Footprints on the Moon

On Thursday, I posted about my purchase for daffodil days, and I also promised pictures when my daffodils opened up. Well, I am a woman of my word… (Sorry if they’re enormous- I couldn’t figure out how to post thumbnails!)

When I bought them on Thursday

The daffodils on Friday afternoon

The flowers this afternoon (monday)

Aren’t they pretty? They look so much darker in the last picture because I had a really bad headache at work today so I’d closed all the blinds. There was a lot of natural light in the first two pictures. I’m glad they’re still alive… I hope they stay that way for a while– I love having pretty flowers on my desk and I can’t afford to buy new ones!

Today is the day! The postie blog carnival all about television went live this morning. This round is being hosted over at Simple Kind of Life by Colleen. There are a lot of great entries about current programming, reality TV, television memories, you name it. You can check out the carnival submissions here..

I love my cats, but there are just some times that I want to tell them to go buy some funeral insurance. Like when I’m working on cleaning up my apartment and they (by they, of course, I mean Lucy) decide to climb in the newly filled trashcan, and knock it over. Excuse me? I just put all the stuff in there, and not so that you could take it right back out!! Or just when you get sound asleep and they (by they, of course, I mean Pudge) decide that your head is the best spot for them to lay down and get comfy. These cats are beyond spoiled and rotten.

I have a confession to make. I am a reality tv junkie. I don’t know what it is about those kinds of shows, but they just draw me in, and I’m hooked. I think there’s just something about the fact that the people you are watching are real people and not just actors. Seriously, if there’s a reality TV show that I don’t really want to watch, I avoid it because if I watch one of the episodes, I’ll want to watch the rest– I just “have” to know what happens in the end!

Do any of you remember that show Paradise Hotel from like 2003? I watched the first episode because it just happened to be on, and I was sucked in. I did not miss a single minute of that show. Because a hotel guest went home each week and was replaced by a viewer, it just wasn’t safe to miss something. I was sooo invested in what was happening! Alot of people didn’t like Dave and Charla, but I rooted for them the whole time. I’d like to know where they’re at now.

These days I’m watching American Idol, America’s Next Top Model, and the search for the next Pussycat Doll. Actually, the final of the Grease show is on as I’m writing this. I’m good at that– tuning in for the final one or two episodes and then pulling for people like I’ve been invested from the beginning.

My father is one of those men that is notoriously hard to shop for. He ends up getting candy, peanuts, and gift cards for most gift-giving occasions because if there’s anything he wants, he just goes out and gets it. Consequently, you have to keep your eyes open all year round for things he might like, but wouldn’t think to get for himself. Especially since his birthday is one short month after Father’s Day. Ouch! This year, I was thinking about motorcycle sunglasses. My dad wears a helmet, but he doesn’t have a faceshield on his. We’ll have to see. I don’t know if he’d wear them or not.

Those of you with pets might want to pay attention to this. Ontario-based Menu Food is recalling pet food sold under 46 brands of dog food and 37 brands of cat food, including well known brands names such as Iams, Nutro and Eukanuba. Pet owners are reporting renal failure in their animals, including 10 related pet deaths. You can find more details, including the complete brand name list, at the Menu Foods Recall Information site. I scanned the list myself, and was glad to see that the food Pudge and Lucy eat wasn’t on there. I didn’t think it would be as pet owners are reporting that their animals are getting sick and not wanting to eat, but my kitties still have very healthy appetites.

Car insurance is expensive! Thanks to the lovely state trooper who wrote my new address on the ticket, I am in the market for some new car insurance for my vehicle. I quite literally spent most of the day last Saturday shopping around for quotes, and I’m not anywhere closer to purchasing insurance for my car. I’m still ringing in under that 25-year-old mark, and I’ve got a couple of tickets on my driving record, so everyone feels justified in charging me an arm and a leg to insure my car. I even used the online tool for my current insurance company and they quoted me almost twice what every one else did — $1009 for six months! Uh, no! I’m going to have to fish out their number and see if I can get a better quote out of them if I’ve got them on the phone. My dad currently spends that much with them to insure THREE cars. My mom spends less than that to insure two cars, and a camper. You can’t tell me that’s really what they should be charging me– that’s how much I had to pay when I FIRST got this car 3 years ago, and I was still considered a teen driver then- without the discount for having my college degree!
It’s back to the drawing board, I suppose. I guess I’ll just have to be grateful that home, travel, and pet insurance aren’t required. I can only imagine the kind of headache it would be to try and secure all of that without paying an arm and a leg!

Well, I’ve got my work computer all sorted out now, and it’s just a matter of getting things set up the way I want it. I got my administrators rights worked out early on in the day yesterday, and then in the afternoon I spent a half an hour on the phone with tech support getting my email client straightened out. You know it’s not a good sign when the tech support guy does something (he had remote access to my computer) and then goes “Hmm… that should’ve worked… hmm..” etc. Amusing, but not a good sign. We had a nice chat about the weather, and his house he’s trying to sell in Florida, and all kinds of other things while we waited. If I must spend half an hour on the phone with tech support, at least it was a nice guy on the other end!!

Now I’m just trying to figure out how to get this blog to email me comments like it’s supposed to. I can’t figure out what the problem is… all the settings say it should be emailing them to me, but it isn’t!! I worked on it for awhile last night, but wasn’t making any progress. I got frustrated and went to bed. I’ve been searching the internet, and asking for help on a forum, so hopefully someone else will recognize the problem that I’m not seeing!

One of the features I like in my dad’s house is that the kitchen is separated from the dining room by a bar-height counter. When I was younger, there were three or four barstools there, and I used to love getting the privilege of sitting up there to eat my dinner. Those barstools fell apart a long time ago, and the counter itself digressed into the catch-all for mail, and other personal belongings since it’s the first flat surface you hit on your way into the house. For that reason, my dad wants to tear it down. His wife likes it though, so I think he’s going to lose that battle. I definitely think they should look into getting some new barstools though. Powell Furniture has some really cute ones they might like.

I want a minivan. Wait, read that subject again. I want another minivan. I had a Plymouth Voyager when I was 16. It wasn’t my first vehicle, but it may as well have been as my first car was ancient and died after about 2 months. After that, my mom got a new car, and I got her van. I loved it! It was so much fun to be able to cram all my friends into my vehicle and just go. One of my favorite memories is from my 18th birthday when a bunch of my friends and I piled into my van and drove around. The van ran out of gas at the end of my street, and we all pushed it the 3/4th of a mile to my house (at midnight, no less). There was a car coming the other way at one point, so I yelled that I was going to stop the van so I could close my door… well, the three people at the back didn’t hear me, so when I hit the brakes they all bounced off the back window! We pushed it into my front yard, and about a minute later my mom came outside, and somehow didn’t find that unusual. I didn’t tell her that we’d pushed the car home for about 4 years. We still laugh about it.
At some point I’d like to get another van, but probably not until I actually grow up and have kids. It seems most of them these days have a van rack on top, and I don’t need to look like a soccer mom until I am one. Until then, I’ll live vicariously through my best friend’s new van.