It was almost a relaxing day. I didn't have a huge things-to-do list and we had no commitments. Actually, the only not so fun chore was touch up painting. But it was only a 45 minute job, start to finish. Okay, it was supposed to be a 45 minute job, start to finish. I had already taken out the quart cans of paint we'd bought years ago when we were deciding on colors. I had already determined which exact shades we picked and was ready to go. Somehow, when the paint dried, the touched up area was shiny and it was really obvious where I'd painted. It turns out that when we bought the gallons of paint they used a different base tint than we'd used for testing. It made just enough of a difference to make a mess. We ended up having to find the correct gallons and recoat whole sections of wall.
Painting Tip:
When you store paint, use a permanent marker and clearly label the can "hall" or "dining room". If you are going to keep your tester colors, label them "do not use for touch-ups". In fact, throw away old colors. If you paint your living room off -white and a few years later repaint it sandy white, they are similar shades and both correctly labeled "living room". Get rid of the off -white or label it "do note use for touch-ups". Taking three minutes to update labels could save you an entire afternoon of repainting your touch-ups.
Other than this small debacle, I had a relaxing day. I got my reading done, took Magic for a really long walk in this gorgeous weather and caught up on the phone with an old friend. (Hey, Old Friend, you haven't followed my blog yet!) Best of all, and here my true colors are showing, I found a wonderfully frustrating game on Big Fish Games.
Comment on Comment:
Matt, thank you very much for commenting on Farmville. Matt quit Farmville too and his comment makes me feel validated.
As soon as I e-mail this to all my friends who I am haranging to follow me, I am going to be watching the Rutgers Game. R! U!
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
The Dishwasher ALWAYS Needs To Be Emptied
Plans and real life don't always see eye to eye. My husband, BP, opened the dining room window and announced into the garden where I was sitting that he was starving. Being the accommodating person that I am, and fairly hungry myself, I packed up the books I was planning to read and we headed off to Jose Tejas, one of our all time favorite restaurants. We ordered a chicken and steak fajita for two with a side of guacamole. It was the best guacamole I ever ate in my life. Then, instead of coming home and reading, as long as we were in the neighborhood, we picked up some ice cream at the Dairy Maid and barged in on BP's sister and brother-in-law. The plan was to stay an hour. I'm guessing everyone knows how that goes. It went until 11:00 and when I got home I thought mostly about going to sleep. I didn't think about it that long, and then it was today.
The grand plan for today was to go to the beach, stroll the boardwalks through Bradley Beach, Ocean Grove, and Asbury Park, have lunch, and read/nap on the sand until about 4:00. Before all that could happen though, I had it in my head to get my reading done, and do some technical things that I don't really understand on this blog. I chose to get the technical stuff out of the way and I did it with a surprising minimum of frustration. But, of course, it took longer than I expected and it was the appointed time for leaving for the beach.
I took Magic, my black lab, out for a quick walk, and noticed the sky was cloudy. It was kind of cool and maybe a little windy. The beach is an hour away. We're having company tonight and we need to straighten up a little. The dishwasher needs to be emptied. BP's knee is bothering him. We could just stay home and I could catch up on all these little things.
No. The dishwasher ALWAYS needs to be emptied. There's always something to read and no house is ever completely mess free and devoid of things-to-do. So I put on my sneakers, packed one of the books for the beach, took a bathing suit and a jacket, to be ready whichever way the weather was going to go, and off we went.
It was a great day. I walked 13,000 steps. We had a really nice lunch at a place we thought was going to be a dive. Once on the beach we were graced with the companionship of a one-legged seagull. BP listened to a book on his iPod while I read a couple of chapters. Then I took a very little nap until BP started getting bitten by killer flies. They must have been alarm flies because the attack occurred at exactly 4:00.
We left. We came home. The mess was still there. The dishes were still in the dishwasher. We took care of both and now we're waiting for our company. It looks like everything got done, the fun and the mundane alike.
Tomorrow's Goals:
Live it up!
The grand plan for today was to go to the beach, stroll the boardwalks through Bradley Beach, Ocean Grove, and Asbury Park, have lunch, and read/nap on the sand until about 4:00. Before all that could happen though, I had it in my head to get my reading done, and do some technical things that I don't really understand on this blog. I chose to get the technical stuff out of the way and I did it with a surprising minimum of frustration. But, of course, it took longer than I expected and it was the appointed time for leaving for the beach.
I took Magic, my black lab, out for a quick walk, and noticed the sky was cloudy. It was kind of cool and maybe a little windy. The beach is an hour away. We're having company tonight and we need to straighten up a little. The dishwasher needs to be emptied. BP's knee is bothering him. We could just stay home and I could catch up on all these little things.
No. The dishwasher ALWAYS needs to be emptied. There's always something to read and no house is ever completely mess free and devoid of things-to-do. So I put on my sneakers, packed one of the books for the beach, took a bathing suit and a jacket, to be ready whichever way the weather was going to go, and off we went.
It was a great day. I walked 13,000 steps. We had a really nice lunch at a place we thought was going to be a dive. Once on the beach we were graced with the companionship of a one-legged seagull. BP listened to a book on his iPod while I read a couple of chapters. Then I took a very little nap until BP started getting bitten by killer flies. They must have been alarm flies because the attack occurred at exactly 4:00.
We left. We came home. The mess was still there. The dishes were still in the dishwasher. We took care of both and now we're waiting for our company. It looks like everything got done, the fun and the mundane alike.
Tomorrow's Goals:
- to get that reading done
- to touch up paint the house with the paint and brushes that I purchased six week ago
- to watch the Rutgers game
- to either walk, bike, or kayak
- to write
Live it up!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
A Brand New Blog for a Brand New Day
Happy New Year! Today just happens to be Rosh Hashana, so I'd like to send out my good wishes to those celebrating tonight.
I've been thinking about blogging for a while now, and today I decided on a topic. My topics are life and time as they go together. We all have the same amount of hours in a day. Some people make much more of those hours than others. Some people build financial empires, or at least mini-empires that provide wealth of varying degrees for themselves and their employees and the rest of their business community. Other people write and publish books that influence opinion, inform, and entertain the rest of us. Still others hold political offices and shape the course of events in their towns or states, or even the country and the world. So far, I'm not any of those people.
I am an urban middle school science teacher, and yes, I touch the future. I also make a great deal of contact with my computer chair as I play endless hands of solitaire, ponder the status of my fantasy football team, and religiously check in to train and feed my virtual racing frog. Back in July I made the decision that I can, want to, and should be doing more to enjoy life and contribute to the world at large. With a mercilessly stern hand I unfriended about seventy of my closest strangers and blocked both my virtual farm and my especially beloved and beautifully developing frontier. It took hours and hours and hours to collect the nails and paint to get that virtual schoolhouse up and running. And that, I realized, was a problem.
I could easily rattle off a list of things I like to do. I love long walks in the woods, kayaking, reading, writing poetry, and swimming in the ocean, but I haven't made time for these activities with any regularity. I have always admired people who get involved in issues that affect the lives of others for the better--people who organize clothing and food drives, who volunteer at homeless shelters, who run in charity marathons. In fact every single event that I have ever attended or heard of has been thought of and implemented by somebody. But I have never done anything of the sort myself. Okay, I make occasional runs to the Goodwill Thrift store, but I suspect that's more of a way to clean out the closet than it is a charitable donation. There are people who think about learning to draw, speaking another language, getting a master's degree, or figuring out a way to get paid to go to Antartica. That's me. Then there are the people who actually go out and do these things. That's who I want to be.
Today is a new day and my mission is to get out there and live. Work time is prescribed. Down Time, the time we spend outside of work, is when we live. For some people, the two blend together seamlessly. The purpose of this blog is to document my own transformation from someone who just kind of exists from workday to workday into someone who decides on how to spend each day and "does it". I am inviting, okay, begging, for anyone out there reading this to join me in making each day count. Please send me your comments on great ways to spend a life. Clue me in on the things you do to make a difference in the world or to make a difference for yourself and your family.
It's late afternoon and I am feeling productive. School is closed today and tomorrow. I got up early anyway and hiked the long trail at Plainsboro Preserve. I haven't done that in awhile and I was pretty exhausted by the time I got back to the car. I have been carrying a pedometer in my pocket for several years with the standing goal of walking 10,000 steps a day. I don't make it very often, but today I was over 9000 by 10:30. It was at about step 7000 that I came up with the idea for this blog. I'd like to say that I came right home and set straight to work, but the truth is that while I did go directly to my computer, I spent several hours messing around aimlessly before actually getting productive. I'm co-reading four books and as soon as I finish writing I'm going to turn to them for about 20 minutes each. They're all non-fiction, so it's kind of like studying different subjects in school. Tonight my husband and I are alone so we're going out to dinner at an undecided location. After dinner I'm going to draw a motivational picture of a potted flower with the caption "bloom where you are planted". It's from a Cursillo retreat weekend that I went to about 20 years ago. We drew the picture as a group activity and I kept it in my classroom for years because I liked the message. Then I went on maternity leave and the picture was gone when I returned. Yesterday I got it in my head to redraw it, and that's what I'm going to do tonight.
There's still about six hours of Today left. Let's live it up!
Donna
I've been thinking about blogging for a while now, and today I decided on a topic. My topics are life and time as they go together. We all have the same amount of hours in a day. Some people make much more of those hours than others. Some people build financial empires, or at least mini-empires that provide wealth of varying degrees for themselves and their employees and the rest of their business community. Other people write and publish books that influence opinion, inform, and entertain the rest of us. Still others hold political offices and shape the course of events in their towns or states, or even the country and the world. So far, I'm not any of those people.
I am an urban middle school science teacher, and yes, I touch the future. I also make a great deal of contact with my computer chair as I play endless hands of solitaire, ponder the status of my fantasy football team, and religiously check in to train and feed my virtual racing frog. Back in July I made the decision that I can, want to, and should be doing more to enjoy life and contribute to the world at large. With a mercilessly stern hand I unfriended about seventy of my closest strangers and blocked both my virtual farm and my especially beloved and beautifully developing frontier. It took hours and hours and hours to collect the nails and paint to get that virtual schoolhouse up and running. And that, I realized, was a problem.
I could easily rattle off a list of things I like to do. I love long walks in the woods, kayaking, reading, writing poetry, and swimming in the ocean, but I haven't made time for these activities with any regularity. I have always admired people who get involved in issues that affect the lives of others for the better--people who organize clothing and food drives, who volunteer at homeless shelters, who run in charity marathons. In fact every single event that I have ever attended or heard of has been thought of and implemented by somebody. But I have never done anything of the sort myself. Okay, I make occasional runs to the Goodwill Thrift store, but I suspect that's more of a way to clean out the closet than it is a charitable donation. There are people who think about learning to draw, speaking another language, getting a master's degree, or figuring out a way to get paid to go to Antartica. That's me. Then there are the people who actually go out and do these things. That's who I want to be.
Today is a new day and my mission is to get out there and live. Work time is prescribed. Down Time, the time we spend outside of work, is when we live. For some people, the two blend together seamlessly. The purpose of this blog is to document my own transformation from someone who just kind of exists from workday to workday into someone who decides on how to spend each day and "does it". I am inviting, okay, begging, for anyone out there reading this to join me in making each day count. Please send me your comments on great ways to spend a life. Clue me in on the things you do to make a difference in the world or to make a difference for yourself and your family.
It's late afternoon and I am feeling productive. School is closed today and tomorrow. I got up early anyway and hiked the long trail at Plainsboro Preserve. I haven't done that in awhile and I was pretty exhausted by the time I got back to the car. I have been carrying a pedometer in my pocket for several years with the standing goal of walking 10,000 steps a day. I don't make it very often, but today I was over 9000 by 10:30. It was at about step 7000 that I came up with the idea for this blog. I'd like to say that I came right home and set straight to work, but the truth is that while I did go directly to my computer, I spent several hours messing around aimlessly before actually getting productive. I'm co-reading four books and as soon as I finish writing I'm going to turn to them for about 20 minutes each. They're all non-fiction, so it's kind of like studying different subjects in school. Tonight my husband and I are alone so we're going out to dinner at an undecided location. After dinner I'm going to draw a motivational picture of a potted flower with the caption "bloom where you are planted". It's from a Cursillo retreat weekend that I went to about 20 years ago. We drew the picture as a group activity and I kept it in my classroom for years because I liked the message. Then I went on maternity leave and the picture was gone when I returned. Yesterday I got it in my head to redraw it, and that's what I'm going to do tonight.
There's still about six hours of Today left. Let's live it up!
Donna
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