I'm transferring part of my MySpace blog to here - mostly the "blunders" part. You'll notice I have a lot of blunders in my life. But we have a lot of funny stuff happening in our family too.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

That Stuff

I have a problem sometimes trying to remember words when I'm talking to people. Most of the time the conversation will have something to do with whatever is happening at the time. For instance if I'm cooking dinner and I need salt for a recipe, I might ask Bill to hand me the salt, but I'll forget the word and I'll say something like, "Will you hand me that stuff there?" He has no idea what in the world I'm talking about. It makes sense to me, though, because it says "salt" right there in my recipe.

The other night I told Bill we were having shrimp for supper. Sam, one of the twins, hates seafood, and most everything else unless it's chicken nuggets or pepperoni pizza.

Bill loves to "mess" with me, so not knowing that the twins knew about the shrimp, a little later on he told Sam to ask me if we were still having that "stuff" for supper. Sam's immediate response was, "Dad, I hate that stuff."

Now Bill thinks the twins and I have this other language going on. Turns out, the whole conversation "messed" with him!


Sunday, November 26, 2006

Thanksgiving Shopping

Well, I did it! This is the first year that I decided to bite the bullet and go Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving! What an experience. I might do it again next year, depends on the sales.

This year my introduction was to Toys R Us. I don't know if that was a good choice or not. They had $60 MP3 players for $30 and a Robo Sapien for $30, both of which the boys wanted.

My step-son Sam went with me. He'd set his alarm for 4, but it went off at 3, so he was awake/asleep for an hour. I got up at 4:11, got dressed, went in and woke him up. He was already dressed.

We pulled into the parking lot at 5:18 and never in my life would I have believed how difficult it was to get a parking spot at that time in the morning. Finally, we found one, I parked and we went into the store. Bedlam! First off I found a clerk and told her I needed only three items, where were they? She directed me to the other side of the store. In Toys R Us merchandise is set up so that you can't cut across the front of the store to the electronics department. No, you have to go around to the middle of the store and then across, and in this case, crossing through all the checkout lines. We finally make it to the right area, fighting our way, elbow to elbow. When I ask the clerk over there where my items are, he tells me they're over on the other side of the store where I just came from! Luckily, I argued, telling him that the clerk over there sent me to him. He double checks, and sure enough there is a Robo Sapien right there under his nose. I take it and go on to get the MP3 players. Apparently they're sold out of the advertised ones already, but have substituted another one, supposedly better.

Now we have to pay for them. But we have to go to the back of the line. So we follow the check out line throughout the store, believe it or not, all the way to the back and then to the front at the end of the line. We stand in line for almost an hour. The people in front of us are getting cell phone calls from their friends wanting to know where they are because they've already checked out. Apparently they got to one of the registers before it was roped off.

We finally get to the front and pay for our items and head over to Staples where they have flash card drives for $14.95 and USB sticks for $8 (definitely good buys). We quickly find that these items are being handed out, one to a customer. And I get one of the last ones left of each. We're in line there for probably another 30-40 minutes. They sell out while we're there.

Sam is hungry so we walk over to Wendy's which is closed, and the next place is McDonalds. I think I even don't like McDonalds for breakfast anymore.

I've got something in mind to buy David, my older son, something and so we head over to Penney's Home Store, but there's no parking. I drive around the lot and end up parking close to TJ Max and remember that they might have that jelly that comes in pretty glasses that can be reused. I've got only three and I want more. As it turns out they do have the jelly now (they didn't my last three visits). Sam and I look around in there for a while and then check out. Then over to Penneys. I don't find what I'm looking for there, but Sam finds a blanket he likes and it's only $8 - I buy it.

Then on to the Mall. I understand it's been recently remodeled and I want to see what it looks like. I go to the shop and find David's present and then to the candle store to get some candles for myself. And of course, I can't leave until we visit Auntie Anne's for their cinnamon-sugar pretzels and lemonade.

By this time I figured that I'm getting tired and it's noon. It's time to head home, but on the way, we stop by Lowe's where they have the 8-drawer tool chest for $88 - another good buy. The first sales associate sends me over to his left and down some aisles - no chests. I ask further back in the store and they send my from Aisle 00 to Aisle 16 all the way to the front of the store. Believe it or not, the associate there takes me back to the door where I walked in and there are the chests right there in front of the entrance door. It would be really funny, but by then my feet are really hurting! Oh, well, what do they expect for probably $5 an hour employees.

I thought I'd include a nice little shot of Sam while we were at TJ Max's that I took with my phone. I love the picture.





Friday, April 27, 2007

Shrimp Scampi

Last night I fixed Shrimp Scampi for supper. 11-year-old Sam hates seafood and wouldn't touch a bite of it.

Today the boys came home from school and immediately wanted to know what we were having for supper tonight. I told them that we were going to have "Food! Isn't it wonderful? We don't have to starve!" I was a little humorously sarcastic I thought.

After watching American Idol Gives Back, William, Sam's twin brother, tried to remind Sam that a lot of those children in Africa would have loved that Shrimp Scampi. And Sam said, "Well, send it to Africa then. Send a letter with it and tell them to dig in!"

Thursday, June 21, 2007

he somehow got "saved"

12-year-old William and Samuel's big brother Lyle came by on the "spur of the moment" last night and asked if they could go to church with him and his girlfriend. He stated that it was a "revival." So Bill and I said "sure." He said they'd be home around 8 or 8:30 which was okay as they'd still have time for showers and bed.

Around 8:30 they came back in and William who is the talker and story teller, came in all excited:

"I don't know how it happened, but somehow we got 'saved' tonight."

We asked what happened and he was only too glad to tell us.

"Well, a couple of little old ladies came up to us and asked us if we were 'saved.' We said no and they just started bawling and crying. So we had to walk down front in front of EVERYBODY! We had to get down on our knees and everyone started praying around us. They were really loud and everybody was crying and hollering."

I said, "I thought you got saved three years ago at Vacation Bible School." But Bill asked them how they felt about that and they both said it was okay. William said he didn't really feel much different, but Samuel said he got a "warm" feeling inside.

Bill said, "Well, that's really nice. Now maybe you guys won't fight with each other so much."

You should have seen the shocked look on William's face as he cried, "What!!!!????"


Monday, July 09, 2007

Eureka Springs trip

We're back from our trip to Eureka Springs. We spent a night at the haunted Crescent Hotel again. This time we took the boys. They were excited to get to witness (maybe) ghostly activity. We took hundreds of pictures while we were there (a benefit of digital cameras and 1 gig cards).

We got there about 3 p.m. and checked in. We were on the second floor again, this time Room 205. The ghost tour would have cost $70 for all of us, so we decided to forgo the tour and do our own tour (plus we figured we could buy the book and save a bunch of money). And having stayed there before and visiting several times, we kinda knew most of the stories.

The first time we stayed, I woke up in the middle of the night hearing a child cry. When I mentioned it to the staff, they told me there were no children staying there that weekend; and after making fun of ghosts in the dining room, the French doors that were locked open, shut banging on Bill as we were leaving the restaurant. So we had interesting experiences the first time.

Then in November 2005 we were there for a visit and while I was purchasing a book in the gift shop, Bill took this photo of me. He swears that it has not been photoshopped. Notice the eye underneath my hand, and the orange glow just above my hands. The tall black thing on the counter is a lens for my camera.



After visiting the hotel lounge, around 10 p.m. we took our cameras and went ghost hunting. It's hard to tell if we get any good pictures until we get home and get them up on our computer. Bill looked at his first and found these green dots in several images (this one is of me and the boys walking down the hall); they are near the bottom of the picture on the left-hand side of the hallway. (All the "anomolies" were only in this one hallway.) He uses a Canon 10D.



So, as you can imagine, he was pretty excited to get these anomolies. Then he set about to take pictures that were "set up" - the boys walking during a long exposure to get a ghostly effect.

After we looked at his pictures, we looked at mine. I didn't see anything in my pictures until I came to the same hallway. This is what I captured:



The very same anomolies captured with two different cameras - mine is a Canon 20D. And I can swear that these are not photoshopped in any way whatsoever other than reducing image size.

I got the same anomolies in a picture of the front of the hotel later on that night, they are under the two middle windows on the bottom:



Maybe somebody can explain it.

Oh, then in the middle of the night Bill did encounter a "ghost." He got up to go to the bathroom and since there was streetlight coming into the bathroom he didn't turn on the light. As he was leaving the bathroom, he was shocked to see an image standing in front of him; so much so that he "cried" out! Then he couldn't figure out how to get out of the room. Turns out it was a full-length mirror on the door. It's funny how even though we like to say we don't believe in stuff, when we're in a situation where we "might" encounter something, our emotional being takes over our intellect.

The next day we took the boys on the different trolleys that run through the town and ate at a local restaurant. I would advise that you read your receipts really good. The menu said that a gratuity would be added for parties of five people or more; There were only four of us. Our bill was $74. We didn't feel the service was all that great so we only left an $8 tip. When I got home and was adding the receipt to my checkbook, I found that they'd already charged a $10.75 tip, so in reality we paid over $18 tip for service we really didn't care for - plus the food wasn't all that good either.

We visited the Passion Play site where William laughed at himself falling on his Heelys and hurting himself while he was looking at the "big Jesus."

We went to Thorncrown Chapel which is an awesome place - a chapel built in the woods. All the construction is of steel and glass. There are 425 windows and over 6,000 square feet of glass in the chapel. I would love to go to a service there. We first saw it when we were on our honeymoon, but it was closed. This is the first time in all our trips that the chapel was open and it was definitely worth the wait!





Then to top our trip off, as we were checking out, the staff offered us a kitten that was born there at the hotel. As much as I wanted a Crescent Hotel kitten, we said no. We left and the boys kept pestering their Dad until he finally relented and we turned around, went back and got "Casper" the kitten. We're not sure whether Casper is a boy or a girl, but he/she has two brothers now, Sparky - the dog, and Speedy the cat.



All in all, it was a wonderful trip that did not last anywhere long enough.


Monday, August 27, 2007

camera

Okay, I just read through my blogs and the last one (which is really the first one) said something about mailing my camera in.

Explanation:

When Bill bought my 20D for me, he also purchased a warranty agreement which supposedly covered camera cleaning. It’d been a year and I figured the camera needed cleaning, besides it had these funny spots on my pictures. Now I’d never owned a digital camera before and I didn’t know about "dust spots" on the sensor, so I sent the camera in for a cleaning.

Being that it was a fairly expensive camera, I also purchased insurance for the box as it was being mailed. So, I enclosed the $10 repair plus insurance which was about $20-$30 (really expensive, I thought). I get to the post office and mail everything off feeling very proud of myself that I had packaged it so well.

I get home and do some stuff around the house and decide to go check my e-mail at the computer in the kitchen. The desk is a little cluttered what with the mailing supplies, etc., so I’m cleaning my desk off, putting stuff away. I put the tape in the tape drawer, the pens and pencils away. Move the pictures to where they’re not taking up a lot of space, place the phone back on the phone stand and put the coffee cup in the dishwasher. Move the camera to the camera bag and put it away.

I’m reading my e-mail and all of a sudden it hits me! Move the camera to the camera bag???!!!!???

What DID I mail in that big stuffed box? Well, the check, the copies of the warranty info, the papers I printed from the internet site that gave me my claim number! But no camera!

I had to make another trip to the post office and mail the camera in again, purchasing insurance again!

Don’t you just love it!