Holidailies!

"And in January, I move into a Master's program."

Whee, congratulations to Melissa. Or one day to be called, Master Melissa!

Good thing I got up when I did. What with the shovelling guys and the Fed Ex and the UPS, it was a good thing I was dressed and mostly ready to answer the door.

The UPS guy bought Jeff's re-furbed hard drive. His work didn't want it, even though it was still covered under warranty, and could be fixed up for the price of getting an RMA and UPSing it back ($5.00). Sure, I'll pay $5.00 for a free 40GB hard drive.

The Fed Ex guy bought some new toys we ordered last week.

This is my old Palm Pilot Professional, about 6 years old now. My Mum's getting this one.

Sam is getting this one for her combined Christmas/ birthday presents for 2002 (her birthday is in May, and I still have to send her presents from at least last year. They're purchased and packed, I just have to repack them and get to the PO) This is the m105 model, still newer than my old Palm, but without an expansion card.

Unlike...

Ta Dah! 8MB of RAM (compared to my current 2), backlit, I can put in movie times and all sorts of cool things.

Still to come

Ebay is a wonderful thing. These are coming to me for $16.00, including shipping. I'm having one of the red ones, Jeff is having the other one, and Sam is having one (probably both) of the greens. The citrus, or as I like to call it, Bright Yellow, will be my spare. Reminds me of my Canary yellow Datsun Sunny. I must dig out a pic of her.

So, it snowed. And then it snowed some more. And continued to snow from 5AM til about 5PM. 6.5 inches of snow according to Pop's highly scientific take the ruler and go out the back and measure the snow piled up on the picnic table.

My car in my driveway. God only knows what this is doing to the leak. Hedge to the right, window boxes full of frozen plants to the left.		My driveway and the street. The green mailbox and yellow newspaper box on the left hand side? That's where the kerb usually starts.

Course, I didn't know it was snowing til Jeff came in about 7:00 to let me know. He had to leave for work at 7:30, instead of his normal 8:10, as the snow slows driving down considerably. (He got in just after 9:00, so it took him every skerrick of that extra 45 minutes to get there.)

I didn't go swimming that morning, as I woke up with the beginnings of a nasty cold. One that progressed throughout the day to coughing and hacking and snot. I just gulped down cough medicine and aspirin, dozing and answering the occasional phone call; Jeff to let me know he got in to work OK, Jeff to let me know we wouldn't be going to the Office Christmas Party (ack, no free lobster, no free lamb! Cough hack choke coffcoffcoff), Jeff letting me know the Office Christmas Party had been postponed til next Thursday (turns out one of the owners lives in Princeton, and wouldn't have been able to come, and if she's going to be springing for the food, she damn well wants to be there. That's me paraphrasing of course!), my fitness center to let me know my evening class had been cancelled and would be reschedule for a day next week. (other than Tuesday or Thursday nights, cause that's when they are anyway)

The Christmas Party trifecta has become two oncers. The card club last night, the Christmas Party next week. Friday night's is more a semi-social obligation, one that Jeff doesn't really want to do (he's not a big social animal) and I'm sick, and would more than likely not have fun.

Dozing through fever dreams. I had the TV on, so the shows kept invading my dreamspace, and then I had a dream where I got up to check out the thumping in my top room. It was Adelaide, taking big hunks of flesh out of a live seagull. When I looked down, the other beasties had also been busy, the floor was over run with squirrels and chipmunks, baby birds and snakes. Anything that could crawl of fly was in my top room, and as I'd opened the door, about to invade the rest of my house. I woke up before that happened and decided that was enough of that, and I'd get out of bed and check out the snow.

Arbor vitae given to me at my US wedding shower in July 1998. We've potted and repotted it every couple of years, and a couple of years have decorated it in lights as a mini Christmas tree. Thought it was part of the hedge when I first took this pic. It's never been under snow like this.
		Gently removed the snow from the branches, dusting it off and not allowing the branches to snap up or make sudden breaks, and it worked.

Jeff had mentioned, mostly in jest, that I might like to clear the driveway of the snow. I was about up to making myself some scrambled eggs and sitting upright. Scrambled eggs are my main comfort food. 2 large eggs,salt, some milk, 2 cloves of fresh garlic, sliced, whisked together til it's blended, then cooked in a bit of butter for the taste. Cooked until the eggs are still soft around the edges. Slice a tomato into dice, fold that through, scarf it down. Warm for my throat, soft for my throat, good protein energy booster and it just tastes really good. I'd have it on toast, but nothing scratchy for my throat.

A couple of guys (one in his late teens, the other early 30's) knocked and asked if we'd like our driveway clear for $10. I checked with Jeff, he's particular about his driveway (me, I'm not that bothered so long as I don't fall down), and offered them $20 if they'd do the front concrete porch bit as well. It took them a good half hour, I gave them one of my shovels to use so they could both be working on it. Hard work, well done, so I gave them $30. Was going to tip $5, but really, it's hard, cold work that I didn't want to do, and giving them $2.50 each extra just seemed.. cheap somehow.

We leave food out back for the strays, there's a few that hang around. This beastie is called Blind Cat. He's not completely blind, but you can tell getting close that he just really perceives you as a shape, and is more attuned to the sound of you. He's getting used to us to the extent that he'll wait outside in the morning for Jeff to put the dry food out. We dump out into a pot base, the last nights dry food that our beasties didn't finish, and he scarfs it up. This is taken through my back kitchen door. He didn't see or hear me, else he'd have bolted. Which is what he did when I had to open the shed door to grab the shovels for the shovelling guy.		Renee has suggested (She's kidding, people, kidding!) that I start a blog for Adelaide. As those people do when they have or are having a kidlet. I think that would be a trifle more indulgent than I want to be, but I'm still going to be posting a pic of her a day. She's just such a sweet cat. And a Gumby cat at that, she arranges herself in the weirdest of positions, things that don't look comfortable at all, and sleeps that way. I don't think she knows what her actual name is, as we mostly refer to her as "Hey Cutie!". I should start using her name, I have no desire to be calling out "Hey Cutie!" when she starts to venture outside.

Jeff got home in a reasonable time, the same amount of time it normally takes him, so the roads are mostly cleared now. He spent the night feeding me with whatever I fancied (chuggets, while he had the full meal, porridge while he had nothing) and telling me to go to bed.

My commitment to Holidailies being firm, I started to write this, and then couldn't get a net connection. Turned out, the snow had started to cause Verizon problems, and I have no net connection, so this'll be posted when it's posted. For once, I didn't yell at them. Snowstorms and weather is an acceptable excuse for a net outage. I'm reasonable, especially since I have my email routed through Dreamhost, so I know that was all fine regardless.

I'm going to borrow from Dorothy R, with my bulleted list of things I should put in an entry at some point;

• swimming, bathers, and going down a size
• Jeff's birthday and the three cakes
• JournalCon 02
• Syd
• Plin Con
• My birthday
• China Outlet & Garage
• Saving the house next door from burning down
• Debt collectors pissing me off
• Christmas Parades, gallons of hot chocolate and more house fires
• 3 years of photos from Walmart
• My amaazing deals at the Goodwill.