Merry Christmas!!

What a nice quiet day we've had so far....no service calls at all (yet!!). As a matter of fact, the only times the phone has rung today has been family calling with holiday wishes (and, in some kids cases, to tell us all they got from Santa).

We spent a whole long day shopping for office furniture a couple of weekends ago (blasted Christmas shoppers!!)......and came home empty handed...sheesh! The only place we found with close to what we wanted was at Staples...as I thought, we'd have had to get the hutch and block a window, but it was the only set that had all the components we needed otherwise. However, they couldn't get all the pieces. Not only that, but they couldn't promise that they'd ever come back in stock. I tried to order the same thing off their website...with the same result...some out of stock items, with no promise of it ever being back in stock. Hee hee....and, persistent salesman seemed very surprised to hear that I wouldn't consider ordering just half of what we needed with no promise of being able to get the rest.....sheesh!

So.......today we decided we'd go with the more expensive stuff we'd found online (that, except for color, I'd liked better anyway).......and our bank refused to process our debit card for the website. Ok....3 other websites had the same furniture for the same price, so try those......NO??? Refused at all 4???? What the heck?? There's plenty of money in the account, but, naturally, being Christmas day, I can't just call the bank .....so in a little while, I'm going to try to do it with our credit card instead. If that doesn't work, we've got to wait and see what's up with the debit card at the bank. In case anyone's interested, we chose from the Kathy Ireland Tribeca Loft collection...in cherry finish.

Things have finally settled down somewhat with work. We got nearly all our postponed work done...just one cleaning didn't get rescheduled, and she doesn't mind waiting until spring, if necessary, since the system is less than 2 years old anyway. We scheduled just one 1 hour job for yesterday...and the guy called and canceled (his wife didn't want to spend the money the day before Christmas), so we thought it would be a jobless day. NOT. The phone rang before 8 am...by noon, he'd done 4 service calls. Fortunately, it quieted down for the rest of the day.

I got a very big surprise for Christmas. As stated before, we don't normally exchange gifts....so, DH's stocking ended up with a tube of Blistex (the squeeze kind that we both use but is hard for us to find locally). I'd given him a few ideas, but he didn't like most of them, so.....he bought me a set of wind chimes........a BIG set! Now, I only like the big, deep toned chimes and have 4 sets that I have hanging outside about 9 months of the year (our winter weather prevents me from leaving them out year round). This set is a bit bigger than the largest of my other 4.......woo hoo! Stocking stuffer???? Well, he said he couldn't find what he really wanted to put in my stocking, so got the chimes instead. Silly man.......wouldn't trade him for anything, of course. (even when I'm p.o.'d at him!!)

I've actually done some crocheting the last few days.....need a cover for a little sausage pillow I use in bed. I've got the same pillow on the sofa, with a crocheted cover...it clashes with both the sofa and the afghan, so I'm going to put that one in the bed and am making a cover for the other one, in sc with one of the yarn colors in the afghan on the sofa.

Done Ramblin.

Once a month?

I guess if I manage to hit here once a month, I can't complain.

The week of Thanksgiving was busy - our friend and his son did come up Saturday, Nov. 17......they wished to stay the whole week, which was fine by us! So....we had 4 for Thanksgiving dinner! It was nice...usually it's just me and Ed, so we don't actually cook "the works". They went home Sat., Nov 24. We had planned to go to VT to see Ed's dad that following weekend, but, sadly, he took a downhill turn and passed away Sunday, Nov. 25. We spent the rest of that day postponing work, arranging for coverage for service calls and packing and left for VT Monday morning. The funeral was Thursday, so we were gone the whole week, coming back home on Saturday, Dec. 1. Between the grieving process and getting all the postponed work caught up with, we've had a very busy couple of weeks since.

When we started the business, we turned our small den/office into a business office. We thought we could get by for a year or so just by adding a 4 foot table to our existing office furniture (a student desk, a computer workstation, a printer stand and a 2 drawer lateral file). Well, we were wrong........because of the set up, we're tripping over each other when we're both trying to work in there at the same time . I decided that, when I couldn't fit another file into the file cabinet, we officially outgrew that set up!! We've decided that we need to go shopping and get "real" office furniture...the room is very small, but with the right set-up, it can work. The only worry I have is that we may end up having to use a hutch type desk set up, which would mean blocking one of the windows....I really hate the thoughts of that, so will probably spend much more time shopping for "the right thing" than hubby would like!!

I've finished all the Christmas shopping for our DD, SIL and DGD...and everything has been shipped. Ed and I don't exchange gifts...we just buy each other a little stocking stuffer...and I do mean little - our stockings are 6 or 7 inch felt ones! We have an elderly couple that are very good friends that we will buy something for.....I've already picked out hers, and I'm leaving his gift up to Ed to choose.

I've not picked up a crochet hook in 3 weeks.....started a sweater for a friend's little guy, but haven't had the ambition to work on it lately. Where is my muse?????

Done ramblin.