Oh woe, we owe

Well, we had our taxes done today. For the first time in our lives we actually have to pay the IRS. Stupid captial gains tax. Well, I won't go in to all the gory details. Suffice it to say we will be taking another cash advance to pay off our taxes. Stupid money.

As soon as I am done here, I'm going upstairs to pack for the scrapbooking weekend. Yay! It's finally here! I have so much to remember to bring. Anyway, I won't be back on the computer until Sunday night or Monday, so don't bother checking. I'll tell you all about it when I get home.

P.S. I called Adobe for help on my Elements 3.0 today. They wanted to charge me $39 to help me find the problem, but suggested I might try to create a new catalog. Well, after looking around for that, I find out you have to be able to get on the page I can't get on in the program to create the stupid catalog.

So I got mad, went on Staples website and found that I could get 4.0 for $89.99 - an instant $10 - another $20 and - a $20 mail in rebate. So I paid $59.94 for it today, with no shipping or tax and then will get another $20 off in the mail in rebate, so the whole thing will cost me a dollar more than the stupid service call fee to fix 3.0. Whew. Good deal, huh?

Cleo

Here's a picture of the little miscreant. Doesn't she look annoyed with me??

I should have named her Houdini

Greg went to be really early on Tuesday night. I stayed up and did some stuff around the house(laundry, dishes, dogs out to potty) and then went to bed at my usual time (8:00). Cleopatra didn't come in the bedroom to sleep like she usually does, but I didn't think much of it.

Wednesday morning she didn't come in to shower with me. Okay, this was getting weird. She always does one or the other. Maybe she's in with Greg? No. After I did a quick search of all her favorite spots downstairs I realized she wasn't in the house anywhere - not even in the hall closet (where I tend to shut her in a lot). My heart sunk to my toes. I frantically searched my memory to figure out when I saw her last and to figure out where she might be. Stupidly, I opened the back door and looked out into the dark and empty yard. My mind was going a thousand miles a minute while I tried to form some plan for finding her, hoping against hope she wasn't a furry manhole cover on the busy road.

Feeblely, and without much hope, I called her name. "Cleo! Cleo-cat!" I thought I heard a faint tinkle of a bell. I called again. Two seconds later I hear it again and know I'm hearing a bell on a collar. In less than a minute Cleo is back in the house and eating out of her food bowl, acting like she hasn't eaten for a month and looking reproachfully at me for making her stay outside all night. Like it was all MY idea!

How that cat manages to sneak out all the time is beyond me. I put a bell on her and I always watch the door when I let the dogs in and out because she likes to sneak out between them. I swear I should have named her Houdini.

I can't figure out why she keeps trying to sneak away. She has her nice box with a heating pad that she loves. We can hardly drag her out of it some days. Must be because of her early formative years out in Promentory Park.

We'll be doing a bed check each night from now on, making sure all the two and four legged members of this family are safely in the house at night.

Odds & Ends

Good thing I enjoyed the sun yesterday because it's raining again. Sigh.

Odds and Ends about me that I am not ashamed to admit:
I like smutty romances novels.
I do choose books by their cover (no matter what I’ve said before). I’ve found some great authors that way, too.
I think Beavis & Butthead are funny.
Potty humor makes me laugh.
I like fruitcake.
I don’t especially enjoy reading non-fiction.
I think Oprah’s book club choices are terrible. I tried to read one once and was so depressed halfway through it, I had to stop.
For the most part, I don’t think much of the books that reach the New York Times Best Seller list, and never use it find good books to read.
I find most movie reviewers hate the movies I like and like the movies I hate.
Guys can sing and dance and not be gay.
Even though I am now in my “late 30s” (ugh!) I enjoy reading kids books.
I regularly exceed the speed limit (it is just a suggestion, right?).
I like dogs better than most children.
Pizza is too a breakfast food.
Danielle Steel books are complete and utter trash. I wouldn’t read one of her books if there was nothing left in the world to read besides her stuff.
TV is okay in small doses.
I don’t care that I don’t read the popular books and no one has ever heard of half the authors I like.
It is too all about the stamp.

The First REAL Day of Spring!

Today was the first day that has really felt like Spring in Portland. The temperature was a balmy 62 degrees. The sky was blue (with some clouds). The birdies were singing. The dogwood trees were blooming. The grass was growing. The mountains were showing off their 20 feet of snow. It smelled really good outside…like warm sunshine. I sure wish it was a day I wasn’t working!!! It was so nice out. I sat in my car and ate my lunch with the windows down. Heavenly! We should enjoy it while we can, because the weather forecast called for rain all the rest of the week. But then, when have the Northwest weather people been able to predict the weather?

As preparation for my scrapbooking weekend, I decided to spiff up my car. I took it in to have the oil changed yesterday and today I took it in and had it washed and cleaned inside and out. I love doing that. For $17 I get all the nose prints cleaned of the windows, the floors and seats vacuumed, the dashboard all cleaned, the doorjambs and edges wiped down, and everything is fresh and clean. I could do it myself, but it is such a pain. And I really don’t enjoy it. So, yeah, I’ll take an hour’s pay and spend it on my car. Of course that meant that this morning I had to drag all the crap out that I normally carry around in my car. For a car that is advertised to seat 8 people, I don’t often have room for 3!! I was amazed at all the stuff I took out:

• 2 300 sized dog crates
  1 bag of whippet racing gear
  1 bag of dog toys
  1 Mexican blanket (covering the back seat to keep muddy footprints off it)
  1 chuck-it
  1 hiking stick
  1 pair of rain boots
  1 backpack with letterboxing items (tarp, poncho, first aid kit, etc)
  1 letterboxing bag
  1 file bag with letterboxing clues
  1 box of bottled water
  1 dirty tennis ball that fell out of the toy bag
  The stamp from one of my letterboxes in Orchards park that I pulled two months ago
  Various loose (and empty) poop bags
  .37 in change
  Several paper clips
  Several hair ties
  1 old banana peel (????)
  6 empty water bottles
  2 empty drink cups

And this was AFTER I cleaned the car out last week! It’s a good thing I don’t have kids. I doubt if there would be room in the car for any of their stuff, what with all the stuff I drag around.

My first digital pages

This is my very first digital scrapbooking page.
This Flat Stanley page was done for my cousin Deb.
Second page.
Third page.

I want to do a lot more, but I have to finish the stuff I've already started as regular scrapbooking. I hope to make a dent in it this weekend.

Silly things about me

This is one of those emails that gets sent around to all your friends. I thought I'd post it here for any of you that missed it.

Four jobs I have had in my life:
Bookseller at Waldenbooks
Travel Agent
Deli clerk at Albertsons
Admin assistant

Four movies I would watch over and over:
Independence Day
The Rock
Captain Ron
True Lies

Four places I have lived:
El Cajon, California
Milwaukie, Oregon
College Station, Texas
Vancouver, Washington

Four TV shows I love to watch:
Still Standing
Two and a Half Men
King of Queens
Scrubs

Four places I have been on vacation:
Cozumel, Mexico
Grand Cayman
New Zealand
San Juan, Puerto Rico

Four websites I visit daily:
awc2006.com (to check on the missing whippet, Vivi)
letterboxing.org (to feed my letterboxing addiction)
stopyourekillingme.com (to feed my book addiction)
Deb's blog

Four Favorite Foods:
Sour cream lemon pie
Cheesecake
Pralines and cream ice cream
Tacos

Four places I would rather be right now:
Letterboxing (anywhere is good)
Reading on a cruise ship
Europe
Diving in the Caribbean

Movies vs Books

Why is it that Hollywood has to take a perfectly good book and completely ruin it by making it in to a movie? Why do authors allow them to do this? Can you think of a single book that was adapted to a movie that was as good as or better than the book? Greg hates watching movies with me when I've read the book first, because I always yell at the TV when the story doesn't follow the book. I can't help myself.

Here are a few I was disappointed in:

Harry Potter - just watched Goblet of Fire on Friday night. They left out characters, put characters in where they didn't belong, skimmed over some of the most important points in the book. It was awful. If I hadn't read the book, I would have been totally lost and thought the whole thing was really stupid. Wasn't entirely thrilled with the other ones that came before it either. For a movie they were fine, but as an adaptation of the books themselves, they sucked.

Hitchhikkers Guide to the Galaxy - Just watched this one this weekend along with G of F. Way to make it weird, folks.

Absolute Power - Um, the guy died in the book? You can't just let him live in the movie! Well, I guess you can when he's played by Clint Eastwood.

Princess Diaries - Completely changed from the book. The only thing that stayed the same was the general premise...Ordinary girl finds out she's a princess. And Princess Diaries 2? Never happened in the books at all!

I don't have high hopes for Da Vinci Code when it comes out, either. Tom Hanks is not my idea of Robert Langdon AT ALL. I'm not entirely sure who is, but it's not T.H.

Oh, and while we are on the topic, WHAT did they do to Phantom of the Opera? And why? Couldn't they have just filmed it as a stage production without having to add all the weird extra stuff? I do have to admit that scene in the beginning where they go from the shabby old theater in black and white to the new clean theater in color is VERY cool.

Sophie picture

First Post

Okay, here it is. My first post at my new blog. We'll see how this works. I love my cousin Deb's blog and read it a couple of times a day. I don't know how interesting mine will be, but hey, we all have to start somewhere, right?