This is my life

I'm trying to decide whether I should walk up to the No Frills (it's about 1K) to pick up the sour cream I forgot to buy earlier (what's baked potatoes and fresh, from-our-garden chives without sour cream, after all?), put my fizz-pop away and wait an hour and drive up, or just do without.

It's awfully hot to walk. I don't really want to put my drink away. I'd really like sour cream with supper.

Since this is the biggest decision of my day, my life does not suck. *g*

It awfully hot out, though.

Work Days off: 10
Number of emails in my inbox: 6132

It's gonna take my spam filter hours to sort them, before I can even start.

It's gonna be a loooong day.

Torchwood, Yum!  I think I'm gonna have to make a "fights like a girl" userpic for Gwen, 'cause she kicks ass  Watching this in full HD was really, really pretty, but I kept getting distracted by Eve Myles' freckles.  I didn't know she had any, before this. *g*

( spoilers for Torchwood 3x01 and 3x02, Children of Earth )

I spent the day yesterday outside, gardening, planning new gardens, moving around the BBQ, doing some weeding, talking with the neighbors...

Y'know what? It was a really good day. My legs are tired today (mostly from crouching to weed - making our front garden as wide as we did may have been a little short-sighted *g*), but they're a good tired.

We're still trying to figure out the best kind of shade tree for the back corner, though. Our backyard faces west, and so it really really hot in the afternoons. We'd like to add trees for shade, but anything that's big enough to actually cast shade is prohibitively expense, and we'd like it to be shade-casting in less than 20 years. So, oaks and maples are out. *g* We were thinking maybe a black walnut or possibly a peach tree, but I'll have to do a little research on growth speeds and heights for those. I loved the walnut trees out at M's old place in Cambridge, so that seems a good way to go - as long as the combination of 10-year sapling we can afford + length of time until it actually casts shade isn't too out to lunch.

I'm impatient, I know.

Life is good.

Apparently, I'm emitting a "hard-drive fail" field while here at work. I've just crashed my 2nd hard drive since Christmas; once again, my puny little 5 year old 80G drive is back in my machine and I'm running virus checker and Windows updates so that I can get back to work.

Are Dell computers allergic to Seagate drives for some reason? Stupid machine only has room for a single hard drive in it, so in order to give me more space, they bought me a nice big 500G drive. Actually, they've bought me two, now, and I'm guessing there will be a third one on the way eventually. I'm getting really, really tired of having to rebuild my working environment, though.

At least all my important files are either on the network drive or on the Linux development machine. It's just my local environment I keep having to re-create.

Sigh.

8:30 on Monday morning and I already want a do-over on the day.

First off, I spent 25 minutes trying to convince Havoc to eat. He's on an antibiotic for an infected tooth, and he has to take a pill 3 times a day. The pill was in the food; he had to eat before I left. From now on, M's gotta feed him before he leaves for work - Havoc'll eat for him.

So, I was already late for work.

Finally Havoc ate, and I went out and got in the car. Turned the key, and... nothing. I noticed that the door didn't seem to be latched when I opened the it; I'm guessing the door wasn't closed enough to turn off the light, and I didn't notice on Friday. So, I'm now waiting for CAA to show up and give me a boost, and I'm now really, really late for work. *sigh*

Can I go back to bed, please?

On the plus side, I can now test the Dreamwidth cross-posting utility. *g*
ETA: The cross-posting works like a dream, including after-posting edits. Whee!

I've finally gotten an Dreamwidth invite code - Yay!

Now, do I spend the afternoon as planned, watching the Dr. Who Easter special (which requires me to hook the laptop up to the TV), or do I spend the afternoon sitting on the porch, in the sunshine, setting up my account the way I'd like?

Decisions, decisions. *g*

'Twas a bit of an up-and down weekend, at least in terms of my mood.

For the first time since I moved to Ontario in the fall of '89, I'm not going home for Christmas. Surprisingly, I've been okay with this, so far. The last time I tried to stay up here Christmastime (about 10 years ago), I was a wreck by now, so unbelievably homesick that I ended up getting a ticket (on points, thank God, since first class seats were all that was available for love or money) 2 weeks before Christmas and going home anyhow. Things are different now, though - I have my own home, I have a partner I want to spend Christmas with - I've been looking forward to Christmas, here.

And yet, for the past week, I've been saying "I've got to get the gifts wrapped and in the mail", and then procrastinating. Oh, I had reasons to procrastinate - first all, I didn't have them all. *g*

Saturday, I finished my mail-away shopping. Then, Saturday night I set out to block the shawl I'd knit for my Grandmother. This was were things started to go wrong. Somehow, someway, in a brand new shawl, finished all of a couple of weeks ago, I managed to break the yarn. I was spreading the shawl out on the bed, trying to find enough room to pin out the points, when all of a sudden I saw this stitch, just hanging there, with no anchor on it. I thought, at first, that I'd dropped the stitch while knitting, and somehow managed to not unravel the whole thing shawl down. But then I looked closer, and the yarn the row above the un-engaged stitch was broken. The row above that, one of the two plies of yarn was broken. I finished pinning out the shawl, putting a pin through that stitch, so that it could dry, anyway. I don't think it's repairable, although I am going to try to darn it, somehow. This really disappointed me - it's a nice warm soft merino shawl, shaped so that it won't slide of her shoulders - I thought she'd really like it.

Our original plan for yesterday was to go up to one of the Christmas tree farms nearish to us, and cut our own tree. The extreme cold yesterday kinda kiboshed that idea, though.

Then, I finally figured out why I as procrastinating so badly on the wrapping front. This is the first year that I'm mailing the gifts, instead of bringing the gifts. I think this is the first real, tangible sign that I'm not going home, and I'm putting it off. Once I clued into what was happening, M & I decided to go get out Christmas tree yesterday, after all, although we did go to the local Lion's Club lot rather than to cut our own, as a concession to the cold.

M put the tree up as soon as we got home, and only one potted plant was broken. *g* It's a Douglas fir, and it's huge - we figure it's about 10 feet tall! We left it alone overnight to fall out, so it's not decorated at all yes, but I think it'll be pretty. *g*

So I finished my mail-away wrapping with the scent of pine in the air, and somehow, that made it easier. My house smells like Christmas, now...

What a lovely day it is outside.

We were up and out early, tackling the snow piled up in our driveway. Now, normally, I'm not a huge fan of shoveling snow. This morning, though? It felt like a block party. It's such a beautiful day outside, and everyone was out, talking, laughing, helping each other out. I met more neighbors today than I have in the the three months since I moved in. The kids next door were having a ball, using crazy carpets to go down the banks into the yards, having snowball fights, just pushing each other into the snow. This is starting to feel like a neighborhood, and I think it's gonna be a good one.

There's something about the sound of a bunch of kids screaming in laughter, even at 10 in the morning, that just makes a day seem brighter, y'know?

I'm a little late (today's been insane, but more about that later), but...

Happy Birthday, neeuqdrazil! I hope you have a great day, and the coming year brings lots of good books, lots of laughter, and lots of snuggles. *g*

Happy Birthday, the_real_crispy. I hope you're having a great day, and the coming year brings nothing but good things.