So much has happened since I last posted in my blog that I am not sure where to begin. It seems time just slips away from you. No matter your plans or your intentions time always has the upper hand and before you know it, you have no time left for those great plans!

Tali has become a new sister since I posted last. No I did not get another puppy from Tali's parents. I actually got another Dachshund. Darlington (Darli for short) is an adorable dapple puppy. She is a little stinker but not nearly as crazy as Tali was when we got her.
We are enjoying her most of the time and finally it seems house breaking has made a break through! LOL

So I can try and promise again that I will post more often here, but instead I will just say that I will post when Father Time gives me a break and gives me that spare couple minutes to jot down something!

I was sitting here with like 2 minutes of free time and realized I had not written in my blog for a LONG time!
I thought that I would have all kinds of free time this Summer since my hubby was not going to race this year. Yah right!

I cannot believe the Summer is practically gone. I had such big plans. We were going to go to at least 3 or 4 races as just plain old fans, and have fun and watch. We have not even made it to one yet, and the season ends next Friday.
 I thought we would take a mini vacation. Maybe just a couple days in the Dells. Never happened.
We had planned on working on our home this Fall and start some of our "big" remodeling projects. First the other house needs a roof, so ours will wait.

It seems like the more you plan big the less time you have. The days seem to be flying by faster and faster. As a child it seemed like Summer's lasted forever (of course so did the school year). Everything took so long to happen. Christmas & birthdays always seemed months away. Then you waited so long to get your drivers license. Then it seemed like graduation would never get here. After that it all seemed to speed up some. Every year it seems as if your foot is getting heavier on that gas peddle.
I for one am ready to press down on the brake a little. I feel like I am missing so much. I think we all need to slow down a bit and enjoy those precious minutes before they all slip by.

Wow it is really taking me a lot to get used to this new computer. Many things are the same, but just as many seem to be so different. I feel like I am calling my son in to help me every 10 minutes! I ran XP forever. I liked it, I was comfortable with it. XP felt like those old pair of comfy sweats that you just cannot part with no matter how nasty and ratty they look. I am sure I will grow to love Vista (hey I am trying to think positive here!). Now I hear Windows 7 is coming out this Fall. What the???? I just switched from XP! LOL I also need to say that Microsoft really needs to hire someone new to name their operating systems. They have NO imagination!
Soeven though it is taking me twice as long to do some of the same basic things I did on XP,  I can see the potential. I think I WILL end up loving Vista as much as I loved XP. So when I am blogging about switching to Windows 7 in 5 years you all can remind me of today. When I was feeling there is hope for this new computer and operating system.

Well I know, I know! I said I was NOT getting a new computer, that we were just doing a really good house keeping on my computer. Well the morning of the big reformat my son shows me this really good deal on computer parts @ Tiger Direct. I had been thinking this already myself. It is a lot easier on my nerves to know my old stand by is waiting in the wings just in case anything goes wrong. So I took the plunge and ordered the parts. I never buy a pre-built computer anymore. My son builds all my computers for me. So I can get the latest and greatest hardware without having to pay an arm and a leg for it. Which brings me to my next point. Computer hardware prices are LOW right now. If you can afford to build a new one, I would suggest do it NOW! I paid half of what I paid for my old faithful 3 years ago.
 
So YES I got a NEW computer. I also made that notorious jump to Widows Vista! I got the 64 bit so I can run an insane amount of ram (memory) and it will all work. LOL So almost everything made the switch fine. I did say almost. I had a Paint Shop program that is about 8 years old that would not work Plus my embroidery iconizer is not working. The developer is working on that one though. So hopefully I will have that fixed in a day or so.

So it seems all is well in new computer land. For now! LOL

Yes, tomorrow is computer cleaning day for me. I am a little nervous, but have complete faith in my son (who will be doing all the work while I pace nervously). Apparently Windows XP gets glitchy after running it for more than 2 years and needs to be re-installed.
Most people love getting a new computer. I hate it. Why? Because I have to re-install everything! No I am not getting a new computer (this year anyway). But it does need a good house cleaning so to speak. So I will need to round up all my software so it can be re-installed after the big cleaning (reformatting). I figure it is much better to do this now before it eventually crashes on me. Kind of a controlled crash I guess! XP has already started doing weird things so it is time. Is it house cleaning time for you? Remember you should back up important files at minimum weekly! So if your house cleaning comes up suddenly, you won't be losing a lot of valuable files.
Wish me luck!

You know how they always say, don't sweat the small stuff. Well I beg to differ. 99% of our lives is the SMALL stuff! So only about 1% should be worried about then? I don't think so. I am sure you are wondering what has me in a tizzy today! LOL You would think with our current living conditions being crowded it would be the kids, right?!?!? NOPE! Of course that only leaves one of the pets and since Magic (the cat) is generally well behaved it would leave only one suspect.
TALI! Some of you may or may not know that I do not care for carpeting. I don't mind an area rug or other small throw rugs in front of entries in the house. I just don't like carpet. If I cannot change it or clean it easily, I don't want it! So our home is about 90% hard surfaces with 10% carpet/rugs. With that much hard floor you would think that Tali would throw up on a hard surface eventually. NOPE! She will run to a rug to throw up. Now don't panic, she is not throwing up because she has any serious aliment. We have two very prolific pear trees in our back yard. Some of the pears fall off this time of year (not sure why, but I am sure there is some pear logic to it). What does Tali do? She eats them. Of course way under ripened pears are not great for her stomach. So she throws up. I keep sweeping the pears up, but you know I am bound to miss one or two that her nose will find. Now she does not eat them when I take her out. She knows better. When Dad takes her out in the morning he does notice ANYTHING! One day she brought a block of bird suet in that fell out of the holder and he did not notice. So yes I am going to sweat the small stuff when I am scrubbing the bright green stains off my carpet today, LITERALLY!
Anyone want a slightly used Beagle??? LOL

I always have every intention to post a new blog entry every couple days here. Well, that just seems to NEVER happen! LOL I always tell myself, oh I will do it later and later never comes. So today I decided I would NOT wait until later and do it this morning before I get side tracked.

I have found that living with an extra person in the house is like adding a whole other family. Our daughter had not lived with us for over 2 years. She went to work at Disney World in Florida in August the year she graduated High School. She was home for about a month and then we all went on vacation to Orlando Florida for 10 days. Shortly after we came home she moved out into her apartment. So to have her come home this last May was a shock to the system so to speak. She has her way of doing things (which of course in my opinion is NOT right!) LOL. It just seems like we are all going crazy with just adding one more person. She will be moving out in a couple weeks. Her house is just about finished and I am looking forward to getting my house back Hopefully at that time I will have a chance to blog more. Oh and Tali, she has been SO NAUGHTY with our daughter home. Ashley spoils the dog and lets her get away with things that we normally would not allow. I have threatened many times Ash would have to take Tali with her when she moves out!  Have a great easy and stress-free day!

I love to cook, MOST of the time! LOL My family raves about my cooking to friends which inflates my ego just a little. My kids used to tell me I should go to school to become a chef. No way! I like to make family meals. I am a cook. I don't do the fancy dancy meals that no one has a clue on what it may be. I learned to cook at a very young age. My first memory of cooking (on my own) was coming home from Kindergarden and making pancakes for my little brother (who was 3) and myself. I was only 5 years old myself. I barely remember them being doughy in the middle. I also learned to cook out of necessity. My Mom worked a swing shift, so was not always home. Plus I am allergic to onions. EVERYONE uses onions. Even growing up my family cooked with onions. They believed that I just did not like them and would sneak them into food only to have me get deadly sick. I must have figured it out. When I got older I got tested and sure enough, I have a bad reaction to onions. So we don't eat out much. People with food allergies will completely understand where I am coming from with this. I have a handful of places I will go to as I know I will be fine if I eat there. Going to new places is exciting for some but nerve racking for me. I had asked at a new pizza place if they put onions in their pizza sauce. The waitress came back and said no they did not, as she walked away she said they used pureed onion in it. Hmmm. I am thinking that is the SAME thing! Also if you tell them about your food allergy they look at you like they don't even want you there. Afraid you may explode or something. I did go to one place that was WONDERFUL. Famous Daves. It is a BBQ place. GREAT RIBS! LOL They gave me a full print out of ingredients. I eat there when I get the chance!
So needless to say I have learned to make almost anything I would want without onions at home. Yes I enjoy an evening out like everyone else. I just think most of mine are right at home cooking what I love for a family who makes me feel like the best chef in the world!

After hearing about a house fire of my niece's boyfriends family member I got to thinking. We have plenty of insurance to cover our belongings and our home. They did as well. They all got out safely (thanks to God) and were grateful that the only real loss was photos that could not be replaced. All those memories gone. I purchased a little scanner a while back (several months ago). You can scan up to a 4x6 photo and it loads it onto a digital card. It automatically numbers them as well. I thought cool! I don't need to put them on the scanner, scan, crop, label and then save. I just run them through. Pop the card out and save to my computer. Well, I have it and that is about as far as it went. I had great plans of watching movies and scanning away. First I need to get all the stuff together, and that did not happen. So after hearing about the fire I decided I needed to take some action. So today I was taking a break from work and decided to watch a corny Sci Fi movie. I grabbed a photo box and my little scanner. I was able to scan about 300 photos in just over an hour. Not too bad. The scanner was getting pretty warm, so I decided to give it a break.

It is funny but I think I spent more time looking at those old photos and laughing then I did watching the movie. It is something I NEED to make time to do. I am the un-official family photographer. I have literally boxes and boxes of pictures to scan. At least ten times more than what I did today. Thankfully I switched to digital almost immediately when it came out! Family memories mean a lot to me. It is our history no matter how good or bad. Those old photos show so many changes and bring back so many memories that I had forgotten. I think we all need to take time and go through those old photos. You may just surprise yourself on how much you have forgotten.

I think we all day dream once in a while about winning the big jackpot. No I am not going to tell you I won the lottery. I think I would need to buy a ticket first, to even have a chance. LOL
The jackpot in Wisconsin was 222 million dollars last night. Not sure if anyone won it, but wow wouldn't that be life changing! Then I really started to think about it. What would I do with that kind of money?
I don't think I would change much. I would buy some land out of town and build our "dream house". Now that would not be HUGE like most would do. I would just make sure I had the "extras" that I wanted. We would raise some animals and put in a huge garden. I know that I would give a lot away to family and friends. I would continue to work on my business (www.stitchitcheap.com) and don't really think I would change much. Hmmmm, maybe I don't need to go out and buy that lottery ticket after all.