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      Saturday, June 09, 2018

otherstuff 09:43 AM - 06/09/2018 The topic: Catchin’ up ---------------------------------------------- It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Let's catch up on the past few weeks. Okay, Opie is lots better. The sore is filled in and scabbed over. It doesn't seem to bother him and it's not weepy any longer. Rocky is almost back to normal, you can barely see him limp. The fur is growing back nicely and his paw almost looks like nothing ever happened to it. And he's spending a lot more of his time outdoors. The problem now is he runs from us when he thinks it's time for meds. He was really easy to medicate when he couldn't run. The week after my doctor's appointment, the orthopedic surgeon called. Went over my options for treatment. When it gets too bad, there will be hip replacement surgery. It's weird, the pain. One minute I feel like I could run a marathon. Like this morning, no pain hardly at all. I did a little vacuuming, and put a load of laundry on the line (I had to, it was a load of jeans, I had another load washed and ready for the dryer and the jeans were still getting dried, just taking too long, probably because the washer had been set at permanent press, not a normal load, so they didn't get spun out as well as they should have, how's that for a run on sentence?). Got the second load moved to the dryer and started it up, then went back to the laundry basket to sort and BOOM! The pain came back. Good thing I skipped that marathon. I ordered some walking canes from Costco online, regularly $34.99, there was a $15.00 discount on them, so that was pretty cool. I had checked on Amazon and this style over there went for fifteen dollars for one, so three for twenty dollars is a steal. They'll be here Monday. We were watching Vudu back on the 25th of last month and the internet lost connection. The range extender broke. One of the antennas came off in my hand and the part it was supposed to screw into, was attached to the antenna. I set up another one I had in the extra room and we were able to watch the movie. I headed over to Amazon and ordered a different brand, that showed up the next day. I have to admit, I'm disappointed in how it worked. I contacted the place I got it and was told to move it close to the router. I did. That worked okay, but it only held the connection for about twenty-four hours and I had to reset it. Not a lot of fun. The longest it held the connection so far has been three days. Another annoyance is that it doesn't see my NAS devices. The external hard drives that are connected to my router, kind of my own little cloud storage. I have all of my tunes on one of them, and my quickbooks settings for the company, and my font library so that I can utilize these files if I'm on the laptop or the computer. Sure, I can change connections, but that's the whole point of the extender. Having a strong signal and faster download than using the router's wifi. And yesterday I checked my download speeds on all of my wifi connections and ended up ordering another network device for the laptop to connect to wifi. I should be getting a lot better than I am. The extender that broke has a year warranty, I ordered it on December 31, 2017, so the following Monday I contacted the company I got that one from. I had to send a copy of the invoice and wait for their warranty department to send the return information. That got sent out on Friday, and I got notification yesterday that a new one was on the way. It will be here Thursday. I'll probably send the other one I'm not happy with back for a refund. The weather is amazing right now, but the sun is still on its way up. I told Brian earlier this season that we won't have a spring, we'll go right from winter weather into summer heat. Looks like I was right. We saw Deadpool 2 last Sunday. I used my MoviePass (if you like the idea of this, try getting it at Costco, it's cheaper or let me know and I can refer you and something awesome happens for me or something like that) for the first time. It was a snap. We'd also brought discount tickets I ordered a few years ago. The pass Brian used was invalid. Already used. Huh? So, he tried the other one. Same thing. Weird. Fortunately, we use our Regal Club card so that we can bank points and there were enough points in the account to purcvhase Brian's ticket! (When we got home, I checked all of the other discount tickets we have and there were two of all of them except two. The ones we'd already used. Apparently, I printed them out twice. Duplicates tossed.) We really liked the movie, but damn it, tears at a Deadpool flick? Really? Guardians 2 had tears. Pirates 5 had tears. Enough! Last month, my Epson R1900 had a big problem with the cartridges. I use a continuous ink system and the piece that held the ink tubes down, broke. Fortunately, the company where I got it from, after some back and forth about the piece that broke, sent me one. It's nice and quiet again. And they didn't charge me for it. Which was really nice of them. Now I can print my own paper again. I made another balloon, which Brian took to his chiropractor. I love making these things, I really do. I think shipping them would be pretty spendy, so I haven't sent any to anyone. I posted on SVGCuts facebook page and said they needed more hangy things. I think butterflies would be pretty fun to hang from the ceiling. And that's about it for now. Not really a lot going on, just doing laundry and watching the Rifleman. A flashback to childhood, for sure.   svgcuts    rocky    opie    geekstuff    doctor    cryptococcus    craftstuff    catstuff    abcess    | Permalink

      Thursday, June 21, 2018

otherstuff 01:00 PM - 06/21/2018 The topic: Stuff stuff ---------------------------------------------- So, pretty upset with what this administration is doing to our country right now, the first lady's choice of outerwear pretty much just takes the cake. I only used to loathe animal abusers like I do this family, but who knew there was always room for more hate?  Yeah, I'm a hater. I admit it. Raised democrat, I have voted republican in the past. Probably won't ever do that again. I married a republican. He made a good living and followed the party line. And rhetoric. The business tanked. The economy hurt his company badly. People weren't spending so much on specialty, artisan work like he did. So, he let that go and started his current company. There's not near the money coming in that had been, but not having that money changed the way he looks at life. I think the turning point was when Romney said what he said about the 47% of Americans who paid no income tax, like they were all entitled deadbeats. Brian agreed with him. I do the taxes. I know what we pay. I said "I've got news for you. We're in that 47%. We paid no taxes last year. After the deductions, we owed nothing. We paid no taxes."  I left it at that. The point being, he was still working his ass off and we were barely getting by.  He learned the hard way that just because people don't owe on taxes, doesn't mean they don't work hard. And he started paying attention. Since he wasn't out and about, listening to angry, white man, hate radio, having it drummed into his head hour after hour (he did a lot of driving to get to job sites), he started to lighten up. It was nice. He wasn't raised on religion. Religion caused problems with his parents relationship. His mom wasn't religious. His dad was. And his father spent much of his extra time helping others, not helping at home while his mom worked full time and had five kids of her own, as well as a foster child. So in the 2016 campaign and all of these people came out saying "God chose me to run", Brian was "huh uh, nope, nope".  And then there was trump. Remember Brian had a successful company until the last recession? Well, during his time with that company, he dealt with people like Trump.  Contractors who filed bankruptcy and left their sub-contractors holding the bag (a general hires subs, who pay their own employees, pay the payroll taxes, pay the material suppliers, etc). When the general declared bankruptcy, someone has to pay the employees and the suppliers. Way back when, Brian and his cousin did a big job for a big company. The company was happy with the job. But when it came time to pay, they balked. Lawyers were involved. The big company lawyers told the little company "sure, you can sue us and take us to court. You'd most likely win. But we have lawyers on staff and can drag this out for years. Can you afford to do that?" Nope. The little company couldn't and was paid $200,000.00 less than the contract was for. And that's how Trump works. He's NOT a good businessman, he's a con man. And that was enough. Brian left the republican party after forty one years. And watching this shitshow of an administration is just hard to do.  Melania's big f*ck you jacket this morning, the one she wore to visit the children ripped from their parents' arms, was just the icing on the cake. Just when I think I can't hate these people anymore than I already do, they do something like this. So, to take my mind off of it (and this is probably the last you'll hear of this subject from me) I've been checking out other things to do with my Silhouette. Like etching metal!  I did a little bracelet last week, with a trail of tiny dinosaurs. Problem was, it was just the outline and the etching was done into silver aluminum. You can barely see the dinos. So, I did my Google searching and tried a couple of different things. Like Sharpies. Nope, didn't work. Acrylic paint. Nope, didn't work. Boo! I checked out different types of supplies, found some called Alumamark, that when the top layer is etched, is black underneath. I ordered about eight bucks of those, to play with. And I found some anodized aluminum samples for around fifteen dollars, to play with. The day after I set up an account with them, I got an email saying that all I had to do to be approved for up to $150,000 was fill out a form on their website. Just damn. I'm pinching pennies to get this twenty-five dollars up. It just made me laugh. I also found some tutorials on filling in text with the Silhouette, which would make the designs much more easily seen. I spent hours watching videos this past week. And wouldn't you know it, just when I think I've got it down (I did some testing yesterday, not with actually running the Silhouette, but working with the software), today, there was a link to a Silhouette tutorial on using the fill options with the sketch pen. lol!  I've been keeping up with the paperwork. Well, kind of. Invoicing and new accounts have been done, but the statement reconciliations are falling behind again. I blame my bad hip. The pool is finally clean! Yay! It got a little hairy there for a while. (I have before and after pictures I need to upload.) The water wasn't getting as clear as it should have and algae kept growing. Brian added liquid chlorine and realized the inline auto-chlorinator needed more chlorine. For some reason, the big filter kept blowing amounts of diatomaceous earth back into the pool, which indicates a hole or opening somewhere in the filters, but that resolved after a week or so. Brian was actually so upset, he started looking for a different type of filter, but the cost of a new one (a grand) got him to back off of that idea. I'd love to go swimming, but the water is still in the 70°s. The weather has been fairly mild, the afternoons get pretty warm, but so far, the pool hasn't warmed up much. The surgeon (for my hip) said exercising in the pool is good because it's not weight bearing. Not yet. The Ranger was having problems with the brakes. Not something you can put off until you have more money. Too dangerous. He took it to a local shop and it ended up costing close to a thousand dollars. One of the rotors was split (which means absolutely nothing to me) and needed to be replaced. Luckily, he still had some funds left from the sale of his Bronco back in January. Worth the piece of mind. Cats are doing okay, getting old. Deaf Sammy stands in the bedroom, yowling his head off and you go in to make sure he's okay, he sees you and just mouths the word "meow" with no sound. It's really sweet. Opie's abscess has cleared up nicely. Rocky runs when he sees us coming again, because meds. My replacement range extender got here. It's up and running. I'm not returning the other one. Since the final straw, I'm returning it, moment, it hasn't had to be reset once and amazingly, finally started seeing the NAS drives. Since it sends both 5G and 2.4G signals, and 5G is better and faster, I'll go ahead and keep it. The other one is set up here in the family room and the service to the Roku is always "excellent". No buffering or losing the connection during a show. Yay! I've washed three windows this week. Before hip problems, I'd have the entire house done in one day. Just can't do it. I haven't cleaned the windows in over a year and it's been making me crazy. So, one day I did the dining room windows (actually, a bay window, with three windows). Huge difference. A couple of days later, I did the family room windows (another bay window, with a big pillow for the cats to lay on; that window had lots of kitty noseprints and old kitty sneeze juice). Then I set my sights on my favorite window in the house, the one in the laundry room. I needed a stool to do that one. Brian cleaned the screen for me while I washed the window. I love that window. I have more windows to do, but I'm shower fresh right now. Maybe I'll get the other windows and sliding glass doors done this weekend. I love it when the windows are clean, it really helps my mood. So, that's about it for now. silhouette    rocky    pool work    opie    geekstuff    craftstuff    catstuff    | Permalink

      Sunday, June 24, 2018

craftstuff 05:57 PM - 06/24/2018 The topic: I’ve had an idea rolling around in my head ---------------------------------------------- For a while now. There will be two phases to this. And yesterday, I started working on phase one. It's going to take months to do and I'm okay with that. I'll do it in the evenings watching television. But first, I needed to choose paper and then cut the project out. Yesterday, I went through my digital paper (which is just a graphic that you print; these are nice because if you run out, you just print more, not like when you run out of cardstock that has been discontinued) and decided on designs that I made a long time ago. I picked out four of them. Unfortunately, for what I'm making, the design can't be too small or too big. Which I found out after printing out about six different sheets with different sizes of the same graphics. Which left two. I can deal with that. I would have preferred more choices, but two will be okay. Then I got to printing. I printed twelve sheets of paper, well, actually more, in case I screwed up (a common occurrence). That took most of the morning. This sucks because I have all of these big plans on the weekend, plans that use electricity and our electric is cheapest on the weekdays from midnight to six am and on the weekends from midnight until two pm. Weekends are for laundry and, if I ever get it out of the box and assembled, washing the floor. I got one load of laundry done, but that's on the other side of the house, so, out of sight, out of mind. The rest of the day was spent watching old movies via the Roku. Today, I got a load of laundry going, took a nap (yeah, I'm becoming the stereotypical old lady), then moved that load into the dryer and started up the next load. I turned on the laptop and got the Silhouette Design Studio up and running and started to modify the file that I use to cut the pieces. Trying to get as many from a sheet as possible. I have three different designs. With one of the files, I can get twenty-seven pieces from a sheet of 12 x 12 cardstock (pattern A). With another, I can get thirty-five pieces (pattern B). And on the last one, there are forty-eight pieces that need to be cut out (pattern C).  I have twelve sheets of card stock to cut that I printed out for pattern A. I have four different paper colors. I have three sheets of each color to cut. Pattern B has eight pieces of cardstock, pattern C has four. I have a lot of cutting to do. Then I set up the Cameo, pulled the paper out and grabbed the mats. These are brand new mats. They're an offbrand I bought on Amazon and I've had pretty good luck with them. Today, I did not. The major complaint is too much adhesive. One of the tips for getting your paper off of over sticky paper is to place the mat and paper, with the paper side down and gently pull up on the mat, to split the two. I've found sliding a ruler between the two as I pull up, helps even more. On my first piece, I heard a crack. The mat split. A brand new mat. I got my Gorilla tape and taped the back. I'm nothing if not resourceful. And the other problem I had was also a mat problem. The abundance of adhesive left a considerable amount of residue on my paper. If left on, the residue would collect dust and lint and that's not acceptable.  I could rub it off with my fingers, but that was messy and really didn't do a very good job and the paper would bend. Not the best idea. I tried a tissue and that worked as well, but it also seemed to pull off some of the color (faint tint on the tissue). So, I tried a disposable dusting cloth, an off brand that came from my mom's house so long ago. That worked nicely. The thing is, it's time consuming to wipe each one off. I only got pattern A cut out today there are three hundred and twenty-four pieces that need to be wiped clear of residue. I haven't quite sussed out phase two. I know what I want, I just have to find something that will work. Good thing that I'm not under any kind of deadline for this. But it will be really cool when it's all said and done. silhouette    making my own    cuttting paper    craftstuff    | Permalink

      Monday, June 25, 2018

craftstuff 09:09 AM - 06/25/2018 The topic: Mats are better this morning ---------------------------------------------- So far, so good. The adhesive has worn off (more like transferred) and the cardstock is splitting smoothly from the mats. And the pieces aren't all sticky. Yay! I'm hoping to have most of these thing cut today. With the rate I'm going and the early start, I just may do that. Then I can play with etching! Summer fun! craftstuff    | Permalink

otherstuff 11:12 AM - 06/25/2018 The topic: Things I like ---------------------------------------------- Things I find comforting and make me happy. Kids playing outside. The laughing and yelling bring a smile to my face. The birds at the feeders or the water bowl on the bank. The birds eating the seeds on the overgrown garden. We didn't plant anything this year, there's still the catnip, but I wouldn't let Brian have the weeds pulled because I've seen the birds eating the seeds from them. Watching birds pull apart a dandelion pod and nibbling on the seeds at the bottom is relaxing. The sound of the wind in the trees. Clean windows. Standing at my favorite window, the one in the laundry room. Having it open, standing on a stool, with my nose against the screen, feeling the breeze against my face. Watching the yard, the bees, the cats, the birds, the sounds of the small windchimes over my head, the big windchimes outside....it soothes my soul.   | Permalink

      Saturday, June 30, 2018

otherstuff 10:24 AM - 06/30/2018 The topic: Short update ---------------------------------------------- I can sign up for Medicare tomorrow. Three months before my birthday month. I'm back working on my store since I will definitely have catnip for sale this year. Since I couldn't get the old store working again after the hack last January, I found out that the upgrade to it was on sale for $117.00. I just checked, they don't even have my new version listed any longer. I lucked out. Anyway, I finally got it to look kind of like the old store and am in the process of adding the stock back in. I have less than a hundred and twenty products, but there are descriptions and options and pictures that need to be input. I had a couple of people help walk me through SQL database exporting and importing, so, that's helped, but I still need to manually do the tweaking. I've been assembling the pieces I cut out a couple of weeks ago. I can do that sitting on the sofa and gluing. I'm excited about how this project will come out. I have a ton of paperwork to do. Now I'll also have another month of bank reconciliation to do. Lucky me! My leg hasn't been hurting as badly as it had been, that's good. Maybe I'll wash some more windows. I sure like clean windows. I woke up this morning with Sagwa's paws on my arm, face to face. He likes to sleep next to me like that. The pool is looking awesome. It's not hot enough in the house yet for me to feel the urge to jump in, but soon. It will be soon.   sagwa    lvdesigns    geekstuff    craftstuff    catstuff    catnip    | Permalink

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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities. In her spare time, she makes pretty things to sell in her store.

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