Being in cleaning mode will bring on the grumbly mood. Didn’t I just do this?
But I also had yet another glass kiln disaster and THAT just about sent me over the edge. (Plus, the glass bowl I tried to make with the partially “stuck” mold I attempted to pry loose later EXPLODED in my sink, scaring me to death! The glass shattered into a bunch of pieces. John and I are baffled about the how and why that happened. I’m just glad I was across the room and that it was contained in the sink!)
(And yet another waste of glass…)
And we’re still waiting for the oven repairman. Oh! And one more frustration: I just learned that my MOST FAVORITE LIPSTICK COLOR IN THE WORLD IS BEING DISCONTINUED. I’ve been wearing Revlon Moon Drops #260 for years and I love it and they’re ending it. Just kill me now. (Yeah, I know. First world problems).
On the “good news” front: We had our FINAL house inspection and totally passed! It was contingent on John completing the master bathroom (DONE) and addressing a handful of relatively minor “dings” from the contingent inspection (that still allowed us to move in. Heh.) So, it was a little anti-climatic, but still important and still a relief.
He separated the permitting of the house from the driveway/retaining walls/storm drainage and he’s now focusing on that part of it. He’s been building forms for the concrete footings and then we wait for the concrete guy to be available to come pour. Then, retaining walls (the concrete guy will construct those forms). There will also be block walls along the driveway, which will be a lot more attractive than the concrete ones. I’m not very excited about those (concrete), but they are required. Maybe someday I’ll have wisteria draping off them or something.
Lots of shoveling. (And that’s after a lot of excavating). He’s a sore puppy.
So, this is weird. While he was shoveling, John encountered a grouping of strange rocks. They are truly curious! They are much lighter weight than they look like they should be, and they have some kind of a metallic “coating” on the surface. They don’t respond to a magnet, but when I did the “ice test,” the ice immediately started to melt (which means it could be silver? I doubt it, though). Aren’t they strange looking?
Anybody in the know?
The weekend was gloomy and showery, and on Saturday we ventured to the Olympia area and took in the Pacific Northwest Mushroom Festival. It was fun! Lots of hawkers selling lame/awesome things. These flavored olive oils (for dipping, marinating, and cooking) seem to be uber-popular! I picked up a couple:
Locals know Ciscoe Morris, our Seattle-based Master Gardener. Oooo la la!
We also picked up a bunch of mushrooms, of course!
Afterward, we drove over to the Olympia Farmers Market and got some nummy cucumbers and cabbage. Didn’t see anything else we needed, plus no room in the fridge! It was nice to get away (and leave the dogs at home).
And finally…in the same category of “things not working right,” my laptop has been hiccupping a lot lately. It’s pretty old as far as laptops go (6 or 7 years? Maybe more?) Part of the problem is that the hard drive is really full. It’s sluggish and overwhelmed. It’s also a mess with layers upon layers of photos and documents after migrating all that crap two or three times over from previous computers. It’s confused and over-burdened.
So I had this great idea to transfer the majority of my photos to a cloud-based site. I have Dropbox, but the storage is paltry and I really don’t want to have to pay! I learned that Flickr allows an entire terabyte of free storage! So my computer via my relatively slow DSL internet connection has been uploading photos to Flickr for the past FOUR ENTIRE DAYS STRAIGHT. And it’s STILL uploading! Jeeze. I figured I could then (safely) delete a bunch of the photos on my hard drive, freeing up a ton of space. But I’ve since read that I shouldn’t do that! That I should get myself an external hard drive and store them on that in addition to Flickr, THEN delete them from my hard drive. (To be uber-safe). So I guess that’s next.
I can’t believe how long it’s taking to upload those photos to Flickr. But it is nice to go there and see my photos. There’s even a “magic view” that sorts them by “cat” or “dog” or “sunset” or whatever! So far I have 11,350 photos on there!
