Important Family Time, Eating Dinner Together

Have continued cleaning up my desk area, trying to transfer files etc. from stacks of CD's and my older computer to this one. You know the constant effort to get organized. Making headway for sure; though a heavier than normal work scheduled has slowed things down again. errrrrrrr Work gets in the way, frustrating. lol Life hun?

Anyway in the process found these nice pictures of my new dining room when it was new. Guess I hadn't ever gotten around to editing and posting my pics before. I've never had a dining room set before and so was super thrilled when we selected this. Also, today's furniture is soooooooo big, it's not all that easy to find something that is physically the appropriate size as well as something that isn't over powering in it's height. With new houses being so modern and having large open spaces furniture design has followed suit. I like to actually sit in a chair with feet on the floor, not do an Edith Ann imitation. And our house is not big and open, it's what I call normal. Kitchen, Living Room, Dining Room, 3 bedrooms, and 1 bath.

Dark gold walls, wine in the style of an old still life is the border. I have nice hand painted dishes that have been in the family multiple generations that I can now have on display in the china cabinet. I do still want a picture or two on the walls, but haven't gotten that far. I don't know art, I know what I like when I see... and am remembering a dark picture of an elderly gentlemen sitting at a table in perhaps France or Italy sipping wine. The picture is one that makes you feel like you're in the vineyards. Anyone know what that picture is called? I'd love to have that.

I know in today's busy world it's not uncommon for families to eat on the run, to not sit down and eat together. That's too bad in my opinion. I think one of the most important times of any day is dinner time. It's a time without TV, a time without internet, a time without kids being plugged in or turned off. Or should be. A time for families to look at each other and actually converse. A time to ask about each other's day.

Spring Yard Business

One little spurt of Spring Color! Isn't it wonderful? This one small clump of purple Crocus is blooming, or was the other day beside the deck out back. So far, this lonely clump is it. But, it got me pretty excited. Spurred both hubby and I to spend the day doing some spring clean up in the yard. Was good to get outside even if cool after the long hard cold, extremely snowing winter we've had. This one little clump gives me hope, hope that it will warm up, that the snow really is gone, and hope that winter really is over. I know the calendar says it's spring; but around here...that really doesn't mean much. We often get a snow or two after we pass the date on the calendar.
We raked all the flower beds of the winter junk. Winter junk is what's left of the leaves, the deed stems etc. We picked up sticks from both front and back yards from what fell from the trees. We filled 4 of these large trash bags and 2 large trash cans with yard debris. I cut the tall grasses down to a couple of inches and that really produces lots of stuff. Our community composts. They do pick up yard waste once a week and take it to the compost facility for a fee. The fee isn't bad, but we live pretty close and have the means to take it ourselves; which then makes it free. So, here's the old Explorer loaded to the gills as hubby get's ready to make the journey to the dump.

Wearing Art

Wearing Art. I bought this jacket last summer at a local Art Fair. It was too warm for the summer but I've enjoyed wearing it throughout the fall and winter. And now that spring's approaching I'll probably wear it even more. When you buy art, or something hand made you assure yourself you're not going to see someone wearing the same thing; and you support the artist directly. You're not going to get a sale, probably...but I think it's a nice way to have something unique and support artists. This jacket is very well made and I wear it to dress up like above. We were heading out to dinner. This jacket paired with nice slacks can be quite dressy, or with a pair of jeans a bit more casual.
Hope you can see the beautiful brocade effect. Though the lighting made it look a bit more orange. The one above is more true to the real color.

AND speaking about wearing art, hop over to Brenda's blog and check out her 29 day give away contests!

AND you still have 7 days left to enter my contest over on Traveling Suitcase.

Girl Scout Cookies

Girl Scout Cookies! It's that time of the year, did you order and take delivery? Did you see the kids at the grocery store with cookies on a cardboard table? It's very different now. Did you even buy from a Girl Scout? Or, did Mom or Dad bring an order form to work? Seems now days many projects that were once kid oriented are now being done by adults. Why? Do we not let kids do as much as our parents let us do? I do think that's part of it. Do we try to control too much? What is the difference. When we were kids you went door to door in your neighborhood, you knew your neighbors and it was safe..........or at least we all felt like it was. Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, school fundraisers were done on a much smaller scale. There were no competitions to see who could get the biggest order, you didn't go beyond your neighborhood, and Mom and Dad certainly didn't sell them for you.

Times, they do seem different. The selection of the cookies is greater; but I don't think they're as good as they used to be? What do you think? How many boxes did you order? Above are our 4.

Thin mints are Hubby's favorite. My favorite are the peanut butter on the far right. Though the first box I ate were the peanut butter and chocolate ones in the red box, 2nd from the left.

I wasn't a Girl Scout, were you? I was a Brownie and never went beyond that, once we moved there wasn't a group in my school. I never went to Girl Scout activities, nor did our daughter. She was however a camp counselor one summer in Connecticut at a Girl Scout Camp. Tough summer job. You work 24 x 7, sleep in a tent, a floorless one at that. She kept busy checking the girls for ticks etc. lol.

What's wrong with this picture?

Ok, that's a saying cause clearly I don't have a picture here; but wait a minute. You're driving to and from work every house you pass has snow melting; but still plenty of snow piled up along the walk and drive. Businesses have mounds still in parking lots from the plows piling it up storm after storm. You here kids voices, they're walking home from school BAREFOOT! BAREFOOT and wearing SHORTS!!! Not one or two, lots of them. I saw them all the way home. Smaller age kids playing in their front yards the same thing. Are people nuts? It's not summer, it's not even Spring. There's still Snow...you know the cold white stuff on the ground. Yeah I know teenagers do stupid things and might have gone nuts over the fact that the sun had finally come out and the snow was finally melting. I know they think they can do whatever they want and probably where wearing the gym shorts, and had shoes in their bookbags....but come on. It was pretty, the sun was out; but it was just barely 50 for a few hours. We had frost again that night, it's still winter.

And what the heck is wrong with parents? The small children, some younger than school age dressed the same playing in yards didn't just do this themselves. They are home with adults, they are playing barefoot next to a pile of snow!

I can't tell ya how disgusted I was. Parents and teachers are suppose to be teaching kids to be responsible. What adult thinks it's responsible behavior to be barefoot in the winter time with snow still about?

Any idea how many will get sick, not be able to go to school because of it? I shake my head. Parents have a job, and sometimes you're suppose to lead by example and sometimes you're suppose to say no. When the welfare, safety and health of your children is a stake you most certainly are suppose to put your foot down.

Gonna have to grab some yarn and relax a bit. Almost finished with a scarf for the homeless and I can guarantee you as nice as the sun was that one day for them, they weren't running around shoeless wearing shorts.

Cell Phone Software, who knew?

My cell phone and blue tooth. The cell isn't brand new; but then I've only had it a few months too. It keeps turning itself off. Makes me crazy. I use it as a watch when at work. I keep it on vibrate so it doesn't ring, but in my lab coat jacket where I can periodically check time. I work in food market research and need to keep track of how the tests are running against the schedule for 1. I'm able that way also to see if I've missed a call.

Yesterday I had it. The silly thing turned itself off 5 times during the course of my work day. What a nuisance. It's also not uncommon for me to have phone in hand or on my desk and it not ring with incoming call; but seconds later it rings I've missed a call. Weird, my other phones never did this stuff. This is suppose to be a better phone, more hi-tech etc. I've also been getting lots of folks who say I'm breaking up and they have a hard time hearing me. I have it turned up and so do they at their end.

What gives? Headed right to Verizon after work to get to the bottom of things. Bob, nice guy there hooks into his computer and tells me I need software updates. I have version 3 and 6 is available. Meaning I've missed a few updates along the way. He was pretty certain that would fix the problems I was telling him about. 10 minutes later I was in the car and on my way. The phone has not shut it self off since. And 3 people who often have have said I'm breaking up have called and said they hear me better, and the connection is improved.

I asked my new BF, Bob if this was something I could do myself and he first said he could show me how. Then after messing with the phone (which he did before he put it on the computer), he said...hum your phone thinks it's updated so probably best to come in and let us do it on the computer. A friend told me she regularly (like monthly) dials *288 and gets updated. That she had been told to do that when she bought the phone. No one has ever told me to do that with all the various phones hubby and I have had. So, I looked things up on line and do see that recommendation although on blogs and other sites; not the actually Verizon site, nor do I find it in the manual.

You're suppose to dial 288, when it asked if you want to update roaming you take option 2, then again option 2 to update your programming. You receive either a beep (according to one site), or a visual text (according to 2nd site) telling you to click ok which then turns off and restarts your phone....reboots. My friend does this monthly as I mentioned; though the sites suggested once every 3 months. She says she even does when out of town; however both sites recommended you not do this except in your home calling area.

If when you try the 288 you have problems call Verizon Customer Service by dialing 611. However, in my case Bob apparently did the above and that's when he got the message the phone was current with updates...............clearly it was not. My recommendation, take your phone and let the experts do it for you. It's easy, and it's free.

Who knew? I didn't, did you?