Snow!!

We got some of our snow back yesterday......we got about 10 inches over the course of the day and evening....and we're getting itty bitty flurries today......WOOHOO!!

Last week when I went shopping (egad, more money spent!), I bought 4 tall elcheapo 5-shelf bookcases at Walmart to put in the hobby room for use as stock shelving. They are 72 inches tall and about 30 inches wide.....at less than $29 each, they were actually a decent buy - 2 of the shelves are rated for 50 lbs and the other 3 are rated for 35 lbs, which is about right for what we'll need to put on them. Total assembly time was only about 3 1/2 hours.....but it took all day to do it, with the interruptions we had. While Ed was doing that, I started condensing some of the totes of yarn and finished things to make room for the cases. Ugh, I hated to because I know that when my new cabinet arrives, I'll have to do it all over again....but there wasn't enough room now, so I couldn't wait...sigh.

Ed brought stock in from the shed....only took up part of two of the units, but we'll use more space as our customer base grows. Yesterday, I claimed one of the units and started moving the few non business things out of the office so that we could get rid of a shelf in there that was in the way. WOOHOO! I no longer have a shelf 6 inches above the lateral file, so the extra printer (hmmm....and maybe the fax phone, too!) can be brought into the office from the hobby room and I'll not have to run back and forth to use it.....except I ran out of steam and didn't get that done yesterday. I'm pooped, but I am going to move that stuff today!

As you can see, I finished that pillow cover. I've decided to recover two other small pillows, since I've still got some of the other colors in this afghan.....might get those done in this century!

Done Ramblin!

January thaw.....ICK!!

Ok...to start....I've gotta "fess up". Back on Christmas day when I was having trouble getting my debit card accepted....I did end up putting the order on our credit card instead. The next day it dawned on me..........it was my fault!! I was putting in the wrong pin number - ER DUR!!! Honestly...it's the only card we have with a pin number.....ya'd think I could remember it!! Well, at least I had the right numbers, even if I didn't have them in the right order! S'ok......the furniture got ordered, and that's the important thing......even if it is going to take 6 to 8 weeks to get it.

I also ordered another "pantry cabinet" for the hobby room. I have one.....72" tall, about 3 ft wide and 16" deep that I keep LOADS of yarn in. I've been saying for several years that I'd like another so that I could get more yarn out of totes, but couldn't find one the same size.....I didn't want a smaller one, so didn't get any. While I was browsing online for office furniture, I found one......so I ordered it. It arrived by FedEx yesterday......and I wouldn't even let him in the door with it! First....he never rang the doorbell...I happened to go out toward that part of the house and saw the truck, so went to the door, just as he was leaning it up against one of the overhang posts.....I can't be positive, but I think he was just going to leave it...he was very surprised when I opened the door...and lied to me about ringing the doorbell - when I said it didn't ring, he said "oh, no...I guess I knocked on the door." Then he said "I suppose you won't accept this, huh?"....I took one look at the mangled box, totally open on one end...could see that at least one of the pieces had a corner broken right off and said "Ya think???? Send it back." He said he didn't notice it when he loaded it onto the truck that morning....must have had his eyes shut! As soon as he left, I emailed the customer service rep at the website I'd ordered it thorough. They answered my email within an hour and said they'd contact the manufacturer right away and arrange for a replacement to be sent. According to their blurb, this website is owned and managed by senior citizens - does that tell ya anything??!!

Oh.....and.....my the windchimes that my wonderful hubby bought me got sent back. Come to find out, he didn't buy bigger ones....what he got were one size smaller than my largest.....the box was a whole lot bigger, though!! However, the girl at the shop has a larger set coming on Friday.....they are definitely larger, so we'll probably take a ride up this weekend and get them. Course, I can't hang them out until spring.......but that's ok....sigh.

So.......we got one tiny little 40 mile snowmobile ride in on New Years Day.....made sure we didn't go further than an hour's ride from home and stayed where there was cell phone service, so we could check our answering machine for customer's calls. It was great, though I'm very much afraid that the cold is going to bother me this year.....SNARL GROWL GRRRRRRR. Sigh.....can't be helped.

Of course, the past two days, there's no way it could bother too much.....were in our January Thaw....boo hoo! We had about 3 feet of snow on the ground....with temps in the high 40's and low 50's yesterday....and a temp of 47 at the moment, we've lost over half our snow - WWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Again.....can't be helped, so just deal with it. It's been so foggy these 2 days that we can't even see the neighbor's house about 600 feet away.

Work has slowed right down, too.....we no longer have things scheduled far ahead. There's nothing at all on the schedule after tomorrow......so, of course...I'm all tense. I'm the worrier....Ed just goes with the flow....lucky him!

I'm going to be mailing surprises out to some of my crochet group friends here soon. If I get more addresses from more of them, I'll surprise more of them!! Hee hee...can't say more....at least one of them reads my blog (right, Wippy?). I'll tell ya all about it when I'm done (if I remember!)

On a crochet note, I'm still working on that pillow cover.

Done Ramblin

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.