Update to Naps and Sims etc.

Okay, I just got back from the library, and first: I shouldn't have gone, because I am now exhausted and need to lie down (stupid cold). Second: I got SO MANY books. I started piling them into my arms and I got greedy - I wanted all of the books! But I settled for the following (no links to them on Amazon, because I'm too tired): Digging to America by Anne Tyler, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Getting Over Jack Wagner by Elise Juska, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.

I'm never going to get all of those read in one month. But I don't care - I'm just happy to once again have a stack of library books waiting for me. And now I'm going to go lay down in my marginally cooler room and read.

Naps, and Sims and Books and Sickness

I called in sick today. That cold I started to get on Saturday hit a new peak of horribleness this morning. I woke up with a sore throat and a headache and feeling awful, so I called in. It's a good thing I did, too, because I'm still feeling very crappy and the day is more than half over. Sigh. Stupid cold.

I also went in and took a nap this morning. I've said before that I don't nap unless I'm sick, and that is true, and even when I'm sick, I'm not very good at it. I laid in bed for over two hours, and I slept for a good portion of that, but I was in and out of consciousness, my mind racing almost the whole time. I was lying there trying to rest and feel better, and I was thinking about my Sims game, and about writing an entry in here (I think I composed an entry while I was in bed, and I think it sounded a lot different than this one does. I hope it wasn't better), and I was thinking about something that I got into right before I went to lay down.

I was reading an entry of Mopie's book blog, and she linked to her escapades list, which is a list of things that she wants to do. In that list is reading all of the books on four or five best books lists, and I searched online and found some of those lists and some different ones, and suddenly I want to read them all too! I bookmarked a few of them (the BBC's list, Time's list, the Modern Library list and the Radcliffe Publishing Course's list), and I want to go to the library right now and start getting books. If I feel well enough later to get showered and dressed and go, I will be.

I reserve the right to change my mind on which ones I want to get before I go (especially if I don't go today), but right now these are the ones I've got written down: The Assistant by Bernard Malamud, The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow, All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren (one of the lists was in alphabetical order - Time's, I think. And it includes Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret, which I loved), His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman (which is apparently a whole trilogy), To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. It's a fun list, isn't it? Okay, now I really have to go to the library today.

And now I'm way too hot to keep working on this laptop (the temperatures are in the 80s, yuck), so that's it for this entry. If you have any other good reading suggestions, or if you loved or hated anything I've listed, write me a comment! I love talking about reading.

Feels like freedom to me

It's Monday - my last day off for this weekend, but somehow it doesn't feel like it. It feels more like a vacation to me - almost like I'll never have to go back to work. Tomorrow morning is so not going to be fun.

My cold didn't really hit me very hard - nowhere near as hard as it hit my boss or Jamie. I got a little stuffy, but not too bad because I'm always on a nose spray for allergies anyway, so it tends to keep my nose open even when I'm sick. I'm a little snotty, but mostly I'm just very low energy and kind of fuzzy headed. I don't ever nap, but when I'm sick, sometimes it just feels very good to go lay down in or on my bed and just rest. Especially on days like today, when the windows are open because it's nice out, and I can hear the wind blowing and the birds singing. It's very peaceful. I love holiday Mondays. I kind of wish that I could win the lottery so that I could quit working (because that or marrying rich is the only way I'm ever going to be able to stop working, and the lottery thing is much more likely, even though I don't even play it).

Jamie, Sarah and I are probably going to go roller skating in the gym at work today, and maybe out to lunch too. I'm not sure how much skating I'll be able to do, what with the low energy thing, but I want to go anyway. I may have to keep sitting down, but how often do I get the chance to do something fun with my two good friends on a holiday Monday? Not all that often, and I'm looking forward to it. If we go. Which I think we probably will, as long as everyone can get up and going and decide on when and all that.

And I guess that's all I have to write for right now. I hope you all are having fabulous holidays out there (if you're in the U.S. - otherwise, um, happy Monday! I hope your work doesn't suck!).

Currently watching: the season finale of Medium, which I recorded last week. I also just finished watching House.

Currently reading: nothing, because I just finished Marley & Me, which was an enjoyable read about a family and their hyper, incorrigible, but lovable and loyal dog Marley. Very sweet, and made me miss my Bo a lot, for some reason, even though he was neither hyper nor incorrigible. He was, however, very lovable and loyal, and he very much had a piece of my heart.

Currently listening: to the sound of my college Sims writing their term papers and complaining because they're tired or hungry or whatever. They're on free will and can therefore do whatever they want, so I don't know why they're yelling at me.

Currently eating: an English muffin. And I have two very interested dogs watching me and waiting for their pieces, which I'm about to give them. Willow is a drooler, in case you wondered. They both had baths yesterday. I didn't really have enough energy to give them both baths, and yet I did it anyway, and now they are both clean and pretty. Especially Bernie - the bath really brought out a beautiful shine in his coat. And now I really have typed enough for one day so that's all. Happy Monday!

Illness shouldn't be allowed on holiday weekends

Okay, so a tip for all of you workaholics out there - if you're sick, and may be contagious - STAY HOME! You may have a lot of work to do, but you know what? It will still be there when you feel better, and staying home has the wonderful benefit of making you someone who is sparing his or her colleagues from catching the dread disease that has you feeling so low.

And as you may have guessed, someone at my work (my boss) was sick last week, and instead of staying home, she came in anyway because she - you guessed it - had too much to do! And that's all well and good if she was the only one to suffer, but when I wake up on Saturday morning, which happens to be the first day of a three day holiday weekend, and have a sore throat which quickly turns into the beginning of a beauty of a cold, then suddenly I'm suffering too, and I'm not happy about it. She is SO going to hear about this on Tuesday morning.

Of course, Jamie was sick, too, but he only worked half a day in his sick state, and he stayed home the next day, so I don't blame him. :)

Anyway, I got up this morning and went to the grocery store right away and got drugs (and groceries), so I'm currently medicated. My Dayquil is wearing off, although it didn't seem to do much to begin with, and my Advil are kicking in, so I'm not feeling too bad at this moment. I'm well enough to play my Sims, but not well enough to go to my sister's cookout today. Oh well. Maybe I'll feel well enough by Monday to go roller skating with Jamie and Sarah on our day off.

Oh, and one more thing. I think someone needs to remind me from time to time that when I get up at 12:45 to use the bathroom, I am going to be far too fuzzy headed to think clearly. Especially when my throat was already hurting then. 'Cause I got up this morning at 12:45, and used the bathroom, washed my hands and was getting ready to stumble back to bed when I heard water running, and it sounded like it was in the basement. So I put on my boots (my basement is not finished, and the first half has a dirt floor) and my jacket with the hood up (to shield me from spiders, of course), and I go downstairs to investigate. I was worried that I had pipes leaking, or that the water pump was broken again, and was wondering what in the world I was going to do about it at 1:00 in the morning. Well. It was just the water softener backwashing, like it does every night about that time, only I'm usually asleep and can't hear it. I absolutely hate my basement, and don't even like to go down there in the daylight, much less at 1:00 in the morning. I put some salt in the water softener while I was down there, because it was almost empty, and since I was there, why not? Then I came back upstairs, washed my hands again to get the basement yuck off of them, and went to bed, where I laid in bed for half an hour imagining that there were crawly things on me from the basement before I finally went back to sleep.

Sigh. My vacation is not starting well. And now I need to get back to playing my Sims. I hope you are having a much better Saturday than I am.

Holiday Weekend...Almost

It's the Friday before a holiday weekend! Monday is Memorial Day, and we get it off, and I am very happy about that. Of course, most of the people who work on campus seem to have taken today off in order to get a jump start on the weekend, so it's like a ghost town around here. But that's okay. I'll only miss one of them (Sarah, I'm giving you a big exaggerated Dale sigh complete with puppy dog droopy eyes over here). And my weekend gets to start at 4:00 today, so that isn't too bad.

* * *

So I think Bernie is teaching Willow some new tricks. I've had her for 9 months now, and for the first time in all of those months she rolled on her back in the grass yesterday. Bernie does that at least twice every single time I take the dogs out, but Willow never had. But yesterday she did it twice. And of course I didn't have my camera with me either time, dangit. I took the camera out with me the third time, and she didn't do it. Of course. Anyway, it was very cute. She was a very insecure, neurotic dog when I got her (and okay, she still is a bit neurotic), but it seems like she is finally starting to relax and figure out what it's like to be a happy, well cared for dog who can sometimes enjoy life, and I love that. Now if only Bernie could teach her to be a bit quieter. I'll have to get him working on that.

* * *

Sarah and I started roller skating during lunch again. Yay! It's a very fun way to get some exercise and I'm very happy that she likes it as much as I do. And, even more good news, Jamie finally got himself some skates too! Sarah called in sick today (still sad about that, by the way), but Jamie is here, so we'll be skating around the gym today without her. And it's his first day on these skates, so she's missing some serious comedic potential. Sigh. I think we'll manage to have fun without her, though. :)

* * *

Okay, I should get back to work. I hope you all have a great holiday weekend! I'll be spending part of it at my sister's house for a picnic, and will of course be spending a large chunk of it playing my Sims, so I'll love every minute of it.

* * *

Currently reading: Marley & Me, by John Grogan (borrowed from Sarah)
Currently listening: Yahoo radio. They're playing "Bad" by U2 at this second
Current watch (you know I'm still excited about those): I'm wearing a Tigger watch today. It is very cute.
Currently watching: nothing, 'cause I'm at work, but I got to start watching this last season of Smallville last night, which was very exciting. Clark is such a cutie
Last webpage visited: www.boolprop.com, the best Sims forum around

Why it's crazy to live in central NY

Central New York. May 21st. It's snowing - see the photographic evidence below.


It isn't sticking to the grass in my yard, but it is sticking to the plowed fields across the street. And then, according to the weather channel website, it's supposed to be in the high 70s or low 80s by mid-week. It's weather insanity! And a typical spring for us here in central New York. Sigh.

I am a lost cause with money

So, you know when I told you (I think I told you) that when I got the money for my first editing job a couple of months ago, I saved out the money for the trip my sister and I are going to take in June, and I gave it to her to hold for me? I was a smart woman for doing that. I got paid for a second editing job a week or so ago, and I've been good with the money up to now (all of my May bills are paid, and the rest is in my checking account). And then I went to Walmart yesterday to get groceries. And I took about half of my dead watches with me. I don't think I've ever mentioned in here that I collect watches, so you may not know that about me unless you're someone who knows me in real life, but I do. I have 39 of them (it was 40, but I left my Tazmanian Devil watch in class a couple of weeks ago, and someone took it. Bastard. I hope it dies on them), and before yesterday, only four of them had working batteries. Now 21 of them have working batteries. And I bought a new watch while I was waiting for the good jewelry people at Walmart to put in all of those batteries. I'm not mentioning any dollar amounts here, but you can do the math. The batteries cost about $3 a piece. The watch cost $22. Yup. I have a serious problem. But my watches are pretty, and I can't wait until I get to choose one to wear tomorrow.

See? Pretty, right? Okay, you may have to be a watch loving person like me to appreciate them. But trust me, they're making me happy. And I don't just collect watches, I collect fun watches, so mixed in there you will see (if you look closely enough) Sylvester the cat, Tigger, Spiderman, Bugs Bunny, Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola and lots of other fun most likely cartoon characters. The new one I bought yesterday is the red banded one on the bottom left - next to the butterfly. It's an antinque looking Mickey Mouse, and very cool (it might win the contest for which one I wear tomorrow).

Okay, and now that I have completely bored you, I'll move on past the watch obsession. I am having a great weekend, even though all of that oldness stuff that I've been talking about apparently comes with an inability to sleep in (which probably goes along with the inability to stay up late). I have gotten up both yesterday and today at 6:30. Sigh. I used to be able to sleep in, I swear I did. Oh well. Getting up early just means I get to start playing my Sims earlier. And doing my laundry earlier. So it's not all bad.

And now I guess that's all I have to say for today. So since I forgot to do this last entry, I'll tell you the following:

Watching: Re-runs of the Gilmore Girls that I tape everyday on ABC Family Channel. I am currently watching the episode that was shown on Monday. I'm a little behind.

Playing: the Sims, of course. The house I'm playing has two teenagers in it (twins), and the girl went on a date the other night, and her date came and brought her a poker table in the middle of the night as a gift. Why didn't any of my dates ever do that for me? Sigh. Also, the guy is - okay, this is hard to explain to any non-Sim playing people, but I'll do it anyway because I know at least two people reading this play the Sims. I created a family in my game that is my family from when I was a kid. My Mom, Dad and my four older siblings. My siblings and I are all currently teens in the game. The teenage girl in the family I'm playing went on a date with the Sim patterned after the brother closest to me in age. In real life he's a bit of an ass, and I could never see him buying a poker table for a girl, so it made me laugh. Okay, I'm ending the Sims talk now.

Reading: Just finished reading Child of My Heart, which was decent. I would rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars. I was going to read a book called Marley and Me (I think is the title) that Sarah lent me, but it's at work. So I'm just starting Good Faith by Jane Smiley. I may switch to the other one when I get to work tomorrow though. Maybe.

And that's all I'm doing right now (unless you want to know that I am drinking a Diet Pepsi, and am therefore a little wired - yes, you can blame this entry on the caffeine), so that's all I'm writing. I hope you all are having a great Sunday!

Friday! Woo!

Remember when I posted that entry about my new glasses, and how they were a sign of me being old? Well, sign number two came last night, when I went to bed at...ready for this?...8:30! What the heck? I have two excuses: 1, I was still tired from earlier this week when I stayed up too late watching the Grey's Anatomy season finale; and 2, I had a wicked headache, and going to bed brought the possibility of it going away before I woke up (which it did).

Also, I didn't actually go to sleep at 8:30. I watched the end of the Will & Grace retrospective thing first. Then I shut the TV off and went to sleep at 9:00. Ahem.

Anyway. Today is Friday! Woo! I have big plans of doing nothing this weekend, which I am very happy about. Also, I might go to Pizza Hut and get pizza and breadsticks one of the two days, because I've been wanting some Pizza Hut for a couple of weeks now. And I need to get groceries. I sure do live an exciting life, huh? :)

It is also my first entirely school free weekend, because my last exam was this last Wednesday, and I got my grades today. I did exactly as I figured in my accounting class (which was well) and as good as I hoped in my Flash class. They both could have been better, but you know what? I just overextended myself. There are only so many hours in the week, and between work and attending classes and doing my freelance copyediting work, there wasn't much left for homework. So oh well. And it's not like I did bad - just not as good as I could have done. And the money that I took in working all that time was absolutely needed, so I'm okay with the trade-off.

And now I must leave work and go home and start all that relaxing that I have scheduled, so see you later! I hope you have a great weekend! I might pop in this weekend and update again. If the mood strikes.

Why I don't stay up late watching TV

I stayed up until 11:00 last night to watch the Grey's Anatomy season finale. I say stayed up, but I was in bed watching it, so really I mean stayed awake. And this is why I don't do that normally - I am the walking dead this morning. I need to go back to bed and get at least another hour or two of sleep. But I can't, because I'm at work. Sigh.

The show was kind of worth it, though. If you watch the show and haven't done so yet, come back and read me after you watch it, because I'm going to talk about what happened. Okay? Did you leave? If not, then I hope you watched it! Cause here we go.

I knew Denny was going to die. He had to. I didn't know it was going to make me cry big fat headache inducing tears, though (yes, I am a sap). And I didn't know that Alex was going to make me kind of like him again by picking Izzie (or however you would spell her name) up off Denny's bed and holding her while she cried. Bastard, making me like him again. Also? When they got to the whole Meredith/Dr. McDreamy sex scene, I really couldn't have cared less. Why is the character that the show is named after the least interesting one on the whole show? I love Patrick Dempsey, but I really couldn't care less if he and Meredith get together.

As for the rest of the show, I wanted to hit Yang for not being strong enough to be there for Burke, but I was happy when she went in at the end and held his hand. I'm glad she realized before it was too late what she was doing.

And I guess that's enough talking about a TV show. It's really good, though, and I'm going to miss it until next season. And now I may need to go get a soda to wake me up.

Sleeping Bernie

I took this picture of Bernie last night. My school bookbag is laying on the floor next to my desk, and I looked down to see that he was sleeping with his head on it. Awww. He's so sweet. A bit of a dufus head sometimes, but so sweet.

I just got done mowing my back and side yards for the first time this year. Man, were they high! I had a regular hay field going out there. I would have had them cut last weekend, but my mower blades were rusted in place and wouldn't turn. The mower got left outside for a while last year, and it rusted. Oops. But my brother-in-law came over Wednesday night and got it fixed up for me, so it's all good to go now. Thrilling story, right? I knew you'd love it. lol. I did keep finding things in the yard as I was mowing, though. Weird things, too. I found a dog dish under the tree. Not too weird - I must have had one of the dogs out there at the end of the year. Then I found a beach towel in the side grass. That was weird. Then I found the top of my propane tank (the lid of it, I mean) in the back. It's a good thing I look around while I'm mowing.

So this is my first mostly school free weekend. Yay! I have to do a little bit of studying tomorrow for my accounting final, which is on Monday, but mostly I have the whole weekend to do whatever I want. Which will of course involve a lot of Sim playing, plus I need to sweep up the Bernie hair that is everywhere. Yuck. You know what? I'm going to show you a picture of that, too, just so you can feel my pain (you lucky people). This picture is TWO DAYS worth of hair, just from my living room floor. This doesn't include what was on my dining room, kitchen, bathroom or bedroom floors. TWO DAYS! Look at this humongous pile of hair:

The broom I put there for scale, and Zelda walked up as I was taking the picture. Isn't that horrible? That's just two days of hair - imagine what he could do to this house if I left it any longer than that between sweepings! **shudder**

And that's all I have for now, I guess. I am going to start a new little section at the bottom of my entries for a while, I think. I'm not saying I'll do it every time I post, but if I feel like it I will. :) I hope you all are having wonderful weekends!

Currently reading: Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott

Currently listening: nothing but my Sim humming along with his mp3 player

Currently watching: nothing. My TV is off right now.

Last talked to: Sarah, on IM right now.

Wrap it up

You may as well wrap this semester up, because it's all done for me. Well, technically I have two exams left to take, but I'm not stressing over those. I was stressing over my final project for my flash class. Let me emphasize that more: STRESSING. There, that's better. I worked on it for 8 1/2 hours over the last two days (that's in addition to working both days and spending four hours in my classes), and there were still two things that I couldn't get to work. I shut it down at 10:30 last night because my brain was fried - I just couldn't think straight anymore. This morning I did a few things that I had to do to it (small cosmetic things) and then I e-mailed my professor to see if he could help me with the two problems that I couldn't fix. I went to his office, and it took him, no lie, ten minutes to help me fix what I had spent 8 1/2 hours trying to fix on my own. Sigh. And then he gave me chocolate! So I officially love him.

And now that the stress is gone from my life, I will once again have free time! It's so exciting I can barely stand it. Imagine, time to spend doing whatever I want. Even if that will need to include a lot of sweeping to get rid of the explosion of hair that Bernie is sending all over my house, not to mention the rest of the housework that I have been neglecting lately, it will still be fantastic. I see a lot of Simming in my future.

A stress free life is a wonderful thing, oh yes it is.

And since the stress of this project and the release of it today are all that I have on my mind, I guess this is all I have for an entry today. I hope you all are enjoying stress free days too!

p.s. Cathy? If you're still reading me, would you mind e-mailing me with the link to your blog? I can't find it, and gmail has cleared your previous e-mails out of my mailbox, so I can't go through there to find it. Thanks!

Poll Pics

Okay, here are the pictures of my three B generation girls, along with descriptions (if you missed it, the entry below this one gives the background of the family leading up to these three, along with pics of their parents and grandparents). You can vote by e-mailing me at avidreader7@gmail.com or by going to boolprop.com and voting in the heir poll that I (will) have posted there. Also, I apologize for the picture quality. I couldn't get the pictures that I had saved in the game to show up large enough to really show the girls' faces, so I took pictures of the monitor with my digital camera. Anyway, here they are.

First up, the first born, Bella.

Bella is an Aries, with the following personality points: 6 neat, 9 outgoing, 8 active, 3 serious and 7 nice. She is a popularity Sim with the wish to be a celebrity chef. She recently was asked on a date by a new OFB townie named Jake Danaher, who I had no idea she even knew, and they fell in love. They have two bolt chemistry. Whether she is the heiress or not, she will end up marrying him, because he's cute and he was a big help to the founders of the family when they were having their ten kids, so I already loved him before they went on their date.

Next up is second born, Brinly.

Brinly is a Gemini, with the following personality: 1 sloppy, 10 outgoing, 10 active, 7 playful and 2 grouchy. She is a family Sim who wants to be Captain Hero. Brinly has not found love yet, even though we've been looking all over campus. I like my Sims to have at least two lightning bolt chemistry, and the only people she's liked have only been one bolt. So we're still looking.

Next is the youngest of the family, Beckett.

Beckett is an Aries, with the following personality: 6 neat, 9 outgoing, 8 active, 3 serious and 7 nice. She is a pleasure Sim who wants to be Celebrity Chef. She has just fallen in love with one of her professors, but I don't think they have a future - he has a very large nose and he's a romance Sim. Which might make them a good match, and I wouldn't mind playing it, but I really don't want his nose in the family. So if she becomes heiress, we might find a different guy for her.

Anyway, those are the three girls. I can't choose between them, because I love them all, so I'll be happy whoever you choose. And the other two will get played anyway, because I want to see all of their genetics play out.

Okay, now vote! E-mail me at avidreader7@gmail.com with your pick or go to boolprop.com and vote there in the heir poll (I think you have to be registered there to do that, but if you play the Sims you should do that anyway, because it's a great place to hang out online). Thank you for helping me pick my heiress!

Help me pick my heiress

Hello! I am having a little trouble picking the next heiress of my Sims 2 legacy family, so I'm enlisting the help of my readers here and the good people at boolprop. Hi boolpropians! Thanks for stopping by to check out my Sim's pictures.

Okay, so for those of you who are just here to read me, and don't know about Sims, or if you know about Sims and don't know about legacies, then here's the deal. The Sims, of course, is the best computer game ever, that steals many, many hours of my life. Managing the life of simulated people is surprisingly fun. Legacies are a challenge invented by someone on the Sims 2 website, where you have to play a family, without cheats, for ten generations. In another twist on this challenge, someone else came up with the concept of an alphabet legacy, which is the same as a legacy, only you go for 26 generations, not counting the founder, naming the first generation with A names, the second with B names and so on. I am doing an alphabet legacy, and am currently on the B generation. One of the three children from this family needs to move back into the family house and conceive generation C, and I can't pick which one should do it. So I'm asking you to help me.

First I'm going to show you pictures of the founders and their heiress, and then I'll show you the three girls you have to choose between (this way you can make a more informed choice for me).

This is the founding Sim, Mary Rhodes. She was a family Sim who along with her husband raised ten children.

This is her husband, Samuel. He's chugging some elixir of life - having ten kids takes a long time! A little help is necessary.

This is their daughter, Ainsley. She was their fifth born and one of the most attractive (quite a few of the ten kids inherited their Dad's unfortunate brow ridge/mouth combo, poor things). She is a knowledge Sim who achieved her lifetime aspiration of becoming a mad scientist. She met and fell in love with a college student named Christopher during her years at Sim State. His picture is below.

I don't know why his picture came in so little - sorry about that. Anyway, he is a fortune Sim who achieved his lifetime aspiration of becoming chief of staff on the day that he turned elder. There is a red faux-hawk under that graduation cap. And here are their three kids, in order of birth!

Okay, blogger isn't letting me load anymore pictures in this entry, so please see the next one for the girls' pics. Thanks!

Hi Sis!

I sent the link to this journal to my sister today. She's the only family I've told about it. Hi sister whose name I won't use unless you tell me its okay to do so! I hope you enjoy reading what I've written here, and don't think I'm too weird for posting this stuff online.

My classes will be over in one week and one day, and I CANNOT WAIT. I am so looking forward to not having classes to take for a while. I need the break so desperately, I can't even tell you. Although of course, I might be giving that free time right back away, because I'm up for an editing job for a quarterly journal. But that would only be about 20 or 30 hours per issue, so that's not bad. And the money I would make would cover my fuel oil bills for the year, so cross your fingers for me on it. Also, thank you, Sally, for putting my name in for it! I appreciate it so much. You rule.

So, my water pump broke the other night. I have had problems with it before (that I may have written about here, I'm not sure), and I'm getting so sick of it! I have been showering at my sister's house for the last couple of days, and I've been using bottled water to fill the animals' water dishes, and it is just so inconvient not to have water for two days! I mean, I just want to turn on the tap and have water come out. Is that too much to ask? Also, I'm pretty broke right now (at least until I get my editing money, but that's already earmarked for home improvements of other kinds, like a roof and/or windows), so I'm not looking forward to seeing this repair bill. I love my house, but I would love it a lot more if I didn't need to keep putting money into it.

In fact, just for fun, I'm going to list out what I've done to my house already, and what still needs to be done. Feel free to zone out if you don't care.

What I've done: replaced the water softener, replaced the pool liner, had insulation blown in to the walls, replaced the floor in the living room, replaced four windows and done general painting/cleaning up.

What still needs to be done, in order of importance: new roof on the living room extension and the porch, replace the porch, replace the rest of the windows, replace the main roof, replace the siding, re-replace the living room floor and level it first this time, remove the panelling in the living room and dining room and put up wallboard, replace the flooring in the kitchen/dining room/bathroom, replace the carpet in my bedroom, gut and re-do the room that I used to sleep in upstairs, remove the paneling in the upstairs hallway and put in wallboard and redecorate/clean out the storage room at the top of the stairs.

Whew, that's quite a list. And I could also include: insulate the garage, have the stump removed from the front yard, have the half dead trees taken down out front, before they fall on my house, and clean up and beautify the area around my pool. And open the pool. And add a second bathroom upstairs.

Yeah, that might all be done sometime before I die. Or if I ever (start to play and then) win the lottery. But I love my house! Really, I do!

Ducks

Picture of the day, taken late last week. A mallard and his girl hang out in my (disgustingly dirty, hasn't been opened in a couple of years) pool. They are very pretty, and I was happy to get a shot of them. Also, I'm hoping to get that pool open this year. Somehow. If I can find the money to do it. (Must win that lottery.) The black and blue things floating in the pool are the water bags that once held the cover on the pool. The dark shape under the water is the cover. The bags did their job well, didn't they? Oh, the sarcasm. Also, there's a new post under this one, about my weekend. For some reason blogger wouldn't let me upload a picture at the bottom of the entry. I tried three times and then quit. So scroll there once you're done here. :)

The Other Side of the Weekend

I had a very relaxing weekend for a change. I finished my editing job on Friday night, and while I have some homework deadlines looming, none of them were close enough to make me work on them all weekend. So I didn't. Well, that's not completely true - I did some research on my Flash project, and figured out how I might be able to do parts of it, but the actual execution is going to wait until probably tonight. The rough draft is due Wednesday.

So, with no editing work to do and no homework that absolutely had to be done, I decided to - big surprise coming here - relax and play the Sims. It's not even funny how addicted I am to that game. The hours it eats up! Simming took pretty much all of my Saturday, but it didn't get to take all of it, because when I went to bed on Friday night, I remembered that I had forgotten to print some advertising table tents for the dining hall, and since the event they were advertising is on Tuesday, they kind of needed to be on the tables all weekend. So I went in to work about lunchtime, printed them out, cut them out, and delivered them to the dining hall. And I didn't even clock in to do it, because I had plenty of time to do them on Friday, if I had only remembered.

Going in on a Saturday sucked a bit of ass, but it was something that was quick to do, so I was in and out in 20 minutes or so, so it wasn't too bad. And I was right back to Simming afterward, so that's all good. :)

Sunday I woke up early and relaxed for a couple of hours, and then Jamie came over and picked me up. He got a new (to him) Chevy Malibu on Friday, and we had made plans to go out on Sunday so that he could show it off and I could get a ride. We went shopping. I was supposed to get a vacuum cleaner and two dog beds. I got the dog beds, but instead of the vacuum, I ended up with Quantum Leap season four and The Sweetest Thing. I still need the vacuum, but I love my DVDs, so it all balances out somehow.

I needed the dog beds, though, because...I kicked the dogs off my bed! I had been letting them sleep on my bed at night, but I was just getting sick of it. They take up most of the room, Willow gets jealous of Bernie and growls most of the night when they're both up there, and to top it all off, Bernie has decided that he doesn't need that winter coat anymore, and he's going to shed it all. All over my house, all over my lawn, all over my bedroom floor (hence the need for the new vacuum cleaner) and all over my bed. Only not on the bed anymore, because he's sleeping on his own not-so-little dog bed. Ha! I foiled that one.

And then the weekend was over, all too quickly, and it is once again Monday. Sarah called in sick today, so I'm chat buddy-less, but the day is going pretty quickly anyway. Every Monday morning, though, without fail, I wish that I could win the lottery and never have to work again. I think this whole two days off, five days of working thing is backwards. I wouldn't mind working two days a week, but five? With only two days to relax and do what you want/need to do in your off time? It's a horrible system. And yet I need the money, so I continue to show up. Sigh.

And now that my blog has been updated, I once again feel better. I also just went and bought a Diet Pepsi, so hopefully I'll be waking up for good soon, and then this week can really get started. Oh, have I mentioned lately that school is almost over? Yup, this week and next week, and then classes are over. I have two finals in the beginning of the following week (two weeks from right now), and then I'm done. I SOOOOO can't wait. And now I need to go do some work to keep the boss happy, so that's all from me for now. I hope everyone out there is having (had) a great Monday!