Under Construction: Day 2

Today I had to go out and do some errands. When I returned, the workmen had done a lot of work. Paneling was removed from two walls in our family room, and the fireplace was uncovered. It actually is interesting to see the "insides" of walls, something that is usually out of my purview.

Since I got home they have been making a lot of noise. Since I am only hanging out in non-construction zone rooms, I can't figure out what they are doing. But it is definitely loud and shakes the whole house.

One funny note is that I was right about something, which doesn't happen very often it seems (ha). I had thought that birds were nesting between my walls and the insulation in my office walls a couple of years ago, gainng access from the huge holes woodpeckers had drilled into the wood. And there was proof today. Two nests were unearthed when the paneling came off that had housed numerous baby birds and  their incessant chirping.

We found what looked to be a blue jay feather stuck in one of the nests. I wonder if any of the three blue jays which fly around the house and eat my suet are the parents of the babies, or the baby birds themselves, all grown up.

Under Construction: Day 1

After. . .

Before. . .

Our contractor Chris and his crew started at 9 a.m. today to remove a wall between our family room and my first floor office. First order of the day was to move the built-in shelves and file drawers in my first floor office to the new office upstairs. A big job to tackle the first day but it has to be moved and installed upstairs so that I can have computer access again. I pulled all of the plugs out of everything connected to the computer yesterday so it could be moved which also took out the main phone line to the house. So needless to say we need to get me back on the net ASAP. So dependant on technology!

Our computer tech guy is coming at 1 p.m. today to re-install the computer and all of its parts. It will be close whether he can get into the new office or not.

I have been like a woman without a country the last couple of days or is that a fish out of water? Whatever, I am not sure where I should go or not go in my house. Since I work here, it's doubly distressing. So today I tried to focus on catching up on laundry which knows no limitations even in a construction zone. I was able to complete one project up in my bedroom to reduce some of the items I will need floor space for in my new office. Since the wall unit is now taking up most of the floor space in the new office, I can't put things where they normally go. There will be a new normal, but not sure I am ready for that. Guess I will have to be!

Change is good people say, but those are usually the ones who aren't experiencing it. My car is blocked in too so if I wanted to go out, I couldn't. But for today that is OK. I don't want to do anything to slow the guys down. We need forward progress. Git R done!

I think Borders, Panera's or Mickey D's will be seeing a lot of me soon. Free Wi Fi is a wonderful thing.

Impossible to Choose Top Ten Beatles' Songs?

For my Boom This! Ezine, I borrowed an idea from Rolling Stone magazine, and asked readers what their Top Ten Beatles Songs of All Time were. I got a lot of good lists, which you can read here.
But then I had to finally sit down and choose my own list and that proved a little more difficult than asking for others.


The Beatles were HUGE when I was growing up. We were out of ourminds for them, back in the early 60s, and I remember a lot of how that felt. I was particularly fond of Paul (everyone had to have a favrotie Beatle, of course) and tended to favor his songs. But then my tastes matured a little, and I accepted that the other three could knoock out a pretty good song, too, sometimes.

Interestingly enoough, even though the Beatles were one of the first "boy bands," their legacy has lived on and doesn't seem to be in danger of fading. Somehow that makes getting older and having to deal with other forms of music like rap, good grief, a ltitle easier to handle. OUR music is still here and vibrant. Really wonder if rap will have the same staying power.

Summer freedom

There's something so freeing about summer. Fashion takes a more fun approach, allowing women especially to let down their hair and let their inner child out to play.

The rules of fashion don't apply in these easy-breezy times. Wear colors that don't go together in nature and see what happens. Wear as much color as you can stand and it's OK.

I began to feel this fashion freedom last year when I splurged and bought pairs of shoes that were mint green and dusty rose with blue trim. Short of some old sandals I may have worn as a child, that's the first time I have worn colors on my feet that weren't fashioned in classic (blah) colors -- black, brown, navy etc.

Then, I really went wild, and bought some white sandals to wear to a summer event. I can't remember the last time I owned white shoes. It might have been for First Communion.

August is here now and for the first time in years I am not anxious to see summer go and make way for my favorite season -- fall. That's only because I want to be able to wear my groovy footwear longer. I even want to be able to break the No-White-Shoes-After-Labor-Day rule and wear my new sandals on a trip to Nevada early in the fall. It's got to be summer in Nevada all year, right? That's what I think too.

Blogging, blogging everywhere

Just did a quick search to see if my blog came up on Google when looking for "baby boomer blogs". It didn't. What I did notice was how many blogs there are with a slant towards Baby Boomers. Way too many to count.

Hello? Is anyone reading all of these blogs and if so, why? I am just curious as to what people are interested in and what they will spend their precious time reading.

It would be good info for a blogger such as myself to know!

Yen or Yarn? Does Computer Know Best?

Like you, I type emails quickly, and send them off with only a cursory look to make sure they actually make sense.

Lately my new computer program has been guessing at the words I have misspelled in the text and chooses what it thinks I mean. It hasn't worked out so well.

For instance, this week, I wrote an email about a project I am working on and said something about getting the "yen" for it. It could be that my machine thinks I am Japanese, but the correct word, ladies and gentlemen, was yarn.

Right after that, I wrote an email about basking in the "job" of a young, happy, pregnant woman. What I meant, of course, was her "joy," but maybe the compuer has been around new moms and is just commenting on how much work little babies can be? Hard to say.

Guess I will have to be more careful and slow it down some. Or did I mean dim sum?

Days of pink guitars

Hard to believe but I used to play guitar. It was a long time ago, when I was still in grade school. Did I say it was a LONG time ago?

My guitar was bright pink, designed for the "feminine guitarist" which I guess was me. I loved my pink guitar with Princess emblazoned on the front, but sad to say, I wasn't a very good feminine guitarist. I took some lessons and played in school shows, but really only limped along. I much preferred listening to the Beatles in those days than practicing or listening to my own excruciatingly slow version of "El Paso."

The guitar moved around with me over the years and today we unearthed it from the attic. It was a little worse for wear, but otherwise in pretty good condition. I had already gotten rid of the amplifier a while back because it didn't work so I can't really try out any chords. Which, at least for the people I live with, is a good thing.

I plan to hang the Princess guitar on the wall in my newly painted office (just like I saw in one of those home and garden shows. What an accent piece!). There's something comforting about having old things around us to jog some old memories.

I still would rather listen to the Beatles than play myself, but I am a much more easy-going ritic of my talents than I used to be back in the day.