More Christmas Present

A gift from my mother and father. I get lots of Santas as I collect them and have well over 150 at this point. Some are antiques and family heirlooms, some were found at yard sales, most were gifts from family and friends. Jen is going to take pictures of many of them in the future.

Christmas Present

A present to me from sister Nancy.

The hit of the family gathering last night at sister Nancy's - a pony tire swing to go in Nanny's yard for all the kids to play on.

My fiber-optic Christmas tree which is the only "safe" tree with 5 cats (3 of them just 6 months old now) in the house.

Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas Past

Three little girls in the late 1950's. I am the older blonde on the left. Sister Nancy is the little blonde on the right. Sister Beth is at the bottom. And of course, the real Santa Claus is holding us.

Oh my aching back! Oh, the pretty lights!

DH and I restrung the lights on the back porch today. The temperature had moderated into the 50's (he denies it, though) so we did not freeze during the process. I rigged a telescoping light hanging pole from a duster handle that cut down considerably on the need for ladders and stretching precariously. However, the unaccustomed angle and precision required is already taking a toll on my arms, neck, and shoulders ... and my lower back is protesting, too. But the porch looks really nice! We have three strings of lantern lights with flicker bulbs and a long string of icicle lights that go along the porch roof and then strung a LONG string of colored mini-lights that goes all the way around. I tried to take pictures but was too lazy to get the tripod out and the pics are all fuzzy.

We were going to put more lights on the front porch where we already have LED icicles and colored lights but discovered the plugs on the motion lights we were going to use don't fit inside the light covers. We will have to come up with some short extension cords or something similar. From our slight height elevation I can look out over the town and see many decorated houses. I want to go out light-seeing and take photos too. In the meantime, I have played with wiggling my camera at my own lights. (Hey, why not take advantage of not being able to hold the camera still!)

Whew!

We just went over 12 hours with the computer not able to finish a boot. DH had done something with an ActiveX control yesterday afternoon but it would not install properly. From that point on the computer would freeze somewhere during the boot process. Sometimes we got all the way to the desktop and were able to open a program before the freeze happened. He worked with it for at least 2 hours before I got home and had no more patience once I got here. So I sent him to his room and worked on it myself to no avail all last evening. I even tried System Restore but the computer would freeze during that too. Now, sometimes our modem causes problems with the computer so we are not sure if it was the computer or the modem that acted up yesterday. We unplugged the power to the modem to try to get it to reset but that did not seem to help. I finally just turned it all off and went to bed. DH tried again this morning with no luck. I tried again with no luck this morning. Then I decided to try System Restore by not waiting for the boot to complete and opened it and started it as soon as the desktop appeared. System Restore even seems to have shut down the modem completely during the restore process. Hallelujah! everything seems fine now. Whew! All my Christmas craft and photos are on the computer and I was resigning myself to not being able to complete them for Christmas. I am feeling much better now. LOL.

Red sky in the morning

Just a few minutes ago. They are predicting over an inch of rain in the near future.

Another thing begun ...

Today my mother is 84 years old. Happy Birthday, Mom.

Also today, DH and I (and Mom, Dad, and sister Beth) went to the hospital for the first of possibly three epidural steroid injections into DH's neck for the pain he has been having for months now in his neck and left shoulder and arm. A frustrating experience for him and for me. We went to see the "neurologist" two weeks ago and this is what was set up. We waited for the instructions to come thru the mail as to when and where to show up. The only thing that came was the time of the actual appointment. So I called. "Well, I think you just go directly to outpatient radiology" was the answer I got from the neurologist's office. We checked in at the outpatient information desk instead and that was the right thing to do. They did not even have it set up right in the computer. According to the computer we were supposed to be there last Friday - but he is only there every other Wednesday so what was a Friday date doing in the computer anyway! Rant, rant, rant.

Anyway, the actual procedure took less than 45 minutes after waiting only 15 minutes beyond the appointment time. Funny thing, there was an "X" on the back of DH's neck after we got home and the injection was actually done about 3 inches below the "X"? So far no bad reactions.

We went out to eat breakfast after we left the hospital then DH and I came home and went back to bed and slept ...

All this medical stuff just makes me so angry sometimes. Some of the medical people are good and seem to really care about the patients. Others just push people thru as fast as they can with no compassion at all. I guess the more you see the less you care sometimes.

Sorry, still ranting. Going to happy place now. See the beautiful sunset photo I just took. Isn't it lovely. Happy thoughts.