We have 3.5-4 weeks left.

I’m not sure just how many days are left because of all the snow days & because we had so many ‘banked’ days to offset them (we go to school 15 minutes or so longer than other schools [...]]]> We are in the final stretch of the school year.

We have 3.5-4 weeks left.

I’m not sure just how many days are left because of all the snow days & because we had so many ‘banked’ days to offset them (we go to school 15 minutes or so longer than other schools in the area so we get more ‘saved’ days toward bad weather). I’m sure sooner or later they will tell us when the actual last day is

Or maybe they want it to be a surprise.

I’m starting to make plans for the summer.

First, I am scouring Craigslist for a new pool.

Ours is so out of whack from being blown over in a hurricane and has developed a bunch of small holes, most of which I have found & sealed but it’s still leaking & now I can’t find where. They are all pretty much in the same square 6 inches of space. But no doubt this final one is on the other side of the pool, just to mess with me.

Second, I have decided that the boys only get 2 hours of screen time a day – that’s Wii, computer, DS & tv combined so they’ll need to plan these things.

To save arguing about how long they have been online I am setting up the parental controls on their laptop to only allow logins at certain times of day & for certain amounts of time. They’ll each have their own user ID & password so they can’t argue about someone logging in as them.

Third, we will be reading the Lemony Snickett Series of Unfortunate Events series together for a non specified number of minutes a day.  Usually I opt for having each boy doing one of those Summer Bridge activity books to keep their school skills a bit current. But this year I got my hands on some used homeschool curriculum & I’m going to mix in bits & pieces of that with reading the series.  Plus there will be our weekly library visit.

Fourth, they will be able to earn extra screen time by being outside or reading – half as much screen time as activity time & you can’t use it for 24 hours, but you can save it up. So they can’t earn more screen time usable that day but if they read an hour a day Mon-Fri, they can earn & save up an additional 2.5 hours for the weekend.

I’m going to need to find a way to track time earned & used.

Fifth, we are signed up for some online classes at Big Picture Classes. 

The boys will be taking Kidding Around 4, which will give them a series of prompts and activities that have them put together a sort of art journal 5 days a week for all of July. I think Havoc will mostly enjoy it but Mayhem will moan, as he does, because he has to use his fingers to work the paint brush, pen, crayon, etc, but he needs to keep up with his fine motor skills use. 

I am signed up for the Phone Photography Project, which is also through July & challenges, plus lots of tips & tricks & apps to help improve your phone pics. DH & I just upgraded our phones at long last so I have a new phone to work with!  Plus our old phones still work as cameras & can connect to the web for apps like Instagram & Flickr, if there is wifi for the connection, so I am hoping to get Havoc, if not he & Mayhem both involved in this class as well

Sixth, we are planning some excursions we’d like to have happen, barring financial emergencies like last year or DH’s job suddenly needing him in Connecticut for weeks like the year before last. We want to go to an amusement park, either King’s Dominion or Busch Gardens. DH wants to take them to another major league game. I’m thinking of taking them museum visiting in either Richmond or DC, depending on train ticket prices & what the sequester does to the Smithsonian operating hours this summer. We’re thinking of trying some geocaching on weekends. We’d also like to hit up a water park or two if I can find some reasonably priced less than hour away.

So no water parks probably, unless I am in the mood to drive.

Some people might go camping.

Not me. But others think it could be fun.

Seventh, I am getting a tattoo. The one I was thinking of getting for my 40th birthday but didn’t, and then was thinking again of getting for my 45th birthday but didn’t. I figure your 46th birthday only comes around once so you might as well make it special.  I’m going to get a tree on the inside of my wrist.  I’m still sorting out the design but I’ve a decent idea of the general look -  http://pinterest.com/staceylynn42/body-art/

Eighth, we will be Vadering and working on Rinda’s  summer photo list.

Ninth, the local bowling alley has Kids Bowl Free days Tue-Fri all summer long, just pay for the shoe rental, and the skating rink will have discount open skate from 2-4 on Wednesdays, as well as their Sat 2-4 time.  Not sure how much either will happen but I expect it depends on what their friends are doing.  They are almost, but not quite, old enough to spend the summer texting friends & making plans. I’m already saving up the cost of adding a ‘non-smart’ phone to the cell plan in a year, as I suspect next summer will be the one when Havoc having a phone might come in very handy

Tenth, it appears there is data stuff for me to do this summer. There is a random task that a former employee used to do once a quarter, going through all the customers’ logged equipment & checking it’s status to make sure they still have it, or if it’s been returned to inventory & new stuff replaced in the system. I can do all the data part of it from home.  I can’t go through the actual equipment matching serial numbers (and if people are doing their jobs, there shouldn’t be much equipment to match), but I can make a list for someone else to look (like maybe the people who ought to have done it in the first place), or I can drop the kids at the skating rink and spend 2 hours on random Wednesdays do it.  But it ought to pretty much take me about 12-15 hours a week, over 6-7 weeks, to get through it all and summer vacation is only 10 weeks long. So yay for only being underemployed instead of unemployed over the summer!

And then football practice will begin in early August and that will be that for any other plans.

Wednesday was a baseball game & we ended up tying.

Saturday was another game & we won, so so far we have a 7-2-2 record.

I think we win the league for ‘most tie games’

I also found my missing travel mug

It’s been in my car [...]]]> We’ve had an interesting few days.

Wednesday was a baseball game & we ended up tying.

Saturday was another game & we won, so so far we have a 7-2-2 record.

I think we win the league for ‘most tie games’

I also found my missing travel mug

It’s been in my car all this time. It was on the passenger side, tucked between the seat and the console between the front seats. Tucked in just enough that I couldn’t see it from the driver’s side or the passenger side, and I have sat in the passenger side at least 3 times between losing the mug and finding it again. It wasn’t until we got to the baseball field and I got out of the car and looked in that area for a ball that I saw it.

But now that I have become reacquainted with the lasting heat of the new travel thermos I think I will keep this one for trips where I am drinking the coffee not ones involving keeping the coffee hot for a couple hours, like I need with my job.

Mayhem is getting better with the shoe tying. He is successful at making a knot about 80% of the time, though about half of those are too loose to stay tied.

Still, it’s progress.

We’ve also been playing more dominos with friends

Sunday DH & I went to Lowes armed with measurements

This is the depth of the hallway nook where the washer & dryer are. I want some cabinets built above them, like I saw in a different Lowes a month ago.

There is no reason my laundry nook can’t look like this.

Except there is.

As you can see from above the nook is 37.5” deep.

But cabinets are 12” or at best 16.5”, which is no where near deep enough.

We have a 12” deep shelf over the washer & dryer but I can’t reach anything on it without a step ladder because I can’t reach over the machines & back that far.

Cabinets up flush with the washer & dryer would work so much better!

But DH would have to build some sort of custom support structure to hold it up near the front & it would leave me with at least of 20” of unused space behind as a dust & spider area, which doesn’t work for me. So we’d need custom built cabinets.

So that’s not going to happen any time in 2013

This week I made a frittata & bought a roast chicken & we had chicken & dumplings one night & triangle sandwiches, plus leftover frittata or roast chicken one night.

It was a very poultry centric week for meals. Plus we had fish once.

And I made that 10 egg pound cake again. Using a metal pan & remembering to adjust the temp resulted in a much better pound cake. This cake will be making monthly appearance. Next time with raspberries instead of chocolate chips.

How was your week? Any interesting developments?

or rather they were Mayhem’s shoes.

As you can see they are unwearable

Cheap or pricy, all of Mayhem’s shoes blow out the same way. The little tab of sole that wraps up over the front of the toes gets ripped down and takes the sole with it eventually.

Our back atrium.

Before we put the clear roofing over it the drains would clog with dead leaves & rain would back up and if there was enough of it it would flood the back bedrooms. After the last such flooding we had to replace the carpet in both rooms with wood flooring & [...]]]>

Our back atrium.

Before we put the clear roofing over it the drains would clog with dead leaves & rain would back up and if there was enough of it it would flood the back bedrooms. After the last such flooding we had to replace the carpet in both rooms with wood flooring & and we put the clear roofing over the atrium itself.

But now we have a new issue. By covering the area we have apparently created the perfect wasp habitat. We can’t open either sliding glass door to allow for a cross breeze because there multiple wasp nests around the door frames & the screens don’t fit so well that they keep the wasps out of the house.

We’d started using the area as storage for things that don’t need to be 100% sheltered from the weather but as you can see, lack of upkeep due to the wasp issue has made the place a dump.

And as you can also see we have a vine/weed/honeysuckle overgrowth issue because the conditions are perfect and the fear of wasps keeps us from weeding.

We need to get rid of the wasps, then clear the atrium out & weed, then power wash the whole thing, then get new screens for the doors.

Then we have to come up with some way to keep the wasps from reinfesting the place.

Which is why we’ve let it go for so long. The wasps are only just now really becoming an issue for the season. Now is a good time to spray & clean & weed. But then what? How do we keep them from coming back?

Any ideas for keeping wasps away?

That black & steel travel mug is my very favorite travel mug. I’ve had it since about 1995, when I moved to this area and suddenly had a much longer (physically) commute than [...]]]> The first of every Sunday Sian at From High in the Sky hosts Storytelling Sunday. This year’s theme is “My Precious”.

That black & steel travel mug is my very favorite travel mug. I’ve had it since about 1995, when I moved to this area and suddenly had a much longer (physically) commute than I was used to & a job that didn’t provide a coffee pot for employees (there were too many people to make that financially feasible).

It is a 20oz, wide bottom mug that would never fit in any cup holder of any car I have ever owned (and I have had 3 of my own and 3 of DH’s since 1993). But the wide bottom made it balance perfectly on the console between the front seats.

I once slid off into a ditch on an icy road and never spilled a drop of my coffee.

Within a year or so of my getting it it had lost it’s top flap that kept the two drink spouts covered so coffee didn’t stay as hot for as long as it was supposed to (18 hours!) but that was ok because with that top flap the coffee remained too hot to drink for a while after I got to work. Without it the coffee was perfect to drink shortly after I sat at my desk.

It didn’t see much use from 2003-til this January. Just on long trips with the family or hour long drives to the town south of us for shopping. But it has been in regular use since I returned to work.

And then Wednesday I lost it.

I kept it on the console by my seat for the trip to work but on the trip home I would hang it by the handle from the basket behind my passenger seat. (it’s a mini van and I keep the seat behind the driver folded down. Havoc sits behind the passenger seat & Mayhem on the driver side in the 3rd row. With the one seat folded down we have a bunch of space to move around & the boys can’t touch each other. I keep a small basket right behind my seat to hold assorted small stuff). I think, when I was loading the groceries into the van I must have bumped the basket & knocked the mug off & onto the ground. I would have though I would have heard it hit or seen it, but I was preoccupied because DH was driving & had pulled up in the wrong direction so I was actually in the driving lane loading the van rather right in front of the store.

I have a memory of bringing the mug into the house.

I think.

I might have a subconscious memory of thinking something was slightly off, something to do with my mug. So maybe I didn’t.

But I have looked all over this house & the mug is not here. And it isn’t in the car.

So I have lost my precious mug that I had owned for 18 years.

Thermos doesn’t make mugs like that any more. So it is pretty much irreplaceable.

I ended up getting this one, because I have to bring my own coffee to work. I drink decaf and the rest of the office doesn’t & there is only one coffee pot & no way to boil water for a French press.

If you are wondering why someone who drinks decaf needs coffee in the morning, one word – habit. I’m cranky without my coffee & it’s nothing to do with needing caffeine to face the day. It’s everything to do with drinking coffee every morning since 1989. Giving up caffeine in 2010 for my insomnia was easy. Giving up coffee was impossible.

I like this container ok. The lack of handle is actually handy because I’m not obligated to hold it in a certain hand to get the mouth holes to line up. And the fact that it isn’t missing any parts means it actually keeps the coffee as hot as it is supposed to. This is useful because I leave the house at 7:10a & go to the gym & get to work at 9. I would pour coffee out of my mug & into a coffee mug & microwave it when I got to work because it would be only slightly warmer than lukewarm by then.

But I scalded my tongue Friday because I had forgotten how hot coffee can remain if properly kept.

But I still wish I could find my old mug.

It’s a chocolate chip pound cake.

The only criteria I had when choosing a pound cake recipe was the number of eggs used. 

It had to be high.

3 or 4 eggs was not going to cut it.

The whole reason I wanted to make a cake was to use a lot of [...]]]>

It’s a chocolate chip pound cake.

The only criteria I had when choosing a pound cake recipe was the number of eggs used. 

It had to be high.

3 or 4 eggs was not going to cut it.

The whole reason I wanted to make a cake was to use a lot of eggs & I had heard that pound cakes were high in eggs.

This one used 10! 8 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks!

Unfortunately it came with tricky baking instructions and I screwed them up.

Which is why the cake came out both over cooked and undercooked.

Which I would not really have thought possible.

See, the instructions said to preheat the oven to 350 and then once the cake was in you were supposed to turn it down to 325.

Only I forgot that part and baked the whole thing at 350 for 90 minutes.

I think the silicone bundt pan had something to do with it as well. Those silicone pads work ok for cookies but my silicone muffin pans & cupcake holders & this bundt pan are nothing but trouble. Nothing bakes evenly in them.

I want to get a regular bundt pan & try again at the right temperature.

I also need a springform pan.

I found a recipe for a chocolate mousse cake that needs one.

It needs 8 whole eggs and 5 egg whites!

We are getting 3.5 dozen eggs a week. I sell some to friends but I cannot seem to get ahead of them. I have 8 dozen eggs in my fridge now & it seems like I always have at least 5.

I forgot what day it was… DH took the kids to a Nationals game yesterday, in my car, so I was stuck at home & got involved in reading & totally spaced the blog post I was going to do about reading.

This is probably the biggest stack of to be read dead tree [...]]]>

I forgot what day it was… DH took the kids to a Nationals game yesterday, in my car, so I was stuck at home & got involved in reading & totally spaced the blog post I was going to do about reading.

This is probably the biggest stack of to be read dead tree books that I have had in nearly a year.

18 books!

Plus 2 that are not pictured!

I can’t even fit my kindle on the nightstand because these are all ancient paperbacks, some from the 1950s and they are too unstable to support the weight of the kindle.

I have all of Edmund Crispin’s books & about half of Michael Innes’ . I’ve worked my way through all of Elizabeth Daly’s & have listened to nearly all of Ngaio Marsh’s over the past 6 months, only 4 more to go.

Mysteries from the 1930-60 era are much more erudite than today’s. They never use a 2 syllable word where a 4 syllable one is available. People never ‘say’ things. They ‘natter’ and ‘whisper’ and ‘mumble’ and ‘chatter’ and “articulate’ and issue ‘gnomic utterances’.

They also seem to ‘ejaculate’ a great deal, which is nearly as jarring to me as all the casual & unthinking racial slurs that randomly pop up.

However, I challenge you to name me a book published after 1970 that mentions ‘gnomic utterances’ and yet I have come across it nearly a dozen times in books by 7 different authors.

Then there are words like prolegomena, derogation, logomachy, peroration, minatory, jocosity, emendation, aposiopesis, lachrymose, conurbations & petechial. I either had a general idea of these words meanings or could guess it from the context, but I still had to look them up to be sure.

And these were ‘railway reading’ books. Not ‘great literature’.

Makes me wonder if the general reading public wasn’t expected to be better educated than it is today.  Writers today are told that they should write to a general 5th grade level. I doubt many 5th graders know the meaning of ‘conurbations’. I have an MA that minors in English and I didn’t.

Or has our vocabulary been shrinking? Like going from “I agree” to “okay” to ‘k’ over time.

I have to take a break every now and then & read something written recently because my brain needs a break from the wordiness.

And my eyes from the tiny print.

You can’t adjust print size on a paperback and people in the 50s must have had much better vision than people today. I compared print size between a paperback from 1948 & a paperback published last month and the type is half again as big for the book published last month.

It’s also twice as thick, so maybe the tiny print was a way of keeping costs down.

What have you been reading lately?

SCRAPBOOK TUESDAY!

ok, not as catchy a title but it’ll do for now.

These are my layouts for the past few [...]]]> I haven’t done a Scrapbook Saturday in awhile & now that Saturday is baseball day it will continue to be awhile so I now bring you:

SCRAPBOOK TUESDAY!

ok, not as catchy a title but it’ll do for now.

These are my layouts for the past few weeks. I have been doing much more reading than scrapping lately.

So that was the two week menu as planned last week, sort of.

I’m please to say I did make 5 items on the list, everything crossed out plus the frittata & the pork chops & we had fast food twice & leftovers once

That leaves me with 4 meals on the list plus [...]]]>

So that was the two week menu as planned last week, sort of.

I’m please to say I did make 5 items on the list, everything crossed out plus the frittata & the pork chops & we had fast food twice & leftovers once

That leaves me with 4 meals on the list plus chicken & shrimp stir fry & grilled steak & veggies assuming the weather cooperates on the weekend. Plus fast food before Tuesday’s game unless I get my act together to make triangle sandwiches. This is unlikely as I have to make bread dough or buy crescent roll, and I really can’t see either happening.

The boys won their game Saturday 18-1.

I’ve been reading Gervase Fen & Sir John Appleby mysteries lately. I love “Golden Age” British mysteries & found a large lot of the Appleby’s on ebay recently, with some Fen thrown in so I am back reading actual paperbacks for the first time in ages. Paperbacks printed in the late 70s & early 80s at that. I’m afraid of breaking them.

I was supposed to have a whole week of work this week but DH is taking the boys to a Nationals game Wednesday & since they won’t all fit in his Miata, he has to take the minivan.  I can’t drive his Miata so guess who has the day off?  Fortunately my current project can be done from home (though much more slowly as the database doesn’t like working over the internet) so I will at least get some hours in.

I guess I probably ought to learn to drive the Miata, but I think I am still suffering from PTSD from my previous experiences with a stick shift & I get all anxious at the thought.