Another Christmas has come and gone. The time just seems to be flying these days. It seems like the new year comes and with a blink of an eye, Christmas is here again. Sometimes it’s so hard to believe how fast is passing.

So my Christmas wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t completely horrible either. We spent it with Jo’s family, but I was sad a lot during the holidays because we weren’t able to spend any with my family back home. Christmas proved to be a bit depressing in that sense. I don’t like celebrating holidays away from my own family and as much as I love and enjoy my in laws, I still wish my own family were able to be a part of it.

Christmas day was actually the worst part of the holiday season. This is a day when we all go to my in laws for a big Christmas dinner. Jo even made his special corn bread dressing, and I made yummy deli spirals for appetizers. Well Jo’s uncle and his girlfriend were here from Ottawa. We were so excited to get to spend some time with Jo’s uncle, but as we got about 10 minutes into our 45 minute or so drive there, our SUV started acting really strange. The engine light came on, and soon after it came on it began flashing manically. I could tell that it just wasn’t getting much power. I mean, I had my foot pressed on the gas pedal, almost to the floor board. I don’t think it ever climbed over 40 KPH after the engine light came on. I pulled off thinking it might be due to the cold and perhaps we didn’t let it warm up enough. Not the case. After pulling off and starting back out on the road again, she went kaput. It was Christmas day, so there weren’t many travelers on the TCH. Luckily someone pulled over and let us use their cell phone (because ours was left at home.. wouldn’t you know). Anywho. Phone the in laws and my father in law came out to see about us. I hated he had to do that but was thankful he did, and towed us back to the apartment parking lot. Engine troubles again though. She’ll be back in the shop again soon. Fun times. Hopefully it’s not going to cost very much, even though we heard it will cost us $100+ just to tow her to the garage! At least if we do need any new parts they won’t cost us as much as Ferrari parts might.

Well, enough of that. Here’s a picture of my pretty tree. Colors were red, gold and white. I needed more bows, really, but all of the department stores ran out before I could get back to buy more. Pffth.

Hope you all had a nice holiday.

Speaking of my laptop; I’m hoping to go to a wireless router soon. Since moving into our new place and making plans for my home office, I’ve realized just how badly I need and want a wireless connection. One thing I’ve always hated is seeing wires and cords everywhere. This is currently a problem for us because our network is setup in the living room, where Jo’s computer is set up. My computer is in my office, which is in the second bedroom. When Rogers came out and installed our internet, the best they could offer us was to drag a long cable all the way from the living room to the office. It runs along the baseboards but it’s visible, and it’s going to drive me bonkers. Especially with 2 cats. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught them pouncing it.

This is usually the best time of year to find a good sale, so I didn’t think it’d be too hard to find a good bargain on a wireless router. I found one over at Buy.com for a great price - $39.99 - and it’s a brand we’ve used before, D-Link. It sounds like it should be fairly easy to set it up, and we’re all about getting things done easily these days! This wireless router should definitely take care of the cable being run all through our place, don’t you think?

I’m just about ready to toss this laptop out of the office window, right into that huge snowbank just below it. It’s being extremely slow today, and I have no idea what’s causing it. I’ve tried everything. I’ve closed out of everything, rebooted, ran scans. It just won’t budge. It currently sounds like it’s about to take off. I’ve never heard this racket before.. so that can’t be good. I’m desperately trying to push through projects, so I’m hoping it gives it up soon and goes back to being a nice little laptop. I’d have Jo have a look at it but he has work in the morning at 5am, so he’s kind of unavailable, aka sleeping, right now.

And speaking of that snowbank.. this snow is driving me nuts. We’ve been under blizzard like conditions since early this morning. The winds have to be gusting near hurricane strength, and it’s snowing. It’s that light, fluffy snow so it’s blowing everywhere. It looks like we’re going to have a lot of drifting snow tomorrow, so that’s going to bite for shopping. Ah well. Such is life!

I have been going full steam since Friday. I finally finished decorating the tree, most of my Christmas shopping and I managed to wrap a lot of the gifts I bought. That was Friday. Then yesterday (Saturday) I wound up doing a few loads of laundry, which by the way is never a fun task. It’s all washed, dried and put away. Shortly after I decided to go to bed because I just could not keep my eyes open any longer. The pain in my legs (arthritis) didn’t help at all either. Then this morning I decided to give the house a light cleaning (wasn’t messy to begin with) because we had Jo’s parents over for dinner. How I’ve managed to squeeze in some time to work on finalizing some designs… I do not know.

I’m currently finishing up a personal blog for a “lovely” young lady, who is always a pleasure to work with. I will also be finishing some revisions to another design (lightening colors). I will finalize another larger project after and then try to finish up mockups for 2 contest winners, one being from my own contest and the other from the twenty-something blogger Chicago meet-up. I hope to finish all of this by Tuesday. Wednesday will be dedicated to trying to finalize a first draft on another large project. I have a few smaller personal & photoblogs to finish up too. I decided to close the queue for now because I’m full through the middle of January right now, and January will be bringing some great new changes for me in the design area.

I need to call it a night soon. Once again I’m exhausted to the point where I can barely keep my eyes open. Besides, I’d like to get a really good nights sleep before cracking my work whip in the morning! I want to finish up as much as I can before Christmas because like the rest of you, I’ll be spending some time with the family then. It won’t be much longer before I’m going to need a little down time. I wonder what kind of hotels las vegas has to offer?

I have some last minute Christmas shopping I have got to get done. I had hoped to be finished long before now but between moving to our new place and being sick this last week or so, I just haven’t had the time or energy to get it done. I’m on a mission though, tomorrow. I’ve decided to hit the mall early in the morning and try to finish up those last few gifts. I really hope that I’m able to find what I’m going there for. There’s nothing worse with Christmas shopping than getting to the mall or department store to find everything (or most) that you’re there for is sold out. That’s happened to me quite a bit over the last few years. Like last year Jo wanted a new iPod. Of course I should have known better but I put my shopping off until December. That was a big mistake because most electronics, especially the popular things like iPods, were sold out. Jo was so bummed that he didn’t get his iPod, though he’d say it didn’t bother him. His pouty lips and sighs proved differently.

I’ve gotten most of the bigger things. What I need to get now is just for some of Jo’s relatives. I ordered my families online, so hopefully all of theirs will be shipped to my dad’s before Christmas. Last year it was a couple of days late.

I need to make a list for tomorrow though. I’m sure if I don’t I’ll forget something, and other than the gifts, I need to pick up groceries and some tins for the goodies I’m going to make next week (homemade cookies and candies). I think I’m going to pick up one more set of ornaments for the tree. It still looks a little bare in some places!

So much to do.. so little time!

I don’t think I’m ever going to get my external hard drive back from Jo. He’s been using it since I bought it because I never decided to use it. That’s only because I didn’t feel it was necessary yet.. not at the time anyway. Now it’s necessary. As the workload with my design business has increased, I’ve found myself quickly running out of space on my hard drive. Plus it doesn’t help that I moved everything from my old desktop to this laptop too. That includes all of the thousands of photos I had stored on that old desktop computer!

I see Buy.com has one on sale this week. It’s a 500GB external hard drive by Calvary, and at only $99.99 it’s about $50 cheaper than the 160GB external that Jo took over. I was hoping to keep my purchase around the same price I paid before and it appears I can do just that. A guilt-free purchase just in time for Christmas? I think so! My plan is to move all of my archived designs (both my personally designs and client designs that have been launched) to the external and keep as much free space on my actual computer as possible. Five hundred GBs should allow for that, don’t you think? I think it’ll make a nice addition to my home office, and it’s obviously going to go to great use!

I invited my mother and father in law over for dinner Sunday. I can’t figure out what to make though. I was going to do some sort of pasta, but I’m quite limited if I do that because my mother in law doesn’t like red sauce (like marinara). I could do chicken alfredo, but we’re having that tomorrow night so I don’t think Jo’s going to want it again so soon. I’m torn between mini meat loaves and pork chops right now. I’m not sure about the side dishes though. Any suggestions? I could probably do potatoes with either, or even macaroni and cheese. I may hop over to Food Network and see if something there will inspire me.. perhaps some sort of casserole?

I sort of want to be brave and make something completely different. Something I’ve never made before. Only thing is I’ll need to test it first because if I ruin it Sunday.. what will we do? Have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a grilled cheese. Ha, ha!

If you have any ideas or recipes, please share. I could use more, even if I don’t use them Sunday!

Since we’ve moved into our new place I’ve found a lot of stuff we don’t really need. This seems to happen any time we move. I’ve found some of Jo’s old books, tons of DVDs we haven’t watched in ages and a bunch of old used cds. I’ve been thinking about getting rid of some of it, possibly donating the shoes and clothes to charity, and possibly having a yard sale for the rest. I have so much junk that I don’t use. It’s kind of ridiculous. Lately I’m all about simplifying things, so naturally all the junk that’s cluttering closets needs to go.

Slight problem with the yard sale idea though: snow. I have a feeling it’s going to be Spring before I can actually do that, which sucks. I took a break from a project I’ve been working on to see the snow falling like crazy outside. I didn’t even realize it had been snowing, so imagine my surprise to see a few inches of the white stuff on the ground! I took this a few moments ago. Sorry about the quality. It was taken with my webcam to show a friend why I think I might have trouble getting out of the parking lot in the morning.

Doesn’t that look like so much fun??

It’s kind of hard to capture life when you’re without a camera. I’ve been thinking about buying myself a new point a shoot digital camera for a while now. Actually, since I sold my DSLR this past Summer. I don’t want to spend a large amount on it, but I do want something half decent too. I think I found exactly what I need. It’s on sale at Buy.com this week for $144.99 after rebate. It’s the Canon PowerShot SD1100, and I have a couple of friends that actually own it and have recommended it. Possibly getting free shipping certainly sweetens the deal too. I was really hoping to keep myself on a $200 budget, so I would definitely achieve that here.

With Christmas getting closer, I really need to make a decision soon. I don’t want to be without a camera during the holidays, you know? It would stink to miss out on capturing those kinds of memories. I don’t mean the whole “gift” thing either. I mean the memories involved with being with your family; the smiles, the laughs and just spending the time with them all. I sort of missed that last year, since I wasn’t allowed to open my “gifts” (including the camera I got then) until Christmas.

Jo’s been hounding me to tell him what I want from him for Christmas. Perhaps I’ll make a little mention of this instead of the handbag I mentioned a few weeks ago!

I’m trying to plan a trip back home. The plan is to visit sometime in February, around the middle of the month. My dad will be celebrating his birthday on the 14th of February, and my mom on the 15th. Plus Jo’s birthday is on the 6th. I doubt he will have much time built up for vacation by then, so we will likely only visit for a week. A week is better than nothing at this point though. I am really, really missing my family. I’m sure a lot of that is because of the holidays, but a lot of it is also because of my grandpa’s health too. I’m absolutely terrified that something is going to happen before I have a chance to visit, so visiting as soon as possible is a definite must. I’m looking forward to visiting with my nephews, niece, sisters, my brother, my mom, my dad, Tammy (mom’s roommate), Kim (dad’s girlfriend) and other relatives and friends. It’ll be really nice to catch up with everyone.

We’re going to be flying, which I’m not looking forward to. I’m scared to death, and almost certain I’ll need to be knocked out before the plane takes off. I don’t think many people realize how bad my fear of flying and planes in general really is. I literally panic just being near an airport. I can only imagine what it’s going to be like being in one for the purpose of leaving from it. I feel bad for Jo. I know it’s not going to be very enjoyable for him! Everyone keeps telling me there’s nothing to it, that it’s not going to be as bad as I seem to be expecting it to be. I sure hope they’re all right!

I think I could have “breakfast” every meal of the day. I make a delicious breakfast quiche, and the best dern French toast you’ll ever eat (seriously). My favorite thing, however, would have to be eggs and grits, with a side of either toast with jelly/jam (strawberry or apple) or hash browns. Jo prefers the hash browns but we’ve run into a slight problem: we don’t have a toaster oven, and we’re not too keen on the idea of frying our hash browns. We’ve been asked what we want for Christmas by both of our parents and until now, I couldn’t really think of anything I wanted or needed. Until I checked out what Buy.com has on sale and found this: Black & Decker Stainless Steel Infrawave Toaster Oven.

Other than the name brand, I find the stainless steel very appealing. All of our other appliances are stainless steel, from the grill to deep fryer, right on to the electric can opener. It would match perfectly. Jo’s mom has sort of confessed that she’s gotten us a new slow cooker for Christmas, so I’m thinking that the toaster oven would be something my mom or dad could get us. It’s on sale for $59.99 this week, after the rebate. Plus there’s a chance the shipping could be free. My dad is all about saving money, so this would definitely be right up his alley in terms of not having to spend much on us!

It’s just after 1pm here, and I’m suddenly craving breakfast. Imagine that!

This Winter stuff is really getting old. What was once a favorite season of mine as slowly turned into the season I hate most. I think it’s the snow. Not that it isn’t pretty to look at, but it’s such a mess. We got a lot of it a couple of nights ago, and again last night. I just took a quick look out of my office window to see that it’s snowing yet again. Between it, ice, the cold and the time which sends the sun spiraling down over the horizon around 4:30pm each day.. it’s just so stinkin’ depressing!

We’re supposed to be running some errands later on, but I’m not looking forward to going outside at all. I’m also not looking forward to scraping all of that snow off of my windows and windshield. I can’t even see any of them through all of the snow.

Now I see why so many people questioned why Winter used to be my favorite season.

As for this rotten cold/flu I seem to be getting: it’s not gotten much worse, but it hasn’t gotten much better either. My throat feels like someone tossed a burning match down it. My nose feels like someone has shoved an entire box of tissues up it. And my head, the pressure. Time for Theraflu or something I guess.

I have my days and nights all messed up. Ever since I broke down with those sniffles, my sleeping schedule has just been so out of whack. Sometimes I sleep at night, sometimes during the day. I’ve slept a lot these last couple of days. I’m hoping that it’s not some nasty cold or flu creeping up on me, but I’m leaning that way. The worst part about it is that my energy level has dropped to almost nothing. It seems like a huge chore just to get up, get showered and get dressed. Whatever this is, I hope it’s over with soon. I absolutely hate feeling like this. I guess no one really enjoys this kind of thing though, do they?

I’m sitting here fixing to catch up on some emails now. I want to get through a bit of it before I call it a night.. again. We have some running around to do tomorrow, which I’m not really looking forward to considering the amount of snow on the ground right now. We need new windshield wipers though. The passenger side wiper broke off after all of the ice the other day. I think that’s partially my fault though. I left the wipers “on” when I shut the truck off earlier that morning. I wanted to let the truck warm up a bit before taking off, so while it warmed up, I scraped the snow and ice off the windows and windshield. At some point the wipers started going, which was around the same time I was scraping that area of the windshield. I didn’t think they hit together that hard, but it was apparently hard enough since it completely broke off before I got backed out of my spot. So, there goes about $20 on that. Jo’s wanting to stop in one of the stores here too, to look at work boots. The ones he’s been wearing are really hurting his feet. I’m wondering if it could possibly be something like Plantar Fasciitis or if it is actually the boots causing the pain?

I’ve been wanting to do some baking too, possibly some homemade cookies or something. I guess we’ll drop by the grocery store too before everything is said and done!

I haven’t had the best day today. It didn’t start out so bad, really. But as the weather turned into a rotten mess, so did the rest of the day. I’ve had terrible pains in my joints, which I’m sure makes me sound so old. I’ve also encountered more engine trouble with my Escape. We’re noticing similar things going on with the engine, like we had this past Summer. Then of course; the cats. They’re simply not behaving when it comes to the furniture, and especially the Christmas tree. I know they’re fascinated by all of the dangling ornaments, lights and Bella is quite fond of the tree skirt.. but “mommy” has had enough. Bella is so bad about trying to play with the ornaments and nibble on the tree. Jynx isn’t so bad, but she loves pouncing the tree skirt and often crawls under it. Jo has gotten on to Bella a few times about clawing the (new) love seat too. The spray isn’t working yet, and we’re waiting on the soft paws to get here. I think I’m going to take them both to the groomer and have their claws clipped down for now. I’m not sure if that will help, but it can’t hurt can it?

Well, I’m not going to let my entire day be ruined by all of these things, I’ve got my big girl panties (not
plus size lingerie) on - it will eventually pass! I’m going to finish up some design mock ups and get to bed shortly.

We could use some better indoor lighting around here, especially in the living room and my office. I often find myself squinting at my monitor, which I work in front of for about 6-8 hours each day. I’m thinking that a desk lamp will suffice for my office, but the living room would probably require 2 regular lamps. It just boggles my mind that there isn’t a single light fixture in the living room. None at all. The lighting must come from a) natural light from outside when the blinds are up, or b) from the dinning room and kitchen.

I would like to try and find a new desk this week too. That’s going to be quite frustrating because I’m looking for something like an “L” shaped desk with lots of space for a laptop and a desktop set up. I’ll also need space for a printer and tablet. Am I pushing it now? Probably. I’m going to have to keep to a budget, and really don’t want to spend more than $300. That sort of limits me right there though, because most of the desks that I’ve found that semi-meet my needs cost well over $400. Maybe it won’t be entirely hopeless though. I may do as a friend suggested and just buy two desk and put them together. Hmm.

It looks like I’ll be adding to my to-do list for this week. I don’t know how I’m going to get everything accomplished, but I’m going to try. It would certainly help to have 36 or so hours in a day though, rather than 24. Think of what could be accomplished then!