The blizzard of 2008

Well, it's gone full blown blizzard here in Central Ohio. My first one in over 20 years. I don't even remember when the last time the weathermen said the word blizzard. I must have cabin fever, cuz it's a pretty snow. My back yard is all covered in white and even at 3 in the morning, it's got a bright glow to it. And it's sad but right now all I can think is, "damn, why did I let him take my camera to Florida?" Yep, that's sad isn't it. The biggest snowstorm of the decade and I don't have a camera to take pictures of it or my dogs playing in it. Yesterday when I got home from work they had a blast playing in it while I shoveled the walk. This morning, they weren't too happy about it as its too deep for them to do their business. I'm gonna have to get the shovel out just so they can pee. And I would say that Karma is bitting me in the butt, cuz it's Saturday and not my turn to work~ they're gonna have to close the office today. It's not safe to drive. But I can't bitch too much. I'm so very, very thankful that it did happen this weekend and not next weekend for 2 very important reasons. 1 is that Shannon's flying home on Friday and 2 is that my mom & brother's family are all coming down to spend the weekend at a waterpark hotel near here. It's the anniversary of losing dad and if I was a wreck on his birthday, I can only imagine how I'll be then. But having the girls around helps me and I know that those girls are moms reason for going on. So let it snow now cuz I want dry roads and just a little sunshine next weekend.

Well, I got my PSE to where I can scrap some. Look at what I did last night. I had bought all this stuff from Megan for her birthday sale and really didn't get much of a chance to use it and then I picked up her grab bag. I must stop shopping!!!

This one uses Lindsay Jane Designs Breath of Spring collection. It's available at SBB. I had picked up several of her new kits and haven't had a chance to use them or the big SBB collab kit I got too. I'm so far behind.

More Flergs stuff.

Well, I'm thinking that i'm going to go crawl back in bed under the covers with my doggies for awhile. Then I'm sure I'll need to go shovel. Cate I feel for you girl. If this is normal for your area, I'd move. I hope that Barb and Jamie to the south of me didn't get it too badly and that everyone is safe. Stay warm and scrap happy!!!

Credit card comparision for low credit scores

I remember a time when my credit wasn't the best. I was young, I shopped a lot and couldn't pay. Millions of Americans are in the same boat. But the difference between now and then is that several companies are willing to give those people with bad credit card debt and low credit scores a chance. This website Bad Credit Offers has compiled a list of 10 companies that will work with people to help improve their credit by offering them credit cards, home or auto loans or even personal loans. It compares the companies and even offers direct links. So if you are one of those people who is trying to turn things around with your credit, check out this site.

Eating crow and getting tagged

I guess that eating crow is never fun, but can be important to do sometimes. I'm sure that some of you will remmeber my big bitchfest the other day. Well, I got so wrapped up in my own issues that I forgot that real life is a little more pressing sometimes. I owe Megan an apology for jumping to conclusions and then bitching about it.

Also Barb tagged me so I have to come up with 7 things you may not know about me. And I have no idea what to tell you. So I may come up short. But here goes.

1) I've lived in 4 different states - Kansas, Michigan, Florida & Ohio. Ok, that's boring. I quit school to go live on the beach in Florida. All I had was a job, I went down by myself. I lasted a year.

2) On spring break, my senior year in high school I was on Entertainment Tonight and recognized in 6 different states. I was a Prince freak and went to the opening concert of his Purple Rain tour in Detroit and the final show in Miami. I was interviewed cuz I traveled so far.

3) My second car was a 1975 Pontiac Lemans and boy was it fast! It was also the size of a small boat.

4) I've seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show 138 times in the movie theater. It used to be the weekend thing to do when I was in high school. I think I've seen it sober maybe twice.

5) I'm very computer illiterate. I used to think I know a lot until I tried to master PSE, vista and FTP on my other blog. Now it just gives me a headache.

6) I'm a Gemini and it shows.

7) It's actually 10 minutes til midnight Thursday night and I should have been in bed an hour ago. I'm a real bitch if I don't get 8 hours of sleep.

So now I get to tag people - HA! Kristine ya wench; Heather; Cate; & Andrea. The usual suspects.

Oh yeah, my PSE issues are still here. I uploaded 6 and still couldnt use the Organizer, so I deleted that and reinstalled 5, disabling the active file monitor. I can't pull photos over but I can drag and drop so that's what I plan to do, for now.

Snow update - the weathermen here don't know anything. They forcast either 4-6 or 6-12 inches. Either way, I think we're getting snow. So Meg, if you're reading this today, I'd trade you your a.c. for a snowball anyday.

Have a great weekend all!!!!

Edit: It's early morning and my usual blog time. My head is pounding cuz of the weather change but a bit clearer. I thought I'd let you know that I'm able to scrap again. I've been working on a page for the last half hour.

Yesterday was really rough for me personally. I thought I'd be ok until someone was actually nice to me. I went into the florist in the strip mall where my office is. I was early for work and thought that maybe some flowers would cheer me up. The florist is a really nice guy and we've talked on several occasions. We'll I lost it right in the middle of the store. How embarrasing is it to cry in front of people. We'll being the sweet guy he was, he special ordered me my favorites, daffadils. He made this gorgeous arrangement and brought them down to the office for me. Then only charged me his cost. I wish I had my camera, I'd have taken a picture of them to share for everyone else who is so sick of winter they could just spit. They are so beautiful and I really can't wait to go back into the office to see them. I figure that it'll be another 3 weeks before the ones planted in my yard bloom. My crocus are up but I'm sure the snow will knock them all back down.

Ok, all you other LOSTies out there, what did you think of last night's show? Personally it bored me. And confused me (what else is new). Is Ben a good guy or a bad guy? Is Widmore a good guy or a bad guy? And how can Jack love Kate and kiss Juilet? I'm not a fan of either Kate or Juilet. And I was really getting upset as it neared the end and no scene's with Sawyer. So very glad to see him at the end. Sweet dreams for me. Can't wait for next weeks show!!!

Ok, off to try to finish this layout. Have a great day all.

Car insurance check up time

Well, it's that time of year again. Car Insurance renewal time. And with that renewal notice comes the shopping around. I do it every year to make sure that a) I'm getting the best coverage for my needs and b) that I'm getting the best coverage at the best price. I call it my annual financial check up. I also do it with my home owners since I usually try to keep them together. Most companies will offer you a discount if you have more than one policy with them. So do you compare rates on a yearly or semi annual basis? How do you know that you have the correct coverage for you? And more importantly are you getting the best rates? Do you know what questions to ask when shopping around? Do you know what answers to give? Let me give you the crash course that I tend to give my customers. This is not meant to be all inclusive and is not a substitute for getting your insurance questions answered by a licensed agent in your state.

First of all, full coverage doesn't necessarily mean fully insured. Full coverage to most insurance companies means that your car is fully coverage against collision or damage. Full coverage does not necessarily extend to uninsured motorist coverage, rental, medical or towing. If you are asking for full coverage, make sure that you ask if it includes these additional items and then decide if you really need them. I don't need towing, it's included with my car loan so I decline it. Also ask how they determine the value of your vehicle. Which blue book value to they use? Do you know the blue book value of your vehicle? If you car is more than 7 years old and you do not have a loan on it, you should look into if it is economical to have full coverage on your car. I cannot tell you how many people will come in and put full coverage on a 10 year old plus vehicle, with a $500 deductible, pay $800 a year and then get mad when they have that vehicle totaled out and only get $500 out of the claim. Full coverage is blue book value less your deductible or the cost to repair the vehicle. On older vehicles, most insurance companies will total it out instead of repairing it. Just check the values and weigh your options.

Secondly less coverage does not always mean a lower price. Non standard insurance companies are designed for high or higher risk drivers. People with not so perfect driving records or credit. So if your state minimum is all they write in the limits of liability, ask yourself if you are involved in an accident, heaven forbid, and it's a bad one, will those state limits cover all the parties involved? Chances are no. Make sure that you are carrying limits that are high enough to protect you.

Most importantly, find an agent in your area that you can ask these questions of and get the proper advice from. Insurance is a tricky business and it's up to you to be informed.

Thank you

Many thanks to all of you who responded to my bitchfest yesterday. I guess I need to learn not to focus on those people who can't seem to follow rules. I have issues with that to irl. So 1 person who takes part in the DST train didn't stop by. I'm so happy that 14 other people who were not right below me did. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

My computer issues went from bad to really bad. I was working on a fix for my organizer issue and found that all of my photos are gone. That's not really bad because I have them on back up discs and the most recent ones are still on my memory card, here in my office (the camera is floating around Florida right now) I now have an extra 70GB of space on my hard drive too. Who knew that photos took up so much room. Oh, everyone but me. Anyway with the fix that allowed me to get into the organizer, it wouldn't let me pull any photos over. What kind of fix is that? So I played around a little more and nothing worked. I uninstalled and downloaded PSE6. Same issue. So it's not the software, it's something else. I'm gonna have to call support today. Fun,fun,fun.

"Man plans and God laughs" has become my favorite saying lately. I had planned to do a simple layout to post here today. It would have been my daddy's 64th birthday. Then I figured that I'd put a picture of the two of us here. Well as you see no photos. So no public memorandum to celebrate. So I'll just add that I miss him very much.

Hope that you all have a great day. More snow forecasted for us in the morning. Thanks for stopping by again today.

UGH! It's gonna be a bit*h post

I don't know where to start. But I'll warn you now, this is gonna be a bitch post. I guess we'll start with scrapping. Somehow, some way I messed up my PSE. I can't get the catalog to open. For those of you who don't have PSE, the catalog is the area that holds all the papers and pictures and from there you put them into the editor area. I don't know if it's called the same thing on other programs. I tried to do a system restore, didn't help. I went to do a repair under the unistall area, didn't help. So I removed PSE and reinstalled it. No problem, until it wouldn't take the serial number. It says it's invalid. It has been loaded into 2 computers already. I'm trying to reinstall it again. I'm not pleased.

For 2 days in a row now the person below me on the DST blog train has bothered to leave comments, therefore I doubt they even stopped by the blog. Isn't that the whole purpose of the train? I know that there are days that I don't get back by everyone who's stopped in here, but I always, always get the person above me. And it wasn't like they were new to the train and didn't understand the concept of it. I was really ticked off and gonna raise a big bitch about it (other than posting it here) but then figured that even if the person below me didn't stop by, so many of you did. So thank you, you have restored my faith in the blog train.

And finally, what really set me off at 1:30 this morning, as the dogs whined to be let outside, was that there was at least 1 inch of snow of the ground. It was 65 degrees here on Monday. I am so tired, so very tired of this snow. And we're supposed to get more this weekend. Is Spring ever going to come???????

So there's my humpday bitchfest for you all. Thanks for stopping by and comisserating with me. Hope you all have terrific days!

Primary time

Well, I had planned on being on of the first at the polls, voting and coming back home to blog and get ready for work. Of course, when I woke up at 5 am to let the dogs out to rain & 35 degrees, the best place to be was right back snuggled under the down comforter. So when I woke back up, it was 6:25 and there goes my plan out the window. I'm not sure how the polls will be. For the last Presidential election, I only had to wait about 15 minutes. I've never voted in a Primary before. (at least that I can remember) Let's just say that I'm awful glad that my phone number is unlisted. I've had a lot of people tell me that they've been getting lots and lots of campaign phone calls.





I spent part of last night playing around with a challenge from SBB to create Easter stickers. It's part of the learn something new challenge and I was going to combine it with DSO's color challenge. I'm thinking I printed off the wrong tut. Either way, I've got some more work to do on them. I also got the girls latest photos sent to me. Some of the shots are fantastic, but a lot of them I'm not so crazy about. I think it's the same photog that they used for the last series, but maybe not. I'm sure that you'll be seeing a lot of those soon as I have tons of spring kits with no photos to scrap yet.

Keep an eye out for something new from Heather Manning. Here's a little sneak peek. I'll have more details soon. Butterflies by Flergs.

Off to do my civic duty. Hope everyone has an awesome day.

Monday, Monday

Yea! It's 55 degrees outside right now. And it's 7 AM. It's supposed to get into the mid 60's today with rain later on tonight. Of course nothing lasts forever and it's supposed to snow again tomorrow. I'd say only in Ohio, but I believe it's really only in the Midwest. I'm truly hoping that the snow that we're supposed to get later on this week is the LAST snow of the year. I'm ready for daffadils and tulips. After all, it's March.

Speaking of March, tomorrow is the primary here for Ohio. If you'd have said 6 weeks ago that Ohio could be the deciding factor on the Democratic ticket, I think a lot of people would have laughed. And then a lot of people thought that having the Ohio primary so far back was pointless. Well it may be for the Republican's. I think that McCain's got the nomination all sewed up. All I can say is I'll be glad not to have to watch all those political commercials again for a few months. Talk about OVERkill. I'm so glad that I have Tivo and will be using it this summer to fast forward past all those commercials.

Ok, on to business. Do you like scraplift challenges? Well, over at Heather Manning's CT blog, I'm running the first of the March challenges. No more coloring inbetween the lines. Scribble and doodle all you want. Check it out here.

And here's my lift. I've never done a scribbly page before, so it was a little bit of a stretch. Frame & other doodles you can pick up in Heather's store. The paper is from her Dirty Snow paper pak.


And Cherie Shields released a new kit at Sophia Sarducci's. Sogni Dolci or Sweet Dreams for those like me who's Italian is limited to pizza toppings. Here are 2 layouts I did with her new kit.


And don't forget about Kiki Halbert's new fabulous paper pack, Wasted Walls. Terrific for those masculine papes, but works great with the girls too. See Em being a Rock Star. The foil elements are by Kiki too, Foil Flourishes & Foiled Again. All are available at Plain Digital Wrapper.



I FINALLY got my Shutterfly Christmas book all done. I know that no one is in the mood to see cutesy Christmas layouts, but you just gotta see these. I've gotta be the only person still buying Christmas kits in late Feb.But I'm glad I finally broke down and picked up Jofia's Warm Christmas. So much fun with this kit. And the alpha is glitter by Flergs. I finally figured out how to load it, lol.
And the last page of the book, us all playing my nephew's game, he didn't get to play it for a few days. lol.
And I among many others, went nuts for Flerg's birthday and here's one of the pages I did. Something about sleeping babies just touches the heart.

Hope you all have a wonderful day! I'm going to enjoy the warm up, even if it's only temporary.

A little humor to start off the morning

One day I met a sweet gentleman and fell in love. When it became apparent that we would marry, I made the supreme sacrifice and gave up beans.

Some months later, on my birthday, my car broke down on the way home from work. Since I lived in the countryside I called my husband and told him that I would be late because I had to walk home.

On my way, I passed by a small diner and the odor of baked beans was more than I could stand. With miles to walk, I figured that I would walk off any ill effects by the time I reached home, so I stopped at the diner and before I knew it, I had consumed three large orders of baked beans.

All the way home, I made sure that I released all the gas.

Upon my arrival, my husband seemed excited to see me and exclaimed delightedly: "Darling I have a surprise for dinner tonight."
He then blindfolded me and led me to my chair at the dinner table. I took a seat and just as he was about to remove my blindfold, the telephone rang. He made me promise not to touch the blindfold until he returned and went to answer the call.

The baked beans I had consumed were still affecting me and the pressure was becoming most unbearable, so while my husband was out of the room I seized the opportunity, shifted my weight to one leg and let one go. It was not only loud, but it smelled like a fertilizer truck running over a skunk in front of a pulpwood mill. I took my napkin from my lap and fanned the air around me vigorously.

Then, shifting to the other cheek, I ripped off three more. The stink was worse than cooked cabbage.

Keeping my ears carefully tuned to the conversation in the other room, I went on like this for another few minutes. The pleasure was indescribable. When eventually the telephone farewells signaled the end of my freedom, I quickly fanned the air a few more times with my napkin, placed it on my lap and folded my hands back on it feeling very relieved and pleased with myself.

My face must have been the picture of innocence when my husband returned, apologizing for taking so long. He asked me if I had peeked through the blindfold, and I assured him I had not.

At this point, he removed the blindfold, and twelve dinner guests seated around the table chorused: "Happy Birthday!"

I fainted!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you thinking of buying a house?

I bought my house five years ago in the middle of the housing boom. The market was wonderful for both sellers and buyers. Zero down loans were readily available and easy to qualify for. How quickly things have changed here in only five years. I feel incredibly fortunate that I knew a little about the mortgage industry, having worked in an office back in the early nineties. When I went to my bank, I was adamant about having a fixed rate loan. It didn't matter to me that I could have had an adjustable at 3%. I wanted the security of knowing that my payments would be the same for the next 30 years. Now 5 years later, we are seeing what the no money down, adjustable rate mortgages are doing to the housing market and the foreclosure rates.

With the housing market in a slump, if you've been thinking about taking the leap from renter to homeowner, now is the perfect time to look into making that dream come true. It's definitely a buyers market nowadays. The first thing I would recommend that you do if you are thinking of buying a house is to get a Mortgage Quote and get yourself prequalified for a mortgage. When searching out a mortgage, take into account many things including interest rate and escrow standing. Do you want to be responsible for your own taxes & insurance? A lot of mortgage companies are willing to look into this provided you meet the criteria. A lot of people, me included, prefer to have that escrowed into their monthly payments. The interest rate most likely will not vary that much between lenders, unless you've got a broker that is bumping your rate to make their commission. So it never hurts to shop around for mortgage rates if you feel that the rate you're being quoted is too high. There are many factors that go into what rate you are quoted though, so what may be a great rate for your Uncle Charlie may be unobtainable for you. Seek out a qualified mortgage broker and realtor if you are thinking about buying your first home. Take advantage of this fabulous buyers market. Hopefully it will turn back to a sellers market soon.