- January 30, 2013 -

Yesterday started off good, I had high expectations for the day (always a mistake) & started off with a scrambled egg for breakfast & then excitedly got out my crocheting (I'm working on an afghan), found a good movie (The 5th Element), sat down, unfolded the afghan, laid it out in the position it needed to be in to continue working on it (which was over my legs & in my lap), positioned the yarn on my left, all my other stuff (chocolate milk, etc) on my right, started the movie, took 1 stitch ... &

the mailman pulls up ... has a package. It was pouring out so I couldn't just ignore him & let him sit the package & all my mail on the front porch, so I had to quickly grab the ball of yarn, pick up the afghan, remove all the yarn from in between my fingers (you have to weave the yarn between your fingers for tension while crocheting), dump everything on the nearest surface, the dogs are going nuts ... move everything to a surface where it won't get trampled & tangled by the dogs!), run around all the living room furniture (the front door is inches from my head while I'm sitting in the living room, but to actually GET to the door to open it & receive anything requires 1st walking as far away from the door towards the west wall of the living room, then making a left & heading south towards the dining room, then making another left & heading back east towards the hallway, then left again & back north to get the the door. You've made a full square, with the exception of the back of the sofa that was blocking you from getting to the door in just a single step. Small house, small rooms, LARGE living room furniture. Anyway, I get our mail, sort through it, & then have to go through the entire process of sitting back down, arranging the yarn, afghan, stuff ... un-pause the movie, take a stitch ... UPS backs in the driveway. MOTHER OF GOD WHAT THE ... repeat process to get to the door as quickly as possible without destroying my crochet project, pause the movie, etc. Get the package, open it, look at it, put it away neatly ... back to the sofa, pick up the project, un-pause the movie, have no idea what's going on, un-pause the movie from the beginning ... the phone rings. A text message. An IM. Anything that COULD come in, did. After literally an HOUR of this I finally snapped. I ended up re-starting the movie from scratch & instead of happily crocheting just for fun, it ended up being a de-stressing exercise. The good news from all that was that the USPS brought me a cross stitch magazine that I had ordered & UPS brought me a quilt block book that my best friend bought me. Both crafting items that I was happy to receive! At some point during all the busy interruptions, I had a meltdown & decided I wasn't going to do ANYTHING yesterday other than crochet. At the rate I was going, it would take me ALL DAY to crochet a single row on the afghan anyway! It all did finally wind down & I was finally able to watch the movie straight through (from the beginning) & get several rows completed on the afghan. De-stressing worked, I was finally calmer again. I turned off the TV, carefully picked everything up, folded it up, put it away, picked up all my stuff, started heading back to my office & glanced at the clock on the back of the stove. It was time to pick Josh up from work already! That means there was exactly 1 hour of interruptions, otherwise I would have had 1 hour between finishing the movie & picking Josh up. Sheesh! OK, head out the door, pick Josh up, get hit by another car who was parking behind my truck in the parking lot & mis-judged how much further she had to pull up ... no damage, she was really nice & worked there. I wasn't going to punish her when there wasn't a scratch anywhere except on her front license plate (from my trailer hitch). When we got home I went to work on eBay for a while, checked facebook & Google+, went to the LCFD for a BBQ / get-together (perfect timing on that one! I had just finished everything & I usually don't get that lucky with the timing), came home & started working on a needlepoint project & worked on that for a few short minutes before Pete got home from work. Usual routine after that. Today I woke up I put Joselyn outside & called CCCC & inquired about a Fire Investigator class I want to take. It starts in October & it sounds like something I'd really enjoy doing. I wasn't on the phone a minute & Joselyn lets out a single bark, so Josh brings her immediately back in the house & then the Chihuahua that always barks at him started going OFF ... while I'm on the phone. Wonderful. Can't even make a business call without sounding like I'm calling from a kennel. I got all the information & will probably start classes in October. After that I checked my voice mail from this morning & guess what? I entered a Hometown Heroes contest this past summer & I won! I won 2 tickets to a Dallas Stars game on February 8th. Great seats AND the game is on Pete's birthday! Double win!! I checked my banking for the week, added an address into AnyTime, started blogging ... & the mailman pulls up. Hey, it's a flashback of yesterday except I'm not buried in a large yarn project. He brought me a cross stitch kit I ordered (pic above). Perfect timing since I wanted to start working on it today but never thought it would be here this quick! I came back in, sat down & started typing again. Minutes later, UPS pulls in. HA! Now it really IS a replay of yesterday minus being buried in yarn. UPS brought me another quilt block book from my best friend. WOOHOO! Thank you Ann! I love the books & they will be put to good use, you'll see. I'll send you pics of what I make from them. :) Groundhog Day 2 Saturdays from now.

Antoine Lavoisier, the Father of Modern Chemistry, was beheaded during the French Revolution. A judge refused to spare his life, saying, "The Republic has no need of geniuses."

Baseball's theme song, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," was written by a guy who had never seen a baseball game, but I'm fairly sure he had tasted "peanuts & Cracker Jacks."

Best-known American baseball players of all time top 10:

1. Babe Ruth
2. Willie Mays
3. Ty Cobb
4. Walter Johnson
5. Hank Aaron
6. Lou Gehrig
7. Christy Mathewson
8. Ted Williams
9. Roger Hornsby
10. Stan Musial

Bloomberg:

Get instant access to all your business and finance news, market data and portfolio tracking tools from the most trusted source financial professionals around the world rely upon.
Features:
- Latest market-moving news across 35 news categories including: Economy, Politics, Technology, Health Care, Energy, Spending, Bonds, Commodities, Currencies, Emerging Markets, Funds, Insurance & Municipal Bonds
- Latest market data across major Equity Indices, Futures, Commodities, Bonds & Currencies
-Tools to create and track companies and indices over time
Plus:
- Bloomberg Television Live - a 24-hour global business and financial news network supported by 146 news bureaus in 72 countries
- Top videos: The biggest business stories right now
- Related videos within articles
- Top audio interviews from Bloomberg Radio - bringing you the smartest names in Finance, Business, Economics & Investment
- Ability to share stories via Facebook & Twitter

Handy Man DIY:

"Handy Man DIY is certainly a handy utilities app with which to begin any project idea which has been brewing in your head!" Review by: CooliPhoneiPadapps
A feature packed home improvement planner designed to assist you in renovating your home by providing the information you need to complete a new project. Need to find out how much paint, flooring or trim you need? Enter in your room measurements and let Handy Man DIY do the math.
Handy Man DIY does it all for you!
Anyone can be a home improvement guru with Handy Man DIY's detailed how to videos and instructions. Handy Man takes the guess work out of shopping with prebuilt material lists for common household projects or you can build your own. It also allows you to enter price information to estimate project cost.
Our goal is to make Handy Man DIY the only home improvement app you will ever need!
Features:
- Store room details for later reference, as well as calculate various room dimensions.
- Floor and wall square footage
- Total length of walls (great for determining amount of crown molding, chair rail, or trim)
- Room volume
- Store dimensions for windows and doors for later reference
- Create shopping lists
- Prebuilt shopping list of common home improvement projects
- Over 500 frequently used items to choose from
- Estimate how much a project will cost by entering in quantity and price information
- Email shopping lists
- Create task lists of things you want to accomplish for each project
- Detailed written description of how to proceed on a project
- Video tutorial to show you complete a project
- Material list of items needed for each project
- "Getting Ready For The Season" displays seasonal reminders of tasks to get your home ready

Have yourself paged every hour on the hour.

Plane crashes off Ivory Coast (2000):

A Kenya Airways Airbus A-310 crashes after takeoff into the Atlantic Ocean off the Ivory Coast on this day in 2000. Because the passengers did not have enough time to put on life jackets, only 10 people out of the 179 on board survived.

Kenya Airways Flight 431 left Nairobi, Kenya, and was supposed to stop in Lagos, Nigeria, but was forced to land in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, because of strong Saharan winds. After waiting three hours, the flight took off from Abidjan at 9:08 p.m. As the plane left the ground, a stall warning signal sounded in the pilot's cabin. Apparently, the signal was faulty. However, it caused the pilot to descend and ignore ground proximity warning signals. Within a minute, the Airbus jet crashed into the ocean.

The dark of night made rescue efforts virtually impossible. Ambulances, firefighters, police officers, soldiers and divers waited at the beach near the crash site until the early morning hours when there was enough sunlight to see. However, by the time they could begin searching, there was little to be done other than collect the bodies that were washing ashore. Eventually, 146 bodies were recovered out of the 169 fatalities. Many of the victims appeared to have survived the initial crash, but subsequently drowned.

The plane had been scheduled to be replaced in the coming year.

Remove onion odor from your hands by washing them with baking soda or by rubbing hands & fingers with fresh lemon.

They're cheap, is what it is. Let me tell you about General Electric. They actually collected all of the rice thrown the other night at Woody Harrelson's wedding on Cheers, served it to the commissary today with the chow mein lunch. -Johnny Carson 1992

Weigh the options: Before you buy in bulk, check the cost per unit, or CPU, displayed on the shelf, to make sure a larger container is indeed a better value.

What we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.