Monday, January 01, 2007

Happy New Year! It's Raining!

I’m writing this entry out in Microsoft Word because now is the time I have to write and the rain is coming down so hard that we cannot get a satellite signal for the internet. Yes, folks, we live so far out in the middle of nowhere that we don’t get internet without a satellite.

Well, we could if we used dial up. And we did that for a while but it drove us all quite mad. And if the phone lines went, we were still cut off. So, now we use the satellite. It works great until there is very heavy cloud cover or rain. I should mention there is also the issue of uplink time. There is just enough lag with the thing that my husband is not welcomed to play on-line with the war games folks as they say his response time is too slow. We can, at least, play card games and such which we could not do with the dial-up.

I started back on Weight Watchers on Thursday but losing weight and getting in shape are two of my big goals for positive new behaviors for 2007. I joined the gym last week, too, but haven’t had an opportunity to use it yet. I’m hoping to go out there tomorrow. They are closed today for the holiday or I would be there now.

Ken is not out of bed yet, but promises me that he smoked his last cigarette last night. He has the nicotine patches and says he is going to “sacrifice” his last 8 smokes in some fashion today. I’m thinking the toilet would be a good choice.

John is off with his friend, David. He and David took off last Wednesday and we heard nothing from them until Saturday when I contacted my oldest son, Wes, who put out an all points bulletin with his friends. Someone finally got in touch with David. They were partying up in Baltimore. I decided that since he would rather spend time with his friends than with his family that his friends could take him to the bus station on Tuesday at 2 a.m. So, yesterday morning at 4:30 a.m. John tried to sneak into the house and gather up all his stuff. I woke up as it’s normally what time I wake up anyway and helped him gather up what we could find. He got his lecture and he left.

Of course, I found some more of his stuff scattered throughout the house and will pack it up and mail it to him sometime this coming week. I just hope he makes it back to Fort Gordon on time and sober.

Matthew is at a friend’s house but will be home later today. He and his buddies took advantage of the nice weather yesterday to go skateboarding up in Callao.

Went grocery shopping yesterday and spent just over $190. The cost of feeding this family is getting very bad. Fresh fruits and vegetable costs have nearly doubled in the last two years and the cost of meat is just ridiculous. Granted, I’m not the farmer at the other end trying to make a living; but unless you want to live on canned goods and dried beans and rice, it’s very hard to make a grocery budget that makes any sense. I do feel sorry for folks on a limited fixed income. These times have got to be very scary.

With John’s departure, I got my fiber room back and Ken carried Eleanor upstairs for me after I cleaned up his mess and vacuumed the floor. I need a small stereo up there. A little TV would be nice, too. But since it would have to hooked up to the satellite dish, this could get expensive so it probably won’t happen anytime soon. In any case, the wheel “faces” the door and sits in the middle of the room. It’s a small room, but it is really amazing how much space Eleanor occupies.

Hopefully, the drum carder will arrive tomorrow. (Maybe while I’m at the gym, so I’m not distracted from that mission). I teased out a lot more of Kate’s locks. I hate to say it but a lot of that fleece is a mess. It’s going to take a lot of patience on my part to really get a decent amount out of it. However, the price was worth the learning opportunity. And I still have about half of it to wash so there is probably more worth struggling with than not.

2007, here we come!

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