1-01-2009

Happy New Year!

I hope your 2009 will be a year of good things. My only resolution is to stay as happy as I've been in 2008. There were bumps, of course, but absolutely nothing so bad I didn't survive. I mean, I'm here writing this, right?

I deconstructed Christmas in the house today: took down the tree and boxed all the "house deco's" (hey, that's what's on the box they're in; of courseI wrote that on the box but so what). It didn't make me as sad as it often has in the past, although I don't know why. But the house is back to just a house, and that's okay. On with the year.

Before I do get on with the year, though, I have to show you the only new decoration I bought this year. (I wish I could put pictures horizontally in a row but you'll just have to suffer through scrolling.) I didn't know which shot really shows this piece best so you get two:

That's actually a glass block, of the kind used for glass block walls/windows, wrapped in a beautiful bow and then, the coolest part, those are Christmas lights on the inside. I just love it. I had it on a timer so it went on when the tree did and until I went to spend some time in the living room, that was the only light in there. It was really pretty.

And since I'm doing my Christmas photos a bit late here, I'm adding one of Susie (or Suzi, when I think she looks particularly glamorous). The snowman she's in love with usually sits on a window sill but was knocked off when I opened the living room drapes. She could not resist sharing his space, so to speak. It was too cute. (She's a very private cat and unaccustomed to PDAs.)

His black hat and very white body must have attracted her! I took several shots and she didn't move. That's pretty committed, for a cat.

Not much to say

I want to keep up my dedication to write more often but I find I just don't have much to say ... much of the time. I'll try to improve on that. For now, I have one more day to work at the bookstore and I'm pretty happy about that. I don't think I wrote here that I figured out why I took this job: It was to see if I actually wanted a job. My across-the-road neighbor is my age (maybe 1 yr. older) and retired about 6-9 mos. before I did. She lasted about a year before she took a part-time job at the college in food service. She works half-days, I think, and gets her summers off. But she's very local with her entire family practically within shouting distance so she doesn't travel as much as I do.

I'm finding that even volunteer work means a commitment that, while more easily adjusted than a paid job, is something that you have to try to keep up. My reading for the vision-impaired, for instance, is something that I'm supposed to do every week. I miss about 1 out of 6 weeks and always feel guilty about that. I just realized that I might be gone for 4 successive Tuesdays when I go to FL for grandbaby2's arrival and I'm wondering if I should have a laptop to put my sound-editing program onto so I could sort of keep caught up with the reading. I won't spend $500 (or more) to do that but it has crossed my mind. So keep this in mind, all you young readers: retirement, like old age, ain't for sissies!

The weather is weird: LOTS of wind yesterday and last night, the yard littered with broken branches ... again. Yesterday it got into the 50s, I think, and there are flood worries because of rain and ice jams just north of us; tomorrow it'll be snowing and then pretty cold again. Bruce thinks yesterday was our "January thaw." Oh, I hope not. At least we're not Utah ... or Seattle ... or southern Wisconsin ... or ... ... ...

Christmas 2008

Happy Christmas to you!

As you can see, Bruce & I had a very nice--and rewarding!--Christmas. He gave me a very beautiful pendant: a blue topaz heart-shaped stone that's a "flower" with silver (or white gold) stem and leaf. It was designed and built by the local jeweler who designed my engagement ring. Really beautiful, delicate and feminine. I love it. I gave Bruce a shiatsu massage chair pad and he loves it. I'm glad.

Below is my attempt at a Martha Stewart table design. It's not too fancy this year; I just decided to use the bows from gifts to dress the table. It was fun to try, anyway.


And here is yours truly with Bruce, our Christmas portrait. I'm wearing my lovely Coldwater Creek winter sweater. It's too subtle to show up here but there are three white Christmas trees on the sweater, pearled and lightly sequined. Very nice and I feel lovely in it.


The ice cube snowman lights up blue and the light fades in and out. A little weird but I love it, and obviously so does Bruce because he got the batteries into it well before I got to it!

Ho Ho Ho!

About that job

Darling Bruce snowblowed (snowblew just does not sound right so live with my approximate grammar) the driveway yesterday even though he should not even have been outside. But he honestly doesn't mind doing that (most of the time).

And then it snowed more last night. But really only a little. And I put together a crockpot meal last night so I didn't have to do that this a.m. And even more darling Bruce drove me in and I got to the bookstore at 9:00. That's where I discovered I was on the schedule now to work 11:00 - 7:00. HUGE sigh (and muttered curses, you can bet). I actually caught Bruce before he got home--no he doesn't have a cell but I knew he was going to the gas station--and he came and took me back home. Then lo and behold, my car started! (I'll get a new battery in the next week or so just to be sure of it.) So I drove to work. As I was leaving the training supervisor told me that if I'd come to her at 9:00 she would have had me stay and work till 5 or 6.

All that was just lead-in to this: Is it because "retail" hires so many students that managers can be that capricious with their schedules? Or is it that college students have taught managers that they don't need to know schedules more than a week in advance? Or is it that because there are so few full-time workers that capricious schedules are the rule (whether or not the part-timers are students)? There's a fundamental difference between the way retail in a mall situation is run as compared to the way upscale department stores are run. Or maybe they only used to be different. I don't think so, judging by my experience in some upper-end stores in Tampa: the floor salespersons were very well dressed and made up, knew the stock in their departments and provided VERY good service. Malls maybe began our decline to the McDonalds type of service in retail, and then WalMarts took that even further. I know I sound old and crotchety about this, but there really was a service standard that meant the customer was right, or at least knew something.

So a customer complained to me at the cash register that the service in the bookstore was "terrible." There were always lines, he said. (There aren't; it's the week before Christmas, for heaven's sake.) So I said, "We try to give every customer as much time as needed at the register, sir, and that's why the line sometimes moves slowly." I had done all he wanted, after all. He missed my point. But it was nice to hear from a customer about 3 people later that she was impressed by how quickly we kept the line moving. Yin and yang, I guess.

"Later That Afternoon ..."

Here's the second video I did.



You can see the snow a bit better, I think. I have no idea how many inches we have now--looks like 3-4. Bruce is apparently feeling better and is out with the snowblower, which he pooh-poohed a couple of years ago. The birds are fun to watch on a day like today: They're puffed up as fluffy as they can get so they look like feather balls with wings! Even the tiny chickadees look big.

I called the bookstore and told them I wouldn't be there at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. I told 'em my battery was dead and my husband was too sick to shovel. One truism & one slight exaggeration. I'll get there when I can. And they're okay with that. There won't be any shoppers until about 9:30 or 10:00 anyway. Duh.

So we're getting the snowstorm that you all got (with the exception of the Florida contingent but at this time of year it's just better for my peace of mind to pretend they're getting this too). It started at about 8:30 this morning and will probably snow all day. As you can see in the little video, this is on top of the 10 inches we got two days ago.



(I think the snow coming down is actually more visible a bit more distant from the house. And I didn't mean to cut off like that; I thought my camera battery ran out.)

White Christmas? To quote Sarah Palin, "You betcha!" I'm not so happy about that because white could mean just enough snow to cover the grass; it doesn't have to be two feet deep! And Bruce has a whopper of a cold. I'm probably going to learn how to use the snowblower!

However, my Beetle's battery is dead right now. So I'll make a call to AAA because the car is in the garage nose-first, of course, and I don't want either Bruce or me pushing it out. Those AAA guys have a portable charger they can take into the garage, I'm pretty sure. I just can't decide if I'll call today or tomorrow. I think I'll let it go till tomorrow because I should drive it around a bit after it's charged and I absolutely do NOT want to do that today; the weather is just like it was when I was a pinata. I do learn from experience. :-)

The bad news is that I'm scheduled to work at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. I may not be there at 8:00. I can take the Ranger; Bruce doesn't mind that. It's getting out of the driveway that might be problematic. When the plows go by we get an impenetrably packed foot or more of snow from them. It's like shovelling concrete. We'll see how it goes, and I'll certainly tell you, dear reader, all about it.

For now, have a relaxing Sunday.

Picture Postcard World

I live in a world of picture postcard pines. Driving home from the bookstore today I passed countless evergreens (I was driving; I couldn't count them!) that are snow-laden just like those always pictured when showing ski resorts or the Adirondacks. The roads were slushy and brown but the pines were beautiful. I do love this area. Looking out my window right now I see about 4" of snow on the cedar rail fence around my garden. It's so pretty. (It covers all the leaves I didn't rake off my garden. But my plants seem to do fine with a bit of insulation through the cold cold months. How's that for rationalizing?) I think I really am gearing myself up to walking outside again; I miss walking around the block here and keeping an eye on snow-covered trees, the now-frozen now-not river and its winter changes.

The bookstore was busy all day today, and I'm probably in a pretty good frame of mind because I only worked 8:00 - 3:00 today. Next week will be a long one again: 8:00 - 5:00 on Monday, Tuesday and ... dah da dah dah (think mournful, threatening music) Friday. I'll just paste a smile on that day and try to deal with all the people who want to return things without receipts. Maybe I'll try to find an attractive flak jacket between now and then! But that schedule means I'll be able to make my cinnamon rolls--yes, just like my mom made every Saturday--for friends. I won't eat too many of them because I'm still working at staying low-carb. My cookie and candy intake has been remarkably low this year. I'm not sure how long that will last but I'm trying!

Light is fading outside; it's getting close to that shortest day. The air seems blue.

Have a good evening.