Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Annie Oakley was a little confused

First and foremost, happy birthday Grampa on January 27th. Hope it was happy.

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Now to the business of blogging……

So, I forgot the blog yesterday. Forgot. I meant to blog, I thought about blogging, I took a picture to put on the blog, but then I didn’t blog.

And you know who asked me if I blogged? Really. You have to know. It was Laura, the blog muse. My faithful reader Laura.

I think I’ll post a picture of her, just because-

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This is Laura’s Verklempt look. I think it is a suitable look for the day.

Although

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this one  brings back some fond memories. Being here, in this refrigerator, at this time, was NOT ok.  But you can just feel her elation at the new, spotless, side by side in our soon to be break room.

But seriously, when I have little to say I can’t always fall back on Laura to save the blog. Well, I can, and I usually do, but not today. (OK, obviously I have done it again today-I can see that-don’t bring it up-it’s my blog to do with Laura as I please. And that thing about NOT being OK? Totally an inside joke. Touché blog dissenters)

I just watched a PBS thing about Annie Oakley. And she was a big advocate for woman bearing firearms. Well, not like bearing children, but she did say she believed women should keep a firearm on the nightstand. Dang. I could blast the snore right out of Dave. She would also demonstrate how to conceal a gun in your umbrella to have in case of emergency or when bending someone to your will. I am thinking that if Annie Oakley whipped a firearm out of her umbrella and was demonstrating the business end all up in your grill, you’d be agreeing with whatever she told you to do, or not do. Because that Annie, she did not miss. Ever. But Annie did not believe so much in women having the vote. Really? She’s out packing heat, and encouraging women to pack heat, but not wanting women to vote? I suppose if enough women were carrying concealed and shooting out of their umbrellas who the heck needs the vote? Ok, maybe she wasn’t confused at all.

Yesterday I had the day off which confused me so much I forgot to blog. I didn’t, however, forget to clean the stupid bird cages.  I schlepped the giant cage drawer upstairs and attempted to clean it and put in clean newspaper lining. Sounds easy doesn’t it?

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Well, it’s actually not. And just when you were thinking “ok she used Laura for blog filler, certainly she won’t use Jack again”, he shows up. But you didn’t expect him here, did you? DID YOU? No. You did not. Please, don’t make me get all Annie Oakley on you.

And one last thing?

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Laura and the amazing moving cat picture.

Feeling better yet?

Monday, January 23, 2012

Lack of (p)interest

Not much to blog about this week as I am still recovering from the girls weekend out.

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Sorry, but I love this picture.

I have one thing I’d like to mention. I finished these socks, which were something like the second pair I ever cast on. About 7 pairs later, I finally finished them.

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That’s Regia self striping yarn. I personally like the socks but think the fabric would be nicer on a bit of a smaller gauge needle.

Ok, all the people who just nodded off over that last sentence can now WAKE UP. Dave has discovered Pinterest. I knew of Pinterest from another blog, and then Laura came up one day to show me some fascinating thing on the site (because at work, watching paint dry is, for us, sure to be an attention getter). Then Dave got an invitation from someone he works with and the rest is history. He spent about 37 minutes finding the perfect user name-iamlegend-and off he went. It’s his new obsession for the next 20 minutes or so.

And that’s all I know. It snowed this week and we shoveled. Blane came over, Jack got into trouble. Fringe completely messed me up and Downton Abbey….sigh. In other words, same old, same old.

I’ll try to see if I can stir up more excitement for next week.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Girls Night Out

Oh man, the Girls Night Out finally happened, and it happened with a vengeance.

Totally.

I wish I had more blackmail pictures to show, but the crap camera ran out of batteries and besides, it was a little too much fun to keep taking pictures.

But I did get a few.

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Here’s the girls, just starting out. Lets see, starting on the right and going clockwise is Lynn, Jenna, me, Sara (the other Sara), Mary, Sue, and Betsy. No idea who the person walking around and getting into the picture is, but she’s very happy about it.

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Here we are again. A little later, a little happier, a litte blurrier. Found the Spotted Cow. Gotta love Wisconsin. Again, no idea about that person lurking around the bathroom. And sorry about the blur. It was Jenna’s phone this time.

Then, because of the uncontrollable girls we are, we decided we had to go dancing. And dance we did.

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Taking pictures of people dancing around in a darkened bar area has to be some sort of sobriety test, and I was failing badly. But either way I captured Lynn, Sara, and Mary until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

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I let Lynn throw me around on the dance floor unmercifully. She is a pretty dang good dancer when it comes to spins and twirls. The band was fab and played songs we could all sing to. Sweet.

We ended up back at the Frog in Fountain City-the gruesome threesome.

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Really?

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Yes Really. I think these girls should be cut off.

(Don’t worry, we had a designated driver and a brand new van. Nothing could be sweeter. Out of the goodness of our hearts, we didn’t even throw up in it)

We stayed at the most beautiful lodge out side of Fountain City, way up on the bluffs (which could have been dangerous had we been able to wander outside after arriving, which we couldn’t. I couldn’t even figure out the radio)

Here’s our view if it were summer-

But it wasn’t

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It’s winter but still fantastic. Even the morning after. Which is saying something. (Click the link above-the rest of the house was just as fab)

Staggered home and managed to get to knitting group. I felt kind of like this

Just a wee bit crispy……

and this didn’t help either-

Sigh.

But since that day I have recovered and decided that Girls Night Out was the best time I’ve had in months.

Thanks Girls!

 

Monday, January 9, 2012

The Paradox

Dave’s birthday was last week, although it seems like several weeks ago. Although that might be the beer talking.

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He was on vacation which explains the not shaving for two weeks. However, now that he’s an NFL owner-who cares?

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He also got a Blu Ray player and we now have Netflix. Dang but that is a sweet deal. We watched Better Off Ted, and some Girl With….movies and the documentary Babies. We also watched all of Season One of Downton Abbey-twice. We will never be without it again.

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There was cake, and I just noticed we had some difficulty with the “day” in birthday. That’s hilarious.

There were also crazy people.

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Do NOT make that bigger.  Somehow, every time I take a self portrait with Dave, he makes me laugh so hard I look stupid. Which I am starting to think takes the looking stupid pressure off of him.

That also could have been the beer. Or not.

A good time was had by all.

DSC02000I think.

 

I got all sorts of pictures this week. Laura finally sent the cow pictures, some of which had to be censored. But these were cute.

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Seriously, what could not be cuter than a little cow with it’s mommy? I ask you-what?

Well, perhaps not the birth of the little cow with it’s mommy-

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Laura did send the actual little cow shooting out of the big cow, but I don’t want to lose the other 3 readers of my blog by showing the actual graphics. Although I may sneak them in one of these days, ‘cause that’ll teach people who don’t blog to make fun of my blog. And I have yet to see a picture of hooves coming out of a cow’s backside on any of the other blogs I admire. Touche Sassy Redhead!

My sister Martha also sent me a picture of her cat Daisy-

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Come on now. That’s a cute cat eh? But, is it in the bathtub or something? Is that a common cat theme in the blog? Cats in bathtubs? Cats in sacks? Cats in prison?

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Or cats in boxes?

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I believe he’s alive. Or…is he?

Monday, January 2, 2012

Happy Happy New Year

Hello and happiest of New Years. (Does that have an apostrophe? Like New Year’s?)

We have been a bit busy here. First of all, I have watched all of Downton Abbey, season 1, twice. Bring it Season Two. In a way, I am sort of glad I didn’t watch it last year because I would have gone ca-razy waiting for season two, which conveniently starts next week. So, please Bates, get together with Anna, Mary and Matthew-come ON, and Thomas, ohhhh, I hope you get yours. Sigh.

Cody and Blane were here all last week. This is Christmas-

(As a little preface, crap camera doesn’t have a remote, only timer which was problematic at best-)

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Wait, that didn’t work (I call this one the missing man formation)

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No, that’s not it either

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Better. And yes, Cody has some weird Mohawk going on. Did you notice too, how Blane doesn’t change much between pictures. If I didn’t risk complete boredom, I’d post the bunch of pictures we suffered through took and he would look the same in every one, while the rest of us (ok, me) are all looking the other way and blurry and talking to each other. Now that I look at it, once Cody got ready, he didn’t change much either.

Moving on.

We had the slightest decoration fail.

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Yeah, that’s a problem. Actually, this was the problem.

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And we had a tree-

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which Blane put up and decorated.

We had a sort of tree at work too-plus some other crazy decorating. Which I also didn’t do.

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I fell down in the decorating dept. It was all I could do to organize myself. (Hoping to get some sort of card out by April)

During this time, while I was not not decorating, I was finishing the shop quilt

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Had fun with the Jack cam.

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Went to a Christmas party  which the crap camera took an blurry picture of.

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And finally, ended it all with Cody leaving on Saturday, New Year’s Eve.

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I rocked it on the boy department.

Lastly, on New Year’s Day (using apostrophe) I ran a little race sponsored by the Running Room called the Resolution Run.

Barb and Angela and Susan and Lorna were all there too, and we totally killed it. There was a ton of ice so the goal was not so much to run fast-but to stay upright.

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Barb’s big finish of her first 5K!

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She was sporting a knitted cowl, representing our knitting group with good taste.

While I was at Barb’s, after the run and sipping a delicious Bloody Mary, I took a picture of her cat in a basket, which I found amusing.

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Pictures I don’t have to show you-Laura was at the farm and took pictures of all the cows/calves in the barn AND a cow actually having a calf. It took all of Laura’s strength to take these pictures and I can hardly keep asking her for them because she gets that “talking about the farm look” which can be a wee bit scary. But if I had those pictures they’d totally get top billing. Except for maybe calving ones. They probably have to have a disclaimer-“these pictures may be disturbing to some viewers”.

And that, my friends, starts off a whole new year of blogging.

Here’s to 2012. Let’s see what happens now.