Extra Long Shoe Laces

Let's be right up front about this, I HATE THEM!  They're a pain in the patooy.  I know why the laces are too long, it's cost effective for  the shoe manufacturer to only have to stock one length of shoe laces, long ones fit (HA) all lace up shoes. But knowing that does me very little good.
What to do with your long laces?  You can tie extra long bows, you can double knot them, use the extra holes at the top of your shoes, cut them down, wrap them around your ankles or spend the day tripping over them.  Right now I'm double knotting them, but I'm not happy, knotting them once is bad enough, double knotting them requires more manuel dexterity than I have.
For my next pair of shoes I think I'm going to get ones with velcro closure, then I'll officially be older than dirt and have to move to Florida.

Meslisandre

Oh Melisandre you of the flaming torch, I so enjoyed our visit today.  You filleted my right arm and sent part of it off to be examined, then
 burned numerous items off my shoulder and back.  I'm sure I'll be sleeping on my tummy tonight.  But if all goes well and she's expecting it to, then I don't have to go back for 6 months.  Thank goodness for small favors.

Memory, My Poor Memory

Box of Checks

I wasted an hour this morning looking for a box of checks.  I don't write a lot of checks, pay most of my bills online, but some places are still not set up for that so I pull out the old checkbook.  Today when I wrote my check I noticed that it was the last check in the book so I went looking for a new book to put in it.
Our bank has gone through a couple of mergers in the last couple of years and so through a couple of name changes.  They told us we could continue to use our old checks, but my checks were so old I'd  ordered new ones with the new name on them and when they came I put them away, somewhere.  Unfortunately I forgot where that somewhere was, I tore apart my desk and the area all around it looking for the boxes of new checks.  They were nowhere to be found.  I became worried, as I'm apt to do, and began to wonder if the checks I'd ordered had even come in or if something had happened to them.  Then I opened up Mac's checkbook and saw that he had one of the new checkbooks, so they'd come in or at least the ones for his account had, though I couldn't find the box of them either.

My oh so neat shelf

Then I looked on the top shelf of my desk and though it was obvious that there were no boxes there I looked anyway and lo and behold I found my checks.  Not in a box as I assumed they would be, but in a portfolio.  I felt stupid for not remembering that.
 I got a new checkbook out and put the rest back, here's hoping I remember where they are when next I go looking for them, but given the state of my memory which has never been good I'm really not hopeful.  But perhaps blogging about it will help.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to my sweet husband, my best friend and the one I've been lucky enough to spend my life with.  You'll always be the beautiful boy I first saw across the quad way back in high school.  Hope you enjoy your presents!

More Baseboards

More baseboards, lots more.  And bless Mac who did all the taping and clean up.  Now I just have to do our bathroom.

Busy Monday morning or perhaps it only feels busy because I'm so clumsy today I'm having to do everything twice.  Laundry done and on the line, bread in the bread machine and almost done, baseboards painted in Miss Kitty's bathroom, acres of honeysuckle cut back in the garden and here I am.
Mac said I need to change my header to something more Holloweeny, so I did.  And just look at the cute little dachshund he just finished.
I need to hide the Halloween candy I bought to give out better because according to the laws of physics, no 2 objects can occupy the same space, so accordingly  chocolate and I should not be near each other or we will soon occupy the same spot, namely me.
Using a variation on this "law" my Father once wrote an excused absence note for me saying," Because an object can not occupy 2 separate locations my daughter was not at school yesterday because she was home."
The school secretary gave me the strangest look, can't imagine why!

Boxes

Recently Amazon posted a bunch of Tweets that people had posted about Amazon Prime.  I tweeted that Amazon Prime was invented so my cat would always have a box to lay on.  What did cats lay on before boxes?
Then I saw this great picture on Pinterest, this could well be my cat!

Random Friday Thoughts

•  Both the Wild Card teams are going to the World Series, that's fun, but of course we'll be rooting for San Francisco 'cause we're originally from the San Francisco Bay Area----Go Giants!

•  Trying to send money in a foreign currency to a foreign country is a complicated job thanks to 9/11, you'd think we were trying to fund something weird instead of paying for a cottage

•  Our cat's on indoor restriction, she's becoming way too comfortable with hanging out with squirrels

•  We've finally gotten around to watching The Big Bang Theory from the beginning and it's great and  no, I'm not identifying with Sheldon, even I'm not that weird

•  For some reason the song "The End of the World As We Know It, and I Feel Fine" by REM is  stuck in my head  and no I'm not thinking about ebola

•  I have a Christmas project started upstairs, but it's sitting next to a puzzle and the puzzle keeps sucking me in, saying, "Come on, just one more piece"

•  Tomorrow our area is having a garage sale, we're not participating and I'm hoping shoppers don't show up at dawn hoping to buy some junk, I mean gem to haul home with them

•  I need to go find some pipe cleaners 'cause Mac needs to put spiders on our spider web

Have a great week end.

Scary Thought

Really had trouble getting to sleep last night.  Hate that, not just because I want to sleep, but because I always worry that I'm keeping Mac awake.  When I can't sleep I get the "rolly pollies" and I can't lay still.
Last night Mac asked me if I was channeling Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory and was thinking about sneaking out to clean something.  Channeling Sheldon would truly be a scary thought.

A Just Reward

Beautiful day today after the thunderstorms of last night, blue sky with fluffy "Simpson" clouds.  It was an errand day, so the horses were hitched up and we headed into town.  First stop was the bank where we worked out how to send £ sterling to the UK, very complicated since 9/11 'cause the government wants to know exactly who's getting the money.
Then popcorn shopping, I'm afraid we're addicts and go through a ton of the stuff, but fairly low calorie and no butter.
Then to Ace, you know, the place with the helpful hardware folks.  It's the nearest thing we have to an old fashioned general store, ours even sells Avon.  I needed white paint to do baseboards, I fear I have cleaned the paint off of many of ours and now I need to start painting them, again.
When we finished at Ace I suggested to Mac that we needed a reward so off to Plum's we went to have a banana split. Oh we were good because they were offering 2 splits for the price of one, but we just had one, with 2 spoons of course.  Banana splits are kind of special to us, we use to go out to have one WAY back when we were dating.  We went to an old fashioned looking ice cream parlor called Lois's that unfortunately no longer exists.  So having a split makes us feel like teenagers again, plus or minus a few wrinkles and grey hairs.
Then it was off to the grocery store to pick up a few things and 2 ENORMOUS pumpkins.
A really nice day.

The Long and the Short of It

Do you like long books, short books, short stories, series, novellas, what?  My own preference is for long books.  I'm currently reading The Last Lion by William Manchester, his biography of Winston Churchill and it runs 992 pages.  Even better it's the first of of a trilogy.  I love to read series.  If I like a book I hate it to end.  Of course I hate waiting for the next in a series to come out---do you hear me George R. R. Martin, don't do a Robert Jordan and die on me before you finish The Game of Thrones.
Some short books are fun Ella, Minnow, Pea (Mark Dunn) at  pages 208 pages  and The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett) at 120 pages and I will read them after reading a long book, but they're never my first choice.  I'll probably read Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villain Tales (edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling) at 208 pages before tackling the next in the Churchill biography.
And then I need to get going again on the long series I'm reading by S.M. Stirling, the Change series has 11 books in it so far and I'm on number 7, The High King of Montival.  Not great literature, but fun.
So what's your preference?

“but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.” 

 Jane Austen