Weekend catch up, and a good night's sleep

photo courtesy of Carol Esther

This weekend is a catch-up weekend. Things have gotten absolutely out of hand around here!

Laundry is behind.
Bills are behind.
Cleaning is behind.
Bills are behind.
Yardwork is behind.
Bills are behind.
Joy is behind.

Are you noticing one issue that seems to be standing out repeatedly? The paperwork was piling up, I have had a couple of outstanding issues with my insurance company (and I don't mean outstanding in a good way!) and whenever I glanced at my Quicken files and my online banking center things just didn't seem right.

Yesterday I finally tackled the disaster area that is my desk and all of the receipts and bills that go along with it. Things still seemed out of whack. I was so depressed. Have I really been overspending that much? Did I really do that much school shopping? Should I have passed by the rambutan at the store?

I was in the final stages of bill paying, bleary eyed and tired, when I came to the paycheck stub that Pat brings home and dutifully puts in the receipt basket each week. It looked odd. It did not say "not negotiable" on it like the usual direct deposit stubs do.

Holy crap! I yelled, you brought home a check!

Then I found another one in the file drawer that I had missed.
Yikes! I would have found it in a couple of weeks when I reconcile my bank statement to my Quicken files, but let's just say I slept a little better last night than I did the night before.

To burn or not to burn, that is the question.

When I first started my blog my friend recommended that I use Feedburner to burn my blog. After some research and much confusion I signed up for a Feedburner account and away we went.

Shortly after that my blog stopped posting regularly to my Yahoo home page and I got really frustrated! I cancelled my Feedburner setup and went back to just blogging with Blogger. Then of course you know that the problem wasn't with Feedburner, but with my Yahoo home page. Today I went back to using Feedburner. One of the reasons is that I have had a request for email subscriptions which Feedburner offers.

Anyway, enough techno-mumbo-jumbo! In the upper right corner there is now an email subscription link. There is also a link to subscribe in a reader such as Yahoo or Google or whatever you may use!

Email me if you can't get through on the blog and you need further assistance!
hollisterjfinklefart @ yahoo dot com

It's good to try new things.

Today the boys and I went to the grocery store.

While I had my back turned, they put something into the grocery cart. They think this is funny. Today I thought it was funny because I purchased what they bought, called it an adventure, and made them eat it.

I don't know how funny they thought that part was.

When I turned to look at my cart there was an alien-type thing in a plasitc container facing me. Actually, It was a group of about ten alien-type things looking at me. the boys were laughing hysterically!

This is a fruit that was grown in Guatemala called Rambutan. The instructions on the package said to remove the hard outer shell. A paring knife sliced through it and it came off pretty easily. These are the shells of four pieces of fruit.

The package said it would taste similar to a grape. These were white inside but they had a rather large pit or seed in the middle. I put the nickle in the picture for size reference.

It was definitely different! Spencer suffered through his complaining all the while. When he was finished he asked for something else for dessert. I said he could have an apple. He took one bite and said that the apple tasted like a piece of fluffy chocolate cake after the Rambutan.

Wow! That's some fruit!

Technology is Awesome!

Right now I am cruising down the highway doing 70 (or so) miles an hour and writing my blog. Life is grand! The fam and I are heading over to Detroit to see my brother and his family for the weekend. Pat just got this super-fabulous item for his laptop. It is a cellular internet card. He was all anxious to show it off. I was all anxious to try it out.

So far it has been amazing! We were able to get some details on a CD that I rented from the library, check out one of our favorite blogs, and verify one of the character names from the Fantastic Four movies.

Somehow, I don’t think this is what Al Gore had in mind when he invented the Internet.

So long Yahoo!

I have used MyYahoo! as my home page for a really long time. It has been great! I loved the pretty backgrounds that I could choose. I loaded my home page with all sorts of fun little widgets and gadgets and links and well, all sorts of really cool stuff.

The day I really got excited was when I began reading my first blog. Cranky Fitness. It was so cool because whenever The Crab dished out new blog material, I was right there, ready to read, because I got a cute little picture and the first line or so of what she had published. Life was good. Life got even better as I began to read more blogs and could add them to my sweet little home page. I was happy!

Then, (cue sinister music) things got a little strange. I started my own blog and placed it on my home page, but wait...that's not my latest posting. Maybe I need to refresh my page. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Still not my latest post. Maybe it was just my blog. Maybe I set something up wrong and it was all the fault of MY blog. Unfortunately, I realized that nobody's blog was getting updated consistently anymore.

This week I have been migrating all of my web-ly possessions over to iGoogle.

See ya Yahoo, it's been fun, but not that fun.

pre-cooked veggies?

image courtesy of illiquid

We had corn on the cob for dinner. I set the pot of cooking water out on the porch after dinner so that it could cool and I could water some flowers with the water. Spencer and Ian were cleaning the kitchen when Spencer mysteriously disappeared!

When he came in I asked him where he had been. He matter of factly told me that he had watered the Z-bed with the corn water.

It was still hot!

We all got a laugh out of pre-cooking the veggies while they are still out in the garden!

My in-laws are awesome.

Well sort of. They have this great tradition that when one of them is eating at the other’s favorite restaurant, they call from the restaurant and rub it in. We get many phone calls from George’s Pizza in Austin MN. George’s is a family favorite and since none of us live in Austin any longer, it is always a “destination” to stop in and have some of our favorite pizza. This generates many gloating phone calls. The calls usually occur between the siblings, and I am kept out of the fray.

Recently, I was the recipient of a gloating call because one of the brothers was having cheese curds. We can’t get those here in Michigan. For the uninitiated, a cheese curd is a deep fried ball of cheese heaven. You may be thinking, oh I have had fried mozzarella sticks, it’s the same thing. No, it’s not...even...close. Cheese curds are WAY better! I love cheese curds. I didn’t need that call!

Once, many years ago, too many years to remember the number, my husband took me to a fair in Minnesota. “Let’s get some Tom Thumb donuts.” he says. “What’s a Tom Thumb donut?”, I ask. The crowd gasped. Well not really, but he was astounded I had never had one. Another regional item. I have been longing for them ever since. My love for Tom Thumb donuts came up in a phone conversation with one of the siblings recently. I was assured I wouldn’t get a call from some fair in Minnesota. Instead, today I got this package in the mail.



Notice the blurriness of the photo. I think I had the shakes!

Stale, who-knows-how-old, Tom Thumb donuts with instructions to add a couple of teaspoons of water, microwave, and inhale deeply.

What a creep!

How sick do you think I will get if I eat these things?

Happy Friday!

It's Friday night, the boys are gone camping. Time for a chick flick and polishing toenails. Yippee!

(No, those are not my actual toes!)

Divorce sucks.

And not just for the family members involved. Today I had divorced parents that came in to the company that I work for and totally sucked me into the misery that is their feud with one another. It made me mad! I was angry for about an hour because they were so inconsiderate. Then I thought about the kids that these goofballs have together and how they must run these kids through this nonsense on a regular basis. I felt sorry for them. It really made we want to put even more effort into my marriage. If not for my husband’s and my sake, then for our children. Nobody should be treated like that. Ever!

I am an addict.

Everyone who knows me knows that it is true. I get addicted to the regular things that other people get addicted to, but I also get addicted to other crazy things like scrap booking, computer games, rubber stamping, etc. Let me introduce you to my new friend, facebook.

It started out harmlessly, one friend request, it seemed simple. Before I knew it I was scouring my entire life looking for friends to send requests to.

Then I moved on to Flair. I was pretty darn excited to be so hip and knowledgeable to even know what flair was. What is flair? You are so uncool lucky you are reading this blog! Flair is this killer app item on your page where you collect buttons and put them on your bulletin board. My board is AWESOME! -note I even have Blogger flair!

Then I found out you could create your own flair! How cool is that! Pat had hired and aspiring graphic artist to design a logo set for us a long time ago. (Isn’t he amazing?) Our logo made great flair.

But then something very strange happened, I started to become obsessed! I began to see everyday objects in a whole new light, or should I say... shape! Suddenly, the pizza I was cutting for the kids wasn’t just a pizza, but a perfectly round object that could possibly become the world’s greatest flair!

“QUICK! GET THE CAMERA!” I screamed.

As I hovered over the pizza to get the perfect angle, with my starving children glaring at me, I felt guilty…as I got the perfect shot.

May I present the world’s greatest flair:
Peace o’ pizza.

The "Z" bed

Last night we had zucchini for dinner. While this may not seem like a big deal to you, it was a very big deal for me. The reason…I grew the zucchini myself! Ok, not completely by myself, Spencer and I planted the seeds together a few weeks back. We were kind of late in the season for planting, but we proceeded anyway and last night we were able to consume the fruits (or vegetables) of our labor.

In case you are wondering about the title of this post, a couple of weeks before we planted the zucchini seeds, I had planted zinnia seeds. The zinnias were stating to sprout, so we just inter planted the “Z” plants together and deemed it the “Z-bed”

Be careful what you wish for...

I said I wanted a clean house.

This is what I got.

Did I mention he had both knees replaced five months ago?

Gotta have tunes...

A "willing" helper. Really!

Was blind, but now I see.

A couple of days ago I got new glasses. They told me they looked good on me. I couldn’t tell.

When I picked them up I had my contacts in and just put the glasses on to be fitted. I had to keep my eyes closed because everything was a blur. A really uncomfortable blur. My eyesight is really bad!

Ian (a.k.a. my 13 year old fashionista) told me that they looked great. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “Not only am I telling you that you CAN wear these out in public, but that you SHOULD wear these out in public. They look great Mom.”

Wow.