Back and Forth Across the Pond

When I saw I wrote a post on December 17, I assumed I wrote about our party. But it was just a link to us being elfed. That site is no longer available. Sorry if you missed it. And now I'll tell you about our party. Everyone had a great time. The big problem is we were expecting 33 people and only 19 actually showed up. A few people contacted us to say they couldn't make it, and I'm fine with that. Things happen. But a number of people didn't call. That annoys me greatly. Don't RSVP and then not show. The party was such a success that we've decided to make it an annual thing. We've already got plans for next year's do. We're trying to learn from this year's experience and make improvements. For instance, we're going to have it a week earlier. Yes, it puts it only nine days after Thanksgiving, but some people couldn't attend because of conflicting office parties. Chances are good we won't have that problem if we move our party up a wee...

Sorry for the lapse in writing. I've been vacillating between being really busy and really lazy. We had a very nice Christmas. The folks and Andrea came up here on Saturday the 22nd for a gift exchange. We spent Christmas Day at the folks'. We drove down and came back on the same day, which made for a lot of time in the car (especially when traffic on 95 came to a stop). But it was nice all the same. New Year's Eve was very quiet. Steve and I watched an X-Men movie marathon, pausing the DVD long enough to watch the ball drop at Times Square in New York. Steve and I have never managed lazy very well. We're both more prone to want to do things, so I'm surprised we accomplished our goal of lazy and low key. The problem now for me is getting back to being active. Especially now that I'm job hunting. In other, more exciting, news: We're going to England in April! Mum and Dad Ashton were planning to come here, but decided that they just didn't want to make the...

In five days, we're hosting our Christmas party. It seems like just yesterday that it was Thanksgiving and we had weeks to get everything done. Now it's just days. Still, we're in good shape. Thanks to Steve's tenacious work, we've got 95% of the outdoor projects and decorations done. I should finish the indoor decor today. But that's just the tip of the preparation iceberg. I've got several hundred cookies to bake, plus a buffet of party food. I've got two guestrooms to prep and freshen, because Andrea and a couple of her friends are staying the night of the party. And there's still a lot of grocery shopping to do. Before I can bake those hundreds of cookies, I need the supplies. But at this stage of the game, I'm not overly stressed. Yes, I'm going to be busy busy the next few days. But I don't think I'm going to be up at 4 a.m. the day of the party just to try and get everything done. I managed to host Thanksgiving dinner without a...

Remember that bruise I mentioned two posts ago? Although it remains uncomfortable, it's healing pretty quickly. The nice thing is I don't have the constant bruised feeling from before, so I think the treatment worked. The area only bugs me if it's bumped, which is to be expected of a bruise. Here are a couple of photos: This picture was taken Saturday night. The line to the left is my incision scar. The size of the bruised area is about the same as that of my palm. This was taken last night (Sunday). It's not nearly as red, anymore, and you can see the yellow halo where the bruise is healing. I'm hoping it will be healed enough in another couple of days that it doesn't hurt, anymore. I would really like to get back to sleeping on my stomach! Deanne

We've always wanted to have a pool table. When we moved back out to the house and decided to use the livingroom as the main seating area rather than the den, we decided to make the den into a pub room. As luck would have it, Sears was having a close-out sale on some of its pool tables and we were able to buy one for half of what we expected. It sat in its boxes for ages. Steve finally had time to begin building it the week before Thanksgiving. He finished it today. Here are photos of the progress: It took almost no time at all for Steve to put the basic frame together. This part was a bit more tricky. The cross boards had to be just the right measurement on the diagonals to insure the frame was square. Now Steve is adding the slatron surface. We couldn't afford a proper slate table. Slatron is just a type of MDF. It won't last as long as slate, either. It lasts about ten years. By then, maybe we can afford slate. The slatron is now in place. Adding the felt was another ...

I feel like this entire week has been wasted. I had been so busy prepping for Thanksgiving that I decided to take this past Monday off. I just wanted a day to myself. I took it and it was very nice. Unfortunately, Tuesday found me awakening to a sinus headache that lasted through Wednesday. I could do very little on those two days, because moving around made my head pound. The pain was gone by Thursday morning, and feeling revitalized, I got some work done. But I had to go into Jacksonville for my post-op appointment with my doctor. I didn't have a lot of time, so I barely scratched the surface of my To Do list. The midwife who works in my doctor's practice encountered complications with one of her deliveries, and my doctor went to assist. Steve and I ended up being in the office for two hours. I got a clean bill of health. He found about 4 mm worth of granulation on an interior suture line, which he treated with silver nitrate. Granulation is essentially where an incision or...

I finally had to give up with my idea of having a blog that was entirely housed on our own server. Our original one worked well, but then I lost the password and Steve's attempt to override it failed miserably. And our second one never worked right, regardless of the effort Steve put into it. Since my PHP programming skill is basic, at best, and Steve doesn't have a lot of time to try and get the thing working, I had to give up. So I went to Blogger to get one hosted there. As luck would have it, it's possible to have a blog hosted there, but tagged to your own domain. Steve set up a subdomain on our server, but it will be a few days for it to be active. In the meantime, I'll just use the Blogspot. Of course, this makes it sound like I have a lot to say, but I don't, really. Today is my birthday, but we've got nothing planned. It's just as well. I've had a sinus headache for the past two days, so I doubt I could enjoy myself. I certainly wouldn't enj...