Inadequate Materials

Well, everyone, I've officially spent too much time on the internet. It's my 300th post! As promised, I'm answering your questions today. So here we go! Debra asks: How did the Captain woo you and ask you to marry him?   Well, let me tell you, it was all very romantic. It was a slushy, grey January day in 1996 in Southwestern Ontario. The Captain picked me up from work and took me to the fanciest restaurant in town : The Keg! He was acting sort of weird and quiet and I could see something was up, but it was impossible to tell whether that something was good news, or if he was going to dump me. As I always hope for the best but plan for the worst, I figured I'd better get one last really good meal out of it, and I made 3 trips to the all-you-can-eat salad bar before getting started on my enormous steak and large glass of wine. Maybe it was the wine, and maybe it was the 8 pounds of salad and steak in my stomach, but I don't remember much else. He pulled out...

I'm really not ignoring you guys! I have an inbox full of your comments from my last few posts, and I like to get back to all my blog friends before posting again, but it's just not happening right now. RB lost his tutor suddenly for the second time in 18 months. It was no one's fault this time, but it's not looking like we'll be getting a new one any time soon, so in the meantime, I'm trying to fill in the gaps for him and come up with a Plan B in case we don't find anyone at all. It's really cutting into my blogging time. So inconvenient! I promise to get around to visiting you all and commenting again soon. Just bear with me. The Captain is also away on course for a few weeks so I'm on my own here. Ahhh...military life! I happened to notice today that my next post will be my 300th. I almost missed it! So I thought that since I haven't been finding the time to go blog-hopping, maybe I'd open the floor up to my blog pals (for the reco...

WAAAAY back in November 2010, I decided it would be a great idea to order photo calendars of the kids for all the grandparents for Christmas. Being anti-social and ultimately lazy, of course, I ordered them all online. I'm not going to tell you which company I went with, but I will give you one very cryptic clue. It rhymes with Crawl-Mart . Seriously, people. One of these days, I'm going to get sued. So, with it being the holidays, I guess things got busy over there and the calendar I ordered for one of the grandparents--to be sent directly to her--never showed up. A huge kerfuffle ensued in which I had to make approximately 3 phone calls to the company before anyone would admit that the order was lost, and a replacement was finally sent out. Grandmother received her Christmas calendar on January 27th 2011, more than a month late. I'd have filed a big, noisy complaint, but they also forgot to charge my credit card. So really, no harm done. End of story? Apparently not. ...

Usually, that week between Christmas and the new year, I figure out my new year's resolution. This time, it's taken a little longer for it to come into focus. Maybe this picture taken at 11:50 PM on December 31st will give you an idea of why 2012 has started off at such a sluggish pace around here: It's always a wild party at our house... But now I think I'm ready to commit. I've known for a while that I need to start taking better care of my health. I have a bad habit of thinking that because I'm not overweight per se (this doesn't mean I couldn't still stand to lose a few pounds), that I'm perfectly healthy. But if you took a good look at what goes into my mouth at any point on any given day, or how much time I spend on the couch or in front of the computer, you'd know that there are certainly improvements to be made. I'm keeping it general again this year because I think there are a lot of areas that define "health". I do ne...

2012 has gotten off to quite a start around here. First I discovered that my little iPod Shuffle has gone off to the great electronics pile in the sky. Then I found RB in the pantry yesterday morning stuffing a contraband substance (Hostess cupcake) into his mouth whole. As I have had to install locking door handles all over this house due to RB's wandering hands, monkey-like climbing skills, and naked butt issues, I decided that January 1st was the day I was finally going to end the pantry mischief once and for all. And it was only going to take me about 5 minutes. After all, I have experience with this. I began with a Phillips screwdriver, and removed the ratty old regular handle. No problems there. But when I started to try to fit the new locking handle into the hole in the door, I found the inside mechanism was too long. Never having come upon this problem before, I started devising new ways to make it fit. After about half an hour of drilling, sawing, hammering (and by this,...