Ack! I have not been paying attention, but on March 8th, I completed year 3 of sheila365.com’s photoblog! The first year I faithfully posted a photo-a-day (March 8, 2010 – 2011). The second and third years were not daily, but close to it. And after all this time, I still look forward to posting. But, I enjoy much more looking back on my own posts from time to time to remember the moments I captured.
I am amazed and happy to report that I have 180 followers (thank you!) and I have amassed nearly 15,000 visits, and 1100+ comments. This aint the New York Times, but it is my very own soapbox to share an interesting thought or two. I’m glad you are all here to share them with.
In keeping with past years, here is a collage of the moments I’ve shared from year 3 of sheila365.com…
We went out for monte’s birthday-eve dinner tonight, because we will be on the boat tomorrow night. Birthday boy’s choice: stone crab at truluck’s. yum!
We had a bit of a late start for dinner. But it was worth the wait. Monte whipped up some pizza dough and Julie and I were on toppings duty. We played a few rounds of rummikub – a fun tile game that’s a mix of rummy and dominoes. Try it. You’ll like it. That goes for the pizza or the game. 🙂
Yesterday afternoon I was pulled into a critical situation with a client (aka a “crit sit”). This usually means 24/7 phone calls with a dozen or more people from all corners of the planet to diagnose what caused a problem in a client’s IT environment, and then fix it. So it’s been a long day or two… and will be a long weekend.
Monte, Julie and I hit the lake today. It was a nice day, no wind to speak of, but sunny – temps in the low 70s. We motored to Arky South, anchored and played rummy for a bit.
We attended the graduation of my cousin’s son, Zach, who graduated from Air Force basic training today – an honor grad. He is starting in the footsteps of his father, but I’m sure he will craft his own way. He is now a U.S. Air Force Airman, and is on his way to great things. It was really nice to be a part of the huge contingent that came to support him.
Today is the last day of my vacation. Tomorrow it’s back to work for me.
My day started with a mimosa and ended with a glass of champagne — with this absolutely gorgeous sunset squeezed in between. I snapped this as we headed to BB Rover’s for a quick dinner.
Monte and I have discovered the Showtime series called The Tudors. We don’t have Showtime, but BBC America is broadcasting past seasons’ episodes via cable. Yesterday and today have been a marathon session of season’s 1 and 2. I found seasons 3 & 4 on Amazon Instant Video, so we can stream them for free at our leisure. 🙂 Speaking of leisure… I can’t wait til Friday!
For a week or two near the end of every year the shop outback becomes Santa’s Workshop. This year, Santa gave me some beautiful, hand-cut wooden beads for stringing, made out of walnut.
Today, the first day of 2013, I pulled out my box of beading supplies and tools and set out to make something with the walnut pieces. I ended up stringing together a bracelet. I like how it turned out.
We celebrated the evening with friends. The murder-mystery theme was fun. It was set in 1969, so the costumes were a bit … far-out, man. I was Enya Goddard-Daveeda, high priestess of the Church of the Vacant Mind. My costume instructions were to wear all white: gogo boots, flowing robe & miniskirt. Can you believe I found knee-high white platform-heeled gogo boots that laced up the back?!! Thank you Goodwill!
It is fun to get a little silly. And we did.
As is the custom, Monte played Auld Lang Syne on the saxophone at midnight, and everyone sang along. We also played an encore out on the front lawn just to make sure noone was asleep.
I don’t exactly know what my resolutions are. I do know that I want 2013 to be a year with a little more peace, love and understanding. I guess we’ll have to figure out what we each should do to make that happen along the way.
We, in the modern and developed “first world,” enjoy luxuries that are inconceivable by those living in developing “third world” nations. In the real scheme of things, any woes that we complain about related to technology are nothing more than noise. But it doesn’t make them less annoying because of that…
Our latest first world problem: when I use the treadmill, our DSL modem drops its connection to the internet.
Ah yes. Quite a quandary. A recent development — and an unacceptable one. Imagine the fun we’ve been having trying to talk to AT&T about it for the last few weeks to get help with troubleshooting. So we’ve been trying to debug our modern conveniences ourselves to find the root cause. We suspect a new DSL modem which we got a few months back (a Netgear), because the old one (a 2wire) worked fine when the very same treadmill was on.
If we plug the treadmill into an outlet on the other side of the house, it does not interfere with the modem. So we could move either the treadmill or the modem. Both of which would be a major pain. So in the mean time, I hope to find another solution… i.e., finding another brand of modem, like the 2wire that we had for many years until it went kaput.
Anyone out there have a better suggestion?
Update: I think we fixed the problem!! (through no help of AT&T, by the way). After a month of trying to figure out what the problem was, in desperation and frustration I dug out our old 2wire DSL router out of the closet. It had worked (and coexisted with the treadmill) for about 10 years before crapping out this summer. When that happened, we replaced it with the AT&T-recommended netgear DSL modem product, which is the one we’re currently struggling with. In the old 2wire DSL modem box I found the original DSL phone line filter dongle thingies that we also replaced when we got the new netgear modem. The ones we got with the netgear modem say “Pace America” brand on them. In a desperate attempt to try just one more thing, I changed out the Pace-America brand DSL phone line filter dongle with the 2wire brand one that we had used with the previous 2wire modem for many years. And…(drum roll) it fixed the problem! I post this update in the hope that it will help some other poor schmuck that has resorted to google for help on how to fix their treadmill / DSL router interference problem.
Today we set out to run a few errands. For New Year’s Eve this year we are attending a party with a murder-mystery-dinner-party theme. We have each been given a part ahead of time and have to come dressed the part. So today our mission was to set out to find appropriate garb and accoutrement. A couple of stops and several hours later we came home with most of what we needed. Stay tuned for more on that in the next few days.
Tonight we stuck close to home, watched reruns of Season 2 of Downton Abbey to prepare for the kickoff of Season 3 in a week or two, and warmed ourselves up with a couple of mugs of hot chocolate. I love these snowman-in-a-snowball mugs that my mom gave us many years ago.
Sheila365 