Memos, Mail & Me: On The Road Again

Linking up with Sian and all the Mondayers...

I went to Belize with my sister Deanna

- we both were desperately in need of...

... some away time

... some down time

... some disconnected time

and Belize was just what the doctor ordered!

Visiting the Mayan Ruins at Xunatunich

It was fantastic! We spent most of the time just chilling and getting to know the staff at the resort. Except for the one day that we did a day tour to the mainland - hiked the mayan ruins at Xunatunich, zip-lined through the rain forest, and went water tubing through a cave, and came home physically exhausted but emotionally exhilirated.

And could barely walk for the next two days! We exercised muscles that have likely gone long unused. But it was what my spirit needed to refresh. Just what the doctor ordered.

But the doctor would have advised against this....

Got this my last day at the resort while sitting in the shade, under an umbrella... not just a sunburn, but some kind of rash on my legs and tops of my feet... possibly an allergic reaction to the kelp we waded through for all of about 30 seconds... itched, burned, stung for days.  I came home May 1st and the rash is finally gone, just sunburn remains, waiting to peel...

And now it's May 8th and I'm on the road again - back to Rockville and Baltimore for work.  And suddenly I'm not dreaming of away time... can you believe I'm dreaming of just staying home for a bit?

Mail?  Just bills and sales flyers. 😒

Memos, Mail & Me - Life is Full

Yes, I've been noticeably absent again.  😞

March went by so quickly.  And then I blinked and we were 3/4 of the way through April.  How did that happen?

I've written to you all dozens of times in my mind. Somehow making the time to get here and post just doesn't happen even when I have stuff to say.

I miss blogging.

I miss YOU.

I can't make any promises that I'm really back... but I'm trying.

March was a banner month at the Andrews household.  Really and truly.

Rachel found a new job at a really good starting salary for a recent college grad working for Entercomm in Bala Cynwyd.  An honest-to-goodness full time job with a salary and benefits!  She started March 6th. After her first day driving into the city and back, she came home and announced that she was OVER the commute.  Three weeks later, on April 1st, we moved her into an apartment in Manyunk.  An eight minute commute to work. She has her own bedroom with a private bath, but shares the common space with three other young women.  It's a nice place - not great parking, but she's happy to be in the city and that's what matters.  She is now really on her own for the first time and it is scary and exciting and frustrating and fun all at once. And her support network is a mere hour down the highway.

My orchid plant blossomed - which seems to happen every other year.  But the flowers are gorgeous this time!

On March 17, after FOUR. LONG. YEARS. of searching (while employed at a soul-sucking slave labor IT job for a company that makes a practice of purposefully demoralizing their employees), Jay was offered a new job which he started on April 10th.   It is similar work and similar pay as what he was doing, but so far the new job is super laid back and his boss seems pretty nice.  So yay!

Then, on March 23rd Becca FINALLY got her letter from Lehigh Carbon Community College and she was ACCEPTED (YAY!!!) into their highly competitive Physical Therapy Assistant program. They get like 200 applicants a year and only accept 35. She will start in August. And we are breathing a collective sigh of relief ... because Becca has both A.D.D. and generalized anxiety disorder, the waiting for an answer so that she knows where her life is head next was stressing her out big time. The girl absolutely requires routine, consistency, and long-term planning to stay sane. But now we know and she can move forward. She is so excited and we are all pleased and so proud of her.

I bought myself sunflowers for Easter.  

We had unseasonably warm temperatures back in February (yes, it has been that long since I chatted with you all), but then along came snow storm Stella in mid-March and dumped nearly a foot in our neck of the woods.  Our very confused daffodils, which had started shooting up way too early, were buried.  And yet...

After the snow cleared, they still managed to flower, although the heads were laying on the ground.  April 14th.




















We also have a profusion of these:

I don't even know what these are, but they came up on their own several years ago and have multiplied each year.  Now they look like an intentional planting, in big bunches in the front shrub bed.

Over the last week, Spring has really taken over.  All the trees are leafing out, the flowering trees are filled with blossoms, it is all so pretty and green... and yet, I've felt oddly disconnected from it all this year.

I leave on Wednesday morning for a girl trip with my sister Deanna.  We are headed to a tropical island.  We are planning to sit in the sun, read books, walk the beach, and generally just take it easy. As a plus, there is truly limited internet access and I won't have cell phone service as I'm not activating an international plan.  So I'm hoping this will be just what my soul needs.

Memorandum Monday - a post without a photo

I did have something "new" happen to me over the weekend. But it wasn't pleasant.  You'll be glad there are no photos.

I was driving down Route 33 headed to Saylorsburg - Jay and I were on our way to one of our favorite flea markets. Less than a mile from the exit, I saw a flash of grey and heard a "thwack" against my windshield (at 60 miles per hour). The sound literally made me feel sick in the pit of my stomach.  And then I just started sobbing.  I don't know what kind of bird it was. There was nothing I could have done to avoid it, as it flew right into the windshield.  After nearly 40 years of driving with a clean record, killing nothing more than the bugs that splatter against the windshield on the highway, I experienced my first nature fatality at my own hands.

As we arrived at the flea market and parked, I was still crying. I hope nothing like that ever happens again because it honestly felt awful.

On a happier note, we had a great flea marketing weekend and I hope to catch you all up soon on what is happening with The Shop these days!

Memorandum Monday

I spent last weekend in D.C. visiting Sarah.   We drove down Friday morning.  New things I did on Friday:  saw the movie "Alliegant" and went to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum.  There I saw:

A Concorde jet. I learned that these planes catered to first class customers and could carry 100 passengers across the Atlantic in less than 4 hours.  I wish that were true of the flight I'll be taking in July!  Alas, the Concorde fleet was retired in 2003 and this plane was donated to the museum.

The space shuttle Discovery.  I learned that the Discovery completed 39 missions between 1984 - 2011 before it was retired.  Seeing this thing up close, it is really much larger than I had imagined it would be, although my husband tells me much of the space was a cargo hold, not areas for the astronauts.

There were so many other interesting aircraft - WWI fighters,  military helicopters, racing planes - a very interesting stop!

On Sunday I went to a new to me flea market - in an indoor parking garage structure in Arlington, VA!  Interesting flea market, but the parking garage is dark and made it difficult to really see all the goodies.

Joining in with Sian and all the Memorandum Monday folks. 

Memorandum Monday

To:  All My Blog Friends
From: Cheri
Date: March 28, 2016
Re: Your Health

I have been reading Grain Brain by Dr. David Perlmutter.  It follows closely with Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis that I read a few years ago. Both books espouse the theory that our grain-laden diets (and especially the GMO grains) are responsible for a myriad of medical problems from type 2 diabetes and obesity to skin conditions, headaches, and a host of inflammatory diseases. Grain Brain goes beyond the physical conditions and claims that grains and sugar are responsible for (or negatively affect) conditions such as Alzheimers, Parkinson's, bi-polar disorder, and even ADHD.

I'm not that far into the book, but this past weekend I read that studies as far back as nineteen years ago (and the book was published in 2013, so even longer than that) showed no correlation between high cholesterol levels and the incidence of heart attack or stroke. In fact, Perlmutter claims that people with high cholesterol levels (240+) fared better on memory and cognitive testing and had lower incidence of dementia than people with low cholesterol levels.  Say what now?   Yet, the medical and pharma communities are still pushing us to eat low-fat, low-cholesterol diets and to take statins if cholesterol levels hit over the 200 mark. So glad I passed on that statin prescription last year!

As I said, I'm not that far into the book, and I'm not taking it as gospel, but it is a strong reminder as to why I went to a Paleo lifestyle several years ago and a reminder that I need to get back to it. Unfortunately the convenience (grab and go) of grain-based products always seems to pull me back.

Today, Cathy Zielski shared this article on our FIT group.  It's a very condensed version of some of the same thoughts if you want a quick read!

recycling an old photo to add some happy to this post!

Joining in with Sian and all the Memorandum Monday folks. Hope you all have a healthy and happy week!

Memorandum Monday

Linking up with Sian and all the other Memo Monday folks!

My weekend was pretty routine.  The one thing I did that was new for me was spend TWO HOURS on the phone with my daughter Sarah.  She is a bridesmaid in a wedding this June and has tapped me for creative help planning the Bachelorette Party.  She had a theme and ideas, I just helped flesh them out and volunteered my crafting services. But TWO HOURS non-stop on the phone - WOW!

Saw this on St. Patrick's Day. It literally only lasted a few minutes. But it was gorgeous while it was there!

Memorandum Monday (Tuesday Edition) - The Computer Saga

Linking up with Sian and all the other Memo Monday folks!

My story for Memorandum Monday goes like this.  On February 23, after doing some work on my home computer (which was my OLD work laptop hooked up to a large monitor and full size keyboard and still running Windows XP), I went out to the grocery store.  When I came home, my screen was black. I tried rebooting -  nothing.  Jay came home and ran some utility, but was unable to "see" the hard drive.  On February 24 he took the laptop apart and ran the drive through some reader machine. Still nothing. Diagnosis - catastrophic hard drive failure.  UGH.

Now two things I should tell you right off the bat - First, this did not affect my External Hard Drive which has all of my digiscrap supplies and photos on it. That drive was still fully functional. Hallelujah. And second, I wasn't terribly worried about the rest of it as I've been running "BackBlaze" on my computer for several years - since the last time I had a hard drive fail and had to learn the hard way about the importance of a back-up service. I knew that my files were backed up and should be retrievable through the BackBlaze online service.

Thankfully, I had my current work laptop, which has most of my "stuff" on it, so I was able to stay operational, albeit not in the ways to which I was accustomed.  I had to access home email through my webmail account which had none of my email folders, archives, contacts, etc. Which meant if your comment on a blog post came through without your email attached, I had no way to reply! And trying to complete layouts on my laptop screen was .... excruciating.  Which is why I ultimately quit the LOAD challenge without finishing out the month.  On the 24th I downloaded my backed up files from Backblaze - the biggest "issue" I faced was that all the work I had done on Excel spreadsheets for The Shop was a week out of date and I had to recreate the last week worth of work, which was actually a lot, but I got it done.

On Sunday evening, February 28, Jay finally pushed the "buy" button for my new computer. And then the waiting game began.  I waited. And waited. And waited some more.

And that, my friends, is the very long back-story to all the new things I learned in the last week.

My new computer finally arrived on the evening of  March 10. Check it out - That big silver and black box next to my monitor is my new HP Envy 750.  Jay & I both thought the new box would be much smaller - so not!

On Thursday night, after Jay unboxed and booted up the computer, I installed PSE13.  Yes, PRIORITIES ladies. Or else, just that it was something I knew how to do and was comfortable with.  I tried to install LR5 but ran into a snag with serial numbers and had to email the support group to get the serial number. I learned to write the serial number ON THE BOX so you don't have to look for the paper you saved it on or the old email (to which I still did not have access) where it might have been.  On Friday March 11, having received the errant serial number, I installed LR5 and learned how to import my old LR catalog so that all my photos with all the tagging would show up. Ta Da!

At this point Jay still hadn't ordered or installed any Microsoft Office product and I was wanting my email back.  So I went online and after conferring with him, ordered Microsoft Home and Business, downloaded, and installed the program.  Having access to Word and Excel, I began moving the personal files that I had downloaded from Backblaze to my work laptop onto my new computer. Using a thumb drive and moving 2-3 gigs of data at a time.

On Saturday, having gotten tired of waiting on Jay to set up my Outlook email account, I got online and learned how to set up .pop and .smtp email accounts - all by myself. AND I learned how to import my Outlook .pst backup file into the new account.  As if by magic, all of my old email and folders were restored! Hallelujah!  Yes, I'm a bit proud of my very non-techie self on that account! I'm only missing whatever email had downloaded to my computer on the day it died.  The rest of it was safely in the .pst back-up or still on my webmail account awaiting download. And I learned to set my webmail account to hold copies for two weeks after download before deleting from the server, so I won't have any missing emails again!

I also learned that I save a lot of stuff I really don't need. Being without all that back-up email for over two weeks, I realized that there was very little of it I would likely ever refer to again. And transferring files, I found stuff I hadn't opened in years and no longer had any need for. Which meant a fair bit of purging, but I feel very good about that. A little less digital clutter in my life!

I'm slowly reloading other programs, getting screens set up the way I want, and learning my way around Windows 10, which is VERY different from the Windows XP interface. Today I learned how to move my Backblaze account to my new computer and start the back-up process all over again. That was a lot of learning for one week!

Lest you think my entire weekend was consumed by computers, it wasn't.  My mother had given Jay & I a gift certificate for Bucks County Playhouse for Christmas.  We went on Sunday (an otherwise grey and dismal day) to see (NEW to us) the final showing of "Defending the Caveman"   The only thing I knew about the show is that it's a comedic play about relationships between men and women.  I didn't realize when booking the tickets that it was a one-man show. And I'm not sure what rock I've been living under, but the show has been running for 16 years and I had never heard of it.  Turns out it was great! We had great seats in the second row. The actor for our show was Vince Valentine, a Philadelphia native, and his version incorporated references that only folks from this area would understand.  It was hilariously funny and informative and we both laughed a lot.  A totally enjoyable experience.  Thanks Mom!

Memorandum Monday - You've Got {HAPPY} Mail!

Joining in with Sian and all my fellow Memorandum Monday-ers.  What "new" thing did I do last weekend?  Well, I had a very special surprise when this showed up in my mail:

Sian has knitted me the prettiest pair of striped socks! The foot part fits perfectly and the calf part is nice and slouchy loose - they may just become my new favorite sleeping socks! (yes, I am one of those people who wears socks to bed until the weather turns to sleeping-with-the-windows-open warm).  The socks were so prettily wrapped up in their little cuff, I almost didn't want to open them. But actually wearing them takes precedence and that cute little paper cuff with the washing instructions will likely find a home in my Simple Album as a remembrance of some very special happy mail.  THANK YOU so much Sian! I love them!

Memorandum Monday & LOAD 13 - 16

Back again to play along with Sian's Memorandum Monday!  I missed last week because, well, LIFE. You know, it has been totally kicking my butt lately.  

Valentine's weekend we had temps in the single digits (think -15 for you Celsius folks). It triggered a fibro flare that left me tired and just plain miserable. I even missed creating & posting a LOAD layout for Valentine's Day. I was too tired to go out for dinner. Yuck. Honestly, I was ready to throw in the towel and call LOAD done for the month.  But I spent Monday creating two layouts and got myself caught up.

Work has been stressful too, with a copyright infringement issue that I just can't seem to get resolved. So there's that.  And all the tracking and careful eating and keeping up with things that I do all week just seems to fall apart on the weekends. 

This past weekend was a bit milder (thank you!!!). Jay and I made it out to several thrift shops and an indoor flea market and had some interesting finds.  And I learned that just because someone tells you something belonged to their grandmother doesn't mean it is old!  We bought a totally kitschy "Betty Boop Diner" indoor/outdoor thermometer, which, upon research, is being sold today!  Ah well, it still looks good at the shop, so live and learn! I actually learn new things about old stuff nearly every weekend as we purchase and research things for the shop. When I have something truly interesting, and can remember to save the links, I'll share!

 Frame Cluster is "Memory Keeper" by Kimeric

 Quick Page from Bohemian Beauty Collection at Sweet Shoppe Designs

 Happy Birthday Template from Cindy Schneider with modifications.  Sarah's Sweet Sixteen was on my list of "Five Faves" last March that never got done. So I finally get to check another one off that list!

 Using Kimeric's "Picture Perfect kit.  Another School of Life album page done.  I'm nearing the finish line of the K-6 album pages!!! I only had to change out one photo to make a similar page for Rachel.

Memorandum Monday & LOAD 6-8

The weekend saw an unplanned visit home from college for Becca - she was just homesick! Of course, that had a ripple effect, from which I learned... if all the weekend plans get changed, the stuff you bought to make dinner works just as well the next week! That saved me from having to go grocery shopping today which was a very good thing - as I had an eye doctor appointment today - the one where you have your eyes dilated... and I learned - it is very hard to do computer work with dilated eyes.  I now have a massive headache.  Another lesson learned!

 I loved the email from Goodreads telling me what I had read in 2015 and was thrilled to turn it into a page.

 Cathy Zielski's template said "Slice of Life" - a little creative photoshopping and it was perfect for this layout!

 This story was on my Fave Five list last year - now it is finally scrapped! And it took two pages to do it justice.

Memorandum Monday - The Blizzard of 2016

I spent my weekend watching the snow pile up outside. Quite literally.  It started snowing here around 6 p.m. on Friday night.  When I awoke on Saturday morning, the window in my office looked like this:

We had such high winds that the snow blew through the window screen and was stuck between the glass and the screen.  It is still working on melting out as I type this.

And yes, it was this grey and overcast ALL. DAY. LONG.

The sliding glass door from the sun room to the deck at 9:45 a.m.  At this point we already had nearly a foot of snow.

Same location, 3:30 p.m. There were no lulls in this storm.  It was either snowing lightly or snowing heavily all day.

 At 6:06 p.m.  From the inside, that second line on the window is 28" from the floor.  But immediately outside, there is a step down, so the deck itself is about 6" lower that the inside of the house.

Final shot - 8:45 a.m. on Sunday.  The snow stopped some time during the night. All told, we got 30"  with blowing drifts that were easily 4 and 5 feet tall.  If that were water and the deck could contain it, we would have a swimming pool!

Obviously we can't open this door!

What I learned:

• weather forecasts can be wildly inaccurate (our area was in the band that was supposed to get 6-12")
• Perkasie had the highest accumulation in Bucks County PA.
• 30" of snow means multiple times out shoveling and snow blowing. 
• I am EXTREMELY grateful that Jay is the one who handles all the shoveling and snow blowing!!!  Here he is with the snow blower around 4 p.m. on Saturday. You can see the snow is up to his knees as he clears the sidewalk!
• A day stuck at home when you are fully prepared is really a lovely thing.

And finally - check out what came in the mail on Friday (before the snow thankfully).  This beautiful calendar from Carola.  I'm going to enjoy all these scenes from the Oregon coast during the year!  Thanks Carola.

I'm playing along with Sian's Memorandum Monday.

Memorandum Monday - Sweethearts

I'm playing along with Sian's Memorandum Monday.

I spent my weekend at a crop retreat. And the week preceding it purging my scrapbook supplies and making up page kits so that my time at the crop would be productive and worthwhile. I never really had a chance post-holidays to get back into any kind of routine. That starts today. Life should finally settle back to some semblance of normal.

Something new I learned this weekend:

1. If you really spend the time pre-planning pages for your crop you can:

• take a lot less stuff with you
• get a lot more pages done
• have time leftover for other things

I actually finished all of the paper pages I had brought to work on and did a digi page from scrap as well! That left me time to update my planner, keep up with my Simple Abundance reading every day, get to the hotel gym twice!, keep up with my online classes, and do some light reading.

2. The weight it took you two full weeks to lose can be regained in just three days - despite getting to the hotel gym and making the best choices you could from the foods available. Ugh.  I guess pizza and coke just can't be part of a weight loss plan.  Bummer.

3. Did you know that the Valentine's candy "Sweethearts" has been around since 1866?  

Apparently the original version was much larger and had long flowery messages.

The current miniature hearts with short messages first appeared in the early 1900's.

What's even more interesting is how the messages have changed over the years. Who knew???

I used to love getting these candies at Valentine's as a kid. Now I wouldn't be able to tolerate the taste - but they are still fun!  Did you get Sweethearts as a kid?

Waving hello to all the Monday-ers!