Sunday Night Chit-Chat

Go see Carla if you want to play along. Copy and paste your answers and direct a link back to Carla's blog.
Here we go....

I've been scanning family photos this evening.  This is my brother holding me after my Christening in 1959.  Don't let that angelic, cherubic face on him fool you.  He had him some right nice devil horns the whole time growing up.lol



What are you...

Reading?  "I Wrote You Word"-the Poignant Letters of John Lee Holt.  *He's an ancestor who fought in the Civil War.  His great granddaughter had his letters home to his wife compiled into a book back in the 1990's.
 
Watching?  Listening to the Olympics, Hubs is watching them.  Well sort of, he has ADHD with the remote and keeps changing the channel.  It drives me NUTS!  Hopefully he goes to bed soon and I can actually watch an entire race from start to finish.lol

Listening to?  The Olympics.

Cooking/Baking? We thinned out the Collard Greens in the garden today, so I cooked up the thinnings with a tad bit of salt pork.  "Tad bit" is a technical cooking term you know.....
I baked a double batch of brownies yesterday as #2 Son came home from summer camp.  Those won't last long with him home.lol

Happy you accomplished this week?
 Got the bills paid.
Got some cleaning done.
Got some swimming time in between the downpours of rain.....yah, rain!!!

Looking forward to this week?  
Getting a good amount of photo scanning done.  Getting some more cleaning done in the living room/dining room.  Hubs goes back to work so I'll have some quiet time again. 
Working on some more genealogy.  I'm adding my sis-IL(brother's wife)family to our tree.  Will be interesting to see where that takes me.

Thankful for today?
  My kids.  They drive me nuts but they are good kids.  They are a blessings and I'll try to keep that in mind when they are on my last nerve next time!lol


*Bonus Question*
What are 3 RAK's (Random Acts of Kindness) you witnessed this week?

Well, I didn't really go anywhere this week so other than Hubs and I doing for each other, no RAOKs last week.  I let someone go ahead of me in line at Rite-Aid.....that will have to count. ;-) 
Ok, I offered to do some genealogy legwork for a guy in the UK......ok, the weather has to cool off first but it's penciled in for Sept. or Oct.

Sluggy 

Goal Check-Up....1/2 of the Way Thru 2012

Readers might remember that I set up a List of personal Hopes/Goals for 2012 back in January.
This post will be about revisiting my list and where I stand in regard to them at the 6 month checkpoint of the year.

Did I just say we are halfway through 2012 already???!!!  Ok, this post is almost a MONTH LATE and we are almost at 7/12th of the way through the year.
I think I really need to go breathe into a paper bag now, because I am about to hyperventilate at that thought!

At any rate, here is the list with updates....


Sluggy's Personal List of Goals for 2012

1.  Get all the tax and college Paperwork completed and filed by the end of February.
DONE....one of the few things I can totally cross off the list until next year.  Go me!lol

2.  Convert all my vinyl LPs to CDs and purge the LPs from my life.
I've decided to change this Goal to Digitizing all my photographs, since I have the handheld scanner and I've already begun to scan my photos into the computer.  If/When I get the photos completed I'll start on the vinyl LP conversions.  So for now, I'll give myself.....
IN PROGRESS But BEHIND!

3.  Continue to Declutter everywhere.  Finish the garage and move what's in the living room into the garage so that the house is 100% done by April.  Be out of the storage unit by December.
FAIL--well, the house is NOT 100% done yet so that's a fail.   
But I have continued to declutter.
I have gotten down in the decluttering to the nitty gritty of things.  I have so little used stuff to still get rid of and we just don't buy stuff anymore so there is nothing coming into the house to replace what I've gotten rid of.  That's a good thing!
But what is left is stuff I am finding difficult to pitch and donate.  All the things I bought to sell many years ago.  It kills me to donate some of this, knowing that what we get in donated value is less that what it cost me.  And yes, I'd sell it IF I could find someone locally to buy it and I've tried, believe me, I. Have. Tried.  And eBay is no longer an option because of the weight/high shipping costs these days.   There are buyers there but between the price of the item AND the shipping it's just too expensive.....and if I lower the price, well, it's more cost effective to take the tax write-off for the donation.
I guess I've had this stuff so long I am emotionally attached to it......and I need to let go of the thought of the money I have invested in this stuff.  Let go of the crap, let go of the money and let go of the memories.

We are almost ready to start work inside the house on the home reno projects. I know we have the cash for this but it kills me to hand it over to do this work that I use to do when I was younger.  I was always the handy one in the marriage.  I painted,  hung wallpaper, laid flooring and made a tiled platform for our wood stove in our old house.
My NEXT husband will be handy......lol 

4.  Complete 4 house projects in 2012.  2 inside/2 outside
FAIL so far.  Projects identified and the cash is there, but we haven't pulled the trigger yet on any of them.

5.  Read 20 books this year.
IN PROGRESS-I've read 3.  Need to up the reading time but I don't think I'm going to make it to 20 before Dec. 31st.

6.  Rework the stockpile.  Make it healthier and more compact.
IN PROGRESS but MOSTLY DONE.  I'm going to make one more sweep through to get rid of things we don't eat and things that have been in there too long now and get rid of it.  This will happen in September so it is still not finished.

7.  Finish up the eBay sales by May.
FAIL  
I shut down eBay before Christmas and didn't do any eBay sales this year.   I still have some things to sell there and will restart that in Sept. and shut down for good in Dec.

8.  Get the sewing going again.  Go through projects in-progress and alterations pile and get rid of stuff.  Sew clothes for myself for a change!
FAIL
So far I've done nothing except hems some pants for Hubs and daughter, and finish some pj pants for daughter. 

9.  Get the Etsy Store up and running. 
FAIL
So far this has not happened.  

10.  Spend more time with family, especially Hubs.
PASS  Hubs and I have been spending more quality time together.  The kids?....not so much.  Seems they don't want to spend time with us old folks unless we are spending money on them.

11.  Lose 40 lbs...there, I said it!  Now I have to do it!!
IN PROGRESS but way behind.  I've lost 5 lbs. for the year.  As long as I am heading in the right direction, I'm not going to freak out about this.

12.  Continue the Savings Challenge with a goal of $20K for 2012.
IN PROGRESS and ahead at this point for the year.  We've got $13971.40 through June.

13.  Continue to be Frugal whenever possible and live well below our means!
IN PROGRESS/DONE  We spend way below our means each month generally.  In a bad/expensive month, we still spend less than we make, though sometimes with not a lot of room to spare.

14.  Take at least 1 REAL vacation and ENJOY IT!
DONE....sort of  I don't know if I'd call 3 days in Ohio during a heatwarve a vacation really.lol  
 We celebrate our 30th Anniversary in August this year.  We'll take a vacation after the tourists all go home in October and go to the beach.  Which beach I have no clue....

15.  Just in case I think of something else later, I'm leaving #15 empty.


Looking at this list, I am frustrated that I haven't ticked off my things on my list at this point.  It looks like I am good about finishing if I have a firm "unmovable" deadline date for a goal, but goals that have no real deadline for me?......I just let them slide.
Bad Bad Sluggy!


Or maybe it's just a case of biting off way more than I could chew in a year?  I just don't feel as ambitious
as this list needs me to be anymore.

So with half the year gone, how are you doing on your Goals for the Year?

Sluggy 

Musical Friday

Hubs and I are off to change banks in a little bit.  Well not so much changing as "adding" a financial institution.  More later on that.

Then I am off reading and trying to stay cool.  While I Occupy the Backyard, how about something to ease us into the Weekend. How about a little Swing Band music?

Bet you couldn't have guessed this group is from Greece?!  There is absolutely no breaking plates, Gyro eating or Windex usage..... ;-)
Joking people......2 Points if you get the reference there. lol






Here's another video they did with a Nawlins voodoo/zombie feel.....



Have a great weekend!

Sluggy

It's Here, It's Here!

I so feel like Navin Johnson from the old movie THE JERK.
If you are a person of a certain age, you know what I am talking about.
The scene from the movie when the new telephone books come in and he finds his name in print and goes bananas.



The mail came yesterday and you probably heard me doing a dance of joy from where you are.
If not, you felt the earth move at least cause when I dance, everything shakes.lol

Anyway, WHAT you ask got me so excited?
Getting this.....

This is a book called "I Wrote You Word".  It was published back in the 1990's as part of a historical series having to do with Virginia history.
This is a collection of the letters that Private John Lee Holt wrote home to his wife while he was serving as a soldier in the Confederate forces during the War of Northern Aggression.
Or what yankees like to call it, The Civil War. 8-(

John Lee Holt was born in Campbell County Virginia in 1829, the eldest son of James Holt and Sarah Mason Holt.
He was a school teacher as well as a tobacco farmer in the Summer months.
He enlisted in July of 1861, at the age of 32, 2 days before the Battle of Bull Run.
He left a wife of only 2+ years and a 16 month old son to go off to war.
John Lee Holt, being a literate man, in a time when so few were, was quite the prolific letter writer.

These letters were bound into print in a small edition of 1000 books.  Each one is numbered and signed by the great granddaughter of John and Sarah.

I have been waiting and watching to find this book at a price I was willing to pay.....and knowing me, you KNOW it was quite frugal.
I finally found a used and rare bookseller in Indianapolis who made this available for purchase online.
And after sending a check away, what seems like eons ago, my book finally arrived and I did my best Navin Johnson impersonation yesterday.

So why did I want this book so badly?
Well, ya see......he is kin.
John Lee Holt was my 2 x Great Grandfather's Nephew.

If you want the twisted branches of the tree play-by-play......

My 2 x Great Grandfather is James Harper.
His brother is John Harper.
John Harper married Elizabeth Frances Holt.
Elizabeth is the sister of Nancy Holt.
Nancy Holt is the second wife of James Holt-who is the father of John Lee Holt.
James' first wife, Sarah Mason Holt, John Lee's mother died in 1862.  James Holt decided to marry him a "trophy wife"-Nancy was 31 years younger than her husband and 7 years younger than her stepson John Lee Holt.  She only lived another 1-2 years so there were no additional children added to the family from this union.

I haven't looked into it yet, but I may be related through John Lee's mother, Sarah Mason, as well, since I have other branches of my tree that intermarried into the Mason clan in Campbell County too.

Anyway, let's just call him kin and move on, shall we?

I have just begun to read the book so I will leave you with a photo of John.....

This is a photo of a brooch John Lee Holt had made for his wife......or in his words....
"I have had my likeness taken in a breastpin for you & will send it to you the first opportunity as I do not wish to send it by mail"

Off to dive into the world of John Lee Holt now.....

Sluggy

I Can't Help Myself!....The Decluttering P*rn Returns!

More Decluttering......

This first lot got taken in May with a bunch of other crap, but I forgot to write these things down on the paper and post this photo here, so I'm noting them now.....

6 x Star Wars Action Pack of Vehicles
4 x Star Wars assorted Model Kits
1 x Micro Machines Star Wars Playset
1 x Barbie 40th Anniversary Doll
1 x Dilbert Dogbert Ceramic Mug
1 x Easter bunny candy mold

5 x Framed Power Rangers Posters

1 x Cabbage Patch FURSKINS Teddy Bear

4 x Miniature Radio Flyer Wagons

3 x Star Wars Trading Card/Role Playing Card Game Sets

6 x Cheaters Reading Glasses
2 x Kid's Sunglasses

 2 x Kid's Bed Sheet Sets(used)

10 x Ty Beanie Babies-retired

47 more Most Excellent Items outta here!!!

Sluggy