What a Crazy Week

What a crazy week. I am so behind on all my computer fun, a little behind on the house, but have had fun.

I didn't realize how much of my life is associated with computer use. My laptop is what I use to post to the blog, check my mail, read other blogs, look up things on the spur of the moment. It is so infected with virus critters that I cannot do a single thing with it. Pretty nasty little guys as one of them, or all of them, have managed to disable the anti-virus program so it cannot even begin to detect them to remove them. I have some photos on there that I need to save to CD, but have been afraid I would end up saving the virus as well. Hubby assures me this is not how it works, but I am still not sure. Checked in to getting it fixed, looking at $200.00 there. For $300 can get a brand new computer. The computer guy said that probably couldn't save any of the files on it, so why not just start from scratch?

The desk top computer has a few little issues, but is workable. No one much used it, mainly it is set up because that is where the wireless router is located. At any rate, when I bought a new computer desk for it, I did not get a user friendly one. It is physically painful to use for any length of time, like more than 10 minutes. I have my eye on a new desk set that is compact. You would not believe how many of the cheaper computer desk are not set up for towers. Guess that is soon to be a thing of the past. At any rate, the desk I am looking at has a little printer stand that comes with it and it is large enough to put the tower on. If I am going to get back in to scrapbooking, or even printing off of a photos, I need to set my printer/scanner where it is a lot easier to get to for scanning. It sits on a shelf now as it is a wireless printer, which works great for printing off calendars and recipes and letters, but not at all for scanning. It can be done, but I want to scan a lot of my mom's photos and standing on tippy toe to get the paper changed and photo on the scanner glass is just really not working. So...while hubby is gone this week, I plan to work on moving things around a bit in our bedroom and just putting the desktop and printer together in a corner like it used to be. I would like to have it in my craft room, but the main connection for the internet and the wireless set up cannot be moved easily and I can move my personal schedule around to work on any computer or photo needs during the day so not to disturb my hubby who goes to sleep way early.

My little grandson emailed me the cutest note the other day. My oldest daughter, his mom, set him up a little email account so we can write to each other. Of course, just as it gets set up, I loose my computer. But I will work with what I have and it will be fine. My poor little farm is probably all dried up since I have been spending little time on Facebook.

Along with all this chaos, I joined a bowling league that bowls on Fridays. Thankfully it is a short league, because I am not going to stay on for the next session. Soon it will be summer league season and I will find a league that plays on a different day of the week. Fridays are just good days for me to commit to being there, and you pay whether you are there or not. I am having a lot of fun with it though.

As for menu planning. I didn't this week and the funny thing is how off it feels. Kind of like I am a little unsettled because of it. Hubby has been gone again this week, thankfully this is a once a year thing, and I have been really lazy about the meals with just J and I. Eating out way too much, but I will make up for it and we have been really picky about the cost and nutrition of what we eat. Over the week end, I will get the menus and recipes caught back up. I can just pick up with what wasn't used and start there. Now that I have my freezer and pantry stocked up, pretty well any way, I plan to take a whole day and plan all of February out. Monster task, but I am up for the challenge. Now that I am getting the house back to the point where it is just keep up or maintain, it will go quicker with that as well. I am aiming for better time management so I can craft with out guilt. I tend to get focused in on what I am doing, okay obsessed, and knowing that I am really making an effort to multi-task the essentials. The plan is to spend the mornings with upkeep, afternoon with crafting, then dinner and taxi service, then have the evenings to continue working on what ever project I am working on. Along with the paper crafts I am back in to I hope to add in some fabric crafts (quilting, sewing, embroidery) which for some reason I am being resistant to jumping back in to. I am sure there is some deep psychological reason for this, but refuse to evaluate that area today.

Everything seems to be going fine now with my daughter-in-law and appears to progressing with the pregnancy well. New due date is August 17. Personally, I think they are off by about a month, but what do I know? Her birthday is tomorrow, so we are having a family dinner on Sunday evening to celebrate. It has always been a tradition to go out to eat somewhere for birthdays, choice of restaurant went to birthday person. The size of our family now has gotten it to where the cost has been over a hundred, some times close to two hundred dollars. I know that it has been a real treat for everyone, especially myself, to have those little outings, but that equates to half my monthly budget for just one meal. I made the decision, with great gratitude from hubby, to change over to birthday dinners being at our house. We are going to cook steak and trimmings for every one at a fraction of the cost, and quite frankly I am so spoiled to hubby cooking the steak that the ones at the restaurant just can't compare. Now that I am getting my kitchen all tricked out with great gadgets it will be a real joy to cook larger meals, even the smaller ones for that matter. I just wished that all the things on my wish list weren't so expensive.

With that said, I have to say I am looking forward to my pressure cooker arriving. I returned the defective one and bought a little higher model that had lots of great reviews. It is dual purpose, working as an electric Pressure cooker or Slow cooker which is a bonus, especially since my favorite crock is acting crazy lately, burning everything around the edges. I actually have a few crock pots in different sizes, but am down sizing a few things to make more space in the kitchen.

That about catches everyone up with what is going on around here. Oh, one more thing, next week a national educator is coming to the local scrapbook store and I am taking one of her classes. Her name is Jenn Star and she is with Ranger inks. The class is called Ink Boot Camp and will teach a variety of ink and embossing techniques. Great thing is that the project for the class makes a 6x6 mini-album that is a reference manual for what we will be learning. I love stamping and embossing, more than the other paper crafts, so am really looking forward to this. There was another class that is devoted to techniques, but due to cost I had to choose and this class description seems to be more of what I like doing.

I slept in a little later than usual this morning due to the foggy weather, school had another fog delay, and while it was nice it sure makes the day half gone already. So it seems anyway. Off of here and on to other things. Thanks for dropping in, come back often.