It's THAT Time of Year Again....

NaBloPoMo-"National Blog Posting Month"

Why this has to be the month of November, I don't know, as it gets pretty painful towards Thanksgiving at the end of the month.
Anyway, I will try to use it as an excuse to actually do some blog posting, instead of reading everyone else's- yes- I've become an Olympic-caliber lurker.

Nancy, at Victorian Motto Samplers, is having a 25-Days of Christmas giveaway
She dyes her own flosses and trims in the most scrumptious colors.

Now, that wasn't so bad, was it??

Halfway….

Geesh! I’ve been very bad at posting and stitching. Don’t know where my mojo’s gone %^(   but we’re halfway thru June already!

Here’s 2 weeks’ worth of stitching on Beacon House. I yanked up my big girl panties and did the snowflakes on the left side of the chart. I can now scroll over to the right side. I think I’m about halfway done:

You may have seen on the national (and international)  news about  the town next-door to mine that has imposed a $20 fine for swearing? Yeah- except for the people who voted for it at Town meeting, we all think it’s pretty stupid too. It’s not like they don’t have other, more important problems to deal with…

AHhhh...

that's more like it! Everything seems to be working, I got my Federal return filed. The State costs $20 so I'm hard mailing it. My hard drive doesn't sound like it wants to explode, programs are opening & closing as quickly as they should. Computer magic (a.k.a. "the Off" button) works every time!

Stitching Fun…

Here’s tonight’s progress on Beacon House:

Have I mentioned how much I hate Windows? It has taken over 5 minutes to post everything you see above this point!
Anyway, here’s my February ornament:

Ewe & Ewe & I  Friends Christmas Sampler (again). I stitched this last year and gave it to my barn owner this past Christmas. It’s a really sweet design and I wanted it for myself.
I have to go before I throw my chair through the monitor. More updates have come thru and I seemed to have slowed to a crawl……….arrrgggg!

Please Bear With Me…

I bought my Turbo Tax software and went to install it on Sunday. I got a prompt that said it would not install TurboTax because I did not have Windows XP Service Pack 3 installed. So I mumbled to myself  “Yeah and there’s a reason for that!” and turned the computer off (after browsing aimlessly thru Pinterest for another 15 minutes, thank you Jane, very much!
On Monday I remembered the portable hard drive Em gave me for Xmas 2 years ago, and decided to back up my files. This involved installing the backup software, which took about half an hour and then trying to set the back up parameters i wanted. I pressed “Back up” and there’s no status bar of any kind. I could hear my hard drive chugging away, and the tiny light on the portable was blinking away, but no indication of any kind that anything was working properly. So I let it go over night, and in the morning it showed a message that  the program became non-responsive and that the backup wasn’t complete, but a file was on the drive and it was 20 GB less empty. After I got home, i tried to restore a file, to no avail. Again with the piss-poor instructions. So I un-installed the software, and re-installed it, deleted the  I had backed up, and pressed “Back up”. This time it said “…initializing backup” then gave a percentage of completion.  But again it took so long, I let it go over night again, but in the morning it had the same error message, but a big chunk of GB was used again.
When I got home from work I tried again to restore one of the backed up files again with no success. So I took a deep breath tonight, crossed my fingers and installed Service Pack 3, and since I’m typing this post, everything seems to be working. Except the portable hard drive. I will try installing TurboTax tomorrow, after turning off & re-starting my computer again.
I’ve also been trying to stave off a head cold over the weekend. Yesterday an earache started- every 3-5 minutes it felt like a pencil was being jabbed into my ear. I dug out my bit-warmer rice pack and heated it and held it on my ear for about 2 hours. It was much better this morning.
And that is all.

Wonderful Wednesday Wrecipes…..

Sorry about the lack of post-age. I’ve been helping out at the barn a LOT due to the barn owner’s rotator cuff surgery at the beginning of November. She’s started P.T., but it’ll be  while before she’s ready to toss 20+ bales of hay down from the loft.

The other lady helping out is there a lot, too, so I feel compelled to stay as long as she’s there, plus she’s riding one of the retired horses, and asks  several times a week if I’ll ride with her. So instead of my usual in-and-out in 90 minutes or less on any given evening, I’m there 2-1/2 hours or more, plus cleaning stalls for about 2 hours three mornings a week. By the time the weekend comes around, I just want to sack out on the couch. Blech. Plus my computer has been slow- I think I have to start taking old stuff off…

Anyway, I came across the soup thru this link from Edgar’s blog. I think it’s the best soup I’ve ever made- it was really hard to stop at one bowl! My recipe below is a tiny bit tweaked from the original, mainly by substituting turkey for beef.

Pasta E Fagioli Soup

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground turkey (or Shady Brook Farms 20.8 oz. package)
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• 2 carrots, finely diced
• 2 stalks celery, finely diced
• 1 can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1 can red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 can cannellini beans (or white kidney beans), drained and rinsed
• 1 (26 oz.) carton beef broth (or 3 cups)
• 1 jar (25 oz.) spaghetti sauce (I used about ¾ of jar)
• 2 tsp. dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons dried parsley (I used fresh because I had it on hand)
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 3/4 cup uncooked ditalini pasta (or your favorite pasta shape)
• Salt, to taste (about ½ tbsp. kosher salt)

Directions:

1. Brown meat in a large skillet; drain excess fat & discard. Add to crock pot.
2. Drain & rinse both types of beans, and add to crock pot.
3. Add all other ingredients, except pasta, to crock pot and stir to combine.
4. Cook on low for 6-8 hours, or high for 4-5 hours.
5. My crock pot was too small (YIKES!) so I used a French oven (6-quart, I think), and cooked in the oven at 275 degrees for about 4 hours.
6. During the last 30 minutes of cooking time, add the pasta & stir.

You may want to have an additional can of broth on hand- the pasta will continue to absorb liquid as it sits leftover in the refrigerator. When you re-heat the soup, stir in a little additional broth.

Time Flies….

When you’re putting up Christmas lights on a deadline. I’d show a picture except I started off with a partial outage on one string, and I had to plan the layout of my 3 strands along my gutter  so that the bad section would be at the easiest place to take down when (if) I get the replacement strand. I had to go out to a last minute birthday party invitation, so I plugged everything in, admired my 2-3/4 strings of lights on my way out, and when I came home, a second strand had a partial outage. Before I started hanging these up, I literally unplugged every bulb in the bad 3-foot section and tested with a spare. I found one bulb with a bad filament, and replaced that too, but to no avail.  The futility of trying to find the bad bulb is making me think I should just get new lights, possibly just a straight string, rather than the icicle type I have now. Do you know that not all icicle lights look the same when lit? So I may as well start fresh with a new look. Or maybe I should just skip it. I could get LED’s- energy efficient! Or colored lights!

Anyway, I got this chart when I was shopping the other day:

I have to research alternate color combinations. The called-for threads are GAST “Currant” and “Blue Spruce”, not that you can tell by the model picture, which seems faded. I think I want at least some gold in there, if not blues and violets and emerald green. I don’t intend to start it anytime soon, so I have time to decide.

Complaint Department…

If you don’t like whining & complaining, then don’t continue reading:

Google mail needs a filter to sort by senders so one may delete en masse.

Verizon needs to treat their 25+ year customers a little bit better. Why do new customers get the good deals and existing customers get bubkiss?

People walking their big dogs need to pick up after them when they defecate on my lawn. My dog doesn’t poop on your lawn. One of these days I’ll follow you home so I can return your dog’s poop.

What’s with the rash of telemarketers calling & texting my cellphone- which has been on the Do Not Call Registry since day one???

My local supermarket, Hannafords, needs to stop raising prices every single week. Their own brand English muffins, have gone from 99 cents (for as long as I can remember) up to $1.59 just last week. And they are out of their brand peanut butter, too.

The tattoo guy needs to stop living in his store.

Airlines need to quit it with the fees. A story on the news this morning said they’ve made billions-with-a-“B” on fees this past year (what do they think they are- oil companies??)

Seriously, the Occupiers need to go home. And stay there. I fail to see what political agenda they are trying to serve by pooping on police cars. When you start yelling at little kids walking to school, or preventing waitresses from getting to their jobs, while letting Michael Fatso Moore get away with insisting he’s “not in the 1%”, you’re not helping your “cause”.

And hey FLOTUS: if I want to eat  a cheeseburger with mayo and salt on it, it’s none of your business. I don’t bitch at you when you stuff your face with Kobe beef and lobster, on MY dime.

And now that I’ve regressed to political sniping, it’s time to call it a day.

God will this month EVER end……..

Beacon House – HELP!

I worked a bit on it today, I had my day off due to horse shoes and a dentist appointment.

I added a friend for the first little guy and a dog for them to play with. I also reached the bottom border on the left.

Here’s where your help comes in: I don’t remember why, but I went looking for Beacon House chart errors the other day, and came back to Carol’s blog, who I remembered had started the piece and found floss errors, in addition to the HUGE fabric size error. I wish I had refreshed my memory about a month ago because one of the floss errors was those trees: they should be stitched in the darker green with lighter green “dots”- reversed colors from what I did (as called-for by the floss/symbol guide).

There is one more tree on this side below the boys, and 3 trees on the right side of the piece. Should I correct the colors on the 3rd tree, left, and stitch the corresponding color combinations on the right, or keep this combination for the left side all 3 trees and do the correct combo on the right or continue with combo on the 3rd tree as well as the right side? Mind you I really don’t want to unstitch both of those trees!

I’m a Twit I guess….

Can someone explain Twitter to me? I’ve had an account for over a year. I think I established it for a coupon deal site. (Which doesn’t even make posts anymore!) I follow about 40 people/groups/entities and four even follow me back (yikes!) I've made a total of 48 tweets. I mostly find it annoying.
I just _ don’t _ get _ it.
How do I view, or is it even possible to follow, a conversation between one of my follow-ees and someone else? It’s so frustrating trying to understand what people are talking about when there’s only one side of the conversation. (Unlike Facebook, which I mostly understand) What’s the deal with the “#” sign and the “@” sign? Not that I ever would, but how do you post pictures? How do you view things that are recommended by newscasters: “Follow on Twitter…etc.”
Why is this Twitter thing so popular???

Look What I found….

at my local supermarket:

It didn’t seem to have the crumb topping as advertised, and it was kind of sweet (even for me), but for $1.89, I can’t complain too much.

Of course, the next time I go to shop, it’ll cost $2.09, because they raise their prices every week since the Stop & Shop closed.

Bastards!

Winter….

at Beacon Hill House. I don’t know why I want to use “Hill”.
Anyway, not much progress to show:

I had stitched over 3 threads with Oatmeal in the band of snow to the right of the little man. Then I switched to the Light Khaki for a row or 2. Last Thursday, when I resumed stitching, I caught the error as I stitched underneath the little man to meet up with the errant section, and saw I was off. I spent half of my time un-doing, and re-stitched the bad row. (Between bites of that delicious cupcake!)
So what you see is about the same as the previous picture….*sigh*

What the???

So my Feed-jit traffic feed shows how some of my readers arrive at my blog, either directly, or from another blog, or thru a google search. For some reason, I've had numerous hits-I want to say I'm getting close to 10 in the past month- from people searching for "frowny face" ?????
People from around the world, no less. Just when I think it's a fluke, another one pops up.
What's with THAT???!!!

More Stitching…

Progress on Beacon House:

The second tree took less time to stitch than the first.  There is actually 3 different flosses for the snow:  GAST “Oatmeal”, WDW “Light Khaki” & WDW “Snowflake”. The bottom of the piece is about 20 stitches below the bottom of the lower tree trunk.

I’ve been fighting off a sinus thing for 2, closer to 3 weeks now. It seems every other day I’m headachy and nauseous. It’s been very tiresome; I have to force myself to get up to walk in the morning , and I’ve been skipping riding in the evening (although I managed to ride twice in the past 3 days). My lawn is seriously overgrown- I HAVE to take care of it today, and all I want to do is take a nap.

Blech.

For the Birds…

Here’s Beacon House, after stitching Thursday:

And a little closer, for those of you who may want to critique my proficiency at stitching:

I’m enjoying my time with this piece, although I don’t seem to be progressing very quickly. Maybe it’s all the double-checking the chart so often? The difference between this photo and last post’s is about 3 hours of stitching time.

I’m picking up some Chinese for dinner with Bob at rehab.

We had one day (yesterday) of “dry” (as in not-humid”) air, and today we’re back in the soup. I’m really getting tired of feeling like a grease-ball and having the frizzy hair-do!

…or Not so Much…

I survived intact. My willow trees (the bane of my existence!) each lost about a third of their branches. My lights were out most of the day; I had an hour and a half late afternoon where they came on & re-cooled the refrigerator/freezer, and then went out again. They were back on for Sunday night football.

I even tried to stitch, but it was so dim in my living room, I gave up. So I kind of snoozed on the couch all day, which was hard to do with all the cracking branches I was hearing, on top of not being a good nap-per.

Here are some pictures:

Amazingly, nothing hit the house or car. I’ve been snapping branches all morning, making piles of fronds, kindling, and chain-saw material. If nothing else, willow trees are easy to take care of by hand.

Armageddon!

Just got the first showers from Irene. It’s been hazy/foggy/cloudy all morning. And VERY humid.

Here was the supermarket last night:

 

No bread except an orphan loaf or 2 of pumpernickel! Sandwich “flats”, bagels, English muffins and hamburger & hot dog buns was all that was left.

I am officially batten-ed down.

Big Ooops!

Current progress on Quaker  Halloween:

If you’re familiar with this design, you may be able to figure out my HUGE mistake. I think I can alter the last half medallion along the bottom edge, so that I won’t have to rip out a whole bunch of stuff….

And then…..

I just got my computer back in my computer room, aka the kids’ bedroom for the past 2 years.

And obviously, it works. YAY!

Now on to re-arranging the living room, aka the computer’s home-away-from-home. First, I have to go take care of Axe. Miss Em’s ankle is toast.

Well?

So much for the End-of-the-World. Good thing I didn’t go crazy with the old credit card yesterday.