Kevin's Watch

Feeling pretty good today, picked my wife and kids up from the airport, and got to spend some time with them for the first time in 3 weeks

And they brought me some duty free cigs and booze - but they also brought me some grape fanta, which isn't available in the UK, and tastes sublime.

That's Fanta Grape mate, not grape fanta.

Anyway, yeah, OK, surviving...so much crap to sort out and so little motivation to spread around... *sigh*

--A

I'm not feeling so grand right now. I've had a very stressful week. Remember how I stopped in last Saturday and said that another wave of ice storm was coming? Well, it got here. And when it arrived it gave us another 3/4 inch coating of ice on everything, causing tree branches, tree trunks, and even electric poles to snap under the weight of the ice. We lost power at 7pm Saturday night, and were without it for 114 hours. Yes, 114 hours. My house got down to 44 degrees F (6.6 C) before I was forced to take my cat and evacuate. I was fortunate in that my friends in a neighboring city had their power restored after 50 hours, so I stayed with them, and commuted 30 miles every day to come back. My work was also without power for 2 days, which means that I lost 2 days of leave--against my will.

I also lost almost the entire contents of my refrigerator and freezer--three trash bags full of food.

Some pictures of the destruction and beauty (I can't take credit for the pictures--they aren't mine) :






Anyway, then tonight I opened my mail, and discovered that my online payment for my student loan (due the 1st of the month) somehow didn't go through, even though I set it up. This has never happened to me before! Now I have a late payment, and even worse, I'm not sure that I'll have enough money to pay the rest of my bills on time since the way my paycheck falls this time (I get paid every other Friday). And the worst part is that I checked my bank account the day after the payment was to go through, and I was SURE that I saw it had been debited. Now I know why there was a little bit of wiggle room in the budget. Bloody thing. . . it's going to take me weeks to get my budget straightened up now!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Okay, now that I am finished whinging about my life, I wanted to say that I am glad that Wadds and Creator are safe after the close-calls. And glad that Sea's father isn't horribly sick. And sending get-well thoughts to the sickies. . .

Incredible scenes! Very surreal-looking.

Sorry to hear your life's been turned upside down, Wyldewode. Wishing you a swift recovery from the mess!

Lovely pictures, but I'm sorry to hear about the money troubles, Lyr! Is there any way to call someone and tell them what happened so you don't have to pay late fees? With your track record of paying everything on time, I'd think they'd be able to work with you a bit... it's worked for me in the past.

Good luck Doll!!

(And I know all about the power thing... happened to us up in WA a couple weeks back... mine was only out for a short time, and we had a fireplace to keep us warm, but I can sympathize. )

Lyr -- if it was 44 degrees inside your house, I'm thinking the stuff in the fridge was pretty much okay. The stuff in the freezer woulda been toast, though. (Once, when we lived in Colorado, I took the kids on a winter-break car trip. I didn't bother with a cooler -- just left the food in the trunk....)

Great ice storm pictures!

Once, when I was still married, we had an ice storm the night before we were planning to go to the Christmas tree farm. The trees were beautiful and sparkly...but as we got closer to the farm, the ice coatings got thicker and it stopped being pretty and started looking like the trees were in pain. When we got to the tree farm, the owners were turning everyone away -- their trees were so brittle with ice that it would have damaged them to cut them down. Seems counterintuitive -- we were killing them by cutting them, after all -- but I suppose the branches could've snapped off when they hit the ground, or something. Anyway, we had to go back the next weekend to get our tree.

Oh yeah! Feeling okay today. We had some snow and ice yesterday, but I had zero problems getting in this morning, and work has been pretty okay so far today.

I feel better. I think I am finally over that stinkin cold. Now my only complaint is my lip/chin. I made a homemade batch of beef stew on Saturday and dished myself up a bowl and went into the living room and curled up in the chair to eat it. It was very hot so I was blowing on my first spoonful to cool it down and Moose jumped up in the chair and knocked my elbow causing me to spill the hot hot stew on my lip and chin which are now sporting blistery burns.

Moose! Bad dog!

Wylde...I love pic #1!!!

I am almost over my cold...just a hack remains!

A Gunslinger wrote:Moose! Bad dog!

Wylde...I love pic #1!!!

I am almost over my cold...just a hack remains!

Know how you feel. Took me a little over a month to get rid of the dammnd thing.

The thrill of having my children home again is fading (only kidding), but the feeling of eternal tiredness is returning quickly - if only Amy would sleep all the way through the night without one of us having to go into her room to get her back to sleep.The joys of parenthood.

The bags under my eyes are turning into suitcases again

Apart from that, work today was a pain in the ass, and that was nothing to do with the prisoners. We still haven't heard anything concrete about our payrise (which was due Oct 1st), and we had the draft pictures of our new "corporate dress" leaked today - It's a bloody farce, and if they think we will wear the sort of thing they've came up with, they have another think coming.
Bloody government, couldn't organise a p*** up in a brewery.

Ill. Woke up with a bad headache I thought at first might just be the usual I get when I stay in bed longer than I should, but later on it got worse and I threw up a couple of times.
Hadn't had anything to eat or drink all day, so I finally forced down a sandwich and some paracetamol a few hours ago. Now I'm a bit better, but the headache's still there; I'm going to go get some sleep once I've finished reading new posts here and see what I feel like in the morning.

Thanks, everyone! I think that things are going to get back to normal eventually, though it may take a little time.

Regarding the food, the insulation of the refrigerator actually kept the temp above a safe temp (warmer in the fridge than in the house). I wanted to err on the side of caution though, as I certainly don't want food poisoning.

And Wadds, for whatever reason the company had not assessed me any late fees yet--probably because it wasn't a month overdue yet. Anyway, it is an indication that I need to buckle down and track my budget more closely.

Also, after spending the better part of a week with the friend who will become my new roommate sometime in the near future, both of us are eager for me to move in--just as soon as my other friend moves out. She is currently seeking a place for she and her fiance to live, so it could be anytime from next week up until their wedding in April. I'm just ready to start a new chapter in my life--a new city, a new home, and hopefully a brand new job. I know it is coming--eventually!--but I am just impatient.

Ah. . enough about me.

Sorry to hear about the burns, Jenn. That has to be incredibly painful!
And Murrin, that sounds like a migraine. Hope it gets better soon.

I feel tipsy. I've been drinking cosmo's and I just got done watching Heroes while on the phone with a friend while narrating the entire episode to him AND explaining the whole back story. I think I did a good job... but it took alcohol to do it. And unfortunately, I think I missed some dialogs, but I probably caught more than I usually do, because I had to focus and tell him as many details as I could. It was good practice, and I want to do it again.

Since I'm moving, I'm trying to sell some stuff that I don't want any more, but I don't know how much to list it for on Craigslist... so any suggestions would be awesome. Here's the table I want to sell:
img.photobucket.com/albums/v114/sadpandaa/table2.jpg
img.photobucket.com/albums/v114/sadpandaa/table1.jpg
img.photobucket.com/albums/v114/sadpandaa/chair.jpg
img.photobucket.com/albums/v114/sadpandaa/leaves.jpg

It's pretty old (belonged to my grandparents) and definitely isn't in wonderful condition, but could easily be refinished, and is still a sturdy table, and has two leaves. So... what do ya'll think I should list it at? Even making 50 bucks would be nice, but... I don't know if I should try to ask for more than that...

And I have table cloths, too, but I don't know if I want to toss them in as incentive to buy the table or list them separately.
img.photobucket.com/albums/v114/sadpandaa/tablecloths.jpg

Anyway... I still feel buzzed from the alcohol... but that makes sense since I just typed that I was in the first place like 3 minutes ago. And I still have about a third of my cosmo to go. (I made it a little too strong, but at least I'll get to sleep quickly!!)

I'm so glad Lyr, that you don't have to pay late fees! Because they blow.

Ok, I'm going to finish my drink and surf craigslist some more. That thing is addicting.

I think that $50 is a steal for a solid wood table with that many chairs, but that's my take. If I were you, I'd decide what my bottom line was, and then list it just a tad above that. Only other suggestion would be to surf for similar quality table/chair combo and see what it's going for.

Good luck!

Feeling better. Woke up to snow outside--it's going to be bloody freezing walking in to my lecture in twenty minutes.
First real snow this winter, heh.

Feeling good... keeping an eye on the Pantheon game and in the meantime, surfing the web to find good rates for a plane ticket to go back home for a week-end, in mid-February. If only I could avoid taking more than 1 free day from work, that would be great...

Argh. I'm in autocad training all day....I swear, it's like training Lassie to fetch.

Healthwise, I feel rough. I've eaten something dodgy, or picked up a bug, or something. But that's far outweighed by receiving a load of offers from universities (i.e. "On the assumption you pass your current course, we'll have you"). Enormously cheered by that, I must say. University places can be quite competitive.

YAY! Good for you about the Uni offers! Keep up the fabulous work! Sorry about the physical yuckiness.