My Weekend with Picture & Video PORN

Well we sort of got a lot done over the weekend.

Hubs got the deck swing awning put back up and the patio chairs out of the shed.
He also got his Winter/Summer clothes switched out in the closet.

We got everything hauled out of the daughter's old room.
It is presently occupying my living room........

 

So far all she wants, that I have told her about, is a box of her baby things, a belt and the gorilla suit.
Yes a full bodied gorilla costume.
Don't ask.....

After purging all her crap from that bedroom I started in on reorganizing what was left in there.  I can now almost fit all the toiletries either in the dressers or the bookshelf and I can fit all my tubs of fabric in the closet. Yay!
I might even be able to put my out of season hanging clothes in there.  That would be nice since our walk-in closet is so crowded....mostly with photo albums of family pictures from 3 generations.  While I have very few photos of my grandmother's, my mother was quite the prolific picture taker.  I have nowhere in this house to store ALL the photo albums together. sigh.  I need to come up with a better plan with these.

In the daughter's old bedroom there are also the open shelves of fabric which is a mix of what is left after selling off all I could in 2014/2013 and some of my personal fabric which I hope to use soon.

And speaking of fabric.......I relisted about 81 pieces of fabric last week on Etsy.  Nothing wintery or Christmas, just the lighter weight and Summer-y stuff.  And over the weekend I sold 5 pieces to 2 different buyers.
Go me!!!
These new listings expire in August and I'll decide what to do then...whether to relist anything and/or add the Fall/Winter fabrics depending on how it goes the next 4 months.

Late Saturday I had to go up to Rite-Aid and spend my last $3 of +Up Rewards.  I went earlier in the week but some Load2Card Qs came off unexpectedly(to me)so I still had $3 to use by Saturday night.

I used a Rain Check for trash bags($3.99), use my $3 in +Ups and paid $1.05 with tax OOP.
No more +Ups.
Sad Face.


I did my 1.5 miles on the bike too each day, and here is what I am up to so far for April.....

It's a fancy computerized bike so it tracks lots of stuff.  Note that under distance I have gone 19 miles so far this month.  Last month I worked myself up to 22 miles for the whole month.  At this rate I'll break 40 miles probably for April!
Woohoo!


We also cleaned off the front porch and I did a little cleaning in the garage.
Then Hubs hung out his flag......

It was such a nice day on Sunday that we went out to lunch at Bob Evans just to get out of the house.
I took this video there.......




Please ignore whatever I was doing with the fingers on my right hand.
WTF was that?!? lolz

And here the food arrives......



We hung out when we got home.....reading, listening to music and relaxing.

I made a pot of "Sunday gravy" with meatballs for dinner and packed up the Etsy orders.
Before you knew it, it was time for my Sunday TV orgy.....Call the Midwife, Mr. Selfridge & Wolf Hall.

Wolf Hall has some very good acting.  It's a historical drama about the goings on of the Tudor court of Henry VIII.
I've always been fascinated by this guy(going so far as to take a history course in college on Tudor England).  In many ways he was one of the worst British rulers but he also changed the course of the world in some ways for the better.
Such a narcissist.
My interest is also heightened because supposedly one of my 5x Great Grandfathers is a descendant of one of Henry's bastard children from one of his mistresses while he was still married to Catherine of Aragon, Agnes Blewitt.
There are 7 known or suspected illegitimate children of Henry Tudor, only one of which he publicly acknowledged.

My supposed Ancestor from an illustration by John Dryden, courtesy of Wikimedia.

Yah, Agnes "blewit alright".......hehehehe

So there you have it.
My weekend.

Next weekend we have grand plans around here.  The project from last Summer we bought supplies for and never did.
Last year we made this nice surround area for our HVAC compressor on the side of the house.....

We had cleaned out next to the other side of the house last Spring......

We are going to make a similar rockfilled bed on this side of the house.  It will serve two purposes....1-to keep grass from right up next to the foundation(and impossible to get to with a mower)and 2-make it look nice and be low maintenance.  Plus we'll put a bench out in it so we can sit under the tree during the heat of the Summer.

I don't suppose it will get finished next weekend since we need so much stone we'll need to have it delivered and we haven't even began to look into having that done.  At least we can rake it out, level it, put down edging and a weed barrier(with enough stones to weight the barrier down so it doesn't blow away).

That's all I got.......

 

How was your weekend?

Sluggy

This Week on the Dining Table

The "The Sun Finally Came Out, It Warmed Up & We Went Out" Edition.....

It hit 64F degrees here yesterday so we went out for a bit.
We had lunch at Bob Evans(cuz I had a coupon!lol).  They have a mailbox as part of their exterior décor at the restaurant....I guess to give it a "home" feeling, right?

 

 

Well just to prove that there are idiots walking around among us, they needed to post this sign on the mailbox........

 

 

It says, "Not For U.S. Mail Decoration Only".

I guess some moron tried to put outgoing mail in the thing. 8-P

 

Anyway, onward to the meal planning!

 

Here's what was planned last week.......

1.  Easter ham, deviled eggs, mac & cheese, mixed Italian veggies, sweet potatoes

2.  grilled fish, leftover Easter side dishes

3.  chicken marsala, mashed potatoes, asparagus
4.  Assorted leftovers

5.  Boston baked beans, assorted leftovers

6.  leftover Popeye's meal stuff
7.  quiche leftovers

And this is what actually happened--

1.  Easter ham, deviled eggs, mac & cheese, mixed Italian veggies, sweet potatoes
2.  leftover Popeye's meal

3.  chicken marsala, mashed potatoes, asparagus
4.  leftover mac & cheese w/ham pieces, tomato and cuke salad

5.  leftover quiche, sugar snap peas

6.  Subway sandwiches
7.  leftover chicken marsala, mashed potatoes, corn

Everything went as planned except I didn't make the beans or the grilled fish meal.

Last week I made 1 trip to the Dollar Store and spent $9.00 OOP on $18.50 worth of reg. retail groceries.  Not quite NO grocery shopping but quite low.

I had 2 transactions at Rite-Aid last week and spend $1.55 OOP on $67.68 worth of toiletries.

For the week, $10.55 total spending on $86.18 worth of food/toiletries/HBA.


$172.32 spent of my $300 April food budget, leaving us $127.68 for the next 17 days of the month. 

Leftovers going into this week are--1 slice of quiche, corn, mac and cheese and a bit of ham and the bone. 
I will confess to a bit of food waste last week.  The leftover sloppy joe meat went moldy before I got a chance to use it up.  bleh.  Not a bit portion but wasting meat really chaps my hide because it is so expensive!
Why don't the junk foods ever go to waste? lolz

Here is the plan for this week.........

1.  Spaghetti and meatballs, salad
2.  Ham and bean soup

3.  Fish, potato salad, whatever veggies I can dig out of the freezer
4.  Kielbasa on rolls, grilled onions, Brussels sprouts

5.  Chicken and Confetti pepper fajitas

6.  Leftovers
7.  Maybe get Take-out or BLTs(if I can find some nice tomatoes this week)

1 night of leftovers and 5 nights of new dishes.  There will be leftovers of the spaghetti, potato salad, the soup and the fajitas and the take-out(if we get some) plus the quiche, corn and mac & cheese from last week.

 

What I need to buy for this menu......rolls, peppers, maybe tomatoes and we will need milk.  I plan on spending less than $20 this week.

 

What is getting fixed and served at your house this week?    

Was last week's plan successful, did you go off plan or did you not even plan what was going to be eaten that week?

Any great deals on food at your stores this week?

Sluggy

Where Is It Worth Visiting?

I saw this article on Yahoo this morning.......HERE.

It's a Yahoo Travel survey where they asked people what they thought were the most "Overrated Cities". 

I am sorry to tell you Sonya Ann, but these folks named your favorite, Las Vegas, as the most overrated city in the world.

Rounding out the Top 3 Most Overrated in the survey were New York City and Miami, respectively.

I have never been to Vegas or Miami but I have been to NYC on many occasions.
Heck, I almost went to graduate school there!
Plus I worked in Brooklyn for a couple of years.
I must say as far as Manhattan goes I am NOT a fan.

Of the places I have visited I'd put on this list.......most are not major cities since I tend to NOT go to those(my preference)......

*New York City (Noisy, dirty, expensive, crowded)
*Niagara Falls, NY (The American side is pitiful.)
*Myrtle Beach, SC (Hated, HATED it!)
*Ocean City, MD (Nothing but schlock for miles but we go back every Fall....what does that say about me?)
*Any place in NJ (LOLZ...hey! I lived in NJ for 3 years.)
*Gatlinburg, TN(miles of tourtisy schlock for miles...man has ruined this place)
*Columbus, OH(breaking down there may have something to do with my POV on this one)
*San Diego, CA(crowded, hot, and rude people)
*Dallas, TX(very hot in Summer, polluted, crowded)
*Wilkes-Barre, PA(a big depressing grey slag pile of a place overrun with NYC criminal elements)
*Scranton, PA(a big depressing grey slag pile of a place like W-B, but with nice highways)
*Toronto, Canada(traffic and a tall tower and they don't sell biscuits in McDonald's for breakfast because a biscuit up there is a cookie....meh)

If you live in one of these places I am sorry if I offend.....and you have my pity. ;-)


So what places have you been that didn't live up to the hype and why?

Sluggy
 

My Super Exciting Weekend....Not So Much

Here's the plan at Chez Sluggy for the weekend.
Hold onto your hats because we are getting WILD here!  8-)))

We are going to clean out my daughter's old room.
She has been gone now just about 2 years since moving to Louisiana.
Needless to say whatever she couldn't fit into her subcompact car when she left didn't go with her.

We are in "get the house ready to sell" mode now so it's time to clear her stuff out.
I'll be taking photos of everything we remove from the room that belongs to her and will send the pictures to her and she can decide if it goes too charity, to the trash or we bring it with us on this next trip to see her.

I got enough of my own crap here, I don't need her "left-behinds" too.

Next it's on to the oldest son's stuff.  He has very little here but there is some and I'll do the same(take photos and he can decide)and the next time we go there or he comes here it can be carted off.....unless it is something he doesn't want then it goes soon to SA or the dump.

Also on the "clean out and clear out" list this weekend are--

A.  MY closet   Need I say more? lolz
B.  My flash drives  I have 2 flash drives I need to clean out/up the old files on them.  Every time my computer is about to die I backup files on these FDs.  I need to go through and delete stuff I don't need/want any longer and then reorganize what is left.

I have already started on 1 of the FDs.

And I found some photos I thought I had lost a long time ago.
Back in March of 2012 right before I had my heart episode I did a swap.....I think Carla organized it?

Anyway, my swappee was Judy.  I put a lot of time/thought into gathering her goodies according to her likes and dislikes and I took photos of everything even though how swaps work is that the recipient usually posts photos of what they get in the swap on their blog(if they have one).

Well around that time was also when Judy lost her husband so needless to say she never posted about what she got......nor would I have expected her to post about it given the circumstances.

So I can now(2 YEARS later!lolz)show what she got.  ;-)

 

Everything packed in a cute puppy gift bag

An over view of the goodies

A running joke about "Calgon, take me away!" and some hand sanitizer because she works in a hospital.

My prized homemade Pepper Relish

Some Easter candy(because it was almost Easter) and it's Irish Crème filled because of her Irish ancestry.

A PlanAhead journal for 2013 in her favorite color, red.

A cool pouch holding.......

Red Cloisonné Rosary Beads direct from Italy at great personal expense.....ok, not so expensive but a really nice set. 8-)

She wanted a new rosary and I found this neat set in her favorite color from a seller on eBay so it had to go into the swap bag.

So now I can mark this undone thing off my list.

And I can remark again that I miss Judy......as do many others.

If you are out there Judy reading this, please know that we miss you and worry about you and I'd love it if you'd email me sometime.

Ok, I am off to start the cleaning out upstairs now.  I doubt I'll get all this stuff done today but we'll get as much as we can and finish up during next week.

Maybe by next weekend the weather will be warm enough to start some yard clean-up.
I can only hope....

What exciting things have you got going on this weekend?

Sluggy

 

Would You Give Her Your Money?

I saw this article over on Yahoo the other day and it got my hackles up.........

Article HERE.

While I am glad that there are generous people in this world, who will give money to a complete stranger this article bothered me on many levels.

Your life, my life, everyone's life is made up of little decisions.  String together these decisions and it forms the basis of what becomes your life.

Where you choose to go to school....if you chose to go to school.
Which career path you choose.
What job you take which leads you to live in a particular area.
If you choose to marry or remain single.
If you chose to have kids.
And on and on.

Likewise all your financial decisions also lead, one by one, to where you are with your money today.

This woman made decisions in her life that led her to where she was, up to when this accident befell her.

She chose to get a degree that led to her working in a hospital and earning a pretty good salary from the sound of it(average wage for a child psychiatrist in NY is $160K yr.).
She chose to remain in her parent's rent controlled Manhattan apartment after they died.
She chose to either adopt or have IVF/etc.(both are costly) and have 3 children at an advanced maternal age as a single parent.
She chose to spend her money on nannies for these kids(and I assume they go to private school).
She chose to not get any sort of renter's insurance.(One wonders too if she has life insurance for these kids sake.)

And then her apartment and it's contents was destroyed in this terrible accident.
And she wants others to cough up $200K so she can resume the life she was leading.

I am sorry. 
But my wallet won't be opened for this lady.
Who I DO feel sorry for are those kids.
They are the victims in this scenario.

She made lots of bad or at the least questionable money decisions up to this point.
With her large salary she made a conscious decision NOT to get renter's insurance when she KNEW full well if something ever happened to her apartment that she'd have to pay a HUGE amount to replace it with a market rate priced apartment.
Let her move to Jersey or Brooklyn and commute into Manhattan for her job.
These kids are young and it won't do them any harm to change schools and move out of the city.

Or maybe I am just being an old scrooge.....
We need to help our fellow man on one hand.
But on the other hand, our fellow man needs to live with the consequences of the choices they have made.

What do you think?
Would you give someone like this money?

Sluggy