My computer is old in comparison with a lot of others. Put it this way... there is no USB port on the outside of my tower. Uh, I had to add a card to get a USB connection to hook up the printer, when we got that. My memory is almost full... too full to do a defrag... Ok, so I have not exactly contributed to the health of my computer. However, all systems were go until I added Skype the other day.

No, don't get the wrong idea, it is not Skype's fault. I noticed that my headphones didn't work, so I can only "chat" through the keyboard and not actually talk aurally to someone. The sound would not register, and my computer did not pick up audio hardware. Could this be the beginning of something serious?

I will have to take it for a check up, especially since more things happened yesterday and today. For now, I will just have to baby my computer, and take it slowly. I think I'll let the two of us "sickies" take a little nap. After all, they are such children, and growing so quickly!

Toodles for now! lisa

More De-Cluttering...

Hopefully, the people who say they will pick up my stuff will pick it up! Yay! Less for me to clutter my home and less to dust (or collect it!).

And while I was doing that computer updating (phone numbers, addresses, e-mails, etc.), I happened across some belated birthdays (they weren't in my computer!). Got those cards addressed and sent out, too! I'm on a roll... (don't roll your eyes!)

However, from this little itty bitty stint, I found 3 more things that should have been put away with the Christmas items! Yikes!!!!!!!!! Does it ever end? It is almost like an invasion of the Christmas stuff! I thought, once again, that I had it all taken care of, but no! That snowman candle just had to come out of hiding on my mantle. I think I've gotten it all now. I'll put the "found" items up when we "rearrange" the rafters next month.

I missed the boat on a sale I forwarded to everyone else! How does that happen? It's called procrastination. I could have paid only 10 cents for each photo, but didn't bother to take the time to finish them and upload prior to the sales' expiration on the 12th. Sorry me! Next time. I will put it on my calendar and have the event "pop" up at me as a reminder. Otherwise, I will just keep overspending $$$. And who has that? Not I!

It's tax time! Don't forget! And the sooner you file (if you are getting a return...) the sooner someone else can stop collecting interest on your $$$. Don't let it happen to you, and don't let them charge interest and penalties (which they do...) on money that should be returned to you. Make sure you file on time!

Well, back to work... Toodles for now! lisa

Computer Crap!

Holy Moly! My computer is acting liking a two-year-old (mine included) and throwing tantrum after tantrum!

I don't know much about computers, but I do know more than some. I have been trying to install PrintMaster by Broderbund. What a pain in the butt! I run the drive with the installation disc. No problem. However, during the installation, it tells me "typical.cam" is corrupted and cannot be used. OK, so maybe I got some of the letters after the dot wrong, but it's still the same message.

My problem is... THIS IS A PROGRAM I JUST BOUGHT! NEW, IN PACKAGE!!! I shouldn't be having any problems with it. But I am!

Like I've said before, I like doing my own cards. So... since my other program was acting up, as in not even working... I bought this one. It appears (from reading the packaging) it can do so much more than my old program. Great! However, I can't even seem to get the darned thing installed! Yikes! Oh well... I'll keep working at it. Maybe I'll just switch to the custom installation, rather than the typical, as that is where the "problem" appears to be.

Toodles for now! lisa

Sew Nice for a Birthday

OMG! Someone commented! OMG! Wow! Someone actually reads this? Thank you! To the anonymous commenter... THANK YOU!

Not only was there a comment, but it was extremely useful. Who would have known there was a website devoted to pig collectors? I wouldn't have... but I used the info, sent in my request and forwarded the website, http://www.happypigcollectors.org/ to Stacy! (Now let's hope she realizes she needs to press the "send/receive" button at the top of Outlook!)

I found it wonderfully warm that someone would actually care enough to give me awesome information and help me out in need. Thanks again!

This week has been hectic, but aren't they all?! (BTW... I am way behind in watching taped TV - did I mention I need TIVO?, and writing... I'll catch up one day, or just maybe start over...)

Miss Marissa is at the throws of the "terrible twos," which will probably go on for the rest of her life. (At least that's the way it feels right now!)

She has become the world's pickiest eater... well maybe not the pickiest, but getting there. She once liked vegetables. We are at the stage where she refuses to eat any vegetables. Not even starchy vegetables, i.e. corn, potatoes (unless they are fries, of course). Fruits, she is ok with. Meats... ugh! She will only eat chicken. And it cannot be in any kind of sauce. She even picks the ground beef out of spaghetti! Mac and Cheese, other noodles, and stuff are ok. She does not like Alfredo sauce. No gravies, etc. either. Pizza, chicken, and spaghetti... hmm... sounds like I should open a Shakey's, huh? Oh! She did discover dried blueberries and dried strawberries this week and LOVES them! Yeah! Something else she can eat that is healthy!

And the tantrums have been raving! If I did not know this kid, I would think she had multiple personalities. One second she is screaming and crying. With the flick of something interesting, the waterworks turn off, and lo and behold... she is a sweet kid again! Whew! If that doesn't tire you out, then I don't know what will. And she still goes and goes... Yikes!

My brother came out this week and re-networked all of the computers. So, for those of you who have been waiting... the girls have their own e-mails again. Just e-mail me to get the addies... They actually have their room fairly clean, in order to be able to surf the net. Geez! I'm getting sick of hearing about the Jonas Brothers! LOL! It seems to be Rey's fave thing now-a-days!

I just finished a sleepover with my sewing machine. I put together some items for a cousin's quincenera (15th birthday party). It was hard to figure out what to get her (Michelle's birthday was last Sunday - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MICHELLE!), as she's one of those that has almost everything. So, I figured if I make something... she wouldn't already have it now, would she? I'll publish photos and stuff and tell more another day... just in case someone reading is going to the party. If so... see ya there!

Chat with ya all later... gotta go! Toodles for now - lisa