I’ve been sequestered away in Santa’s Workshop. That Santa, man, he’s a taskmaster.
First it was the gifts, then it was the gift wrap.
I was able to take a break to see the best Christmas present this year.
I am pleased to introduce Harper Elise Wood.
Everyone is healthy and doing well.
Now back to work.
I got a haircut….first time in nearly 16 months.
…in Richmond with Kim & Leslee….a trip to Babies-R-Us to return boy themed things because Kim just found out she’s having a girl! (and to think, we only got lost once!)
I spent Saturday afternoon with Leslee and we ended up having an impromptu sewing session at her house. I had picked up some leather scraps and was trying to make journal covers with them. It didn’t work out how I wanted but it was good practice working with leather. I have a better idea of what to do to get the result I want now.
I love to watch Ghosthunters on SCIFI channel on Wednesday nights. It fascinates me. The new season starts next week and to work up to it, they’ve been showing 4 hours each Wednesday for the past few weeks so I’ve been catching up on all of the episodes I’ve missed because of Lost and Mythbusters. I have never had any paranormal experience of my own and to be quite honest I’m not sure I would survive it if I did. I am however, constantly seeing things out of the corner of my eye, something that happens quite a bit on Ghosthunters. I always look to see what caught my attention and it’s never anything of any merit, Milo being the #1 culprit. Needless to say, I spent several hours last night immersed in the night vision world of Ghosthunters.
I begin each day at work with my breakfast routine. As of late that includes some fruit, yogurt* and a bowl of oatmeal. I have a one cup coffee maker that I use to heat the water for my oatmeal and it sits on a small table at the end of the bookcase next to my desk. This morning as I settled in to check e-mail while I ate my oatmeal, I notice something out of the corner of my eye. Having left Milo at home, I turn to see what, if anything, it was only to find two little black eyes peering back at me from the wall above the coffee maker. Startled to find something actually there, I jump in my chair as the eyes disappear behind my bookcase.
I am honestly not afraid of mice, however I figure it’s probably wise to have it removed. I’m feeling rather selfish this morning wanting to neither share my food nor catch an infectious disease. I pick up the phone to call our Maintenance Crew only to get voicemail. As I hang up the phone I notice that The Little Black Eyes have inched their way out from behind the bookcase again. I turn my head to look to get a better view but they disappear again. I decided I’d give it a few minutes and call back, it was kind of cute.
At this time in the morning, there’s only 2 of us in the office. My co-worker who is here with me is absolutely terrified of spiders so I figured I better make her aware of our furry visitor. I also let her know I was waiting to get in touch with the Maintenance Crew and she offered to send an e-mail for me. While we waited for them to arrive, The Little Black Eyes kept peeking out from behind the bookcase. Every time I turned to look they disappeared. It was beginning to be rather comical and I found myself giggling about.
Realizing I should probably take inventory of the food I keep in my desk and make sure everything is actually sealed and put away, I notice our furry visitor’s calling card lying on the shelf around my coffee mug. I take it to the bathroom to clean it along with the bowl from my now consumed oatmeal. When I return to my desk, The Little Black Eyes had gotten brave enough to come out from behind the bookcase and onto the table with the coffee maker. Once I rounded the corner of desk though they scooted up onto the wall and back behind the bookcase. The peeking and the hiding and the giggling continued for several minutes while I finished catching up on my e-mails.
When the Maintenance Crew finally arrive, they’re empty handed. I had expected them to bring implements of some sort; a trap, a box, a broom, something, anything. But no, no, the only thing that came with them were stories of killing rodents with various type of fire arms and fear. Yes, fear. One of the two men is actually terrified of mice. I fill them in on the little game we had been playing and that it hadn’t happened for a while so The Little Black Eyes may have moved on. I start moving my things out of they way while Mr. Fearful comes behind my desk and ever so carefully peers behind my bookcase, ready to turn and run if he sees anyone looking back at him. Mr. Firearm is on the opposite site doing something. I’m not even sure what anymore because I was too busy laughing at Mr. Fearful.
The wall on that side is one of those cloth covered cubicle walls. When we moved into this office we got all the left over wall pieces so the bottom of my wall has lots of holes in it where electrical boxes and wiring used to be. As I am clearing out my things I notice The Little Black Eyes go running by one of the open spots. Mr. Fearful runs away and Mr. Firearm starts poking in the wall with the end of the feather duster we keep but never use. The Little Black Eyes come out from the wall and run right pass them both under the one desk and into the maze of reports laying on the floor of the first cubicle when you enter the office. Mr. Fearful suggests we open the door so it will run out on it’s own. “The exterminators have traps out there”, he says.
As we open the door a Loss Prevention associate just happens to be walking by. With all of their cameras and observation equipment, Loss Prevention has their thumb on the pulse of everything that goes on in this building. “What are y’all doing?”, she asks. We explain and she suggests we use one of the dust pans on a stick and sweep it up with a broom to contain the very fast, very small animal. She leaves and prompty returns handing said implements to Mr. Fearful. He turns around and begins entering the maze of reports on the floor of the first cubicle. The Little Black Eyes run right pass him back towards my desk. Mr. Fearful screams like a little school girl.
Unable to locate The Little Black Eyes, Mr. Fearful and Mr. Firearm surrender their weapons. Suggesting as they leave that we keep the door open all day in the hopes it runs out on its own.
My co-worker and I get back to our desks and settle into our morning job duties. I’m finishing up my breakfast and we decide we’ll leave some food out to see if can catch The Little Black Eyes that way. She comes down to my desk to chat while we have a hearty laugh at Mr. Fearful’s expense. While she’s standing there, she sees The Little Black Eyes come out from under the printer table and head towards my desk. A moment later they’re peeking out from behind my bookcase at the basket I put my breakfast leftovers in. I move very slowly towards the piece of cardboard I’d set out to put on top of the basket when The Little Black Eyes take off. They go down the wall, straight pass the desk next to mine, pass the maze of reports on the floor of the first cubicle and straight out the door into the wide open expanse of the warehouse where the exterminators have traps. My co-worker and I go out there to see if we can tell what direction it went in but The Little Black Eyes are no where to be found. We promptly shut the door to our office.
The adventure and excitement of our furry visitor now over, we get back into our morning routines. As I’m typing my e-mails and keying my reports I’m finding myself continually looking over to the wall to see if The Little Black Eyes are staring at me. They’re not and it kind of makes me sad.
When our boss and another co-worker arrive, we fill them in on the happenings. My boss knows Mr. Fearful outside of work and it turns out he took a 22 gauge shotgun to a mouse in his home and shot out a major water line in the process. Oh, we just laughed and laughed. I think it’s going to be a good day.
*yogurt: Yogurt is freaking complicated. I went to pick some up while shopping this week and was overwhelmed by the selection available. There are varieties to treat every malady suffered by the modern woman. I wanted a low fat, naturally low sugar raspberry (fruit on the bottom type preferred but not required) yogurt, preferably with active live cultures. I was not able to find this mythical yogurt. I fear it may not exist. I settled on something that tastes like I’ve taken a box of Equal, added some raspberry flavored drink mix, tipped my head back and dumped the whole thing in my mouth. Suffice it to say, it’s nasty (and I could have said simply that but I hear some you love my metaphors!). I think I’m going to have to buy plain yogurt and add my own fruit. There are some delightful frozen raspberries out there. I’m remembering now this is why it’s been so long since I’ve flavored yogurts.
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My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Her Eminence the Very Viscountess Joanna the Unhyphenated of Much Madness upon Avon Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title |
We need a new vehicle and are finally in a postition to get Nathan’s dream car - a 15 passenger cargo van. See, we have this thing called a band. Bands have things like people in them. People in bands have stuff like drums and guitars and amps and keyboards that they carry around with them. We want our band to be able to travel in one vehicle and since a motorhome (my choice) is out, we’ve settled on the cargo van. We think we may have found what we want, a lovely little gold number in our price range, not too far from home. This morning, we had the following conversation.
N: Can we get a vanity plate?
J: I thought you didn’t like them. What did you have in mind?
N: TLVS
J: Are you serious?
N: Yes, that way when pull into a show people know who we are.
J: Uh, ok.
N: And then if we get a ticket the ticket will say TLVS and then we can take a pitcure of it and use it for band stuff.
My first guest contribution to another site was posted today! Crafty Daisies posted my Papermaking Tutorial….please check it out (and comment, comment, comment!!)
I got to spend a weekend at the beach with my closest girlfriends. We rented a little cottage a block from the water in Colonial Beach, VA. Even having just taken a week off from work I still relished the time away. We happened to catch the Potomac River Festival so there was plenty to entertain us in the tiny golf cart community that Colonial Beach turned out to be. There were parades, an arts & craft show, a carnival and fireworks.
I’m the only Fall birthday in the bunch. Everyone else celebrates in the Spring and Summer so I saved my presents for this trip knowing full well that I would never be able to wait for the rest once one had been given away. So the May birthdays were a little late, the June were right on time and July was a little early! I had the idea to make fairy charms with the fairy representing a fun take on what each of them means to me. I used a photo of a group of girls on a beach trip in 1956 so it just naturally fit with the project! I do need to say, ladies, you should really know how much you mean to me because I used the original photo for these! Here’s how they turned out……
Maria is my Imagination Fairy because she’s always there with a creative story about Milo. He has the most incredible adventures when Maria’s telling the story.
Leslee is my Giggle Fairy because she is absolutely hysterical but only because she practices every morning in the mirror while she’s getting ready.
Kim is my Internet Fairy because she can look up anything faster than anyone I know. She spares me a lot of aimless wandering about in the Magical Internet World.
Sarah is my Periodical Fairy because she gets the most amazing selection of magazines and catalogs at her house. There’s always something new to browse, shop or read.
Christy is my Absentee Fairy because she not only moved away but couldn’t come on the trip. She loves elephants and I miss her.
In Christy’s absence, a new friend Wendy got to come on the beach trip. Wendy is great fun and I know I loved having her join us! A wide variety of pictures from the weekend are posted in my flickr…please enjoy!
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