Cache in your chips!

It's going to be a geocaching weekend for me and my sister, Karen (aka Ballentine Buddies). The local geocaching group (CSRA Geocachers) is hosting a geocaching event in Thomson, Georgia. As a member of the group, I did my small part by hiding 3 new geocaches and losing my darned sweater along the way. No...it's not a 'clothing optional group', it just got warm out on the trail and I wrapped the darned thing around my waist and it must have dropped along the way. Hopefully some fellow cacher will find & return it thru the weekend.

We even got a mention on the radio and in the local paper!

So we'll have a fun filled weekend of caching, eating good food, visiting with old & new friends, a poker run & night cache! Not to mention speakers and more food! We're squeezing in as much fun as we can into one weekend and I just had to take Friday off to hang with my sister...picking ticks off as we stomp thru the woods in search of hidden ammo cans!

Sound fun? You probably pass by geocaches every day...visit geocaching.com if you're interested in learning more and getting hooked on something that pulls you off the sofa, get you a bit of exercise and meeting new people.

I'm a Mutant

I knew there was something wrong with me....I'm a mutant according to this article.

Ain't he cute?

My niece, Crystal, and her one year old son, Skyler, are staying with me awhile. And I added my sister's two Shelties to the household while she's house hunting and trying to sell her house. So...I now have 4 dogs and a baby in the household. My stylist is happy...she has to cover my gray hair more often now!



Well, Crystal entered her handsome boy in an online photo contest for some fun and he won...here's the cute little dude. Don't let that face fool you, he'll be into the dog water bowl in a blink of an eye if you turn your back!

8 months...but it's not a baby!

YES, finally! My house in North Carolina has sold! I've had a contract for the past couple of weeks but didn't want to post anything and possibly jinx myself! Eight months of paying rent in Georgia and mortgage in NC, plus two electric bills and the weekly cost having someone mow my lawn. Since my neighbor's house sold last July in 3 days, I thought it'd be a snap when I put mine on the market in August. But, as you can see frequently in the news, the housing market took a nosedive. Just my luck...but, luck wasn't all bad since I didn't lose my shirt on the sale. So....I have another 4 months on my lease, and I really am not in a rush to buy a house, so might rent for another year. Especially since I hate packing and moving, I don't wanna do that 'till l I know I'm ready to sit tight in one place for awhile.

Blog Neglect Intervention

Yes....I've been in rehab for Blog Neglect. My friends and family think I should have plenty of time on my hands since I don't have kids to chase after. So they orchestrated an intervention! I now know the first step is to admit that I have a problem....and I do! My problem is my friends and family giving me a hard time and thinking that I laze around and do nothing, so should have time to update my blog hourly! (I think they should get a life, eh?)

But, to appease these folks and keep them from tossing me into blog rehab, I do have some updates.

Famous Couples Party....My "Hiking" group was straying far from the path of hiking with this get-together. We had to come as "Famous Couples". Since I have no other half of a couple (and my brother bowed out of being my partner for the party), I decided to be Miss Piggy and brought along Kermit! Well, first I had to have a costume. Being frugal, I visited the local thrift store for accessories. I couldn't come up with a stuffed pig from the thrift store, so hit up the pet department at Target...then I GUTTED that piggie! (odd that I enjoyed unstuffing a pig toy on my kitchen counter - more rehab later for that!)

Here's photo proof of this disasterous hobby of mine...Hiking that is!
Poor unsuspecting stuffed pig toy....

Becomes Miss Piggy!

So what does this have to do with Hiking? I don't have a clue! But stay tuned for photos from our next "Hiking" group party...it's called an "Anything But Clothes" party!! Ack....can I show those photos here on my blog? Or should I pack my bags for rehab now?

The good, the bad, the ugly

Let's see, I'll start with the good...

Back in October 2006 I purchased an Roomba from an online store, Hammacher Schlemmer, that offered a lifetime satisfaction guarantee. These little robotic vacuum cleaners aren't cheap, so when mine died just past a year old I wasn't happy. You pay enough for something, you expect it to last awhile, eh? So I contacted the company and they sure did stand behind their promise! The refunded the entire purchase price with no hassle at all. Try that at Walmart!

And while I'm on 'the good', I managed to have my Federal and two State returns in the bank withing 8 days of my efile...amazing!

And on to the bad...

I went out for a dinner with friends from my hiking group. We'd planned to celebrate two birthdays at the local Miyabi's Japanese Steak House. We didn't make reservations weeks ahead of time, so we knew we'd have a bit of a wait. After 2 hours I was ready to go somewhere else, but we toughed it out for yet another hour and were finally seated after 3 hours and 15 minutes!! No, the food wasn't that good!

And finally the ugly...

Yup, I snagged mouse #7!! Are we done yet? I sure hope so!

My Record Tax Return!

Was doing a little account balancing and notice my checking account was due for a deposit tomorrow. Well, tomororw is payday, so no suprise there...but the amount was all wrong. Cha-ching! It's my Georgia state tax return!! Holy cow, I just completed that Monday night and by Friday I'll have my return. Ain't it amazing what computers can do for ya now-a-days?

Pau!

My taxes are PAU! That'd be Hawaiian for done, finished, kaput! I came home from work Monday and my W2 was in the mail. I had everything else I needed to get my taxes done, so I sat down and worked start to finish on Federal, and two partial state returns (lived half the year in NC and half in GA). Managed to finish around 10:30 last nite. I've used TaxAct software for several years and it speeds things up a bit since it has last year's info to save a bit of typing. The ugly part of tax software is the little $$ counter it has in the upper right. It tells you what you owe or what your return would be at that point. Well, when you start off, you enter your salaries...so that 'owe' amount is pretty high until you start entering your taxes paid and other deductions. I do get returns from all, but not huge amounts...which is exactly what I prefer. I'd rather have my money in my pocket thru the year than give the government a free loan by overpaying!

Nope, not spending any of it...gonna get my Roth IRA started rather than blow it.

Cheesy Chit-Chat

Picked up another electronic toy for my Geocaching hobby...a PDA. Not one of the real expensive ones, but good enough for me to get going with 'paperless caching'. Snagged 5 caches on my shopping & paperless test-run on Monday! If you don't Geocache, you'd be suprised how many of these little treasure boxes you pass by every day. I'd been to the same shopping area many times and just wasn't aware what was lurking there.

Oh, and while I was out shopping, I walk into Target and the first things I see on this freezing day are racks and racks of bathing suits! Okay, in this cold weather I'm sure dreaming of the beach...but I'm not wearing a bikini in the dream, body just ain't bikini-ready yet.

My mouse problem is still a problem - I'm hearing him in the darned kitchen wall! Now I have no idea how to trap this sucker. He'll probably die in the wall and stink up the whole house! I probably need to search the Internet for mouse killin' mercenaries.

Cold Hard Cacher

Geo-cacher that is....my sister, Karen (that's her in the photo), came to visit Saturday night and we enjoyed a dinner out at Sticky Fingers with over 50 fellow geocachers! Karen stayed over and we headed out in the morning in search of some local caches. My outdoor thermometer read 29 degrees when I got up...sheesh, I didn't think it got that cold in Georgia! So, we donned our long-johns, and piled on the warm layers to do some cold hard caching. Karen's been recovering from a nasty cold and had attempted to clear her ears 'scuba diver' style. You know, pinch your nose and blow, force air into your ear canal and 'poppin' your ears. Well, caused her some bit of pain, but that doesn't stop a serious cacher! We snagged 5 caches and I hid my first caches, three of them! Karen head home, but her ear was still hurting. Later that night she finally decided she couldn't take it anymore and headed to the urgent clinic. Sure enough, she'd busted her ear drum!! Now how many folks get out in freezing weather with a busted ear drum and still cache!?!? Only the crazy ones!

I buried the ghost of Christmas past!

Okay, middle of January and I finally put away all my Christmas decorations. On New Year's weekend I'd removed and packed all the tree decorations, then last weekend I finally took down my tree. Now today I packed up all the other decorations...wreath, candles, that kinda stuff. I know there are folks that still have up Christmas decorations or leave lights up all year 'round, so I know I'm faster at getting this chore done than some of you out there!

Poodle Walk

Almost forgot to update ya'll on my Poodle Walk. No, I didn't walk like a Poodle! I took 'The Girls", Bubbles and Trixie, with me on a walk with my hiking group on Sunday. It certainly was 'dog day' with the hiking group. We had five people and 5 dogs! Ended up keeping a pretty good pace, so I had to give little Trixie a rest every now 'n then - that means I had to carry her! Hey, she was taking 20 steps for every one of mine, so I had to help her a bit. Folks recommended I bring one of those doggie carriages next time, or get a doggie snugglie or purse! Utterly embarrassing! Ah well, the girls sure were beat and passed out once we made it back to the car! A tired dog is a good dog!

Can I get a break?

So, I get home to find a notice from my homeowner's insurance to update my records. Thought I'd done all of my change of address notifications, but I've had them trickle in over the past few months from old credit cards and now my insurance. Chat with my insurance folks, State Farm, to give them my new address and I get the bad news. Seems they don't insure vacant homes (mine is vacant while I attempt to sell it in this sluggish market) and will promptly drop me in March when my policy ends!!! I'd sold my Virginia home while it was vacant for months and a Virginia State Farm agent had kept me insured. Not so with these folks in North Carolina. So I do a little googling and then give a call to another insurance company and get the really bad news! My annual insurance was around $700, but the first 3 months of insuring my vacant home was over the annual cost! My biggest hope is I'll get an offer and sell before my current insurance ends.





And now, another irritating situation. If you've been enjoying the saga of my Battle of the Mice, you'll be chuckling at the latest update. Yup, even though I sent six of those suckers to the Great Beyond (there had better not be a Heaven for mice!), there is fresh evidence of the flea-bitten varmints! And even worse, I spied this evidence in the guest bedroom and I'm expecting a guest this weekend! Even worse than that, my guest reads this blog! Ack! If anyone has advice on dispatching these mice, please post a comment. In the meantime, I'll be heading out for more sticky traps!

Hiking, brothers and chaos

My brother came to visit this past week, and I had a really enjoyable visit. I didn't have vacation time to use, so had to go off to work while he and the dogs enjoyed hanging out and watching TV. We managed to get out 'n about a little in the evenings, saw the new National Treasure movie. The weather was awesome all week (in the 70's!), so I made a couple of afternoon trips to the park to walk the dogs and get a bit of exercise. My brother, David, joined me ... but his idea of enjoying the weather & exercising was a good book and a spot on a bench at the park.

This weekend I've been busy with my friends in the hiking group. Saturday morning, wearing my new lightweight long-johns under my hiking attire, I did the 3 1/2 hour Mistletoe Park hike. A bit hilly, but we kept the pace easy enough that I didn't need to be hauled out on a stretcher! It's a real social group, so afterwards some of us went out for dinner and hit the $2 movie theater to see Dan in Real Life. Good movie...I'd put it in the 'chick flick' category. We decided on another hike for today, not as long though, and at least the weather isn't too bad for January - 60 degrees. Maybe I'll even take "The Poodles" with me on this hike. That should be interesting.

After getting grief from my brother for still having my Christmas tree up, I forced myself to take it down today. I'd taken all the decorations off on New Year's weekend, but the tree was still lighting up every night. It's a new tree, and of course it doesn't fit back into the box!

David helped me rearrange my living room furniture. My niece, Crystal, and her 1 year old son Skylar will be coming to stay with me awhile at the end of the month. So I thought I'd work on baby-proofing a bit. Needed to get the TV backed up flush to a wall so the little bugger can't pull on the cables. Lots more to do to make this place baby-proof! Oh, and not only will these two be joining me, but since my sister Karen (Crystal's Mom) is moving to Alabama...I asked my landlord for permission to pet sit Karen's two Shelties (those little small Lassie looking dogs that bark a lot). Surprisingly the landlord said yes! So, two more dogs will join my household for awhile as well. How do you spell CHAOS?

Holiday Fun

Wow...it's been a week of family gatherings, tons of food always goes with that. I enjoyed Christmas day with my sister, Debi, and her family and then the rest of the gang (sister Karen, brother David and their families) gathered yesterday for more Christmas spirit, drinking spirits and pigging out! Twenty-three of us...we had to each in shifts! Here's a few pics from our recent family Holiday get-togethers.


So then I had one last little Christmas gift....I think I finally manged to capture that darned smart little mouse who's been dodging my traps for weeks! Saw the little critter in the laundry room, so I set two traps in there and WHAM, got him within the hour! Now, I'm really hoping that was the last one....my kill count is 6 of the darned things! Hey, I love animals, but these guys would live much longer if they just stayed out of my house!



And finally...I get to ring in the New Year with an ugly cold...ugh! I probably caught it from one of the kids at our Christmas get-togethers. I rarely get sick, so when I do it hits me like a ton of bricks. I managed to drag my sniffly, sneezing, coughing, germy self into work all week and finally gave in on Friday to stay home sick. Hate using a vacation day to lay in bed sick. Resolutions? Nah...I actually set some goals way before January and am workin' on those.

The Ugliest Ornament

Thought I'd tell the story of how our family tradition of having an ornament making party started. My Dad was career Army, and one year the family was transferred back to Virginia from Germany. It was Christmas time, our household goods shipment was late, and that shipment contained all of our holiday decorations! I remember the Army helped us out with some temporary furniture, Army style bunk beds and such. We always had a REAL tree, but now we had nothing to put on the tree. So, my Mom, being a crafty kinda person, had us making decorations. We used beads on straight pins and decorated those satin balls, and we made paper chains for garland. We even used the bottom of egg cartons to make ornaments. Many of these survived through the years, but I think there's only one egg carton ornament left. To most folks, it might be the ugliest ornament on my tree....but to me it holds lots of love and memories, and started a family tradition that is spanning generations.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Activities

Just days before Christmas, and here are some of the family activities going on. We had our annual Family Ornament Making Party! Lots of glue, glitter, beads and craft stuff ... we made a huge mess, and quite a few interesting ornaments. From painted glass balls to reindeer bulbs.

Some of the kids came to my place for an overnight visit. I took them to the "Lights of the South" right here in my little town of Grovetown, GA. Millions of beautiful lights, and we enjoyed a hayride through the forrest of lights. Did I remember my camera for this photo op? Of course not! So, I made up for it the next day, on our way to see the Golden Compass we passed this metal aligator and just had to snap some festive holiday photos!

As you can see, my nephews are really brave!

Christmas Carolers

Wow, it's been ages since I've had Christmas Carolers visit! You just don't see folks going door to door like that now-a-days. Maybe it's the high crime rate, or maybe it's the weather...but it's not commonplace.
A large group of folks, dozens of children, from a local Church were out caroling in my neighborhood tonight. Well, not much crime here, unless you count folks not picking up poop after their dogs as littering? And weather? Well, many of the kids were wearing shorts...it's in the 80's this week!
So, it was really sweet having all those kids singing at my door (as I attempted to keep my dogs from running off with them) and kinda makes it feel more like Christmas.