HoundBlog

Today was the company Christmas dinner (only they can’t officially call it that thanks to the NAACP) — company bought turkey and pork barbecue and the rest of us brought in veggies, casseroles, desserts and fruit. I ate way too much, but everything tasted wonderful! I made a fruit salad with mini-marshmallows, sour cream, tropical fruit cocktail, mandarin oranges, chopped pecans and put coconut on top.

I never realised there were so many people who didn’t like coconut. Wierd. One lady said it was like eating sticks….I never tasted a stick that tasted like coconut, but I guess everyone has their own likes and dislikes. I only put it on top, so they could scrape it off if they didn’t want it.

Company passed out Christmas cards with a $50 Walmart gift card in it (traditional gift), so now I can go to Walmart tomorrow and buy Ken’s Christmas present — just joking  😆  

I found it interesting that no one signed it this year. Last year’s had 3 signatures on it. Sign of the times?? 😕

Well, time to get back to work……

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, the training class wasn’t actually about Great Plains, but about some tools we bought. As DBA, I’m quite frankly scared witless that the dimwits around here have these tools and can use them. I forsee many late nights fixing what they screw up with them, but hey — that’s what they pay me the big bucks for.

I think I have one more postcard from Eddie somewhere in the house. I rounded up the two I could find and scanned them for you. I hope I made it where if you click the picture, it will bring up a larger version of it, but I am still feeling my way around this program somewhat. I have never been able to get the Now Reading plugin to work properly nor was I able to get the avatar one to work either. 😥

Oh well, no one ever said I was a genius 😆

Ken’s already started me a honey-do list for this weekend. I don’t know where I’ve gone wrong as I thought it was always the MAN who had the honey-do list from his wife, not the other way around. Guess we’ve undergone some role swapping lately 🙂

I know I HAVE to go home and vacuum the house and especially the bird room — I’m afraid those seeds they’ve thrown on the floor will start sprouting if I don’t get them vacuumed up soon 😛  I also have to get the dirty clothes out of the camper and get those washed, but I’ve gotten most of the clothes in the house washed already, so that should not be more than a load or two. I told Ken last night that he needed to take his garbage out — I’ll see if he remembered to do that (doubt that he did).

I also have to make the salad that I’m bringing for the pot-luck Christmas dinner that we’re having here tomorrow. That won’t take long to do and I gave Ken a written list of ingredients for it, so he shouldn’t forget anything. He’ll still call me on the way home as he’ll want to know what to buy for supper tonight. Right now I just know it won’t be soup as that’s what we had last night and what I had for lunch today, too. 😕

Well, I need to get back to work —

Love to all,

Margaret

Scanned the postcards Eddie’s sent me.

And these are some Christmas Cards from my Whippet owners.

 Janet and Steve Phillips’ 3 Whippets — (l-r) Star, Whinney and Tara

Stannage Elling and Rio 

Love to all,

Margaret

Have a training class today in Great Plains, so have to get this done early. I hope it will be worth my time attending. The last one we had was worthless.

Am finally getting somewhat caught up on chores at the house and here at work. It’s been a challenge, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. I still have about a ton of laundry to do, but once I get started on it, it will go fairly quickly — it’s the start that seems to be the hardest to get to.

It’s funny how some things come fairly easily to me while others I just struggle and struggle with. I use case statements every day with my work (a case statement is simply a scenario that the script works with to produce a result when a particular condition exists). I’m working on a lesson in scripting at home that uses case statements, but I can not for the life of me get it to work properly. It *should* be a piece of cake as I love using case statements in scripting — they are so clean and produce such nice results, but alas, I am stuck in a big way. I hope my instructor checks the forum soon as I’ve posted a question there.

On the other hand, I recently was tasked with producing a report that looks at work orders created between Monday of this week and Monday of last week. Sounds pretty simple, right? It’s a bit more challenging when trying to program it as you have to first have the script check to see what day it is today in order to determine when the last preceeding Monday was, then calculate when the Monday before THAT one occurred. That script took me all of an hour to create. :/ Go figure.

Well, got to run. I need to put my nose back on the grindstone.

Love to all,

Margaret

Talked to Mom yesterday. She says her computer is making a noise after it’s been on awhile. I think that’s just a CPU fan going, but it needs to be checked out. I would hate for her to lose her computer — she gets so much enjoyment from it.

Got another post card from Eddie yesterday — this one was postmarked Iraq. I know he’s back in Bahrain, though, and getting ready to go home. I’ll have to scan the ones I’ve gotten so you all can see them. They are rather different.

I’m still playing catch up at work. It seems I don’t get one thing done before they’re asking for another. Job security!

Got to run.

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, so far, it’s been a typical Monday — all crazy and trying to catch up after being away for 4 days.

To catch you up on the last 4 days….

We didn’t do much at the dog show — placed or won a few classes, but no points. That’s the way it goes at these things sometimes. We went out to eat Friday night and you guessed it — to a Golden Corral 🙂 You will NEVER guess in a zillion years what they had on the salad bar!!! Watermelon rind pickles!!!! My eyes bugged out of my head when I spotted them! Oh! I was in heaven! Not QUITE as good as Ma’s (NOTHING could be as good as Ma’s!), but they were outstanding!! Ken and Charlotte agreed with me.

Thursday night, Ken went and got fish and french fries from the fish camp across the street from the coliseum. That was pretty tasty, too. Saturday night, I baked chicken breasts with garlic, squash and zucchini cut up on them in the oven of the camper. Tasty!! Charlotte made a lovely salad out of sour cream, fruit cocktail, pineapple and marshmallows. She also had made some double fudge brownies that she brought along with us — all stuff that was really bad for Ken’s diabetes and my waistline, but oh, so tasty! We will have to get back on track this week with diets and exercise to compensate for the gluttony of the weekend.

Work was a mess when I got in. They’ve had a new computer on order for me for awhile and Carlos finally got it up and at my desk, so I’ve spent nearly the entire morning getting it up to speed with my settings and stuff. I accidentally deleted all my email first thing this morning, so I’ve had to ask everyone to resend anything from last week. I just hope there are no emails from before last week that I need to take care of. Bummer!

The dogs and birds were thrilled to have Mommy home. Riley (the biting African Grey) lowered his head for me to scratch it a lot last night. He never offered to bite once. A milestone! Taji was his usual sweet self wanting me to love on him (which I did) and the ‘tiels were just as I left them 🙂

Well, got to run. More work needs to be done.

Love to all,

Margaret

Just a short note today as there’s not much to say……

Ken told me this morning that he’s taking Monday off as well as tomorrow and Friday. That will give him  a 5 day mini-vacation which he sorely needs! When I asked him what he wanted to do for Christmas, he said he just wanted to stay home and rest. I don’t blame him and I hope none of you think we’re being bad grandparents if we don’t come to visit you this year. He badly needs the few days he’ll have off to rest and I want to spend them with him, since I haven’t seen all that much of him awake these past months. It doesn’t mean we don’t love all of you — we do!!

I found this really cool website that you can play around with colors and textures to do your walls with Certa has this interactive thing that is just fun to play with. It’s giving me way too many ideas about updating the house :P. Now to find the time to do it!

Ms. Bebe is making her debut in gymnastics this weekend. She’ll be competing here in Greenville (and we won’t be here to see her, unfortunately!!), so you all be wishing her good luck! Olympics 2014 here she comes! LOL We will get to see her next month in Charleston and I’ll be sure to take my camera and get some photos of her.

Love to all….

Margaret

Found out today that Eddie will be home in time for Christmas! That is such awesome news! I know Yvonne, Chrystalyn and Randy will be thrilled to have daddy home!

Ken has an atrocious schedule the rest of the year. He will have this weekend off (4 days! Yeah!), then will have the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of Christmas weekend off and that’s it for the year. He is so tired! He’s been working 10 and 12 hour days for weeks on end. I know he’s getting paid handsomely to do this, but I still worry so much about his health. His blood sugar is not staying stable despite the doctor increasing his dosage and I know that not only diet, but stress contributes to that. I wish his doctor would go ahead and refer him to a specialist. I would feel so much more comfortable if he would.

Got to run….. there is so much to do!

Love to all,

Margaret

Happy 65th birthday Frances! You are now officially a senior citizen although you’ve been able to get senior coffee at Hardees for 10 years now 🙂

Charlotte and I went to a bird show in Atlanta Saturday. They really should not call them “shows” as it’s really just a bunch of bird breeders and birding suppliers selling birds and supplies, but that’s what was on the flyer, so that’s what I’m going with.

Before you ask, no, we didn’t buy any birds. We went to buy toys and supplies for the ones we have and Charlotte needed a bigger cage for her blue and gold macaw. It was a fun day that began with Western omelettes at Chadwicks and ended with a kind of yuckky sandwich at Zaxby’s.

I bought a whiffle ball that has a jingle bell in it ($1.25) for Taji along with a big wooden toy for him. I figured he would have the wooden toy torn up in no time at all, but he’s had so much fun with the whiffle ball that he hasn’t done much to the wooden toy yet. For those of you who don’t know, most of the large parrots and a lot of the smaller ones need to have things to destroy in order to stay happy. I give Taji sticks from the woods, but you have to be careful what tree they came from as some are poisonous, so buying the wooden toys (made from childrens’ wooden blocks) is safer for them. I wanted to buy him some toys he could pick up with his feet and beak and the whiffle ball fit that bill admirably. I bought two of them — one for Riley, but he doesn’t seem interested in his toy and he’s not destructive like Taji is, so his toys last longer. He seems to like ropes with knots in them that he can untie (the cockatiels like those kinds of toys, too). Any way, mission accomplished!

Got an email from Eddie with a link to a Snapfish album of pictures he took in Iraq. He didn’t say if he was back in Bahrain or not, so I don’t know where he is. Since he hasn’t posted anything on any of the last few blogs, I’m thinking he’s not where he has access to a computer right now.

We leave for Winston-Salem and our last show of the year Thursday, so I won’t be posting much this week. Take care everyone!

Love to all,

Margaret

Happy  birthday Eddie! I can’t believe you’re 34 years old today! It seems like just yesterday when you were a 8 lb 14 oz, red faced, sweet baby boy 🙂

You’ve grown up to be a man that I’m proud to call son.

I can remember when I turned 21 — you were a bump on a log at that point and your dad and I were living in California (29 Palms to be exact). I was so excited because I was pregnant. I knew in my heart that you were a boy (that was before ultrasounds) and I was so happy to be having a son. I had such high hopes for you. I wanted you to go to college and find a calling that you could love doing as a career and find someone to share your life with who would be your soul-mate. I know you have two lovely children who will bring you as much joy and pain as you brought me over the years.

I’m so proud that you finished college and hope that you have found a calling that you love. No job is perfect, but if you don’t get up in the morning dreading going to work, you have found something pretty close. I’m proud that you are in the military serving our country at this time in it’s history. I pray every day that God keep you safe from harm. After a false start, it seems you have a soul-mate.

I’m looking forward to your homecoming next month. Until then, stay out of the way of spitting camels 😛

Love to all,

Margaret