I’ve Been a Very Bad Person
… who hasn’t kept up with her blog posting. I can’t believe I haven’t written since Oct. 26th! It feels like forever, doesn’t it? Have you missed me?
I have been keeping busy, in mostly good ways. Of course there is always work and home life to keep me busy, but I feel like I have been extra busy to have ignored my writing for so long.
There was Halloween. The Hubby and I dressed up as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf and went to a party at K&E’s house. We had a good time – lots of friends were there. (I’d put pictures – but it doesn’t seem to be working at the moment!)
I have been working on the church Annual Finance Campaign. This takes time – both in creating the materials and in following up with people about their giving for the upcoming year. Our commitment Sunday was a few weeks ago; now I update the spreadsheet with all the pledges given and track down everyone who gave last year and haven’t replied for this year.
I got a new computer. My Gateway was having several issues. It was getting pretty full and didn’t have alot of free space. (Yes – I did go through it and got rid of programs and files I didn’t need anymore). I regularly did the disk scan thing to clear up temp files and crap like that, and defragmented every week or so… but it really wasn’t helping much. I started to get error messages about data not being written to the hard drive. The final straw was the power issue. I would be at my desk, using my external keyboard – not even touching the actual laptop – and the power would flicker between the AC adapter and the internal battery. I had a friend take a look at it, and he recommended to my bosses that I get a new computer. Considering the Gateway was 2.5 years old, it had certainly done its’ work for me as well as could be expected.
So, I ended up with a Lenovo Y530 from Circuit City (before they announced store closings!). I spent a day and a half geting used to Vista; installing, uninstalling, reinstalling software; finding those “only use them once in a while” programs are actually programs I need at my fingertips and then spending more time trying to find them again (auto-backup system, pdf printer, .mdi file converter, payroll company software, etc.) I only have one outstanding issue left, and I actually had the problem before I stopped using the Gateway.
For some reason, my external keyboard has stopped working. I “rebooted” it; I put in new batteries (twice!); I checked the software and it says it is working fine (I guess computers can lie!). The mouse works – but the keyboard doesn’t. So I still have that issue to resolve.
And tonight I got to make some cookies. It feels great to be in the kitchen trying a new recipe. I made Macadamia Lace Oatmeal cookies from Baking Bites. I had to make a change – I didn’t have any macadamia nuts. Well, that’s not exactly true. My sister in law gave me a bag – about 7 years ago – that I still had. I opened it – nibbled on it – and decided that was not going to go anywhere but the garbage. So I substituted walnuts instead. The verdict – very good! They are very simple to make – hardly any ingredients – and they are even wheat free so I can give them to my mom! The Hubby liked them alot – although I need to learn how to drizzle chocolate effectively to add a bit of pizazz to them. The Boy wasn’t interested when I was making them, but after tasting a finished one, said they were okay. I liked them – but you have to remember these are lace cookies, so they are not filling – they are very light.