Slow Weekends

Currently Reading: Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

One of the things CC and I like most about living here in the apartment is our ability to do absolutely nothing on the weekend and not feel guilty about it. Before, when we were sharing the house with my parents, the weekend came and there was always this sort of fog of guilt around everything. We just HAD to do things around the house no matter how many things we'd done during the week. There wasn't any real DIRECT pressure on us, but you could feel it, gnawing at you. We'd do the floors or dust or clean things, and always food shopping.

These days though that's not the case. The apartment stays a LOT cleaner than the house does so right there you can write off a whole lot of work. We're only cooking for two now which means half the dishes we used to have. And with CC coming home from work mid-afternoon, we can food shop any day of the week.

It's such a luxury, or it seems to be anyway. We've had a couple of days like this already. We turn on the TV and watch it. Just that, just watch the TV, not watch the TV and vacuum or watch the TV and move furniture. Just watch, and talk a bit. Or maybe she'll play the keyboard for a while and I'll read the papers online. Slow, relaxing, fabulous. Best of all, 100% affordable :-)

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We weren't able to totally goof off this weekend. My mother had ordered some new furniture and she wanted me to go over there and help arrange two rooms. Lots of clashing styles you see so it's tricky to get the right balance. Even more difficult, the pieces of furniture aren't anywhere near the same size so you can't block things off in neat little sections. Maybe one pieces you can center on a wall but if you go with a different piece there, it has to be off-center otherwise the whole balance of the room is shot. Ok, most guys reading this have glassy eyes right now and have no idea what I'm talking about :-)

We did manage to do two important things to day, at least I hope we did. We got both rooms figured out. The furniture is placed well so it's not crowded. There are nice, big open spaces and it's not as drab. I've also convinced my mother to hold off on hanging certain things on the walls until she gets the rest of her furniture. Trust me on this one, where you place two end tables can REALLY make a difference. Plus, she has to get lamps too and that will also affect what goes on the walls.

All and all, a nice visit and we made some progress in the decorating :-)

Avant Browser, Japanese Fiction & Rear Window

Just Finished Reading: The Inugami Clan by Seishi Yokomizo

I have found the perfect browser! Well, it's perfect for ME anyway. I finally found a browser that has all the really nice features of Netscape and Firefox but actually runs like Explorer so the web pages you view don't get all messy.

One of the really great features about Netscape and Firefox is tabbed browsing. This allows you to load multiple web pages in a single browser window. It's VERY handy if you like to switch back and forth between different pages or if you tend to open a LOT of pages at once. Having them all tabbed in the same browser saves a LOT of desktop space and memory. Explorer never got around to putting in that feature so every time you want to look at a new page you have to either dump your current page or open a whole new copy of the broswer. Well not anymore.

Avant Browser is really more of an overlay for Explorer than a separate program. Everything works just like Explorer. Everything is in the same place as you remember it. You just get more control over EVERYTHING. Want to block those pop-up ads? No problem. Lots of browsers do that now. Want to block those sometimes obnoxious Flash ads that slow your system to a crawl while they show commercials? It's just a click away with Avant. No external add-ons needed. Of course, there's the tabbed browsing as I mentioned before, but also you get GROUP launching. Think of your favorites menu. Now, say you like to view 5 specific newspapers every day. You normally go one by one through favorites or maybe on your "links" bar. With Avant, you can load them into a group then launch that group and watch those tabs fly baby! It'll load them all for you in separate tabs for you to view when you want. Fabulous program. You can customize your menus in ways Windows only dreams of! You can change how it looks and, if you download a little sub-program, you can change the skins making the browser look however you damn well want it to look.

I found it over on CNET. I'd been over there reading a story on something and one of their little "also featured" links caught my eye. Did a little reasearch and as it turns out, I'm not the only one who likes Avant. It gets 4 or 5 out of 5 stars pretty much everywhere it's listed. And here's the best part: It's free! That's right, it's free. You download it, install it, done. No ads, nothing. The programmer asks for a donation of course, and if you can afford it, you should be nice and pay him a little something. But the program will run the same, pay or not.

If you want to check it out, head over to cnet.com and do a search for Avant Browser. You can read up on the review and see screenshots before you download it.

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I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, everyone should sample a little bit of world literature from time to time. Wait, that sounds too snotty. Forget the "literature" part. Read some books from other countries. Why? Because it sure is a whole lot more fun when you can't figure out all the plot "twists".

I just finished The Inugami Clan last night. Great mystery novel. I've got a rather large selection of books from Japanese authors and the collection is growing. Since I studied English in college and read a LOT of books from Britain and the US, it's become quite easy to figure out where books are going long before I get to the end of the story. The "twists" that the authors put in to shake things up, I can usually spot those FAR in advance. In short, I find too many books to be predictable.

Now, that's not entirely a BAD thing. I mean, you pick up something by Shakespeare and it's got "TRAGEDY" in the title, you KNOW half the cast is going to be dead by the end of the play. Hell you can even predict how some of them are going to die. That's called foreshadowing. The problem comes when every book you see can be summed up as a variation of another book or pair of books. It's a very bad thing when you can write off novels the way Hollywood people write off movies: "oh, it's The Matrix meets Logan's Run" or "It's The Incredibles meets Harry Potter". That's bad for movies and it's even WORSE for books.

What I used to do was just switch genres. I'd read some sci fi, then some generic fiction, maybe something historical, keep things changing. But after a while even that's not enough. You see influences from one novel reaching into the others and you start to wonder if these people actually bothered to check and see if their "unique idea" had already been done a half dozen times. And I'm talking about series fiction. You expect, for example, all the Mike Hammer novels to be about the same. That's why you buy them. I'm talking about the books that are SUPPOSED to be different but aren't.

About the worst thing you can do is read the classics. That sounds bad but it's true. I've read a good chunk of the classics and that really does mess up modern fiction for you. Knowing that a certain story is just a retelling of a book from 40 or 50 years ago, it makes the author seem a bit lazy and it adds to the predictability.

So, if you read a lot and you want to KEEP reading a lot, try looking for books from other countries, the more foreign the better. I tend to head for Asia myself, usually Japanese and Chinese. Their stories build up in an entirely different way and I find that change quite refreshing.

Listen to me, I sound like a critic today :-)

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And our final item for today, Rear Window. Ever see it? If not, go out and get it, it's fabulous. I already loved that movie but now that I'm living in an apartment, I've found a whole new appreciation for it.

Basic story is this: photographer, injured while on assignment, is stuck in his apartment in a wheelchair with a broken leg. Bored out of his mind, he grabs his camera and using the telephoto lense, he starts watching the people in the courtyard and windows of the apartment complex he lives in. Each apartment has it's own little story of course, but the main one has to do with . . . nah, you just get the movie and watch it yourself. :-)

What's interesting is seeing how little things have changed over the years. We live in apartment complex now, having lived in houses up til now. And while the layout is different of course, if you watch the people who live here, you can find all the characters from Rear Window (minus the . . . nope, not going to give away the plot).

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SO, to recap, go to cnet.com and download Avant Browser, go to your neighborhood bookstore and get something foreign and pick up a copy of Rear Window. Then enjoy your weekend :-)

Summer Reruns

Just finished Reading: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

We have achieved synchronisity. Open the TV Guide and have a look at what's showing on cable. Now, get out your newspaper, flip over to the entertainment section and look at what's playing in the movie theaters. Creepy isn't it?

Now, I'm not going to say that remaking movies is a BAD thing. There have been plenty of GOOD remakes. Ok, there have been a FEW anyway. And just because the idea came from a TV show, that doesn't mean the movie will be bad.

You know it's NOT a good sign for Hollywood when they pin their hopes on yet another War of the Worlds movie, a quasi-matrix clone and The Dukes of Hazzard. That last one really worries me. Who was the freak of nature that thought we needed a Dukes of Hazzard movie? If there was ever proof that the people out there on the west coast are smoking something funny, that's it.

The trouble with all of these remakes is their growing lack of quality. No, that's too nice. They suck :-) In any decent year, these movies would be considered filler. They'd be the movies you went and watched BETWEEN other movies. For example, one week the latest Harry Potter movie would be out. You'd go and watch that. Next week, well there's nothing major being released but the week after that there's another Lord of the Rings. Great, but maybe you don't want to wait two weeks to go see a movie. Maybe you LIKE seeing movies in the theater on the big screen and all. So what do you do? You go to the movies and you see filler. Sometimes the filler is good and becomes a surprise hit, sometimes (usually) it's bad but keeps you moderately entertained. The movies this summer all seem to be filler.

Why are they all so BAD though? I think, in that case, they're a little OUT of synch. Take War of the Worlds for example. Obviously you can't make a movie that's true to the book. We've had so many breakthroughs in science for things to happen the way they do in the book. You have to tinker with it a little bit or do it the way it was done in Independance Day. Honestly, these critters burry their ships underground, they wait for years and years to pop up and conquer us, yet they don't even bother to find out of the air is breathable? They have all that tech but they can't make a proper air-tight seal? They have fabulous weapons but they don't have Lysol?

Then you go the other extreme. They really didn't need to tinker with The Fantastic Four the way they did. Ben Grimm didn't need to be married. He's supposed to get a blind girlfriend a few comics down the line, remember? And what's this about Reed and Susan being EX's? Their wedding was one of the biggest events in Marvel history. All the great Marvel heroes showed up (including a cameo by Stan Lee). They could have just stuck with the basics and make minor changes only due to advances in tech.

What's also annoying is that the folks out there in Hollywood decide to make movies based on older movies and TV instead of getting their stories from good books. You'd think by now they'd have figured that out already. Then again, when they DO make a movie based on a book they tend to either pick a really crappy book or they change it too much and you lose the things that made the book good in the first place.

And here's a creepy thought for some of us. You realize that when we're in our 60's they'll be remaking movies we thought were great when we were younger. Just wait, we'll see a new and improved version of Jaws or maybe someone will reshoot the ENTIRE Star Wars series! Of course, we're more likely to see remakes of bad movies. With my luck, 30 years from now there'll be a rush to remake Jennifer Lopez movies. God help us :-)

Cedar Fever

Currently Reading: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

Back when I was living in San Antonio, every year we'd have Cedar Fever. that was the time when all of the "mountain cedars" which are actually ash junipers I think, would drop their pollen. Actually it came out more like a cloud -- a big, yellow cloud.

Every year, and they may still do this, a reporter would go up into the hill country -- no more than 5 miles or so outside of town -- and stand in a field with the trees. The reporter, usually one of the weather men, would grab a branch and shake. Try to imagine a tree covered in yellow powder. That's what it looked like. The stuff just flys off like powder.

A LOT of people are allergic to that stuff. Actually even people that weren't really allergic to it had problems just because there was so MUCH of it in the air. Sort of like the mold spores. Most of the time they don't bother you but somewhere along the way they'll reach a high enough concentration that'll get your nose running.

Anyway, fortunately here in Memphis we don't have ash juniper trees. Lots of OTHER trees but not those. We've not nice pine trees and pear trees and some oaks and maples. Dogwood, magnolia. And those pain in the ass flowering trees that are the bane of my existance this time of year!

Ahem. Sorry. Sometimes it's hard to control myself :-)

Most of the time, these trees are very nice. Small, green leaves. Not too tall. Nice branches. They don't make much of a mess in the fall. In the spring and early summer they have nice, pretty flowers on them. Some are white, some pink, some purple, and some inbetween pink and purple. However, mid-summer, right about NOW for example, they pollenate. I can actually see it when I walk the dogs. You look inside the flower and there's lots of little yellow clusters in there just WAITING to fall out. If a wind kicks up, they float on out and drop all over everything. If you have a dark enough colored car, you can actually see it piling up on your hood.

We've been a bit lucky the past few days in that it's rained just about every day. These are mostly daytime heating showers but we've also had a few thunderstorms. One actually knocked out power for a little while. Point is, the rain knocks the pollen out of the air so it's not a problem . . . much. But it won't last forever.

As you may have guessed, this is the Memphis version of cedar fever. It's worse though in many ways. What really makes it a pain is that it comes right in the middle of summer. Now, honestly, it's bad enough getting sick in the winter and fall but who wants to be sick in the middle of summer? Bad enough you're all sweaty from the hot, humid air, but then you have to add in a stuffy, runny nose and all that mess.

Makes me grouchy.
Makes me tired.
Makes my head hurt.

On the plus side, it doesn't last nearly as long as cedar fever season in Texas. I suppose that's SOME consolation, just not much.

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Almost time for football season! Not that fake, wimpy metric football either! That's right, time for REAL football. It's still early, I know. But pre-season starts in about 3 weeks. Well, 2 and a half now. That's sure to brighten my mood up a bit :-)

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Got the new Harry Potter, as you can see from the sub-heading. Really funny story about that one. Ok not REALLY funny but somewhat funny. I'm cheap. I don't like having to pay extra for the super fast shipping because they always charge more than they should. So when I order things online, I usually do so with the assumption that it's going to take at LEAST a week to get to me. Well, that wasn't quite the case with this book.

I was over at Amazon.com Saturday night. I'd been browsing the net checking to see if I was right in my predictions about what happens in this book (and I was). Given what I'd read in the reviews, I decided to go ahead and order a copy now instead of waiting. Saturday night, maybe 10 pm or later, I put in my order.

Tuesday afternoon there's a knock at the door. I get up, check through the peep hole, no one's there. I open the door and there's a package on my doorstep . . . from Amazon.com. I was thinking, surely this can't be the books I ordered Saturday night. I didn't ask for any quick shipping. Hell I just took the freebie shipping which is as slow as you can get. But there it was, my Harry Potter book. I guess they had things wound pretty tight over at Amazon and if you ordered one of these you got processed faster than usual. But even still, I ordered it Saturday night. That means it got processed and the box packed Sunday morning. Had to because the post office here tends to be slow. That box had to arrive Monday in time for sorting and delivery on Tuesday. I wish ALL my Amazon shipments came in that fast :-)

As for a review of the book, I just started it last night so I've only read the first few chapters. It's more like the last three than the first two. I've noticed that the further she moves the plot, the more complicated it all gets. The first two books were fairly straight-forward. The plots weren't all that complex nor the characters too deep. But starting with the third book, and continuing on through the rest, it's been growing more and more complex.

Don't listen to this rubbish that the books are getting "darker" and all that. Books aren't dark. Movies are dark. Pictures are dark. Rooms are dark. What reviewers mean is that the book has a lot more gloom in it. More scenes where things are stating to look bad for the characters and that's really how it SHOULD be at this point in the story arc. We're really reaching the end of the second act in the play so things SHOULD look bad. We've got to be in a position, at the end of this book, where we have doubts about how the story will be revolved. We need to feel a little bit of peril here so that when we finally reach the third act, the next book, our protagonists will be more heroic and our antagonists will fall all the further.

I don't know how she intends to wind up this series. Up until now I've been able to predict most of the major plot "twists" before they happened. In story like this, certain things ALWAYS need to happen before the action is resolved. But when you get to the third act, all bets are off. She can resolve it any way she wants to. Happy ending? Maybe. Tragic ending? Doubtful. Most likely it'll land somewhere in between. Does that mean Harry will make it through? Who knows? But I can certainly see the possibility of Harry dieing a heroic death and as a coda, having Ron and Hermione married, years in the future, naming their first-born after him. But then again, I can picture it ending in a LOT of different ways. Guess we'll all just have to wait and see how she does it.

So there you go, long blog entry for today. Hope that makes up a bit for the lack of posting. Enjoy your summer reading!

And Still No Dinning Room Set

Currently Reading: Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card

Yes, you read that right, still no dinning room set. Not that such news, in itself, would actually be worth noting except for the fact that we did it again. Yes, we did it again. We went shopping. We're going to have to stop doing that.

No, I'm not talking about food shopping, though we DID do that this morning (and picked up a niec potted palm, sheet set and some more towels). This is about what we did yesterday. Yesterday we went to Costco .

Last time we were at Costco we saw this really nice keyboard. It's got all sorts of great functions, lots of different instruments, the works. VERY reasonable price. You should have seen CC's eyes light up. There could be NO doubt that she wanted it. Now, I know how things at Costco work. You can get some SUPER deals but the downside is that they might not have the same thing from one week to the next. Hard to say whether something you saw one week will still be there the next. I didn't want to put off getting this keyboard for too long and as it turns out, that was a good plan.

We went out yesterday, not long after CC got off work, and went to Costco, got that keyboard. It was the LAST one. Picked up a few other things while we were there, like about a 6 month supply of breakfast cereal :-). Then over to the bookstore (yes, I was forced) :-) to get some music books. CC spent all Friday night playing the keyboard, which I'm sure you'll read about over on her blog.

She's one happy camper today and that makes ME a happy camper today :-)

Oh yes, for those of you who asked, I am feeling a bit better now. Had a brief relapse Friday morning but I seem to be over it now. Time to get back to work on all that stuff I didn't get done the past few days :-)

Sick Days

Currently Reading: Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card

I hate sick days. I suppose everyone does but that hardly makes the experience any better. Being sick is one of those situations where misery does NOT love company. In fact, most people in my family prefer to just dig in somewhere hidden and not bother with anything public until they get better. It's also difficult to get sympathy out of them because no matter HOW sick you may be at any given point, rest assured one of them has been MUCH worse and lived to tell you about it over and over.

"Yeah, I'm down with the flu. Fever at 102, can't keep anything down. Just laying here drinking water and waiting for it to play out." Now, you say something like that to most people and they'll reply something like, "Aww man that sucks, you poor thing. Anything I can do for ya? You want me to refresh that glass of gatorade or grab a magazine for ya?" But in my family it's more like, "Just the flu? Oh well you're getting off lucky! I remember one time I got sick with the flu, had a fever of 117. I couldn't eat or drink for 3 weeks and when I did it came right back out. I had body aches for 2 months after that and the doctor said I was damn lucky I didn't suffer brain damage."

Mmhmm. Makes it tough to be sick. I guess you'd file that under one of the perks of moving into the new apartment. When I get sick now, the only ones here are my lovely wife and my faithful pets. I get plenty of sypathy from CC. She's really super at that. And the dogs, well they do their part too. They pitch in by cleaning up any bits of food that I may have left unattended around the house. No really, they're just trying to make sure we don't get roaches :-)

The timing of this was rather interesting too. Last night CC worked overnight. She went in at 7 and worked until 7 this morning. Such a trouper that one. She got NO sleep last night and I guess in a sort of weird sympathetic reaction, neither did I :-) Well no, that's not QUITE true. I got about an hour.

So there we were this morning, both of us, laying in bed, sleeping it off.

Now, even though I was sick, I DID manage to do a few productive things. Got that laundry done and the ironing too. Can't send my wife off to work in wrinkled clothes ya know. She's got to look pretty when she teaches :-)

Safe to say I'll be having something light tonight. Maybe some soup. Soup sounds good. Don't want to push myself yet. Soup and bread. Simple. It'll give me enough energy to get through the night and hopefully tomorrow I'll be all better.

Is it Monday already?

Currently Reading: Orion by Ben Bova

So how did it get to be Monday already? Seems like I just posted my last message here a few days ago. Seems like we just went shopping for food the other day. And yet, according to the calendar, all those things happened last week. I guess all this peaceful apartment life is starting to make me lose track of time :-)

We've really been enjoying ourselves lately. What's funny though is that we're not usually doing anything special.

This past Thursday, we DID go out to the botanical garden for a show and that was really cool. They had a display of Ikebana flower arrangments and kimonos as well plus a tour of the Japanese garden there. Had a ball feeding the koi :-)

We're still working on getting things just right here. Decorating is a bit tough when you're on a budget. Things have to wait. The biggest problem is still the HUGE white space over the fireplace. We've had several ideas as to what to put up there but nothing has been decided yet.

And no dining room table either yet. Actually we still joke about that. If you take all the money we've spent on OTHER things (things most people would consider less important) we could have bought that dinning room set 2 or 3 times over :-) And just between you and me and the rest of the world, there are probably a few other things we'll buy before we get the table. Right now we're just doing fine with TV trays and sort of ignore that big empty space over by the kitchen :-)

There are a few things that we still need to buy and areas that need decorating. The bedroom, for example, is pretty much done just for utility. The bed is in there. The clothes are there. The TV is hooked up but that's it. The walls are all blank and there's no other furniture or decoration in there yet. We still haven't decided on what theme to go with and since we only spend time in there sleeping, it's low priority.

Yes, things are going just super over here. Unfortunately that makes the blog entries a little less exciting. I realize that so what I'm going to do is try and stir up some trouble :-) Or maybe I'll tell stories about things I've seen here in the apartment complex. You really do see some funny stuff if you just watch what other people are doing.

Those stories I'll save for next time. Right now I think I'll just enjoy the peace a little longer :-)

The Holiday is Ending

Currently Reading: Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card

Well it looks like we all managed to survive the holiday season. Ok, well maybe it's only the 4th of July but that still means a 3 day weekend and lots of celebrating. Holidays are over though. Time to get back to work.

Not right this SECOND of course, but it is time to get back to work on things. Lately I've had quite a few items on my "to do" list and I've been less than eager to check them off. In theory, I suppose I could check them off without actually DOING them but that would be cheating :-)

Right now I'm in one of those situations where I have a lot of LITTLE things that need to be taken care of. So many little things that I'm not really sure where to start. And they're all just about as important so it's not like I can make it easier by ranking them and then starting with the most important. What happens is that I sit here trying to figure out which one to do first. Time passes. More time passes. Pretty soon there's not enough time to do some of those little things so I shorten the list to the ones I DO have time to finish. But by the time I've done that, more time has passed and I end up not having enough time to do ANYTHING. So, in short, I've ended up sitting here trying to figure out what to do first for so long that I got nothing done.

I've also been a bit under the weather the past few days. Maybe I'm allergic to work :-) Actually what I'm allergic to are these very pretty flowering trees that everyone likes to plant here in Memphis. They're certainly very nice to look at. Not a large tree, maybe 10 to 12 feet high on average. Every year they flower (some are white, some are pink) and every year they set my nose off something awful.

So, combine those two things and you've got a perfect recipe for inactivity and complete lack of production. Well no, not COMPLETE lack of production. I have managed to do one or two things but I'm hardly making good use of my time.

You know what's worse? Right now I'm sitting here trying to think of more things to say so I'll be able to stretch the blog entry and thus keep myself from doing some of the things on my "to do" list. Bad, yes, I know, I know. Bad bear! :-)

Oh alright, I'm going, I'm going. Maybe I can sort of ease back into it right? Start with some light chores, don't push myself too hard :-)

Ok.
Here I go.
Off to do something.
:-)

Episode VI: The Return of the Bear

Currently Reading: Shadow of the Hegemon by Orson Scott Card

Ok, so I borrowed the title idea from George Lucas. He's got too much money to bother with a lawsuit over something like that :-)

Yes, I've been away from the blog for a while. Do I have a good reason? Well, no, not really. It's been rather odd this week. You see, I haven't much been in the mood for writing . . . anything! Not just the blog but also e-mail as well. Right now, all around the world, people to whom I owe letters are nodding their heads. Yes, I know, I haven't written and I am sorry. I still have the letters though and I WILL answer them . . . soon :-)

The apartment is shaping up nicely as I'm sure you've all seen over at CC's site. No need for me to go into details about that. We've still got a LOT of work to do but mostly it's a large collection of little things. We need things on the walls.

Currently we're trying to decide what to hang over the fireplace. It's a HUGE area given that the ceilings in the room are 12 feet high and the fireplace is about 5 feet scross. That's a lot of white space. We were thinking framed mirror but now we're leaning more towards framed prints.

Tuesday we did something that I've been looking forward to since last year: we attended a Drum Corps International show. If you don't know what DCI is, it's a collection of marching bands, only brass and percussion though, no woodwinds. The music they play is excellent and they march wonderfully. They're also supported by a talented (usually) colorguard that twirls flags, rifles, sabres, you name it. It's great entertainment, especially if you ever did time in a marching band in high school.

The Cavaliers: 06-08-05 Toledo, OH

The winners of this particular contest were The Cavaliers. I've enjoyed their work ever since my first DCI show back when I was 11 or 12. We even managed to trek out to Atlanta one summer to see the finals. What a great time we had too.

The other big news for the week is the addition of a wireless router for our home network. Oh we are both thrilled with THIS wonderful piece of equipment. Having a wireless router means different things to CC and I. To me it means I no longer have to share the modem and by that I mean switching the cables from her machine to mine. We can now both surf at the same time, no problem. It also means I can access the Internet with my PDA should I decide I want to check mail from the sofa or maybe do a little browsing. For CC, it means a WHOLE lot more. Her laptop has a wireless card in it so right now she can access the Internet from any room in the apartment, including from the balcony. For the past few days she's been doing HER work from the comfy chair over by the sofa. Yes, we are just LOVING it.

Three day weekend for us so that means visits to the family. Might not get to blog again until Tuesday.

Happy 4th of July everyone!