Happy New Year! - Pay It Forward

Happy New Year! I went to bed at about a quarter to midnight last night. I figured hearing the fireworks would let me know when the new year started. I was thinking as I went to sleep that at 45 I really don't relate to the number of years going by anymore. It just seems a silly and arbitrary way to measure a life. I'd rather focus on the number of days. It seems to me that focusing on the number of days we're here would keep you more in the moment and enjoying what you have right now. Today I'm 16,744 days old.

Or, it's just a crock and I don't want to have to say "I'm 46".

We spent the day de-christmasfying the house. The place looks so bare now. Our friend Kathy came over to help and hang out and get her Bear fix. A perfect way to spend a grey soggy northwest day.

I'm feeling pretty special today because the lovely Trace was good enough to choose my name to be one of the recipient of Real Live Lesbians 'Pay It Forward' . RLL was a paid forward by Scarlet and now it's come to me.

I went back to Scarlet's benefactor to find a bit of it's origin. “the exchange focuses on doing an act of kindness without expecting anything in return other than that the recipient will, in their turn, pass the kindness along and pay it forward in their own way.” The idea is to "send something fun, inspiring or uplifting" to three bloggers. "The little something you send can be something you made, bought, were given or found. No biggie, just a gift that will make the person smile. Maybe something unique from where you live? There are no cost restraints, but don't go crazy!" I think it's a great idea. Coming up with the next packages will be almost as much fun as getting fun mail from RLL. Go check out the video of Trace doing the picking. She kinda snuck me in there in the end.

RLL's package came yesterday. Here, look-see what she was sweet enough to send on to me.



I love it. Planting an Amaryllis bulb on New Years seems like a great way to mark the day. After that I'll be running around the house with my bubble blowing scrubber brush. Maybe, if Jay's lucky I'll take my clothes off.

This next part is almost more fun then getting stuff. So leave a comment (even if you never do) and Bear will pick three names for me to pay it forward to. Come on you know you wanna.

Slo-mo holiday week

I like this week in between the holidays. Te roads are quieter during the commute. The phones aren't ringing to much. It's nice and quiet here at the office. I was able to recreate the prior week from all the notes I took while working from home. It was a big old hair ball to get all those scribbled notes in to the systems at work and make sure all the invoicing was done and other details where captured. It made for a crazy Monday but now I can sit back and relax pretty much.

We had a great Christmas. Janta brought me a new camera amongst other tresure. God love 'em. It's the same make I had before but one model up from it. I'm liking the bigger display screen. I'll bore you with pictures soon. We spent a quiet Christmas Eve dinner with my Mom and Christmas day with Jay's family. Somewhere in there one of the vertically challenged (and sticky) relatives passed on their germs and I'm incubating a cold right now. We did have a moment of worry Christmas day as a 25' limb off the doug fir on the corner of the house gave way under the snow and crashed down on the rockery. If it had been on the other side of the tree it would have taken out the power, phone and cable. - Whew! close one.



The week wasn't all joy and light, Lolli's nephew committed suicide a few days before Christmas and it certainly affected her holiday. There's more than a little strained family dynamics going on there and having to pull the whole family together for this is a challenge. The funeral is today, a few hours from now. Hopefully differences can be set aside for the poor grieving mother. Jay & I will check in on Lolli at the end of the day. Send her a prayer if you would.

One of my favorite gifts this year was a Russian samovar. It's kind of a long story. When Jay's Sister & BIL got posted to Russia years ago I told them I'd always wanted one and asked them to find one for me. I'd expected to pay for it myself. About 5 years ago the samovar was found and purchased but need export licenses as it's considered a piece of heritage. Long story short, it finally made it's way out of Russia this year. It's an interesting piece. I'm still trying to decide if it is indeed a 'heritage' piece or not. It doesn't matter if it is or it isn't I love it all the same. However it's got some interesting clues. There's no double eagle mark on it so it must have been made after the revolution. There are what appear to be tax stamps that have been pounded on to the sides but since I can't read Cyrillic I'm not quite sure yet. The fixture is brass, but it looks like it's brass plated over copper with some copper showing thru in places where you'd expect it had a lot of handling. I'll need to do a little research of production methods. Again I love it as it is but I can't resist trying to figure out if it's from the early Soviet period or a very well done fake. I love this kind of stuff.



Hope your having a great day!

B

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!