Saturday and Sunday

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Ah, here it is already, the last day of January, and the sun shone in the morning, then clouded over and offered snowfall this afternoon! We are experiencing another cold snap, both at the little house in the city and the country house. At the little house in the city this means we pay more for heating fuel, at the country house this means that Attila has to work very hard keeping the house warm with firewood. He is looking tired again! The weather should warm up a little by the middle of the week, which will be a relief to Attila for many reasons.

I have been working on the web site for the church each and every day. I have learned a few new tricks with DNS and how the Internet works, which is always fun! The site is coming along nicely, or so I think. The proof will be when I send an image of the final product to the customers; I am sure some editing will be needed, but hopefully just superficial stuff. Then I have to figure out how to “go live”, transferring the site from google, which will be a challenge since I have heard that google does not relinquish its conquests without a struggle. I will do it though!

Yesterday afternoon I took a quick trip to the laundromat. I am becoming accustomed to this task, and can be there and back again in forty minutes. Then of course there is a 24 hour drying period, with damp laundry hung all over the house, over the backs of chairs, on hangers above the tub, everywhere! This morning everything was bone dry, and quickly folded and stored away.

Diesel continues to be good company. He slept with me last night, waking me a few times as he crawled over me. Finally he curled up by my head, fell asleep, and began to snore. This morning he insisted on sitting on my lap to be petted, while I chatted with Attila. He likes a lot of companionship and physical contact, but then so do I, so we are well matched.

When I work on a website I am totally focused for three or four hours. When I stop I am groggy for a while. I was going to pay a bill today, after I finished working on the website for the day. It was a bad idea, I almost paid the wrong bill, but decided it looked wrong. Thank goodness! I will wait until I am fresh and aware tomorrow morning, to tackle paying bills, and sorting through the pile of mail from January.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Another sunny morning! This morning I sipped my coffee and watched as the sun began to light up the distant clouds. How beautiful the early morning is, when all is quiet, the street lights have winked out, and the outside world slowly comes into focus.

The site design I am working on was approved by the customer this morning. I changed zone files for site redirection, it was a little bit of a learning curve. It went smoothly and the new site should go live in the next day or so, then more testing on browsers and devices, and reconfiguring my computer so that I can access the new site.

My last hair cut was a very good hair cut, but it was quite a while ago, last August, the middle of August. The price for that good haircut was more than I could afford, so I haven’t gone back. The fellow cuts men’s hair for $16, but for my haircut he wanted $45 AND a tip. Men get all the breaks at this guys salon.

Last autumn Harriet cut my bangs for me. My hair grows quickly and my bangs have grown so long that I needed barrettes to keep them out of my eyes, so that I can see. I looked ridiculous, as you can imagine. I took to wearing a wool cap with my bangs slicked back underneath, when I needed to go out in public. I thought about going to the cheaper salons, and then I thought about how wretched I always feel after they give me a bad haircut. So this morning I talked the situation over with Diesel, which was really more like talking it over with myself, and decided to take matters into my own hands. I grabbed the kitchen scissors, placed a small garbage can in the bathroom sink, and went at ‘er. I took off more than an inch. It doesn’t look too bad, better than the barrettes, I can see, and the cut within my present budget.

Diesel has short hair. Even so, the hair situation was getting out of hand, so this morning I vacuumed the entire house. It took thirty minutes. I love a small house!

The replacement windows Attila installed last autumn, in the dining area of the kitchen, were stored in sheds near a farmer’s field, where we purchased them. I discovered that they were full of Asian Ladybugs! I have been killing scads of these attractive insects, each and every day. They come out of the nooks and crannies of the window’s mechanisms when the sun shines on the windows. Usually they are crawling on the ceiling, across the window glass, or on the frames around the glass and the windows. I use a scrap of paper towel to capture and destroy them, then throw the collected results in the compost. They smell terrible when they are squished, and their blood is orange. I read that they bite, but I have not been bitten yet, thank goodness. Perhaps by spring I will have caught up with these unwelcome hitchhikers. I don’t mind them outside, but they are not welcome inside the house.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

Country House

-24°C
Date: 6:00 AM EST Saturday 31 January 2015
Condition: Cloudy
Pressure: 102.7 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: -24.0°C
Dewpoint: -26.4°C
Humidity: 81%
Wind: calm

Little House in the City

-22°C (the thermometer just outside my kitchen window says -26C!)
Date: 6:00 AM EST Saturday 31 January 2015
Condition: Clear
Pressure: 102.8 kPa
Tendency: falling
Visibility: 24 km
Temperature: -22.2°C
Dewpoint: -26.4°C
Humidity: 69%
Wind: NW 4 km/h
Wind Chill:-26

Quote

“Frugality without creativity is deprivation.”
Amy Dacyczyn