Jenerally Speaking

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is here already!  I’m so very very VERY excited.  This is my favorite time of the year.  Thanksgiving is just the beginning…then we have the entire Christmas season to look forward to.  Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas trees, Christmas Carols, twinkly lights, mall Santas, Salvation Army bell ringers, eggnog, very special Christmas episodes on our favorite TV shows, Advent calendars, presents, family visits, snow (hopefully!), decorations…wheeee!  There is no other time of the year like this one.

Last year we didn’t get our Christmas decorations up until the middle of December.  That bummed me out so much that I made us keep them up until the end of January to make up for the late start.    This year, though, we started early. November 21st was our decorating day and the house looks beeeeaaaauuutiful!  (I’m hyper-excited, can’t you tell?)

As for the rest of life – it’s all going so well.  The college savings fund is growing at a slow, but steady pace.  My new interest in tapping into my creative side has been a lot of fun.  I’m currently playing around with scrapbooking and some creative writing.  I don’t have much drawing talent, but scrapbooking is kind of like doing a web layout on paper.  I don’t really have to draw anything – thank goodness!  Digital scrapbooking is fun, too.  I am using a program by Serif, called Digital Scrapbook Artist.  It’s a really fun and addicting with a ton of free designs to use.  The creative writing…well, I’ve actually read a lot of books on writing and journaling recently, but I haven’t actually spent too much time doing the actual writing.  This is typical of me though.  I spend weeks and months preparing for a task before I actually do it.    I’m getting there…

Meghan is feeling so much better these days.  The doctor finally determined that she was probably suffering from a flare-up of her previous sinus infection.  That is why she was getting daily headaches and low-grade fevers.  Her previous antibiotic didn’t quite clear it up and it was getting progressively worse during the past 2 months.  Her energy is back now and she doesn’t seem to feel quite as miserable as she did a few weeks ago.  Hopefully, this is the beginning of a positive upswing.

Speaking of positive…I have also been reading some pretty interesting books, which have been giving me a much more productive and positive view on life.  It kind of started with one of Judith Orloff’s books about positive energy. That led me to some books on living “in the now” (Zen-type books) and then I switched over to Steve Covey’s books (The 7 Secrets of Highly Effective People) and ended up reading a little bit of Bruce Lipton and finally moved on to Wayne Dyer.  His books focus on positive affirmations, higher energy living, service to others, etc.  I’m kind of taking a bit of everything and filling in the gaps with some of the beliefs – including the Christian beliefs from my childhood – and the habits which have worked for me in the past.  The final result is…well, I’m not sure yet.  I’m definitely a lot less worried these days and I feel a lot more centered and enthusiastic about all the little twists and turns my life is taking.  I no longer see my problems as “problems”…they are “projects.”   I forgot where I read that, but for some reason that really stuck with me.  Labeling them like that can put a positive spin on those situations which normally cause us stress.

So – all in all, it’s been a good couple of weeks here.  I cannot wait to enjoy the rest of this holiday season.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Enjoy your holiday!

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Goodness…it’s been a while!   I was starting to get this nagging feeling that I had abandoned my blog, so I scheduled some time to sit down and actually do a little writing this afternoon.

Once again, I’m doing a little tweaking of my schedule.  Whatever I was doing before really wasn’t working for me.  It became obvious to me because I found myself flat out ignoring my weekly planner and letting quite a few unproductive days pile up.  I mean, a little “unproductivity” is nice when we do it once in a blue moon, but I was starting to make a habit of it.  So, I paid close attention to what was sucking up most of my time and I think I figured out what it was.
I don’t think I’ll even admit to it here because it’s just too darned embarrassing.

……

Okay, I’ll fess up.

It’s Facebook.

Now, before you all judge, I’ll have you know that I was a virtual hermit for the beginning half of this year.  I was sick in bed for months with mono and I had practically no interaction with anyone other than my teddy bear and my teenager.  (Okay, so I don’t really interact with my teddy bear, but he sat faithfully at the foot of my bed during the mono-months.)  Anyway…when I was finally feeling better this summer, I realized I felt completely out the loop, socially.  Not that I was much of a social butterfly before this, but when we feel good we want to share it with others and I just realized I didn’t have many others to share it with.

So, I dusted off my old Facebook account, which I never really used before and I found tons of old college and high school friends.  It was pretty awesome actually.  I’m not much of a phone talker…which might surprise those who know me because I actually can and do talk.  A lot.  I’m the kind of person who has to leave 2 answering machine messages because I say too much and the machine cuts me off.    LOL   The problem I have with phone conversations is that I also like multi-tasking and when I talk on the phone, I usually can’t get much else done at the same time.  So, I just don’t like talking on the phone very much.

Anyway…back on topic…so, I went on Facebook and now I have a wonderful way to actually stay in touch with friends and family, while still doing other computer tasks at the same time.  Last Saturday, I met up with my old college roommates.  I hadn’t seen them in almost 12 years, but we met up again on Facebook and made the plans and there we were.  Hanging out and reminiscing about old times.  It was so much fun. 

So that’s the good stuff.  The stuff that is taking up a little too much of my time are those gosh-darned FB applications.  I think I have mentioned before that I come from a family of gamers.  Competitive gamers.  It doesn’t matter what the game is…we compete.  Facebook has a plethora of games – word games, arcade games, life-simulati0n games…you name it, FB has it.   And, I am beginning to realize that this might be what is messing up my schedule every day.  So sad, I know. 

What usually happens is that I usually make some breakfast and as I’m eating it, I’ll log in, check up on friends, respond to wall posts and then visit the games.  That is when 15 minutes turns into an hour.  I could swear that time ceases to run at a normal speed when we are online.  I think we get sucked into some kind of time altering vortex and while the rest of the world is running at normal speed, we are zipping along even faster.  Or something like that.  I think there was a device in the Stargate series that did that.

So I downloaded a little timer for my browser and I have added FB to my To-Do list everyday.  I am actually making it part of my schedule so that it will have a definite beginning and a definite end…instead of it being a filler activity that bleeds into the rest of my daily schedule.  I set the timer, do my little bit o’ socializing and game-playing and then I finish and get back to work.  I should know in a few days it this works or not.  If you don’t hear from me in a month, look for me in the Facebook Time Vortex.

In other news, Meghan may have finally been properly diagnosed for her chronic low-grade fevers, sore throats, headaches.  The doctor thinks it’s a sinus infection.  They gave her amoxicillan back in September for it, but he thinks it never really cleared up completely and it’s been slowly getting worse again for the past 2 months.  So, he put her on Augmentin and we’re hoping this is what she needs to blast those germs into oblivion.    When she’s better, I’ll be taking her to the doctor for her H1N1 flu shot, too.  They actually vaccinated the kids at her school this past Friday, but it sounded like quite an ordeal.  Kids were passing out and I think one of them has a seizure.  I’m not sure what all that was about, but I’m kind of glad Meg was home.  Sounds like it was a little chaotic.  I guess we’ll get more news about what happened when she goes back to school tomorrow.

Everything else is pretty much the same.  I’m slowly saving up my funds for my last 3 college courses.  I think Christmas gifts will consist of lots of homemade items this year.  I’m going to have to get really creative, which actually sounds kind of fun.  I’ve also been taking a peek at some of the leaked Black Friday ads.  I usually just go out on Black Friday to enjoy the Christmas atmosphere – all the holiday shoppers, Christmas music, decorations, etc.  But I think I need to do some bargain shopping this year, so I think I might actually venture out to do some honest-to-goodness Black Friday shopping.  We’ll see if I’m still feeling that brave a few weeks from now.

Hmm – I just saw the message that WordPress has updated to the next version.  I’m a little leery about doing the upgrade right now.  The last time I did that, I had to go through all my posts and delete a bunch of odd little characters which were randomly inserted throughout my blog.

So, I have taken a break from my marathon of blog posting.  I knew that would happen.  I’m still tweaking my schedule a bit here and I haven’t been quite as diligent about sticking to the schedule I actually make for myself each day.  It’s a work in progress…always. 

So, my brother, Chris, is out in California now.  He just started his new job yesterday.  He’s loving the weather and actually found a few old high school friends nearby so that made the transition a little easier.  So far, the jury is still out as to how he is going to like this new job.  His boss is a bit of a micromanager.  Christopher has been his own boss for the past year of so and to suddenly have someone looking over his shoulder again can be a little rough.  Our family tends to be the “I can do this all by myself” kind of workers (for better or for worse!) so I am really hoping that it doesn’t cause too much stress for him.

It’s been quiet here without him, definitely.  He is missed. 

On a positive note, I think we have finally decided what to do with his apartment downstairs.  We are going to turn the living/kitchen area into a library/rec room. We have books stored in various bookshelves and drawers and closets all over the house and we thought it might be nice to have them in one central location.  I’m going to be in charge of “Feng Shui-ing” the room to make it cozy for reading and relaxing.  My brother did not appreciate Feng Shui.  At all.  I’m actually not sure if what I do is actual Feng Shui, but it’s all about removing the clutter and filling the room with happy, positive things.  Nice lighting, comfy chairs, lots of pillows, etc.   His bedroom and bathroom will just get a good cleaning so that it can be used as a guest room.  (For all those guests we NEVER have…lol.  It’s good to be prepared, though.)

Meghan stayed home from school today with her fever and sore throat.  The nurse called twice last week to get me to pick her up from school, but Meghan really wanted to try and stick it out, so I let her stay.  She only had a 99 fever both of those days with a bit of a scratchy throat.  Yesterday, though, we finally gave in and I picked her up early and took her home.  The truth is, the school is becoming filled with sick kids and even though her illness seems to be pretty mild, I don’t want her catching anything worse.  In a few weeks the school will be getting a shipment of the H1N1 vaccine and I signed her up for it.  I’ve decided not to take the chance of her getting that flu.  I had a friend who just recovered from it and she said it was the toughest battle of her life….and she is not a sick person usually.  I did request the vaccine version that is Thimerosal-free, but I’m not sure if that’s even available from her school.  We’ll have to just wait and see.

So, the new V is on tonight.  I hope it’s good.  I have the old mini-series on DVD and I watch it about once a year.  It’s a little cheesy and dated, but I still love it.  I’m a sucker for a good “us vs them” storyline.