25 Things About Me I Bet You Didn't Know

I was tagged by Carla.

Rules:
Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

1. I have moved to eighteen different towns in 37 years. We moved a great deal when I was young, and Art and I moved around a quite a bit before we found home.

2. My Mother never wanted to let us have pets growing up. She is not a pet person. I am. Maybe that is why I have so many now!!

3. We once traded our two ferrets for two parrots. One of our early stove customers fostered parrots, but really wanted ferrets. After four years we were WAY over the ferrets, but I wanted a parrot. Ody still lives with us seven years later. Hilly went to live in CO but died of a brain tumor.

4. I am a picky eater. For example, every time I think of eating pickles I think of Dan telling me stories of someone he knew who cleaned pickle vats in Denver and about all the nasty stuff that would fall in. Ewww!

5. I am not a clean freak. My Mom was the type that would make your bed if you got up to pee in the morning… With three very fuzzy animals my carpets are more often white than the black they appear when I vacuum…

6. I have a savant ability to remember numbers. I am a hubby’s walking phone book and remember my credit card numbers. I can remember phone numbers from growing up, locker combos… A little freaky! I guess that is why I work in accounting!

7. My favorite job (other than my current one) was Radio Shack. I just loved that place! I had most of the part numbers memorized and could find the most obscure little diode anyone brought in. The pay was worse than pathetic, but I LOVED that job. It also taught me most of the structure we used to build our business!

8. I sleep flat on my stomach. Kind of like the dead man’s float. I cannot fall asleep otherwise.

9. I redecorate the house frequently. I think this is why I am such a good candidate for renovating a house. We walk into a house and start imagining tearing down walls, moving rooms. On a basic level I move furniture around and resituate constantly.

10. This is really hard! I am really pretty simple. I am not sure I can get to twenty-five!!

11. I don’t think I can live in a house without a stream anymore. I just love the sound on a summer night, and in winter it is so calming to go outside and that is all you hear…

12. I go to bed at ten. If I don’t go to bed at ten I might as well have. I gloss over and no amount of caffeine can keep me alert!

13. I find things like birthdays and anniversaries very important. Not the gifts, but celebrating and acknowledging them…

14. I got carded up until two years ago. It used to make me so mad! Now that I am not carded, I am a little put off…

15. I am a coffee addict. MY DD mug is rarely not in my hand!

16. My nemesis is laundry. I hate doing laundry!

17. I miss the sky. I love my trees, but a good sunset is really lacking!

18. Am I there yet?

19. I love that our town is so small it is kind of like high school. Everyone knows everyone else, and we all pitch in to make our community family work.

20. I have tinnitus that comes and goes in my right ear for a reason six doctors have not been able to pinpoint.

21. I had radial keratotomy done fifteen years ago. It held for ten years, although I didn’t get glasses again until two years ago.

22. I cherish my marriage. I know this is no secret but it is important to me. My life is fuller than I could have ever imagined. We complement each other well, and even when we worked twelve hour days together to get our biz up and running we loved being together. I feel very blessed.

23. I have a brown thumb. The few houseplants we have are cared for by Art.

24. I am a Stargate junkie. SG-1, Atlantis, the movies… We have a Stargate pinball machine, my favorite coffee mug, I have them all on DVD...

25. I am a New Englander. We moved here after we were married, but it felt like home. I love the seasons, the fact that we have mountains and the ocean. I also enjoy Art’s large family here.

Ski Widow

This week I am feeling the full effects of being a ski widow.

Yay! for hubby to get out there in the subzero temps and get some exercise but boy do I miss him!
Good for Art.

He did ski patrol last Friday, today he is up at Canon with some friends, Wednesday and Thursday he will be up at Crotched.

All of this to warm up for his big "ski birthday" next week.

Although it will probably be a lot more cross country next week so I can go, too.
It has been an awesome year for skiing up here in New England. We have had consistent snow a couple of times a week down here, and I imagine even moreso as you go North. It has been a good winter. Not a lot of melting or warm ups, and even though we had a rocky start with a few ice storms we seem to be out of that and into the white fluffy powdery snow. I would prefer the sub-zero era to hurry up and end already, but at twenty it is really very pretty and I love being out there. Next week I am praying for a warm up (to at least the teens! if not the twenties) so we can get in a lot of skating, cross country, and snow shoeing. Art will do his FREE ski day at Wildcat, of course! I will surely spend that day shopping or at the spa :-)

I used to ski EVERY weekend when I was little. Well, probably not every weekend, but it sure felt like it! We lived in Utah and Colorado and I think my parents thought it was a pre-requisite for living there or something...
But, the whole slip down the hill on two long sticks with wind and snow in your face was never fun for me. Not to mention the falling! I did that very well! I would snow-plow from one side to the other all the way down the hill. I have learned through Art's patrolling that now kids just pretend they are sick or hurt something to get out of skiing! Why didn't I ever think of that?!?LOL! I think I'll stick to snow shoeing if you don't mind!

If the shoe fits...

I joined some friends for the day since Art is off in sunny Arizona. They have a rope tow set up in their back yard with several runs cleared for skiing. They also have many trails carved for snowshoeing in winter, and hiking in the summer.
We had about eight inches of fresh fluffy snow last night so it was beautiful.
We spent a good part of the day hiking around, then headed inside for chili, venison stew, chicken soup and fresh baked bread.
It warmed up about twenty degrees over what it has been all week. Still amazing to me how warm the teens can feel after a cold snap.
A great day :-)

Done.

I finally finished my second knitting project. I got the hat done in four days during the ice storm. Who knew that the scarf was going to take so long! But Art was skiing all day yesterday so I had time to finish it last night!!

I think it may look best on Lizzie. She thought her fur coat was more than enough!

BBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Hubby is off to Arizona with his sisters to surprise his Dad on his 80th birthday.
Am I jealous?
What do you think...

Still Laughing

Once a year we do a team building fun trip with our guys to blow off steam from the busy fall and to celebrate the accomplishments of the year before. When we get a top ten award we try to do a little extra. This year we achieved top ten again, which really isn't that astounding since we were all on allocation (meaning we got this year what we got last...) But, they still worked like crazy to get everyone installed as quickly as possible so the feeling is there.

We went to a Bruins game.
When the limo pulled up big smiles appeared all around and the tone was set. We climbed in and broke out the bubbly. We had a great ride down to Boston to our secret dinner destination.

The Cheesecake factory at the Prudential Center. A couple of our Canadian suppliers had flown in to join us and they met us at the restaurant. We walked around a bit before dinner. Snowballs and laughs were flying.
More beverages and lots of food. The menu is a little daunting, but everything is delicious. If you have eaten there before you say things like, "the tuna on page 19 is very good, or the chicken wings on page six are spicy and fabulous..." A couple of guys tried to downshift into work talk and were rewarded with double drinks.

Then we all piled back in the limo to go to the Garden (gah-den). The traffic was wicked bad, so we all piled out and walked the last couple of blocks. It was a very Bostonian moment to walk into the Garden in the shadow of the Zakim Bridge.

The place was packed. Our seats were a little high, but the view was amazing. We had a lot of characters around us. We had a lot of characters with us for that matter. One of our Canadian friends Paul is a long time Bruins fan, and one was a Habs fan. He wisely did not wear Canadien's logo wear. We heckled a bit, but we were winning so we were pretty gentle. Paul even caught a Bruins shirt that the Bruin's girls were throwing out. Very proud!

The game was everything you would hope for. Fights, checks, pucks flying, and then there was the hockey! LOL! At one point there was a all out brawl going on behind and to the right of us, with the most vocal guy declaring in an unmistakably Southie accent that ALL of row 13 sucked!

Yesterday was a great day. I smiled so hard my teeth hurt, and laughed so much I nearly ran out of breath a few times. Life is Good :)
At the same time sticks were flying on the ice and there was a wad of players duking it out on the ice.

Bruins won 3-1. My voice is a little hoarse today and I can think several others who may not have a voice for days. Good times! One of our guys even talked one especially inebriated fellow into going down to "flirt" with another of our guys. Too funny. I almost cried I was laughing so hard. Poor Sean.

Afterward we walked over to Sully's for a beer. We had one under age person with us so we decided not to stay. Unfortunately, someone ordered six pints before the word spread. A Boston ladder truck and (fire) engine were also active up the street. We had five fire fighters with us so they all went off down the street while the others went in to finish the pints. We then headed off to Cheer's on the Boston Common. It was pretty late at this point so we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

We wrapped up at last call, dropped our Canadian friends off at their hotel and headed back North. We poured a couple of guys into the passenger seats of the designated drivers and home we went.

Sustainability

We pride ourselves on being relatively self-sufficient, and strive to become as self-sufficient as possible. We love our greenhouse and were thrilled that it and our fields were so well used this last year. I am enjoying taking veggies and fruits grown from our yard out of the freezer for dinner. I admit that in many ways I grew up in a bubble and didn't really connect where my food came from, or heat, or the materials that built my home...
My parents always fished, and I still love to go fishing to this day but I think one of my earliest memories of connecting where my food came from happened when my friend Holly invited me to visit her grandparents dairy farm. I was maybe six or seven?? They had slaughtered a cow that day, and the boys were 'playing' with the entrails. ((Gross!)) But we watched them as they processed the cow. I'd like to say it freaked me out, but I didn't do the vegetarian bit until college. The idealistic I can't eat things with eyes moment in time that many of us go through... That pattern was broken by a great big burger for me. I just love the taste :)>
It has also been so much fun raising our chickens. Granted there is no killing, just taking their eggs. We have talked about raising meat-birds. We have also talked about raising a pig. We have a stall for one in our greenhouse. We have friends who raise one each year. Their three kids pick a name for it, and they feed, water, and care for it for six months before it goes to slaughter. That is their primary meat source for the family. The kids understand this and they know what their pig was fed, they know that he was healthy, and not chemically injected...
Hubby and a girlfriend of mine have been trying to connect to take a hunter's education course. You have to take it one time, and it provides gems like don't run and jump over streams with a loaded gun and don't point your loaded gun at anything you don't want to kill... I am on board with taking the course. Education is never a bad thing, and it may prove to be useful someday.
I have had a varied opinion of guns throughout my life. When I was very young a friend's father used to go elk hunting each year. They were all very excited when he would get an elk to feed the family that year, and quite frankly elk jerky is wonderfully delicious. Right around junior high a few boys in our neighborhood were playing with a parent's gun and one of them was accidentally shot and he died. It was very sad. This certainly left a bad taste in my mouth.
I am not a big fan of using a gun as home protection. Too many variables for something to wrong, and I don't like it. But for food it makes a lot of sense to me. I am not sure I could pull the trigger on a deer at this stage, but the fact is I am willing to eat the meat so it would be a little ignorant of me to say that hunting them is wrong...
This last weekend we went up to Manchester to the gun show. It was really pretty cool to walk through the streets of the Queen City seeing women and men carrying rifles and handguns. You don't see that too often! It was jam packed in there. I think there was a line of maybe a hundred or so people waiting to get in when we arrived. No, there weren't any Ted Kaczynski types roaming around. Definitely a more conservative crowd. Lots of 'Obamination' jokes.
We were there for a few hours. Hubby found the 45 he was looking for pretty much just as we walked in. He got a Ruger 345. He was thinking I would want to get a pistol myself. I did like the Walther P22, but I don't think I am a pistol gal. So I set off to look for a shot gun. I would probably use it for 90% target shooting, and 10% hunting. I loved the beautiful wooden handles they had on the 22's, but other than popping a squirrel in the butt (or rather nearly popping as I would likely miss...) they are used pretty much for target and competition. I did get very excited when I saw that they had a P90 for sale. Not the fully automatic military model, but a commercial version. Still made by the same company and still the same look. I told Art that THAT would be the coolest Stargate souvenier ever!! But there was no way hubby (or myself for that matter) was going to drop $2500 so I could have the same gun that Jack O'Neill and company used in Stargate. I was about to give up when I saw a nice Mossberg Rifle. It was a lightweight, but not all black, had a little gold trigger, and a nice scope, and strap. We'll see what happens from here...

A New Day

For the first time this year I noticed that the days are once again getting longer. Days getting warmer will come, but not for a while so I will be happy with the sun. When we were first married I traveled a great deal for my work. During that time I went to Alaska twice.
The first time was in early December. I looked like Nanook of North. I struggled on to the plane all layered up with a huge climbing pack of hubbys crammed full of long johns, wool socks, and sweaters pillaged from friends and family. (I lived in Colorado at that point and there was rarely a need to own such items.) I was in Anchorage and dawn began at about 11:00 and a couple of hours the dim day would turn to twilight then darkness by 2:30. I arrived late in the day so the hotel's cafe was closed. I decided to venture across the street to the grocery store I could see from the lobby. I was about to walk out the door when the lady behind the counter said, "I wouldn't go out there dressed like that if I were you." I looked at here with disbelief verging on obstinance. I was wearing so many layers I felt like poor little Randy from The Christmas Story. She quickly continued,"You will get frost bite if you don't cover your face. I have a mask you can borrow if you like." It seemed a little silly but I took the mask then stomped out the door. Then it hit me! I have never felt cold like that. I think it was about twenty or twenty five below zero with a little breeze. I wasn't ten feet out the door and felt like I had been hiking for half a day and my destination was still so far away! I think it took about twenty five minutes to cross both parking lots but by the time I got there my toes and fingers were numb, and my lips chapped and cracked-justlikethat. I think I spent the rest of the time in the hotels bar drinking hot toddies with some Shriner's who were also staying there. Yeah, no pictures of this one (thank goodness!)
My second trip was in February and was quite different. Still Anchorage, and still mostly dark (dawn at about ten and twilight at about three or four in the afternoon). I had also packed more appropriate clothes and I had a co-worker with me.
The temperature was closer to zero, but it felt perfectly comfortable since I had the memory of 25 below seered in my memory banks. We drove down to Seward stopping to look at Glaciers and a dog sled ride (of course!) Hubby is much more experienced with colder temps and snowy weather having grown up in New England. He was (and is) a good climber and will hike/camp any time of the year. He is a warm body and doesn't seem to chill easily. He is loving ski patrol, and can outski everyone I have ever met with the exception of one friend's sister who hangs out with people on the US Olympic Ski Team.
Since we moved to NH I have developed a full appreciation for the seasons and enjoy winter activities like ice skating, cross country, tubing, and hubby loves skiing. Of course, fleece lined jeans from LL Bean help a great deal! ;-) Art headed off for ski patrol at 7:30 this morning when the temperature was about 8 degrees. I imagine he will be home around 10:30 tonight with aching muscles and a huge smile on his face!
For the second year in a row we will be heading to North Conway for a ski week over Art's birthday. He likes Wildcat and they let you ski free on your birthday. My parsimonious hubby just loves that! The ice sculptures, and skating are my favorites up there.

My hope it to make it to Quebec City this winter. Hubby had a great time with our Canadian friends during Carnaval last year. If it's all the same I will stick to Alaska in the summer though! :-)

Thanks Uncivil Jimmy!

This is why I cross-country!

Ski accident

Ski Bum

What Art has to look forward to...

JANUARY 6--In a bizarre incident that will surely lead to litigation (or an out-of-court settlement), a skier at Colorado's ritzy Vail resort was left dangling upside down and pantsless from a chairlift last Thursday morning.
Full story at http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0106091vail1.html

One sick chick.

Back soon---

NY NY