Find Me

A friend sent this picture to me this morning. I'd never seen it before. My sister and I, with the Houghton children. They'd just emigrated from England. Their family had come to live near their aunt, uncle and grandparents. Their grandmother "Nanny" took care of my sister and I growing up.

Can you find me?

UPDATE: I'm behind my sister with the long brown hair.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

Well, it's day 8 of the big snow and more is coming down this morning with more to come. I was able to get out twice in the past two days to finish up shopping and stocking stuffers so were all ready.

The plan is to go to my Mom's tonight for dinner. It's only about 3 miles but unfortunately it's all hills, but with the jeeps 4 wheel drive it shouldn't be a problem. Tomorrow we plan on driving down to Lacey to Jay's folks about an hour south of here where the snow is deeper and they're house is in a rural area that most likely won't be plowed. We'll have to see how that goes and if we can get there.

Lolli's with us. Jay was able to get down to her house and get her last week. So our little family is complete.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday, doing exactly what you want to do. Thank you for sharing the gift of your time and thoughts with me over this last year. I treasure your friendship.

Brad

"Saturday, In the park, I think it was the fourth of July"

Or, Saturday in Seattle with 19*

We woke up cold this morning. The temp dropped down below 15* over night and exceeded the heat pumps limit. Luckily we've had the new furnace on the back of Jay's truck all week so it's ready to go. We never got it installed since everyone was busy. The weather guys are predicting a record storm coming in so we only have until about sundown to get this baby in. Jay got the old unit cut loose and we both got the new one in place. One natural gas to propane conversion and about 100 other connections and we should be golden. warm. heated.

Weather here is hard to predict so we cut our weather folks a bit of slack. We live weather wise in what's called the Puget Sound convergence zone.



You can see the weather comes in off the Pacific and splits going around the Olympics and converge right over us. If that weren't enough we have the Cascade Mtn's to the east which acts as a wall for the clouds to 'stack up' on dumping the precipitation on Western Wash. That's why the state is basically a rain forest on one side of the mountains and near-desert on the other. Normally this would mean wet and soggy but with the cold air (Thanks Canada) today it means snow. Downtown Seattle, for what ever reason is always the last to get snow. The prediction is 3 - 8" tonight. When 'they' said trace to 3" earlier this week we got 8" up here on the hill. Nothing to do but wait and see. If it happens it will be like a 20 year record.

We did make it out for a while yesterday. We headed out to the mall thinking we'd be one of the few foolish enough to try. Um, yeah wrong on that one. It was crowded. But we had a great lunch and got some presents. I was able to find Jay some toys. Can't say what as he does poke around here on occasion. I always try and find him some big boy toys because part of Christmas for me is getting back to being a kid and all kids should get toys for Christmas.

Well, Wonderboy has the heat pump back online and the furnace unit in place ready to be hooked up. Finally the house is warming up. I'd better go help.

Snow Day!

I bet we get more snow days here then the rest of the country. Not that we get more snow, we just give up and the first sign of it and take the day off. Maybe it's just me, there are plenty of people sitting on the freeway trying to get somewhere.

Bear's a bundle of puppy energy wanting to get back out and dance in the snow. He's discovered he can eat it and has been hoovering the driveway. Well it's too cold for me little dog. We're both home and warm. Luckily we were able to sort out the worst 'no heat' cases yesterday. The phones are forwarded to me but their quiet so far. Knock wood.

Mo was kind enough to take pics of our Christmas tree for us. I'm still with out a camera. Looks like Miss Lilly's been playing around the bottom there. She's typically ensconced on the tree skirt surveying her domain.

The weather is suppose to stay with us through the weekend which kind of mucks up my shopping plans. My family has decided to for go gift giving to the adults which takes a lot of pressure off. The downside of that is I haven't been too worried about getting the shopping done because I thought/am thinking it will be a breeze. Now it looks like I may have to fight the weather or not have as much time I thought i did. Typical of me to procrastinate.

I've been thinking about my posts lately. I used to get ideas about a post and they'd kind of percolate for a day or two before I'd right them out. I think the used to have something to say. Lately I just seem to ramble. I want to get back to more thoughtful posts. I don't normal look at my archived posts. I'm too self critical and it makes me cringe. But maybe re-reading some will get me motivated. Thinking outloud here. outtype? Well, you know...

It's nice being hold up in the house here with Jay. That man is so full of joy normally, a snow day about puts him over the top. I'm so lucky.

B

You want that when ?

The Pacific Northwest rarely gets below freezing and when it does we all go bonkers. This week so far has been pretty nuts trying to keep up with all the customers and non-customers who are with out heat. The trick is to balance it all so you keep techs in the same general geographic area while trying to balance who called first, who is a regular customer, residential takes priority over commercial to some degree, families with kids come first. You may or may not be surprised at how angry someone can get because your choosing to send the tech to a home with children over their business. Monday morning I had the patients to reason with them. That's wearing thin very quickly. My favorite call so far was a lady yesterday who called and said they'd been remodeling their house and they needed ducts and registers added for the party their having on Friday night. She 'HAD' to have a bid on the job that day and she wanted the work done by Thursday. HA! ha ha ha ha

and Ha!

Our new furnace will be installed as soon as we can free the guys up to do the work. We still have the heat pump so we're not with out. It's still a bit chilly in the house. Bear and Miss Lilly are coming up with new and creative ways to spoon each other. Very cute.

Well that was my 15 minutes of fun - back to the phones - Hope your all doing well!

Sunday

The snow held off long enough for Fiwa and Mo to come to brunch yesterday. It was great to spend time with those two and just hang out. Our buddy Ace put in a guest appearance via cell phone and chatted for a few minutes. I made fruit salad and omelette's. Omelette's were not a very good 'brunchy' choice as you end up making them instead of sitting down to talk. After we ate we painted ceramics. It's like our new hazing ritual around here.

It started snowing at about 8:00 last night and made it a perfect night to hold up and watch old movies. Bear & I stayed up till after midnight watching it snow.

I woke up around 3:00 to what I thought was Jay's alarm clock going off. I remember thinking it wasn't that loud and I could blow it off and go back to sleep. Which I did. I think that happened twice. The next thing I knew Jay was waking me up and telling me the CO2 detector was going off and I needed to go downstairs. Turns out that the secondary heat exchanger in the furnace fried and was sending CO2 into the house. Great. Really not good. The alarm on the fire detector is about 5 times as loud. You'd think the CO2 thing would be as loud. If I'd have been alone I could have slept through it and... well not slept through it. So please check your detectors so you at least know what they sound like!

So there you have it. The HVAC guys furnace doesn't work on the coldest day of the year so far. We do have the heat pump but it has to be manually over-ridden every couple of hours. We raided the goats heater and have the house up to 64* right now. It's about 25* outside. Jay's trundled off to get another space heater for the goats.

We're suppose to be going down to Jay's folks house for a family early Christmas with their extended family but I'll be staying behind to 'tend the home fires'. For Jay it's a command performance regardless of ice & more snow coming. I'm not happy about him driving an hour each way but at least his brother will be with him.

I happened to pass the closet in the dining room this morning and noticed two boxes of those little Christmas village ceramic building thingies. I asked Jay about them and he said that he had either got them for us 'If I wanted to have them out' or their for his mother. Mother already has a small Christmas city and I'm sure that unless he went to a specialty shop, which I know he did not, these would be duplicates to ones Mother already has and he knows it. He knows their not my thing but this is his coy way of testing the waters. I'll set them up while he's seeing his folks.

Happy Sunday!

B

13 shopping days left!

Jay and I both took last Friday and Monday off work and made it a 4 day weekend. We were able to get all of the Christmas decorations up and the house is ready. We had originally intended to head for Cannon Beach for a few days but I just couldn't justify spending the money. Watching the nightly news gives me a bad case of the "what if's"

The lack of daylight is taking it’s toll on me yet again this year. Not in a big way. I just kinda feel like a reptile, you know how their whole bodies slow down in the cold? That’s about me right now. I’m not depressed or anything just about two steps away from hibernation.

Nothing much new to report. Work is going along just fine. The new approximate move in date for the new office is mid-January. My anticipation for that date is really just all about having room in my office for Bear to come hang out during the day.

I’ve been dealing with bad skin on my face for like the last year or so. I read about Shea butter about a year ago and have been using that for a while and it’s helped a great deal. However I have still had these damned red spots on my face that just won’t seem to go away. They don’t really develop like pimples per say but just red spots that seem to move around. I’ve been noticing people who used a product called Pro-Active had really good skin so even though I’m pretty sure I don’t have acne I thought I’d give it a try. My niece uses it and has great skin so I thought what the hec. Well I used it twice following the directions (I think) and by the second application I’d done quite the burn number on my skin. Luckily I had the 4 days off to let it heal. I looked like hell there for a while. But once off the dead skin peeled off, guess what? No more spots. I guess I’ll just have to find the right amount to use as to not burn myself again.

At least I’m looking good for my hot date with two ladies on Saturday. Barring any extreme weather, Mo & Fiwa are coming over on Saturday to see us. I’m really looking forward to it. Snow is in the forecast but I doubt it will amount to anything. But a little of the white stuff would be nice!