havocandmayhem.com

The morning is not off to rousing start. There were wailed of frustration and anger at 6:30am from Mayhem who was paying Lego Indiana Jones & was stuck somewhere. It developed into shouting between Havoc & Mayhem about what do to, where to go & just who was going to drop out if they don’t listen. Cats were rubbing all over my face in bed. I am allergic to cats. Yes, we have 4 of them. As long as they are not rubbing on my face & I remember to wash my hands after petting them I am normally fine. I am still breathing with allergy wheeze right now The coffee pot clogged, sending grounds & hot coffee everywhere. It had to be remade. I went to find the wood glue to fix Mayhem’s sword.  I couldn’t find it but I did find that the chest freezer in the utility room has been sitting open since god knows when, possibly since noon yesterday. It is nicely defrosted & all the meats still seem to be solid blocks, but the waffles thawed and the freeze pops too.  Havoc

I had no internet last weekend so there are 2 weeks worth of photos today. We had overcast days and beautiful sunsets It was nice enough to swim sometimes The army men are closing in on my position   I got some work done on my crochet shawl The dinos were on tv And I played around with my macro lens       For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom

One of the fun things about having the bucket truck visit is everyone gets to go for a ride in the bucket with DH. He takes them about 35 feet up & they get to look out over the side. *insert standard safety precaution disclaimer about harnesses etc here*.  I realize it looks like my 5 year old is alone in a bucket way up the air, but DH is actually kneeling in the bucket holding him up a bit so he can se over the edge. You can kinda see the top of his head behind Mayhem’s left elbow. As you can see here Havoc is tall enough to peek over the side himself Then I went up and took some photos for a 360 view   The view is nice from up there, it’s like a ferris wheel ride sorta but I am flat out freaked by heights & ferris wheels so I don’t do it very often. 

I suppose it is just as well that there was a confluence of doom rather than having the various doom occur consecutively.  Saves time. The pole went down at 6:30pm Wednesday taking with it all outside forms of communication. We live in a fringy cell zone & have a cell signal enhancer on that pole along with our internet antenna, so the cell went out too. Thursday morning the new HD arrived & the laptop was so hot I was shocked the keys weren’t melting & it was useless after about 11am. The plan was for DH to take the laptop in Friday & have the Clonezilla copy the existing HD onto the new HD. But the guy that knows that software was at the dentist with an abscessed tooth, so DH had to wing it with occasional calls to that guy who was naturally whacked out on pain meds. He is also the guy that drives the bucket truck & who we were going to pay to come out over the weekend to help put the pole back. Five tries later, at 6pm, DH calls and says “It says it has

Perhaps you may remember this photo from Feb when the pole with my internet receiver collapsed in the high winds and this had to come out 3 days later to fix it Look what I found at 7pm last night I had internet before dinner and 90 minutes later when I got back on the computer I didn’t. I went out to see if maybe the antenna had moved maybe and there was no antenna to be seen. There has been no wind & it is tied down now with steel cables. What could have happened? Rain. I found this That is the spike that was screwed in the ground that had the cables tied to it. Apparently a month of nearly non-stop rain saturated the ground enough that the weight of the antenna & receiver pulling against it, pulled it out. So to recap 1. hard drive is dying & must be replaced 2. most of the software has to be downloaded 3. I have no internet at home 4. Library internet filter views every single page on the web as spam & unpleasant, pissy library la

{scary thundery voice} DOOOOOOOMMM My computer hard drive has a terminal condition. It’s dying slowly as we speak. The buzzing comes more often. It gets so hot I am surprised the keys are not melting.  Or maybe its the fan. Either way, the thing is dying. A borrowed hard drive did not create a buzzing sound so those who know these things feel 95% sure its the hard drive. It is a 3-4 year old laptop. It has a certain type of hard drive style they stopped using about 50 seconds after my Visa payment went through (which is the story of my life) So the various computer docs I consulted did not give me much hope that a replacement hard drive could be found. But one has been found! A  160GB Seagate of appropriate style has been located. The current drive is only 80GB and is a Seagate as well. It has been ordered & will be here by the end of the week. Which is why I have this cloud of doom hanging over me. I have to load a hard drive from the ground up. Operating system, dr

It was nice enough to be outside most of the week. We had a bonfire There was a lightsaber duel Some swimming Things were crowded at the food bowl This guy caught up on some reading I love my macro lens     For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom

On the other side of your computer screen there sits a real person typing these words. A real person, with real live feelings, hopes, dreams, a past that stretches back into the mists of times (it was 1967, perhaps it was the smoky marijuana haze of time) and hopefully a long and glorious future. This real person does not exist online. Not even a vague reference. I was reminded of this other day when I read something about people googling themselves and had an idea I'd done it once but couldn't recall the results. That would be because there aren't any. Lots of people with the same name as me do exist online with Facebook & MySpace pages and Flickr albums and job resumes. They appear in newspaper stories, or lists of swim meet winners or tags on other people's photos. But none of them are me. Anyone googling me without meeting me first (for a job interview for example or because I'm the mom of one of their kid's friends) is going to be in for a bit o

I believe I have mentioned in the past that I like to crochet. Unlike many people who knit or crochet, this is not a fall or winter weather hobby for me.  I crochet in the summer. I am much too busy on the internet in the fall & winter to sit down & crochet. Summer is swimming season.  I sit out on the porch, under the 70% shade cloth & watch the kids in the pool. My high gloss screen laptop is useless in these conditions. I can’t see a darn thing on it in daylight. So I crochet instead. Back in March I showed you all this The 1000 yard skein of yarn I was rolling into a ball prior to crocheting it into a shawl. Eventually it became this And I started working on the shawl yesterday at long last. I’ve finished this much so far Hmm… that needs something to give a sense of scale… What can I use… Oh yeah It’s granny T-Rex I’ll be posting periodic updates as it gets larger. Someday I hope for it to fit me.

It’s a mostly floral group this week. In the brief moments between thunderstorms I went out with my macro lens & photographed some small flowers The rain lifted briefly last Sunday and swimming season was finally able to begin Now that we have a dog, we have a dog crate. Mayhem is fascinated with it These are his Weekly Winners Dinos at dinner Angry jail kittehs . For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom

All the cool kids in the blogosphere are doing the 30 Day Shred. So I had to get the DVD and do it too. And yes, before you ask mom, if they were all jumping off of bridges I’d do that too. Presumably they’d have to live through it to post about it so it must be safe. I do Body Pump 2x a week and cardio one day a week on average. I’ve been doing that for 4 years. I’m not starting from scratch. I’m also lazy sensible, so I did level 1 like a good girl. I thought about level 2 but personally I’d rather have an easy time & know I can do the next higher level next time than get my ass kicked & be unable to finish level 2 at the start. I chose wisely. It was a tough workout. Like someone had squeezed Body Step & Body Pump into one 20 minute routine. I was dripping sweat when I am done & that doesn’t happen much at Pump, even upping my weights, I am not dripping for 55 minutes. Just enough cardio. Too much cardio set off an asthma attack.  Perhaps a few more pointe

Last month we acquired 48 months of car payments. We bought a 2006 Grand Caravan with 24,000 miles on it We had looked at 2008 version in an electric blue first & I liked it more. But I didn’t like it $4000 more. It had the same mileage & I like the radio better. I mostly liked that it was electric blue. Because there are exactly zero electric blue mini vans in the Wal Mart parking lot at any given time. But silver? You can’t swing a cat without hitting a silver mini van in the Wal Mart parking lot. However it does have electric doors, so I can stand in the general vicinity of several silver mini vans, push the remote & then go to whichever one’s door opens. Mayhem loves the electric doors. He pushes the button & then stands in the doorway waiting until the last possible second to leap through the gap, like Indiana Jones. Assuming Indiana Jones would have anything to do with a mini van. I wanted a car with more space for luggage and thought a third r