Two weeks without a post- sorry – not sure how they went past unnoticed. Husband has had me busy working on projects.
My husband and are - in addition to our professions – professional craft artists. We have each worked in an assortment of media over the decades – husband, a larger assortment than me. Currently husband is working at weaving.
Our living room serves as a “loom room” from around mid January to mid December. (I get the room back for remaining month to decorate for Christmas.) He recently bought a smallish big screen TV which is also in the living room – due to lack of anywhere else to put it.
Our reenactment unit has two events coming up in the next couple of months which are more of craft demonstrations than correct 18th century reenactments, so he can bring his loom to those to those 2 events and can sell items he has woven. (It is a modern type of smaller loom and he has an even smaller version to take to events such as these.) So he is working on weaving some additional items to bring along. (I demonstrate embroidery – much easier to set up and needs much less room to work.)
When he sets up a project to weave (called warping the loom) we have to run the yarn which will be woven on across the length of our living room to have enough room – and now we (I) have to be careful not to knock into the TV and throw it over. So, warping the loom now involves moving things so they are not in the way – which things never would have been in the way before.
The process for each piece takes an afternoon for the part that I have to help him with (he then has to do additional things to finish the setup – but I only have to come in for a few minutes to check that the warp threads are evenly and sufficiently stretched.
We have done this process twice in the past 2 weeks – each one, an afternoon gone. Now I will have time to myself as he is working on weaving this piece for a few days.
So in between working at accomplishing my normal daily, weekly, monthly chores, I have been losing time to helping him warp his loom and posting to all of you was not done.
Showing posts with label loom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label loom. Show all posts
Thursday, August 25, 2022
WHERE DOES THE TIME GO?
Thursday, December 19, 2019
CHRISTMAS AND OTHER HOLIDAYS - AND GETTING READY
Another week gone already?
Are you ready for Christmas or Chanukah or Winter Solstice or Kwanzaa or whatever holiday)s) you celebrate?
Me, I have not packed away Thanksgiving yet. Well, the dishes, pots, silverware etc were put away, but my decorations are still out. I don't put out as many for Thanksgiving as I do for Christmas (maybe 1/20th as much as for Christmas or less), but I have the decorations from when we used to have the families here for Thanksgiving dinner and I still put them out – I need to.
I have to get them packed away and get the indoor Christmas decorations put out – at least most of them. I generally don't get to my bear village until Christmas Eve or even Christmas night so they “know” they will be put out late.
We still have a lot of stuff in the house that has to go back into our RV from when we cleared it out in October to take it in for the extended service time. The larger pieces – the bed assembly and such – are back in it. I have several fabric shopping bags with stuff from it, including the plastic containers that we use for food (snacks) storage when we travel. It has been bad weather most days around here the last week or so since I realized I had to get all that out to the RV. Oh, and the vacuum cleaner – we keep a hand held – plug in vacuum in the RV in case we make a mess and need to clean it up. (Lots of vents in the RV for air to move in and out so animals can smell food in it – hence the plastic containers and concern requiring a vacuum cleaner.) It is on my dining room table – not a good place for it to be.
We (and by we, I meant I) also have to store reenacting stuff in the box benches in the dining room that we store it in. We had the last event of the year that we needed our stuff for last Saturday – more on that later, if I remember – the only remaining events are the 6 days – this coming weekend and next – that we will be doing the candlelight night event at the local restoration village and we need little for that other than our period clothing.
Husband has to move his weaving stuff to our studio – won't be able to get to my side of same after he does, but the “loom room” will again be the living room when he does.
After all that I can start putting up the decorations and the trees.
We have been busy the last week since I spoke to all of you. I went to Manhattan to a client on Thursday, which took most of the day especially the travel back and forth. When I got home husband was waiting to pack our van for the reenactment event that was coming up on (now last) Saturday.
It was at a historic home that one of our members works at and was a colonial crafts event that we were allowed (encouraged) to sell our work at. The local community had their tree lighting and other events that day so crowds were expected in the community. Husband had been weaving scarves to sell. It was to rain on Friday – and maybe Saturday – so when I arrived home on Thursday husband suggested that we pack the van while it was not raining, though dark. He was concerned about the tables and racks getting wet on Saturday if it was still raining, so we put everything in very large plastic bags – some items needed two bags – one on each end, overlapping, to cover them. He had put two tables in the back of the van before I came home. We needed to put most of what we were bringing in the main section of the van (where we have a back seat and the middle seat is out & permanently in our storage shed to make an open space). It was a cold night and damp in advance of the rain. He went to slide the side door open and it did not budge. He tried again – and again. He then went in the front door and climbed through to the main section and went to open the door – which is pushing instead of pulling it open from outside as we thought that somehow it had frozen closed and needed to be forced open.
Ha ha! He get the door open and the overhead rubber gasket that keeps water from going into the van fell down – on me. It would not fit back into place. I called our mechanic – if I have not mentioned it is a local shop and 4 blocks from our house – it was almost 5:30 and I thought they closed at same. His newest mechanic answered (there are 3 including the owner) and he knows us by name from all of our crazy car problems. I explained and he told me we should bring it over – if we left it sitting it would flood in the coming rain, at the very least they would have it indoors and fix it the next day. We drove over hoping the side door would not roll open – it did not. He got the gasket back in place and we were set again. We went home and loaded the van. Friday we ran normal errands and picked up deli turkey to make sandwiches for the next day.
Saturday it was misty more than raining and we were able to get everything inside to set up dry. We had a nice room in the museum – the exhibition was on 19th century needlework so it went well with his weaving and my embroidery demonstration. We fit in the room perfectly. The event had people there most of the day – estimate is 75-100 people and since it was raining on and off and nasty the rest of the day, that was pretty good.
Still no chance to pack away Thanksgiving decorations and start on Christmas though. Each day has had new things to waste the day. I did manage to fit in taking most of the smaller exams I need to take to prepare income taxes next year for pay. They are online classes from an approved company and I use them every year. Two more small classes and tests and then the large 3 hour timed test – 6 hours of class time to do. That last one is always the one that scares me. I know that someway I will fit them in before the end of the month as I always do.
I hope to get the stuff out to the RV and pack away the Thanksgiving – at least the downstairs stuff, if not the Teddy Village Thanksgiving stuff tomorrow and hopefully start with the dining room decorations. I need to push a large linen style looking chest from the living room to the dining room before I start the dining room. It holds a small sized tree in the dining room and the large tree in the living room goes where the chest is the rest of the year. (It looks like a linen or hope chest, but instead of the top lifting the front drops down and there are drawers in it for DVDs – husband made it.)
The front hall and the living have decorations also and then the 3 downstairs trees – big one in the living room, small ones in the dining room and studio and beaded one that I made in the living room also – on the coffee table. I was going to change the bear figurines (separate from the teddy village) that are in a corner shelf unit in the living room – but his big loom is in front of the corner unit.
I did put up the wire hanging piece we bought a few years ago to hold Christmas/holiday cards. It is a long piece with little wire spots to clip papers – in this the cards – to and I hang it from our mug rack near the ceiling in the kitchen with red ribbons. I had figured a better way to hang it last year when I took it down and clipped a note into one of the wire spots to remind me – good idea it worked perfectly and I clipped the note back in for next year.
We did finish our shopping – we bought books for his two nieces – the only gifts we buy. I send my adult niblings (that is actually a work – I made it up and then found it already existed – it means nieces and nephews combined) checks for gifts. He has bought some DVDs and such – which he would have bought anyway – and given it to me to wrap for Christmas – I actually stick them in recycled Christmas gift bags – why waste paper. At some point we have to figure out what we are going to do for Christmas Eve dinner – maybe the Asian buffet we go to will be open? We are also figuring we will go there for dinner tomorrow as we won't be able to eat out this or next weekend due to the reenactment, so it will break the meals at home up a bit.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Whatever holiday you celebrate – take time to enjoy it. In the future it will generally be the good times that are remembered – if the problems and misadventures are remembered they will become humorous in retrospect - “Hey remember the year that Susan and Carl got into the box of chocolates when they were little and took a bite out of each and then put them back?” “Remember the year we forgot to bring Ellen's gift and we all had to get together again the next week for her to get it?” Trust me, these things are terrible in the moment, but hilarious in the future.
It is the memories of the time together - even if you are just two like us - that matter in the end. If the decorations are not finished – they will be by new year's. If you will be alone try to find someplace where there are other people, I know that there are community holiday dinners even around here - where no one would think that they exist.
Oh, and as I learned at home growing up – there is always a room to throw all the stuff I you can't figure out what to do with in so the house will look nice for any family or friends who come by. :-)
Are you ready for Christmas or Chanukah or Winter Solstice or Kwanzaa or whatever holiday)s) you celebrate?
Me, I have not packed away Thanksgiving yet. Well, the dishes, pots, silverware etc were put away, but my decorations are still out. I don't put out as many for Thanksgiving as I do for Christmas (maybe 1/20th as much as for Christmas or less), but I have the decorations from when we used to have the families here for Thanksgiving dinner and I still put them out – I need to.
I have to get them packed away and get the indoor Christmas decorations put out – at least most of them. I generally don't get to my bear village until Christmas Eve or even Christmas night so they “know” they will be put out late.
We still have a lot of stuff in the house that has to go back into our RV from when we cleared it out in October to take it in for the extended service time. The larger pieces – the bed assembly and such – are back in it. I have several fabric shopping bags with stuff from it, including the plastic containers that we use for food (snacks) storage when we travel. It has been bad weather most days around here the last week or so since I realized I had to get all that out to the RV. Oh, and the vacuum cleaner – we keep a hand held – plug in vacuum in the RV in case we make a mess and need to clean it up. (Lots of vents in the RV for air to move in and out so animals can smell food in it – hence the plastic containers and concern requiring a vacuum cleaner.) It is on my dining room table – not a good place for it to be.
We (and by we, I meant I) also have to store reenacting stuff in the box benches in the dining room that we store it in. We had the last event of the year that we needed our stuff for last Saturday – more on that later, if I remember – the only remaining events are the 6 days – this coming weekend and next – that we will be doing the candlelight night event at the local restoration village and we need little for that other than our period clothing.
Husband has to move his weaving stuff to our studio – won't be able to get to my side of same after he does, but the “loom room” will again be the living room when he does.
After all that I can start putting up the decorations and the trees.
We have been busy the last week since I spoke to all of you. I went to Manhattan to a client on Thursday, which took most of the day especially the travel back and forth. When I got home husband was waiting to pack our van for the reenactment event that was coming up on (now last) Saturday.
It was at a historic home that one of our members works at and was a colonial crafts event that we were allowed (encouraged) to sell our work at. The local community had their tree lighting and other events that day so crowds were expected in the community. Husband had been weaving scarves to sell. It was to rain on Friday – and maybe Saturday – so when I arrived home on Thursday husband suggested that we pack the van while it was not raining, though dark. He was concerned about the tables and racks getting wet on Saturday if it was still raining, so we put everything in very large plastic bags – some items needed two bags – one on each end, overlapping, to cover them. He had put two tables in the back of the van before I came home. We needed to put most of what we were bringing in the main section of the van (where we have a back seat and the middle seat is out & permanently in our storage shed to make an open space). It was a cold night and damp in advance of the rain. He went to slide the side door open and it did not budge. He tried again – and again. He then went in the front door and climbed through to the main section and went to open the door – which is pushing instead of pulling it open from outside as we thought that somehow it had frozen closed and needed to be forced open.
Ha ha! He get the door open and the overhead rubber gasket that keeps water from going into the van fell down – on me. It would not fit back into place. I called our mechanic – if I have not mentioned it is a local shop and 4 blocks from our house – it was almost 5:30 and I thought they closed at same. His newest mechanic answered (there are 3 including the owner) and he knows us by name from all of our crazy car problems. I explained and he told me we should bring it over – if we left it sitting it would flood in the coming rain, at the very least they would have it indoors and fix it the next day. We drove over hoping the side door would not roll open – it did not. He got the gasket back in place and we were set again. We went home and loaded the van. Friday we ran normal errands and picked up deli turkey to make sandwiches for the next day.
Saturday it was misty more than raining and we were able to get everything inside to set up dry. We had a nice room in the museum – the exhibition was on 19th century needlework so it went well with his weaving and my embroidery demonstration. We fit in the room perfectly. The event had people there most of the day – estimate is 75-100 people and since it was raining on and off and nasty the rest of the day, that was pretty good.
Still no chance to pack away Thanksgiving decorations and start on Christmas though. Each day has had new things to waste the day. I did manage to fit in taking most of the smaller exams I need to take to prepare income taxes next year for pay. They are online classes from an approved company and I use them every year. Two more small classes and tests and then the large 3 hour timed test – 6 hours of class time to do. That last one is always the one that scares me. I know that someway I will fit them in before the end of the month as I always do.
I hope to get the stuff out to the RV and pack away the Thanksgiving – at least the downstairs stuff, if not the Teddy Village Thanksgiving stuff tomorrow and hopefully start with the dining room decorations. I need to push a large linen style looking chest from the living room to the dining room before I start the dining room. It holds a small sized tree in the dining room and the large tree in the living room goes where the chest is the rest of the year. (It looks like a linen or hope chest, but instead of the top lifting the front drops down and there are drawers in it for DVDs – husband made it.)
The front hall and the living have decorations also and then the 3 downstairs trees – big one in the living room, small ones in the dining room and studio and beaded one that I made in the living room also – on the coffee table. I was going to change the bear figurines (separate from the teddy village) that are in a corner shelf unit in the living room – but his big loom is in front of the corner unit.
I did put up the wire hanging piece we bought a few years ago to hold Christmas/holiday cards. It is a long piece with little wire spots to clip papers – in this the cards – to and I hang it from our mug rack near the ceiling in the kitchen with red ribbons. I had figured a better way to hang it last year when I took it down and clipped a note into one of the wire spots to remind me – good idea it worked perfectly and I clipped the note back in for next year.
We did finish our shopping – we bought books for his two nieces – the only gifts we buy. I send my adult niblings (that is actually a work – I made it up and then found it already existed – it means nieces and nephews combined) checks for gifts. He has bought some DVDs and such – which he would have bought anyway – and given it to me to wrap for Christmas – I actually stick them in recycled Christmas gift bags – why waste paper. At some point we have to figure out what we are going to do for Christmas Eve dinner – maybe the Asian buffet we go to will be open? We are also figuring we will go there for dinner tomorrow as we won't be able to eat out this or next weekend due to the reenactment, so it will break the meals at home up a bit.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Whatever holiday you celebrate – take time to enjoy it. In the future it will generally be the good times that are remembered – if the problems and misadventures are remembered they will become humorous in retrospect - “Hey remember the year that Susan and Carl got into the box of chocolates when they were little and took a bite out of each and then put them back?” “Remember the year we forgot to bring Ellen's gift and we all had to get together again the next week for her to get it?” Trust me, these things are terrible in the moment, but hilarious in the future.
It is the memories of the time together - even if you are just two like us - that matter in the end. If the decorations are not finished – they will be by new year's. If you will be alone try to find someplace where there are other people, I know that there are community holiday dinners even around here - where no one would think that they exist.
Oh, and as I learned at home growing up – there is always a room to throw all the stuff I you can't figure out what to do with in so the house will look nice for any family or friends who come by. :-)
Thursday, July 26, 2018
COMING HOME FROM THE TRIP
Well, we made it through last week’s trip and home again.
While away husband came across something that he has wanted for decades. It is a small loom that makes tape. No, not sticky tape, this makes a long thin strip of fabric. In earlier centuries (before the 20th ) it was used to make fabric tapes for clothing and other purposes. As an example, in the 18th century ladies’ petticoats (skirts) had a casing or hollow waistband at the top and one of these tape would go through the casing - well actually two of them as the petticoat were not attached front to back at the top/casing. At the two sides the tapes would be tied together to bring the sides of the petticoats together to the fit of the woman/girl wearing it, tight enough to hold it together and up, but not so tight that one was uncomfortable. (No, really, this works fine.) Why were the two sides open? Well, women had a garment called a pocket or a pair of pockets that were large tearshaped bags with a slit on the side facing away from the body. Since the sides of the petticoat were open, one could reach through the slits formed by the opening and waist ties and reach into the pocket(s) easily. Oh, the pockets were sewn to/hanging from - tape and were tied around the waist (under the petticoat).
The tape loom is around 24 inches tall, 24 inches front to back and around 9 inches across. Well, at least the one husband found last week is. In the past the tape looms he has found has been too expensive for us to buy. He even bought a book on how to make the looms - but decided that he would end up cutting off two many fingers trying to do so. The one he found last week was made by another craftsperson (always good to support a craftsperson) and was 1/4 of what is usually being charged for them - oh, and since it was a museum shop, we were supporting the museum also. He was unsure. I knew we could not let the loom get away from him. He was about to agree to buy it when the big question hit him. Remember how small the RV is, he decided it would not fit in the RV (securely to keep it intact). I had to go out to the RV and measure where I thought I could fit it to make sure - it did fit there. Then again, I told him that he was buying it, if it had to ride around the rest of the day and the next day until we got home - in my lap!
How did I fit it? We have one of those boxes intended to go in a trunk. It has 2 sections and collapses down for storage. I keep the box under the bed to make it easy to pull out and store laptop computers and what we call the last minute bag - huh? Well, we prepack the RV, but there are always the items that have to be used the night before we leave or the morning we are leaving, so we have a bag that we put those items in when we travel. It goes under the bed in this box. I pulled the box out from under the bed. I then wrapped the loom in several large laundry bags. (I keep the bedding in them when the beds are not made up - so they are large enough to hold 2 pillows each.) I laid the loom on its side - the flat side, not the one with the mechanism on it, in the bags, at the back end of the under bed space - one of the flat sides against the back wall of the space. The space is carpeted so it helps protect whatever is there and keeps it from moving as easily. I then put 2 tension curtain rods in front of the loom (I stuffed a large plastic bag into an open area where the loom forms an “L” shape and the curtain rods). Why do I have curtain tension rods? I use them in front of the box mentioned to help hold it in place under the bed. I used two of them to keep the loom in place. I collapsed one side of the box and put the box into place in front of the loom and stood the laptops standing next to the box and then put my last curtain rod in front of the box to keep it and the laptops in place.
It worked! Nothing moved out of place (and roads around here are pretty bad and there is much bouncing of the stuff in the RV) and the loom was in perfect condition when we arrived home. As I mentioned last week - it is amazing what one can fit into the small space that is this RV. Now, short of it traveling on a bed or in the walking aisle of the RV, this was the only space the right shape to hold the loom and hold it safely.
When we get home and unpack the RV we have to be organized also. The first things that are unpacked are the refrigerated items. I put them into a fabric bag and husband will run back and forth to the house with the items. When the refrigerator is empty I shut it off and put a folded towel under the freezer compartment. (There is no separate freezer, just a colder freezer section and if there is any condensation, it will drip in the refrigerator, so the towel will catch any drips.)
I have to remember what has to go into the house. Normally the next thing to go into the house would be “the last minute bag” with items such as medications and the like packed back into it from the trip, but this last trip the next thing that went into the house was the loom! It made the trip in perfect condition. Then onto the last minute bag.
I pack the clean clothes that we did not wear into the second regular laundry bag - we always bring clothes for a day or two longer than we will be away “in case” - case something happens to what one or both of is wearing (such as the time we had to step over a small section of water, but I was too short and stepped down into what looked like a thin layer of water, only to find out that there was a drain system under it that I stepped into up to my knee, barely managing not to get hurt) or something happens and we need to or decide to stay a day longer than we planned. When we pack we put our clean clothes into 2 laundry bags - one for each us - and then put them into the shelves in the “closet” (a small cabinet) and put one laundry bag (the one the clean clothes go into at the end of the trip) away with the last minute bag, and we use the other laundry bag for - well, our laundry that accumulates during the trip. When I put for husband to take into the house, I add the towels (hand and dish) that we used - it will get tossed down the stairs to the basement for washing when it goes into the house).
Little by little it all goes back into the house. The food that was not in the refrigerator (stored in small locking plastic boxes in the RV “kitchen cabinet” - a shelf with a door on it) is taken into the house in another fabric shopping bag. The shoes come out of the cubby they are stored in and are put into plastic shopping bags. The laptops come out from under the bed. Magazines and such come back into the house. I then go to the front of the RV and pack eyeglasses and such that were in the front. I have an manila envelope a little larger than a regular envelope for each of the regular trips we take to accumulate reservations, coupons, etc. for that trip and I take the envelope with me in the map pocket - it has to come back into the house. Almost forgot - jackets and sweatshirts have to come back into the house.
The next to last thing I do before I leave inside the RV is I walk around the inside in a circle and touch each area that we put things into and have to take things out of and put back in the house to remind myself and make sure that I remembered to empty each area. The last thing I do is shut off the lights and then the RV battery - and as I do I say out loud to myself - lights are off, battery IS off. This way I will remember that I shut them off.
We also unload anything we stored in the back of the RV through the back door that we brought or bought - there is a laundry basket there to hold the items.
Oddly, I was greatly short on time to write this post tonight. Husband decided to set up his new loom tonight. “It will only take 5 minutes.” Famous last words. Two hours later it was set up. Two hours that I had other plans for. But that is life and life is more important.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
If you do something over and over again develop a plan to follow to make sure that all of it is done and follow it. I find that when doing something such as checking the kitchen (in our house) at night, locking the door when I go out, or finishing unloading the RV to say something out loud.
When I close up the kitchen for the night (we watch TV in same at night - such as right now while I am writing and posting this) I lock the back door. I then check the back door and say “door locked”. I then look at the 6 knobs on the stove next to the door and count one to six out loud and say “all off”. I then look at the electric outlet box next to the stove, check it and say “nothing plugged in”. (This is the electric outlets which are used for small appliances and we don’t leave them plugged in when they are not being used.)
When I go out I lock the door. As I do so I say to myself “door LOCKED” so I remember.
As mentioned I touch each area in the RV and say that it is emptied before leaving it when the trip is over. I also say out loud that the refrigerator door is open (it is propped open to prevent odors forming) and that the lights are out and then that the battery is turned off.
By saying and doing each of these things it registers on my brain and I do not go running downstairs - or outside to the RV - or back to the door - to check that the chore is done.
I want to offer hopes that anyone living in the areas which are being flooded in the heavy storms are safe and dry.
While away husband came across something that he has wanted for decades. It is a small loom that makes tape. No, not sticky tape, this makes a long thin strip of fabric. In earlier centuries (before the 20th ) it was used to make fabric tapes for clothing and other purposes. As an example, in the 18th century ladies’ petticoats (skirts) had a casing or hollow waistband at the top and one of these tape would go through the casing - well actually two of them as the petticoat were not attached front to back at the top/casing. At the two sides the tapes would be tied together to bring the sides of the petticoats together to the fit of the woman/girl wearing it, tight enough to hold it together and up, but not so tight that one was uncomfortable. (No, really, this works fine.) Why were the two sides open? Well, women had a garment called a pocket or a pair of pockets that were large tearshaped bags with a slit on the side facing away from the body. Since the sides of the petticoat were open, one could reach through the slits formed by the opening and waist ties and reach into the pocket(s) easily. Oh, the pockets were sewn to/hanging from - tape and were tied around the waist (under the petticoat).
The tape loom is around 24 inches tall, 24 inches front to back and around 9 inches across. Well, at least the one husband found last week is. In the past the tape looms he has found has been too expensive for us to buy. He even bought a book on how to make the looms - but decided that he would end up cutting off two many fingers trying to do so. The one he found last week was made by another craftsperson (always good to support a craftsperson) and was 1/4 of what is usually being charged for them - oh, and since it was a museum shop, we were supporting the museum also. He was unsure. I knew we could not let the loom get away from him. He was about to agree to buy it when the big question hit him. Remember how small the RV is, he decided it would not fit in the RV (securely to keep it intact). I had to go out to the RV and measure where I thought I could fit it to make sure - it did fit there. Then again, I told him that he was buying it, if it had to ride around the rest of the day and the next day until we got home - in my lap!
How did I fit it? We have one of those boxes intended to go in a trunk. It has 2 sections and collapses down for storage. I keep the box under the bed to make it easy to pull out and store laptop computers and what we call the last minute bag - huh? Well, we prepack the RV, but there are always the items that have to be used the night before we leave or the morning we are leaving, so we have a bag that we put those items in when we travel. It goes under the bed in this box. I pulled the box out from under the bed. I then wrapped the loom in several large laundry bags. (I keep the bedding in them when the beds are not made up - so they are large enough to hold 2 pillows each.) I laid the loom on its side - the flat side, not the one with the mechanism on it, in the bags, at the back end of the under bed space - one of the flat sides against the back wall of the space. The space is carpeted so it helps protect whatever is there and keeps it from moving as easily. I then put 2 tension curtain rods in front of the loom (I stuffed a large plastic bag into an open area where the loom forms an “L” shape and the curtain rods). Why do I have curtain tension rods? I use them in front of the box mentioned to help hold it in place under the bed. I used two of them to keep the loom in place. I collapsed one side of the box and put the box into place in front of the loom and stood the laptops standing next to the box and then put my last curtain rod in front of the box to keep it and the laptops in place.
It worked! Nothing moved out of place (and roads around here are pretty bad and there is much bouncing of the stuff in the RV) and the loom was in perfect condition when we arrived home. As I mentioned last week - it is amazing what one can fit into the small space that is this RV. Now, short of it traveling on a bed or in the walking aisle of the RV, this was the only space the right shape to hold the loom and hold it safely.
When we get home and unpack the RV we have to be organized also. The first things that are unpacked are the refrigerated items. I put them into a fabric bag and husband will run back and forth to the house with the items. When the refrigerator is empty I shut it off and put a folded towel under the freezer compartment. (There is no separate freezer, just a colder freezer section and if there is any condensation, it will drip in the refrigerator, so the towel will catch any drips.)
I have to remember what has to go into the house. Normally the next thing to go into the house would be “the last minute bag” with items such as medications and the like packed back into it from the trip, but this last trip the next thing that went into the house was the loom! It made the trip in perfect condition. Then onto the last minute bag.
I pack the clean clothes that we did not wear into the second regular laundry bag - we always bring clothes for a day or two longer than we will be away “in case” - case something happens to what one or both of is wearing (such as the time we had to step over a small section of water, but I was too short and stepped down into what looked like a thin layer of water, only to find out that there was a drain system under it that I stepped into up to my knee, barely managing not to get hurt) or something happens and we need to or decide to stay a day longer than we planned. When we pack we put our clean clothes into 2 laundry bags - one for each us - and then put them into the shelves in the “closet” (a small cabinet) and put one laundry bag (the one the clean clothes go into at the end of the trip) away with the last minute bag, and we use the other laundry bag for - well, our laundry that accumulates during the trip. When I put for husband to take into the house, I add the towels (hand and dish) that we used - it will get tossed down the stairs to the basement for washing when it goes into the house).
Little by little it all goes back into the house. The food that was not in the refrigerator (stored in small locking plastic boxes in the RV “kitchen cabinet” - a shelf with a door on it) is taken into the house in another fabric shopping bag. The shoes come out of the cubby they are stored in and are put into plastic shopping bags. The laptops come out from under the bed. Magazines and such come back into the house. I then go to the front of the RV and pack eyeglasses and such that were in the front. I have an manila envelope a little larger than a regular envelope for each of the regular trips we take to accumulate reservations, coupons, etc. for that trip and I take the envelope with me in the map pocket - it has to come back into the house. Almost forgot - jackets and sweatshirts have to come back into the house.
The next to last thing I do before I leave inside the RV is I walk around the inside in a circle and touch each area that we put things into and have to take things out of and put back in the house to remind myself and make sure that I remembered to empty each area. The last thing I do is shut off the lights and then the RV battery - and as I do I say out loud to myself - lights are off, battery IS off. This way I will remember that I shut them off.
We also unload anything we stored in the back of the RV through the back door that we brought or bought - there is a laundry basket there to hold the items.
Oddly, I was greatly short on time to write this post tonight. Husband decided to set up his new loom tonight. “It will only take 5 minutes.” Famous last words. Two hours later it was set up. Two hours that I had other plans for. But that is life and life is more important.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
If you do something over and over again develop a plan to follow to make sure that all of it is done and follow it. I find that when doing something such as checking the kitchen (in our house) at night, locking the door when I go out, or finishing unloading the RV to say something out loud.
When I close up the kitchen for the night (we watch TV in same at night - such as right now while I am writing and posting this) I lock the back door. I then check the back door and say “door locked”. I then look at the 6 knobs on the stove next to the door and count one to six out loud and say “all off”. I then look at the electric outlet box next to the stove, check it and say “nothing plugged in”. (This is the electric outlets which are used for small appliances and we don’t leave them plugged in when they are not being used.)
When I go out I lock the door. As I do so I say to myself “door LOCKED” so I remember.
As mentioned I touch each area in the RV and say that it is emptied before leaving it when the trip is over. I also say out loud that the refrigerator door is open (it is propped open to prevent odors forming) and that the lights are out and then that the battery is turned off.
By saying and doing each of these things it registers on my brain and I do not go running downstairs - or outside to the RV - or back to the door - to check that the chore is done.
I want to offer hopes that anyone living in the areas which are being flooded in the heavy storms are safe and dry.
Thursday, May 3, 2018
FINALLY STARTING TO CATCH UP
Husband gave up on his weaving project this past Monday - someday he will try to do this type of weaving again, but not now.
I have been working on catching up and getting the house and chores back up to date.
I have stored away the several pairs of boots each of us had out for snow this past winter. We have a sort of charm that we believe in (which did not work this winter) - once a pair of boots comes out for the snow, it is bad luck to put them away before the winter is over and will result in even more snow. Yeah, it is stupid and certainly did not work this winter, but we leave them out anyway. Since my teeth are in their seasonal ache period (spring and fall) and I have my seasonal stiff neck (ditto) I am pretty sure the weather will actually stay warm now. So I put the boots away. Our setup for the boots is 2 good sized plastic boxes with lids at the bottom of the front closet. The bottom box holds the boots for more severe weather - the actual snow boots, a pair each of rubber (plastic?) covered shoe boots and such. The upper box holds the boots that might also be worn in rainy weather - the leather ones - and a pair of my old sneakers which slip on. The latter has nothing to do with boots or bad weather. If I have to run out of the house - take out the garbage, recycling, forgot something in the car - they are easy and quick to slip on instead of stopping to put on shoes with laces to go out. They sit at the front and top of the top box so they can be quickly and easily reached. The lid of the upper box becomes a boot tray when we have the boots out - it is placed next to the front door and wet boots are left on it to dry and await their next wearing. I washed and dried the top of it well before putting it back on the box in the closet.
While I managed to fit in the bank reconciliations for our main bank accounts and those of the clubs of which I am treasurer, I did not get to the other accounts - personal savings accounts and a couple of small checking accounts that are used for money transfers, as well as since it was the quarterly statements, the statements for our IRAs. At this point the new statements will be here next week - so I will do the two months of statements together as that is quicker than doing one set now and one set next week. I did find time today to go back and post the purchases and credits on our main credit card statement from last month. I had matched the slips to the statement and paid the bill - in full of course - but had not had a chance to post it to my computer records - so today I did so. Providence must have been helping me as the items for this statement rarely comes out even (posts done with what was billed and paid) on the first try - sometimes it takes lots of tries - but this was one of the time that it worked out on the first try.
Right now I am doing my Wednesday night laundry. Forgot that I had done a load of jeans last week and it was left in the dryer to dry - so I had to bring them upstairs to be able to use the dryer. I also have 2 extra loads I need to do this week. I change the bed’s “underwear” once a month. While I bought new pillow undercovers during the month (as the ones I had were really icky when I saw them - stained and such) I need to wash the mattress pad I took off. We sleep in winter with two blankets. Since it is now in the 70s during the days husband suggested that we only need one blanket now for the warmer weather. I only made the bed with the green blanket and the blue one is waiting to be washed and put on the bed next week. Why do we have two different color blankets? When we needed a new blanket after we had the bed bugs we bought the blue one. Later when it got colder we decided we needed a second one and the store only had the green ones in the correct size. Since I like blue, I wash the blue one first when we are switching to one blanket and leave the green one on the bed to use while the blue one is washed. Then I will put the clean blue blanket on the bed and wash the green blanket. The green blanket will be put in a clear plastic bag when it is clean and after squeezing as much air as I can, the bag will be sealed. The green blanket will then be store in the bedroom in a piece of furniture (a plastic end table with a shelf under it and a closed cabinet area below that - it used to be in our living room in our apartment). In the fall I will put the green blanket on the bed and again wash and dry the blue one.
Today was my embroidery chapter meeting. Due to illnesses somehow not only was I the treasurer, but the secretary asked me during the week to take minutes for her and then this morning the membership chair called and said she was ill and asked me to take care of the renewals (our national group sets the membership year as June through the following May, so everyone has to renew right now), getting a sign in list of members, etc. for her. Plus the VP is out of state and she asked me to get the list of who will bring what to her house for our annual party next month.
After the meeting - which was the first one I went to since January (February and March meetings were canceled for weather and husband’s birthday meant that I could not go to the April meeting). I ran errands which have been waiting since late January to be done.
I had packed some items to donate. Many of them were old computer disk storage items, some were household serving pieces and others were clothes. The bags have been sitting in front of the office closet door since they were packed in late January - each time I thought it would only be a month before they were taken to Goodwill. So if I needed our business checkbook, new paper for the printer, my other laptop bag (I have one for travel and one for work - they hold different things) or the box of 2017 paid bills that I temporarily stuck in the top of the office closet until I clear out the 2008 box from the top of the closet and pack the 2017 papers (bills, statements and anything else) in it and put it in the top of the closet I had to move all the bags, open the closet door, take out what I need (or put away what I no longer needed) and then put all the bags back. So nice to be able to just open the closet.
Similarly I had not been able to bring back our recyclable plastic (soda) bottles for refund of their deposit since early January. I managed to get rid of one small bag (10 bottles, 50 cents) when I suggested to husband that we get rid of a small bag of bottles easily and quickly in the interim, but I kept forgetting to bring another small bag and get rid of them. There still is about half a month’s bottles in the porch - if all goes as it should, they will be returned next month along with any bottles between now and then.
I even managed to fit in a quick trip to the bank branch where we have a safe deposit box and switch an updated offsite data stick drive for the one in the box - also not done since January and intended as a monthly thing to do. I also ordered new checks as I am down to one book while I was there.
So catching up is progressing. I even fit in one of our VERY long telephone conversations with mom.
I mentioned late last year that we had accumulated and submitted a variety of paperwork to our local township for us to receive a senior real estate tax exemption, which is income based. I am happy to say that I received the paperwork saying that we have been given the exemption. This will cut our property taxes for the school year 2018-2019 and our other real estate taxes for 2019. We have to reapply later this year for the following year - at least now we know what to do and what we will need. I have already started collecting the papers as some of them come in without us having to request them. I start contacting the places I will need additional paperwork from either late this month or the beginning of next month - it is all due by the end of the year, so there is time to get it done easily and they will not send out the forms until late August.
For a bit of extra fun, we need to put a new carbon monoxide monitor alarm and a new propane monitor alarm in our RV. We have actually replaced the carbon monoxide monitor before and did not anticipate any problems with it. We have not needed to replace the propane monitor before, but the instructions seemed pretty straight forward. We had to order both monitors. The propane monitor had to be ordered from Canada. Husband found the carbon monoxide monitor listed for sale online, but the one he found said “marine” across it and is intended for a boat. He emailed the company selling it and was assured that it was it the same one - same model number and all.
The carbon monoxide monitor arrived first at our PO Box. When opened it did say “marine” across it. It also has not only different specifications than the one we have, but also they are different than those in the listing it was purchased from. Husband emailed the company about this on Friday. On Tuesday he telephoned as he had not heard back. The employee had him leave a message for the person he needed to talk to and he was assured he would be called back later in the day - today (Wednesday) he called again, spoke to the same employee and was told the same thing and he was a bit less pleasant and she told him that he had written to the wrong email address (the one in their listings) and gave him her email to send the info to - hopefully this will get resolved.
Husband went to take out the old propane monitor - should be easy - push two pieces of plastic on the front together and pull. Apparently the wire was too short for it to pull out. While we need the wire to attach the new one, we had to squeeze in a small wire cutter and cut the wires to get the old one off. We have attempted to remove the piece of floor in this section to get to where the wire connects - but it won’t lift out even after the screws were removed.
Hopefully both of these will soon work out and be installed or we cannot travel in the RV. Next we will progress to dewinterizing the RV - a messy job over 2 days to drain the antifreeze in the pipes and tanks out, add a vinegar and water mixture, run it through the pipes and shake it around the tanks by driving forward and backwards (I mean backwards or forwards or there will be a hole in the garage door) and stopping quickly. Then the vinegar and water mixture is drained out and plain water put in the tanks - then run out through the pipes and taps (3 pairs of taps and toilet) and then the plain water put in again and run out.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - If the work that needs to be done seems immense, do it little by little.
Figure out what is most important to be done and do that work.
Take what can be set aside “for now” and do so - but put all of the items set aside as same together.
Then do the next the thing which needs to be done and so on.
It is amazing what will get done this way and you will get closer to catching up, if not caught up completely.
I have been working on catching up and getting the house and chores back up to date.
I have stored away the several pairs of boots each of us had out for snow this past winter. We have a sort of charm that we believe in (which did not work this winter) - once a pair of boots comes out for the snow, it is bad luck to put them away before the winter is over and will result in even more snow. Yeah, it is stupid and certainly did not work this winter, but we leave them out anyway. Since my teeth are in their seasonal ache period (spring and fall) and I have my seasonal stiff neck (ditto) I am pretty sure the weather will actually stay warm now. So I put the boots away. Our setup for the boots is 2 good sized plastic boxes with lids at the bottom of the front closet. The bottom box holds the boots for more severe weather - the actual snow boots, a pair each of rubber (plastic?) covered shoe boots and such. The upper box holds the boots that might also be worn in rainy weather - the leather ones - and a pair of my old sneakers which slip on. The latter has nothing to do with boots or bad weather. If I have to run out of the house - take out the garbage, recycling, forgot something in the car - they are easy and quick to slip on instead of stopping to put on shoes with laces to go out. They sit at the front and top of the top box so they can be quickly and easily reached. The lid of the upper box becomes a boot tray when we have the boots out - it is placed next to the front door and wet boots are left on it to dry and await their next wearing. I washed and dried the top of it well before putting it back on the box in the closet.
While I managed to fit in the bank reconciliations for our main bank accounts and those of the clubs of which I am treasurer, I did not get to the other accounts - personal savings accounts and a couple of small checking accounts that are used for money transfers, as well as since it was the quarterly statements, the statements for our IRAs. At this point the new statements will be here next week - so I will do the two months of statements together as that is quicker than doing one set now and one set next week. I did find time today to go back and post the purchases and credits on our main credit card statement from last month. I had matched the slips to the statement and paid the bill - in full of course - but had not had a chance to post it to my computer records - so today I did so. Providence must have been helping me as the items for this statement rarely comes out even (posts done with what was billed and paid) on the first try - sometimes it takes lots of tries - but this was one of the time that it worked out on the first try.
Right now I am doing my Wednesday night laundry. Forgot that I had done a load of jeans last week and it was left in the dryer to dry - so I had to bring them upstairs to be able to use the dryer. I also have 2 extra loads I need to do this week. I change the bed’s “underwear” once a month. While I bought new pillow undercovers during the month (as the ones I had were really icky when I saw them - stained and such) I need to wash the mattress pad I took off. We sleep in winter with two blankets. Since it is now in the 70s during the days husband suggested that we only need one blanket now for the warmer weather. I only made the bed with the green blanket and the blue one is waiting to be washed and put on the bed next week. Why do we have two different color blankets? When we needed a new blanket after we had the bed bugs we bought the blue one. Later when it got colder we decided we needed a second one and the store only had the green ones in the correct size. Since I like blue, I wash the blue one first when we are switching to one blanket and leave the green one on the bed to use while the blue one is washed. Then I will put the clean blue blanket on the bed and wash the green blanket. The green blanket will be put in a clear plastic bag when it is clean and after squeezing as much air as I can, the bag will be sealed. The green blanket will then be store in the bedroom in a piece of furniture (a plastic end table with a shelf under it and a closed cabinet area below that - it used to be in our living room in our apartment). In the fall I will put the green blanket on the bed and again wash and dry the blue one.
Today was my embroidery chapter meeting. Due to illnesses somehow not only was I the treasurer, but the secretary asked me during the week to take minutes for her and then this morning the membership chair called and said she was ill and asked me to take care of the renewals (our national group sets the membership year as June through the following May, so everyone has to renew right now), getting a sign in list of members, etc. for her. Plus the VP is out of state and she asked me to get the list of who will bring what to her house for our annual party next month.
After the meeting - which was the first one I went to since January (February and March meetings were canceled for weather and husband’s birthday meant that I could not go to the April meeting). I ran errands which have been waiting since late January to be done.
I had packed some items to donate. Many of them were old computer disk storage items, some were household serving pieces and others were clothes. The bags have been sitting in front of the office closet door since they were packed in late January - each time I thought it would only be a month before they were taken to Goodwill. So if I needed our business checkbook, new paper for the printer, my other laptop bag (I have one for travel and one for work - they hold different things) or the box of 2017 paid bills that I temporarily stuck in the top of the office closet until I clear out the 2008 box from the top of the closet and pack the 2017 papers (bills, statements and anything else) in it and put it in the top of the closet I had to move all the bags, open the closet door, take out what I need (or put away what I no longer needed) and then put all the bags back. So nice to be able to just open the closet.
Similarly I had not been able to bring back our recyclable plastic (soda) bottles for refund of their deposit since early January. I managed to get rid of one small bag (10 bottles, 50 cents) when I suggested to husband that we get rid of a small bag of bottles easily and quickly in the interim, but I kept forgetting to bring another small bag and get rid of them. There still is about half a month’s bottles in the porch - if all goes as it should, they will be returned next month along with any bottles between now and then.
I even managed to fit in a quick trip to the bank branch where we have a safe deposit box and switch an updated offsite data stick drive for the one in the box - also not done since January and intended as a monthly thing to do. I also ordered new checks as I am down to one book while I was there.
So catching up is progressing. I even fit in one of our VERY long telephone conversations with mom.
I mentioned late last year that we had accumulated and submitted a variety of paperwork to our local township for us to receive a senior real estate tax exemption, which is income based. I am happy to say that I received the paperwork saying that we have been given the exemption. This will cut our property taxes for the school year 2018-2019 and our other real estate taxes for 2019. We have to reapply later this year for the following year - at least now we know what to do and what we will need. I have already started collecting the papers as some of them come in without us having to request them. I start contacting the places I will need additional paperwork from either late this month or the beginning of next month - it is all due by the end of the year, so there is time to get it done easily and they will not send out the forms until late August.
For a bit of extra fun, we need to put a new carbon monoxide monitor alarm and a new propane monitor alarm in our RV. We have actually replaced the carbon monoxide monitor before and did not anticipate any problems with it. We have not needed to replace the propane monitor before, but the instructions seemed pretty straight forward. We had to order both monitors. The propane monitor had to be ordered from Canada. Husband found the carbon monoxide monitor listed for sale online, but the one he found said “marine” across it and is intended for a boat. He emailed the company selling it and was assured that it was it the same one - same model number and all.
The carbon monoxide monitor arrived first at our PO Box. When opened it did say “marine” across it. It also has not only different specifications than the one we have, but also they are different than those in the listing it was purchased from. Husband emailed the company about this on Friday. On Tuesday he telephoned as he had not heard back. The employee had him leave a message for the person he needed to talk to and he was assured he would be called back later in the day - today (Wednesday) he called again, spoke to the same employee and was told the same thing and he was a bit less pleasant and she told him that he had written to the wrong email address (the one in their listings) and gave him her email to send the info to - hopefully this will get resolved.
Husband went to take out the old propane monitor - should be easy - push two pieces of plastic on the front together and pull. Apparently the wire was too short for it to pull out. While we need the wire to attach the new one, we had to squeeze in a small wire cutter and cut the wires to get the old one off. We have attempted to remove the piece of floor in this section to get to where the wire connects - but it won’t lift out even after the screws were removed.
Hopefully both of these will soon work out and be installed or we cannot travel in the RV. Next we will progress to dewinterizing the RV - a messy job over 2 days to drain the antifreeze in the pipes and tanks out, add a vinegar and water mixture, run it through the pipes and shake it around the tanks by driving forward and backwards (I mean backwards or forwards or there will be a hole in the garage door) and stopping quickly. Then the vinegar and water mixture is drained out and plain water put in the tanks - then run out through the pipes and taps (3 pairs of taps and toilet) and then the plain water put in again and run out.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK - If the work that needs to be done seems immense, do it little by little.
Figure out what is most important to be done and do that work.
Take what can be set aside “for now” and do so - but put all of the items set aside as same together.
Then do the next the thing which needs to be done and so on.
It is amazing what will get done this way and you will get closer to catching up, if not caught up completely.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
SIDELINED BY A LOOM
Okay, so after tax season normally comes a period of catching up on everything which was not done during tax season. I try to keep things organized during tax season - this year I had a folder next to my desk with paperwork that needed to be done - including some things which were half done and needed to be followed up on. Last week when I posted I had started that work and expected to go quickly through it. Then I was sidelined - by my husband and his loom.
Normally when husband starts a new weaving project on his loom, I help him get the project set up. I see detail easier than he does and I don’t get dizzy bending over. I don’t mind the time it takes as once it is set up he will be happy weaving for some days. This time he was doing a new type of project. It has a much more detailed setup - we have never done this setup before or seen it done and he was relying on books and web information to do so.
While this is not a weaving or craft site, a bit of information is needed to follow what I am talking about, so bear with me and you will have a rudimentary knowledge of weaving. His loom is different than those huge ones you have probably seen at historic buildings and craft fairs. It is much smaller - the width thing it can weave is about 30 inches wide. It also does not have all those strings hanging down with the threads/yarns going through them. Those strings are moved by pedals to raise the strings in various groupings to make differing patterns in the weaving. His loom has a panel that is plastic pieces between a top and bottom piece of wood to hold them together. The strings are called a heddle. What he has is called a rigid heddle. His heddle has alternating holes and slots - slots go from top to bottom of the heddle. Threads alternately go through a hole, then a slot. When the heddle is moved up and down the threads in the holes will be moved up and down alternately and that is how one can slide the weaving yarn/thread through to weave. There are different sizes/spaced heddles for different thickness of threads. The threads that go through the heddle (that go straight ahead and are what are woven through, are called the warp - I set this in my head by remembering “warp speed ahead”). The threads that weave through the warp is called weft. When we set up the loom we are “warping” it and putting on the warp threads.
Since his loom is narrow side to side, there is a way to warp to make double width fabric. It needs a second heddle that matches the first one on the loom. He got a second one for the most common size heddle he uses last Christmas and was ready to try it out. Understand, one is not adding to the sides of the loom, one is (somehow) weaving an upper and lower weaving that is actually one piece when it is finished.
So last Thursday we started setting up the loom for him to try this. At my suggestion he was not warping the entire loom and making a large 60" piece of fabric, but just doing an 8" wide piece, which would double to 16". We tried to follow the directions - we ended up taking the yarn off the loom twice and starting over. And then took it off again at the end of Thursday.
Friday we did the same - we finally decided it was on correctly and he tried to start weaving. The threads were too thick to pass each other in the slots (remember the slots?). He also decided that the threads were twisted around each other. So we again took it apart. Luckily he does not use expensive yarn as we had to toss it out - again.
Saturday he bought different thread that was thinner and stretched thinner when pulled. (Sunday we were out at an event from our reenactment unit.) Monday we warped the loom. We had questions about which of the 4 threads passing through each set of holes/slots went in which (remember we have two heddles so there are 2 holes to go through and 2 slots and out of each group of 4 threads, one goes through the hole in one heddle, while the other three go through one slot. Then one of the threads that went through the slot, goes through the hole in the other heddle and the other threads go through slots - one to the left and two to the right. But which ones go through which slots to make the colors correct? So we stopped and overnight he posted the question. He received a reply and Tuesday we finished “warping” the loom. Today (Wednesday) we fixed some threads that crossed over each other and should not. With some trouble starting, he now is weaving it! The colors are not how he wanted them, but if it works and he ever does this again, we will know how to adjust them.
So everything I planned to do this week to catch up had to be greatly condensed. We put our money as we receive it into a savings account and I transfer what we need into our checking account. I needed to plan out what to transfer last Friday for the coming week on Thursday night and pay some bills. I ended up doing so at 1 am. (Okay, I am also writing post at 1 am as we are still up, but I like to relax a bit this time of night.) All week every time I thought I would do something - or could catch up - we were working on warping the loom. I would go upstairs as he would think he was done, only to be called back down. He knows I have things to do and will try to do things on his own. I came downstairs for something I had forgotten and saw him leaning over the loom - knowing him, about to get ill. “Why didn’t you call me?” “I don’t want to keep bothering you.”
I write the monthly newsletter for my embroidery chapter. It goes out once a month - a week before the meeting. That means it gets emailed out tonight. (Okay, I consider that it is still Wednesday, but technically it is Thursday am.) I try to write it a little at a time over the week, but did not have a chance to do this due to the ongoing warping and unwarping of the loom. So tonight - after emailing some attachments I forgot for my friend’s tax return to her so she could attach them, I first started writing the newsletter. I managed to get that finished and out - 3 different versions of it - one for members, one for the other chapters in our region, and one for potential members. It only took about 3 hours until 12:30 am.
Then I came down here to write my post for this week. I started my laptop - it starts, loads and runs very slowly - and ran to the basement to throw in a load of clothing laundry. I then started writing this post. I just switched the loads of laundry so one is washing and one is drying. The laundry will not be put away until Friday or Saturday as tomorrow (okay, technically today) I am going to a client to do her books.
So, this has been a week of warping and unwarping the loom. Lots of frustration and swearing. Little done that should have been done - another week of “Do the bare minimum and put the rest aside until next week”
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - Sometimes it is better and more necessary to help someone (especially a loved one) to do something even if it wastes lots of one time.
Normally when husband starts a new weaving project on his loom, I help him get the project set up. I see detail easier than he does and I don’t get dizzy bending over. I don’t mind the time it takes as once it is set up he will be happy weaving for some days. This time he was doing a new type of project. It has a much more detailed setup - we have never done this setup before or seen it done and he was relying on books and web information to do so.
While this is not a weaving or craft site, a bit of information is needed to follow what I am talking about, so bear with me and you will have a rudimentary knowledge of weaving. His loom is different than those huge ones you have probably seen at historic buildings and craft fairs. It is much smaller - the width thing it can weave is about 30 inches wide. It also does not have all those strings hanging down with the threads/yarns going through them. Those strings are moved by pedals to raise the strings in various groupings to make differing patterns in the weaving. His loom has a panel that is plastic pieces between a top and bottom piece of wood to hold them together. The strings are called a heddle. What he has is called a rigid heddle. His heddle has alternating holes and slots - slots go from top to bottom of the heddle. Threads alternately go through a hole, then a slot. When the heddle is moved up and down the threads in the holes will be moved up and down alternately and that is how one can slide the weaving yarn/thread through to weave. There are different sizes/spaced heddles for different thickness of threads. The threads that go through the heddle (that go straight ahead and are what are woven through, are called the warp - I set this in my head by remembering “warp speed ahead”). The threads that weave through the warp is called weft. When we set up the loom we are “warping” it and putting on the warp threads.
Since his loom is narrow side to side, there is a way to warp to make double width fabric. It needs a second heddle that matches the first one on the loom. He got a second one for the most common size heddle he uses last Christmas and was ready to try it out. Understand, one is not adding to the sides of the loom, one is (somehow) weaving an upper and lower weaving that is actually one piece when it is finished.
So last Thursday we started setting up the loom for him to try this. At my suggestion he was not warping the entire loom and making a large 60" piece of fabric, but just doing an 8" wide piece, which would double to 16". We tried to follow the directions - we ended up taking the yarn off the loom twice and starting over. And then took it off again at the end of Thursday.
Friday we did the same - we finally decided it was on correctly and he tried to start weaving. The threads were too thick to pass each other in the slots (remember the slots?). He also decided that the threads were twisted around each other. So we again took it apart. Luckily he does not use expensive yarn as we had to toss it out - again.
Saturday he bought different thread that was thinner and stretched thinner when pulled. (Sunday we were out at an event from our reenactment unit.) Monday we warped the loom. We had questions about which of the 4 threads passing through each set of holes/slots went in which (remember we have two heddles so there are 2 holes to go through and 2 slots and out of each group of 4 threads, one goes through the hole in one heddle, while the other three go through one slot. Then one of the threads that went through the slot, goes through the hole in the other heddle and the other threads go through slots - one to the left and two to the right. But which ones go through which slots to make the colors correct? So we stopped and overnight he posted the question. He received a reply and Tuesday we finished “warping” the loom. Today (Wednesday) we fixed some threads that crossed over each other and should not. With some trouble starting, he now is weaving it! The colors are not how he wanted them, but if it works and he ever does this again, we will know how to adjust them.
So everything I planned to do this week to catch up had to be greatly condensed. We put our money as we receive it into a savings account and I transfer what we need into our checking account. I needed to plan out what to transfer last Friday for the coming week on Thursday night and pay some bills. I ended up doing so at 1 am. (Okay, I am also writing post at 1 am as we are still up, but I like to relax a bit this time of night.) All week every time I thought I would do something - or could catch up - we were working on warping the loom. I would go upstairs as he would think he was done, only to be called back down. He knows I have things to do and will try to do things on his own. I came downstairs for something I had forgotten and saw him leaning over the loom - knowing him, about to get ill. “Why didn’t you call me?” “I don’t want to keep bothering you.”
I write the monthly newsletter for my embroidery chapter. It goes out once a month - a week before the meeting. That means it gets emailed out tonight. (Okay, I consider that it is still Wednesday, but technically it is Thursday am.) I try to write it a little at a time over the week, but did not have a chance to do this due to the ongoing warping and unwarping of the loom. So tonight - after emailing some attachments I forgot for my friend’s tax return to her so she could attach them, I first started writing the newsletter. I managed to get that finished and out - 3 different versions of it - one for members, one for the other chapters in our region, and one for potential members. It only took about 3 hours until 12:30 am.
Then I came down here to write my post for this week. I started my laptop - it starts, loads and runs very slowly - and ran to the basement to throw in a load of clothing laundry. I then started writing this post. I just switched the loads of laundry so one is washing and one is drying. The laundry will not be put away until Friday or Saturday as tomorrow (okay, technically today) I am going to a client to do her books.
So, this has been a week of warping and unwarping the loom. Lots of frustration and swearing. Little done that should have been done - another week of “Do the bare minimum and put the rest aside until next week”
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - Sometimes it is better and more necessary to help someone (especially a loved one) to do something even if it wastes lots of one time.
Thursday, March 1, 2018
VERY FRUSTRATING WEEK
We had a very frustrating week. Husband has been weaving a scarf for me. He is using a yarn that he had used before - lighter in weight than most yarns he works with and thinner. I like a light weight scarf. He bought a skein each of light and dark blue - my favorite color.
The first sign that this project was not going to be as simple to do as past weaving projects was when we set up loom to do the weaving. To do this we have to run long pieces of yarn which are attached to the loom on each of the two ends of the pieces of yarn and stretched out tight between them. When we did this we saw something we have never seen before. The yarns pieces, parallel to each other, were pushing away from each other - static electricity. Remember, he has used this yarn before. We ignored this and went ahead. There are various other steps to setting up the yarn to be woven through and they were hard to do as the pieces of yarn kept pushing away from each other.
Well, this is a bit like the frustrating things which happen when we try to organize and declutter. Dividers we know will fit in a space do not. We start doing one part of a project and find ourselves led into another project. But, we carry on trying to get the end of the project.My part in the weaving is done after the loom is set up and I left husband to work.
The easy part of the weaving follows - the actual weaving. Yarn wrapped around a long piece of wood - the shuttle - is pushed through the yarn pieces that have been tied onto the loom. Then the yarn that has been taken through is pushed against what has already been woven in a process called “beating”. Then the yarn pieces on the loom are switched so what was up is now down and vice versa and the process is repeated. On the kind of loom my husband has - with a solid bar that the yarns on the loom have been tied through to lift them up and down - the same bar is used to beat the yarn after each pass - the yarn passing through alternate holes and slots in the bar.
Husband, upset, comes upstairs. He is having a problem. Apparently the yarn that he was using is yarn wrapped around a core thread - we did not know this. At one spot on one piece of tied on yarn the wrapping had unwrapped and was being pushed backwards as he used the bar as a beater - a bunch of fluff sitting on the wrong side of the bar. We managed to get the fluff through to the right side and he glued it in place not knowing what else to do and left it to dry.
Again, similar to doing organizing - if we hit a snag (which is what this was) we try to fix it and move on.
The glue was not enough to hold the wrapped yarn in place, so we repeated getting it through to the right side and then husband kept weaving, but used a large comb as a beater - needing to repeat this several times across the loom for each cross thread being woven.
Along the way a second spot on the same yarn had the same problem. We again pulled it through and glued it into place and husband kept working with the comb.
Well sure, we have all had the same problem repeat - perhaps magazines which are sorted for storage and then additional magazines are found and they all have to be sorted again.
Finally all of the problem yarn was woven into the piece. Husband looked and the rest of the yarn he could see looked fine and he relaxed and went back to his regular manner of weaving. Happy that he was making something for me and it would be greatly appreciated.
Suddenly he is back upstairs. The same problem on the same yarn piece has appeared again in a new spot! At this point he could not deal with it and he decided that the piece had to be finished, even if it was not long enough to be a scarf.
Frustration - we all know this feeling when organizing - what we think will work does not. The time we think something will take is underestimated. Mostly we go on, but sometimes something is so impossible that we have to stop and figure out an alternative.
I know the work he had put into the piece and how disappointed he was that something he was making special for me did not work out. I figured I would take the short piece when it is finished, and use it a table runner or mat (depending on how long it is). It turned out to be long enough for me to use as a scarf - although it will get a bit smaller when it is finished (washed to set it), so I will be able to use it as scarf and show it off to friends as something special he has made for me.
Again, sometimes an idea we have had about how to organize something does not work out - and we must rethink what can be done - how the containers or dividers can be repurposed to be used.
Yesterday we set up the loom for a new project for him - with a more basic yarn which he uses much more often. He has been happily weaving since then.
Similarly, if a project to improve our organization goes awry we must go on and continue doing what else is needed for us to clear clutter away and organize.
He had bought 2 other skeins of the yarn that he had problem with in other colors (it was a sale) and I have pulled the receipt for them and we will be returning them. After all, if they stayed around and he would not feel comfortable using them, we would just be adding to the clutter in the house in addition to being out the cost of them.
Just to add to this week’s frustration, we are suppose to go to a woodworking show (he is a man of many crafts) this weekend. The show is in the next state and is here only once a year. While he does not buy much - if anything - he had in mind to buy a few very small, inexpensive items which are not sold locally (and we don’t like to order things) and it is something different to do and see. So far in this year’s planning to go we have dealt with it being moved to a different venue - not an easy one to get to - and the fact that there seems to be no place nearby for a quick, cheap lunch - found a place 15 minutes away, we hope - and now - the rain and wind storm that is coming may also have - snow. Snow would be a deal breaker and he would have to miss the show - or what is known around here as the typical end to a planned trip.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Frustrating things happen. Things go wrong. All we can do is look at what went wrong and what we can do to deal with what happened. It is life and it just must be dealt with. Sometimes the alternatives are better than the original idea - based on the length of the finished scarf, if he had made the entire scarf he planned, it would have been much longer than I wanted - sometimes they are not.
The first sign that this project was not going to be as simple to do as past weaving projects was when we set up loom to do the weaving. To do this we have to run long pieces of yarn which are attached to the loom on each of the two ends of the pieces of yarn and stretched out tight between them. When we did this we saw something we have never seen before. The yarns pieces, parallel to each other, were pushing away from each other - static electricity. Remember, he has used this yarn before. We ignored this and went ahead. There are various other steps to setting up the yarn to be woven through and they were hard to do as the pieces of yarn kept pushing away from each other.
Well, this is a bit like the frustrating things which happen when we try to organize and declutter. Dividers we know will fit in a space do not. We start doing one part of a project and find ourselves led into another project. But, we carry on trying to get the end of the project.My part in the weaving is done after the loom is set up and I left husband to work.
The easy part of the weaving follows - the actual weaving. Yarn wrapped around a long piece of wood - the shuttle - is pushed through the yarn pieces that have been tied onto the loom. Then the yarn that has been taken through is pushed against what has already been woven in a process called “beating”. Then the yarn pieces on the loom are switched so what was up is now down and vice versa and the process is repeated. On the kind of loom my husband has - with a solid bar that the yarns on the loom have been tied through to lift them up and down - the same bar is used to beat the yarn after each pass - the yarn passing through alternate holes and slots in the bar.
Husband, upset, comes upstairs. He is having a problem. Apparently the yarn that he was using is yarn wrapped around a core thread - we did not know this. At one spot on one piece of tied on yarn the wrapping had unwrapped and was being pushed backwards as he used the bar as a beater - a bunch of fluff sitting on the wrong side of the bar. We managed to get the fluff through to the right side and he glued it in place not knowing what else to do and left it to dry.
Again, similar to doing organizing - if we hit a snag (which is what this was) we try to fix it and move on.
The glue was not enough to hold the wrapped yarn in place, so we repeated getting it through to the right side and then husband kept weaving, but used a large comb as a beater - needing to repeat this several times across the loom for each cross thread being woven.
Along the way a second spot on the same yarn had the same problem. We again pulled it through and glued it into place and husband kept working with the comb.
Well sure, we have all had the same problem repeat - perhaps magazines which are sorted for storage and then additional magazines are found and they all have to be sorted again.
Finally all of the problem yarn was woven into the piece. Husband looked and the rest of the yarn he could see looked fine and he relaxed and went back to his regular manner of weaving. Happy that he was making something for me and it would be greatly appreciated.
Suddenly he is back upstairs. The same problem on the same yarn piece has appeared again in a new spot! At this point he could not deal with it and he decided that the piece had to be finished, even if it was not long enough to be a scarf.
Frustration - we all know this feeling when organizing - what we think will work does not. The time we think something will take is underestimated. Mostly we go on, but sometimes something is so impossible that we have to stop and figure out an alternative.
I know the work he had put into the piece and how disappointed he was that something he was making special for me did not work out. I figured I would take the short piece when it is finished, and use it a table runner or mat (depending on how long it is). It turned out to be long enough for me to use as a scarf - although it will get a bit smaller when it is finished (washed to set it), so I will be able to use it as scarf and show it off to friends as something special he has made for me.
Again, sometimes an idea we have had about how to organize something does not work out - and we must rethink what can be done - how the containers or dividers can be repurposed to be used.
Yesterday we set up the loom for a new project for him - with a more basic yarn which he uses much more often. He has been happily weaving since then.
Similarly, if a project to improve our organization goes awry we must go on and continue doing what else is needed for us to clear clutter away and organize.
He had bought 2 other skeins of the yarn that he had problem with in other colors (it was a sale) and I have pulled the receipt for them and we will be returning them. After all, if they stayed around and he would not feel comfortable using them, we would just be adding to the clutter in the house in addition to being out the cost of them.
Just to add to this week’s frustration, we are suppose to go to a woodworking show (he is a man of many crafts) this weekend. The show is in the next state and is here only once a year. While he does not buy much - if anything - he had in mind to buy a few very small, inexpensive items which are not sold locally (and we don’t like to order things) and it is something different to do and see. So far in this year’s planning to go we have dealt with it being moved to a different venue - not an easy one to get to - and the fact that there seems to be no place nearby for a quick, cheap lunch - found a place 15 minutes away, we hope - and now - the rain and wind storm that is coming may also have - snow. Snow would be a deal breaker and he would have to miss the show - or what is known around here as the typical end to a planned trip.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Frustrating things happen. Things go wrong. All we can do is look at what went wrong and what we can do to deal with what happened. It is life and it just must be dealt with. Sometimes the alternatives are better than the original idea - based on the length of the finished scarf, if he had made the entire scarf he planned, it would have been much longer than I wanted - sometimes they are not.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
DOES TIME EXPAND TO FIT THE WORK TO BE DONE - OR IS IT THE OTHER WAY AROUND?
Well my client was not there when I telephoned her last week. I will be going to her on Thursday. Due to not going to her and a few other bills that popped up I started to go into a panic about paying our bills on time. We pay every bill, every month in full - no payouts, with two much discussed before we did them, exceptions, in the almost 40 years we have been married and we each did so before. This was a timing error - bills were due out and the money was coming in too late to pay them. So we had to raid my tiny IRA for $1000 to carry us through. We will need to make a regular scheduled withdrawal from husband’s IRA next month to pay our quarterly real estate taxes and our semi-annual car insurance payment in February.
I packed up the rest of the ornaments from the main and studio trees over the weekend. Monday night I took the lights off the tree - except the top section which the lights stay in place on. My right elbow started hurting last week (maybe even the week before at this point) especially when lifting my arm or lifting something heavy with my arm and it has been hard to do all of this. Our main tree is artificial (well, all of them are) and had to be disassembled and the sections are too heavy for me to lift with this arm, so last night husband took it apart and stacked the pieces in the dining room where I told him to put them. This way he can warp his loom and start working on it again and the pieces of tree can “drift” downstairs as I can deal with them - he would get ill bending over to put them into the tree box. The studio tree is not in the way and will also find its way downstairs and after the these trees are down I will be able to take apart the one in the dining room- currently blocked by the pieces from the main tree. Since we don’t really get Christmas gifts there is nothing of same to put away - just one empty box that I will ask husband about tossing. I did move the “Christmas boxes” we use for storage out of the way - these are Christmas decorated gift or storage boxes that I store Christmas decorations in during the year and then put them - empty - under the tree so it looks pretty and like there are gifts under the tree. So today we warped his loom - without the tree there is enough room to do so. But he is still surrounded by Santas, angels, Christmas and Chanukah bears.
I finally had a chance to write a cover letter and get out the renewal reminders for our reenactment unit - I serve as the membership chair in addition to being the treasurer as it is easier than passing the info back and forth to someone else about renewals. I had been delayed due to an error on our national group’s website. Something interesting - when I went on their website with my computer and clicked on this year’s membership form I got instead a form for people to form and sign up a new unit. When I contacted the person in charge she said that when she clicked on it she got the membership form. Hmmm? Turns out if one went on the site with a computer one got the unit form, but if one went on the site with a tablet or phone one got the correct the form. It has been corrected thank to my asking about it - it also delayed sending out the renewals a week waiting for this. We put together the mailing t - folded cover letter and forms, put in envelopes, put on stamps and address and return address labels. Out in the mail today. The renewal reminders and forms went out in today’s mail.
I have out a stack of books to write a talk that I am scheduled to give at my embroidery chapter on our meeting next month - 2 weeks from today - on the history of samplers. I keep trying to get started writing it. I know the basics of what I plan to say and the order, but I have to get it all together and have an outline to follow - I would hate to suddenly forget a word in the middle of the talk and I don’t want to start to wander off point! Husband will print out photos for me that he has taken at exhibitions we have gone to - plus I may pull some off the Internet or out of the books I have. Somehow I know it will be done as I want to do it. I don’t feel that I can teach stitches or techniques at meetings as others have done, but I am real good at talking. (Can you tell that from my posts?) I sent out an email today to the chapter board asking if anyone had anything for me to include in the newsletter - which will go out next Wednesday (meeting is the week after).
I put my older software DVDs/CDs that I still need to keep in 2 new boxes as the old ones did not hold much and kept falling apart. The old ones will be donated next month - along with a bag of unworn pantyhose - I wore one and it was awful, so I tossed that one and the rest of the huge bag (from an outlet) will be donated. I have a glass bowl that did not make it in December when I went to Goodwill that will join them. Looking around for what else can be donated.
And now tomorrow I will spend driving to Queens, taking the subway to Manhattan, working for about 3 hours, and then take the subway back to Queens and drive home. I will spend between 4 and 5 hours in transit for the 3 hour visit. Hopefully our mechanic found the problem last month and the drive home will be comfortable. I have already put burgers in the refrigerator to defrost for dinner tomorrow night when I get home.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
We can get more done when we have to than we do when we don’t have to.
It seems odd to me that I normally have trouble getting through what I need to in a week, but then those weeks come when I have to do a LOT more - Christmas decorating or decoration storage, writing a talk to give at a meeting, catching up on laundry when I fall behind, tax season, and other assorted extra or emergency jobs. Somehow it all always seems to get done.
I packed up the rest of the ornaments from the main and studio trees over the weekend. Monday night I took the lights off the tree - except the top section which the lights stay in place on. My right elbow started hurting last week (maybe even the week before at this point) especially when lifting my arm or lifting something heavy with my arm and it has been hard to do all of this. Our main tree is artificial (well, all of them are) and had to be disassembled and the sections are too heavy for me to lift with this arm, so last night husband took it apart and stacked the pieces in the dining room where I told him to put them. This way he can warp his loom and start working on it again and the pieces of tree can “drift” downstairs as I can deal with them - he would get ill bending over to put them into the tree box. The studio tree is not in the way and will also find its way downstairs and after the these trees are down I will be able to take apart the one in the dining room- currently blocked by the pieces from the main tree. Since we don’t really get Christmas gifts there is nothing of same to put away - just one empty box that I will ask husband about tossing. I did move the “Christmas boxes” we use for storage out of the way - these are Christmas decorated gift or storage boxes that I store Christmas decorations in during the year and then put them - empty - under the tree so it looks pretty and like there are gifts under the tree. So today we warped his loom - without the tree there is enough room to do so. But he is still surrounded by Santas, angels, Christmas and Chanukah bears.
I finally had a chance to write a cover letter and get out the renewal reminders for our reenactment unit - I serve as the membership chair in addition to being the treasurer as it is easier than passing the info back and forth to someone else about renewals. I had been delayed due to an error on our national group’s website. Something interesting - when I went on their website with my computer and clicked on this year’s membership form I got instead a form for people to form and sign up a new unit. When I contacted the person in charge she said that when she clicked on it she got the membership form. Hmmm? Turns out if one went on the site with a computer one got the unit form, but if one went on the site with a tablet or phone one got the correct the form. It has been corrected thank to my asking about it - it also delayed sending out the renewals a week waiting for this. We put together the mailing t - folded cover letter and forms, put in envelopes, put on stamps and address and return address labels. Out in the mail today. The renewal reminders and forms went out in today’s mail.
I have out a stack of books to write a talk that I am scheduled to give at my embroidery chapter on our meeting next month - 2 weeks from today - on the history of samplers. I keep trying to get started writing it. I know the basics of what I plan to say and the order, but I have to get it all together and have an outline to follow - I would hate to suddenly forget a word in the middle of the talk and I don’t want to start to wander off point! Husband will print out photos for me that he has taken at exhibitions we have gone to - plus I may pull some off the Internet or out of the books I have. Somehow I know it will be done as I want to do it. I don’t feel that I can teach stitches or techniques at meetings as others have done, but I am real good at talking. (Can you tell that from my posts?) I sent out an email today to the chapter board asking if anyone had anything for me to include in the newsletter - which will go out next Wednesday (meeting is the week after).
I put my older software DVDs/CDs that I still need to keep in 2 new boxes as the old ones did not hold much and kept falling apart. The old ones will be donated next month - along with a bag of unworn pantyhose - I wore one and it was awful, so I tossed that one and the rest of the huge bag (from an outlet) will be donated. I have a glass bowl that did not make it in December when I went to Goodwill that will join them. Looking around for what else can be donated.
And now tomorrow I will spend driving to Queens, taking the subway to Manhattan, working for about 3 hours, and then take the subway back to Queens and drive home. I will spend between 4 and 5 hours in transit for the 3 hour visit. Hopefully our mechanic found the problem last month and the drive home will be comfortable. I have already put burgers in the refrigerator to defrost for dinner tomorrow night when I get home.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
We can get more done when we have to than we do when we don’t have to.
It seems odd to me that I normally have trouble getting through what I need to in a week, but then those weeks come when I have to do a LOT more - Christmas decorating or decoration storage, writing a talk to give at a meeting, catching up on laundry when I fall behind, tax season, and other assorted extra or emergency jobs. Somehow it all always seems to get done.
Thursday, October 26, 2017
A QUICK TRIP AND I CAUGHT UP ON MY PILE OF STUFF TO DO
Well, I had a bit of a chance to catch up this past week. The pile on top of my desk which has to be done before I get to the folder of things to do, is down to scanning in articles from various issues of a magazine related to reenacting that I convinced my husband that we don’t need to keep in full. Much of these magazines are ads for items related to “the hobby”. There seems to be 3-5 articles of varying length that he wants to keep. He has gone through the magazines and circled in the table of contents those articles he wants. I am scanning in the articles here and there as I get a chance - luckily they are not in color so they scan a lot faster.
We did go away for the day last Saturday to the state sheep and wool festival. We have never been there before. It went as our trips go. The ride there was suppose to be 2 hours. Husband printed the directions from Googlemaps. He also turned on the GPS app in his cell phone. They did not always agree. The road both sent us on for most of the trip is a picturesque limited access road that curves around and through mountains. It was so curvy that husband was getting motion sickness, even though he was driving. We were pretty sure we could not go home the same way as he could not deal with the curves again - especially in the dark with no street lights. When we were towards the end of the trip there the two sets of directions varied from each other. The Googlemaps version had us get off the main road sooner than the GPS. We decided to go with the GPS and stayed on the road. All of a sudden the GPS froze. (We eventually figured out that there was no cell service there!) Now we had a problem. As we kept driving and tried to remember where the GPS said to get off the road, I saw a sign to the fairgrounds we had to go to and we exited the road. 10 miles to the fairgrounds and no further signs appeared. I had out the Googlemaps directions and kept looking for roads that were listed on it. We were approaching one and I had to calculate quickly - turn right or left? Luckily I guessed correctly and we turned right and not much further on came to the road the fairgrounds were on. Fair was okay - not a worth a trip back in the future. (Very limited weaving related items - other than wool, of course, which we could not afford - and weaving items were why husband wanted to go.) Talk about disorganized - I noticed that people had a small booklet with map and vendors in it. I walked back to the gate and asked for one - I was told that they hard run out “3 hours ago”. This means that 3 hours into the first of two days of the event (which ran 9 hours the first day) they were out of their handouts - not good planning to me. After we drove to a, yes, another Golden Corral about an hour from the fairgrounds and vaguely on the way home. Dinner was another bust and I will not bother you with the details unless someone writes and asks. Now we had to get home. I looked at the (paper) map and found that an Interstate road near the restaurant headed in the general direction of home, that connected to another major road and that just left figuring out how to get to one of 3 bridges after those two roads to get us home. I have a mapping/GPS program in my other laptop (the good one) which I had brought with me (I generally take it on trips for something just like this) and I am able to find a place by looking at and moving the map and then adding a start, end, or via point there. I did that with several points so that the route would stay where I wanted it and it had no problem getting us home. It was much a quicker trip home than the one getting to the area and straight road - no curve after curve.
Just for fun - and my luck, I did get a mailing from Equifax that I am, of course, included in their latest security breach. I tried to find out how to do all the things I need to do with them as a result, by mail as I will not put my information online and don’t trust doing it by phone. I sort of got an answer from their recorded info phone line and have sent in to them about this. Now I will also send in a request for husband as our credit info is mostly joint. Then I will be calling Trans Union and Experian to do the same with them. And I have such a unique name that I have been sure that I am the only one with it in the world - now there may be many of me if my identity is being used by others. What will happen to my 843-850 (it varies some months) credit rating now?
I wrote the newsletter for my embroidery chapter in only one afternoon - first time since we changed to this new format I was able to do so, it was common before. One member’s email is suddenly bouncing back and she did not return my phone message, so I mailed her a printed copy and asked for her new email.
I am packed, my laptop is charging, and I am going to a client tomorrow. I have written checks for bills to go out in the mail on Friday. I have calculated how much I need to transfer from savings to checking to pay the bills and have cash for a trip next week (we hope). The needed papers are in my “Friday errands” envelope. I have a deposit slip with these papers as I am due to get a check from my client tomorrow and will deposit it Friday also.
Laundry is in washer. First load about to go to the dryer when my cell phone alarm rings that it is time to go down again.
I did so well that rather than take a shower tonight in a rush at the last minute and go to bed with wet hair, I was able to take a leisurely shower before dinner. Ahhhh.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Work at what is piled up little by little, try to keep more from being added and there will be less left in your “pile” of todos.
I know my stack of todos will be piled up again soon - especially if we take a short trip next week - but sooner or later it is gone again.
Don’t eat all the Halloween candy - and check what your children eat before they do. Have a safe Halloween.
We did go away for the day last Saturday to the state sheep and wool festival. We have never been there before. It went as our trips go. The ride there was suppose to be 2 hours. Husband printed the directions from Googlemaps. He also turned on the GPS app in his cell phone. They did not always agree. The road both sent us on for most of the trip is a picturesque limited access road that curves around and through mountains. It was so curvy that husband was getting motion sickness, even though he was driving. We were pretty sure we could not go home the same way as he could not deal with the curves again - especially in the dark with no street lights. When we were towards the end of the trip there the two sets of directions varied from each other. The Googlemaps version had us get off the main road sooner than the GPS. We decided to go with the GPS and stayed on the road. All of a sudden the GPS froze. (We eventually figured out that there was no cell service there!) Now we had a problem. As we kept driving and tried to remember where the GPS said to get off the road, I saw a sign to the fairgrounds we had to go to and we exited the road. 10 miles to the fairgrounds and no further signs appeared. I had out the Googlemaps directions and kept looking for roads that were listed on it. We were approaching one and I had to calculate quickly - turn right or left? Luckily I guessed correctly and we turned right and not much further on came to the road the fairgrounds were on. Fair was okay - not a worth a trip back in the future. (Very limited weaving related items - other than wool, of course, which we could not afford - and weaving items were why husband wanted to go.) Talk about disorganized - I noticed that people had a small booklet with map and vendors in it. I walked back to the gate and asked for one - I was told that they hard run out “3 hours ago”. This means that 3 hours into the first of two days of the event (which ran 9 hours the first day) they were out of their handouts - not good planning to me. After we drove to a, yes, another Golden Corral about an hour from the fairgrounds and vaguely on the way home. Dinner was another bust and I will not bother you with the details unless someone writes and asks. Now we had to get home. I looked at the (paper) map and found that an Interstate road near the restaurant headed in the general direction of home, that connected to another major road and that just left figuring out how to get to one of 3 bridges after those two roads to get us home. I have a mapping/GPS program in my other laptop (the good one) which I had brought with me (I generally take it on trips for something just like this) and I am able to find a place by looking at and moving the map and then adding a start, end, or via point there. I did that with several points so that the route would stay where I wanted it and it had no problem getting us home. It was much a quicker trip home than the one getting to the area and straight road - no curve after curve.
Just for fun - and my luck, I did get a mailing from Equifax that I am, of course, included in their latest security breach. I tried to find out how to do all the things I need to do with them as a result, by mail as I will not put my information online and don’t trust doing it by phone. I sort of got an answer from their recorded info phone line and have sent in to them about this. Now I will also send in a request for husband as our credit info is mostly joint. Then I will be calling Trans Union and Experian to do the same with them. And I have such a unique name that I have been sure that I am the only one with it in the world - now there may be many of me if my identity is being used by others. What will happen to my 843-850 (it varies some months) credit rating now?
I wrote the newsletter for my embroidery chapter in only one afternoon - first time since we changed to this new format I was able to do so, it was common before. One member’s email is suddenly bouncing back and she did not return my phone message, so I mailed her a printed copy and asked for her new email.
I am packed, my laptop is charging, and I am going to a client tomorrow. I have written checks for bills to go out in the mail on Friday. I have calculated how much I need to transfer from savings to checking to pay the bills and have cash for a trip next week (we hope). The needed papers are in my “Friday errands” envelope. I have a deposit slip with these papers as I am due to get a check from my client tomorrow and will deposit it Friday also.
Laundry is in washer. First load about to go to the dryer when my cell phone alarm rings that it is time to go down again.
I did so well that rather than take a shower tonight in a rush at the last minute and go to bed with wet hair, I was able to take a leisurely shower before dinner. Ahhhh.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Work at what is piled up little by little, try to keep more from being added and there will be less left in your “pile” of todos.
I know my stack of todos will be piled up again soon - especially if we take a short trip next week - but sooner or later it is gone again.
Don’t eat all the Halloween candy - and check what your children eat before they do. Have a safe Halloween.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
NO TIME TO WRITE TODAY - POOR ORGANIZATION
Again I am sorry to have to start my post with my hope that any of you in the areas hit by Hurricane Harvey are faring well and I must also add my hope that any of you in the path of Hurricane Irma stay safe.
We did have a nice trip the end of last week and returned safely home late Friday night (okay, really 1 am on very early Saturday morning). Since the trip was rather short - only 2 nights - and we did not go crazy shopping while away (the Walmarts there are so much larger and better than the ones here) we had the RV unpacked by 1:30 am.
At that point I ran upstairs to my computer. While away I had received an email from the president of my embroidery chapter that when I emailed out the (new and revised format) newsletter, I had left her message out and there was a large blank area on the front page. When I read her email I wondered if I only imagined that I had added her message - but then remembered it as a bit long for the space and I had to make the column area longer and also adjust the adjacent column listing our meetings for this year to be a bit longer to match. I apparently sent out a the copy I printed out to check the newsletter before I received her column to make sure that it and the other 7 attachments I had to send with it went out (to me) without a problem. Much embarrassed I quickly sent out the correct edition to the members and others who get it. In my apology I pointed out that either the readers were so polite not to mention the large empty space on the front page to me - or no one bothered to read it!
I actually managed to catch up to the point that my desk was clear! Not that there was not other paperwork to deal with - we are trying to get a discount on our general and school real estate taxes that is allowed for those who own their home and are 65 (as husband now is). There are 4 forms to fill in that I can find, plus we have to give them either our deed, birth certificates and something else - or copies thereof, I cannot tell which from the instructions. We have until the end of December to file these papers - but I know me, I better get them done now. I filled in one form today and have already requested a “receipt” for the medical insurance we paid in 2016 (paid bills not sufficient). I found out that the county holds events to help people with this paperwork and have marked the dates of the most local ones on my calendar (computer and cell phone - entered separately) so we can go to one. I found I was missing our deed - well, I know it must be somewhere, since it is not with any of the house papers in the files or lock book in the house, it must be in our bank lock box - which of course I went to today to switch those offsite backup drives I have mentioned before. I guess we will be going back in the next few days again to check for and hopefully find the deed.
I had my embroidery chapter meeting today and we did a good bit of stitching - then the visit to the bank (above), as well as a deposit to our reenactment unit’s bank account (at a different bank), returned soda bottles (for 3 months since I have not been out on my own since the beginning of June) for recycling, and bought something to start making a gift for my husband (I will not say what in case he reads the post).
I decided to call my mom tonight after dinner - and we do go on - well she does and as you might imagine from my posts, I go on a bit also. By the time I was off the phone with her it was well past the time we normally finish talking when we do at night and past when I should have started evening chores. And I had extra chores tonight.
During the past week husband and I bought a frame and framed an embroidery piece I finished and am entering at the county fair. (Technically it is a tricounty, county fair as it is the official fair for 3 counties. It is held in the style of a late 19th century fair at the same restoration village I have mentioned before.) I know where that piece is - the dining room table. I also am entering the Christmas ornament I made of husband weaving last Christmas and, of course, had not thought of entering it when I packed the Christmas stuff away and I had to find it in the basement. Luckily the “Box 1 ornaments” (the nicest ones which go on the tree first) was the 3rd box down and I found it quickly.
The same cannot be said for the ornament husband made - a handwoven Christmas tree - and plans to enter. Last time I saw it, it was hanging from a lamp in the living room, err, “the loom room”. It is not there. So I ended up having to pull all of the Christmas boxes out and look in them - it is the sort of thing that would be on the top of a box to protect it. I did not find it and do not look forward to mentioning this to husband. I am sure it will be “my fault” that it is missing. Luckily in the time between I wrote this and posted it - husband came down and he had his ornament safely tucked away.
And I also had to do laundry tonight. Last week’s laundry was done a night early so there are an extra day’s clothes and I have towels and bed linens from home and the RV. I was unsure if I should strip the bed or leave it for our final expected trip at the October or clean the sheets and go through the mess of making up the bed again - my decision was made as there were tiny bits of dirt in the bed from it sitting made up - the day after we came home I went in and stripped the bed and took it apart (which has to be done to strip it and also to remake it up).
So, while it probably will not be noticeable to any of you as my posts go out in the middle of the night anyway, this post is going out - more quickly written than normal - about 2 hours late.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Sometimes it takes a bit longer to get to do things than normal - but as long as they get done in the end - that is all that matters. And talking to one’s mom - mine is 89 - is always more important than getting work done.
We did have a nice trip the end of last week and returned safely home late Friday night (okay, really 1 am on very early Saturday morning). Since the trip was rather short - only 2 nights - and we did not go crazy shopping while away (the Walmarts there are so much larger and better than the ones here) we had the RV unpacked by 1:30 am.
At that point I ran upstairs to my computer. While away I had received an email from the president of my embroidery chapter that when I emailed out the (new and revised format) newsletter, I had left her message out and there was a large blank area on the front page. When I read her email I wondered if I only imagined that I had added her message - but then remembered it as a bit long for the space and I had to make the column area longer and also adjust the adjacent column listing our meetings for this year to be a bit longer to match. I apparently sent out a the copy I printed out to check the newsletter before I received her column to make sure that it and the other 7 attachments I had to send with it went out (to me) without a problem. Much embarrassed I quickly sent out the correct edition to the members and others who get it. In my apology I pointed out that either the readers were so polite not to mention the large empty space on the front page to me - or no one bothered to read it!
I actually managed to catch up to the point that my desk was clear! Not that there was not other paperwork to deal with - we are trying to get a discount on our general and school real estate taxes that is allowed for those who own their home and are 65 (as husband now is). There are 4 forms to fill in that I can find, plus we have to give them either our deed, birth certificates and something else - or copies thereof, I cannot tell which from the instructions. We have until the end of December to file these papers - but I know me, I better get them done now. I filled in one form today and have already requested a “receipt” for the medical insurance we paid in 2016 (paid bills not sufficient). I found out that the county holds events to help people with this paperwork and have marked the dates of the most local ones on my calendar (computer and cell phone - entered separately) so we can go to one. I found I was missing our deed - well, I know it must be somewhere, since it is not with any of the house papers in the files or lock book in the house, it must be in our bank lock box - which of course I went to today to switch those offsite backup drives I have mentioned before. I guess we will be going back in the next few days again to check for and hopefully find the deed.
I had my embroidery chapter meeting today and we did a good bit of stitching - then the visit to the bank (above), as well as a deposit to our reenactment unit’s bank account (at a different bank), returned soda bottles (for 3 months since I have not been out on my own since the beginning of June) for recycling, and bought something to start making a gift for my husband (I will not say what in case he reads the post).
I decided to call my mom tonight after dinner - and we do go on - well she does and as you might imagine from my posts, I go on a bit also. By the time I was off the phone with her it was well past the time we normally finish talking when we do at night and past when I should have started evening chores. And I had extra chores tonight.
During the past week husband and I bought a frame and framed an embroidery piece I finished and am entering at the county fair. (Technically it is a tricounty, county fair as it is the official fair for 3 counties. It is held in the style of a late 19th century fair at the same restoration village I have mentioned before.) I know where that piece is - the dining room table. I also am entering the Christmas ornament I made of husband weaving last Christmas and, of course, had not thought of entering it when I packed the Christmas stuff away and I had to find it in the basement. Luckily the “Box 1 ornaments” (the nicest ones which go on the tree first) was the 3rd box down and I found it quickly.
The same cannot be said for the ornament husband made - a handwoven Christmas tree - and plans to enter. Last time I saw it, it was hanging from a lamp in the living room, err, “the loom room”. It is not there. So I ended up having to pull all of the Christmas boxes out and look in them - it is the sort of thing that would be on the top of a box to protect it. I did not find it and do not look forward to mentioning this to husband. I am sure it will be “my fault” that it is missing. Luckily in the time between I wrote this and posted it - husband came down and he had his ornament safely tucked away.
And I also had to do laundry tonight. Last week’s laundry was done a night early so there are an extra day’s clothes and I have towels and bed linens from home and the RV. I was unsure if I should strip the bed or leave it for our final expected trip at the October or clean the sheets and go through the mess of making up the bed again - my decision was made as there were tiny bits of dirt in the bed from it sitting made up - the day after we came home I went in and stripped the bed and took it apart (which has to be done to strip it and also to remake it up).
So, while it probably will not be noticeable to any of you as my posts go out in the middle of the night anyway, this post is going out - more quickly written than normal - about 2 hours late.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
Sometimes it takes a bit longer to get to do things than normal - but as long as they get done in the end - that is all that matters. And talking to one’s mom - mine is 89 - is always more important than getting work done.
Thursday, February 23, 2017
CATCHING UP A BIT AT LAST
Well at last I feel as if I am catching up a bit. While we went last Saturday to a woodworking show in New Jersey, I managed to have enough time at my computer to help me catch up several things - I even managed to prepare a partnership tax return for a client and it is going out in the mail tomorrow. We finally picked up my replacement eyeglasses and I am getting used to darker frames than I had before - I see them when I look through the glasses - I swear the frames were lighter in color when I picked them out in the store.
I finally had a chance to scan into the computer the papers I copied while we were replacing the scanner and getting it going. I hate doing things twice, but had to copy and then scan the copies as there was no other choice. At least the scanning is finally done.
I change the bedding weekly, but I change the bedding’s “underwear” once a month. The under covers for the pillows get tossed in
the laundry with the regular bedding for the week, but the mattress pad is too large to do so and is a load of laundry on its own. I finally managed to get it washed and dried this past week - it has been sitting in the sorter in the basement. I also did a load of jeans last week I save them up as I don’t have enough in a week to justify another load of laundry. I also had a number of sweatshirts to be washed, so I did two loads of clothes last week. This week’s laundry is humming along right now - the clothing load is washing, timer on my cell phone set to remind me to do down with the downstairs towels so I can do a load of towels next.
I packed up the “soft” Christmas decorations. This is an assortment of stuffed teddy bears, reindeer, a doll, stockings, hangings, and other similar items in Christmas theme which have been out - two of the bears are actually Chanukah ones. They all go in a plastic box together in the basement. I have also started taking the packed boxes of Christmas tree ornaments down to the basement - when I go down to switch laundry loads, another of the four boxes will go down. When I am done with those the box of living room decorations and the box of kitchen, dining room, front hall decorations will follow. I take them down in order as this way the tree ornaments are on the bottom of the stack of boxes as they will come out last next year. I still have my teddy bear Christmas village to pack - when these boxes are all down - it will be time to take it down (okay it is past time, but it is our favorite decoration so it comes out first and goes back last).
The woodworking show was a nice change for something to do for the day. Mostly the same vendors are there year to year, although a lot of the regular vendors have dropped out over the years or combined, and the new vendors tend to not be actually wood work related (leaf screens - not really related, investment company - definitely not related). It is an extremely LOUD room as vendors have not only their power tools going, but vacuums and they all are on microphones. In the early days of husband’s woodworking he would have had a list of things to look for and buy, but he has most of the equipment he needs, he does less woodworking (although he still owes me the replacement bread drawer for the kitchen) and we have no money to spend on it. There is no reason to add to the clutter in the workshop with unneeded additional tools. Okay, there was something which caught his eye. Two vendors (new ones) had similar items - it lets one hookup a tool to one’s computer and it will carve designs into wood automatically on its own. But they are thousands of dollars and there is no place to put them.
After the show we went to a chain craft store as it is on the way to where we go for dinner while in New Jersey as we don’t have a store from this chain near where we live. Did not buy anything, but nice to look - they are suppose to be opening near us sometime this year or next, I am sure that anything nice will not make it here, but it is nice to plan. Husband particularly likes the yarn at the store - much bigger and nicer variety than we have here. This is another place where we could buy a lot of items - but we don’t as we don’t have room for it all.
We warped (set up) the loom again for husband to work - this time he is making a spring colored table runner. We had problems getting it set up - not sure why, we should know what we are doing by now, and he had to take part of it out after he started weaving as is went on an angle. He was annoyed as he considered this a simple project to do and relax while he did it. During the week we finished washing the last few items he wove. The items have to be washed to change the weaving from yarns to fabric. They are hand washed and then laid out flat to dry on a rack in our studio so there are days between the washings to allow them time to dry.
We did have a computer problem yesterday. We suddenly lost access to everything on our home network - we could still print and scan, but if we tried to access the server drive - or each other’s computers - the entire setup to do so was gone! Husband figured out it was somehow related to the installation of the new printer unit and finally managed to get it up and working again.
This is school vacation week around here. It was started in the late 1970's for the school districts to save money on heating costs. When husband worked at an non-profit with a school year schedule and we still stayed in hotels, we would often go away for part of this week as it was easy and cheap to get hotel reservations in nearby states (okay, Pennsylvania) as elsewhere there is school after Monday’s holiday. We are thinking of trying our one day trip to same again this week - third attempt’s the charm?
We have had mostly wonderful weather the past week - when we went to the woodworking show we actually left our jackets in the car and just wore sweatshirts as it was in the low 60Fs. The weather is suppose to continue. I hope that none of you or yours have been caught in the tornados in Texas or the raining and flooding in California this past week.
Well, that was a bit of a ramble this week.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Don’t forget to look at all the possible reasons for a problem.
I have posted about replacing the hard drive on my computer late last year. I am still finding software which was not reinstalled - I start to do something and whoops! I also had a problem with a program we reinstalled.
I do not commonly use Word for my word processing. I use another less popular program. I also use an older version of it and do not want to switch to a newer version both due to cost and I am concerned that if I use the updated version it will not have same controls and functions as the verison I am using now. There was an update (actually a few updates) to the program which also have to be reinstalled. The program is, of course, no longer supported by the manufacturer.
One of the problems I have been having - even with an update installed - is that I cannot import the address books - and here I was so careful to back them up at least quarterly up until the hard drive was replaced. Husband came up with the idea of installing the program on the XP virtual drive of my computer (it is on the Windows 7) as XP existed when the program was written and & did not. The program did work fine on & before the change of hard drive.
It worked - the installation program now is no longer partially greyed out. So I went to import the address book data files to the XP installed version. Now being how I am, I have several address books in the program - one for family and friends, one for clients, one for one of the clubs I am in, two for the other one (members and non-member contacts I need), Internal Revenue Service returns for assorted returns - some for several different states, my home state tax department, a general “other states, and lastly an “other” - this last for anything which does not by who it is fit into the other books - such as bills we pay on a regular basis, etc.
I started importing the address book data into the program - the first book comes in and we are excited that it worked - problem solved - and then I go to import a second one - it goes through the entire process, but there is nothing in the address book after it is done. I try again - same thing. I then turned on my work laptop and try to import to it - after all, I have been able to import two books to it in the past. It also would not import the next book.
Husband, always looking to make me happy with my antique software, was going crazy searching the Internet and we were trying all sorts of things. Finally he asked a question which resolved the problem (at least as far as importing to the XP installed version). “Let me see the backup data.”
Ah, we had been assuming this was a program software problem. No. When I went to show him the data, there was none in several of the last set of backups - hence the program had imported the data, it is just that there was one. Why did we not think to look for an alternate reason the information was not importing? Why did we just assume (and you know what happens when one assumes) that it was a software problem? I went to the backups before the one I was importing from and all the data except from two address books imported! The other two books had not had their data properly backed up since 2015! So I imported the data from the last backup from 2015. (I am so glad that I keep the old versions of the backups!) I will have to do a bit of updating - for example the two clubs I have books for have each gotten some new members since the backups were made - but I would have had to do so anyway as the most recent backups were before this also. I at least do not have to sit and enter over 100 addresses again.
We will also try this update on the Windows 7 installed version in case it corrects the import program for same also.
So, if something does not work and what you try to do to fix it does not work, think what else could be wrong - it could be something even more simple than you thought it was.
I finally had a chance to scan into the computer the papers I copied while we were replacing the scanner and getting it going. I hate doing things twice, but had to copy and then scan the copies as there was no other choice. At least the scanning is finally done.
I change the bedding weekly, but I change the bedding’s “underwear” once a month. The under covers for the pillows get tossed in
the laundry with the regular bedding for the week, but the mattress pad is too large to do so and is a load of laundry on its own. I finally managed to get it washed and dried this past week - it has been sitting in the sorter in the basement. I also did a load of jeans last week I save them up as I don’t have enough in a week to justify another load of laundry. I also had a number of sweatshirts to be washed, so I did two loads of clothes last week. This week’s laundry is humming along right now - the clothing load is washing, timer on my cell phone set to remind me to do down with the downstairs towels so I can do a load of towels next.
I packed up the “soft” Christmas decorations. This is an assortment of stuffed teddy bears, reindeer, a doll, stockings, hangings, and other similar items in Christmas theme which have been out - two of the bears are actually Chanukah ones. They all go in a plastic box together in the basement. I have also started taking the packed boxes of Christmas tree ornaments down to the basement - when I go down to switch laundry loads, another of the four boxes will go down. When I am done with those the box of living room decorations and the box of kitchen, dining room, front hall decorations will follow. I take them down in order as this way the tree ornaments are on the bottom of the stack of boxes as they will come out last next year. I still have my teddy bear Christmas village to pack - when these boxes are all down - it will be time to take it down (okay it is past time, but it is our favorite decoration so it comes out first and goes back last).
The woodworking show was a nice change for something to do for the day. Mostly the same vendors are there year to year, although a lot of the regular vendors have dropped out over the years or combined, and the new vendors tend to not be actually wood work related (leaf screens - not really related, investment company - definitely not related). It is an extremely LOUD room as vendors have not only their power tools going, but vacuums and they all are on microphones. In the early days of husband’s woodworking he would have had a list of things to look for and buy, but he has most of the equipment he needs, he does less woodworking (although he still owes me the replacement bread drawer for the kitchen) and we have no money to spend on it. There is no reason to add to the clutter in the workshop with unneeded additional tools. Okay, there was something which caught his eye. Two vendors (new ones) had similar items - it lets one hookup a tool to one’s computer and it will carve designs into wood automatically on its own. But they are thousands of dollars and there is no place to put them.
After the show we went to a chain craft store as it is on the way to where we go for dinner while in New Jersey as we don’t have a store from this chain near where we live. Did not buy anything, but nice to look - they are suppose to be opening near us sometime this year or next, I am sure that anything nice will not make it here, but it is nice to plan. Husband particularly likes the yarn at the store - much bigger and nicer variety than we have here. This is another place where we could buy a lot of items - but we don’t as we don’t have room for it all.
We warped (set up) the loom again for husband to work - this time he is making a spring colored table runner. We had problems getting it set up - not sure why, we should know what we are doing by now, and he had to take part of it out after he started weaving as is went on an angle. He was annoyed as he considered this a simple project to do and relax while he did it. During the week we finished washing the last few items he wove. The items have to be washed to change the weaving from yarns to fabric. They are hand washed and then laid out flat to dry on a rack in our studio so there are days between the washings to allow them time to dry.
We did have a computer problem yesterday. We suddenly lost access to everything on our home network - we could still print and scan, but if we tried to access the server drive - or each other’s computers - the entire setup to do so was gone! Husband figured out it was somehow related to the installation of the new printer unit and finally managed to get it up and working again.
This is school vacation week around here. It was started in the late 1970's for the school districts to save money on heating costs. When husband worked at an non-profit with a school year schedule and we still stayed in hotels, we would often go away for part of this week as it was easy and cheap to get hotel reservations in nearby states (okay, Pennsylvania) as elsewhere there is school after Monday’s holiday. We are thinking of trying our one day trip to same again this week - third attempt’s the charm?
We have had mostly wonderful weather the past week - when we went to the woodworking show we actually left our jackets in the car and just wore sweatshirts as it was in the low 60Fs. The weather is suppose to continue. I hope that none of you or yours have been caught in the tornados in Texas or the raining and flooding in California this past week.
Well, that was a bit of a ramble this week.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Don’t forget to look at all the possible reasons for a problem.
I have posted about replacing the hard drive on my computer late last year. I am still finding software which was not reinstalled - I start to do something and whoops! I also had a problem with a program we reinstalled.
I do not commonly use Word for my word processing. I use another less popular program. I also use an older version of it and do not want to switch to a newer version both due to cost and I am concerned that if I use the updated version it will not have same controls and functions as the verison I am using now. There was an update (actually a few updates) to the program which also have to be reinstalled. The program is, of course, no longer supported by the manufacturer.
One of the problems I have been having - even with an update installed - is that I cannot import the address books - and here I was so careful to back them up at least quarterly up until the hard drive was replaced. Husband came up with the idea of installing the program on the XP virtual drive of my computer (it is on the Windows 7) as XP existed when the program was written and & did not. The program did work fine on & before the change of hard drive.
It worked - the installation program now is no longer partially greyed out. So I went to import the address book data files to the XP installed version. Now being how I am, I have several address books in the program - one for family and friends, one for clients, one for one of the clubs I am in, two for the other one (members and non-member contacts I need), Internal Revenue Service returns for assorted returns - some for several different states, my home state tax department, a general “other states, and lastly an “other” - this last for anything which does not by who it is fit into the other books - such as bills we pay on a regular basis, etc.
I started importing the address book data into the program - the first book comes in and we are excited that it worked - problem solved - and then I go to import a second one - it goes through the entire process, but there is nothing in the address book after it is done. I try again - same thing. I then turned on my work laptop and try to import to it - after all, I have been able to import two books to it in the past. It also would not import the next book.
Husband, always looking to make me happy with my antique software, was going crazy searching the Internet and we were trying all sorts of things. Finally he asked a question which resolved the problem (at least as far as importing to the XP installed version). “Let me see the backup data.”
Ah, we had been assuming this was a program software problem. No. When I went to show him the data, there was none in several of the last set of backups - hence the program had imported the data, it is just that there was one. Why did we not think to look for an alternate reason the information was not importing? Why did we just assume (and you know what happens when one assumes) that it was a software problem? I went to the backups before the one I was importing from and all the data except from two address books imported! The other two books had not had their data properly backed up since 2015! So I imported the data from the last backup from 2015. (I am so glad that I keep the old versions of the backups!) I will have to do a bit of updating - for example the two clubs I have books for have each gotten some new members since the backups were made - but I would have had to do so anyway as the most recent backups were before this also. I at least do not have to sit and enter over 100 addresses again.
We will also try this update on the Windows 7 installed version in case it corrects the import program for same also.
So, if something does not work and what you try to do to fix it does not work, think what else could be wrong - it could be something even more simple than you thought it was.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
THANKSGIVING IS OVER - CHRISTMAS IS COMING
Well, Thanksgiving is behind us. Now we move on to the December holidays. While due to differences in religion, we celebrate both Christmas and Chanukah, 99% of the decorating is for Christmas.
Normally we would have put our outside decorations up this past week, but due to running around to find a turkey and shop for Thanksgiving dinner at the last minute, we did not get a chance to do so. We are currently having rain. We plan to put up the outside decorations on Thursday - it is not suppose to be raining then and it is suppose to go to a relatively “toasty” 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
We put strands of lights on our larger bushes and 2 small trees in front of our house. We put a wreath (artificial) each on our front and side doors. We also have swags (again artificial) which we hang from our light fixtures on either side of the front door. Last year we added a strand of red lights around our white mail box post - gives the look of, sort of, a candy cane. We used to have wreaths on our lower front windows and swags under them, but we cannot do so since we had our windows and siding replaced. The outside lights are controlled by a timer. We have one in our basement for the outlets that they are plugged into - since they are on their own circuit breaker this is a heavy duty timer, which works for the circuit. We also put battery operated candles in our front windows which go on for 6 hours a night automatically. We used to have plug in window candles, but when we replaced the windows, we found that there was a ledge of plastic on the inside of the window which meant that the candle had trouble staying on the window sill and leaned against the window blinds and would have melted them - so we replaced them with these LED candles -no heat so they do not melt the shades.
This past weekend I took out my Christmas dishes. These are not fancy china to be used for company. They are everyday dishes. I use them for dinner during the holidays. I also have Christmas glasses - they were a “spend this amount and get a gift” that I got when I bought a baby gift for a friend decades ago. I keep the dishes and glasses in their original boxes in the gas meter closet in our basement and wash them before I use them each year. I have only 3 glasses - the fourth one broke - and I keep a small 2 piece nativity set in the 4th space in the box, so the nativity goes out when I take out the glasses. I only take out 2 of the glasses and 2 of the cups to the dishes as I am the only one who uses them. Husband has certain plastic glasses he prefers and I put one out for him as it not worth insisting that he use the holiday stuff.
Husband, as I have mentioned before, got a loom last Christmas. It is a good size piece of furniture, 32 inches wide and about the same size deep. It is set up in the living room as are various related items, including a small table and large plastic boxes of yarn/finished pieces. It does not fill the room, but since it sits in the middle of the room, it takes up much of the floor space. When husband set it up last January, I told him that I expected the living room back after Thanksgiving until January so that I could decorate. I never really expected same, and I will be decorating around the loom etc. when I decorate as I got a blank stare when I asked when the loom was being stored for the season. Our dining room has additional items for his weaving, mostly items used to wash the woven items after they are made (to draw the threads together into fabric) which is done in our kitchen. At some point the items other than the loom will have to be moved somewhere - my guess is the walkways of our studio behind the kitchen. The nativity mentioned above goes into a display case in a corner of the living room - normally it is the center of the shelf. Right now it is on a corner of the shelf as I could not open the door to the cabinet due to the weaving boxes stored adjacent to the cabinet, but managed to get it open enough to put the nativity just inside the door. I will move it when I move the boxes elsewhere - really, they have to moved or no tree.
The dining room also has stuff which needs to go out to our RV. (This is all the stuff I had to move to use the dining room table last week.) The last chance we figure to use the RV is this coming weekend and we are pretty sure we will not - then all will go out there for winter storage. It is stuff that is used seasonally in the RV - mostly for cold weather travel - and has to be stored in the house when not being used in the RV.
Why does the dining room have to be cleared out to decorate the living room? Because there is a good sized wooden box piece of furniture in the living room where the tree goes. Husband made this some years ago. It looks like what was called a “hope chest” for a young woman to store the items she made for when she got married. This one, however, holds DVDs. Instead of the top lifting the front drops down and drawers come out to hold the DVDs. It is on wheels (we knew we had to move it back and forth to the dining room once a year) and is rolled to the far wall of the dining room (where the table normally is and all the stuff to deal with is now) and stays there for the season with the table in the center of the room where normal people put it all the time.
I admit to still having Thanksgiving decorations out. I have a small light up “house in a tree trunk” which I painted some years ago and also painted a ceramic bear family and their guests coming to the house. I have since added some small purchased bears. Every year I set it up with the bear family at the house and the other bears coming there. This year after the holiday I had the idea to turn the visitors around and they are now “on their way home”. There are a few other small items to be put away also - it all fits in one box. I plan on it all being stored by the end of the week - it only took 15 minutes to put out.
I have large plastic boxes of stuff to put out for Christmas in the basement. We used to keep it in the garage, but we are getting older - hard to climb up and take out and store the boxes - and the boxes are getting heavier, so I found a spot in the basement to store them. There are decorations for the living room, front hall, dining room and kitchen as well as the ornaments for the trees and my teddy bear Christmas village figurines, buildings, etc.
More on all that in future posts - or I would have nothing to post. We bought a new snow blower Monday. We cannot find anyone who does “residential snow removal” and have to be able to do it on our own. Our old snow blower is probably around 30 years old and is large and heavy. We tried starting it over the weekend and it did not start, although it did last summer when we tried it. We had planned on buying this one anyway as it is hard to get to the other one in back of the house and this one, being smaller, we figure we can store it in a small plastic shed in front of our side door. We still have to get the shed and assemble and try out (at least that it starts and moves) the new blower. Husband is researching on what may be wrong with the old one as he wants it as a backup. They were surprised at the (large home big box) store at which we bought the snow blower that we were buying one. I guess everyone else waits until it snows - when it is too late.
I wanted to talk about holiday shopping. Did you go running out on Black Friday or even Thanksgiving? Visit your local stores for Small Business Saturday (started by that so warm hearted American Express credit card company)? Sit all day at work on Monday for Cyber Monday?
We did none of these things. With the exception this year of a TV which husband thought was a good deal (not that we bought/are buying one) which is still on sale at that large box store everyone hates, we have never seen anything worth running for the deal. In addition we don’t buy large amounts of gifts - or stuff for ourselves - for the holidays or otherwise. Are we grinches? No. Husband’s 2 nieces (under 20 years old) always get Christmas gifts from us which we buy. My niece and nephews are in the mid 20's and we mail them checks for Chanukah. Some years ago we agreed with my family not to exchange gifts between the adults. Every year I bought my sister a sweater at a reasonably priced department store (the one with the tool department) with the return card from the gift she had bought me the year before and she would buy me something there also - I was pretty sure with the return card from the sweater I had given her the year before. Gradually this mostly happened with husband and his small extended family also - which was an exchange of cash for check any way.) Husband buys himself a few small items which catch his eye - I then wrap them and Santa puts them under the tree. Generally I don’t get anything. If I do it is a book or a bear item we found on sale during the year and put away until Christmas (one year I forgot we were doing so and read half the book before I remembered). In case you have not figured it out - I have a passion for teddy bears and some of their friends. I believe that a gift should be a token, not an overwhelming “LOOK AT THIS”. The spending of more money for a bigger or more expensive gift does not mean that one is loved or appreciated more - just that someone spent more money, which chances are means they are further into debt than they should be. Plus, more and bigger items mean more clutter in the house!
Speaking of clutter - this is a good time of year to pass along by donation items you no longer need or want which are taking up room in your house. I am planning on donating my winter coat - I have not worn it in years and due to weight loss, I am not even sure it fits anymore. I plan to add to it some dresses I never wear and if we get a chance to go through them - most of the luggage we have as we don’t use luggage with the RV. We will each keep one suitcase and will also keep a rolling backpack. The backpack and a soft bag should fit in the other bag.
So as you are start getting ready this year - remember, whatever you buy or get has to fit somewhere in your home.
Normally we would have put our outside decorations up this past week, but due to running around to find a turkey and shop for Thanksgiving dinner at the last minute, we did not get a chance to do so. We are currently having rain. We plan to put up the outside decorations on Thursday - it is not suppose to be raining then and it is suppose to go to a relatively “toasty” 59 degrees Fahrenheit.
We put strands of lights on our larger bushes and 2 small trees in front of our house. We put a wreath (artificial) each on our front and side doors. We also have swags (again artificial) which we hang from our light fixtures on either side of the front door. Last year we added a strand of red lights around our white mail box post - gives the look of, sort of, a candy cane. We used to have wreaths on our lower front windows and swags under them, but we cannot do so since we had our windows and siding replaced. The outside lights are controlled by a timer. We have one in our basement for the outlets that they are plugged into - since they are on their own circuit breaker this is a heavy duty timer, which works for the circuit. We also put battery operated candles in our front windows which go on for 6 hours a night automatically. We used to have plug in window candles, but when we replaced the windows, we found that there was a ledge of plastic on the inside of the window which meant that the candle had trouble staying on the window sill and leaned against the window blinds and would have melted them - so we replaced them with these LED candles -no heat so they do not melt the shades.
This past weekend I took out my Christmas dishes. These are not fancy china to be used for company. They are everyday dishes. I use them for dinner during the holidays. I also have Christmas glasses - they were a “spend this amount and get a gift” that I got when I bought a baby gift for a friend decades ago. I keep the dishes and glasses in their original boxes in the gas meter closet in our basement and wash them before I use them each year. I have only 3 glasses - the fourth one broke - and I keep a small 2 piece nativity set in the 4th space in the box, so the nativity goes out when I take out the glasses. I only take out 2 of the glasses and 2 of the cups to the dishes as I am the only one who uses them. Husband has certain plastic glasses he prefers and I put one out for him as it not worth insisting that he use the holiday stuff.
Husband, as I have mentioned before, got a loom last Christmas. It is a good size piece of furniture, 32 inches wide and about the same size deep. It is set up in the living room as are various related items, including a small table and large plastic boxes of yarn/finished pieces. It does not fill the room, but since it sits in the middle of the room, it takes up much of the floor space. When husband set it up last January, I told him that I expected the living room back after Thanksgiving until January so that I could decorate. I never really expected same, and I will be decorating around the loom etc. when I decorate as I got a blank stare when I asked when the loom was being stored for the season. Our dining room has additional items for his weaving, mostly items used to wash the woven items after they are made (to draw the threads together into fabric) which is done in our kitchen. At some point the items other than the loom will have to be moved somewhere - my guess is the walkways of our studio behind the kitchen. The nativity mentioned above goes into a display case in a corner of the living room - normally it is the center of the shelf. Right now it is on a corner of the shelf as I could not open the door to the cabinet due to the weaving boxes stored adjacent to the cabinet, but managed to get it open enough to put the nativity just inside the door. I will move it when I move the boxes elsewhere - really, they have to moved or no tree.
The dining room also has stuff which needs to go out to our RV. (This is all the stuff I had to move to use the dining room table last week.) The last chance we figure to use the RV is this coming weekend and we are pretty sure we will not - then all will go out there for winter storage. It is stuff that is used seasonally in the RV - mostly for cold weather travel - and has to be stored in the house when not being used in the RV.
Why does the dining room have to be cleared out to decorate the living room? Because there is a good sized wooden box piece of furniture in the living room where the tree goes. Husband made this some years ago. It looks like what was called a “hope chest” for a young woman to store the items she made for when she got married. This one, however, holds DVDs. Instead of the top lifting the front drops down and drawers come out to hold the DVDs. It is on wheels (we knew we had to move it back and forth to the dining room once a year) and is rolled to the far wall of the dining room (where the table normally is and all the stuff to deal with is now) and stays there for the season with the table in the center of the room where normal people put it all the time.
I admit to still having Thanksgiving decorations out. I have a small light up “house in a tree trunk” which I painted some years ago and also painted a ceramic bear family and their guests coming to the house. I have since added some small purchased bears. Every year I set it up with the bear family at the house and the other bears coming there. This year after the holiday I had the idea to turn the visitors around and they are now “on their way home”. There are a few other small items to be put away also - it all fits in one box. I plan on it all being stored by the end of the week - it only took 15 minutes to put out.
I have large plastic boxes of stuff to put out for Christmas in the basement. We used to keep it in the garage, but we are getting older - hard to climb up and take out and store the boxes - and the boxes are getting heavier, so I found a spot in the basement to store them. There are decorations for the living room, front hall, dining room and kitchen as well as the ornaments for the trees and my teddy bear Christmas village figurines, buildings, etc.
More on all that in future posts - or I would have nothing to post. We bought a new snow blower Monday. We cannot find anyone who does “residential snow removal” and have to be able to do it on our own. Our old snow blower is probably around 30 years old and is large and heavy. We tried starting it over the weekend and it did not start, although it did last summer when we tried it. We had planned on buying this one anyway as it is hard to get to the other one in back of the house and this one, being smaller, we figure we can store it in a small plastic shed in front of our side door. We still have to get the shed and assemble and try out (at least that it starts and moves) the new blower. Husband is researching on what may be wrong with the old one as he wants it as a backup. They were surprised at the (large home big box) store at which we bought the snow blower that we were buying one. I guess everyone else waits until it snows - when it is too late.
I wanted to talk about holiday shopping. Did you go running out on Black Friday or even Thanksgiving? Visit your local stores for Small Business Saturday (started by that so warm hearted American Express credit card company)? Sit all day at work on Monday for Cyber Monday?
We did none of these things. With the exception this year of a TV which husband thought was a good deal (not that we bought/are buying one) which is still on sale at that large box store everyone hates, we have never seen anything worth running for the deal. In addition we don’t buy large amounts of gifts - or stuff for ourselves - for the holidays or otherwise. Are we grinches? No. Husband’s 2 nieces (under 20 years old) always get Christmas gifts from us which we buy. My niece and nephews are in the mid 20's and we mail them checks for Chanukah. Some years ago we agreed with my family not to exchange gifts between the adults. Every year I bought my sister a sweater at a reasonably priced department store (the one with the tool department) with the return card from the gift she had bought me the year before and she would buy me something there also - I was pretty sure with the return card from the sweater I had given her the year before. Gradually this mostly happened with husband and his small extended family also - which was an exchange of cash for check any way.) Husband buys himself a few small items which catch his eye - I then wrap them and Santa puts them under the tree. Generally I don’t get anything. If I do it is a book or a bear item we found on sale during the year and put away until Christmas (one year I forgot we were doing so and read half the book before I remembered). In case you have not figured it out - I have a passion for teddy bears and some of their friends. I believe that a gift should be a token, not an overwhelming “LOOK AT THIS”. The spending of more money for a bigger or more expensive gift does not mean that one is loved or appreciated more - just that someone spent more money, which chances are means they are further into debt than they should be. Plus, more and bigger items mean more clutter in the house!
Speaking of clutter - this is a good time of year to pass along by donation items you no longer need or want which are taking up room in your house. I am planning on donating my winter coat - I have not worn it in years and due to weight loss, I am not even sure it fits anymore. I plan to add to it some dresses I never wear and if we get a chance to go through them - most of the luggage we have as we don’t use luggage with the RV. We will each keep one suitcase and will also keep a rolling backpack. The backpack and a soft bag should fit in the other bag.
So as you are start getting ready this year - remember, whatever you buy or get has to fit somewhere in your home.
Thursday, November 17, 2016
GETTING EXTRA TASKS DONE - SOMEHOW
This week I wanted to talk about fitting in things that have to be done now and then. One can set up a routine for the week to help one get the house cleaning and other tasks done, but every now and then (more now than then it seems) other things have to be done. Some are planned, some just pop up. Some are fun, but some are just things to be done - some even are things one dreads doing.
I have on numerous times mentioned our RV. The weather is getting cold. Before the weather gets freezing we have to winterize it. If you live in an area which gets cold in winter you probably know that if water freezes in your pipes they will split and you will have a problem. This is more likely to happen if the house or the area of the house where the pipe is located is not heated. (With the huge snow storms here the past few years this has happened to people who lost their electric power and had no heat. Husband worried about in our basement as some of the pipes are attached to the inside of the exterior walls as it was much colder than normal here and ran an electric heater in the basement to keep the pipes warm.) Winterizing the RV is, basically, getting all of the water out of the pipes, valves, etc. and replacing it with non-toxic anti-freeze. Sounds simple. It is not as that simple and there is an entire process that needs to be followed to do it - we have it written down, but still manage to always forget something. Today we winterized the RV.
My husband has started weaving on a loom this year. So, every week or so I help him do what is called “warping the loom”. This is putting the threads on the loom to weave through. It is a relatively tedious process. He needs my help to bring the warp threads out to a dowel to measure them out and then when all the threads are on the dowel, I bring the dowel to the loom - v e r y s l o w l y - and I keep tension on the threads, as he winds them onto the loom. When he finishes weaving a piece I know that he will soon be looking to warp the loom again. So, when he finished a piece, I knew that he would be looking to warp the loom. After we finished winterizing the RV - which took most of the afternoon, I saw him walk into the living room (where the loom is) and look around and sort of sigh. I knew what was going on. He wanted to warp the loom, but did not want to ask me to do so after spending the afternoon with the RV. I made the offer and we spent most of the rest of the time before dinner warping the loom.
So this afternoon was mostly used up with these two chores. I managed to check my email and that was about it. (I am writing this at night after dinner.)
I have worked as an accountant most of my life. (I started helping my dad add up columns of numbers when I was 12, so I do mean most of my life.) I have reached a point now where I have a couple of regular clients for whom I do their books on a regular basis and a handful of income tax clients. Unfortunately there is no exemption by IRS for a practice this small and I have to take annual classes and exams as the same as if I worked full time and actually made money doing this. While I can take the classes and exams as home study, it still is something else which must be fit into my time and takes about 20 hours in total. I get nervous every year about fitting time to take the exams into my schedule. I managed to do some of the smaller classes last night, which helped me get a bit less nervous. I still have some more of the smaller classes to do. I also have a large class and a 3 hour exam I have to take which I have not taken before. This scares the heck out of me. Not only do I have to do well on the exam to keep working - I also have to find a 3 hour block of time to take the exam. Somehow, I know I will do so - special things always manage to somehow be fit into one’s schedule.
Then I know that later this month the other big special things to do will start - Christmas decorating. Somehow no matter how busy we all are, we somehow manage to fit in decorating the house and the tree and buying and wrapping gifts. And then somehow, when it is all over, we find the time to take it all down and store it away. Okay - our decorations tend to stay up longer than they should - but the year they stayed up until April, it really was only because it was a freezing winter and our garage door froze to the ground and we could not get out the storage boxes to store the ornaments. So rather than take off the ornaments and leave them about, the tree stayed up. But for now, let us just think of the fun of decorating and how nice everything will look - if we can just find the time to decorate.
So, in between the normal daily, weekly, monthly tasks we all somehow manage to fit in these other tasks. How we do it varies from person to person and time to time. I just “found some time” I hope to keep available to get things done. On Monday nights I read comics online. Mostly I was reading the entire week of each comic’s strips. Some (most) weeks this reading ran over to Tuesday. Two weeks ago I decided it takes too much time. I looked through the strips as I read them. I dropped one strip. Five others I decided I will only read the Sunday strips. I like the characters, but can do with just a quick visit to them. (Sunday strips generally have nothing to do with weekday strips so I won’t be missing any “plot”.) Over time I may drop some of these strips, but I will see what I decide. The remaining strips are ones which I like the most and want to keep reading. This has cut out over an hour of time that I spent reading my comics and I now seem to be able to able to finish them on Monday night, leaving Tuesday night free for whatever else I need to do. (Hence, why I was able to take part of the classes I need to take last night.)
How do you fit in things which need to be done to your busy schedule? Do you need to fit in making Thanksgiving dinner next week?
I have on numerous times mentioned our RV. The weather is getting cold. Before the weather gets freezing we have to winterize it. If you live in an area which gets cold in winter you probably know that if water freezes in your pipes they will split and you will have a problem. This is more likely to happen if the house or the area of the house where the pipe is located is not heated. (With the huge snow storms here the past few years this has happened to people who lost their electric power and had no heat. Husband worried about in our basement as some of the pipes are attached to the inside of the exterior walls as it was much colder than normal here and ran an electric heater in the basement to keep the pipes warm.) Winterizing the RV is, basically, getting all of the water out of the pipes, valves, etc. and replacing it with non-toxic anti-freeze. Sounds simple. It is not as that simple and there is an entire process that needs to be followed to do it - we have it written down, but still manage to always forget something. Today we winterized the RV.
My husband has started weaving on a loom this year. So, every week or so I help him do what is called “warping the loom”. This is putting the threads on the loom to weave through. It is a relatively tedious process. He needs my help to bring the warp threads out to a dowel to measure them out and then when all the threads are on the dowel, I bring the dowel to the loom - v e r y s l o w l y - and I keep tension on the threads, as he winds them onto the loom. When he finishes weaving a piece I know that he will soon be looking to warp the loom again. So, when he finished a piece, I knew that he would be looking to warp the loom. After we finished winterizing the RV - which took most of the afternoon, I saw him walk into the living room (where the loom is) and look around and sort of sigh. I knew what was going on. He wanted to warp the loom, but did not want to ask me to do so after spending the afternoon with the RV. I made the offer and we spent most of the rest of the time before dinner warping the loom.
So this afternoon was mostly used up with these two chores. I managed to check my email and that was about it. (I am writing this at night after dinner.)
I have worked as an accountant most of my life. (I started helping my dad add up columns of numbers when I was 12, so I do mean most of my life.) I have reached a point now where I have a couple of regular clients for whom I do their books on a regular basis and a handful of income tax clients. Unfortunately there is no exemption by IRS for a practice this small and I have to take annual classes and exams as the same as if I worked full time and actually made money doing this. While I can take the classes and exams as home study, it still is something else which must be fit into my time and takes about 20 hours in total. I get nervous every year about fitting time to take the exams into my schedule. I managed to do some of the smaller classes last night, which helped me get a bit less nervous. I still have some more of the smaller classes to do. I also have a large class and a 3 hour exam I have to take which I have not taken before. This scares the heck out of me. Not only do I have to do well on the exam to keep working - I also have to find a 3 hour block of time to take the exam. Somehow, I know I will do so - special things always manage to somehow be fit into one’s schedule.
Then I know that later this month the other big special things to do will start - Christmas decorating. Somehow no matter how busy we all are, we somehow manage to fit in decorating the house and the tree and buying and wrapping gifts. And then somehow, when it is all over, we find the time to take it all down and store it away. Okay - our decorations tend to stay up longer than they should - but the year they stayed up until April, it really was only because it was a freezing winter and our garage door froze to the ground and we could not get out the storage boxes to store the ornaments. So rather than take off the ornaments and leave them about, the tree stayed up. But for now, let us just think of the fun of decorating and how nice everything will look - if we can just find the time to decorate.
So, in between the normal daily, weekly, monthly tasks we all somehow manage to fit in these other tasks. How we do it varies from person to person and time to time. I just “found some time” I hope to keep available to get things done. On Monday nights I read comics online. Mostly I was reading the entire week of each comic’s strips. Some (most) weeks this reading ran over to Tuesday. Two weeks ago I decided it takes too much time. I looked through the strips as I read them. I dropped one strip. Five others I decided I will only read the Sunday strips. I like the characters, but can do with just a quick visit to them. (Sunday strips generally have nothing to do with weekday strips so I won’t be missing any “plot”.) Over time I may drop some of these strips, but I will see what I decide. The remaining strips are ones which I like the most and want to keep reading. This has cut out over an hour of time that I spent reading my comics and I now seem to be able to able to finish them on Monday night, leaving Tuesday night free for whatever else I need to do. (Hence, why I was able to take part of the classes I need to take last night.)
How do you fit in things which need to be done to your busy schedule? Do you need to fit in making Thanksgiving dinner next week?
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
PREPARING FOR HERMINE'S "VISIT"
Well, we have been home over a week now and I am still trying to catch up. The laundry was done the first 2 nights and put away the next mornings in anticipation of perhaps a couple of days travel at the end of last week - Labor Day weekend. We did not go away.
We were in the line of Hermine - a hurricane which did damage along the eastern seaboard and then came north to visit us. It was like preparing for one of our trips - Hermine was to hit sometime between last Friday and Monday and stay around swirling off the coast to the south of the Island. People along the coasts of our Island are still recovering from “superstorm” Sandy less than 5 years ago - some people are not back in their houses yet as their houses are not yet rebuilt. Hermine was not a welcome guest here. As last week went along it became a situation of - she might hit us - she might just stay offshore - she might miss us altogether (but probably not). She might be a hurricane or she might be a tropical storm or a subtropical storm. She might be gone by Monday or she might be here through (tomorrow) Thursday.
We had extensive days of no electricity at our house in 2011 after Hurricane Irene and again after Sandy, and after we got our electricity back after Sandy, it went out a day later when the area was hit by a “nor’easter” Yes, we were hit by a tropical storm and in less than a week after we were hit by a winter storm! So we made preparations for the worst, hoping for the best.
We have learned from the prior storms what we need to do. We have been told that we should have (always) 2 gallons of water per day per person for, well it used to be 3 days, since Sandy we are told 5 days. We have a small house - full of stuff, no room for 6 to 10 gallons of water always in the house (and when I used to keep 2 gallons in the basement one gallon sprang a leak and we had water all over). We have another system. We were away in Pennsylvania immediately before Irene. (We actually pulled over into a McDonald’s parking lot to use its wifi as we tried to locate a campground near Pittsburgh, PA, the closest area which did not seem to be under the hurricane warning as we decided if we were going to run to same and sit it out or go home. Not finding any campgrounds, we went home. When we arrived home we still had most of the water in the RV tank. We left it. We were supposed to be going away a day after Sandy hit. Husband said what should we do to be ready if we can leave and go on the trip? We filled the water tanks - if we were able to go we had the water in the tanks, if not, emergency water! So last Friday we filled one of the RV tanks with water - 15 gallons. This idea only works in warm weather, once we winterize the RV we cannot really use it for water storage again until we clean out the tanks when we dewinterize in the spring - plus the chance of the tanks and lines freezing in cold weather.
We also plugged in the RV and charged its batteries overnight. We also found during the 2 earlier storms that this gave us something to do in the evening. We would go in and turn on the batteries, put up the TV antenna on the RV and watch TV. Especially after Sandy this was good. The local (Long Island, not NYC) radio station was turning its air over to the local (again, Long Island) news channel to broadcast their broadcasts so that those without electricity (most of the Island) could get more extensive local news. This was very nice of both, but much of the local news consisted of “Look at this - can you believe this happened?” which did not help all that much. By turning on the TV we were able to see what was going on and get more news. We also had some diversion. Husband figured out that we could use the RV batteries for 2 hours to watch TV, recharge computers and cell phones, etc. and then put on the RV’s generator for an hour to recharge the batteries, using only 1/3 of a gallon of gas. We had to be careful as most of the gas stations on the Island were either out of gas or unable to pump gas due to not having electricity. (After a quick drive to look around the day after Sandy when we then found out about the lack of gasoline, we took the car out once for an emergency related to my mom and walked everywhere for about 3 weeks to a month. We were lucky. Most people here do not live within walking distance of stores, etc. We do.) After Irene things were considerably better than after Sandy and not as widespread, so that there were large areas with electricity (and with working gas stations) we went one night to the movies for something to amuse us. The freezer in the kitchen refrigerator is set it’s coldest setting. The refrigerator itself is set as cold as I can let it go without ruining husband’s insulin. We always go out before a large storm that has warnings and fill the car gas tanks.
Back to getting ready for Hermine. We brought in the electric lantern we keep in the RV. It is rechargeable plus it can use batteries instead. We plugged in the rechargeable pack to charge. We also plugged in our laptops and tablets and when not using them, our cell phones. They were all left charging whenever we were home. I always do the laundry if there is a possibility of losing the electricity so that we have a maximum amount of clean clothes, towels and bed linens, but since I had just done them, I did not need to. I unplugged the washing machine and threw the breakers for the clothes dryer - no need to take a chance on a surge coming through. The dehumidifier and stove would have this done also if and when we lost electricity.
We know that in the 1700s it was the standard to “put the room to rest” after using it. This involved moving the furniture against the walls where it was normally kept. This did two things - it allowed different furniture to be moved to the center of the room as needed for different activities and also allowed one to walk through the room in dim light without bumping into anything. I did this, clearing the floors - including furniture and general stuff and it really did help when we had to walk around the house during the day lit only by the light through the windows. I did this again. I pushed our portable air conditioner in the dining room further into the room into a small space where it would not be walked into. I then went to the living room where husband has his loom. I did not want to move the loom - it was set up to work, but I folded down the side of the drop leaf table he uses when warping the loom and moved it further into the room next to the side table next to the sofa. I took the standing lamps and moved them and their cords out of the way so that we would not walk into them nor trip over their cords. Upstairs we have mostly walkways around furniture so it was already clear, as was the kitchen and the parts of the studio we might walk around in.
We went about our life listening to the constantly changing weather reports - not only did they vary from source to source - they also varied hour to hour - not sure what was coming. Each day it was a question of will it rain today or will there be heavy, fast winds today? We are far enough in the center (north to south) of the Island that we do not have to worry about storm surge - but I was concerned about my mom as she was hit by a wall of water after Sandy and had to throw out everything in her basement and the first floor of her house (the garage, den and a bathroom are on the first floor).
There are many activities on the Island in general and it was Labor Day weekend so there were many more. The various government entities from New Jersey through New York City and both counties out here put out a “don’t go out in the water or you will get a ticket” alerts. There had been problems recently with unusually heavy rip currents and the storm sitting off of here was making it worse as well as making a terribly active, heavy surf. Of course going to the beach is a major activity this “last weekend” of summer. (Yes, it ends later in the month, but it is the symbolic end.) One of our local Native American tribes has a large Pow Wow on Labor Day weekend every year with their family members who have moved or traveled away returning every year to the reservation for it and it is open to the public - we have gone several times and might have gone this year - but no one knew what the weather would be.
Saturday we went outside to bring in some items early on in the preparation. We brought the garbage cans into the garage, small solar lanterns and the stands they hang from into the porch. I glanced out into the road and my eye caught on the large orange plastic “barrels” left there by the road crew still working on our street 4 weeks after the 2 weeks they were suppose to be here. There were also large piece of PVC pipe that hold signs and things for them - all ripe to go flying in a gale and do damage. I checked the Internet about contacting the County emergency office which was suppose to be up and runnning and tried calling them - I either got a busy signal or the phone kept ringing. I sent them an email to let them know about the barrels and other items and that someone should come and secure or remove them - no response and it all stayed out waiting to be blown about.
Saturday night the next county put out a warning that people on one of the barrier islands (our Island has smaller islands around it) should evacuate - voluntarily - from the island since if the surf got worse as expected, the ferries would not be able to run and they would not be able to leave. Instead somehow the warning that was sent and shown on TV, announced on the radio, was robocalled to all of the county residents (instead of just those on the island), and was emailed out was that the entire county was under a mandatory evacuation! Calls flooded their emergency management centers and a correction was put out. We came home from the movies and there was a notice on the top of the TV picture - annoying me as it was on constantly for about half an hour and the cable controls were not working right - about the error and correcting it.
So day by day the storm sat off the Island and we were told - later today or tomorrow. As of yesterday, they finally lifted the storm surge warnings and the storm is sitting further east, south of the Island.. While the preparations were needed based on the original state of things, luckily they were not needed. Unfortunately businesses at the beaches and also otherwise that anticipated an influx of visitors lost the income they were expecting for the weekend - we went to the movies Saturday night and the theater was empty.
Now, of course, everything that was moved or dealt with has to be put back into place. The water has to be let out of the RV the items moved in the living room were already moved back so husband could weave and so on. Until next time - the next storm is already forming!
We were in the line of Hermine - a hurricane which did damage along the eastern seaboard and then came north to visit us. It was like preparing for one of our trips - Hermine was to hit sometime between last Friday and Monday and stay around swirling off the coast to the south of the Island. People along the coasts of our Island are still recovering from “superstorm” Sandy less than 5 years ago - some people are not back in their houses yet as their houses are not yet rebuilt. Hermine was not a welcome guest here. As last week went along it became a situation of - she might hit us - she might just stay offshore - she might miss us altogether (but probably not). She might be a hurricane or she might be a tropical storm or a subtropical storm. She might be gone by Monday or she might be here through (tomorrow) Thursday.
We had extensive days of no electricity at our house in 2011 after Hurricane Irene and again after Sandy, and after we got our electricity back after Sandy, it went out a day later when the area was hit by a “nor’easter” Yes, we were hit by a tropical storm and in less than a week after we were hit by a winter storm! So we made preparations for the worst, hoping for the best.
We have learned from the prior storms what we need to do. We have been told that we should have (always) 2 gallons of water per day per person for, well it used to be 3 days, since Sandy we are told 5 days. We have a small house - full of stuff, no room for 6 to 10 gallons of water always in the house (and when I used to keep 2 gallons in the basement one gallon sprang a leak and we had water all over). We have another system. We were away in Pennsylvania immediately before Irene. (We actually pulled over into a McDonald’s parking lot to use its wifi as we tried to locate a campground near Pittsburgh, PA, the closest area which did not seem to be under the hurricane warning as we decided if we were going to run to same and sit it out or go home. Not finding any campgrounds, we went home. When we arrived home we still had most of the water in the RV tank. We left it. We were supposed to be going away a day after Sandy hit. Husband said what should we do to be ready if we can leave and go on the trip? We filled the water tanks - if we were able to go we had the water in the tanks, if not, emergency water! So last Friday we filled one of the RV tanks with water - 15 gallons. This idea only works in warm weather, once we winterize the RV we cannot really use it for water storage again until we clean out the tanks when we dewinterize in the spring - plus the chance of the tanks and lines freezing in cold weather.
We also plugged in the RV and charged its batteries overnight. We also found during the 2 earlier storms that this gave us something to do in the evening. We would go in and turn on the batteries, put up the TV antenna on the RV and watch TV. Especially after Sandy this was good. The local (Long Island, not NYC) radio station was turning its air over to the local (again, Long Island) news channel to broadcast their broadcasts so that those without electricity (most of the Island) could get more extensive local news. This was very nice of both, but much of the local news consisted of “Look at this - can you believe this happened?” which did not help all that much. By turning on the TV we were able to see what was going on and get more news. We also had some diversion. Husband figured out that we could use the RV batteries for 2 hours to watch TV, recharge computers and cell phones, etc. and then put on the RV’s generator for an hour to recharge the batteries, using only 1/3 of a gallon of gas. We had to be careful as most of the gas stations on the Island were either out of gas or unable to pump gas due to not having electricity. (After a quick drive to look around the day after Sandy when we then found out about the lack of gasoline, we took the car out once for an emergency related to my mom and walked everywhere for about 3 weeks to a month. We were lucky. Most people here do not live within walking distance of stores, etc. We do.) After Irene things were considerably better than after Sandy and not as widespread, so that there were large areas with electricity (and with working gas stations) we went one night to the movies for something to amuse us. The freezer in the kitchen refrigerator is set it’s coldest setting. The refrigerator itself is set as cold as I can let it go without ruining husband’s insulin. We always go out before a large storm that has warnings and fill the car gas tanks.
Back to getting ready for Hermine. We brought in the electric lantern we keep in the RV. It is rechargeable plus it can use batteries instead. We plugged in the rechargeable pack to charge. We also plugged in our laptops and tablets and when not using them, our cell phones. They were all left charging whenever we were home. I always do the laundry if there is a possibility of losing the electricity so that we have a maximum amount of clean clothes, towels and bed linens, but since I had just done them, I did not need to. I unplugged the washing machine and threw the breakers for the clothes dryer - no need to take a chance on a surge coming through. The dehumidifier and stove would have this done also if and when we lost electricity.
We know that in the 1700s it was the standard to “put the room to rest” after using it. This involved moving the furniture against the walls where it was normally kept. This did two things - it allowed different furniture to be moved to the center of the room as needed for different activities and also allowed one to walk through the room in dim light without bumping into anything. I did this, clearing the floors - including furniture and general stuff and it really did help when we had to walk around the house during the day lit only by the light through the windows. I did this again. I pushed our portable air conditioner in the dining room further into the room into a small space where it would not be walked into. I then went to the living room where husband has his loom. I did not want to move the loom - it was set up to work, but I folded down the side of the drop leaf table he uses when warping the loom and moved it further into the room next to the side table next to the sofa. I took the standing lamps and moved them and their cords out of the way so that we would not walk into them nor trip over their cords. Upstairs we have mostly walkways around furniture so it was already clear, as was the kitchen and the parts of the studio we might walk around in.
We went about our life listening to the constantly changing weather reports - not only did they vary from source to source - they also varied hour to hour - not sure what was coming. Each day it was a question of will it rain today or will there be heavy, fast winds today? We are far enough in the center (north to south) of the Island that we do not have to worry about storm surge - but I was concerned about my mom as she was hit by a wall of water after Sandy and had to throw out everything in her basement and the first floor of her house (the garage, den and a bathroom are on the first floor).
There are many activities on the Island in general and it was Labor Day weekend so there were many more. The various government entities from New Jersey through New York City and both counties out here put out a “don’t go out in the water or you will get a ticket” alerts. There had been problems recently with unusually heavy rip currents and the storm sitting off of here was making it worse as well as making a terribly active, heavy surf. Of course going to the beach is a major activity this “last weekend” of summer. (Yes, it ends later in the month, but it is the symbolic end.) One of our local Native American tribes has a large Pow Wow on Labor Day weekend every year with their family members who have moved or traveled away returning every year to the reservation for it and it is open to the public - we have gone several times and might have gone this year - but no one knew what the weather would be.
Saturday we went outside to bring in some items early on in the preparation. We brought the garbage cans into the garage, small solar lanterns and the stands they hang from into the porch. I glanced out into the road and my eye caught on the large orange plastic “barrels” left there by the road crew still working on our street 4 weeks after the 2 weeks they were suppose to be here. There were also large piece of PVC pipe that hold signs and things for them - all ripe to go flying in a gale and do damage. I checked the Internet about contacting the County emergency office which was suppose to be up and runnning and tried calling them - I either got a busy signal or the phone kept ringing. I sent them an email to let them know about the barrels and other items and that someone should come and secure or remove them - no response and it all stayed out waiting to be blown about.
Saturday night the next county put out a warning that people on one of the barrier islands (our Island has smaller islands around it) should evacuate - voluntarily - from the island since if the surf got worse as expected, the ferries would not be able to run and they would not be able to leave. Instead somehow the warning that was sent and shown on TV, announced on the radio, was robocalled to all of the county residents (instead of just those on the island), and was emailed out was that the entire county was under a mandatory evacuation! Calls flooded their emergency management centers and a correction was put out. We came home from the movies and there was a notice on the top of the TV picture - annoying me as it was on constantly for about half an hour and the cable controls were not working right - about the error and correcting it.
So day by day the storm sat off the Island and we were told - later today or tomorrow. As of yesterday, they finally lifted the storm surge warnings and the storm is sitting further east, south of the Island.. While the preparations were needed based on the original state of things, luckily they were not needed. Unfortunately businesses at the beaches and also otherwise that anticipated an influx of visitors lost the income they were expecting for the weekend - we went to the movies Saturday night and the theater was empty.
Now, of course, everything that was moved or dealt with has to be put back into place. The water has to be let out of the RV the items moved in the living room were already moved back so husband could weave and so on. Until next time - the next storm is already forming!
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