◆ July 25, 2013 ◆

Good morning! Yesterday was an odd day. The ONLY thing I did on my schedule was make a bagel for breakfast. That was IT. I spoke to Pete on the phone, went to the college to pick Kyle up, went through the mail, made that bagel, talked to Pete again, repaired most of my e-mail problems (still having an issue w/ my Outlook.com e-mail ... some sync error), talked to Kyle, & then checked the Lowe's app on my iPad Mini & paint was on sale. I decided that after living with this brown high-gloss interior paint for 8 years now & considering we're apparently never moving, I was going to start painting over it! I bought a gallon of my favorite color ... Lilac. Fragrant Lilac to be exact. It's Valspar & they're not kidding when they claim you only need 1 coat. This paint is

GREAT! It went right over that high-gloss brown in 1 shot (2nd pic). On the way to Lowe's, Pete called & we played the dodge the question game. "So what are you doing?" "Kyle & I are out in McKinney." "Where are you going?" "Lowe's." "What are you going to buy at Lowe's?" "... ::: pause ::: ... Paint." "What are you going to paint?" " ... The living room." "What color are you going to paint the living room?" " ... ::: long pause ::: ..." "What color are you going to paint the living room?" "Lilac." "Oh God, you're going to turn it into a gay man's paradise!" With that Kyle started laughing so hard that he started to lane drift. Well, I found the exact color I was looking for & the nice lady in the paint department wrote "Gay man's paradise" on the lid of the paint can for me. HA! I painted ONE wall. Just ONE wall! I'm really getting too old for this crap. ONE wall & I'm sore all over & was completely exhausted. ONE wall! The wall with a triple window & a door! I pulled everything down, moved

everything away from the wall, taped everything, & then started painting. By the time I was done I felt like I was going to die & that was the EASIEST wall! I pulled all the tape, hung everything back up, pushed all the furniture back, & just sat there & stared at it ... amazed at how great it looked. I have enough paint left to do a lot more than just the living room, too! Next? I'd like to paint the west living room wall, but the TV that's up on the mantle weighs a ton & almost a decade ago we almost dropped it lifting it up onto there. We're both older & weaker now & we WILL drop it. What am I going to do? Hire someone to move it FOR us? TWICE? And what if THEY drop it? We can't afford to replace that thing. It's huge & way too expensive. Paint AROUND it? That's a crappy & unprofessional way to paint & normally I wouldn't even consider it, but do you see another option here? No, I can't afford to hire a professional, insured mover to come out here twice & move a TV for me. Sheesh! The other wall in the living room is all bookshelves & to empty them, even halfway just to move them will take a long time & is SUCH a pain in the butt. Moving them full is possible, as long as I'm super careful that they don't tip over & they're HEAVY when they're full, so it's going to be difficult at best. Paint around them? LOL!!! I'm too old for this, Kyle won't even OFFER to help, & I can't afford to hire anyone. This bites. The one wall I did looks SO good, but at this rate, waiting until I have the energy back & am no longer sore, & doing 1 wall at a time ... is going to take forever. Oh well, at least I started finally! It's only been EIGHT YEARS. I said I hated the color of this house the day we moved in, but we never painted it. Now at some point I did paint the dining room (now my office) & Eve's bedroom (now my crafting room). They could use painting again though. I'll do them last since they were already done. 1st I'm going to concentrate on the rooms that HAVEN'T been painted yet since we moved in. My Sims game for yesterday was Lemon Drop Victorian & I didn't get much done in the fame because I only did that ONE thing on my schedule & then spent the rest of the day & night painting. My Sim Destiny is a university graduate & is at level 6 in her military career job. Once she hits level 10 or ages up into a mature adult (which ever comes 1st) she'll get married & start a family. This morning I took the dogs out & loaded up Sims ... Winter Retreat. My Sim Kyle is already in the university & is going to classes & working on his skills. Question of the day ... do I keep painting? I should ... I started this & it would be bad to just stop. On the other hand, there are other things I need to do also & I did none of them yesterday as it is. Decisions, decisions. Ugh. This would have been so much better if I was able to finish the job yesterday, but with NO help ... there was no way. Sometimes I wish I had married someone who was REALLY into fixing up our home the way I'm into it. Instead of just buying a house I living in it, buy a house, live in it AND improve it. That way if we ever do move, it would hopefully be worth more than we paid for it. My favorite show ... Sweat Equity! Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to trade in my husband. I'm just saying, sometimes you wish your spouse had an additional trait or two. I'm sure he wishes I was different in a couple areas too. He may not be Mr. Home Improvement, but I've never had a dead PC for more than a day. It all works out in the end. Anyway, at our age, even Mr. Home Improvement would be too old & tired to be doing this crap anymore. Those days are long gone. My dream of living the "flip the house" life has passed. I've always wanted to move into a new (to me) house, fix it up to nicer than when I got it, sell it for a profit, then move into a new house, fix it up ... etc. I love moving into a new house, setting it up, fixing it up ... I get bored living in the same floorplan all the time. I start longing for a new view. My maximum for any house or vehicle is 5 years before I start wanting something different. After 5 years I'm bored out of my mind. At my age, had I lived my home flipping dream, I would have bought a new house, fixed it up, taken the profit & traded my vehicle & bought a different house (larger), etc. about half a dozen times by now & hopefully, if I were good at it, been in a MUCH larger house by now due to being able to trade up in square footage each time due to the profit from the previous house. Oh well, I've had a great life & that's just one of the little dreams that didn't happen. I can't say I have many regrets & would I do it all differently if I could? Probably not. I'm where I'm meant to be & I'm happy here. It's the people who latch onto the "coulda, woulda, shoulda" that are always depressed. Never happy with what they have. I on the other hand am ecstatic with what I have & I'm not going to spend my life wishing I were somewhere else. What if I had been able to live the house flipping dream? What would be missing that I have now? In a parallel universe I'm probably sitting there in my huge house, looking at flipping it in 2 years along w/ my expensive vehicle ... but wishing for something I have in THIS universe. Be happy with what you have. You never know what you'd be missing from THIS life if you traded it for another. It's that whole "the grass ISN'T always greener on the other side" thing. It's the same damn grass. Grass is grass. Be happy with YOUR grass & have no regrets. You can't go back in time anyway, so why stress over it? Angela's birthday on Saturday!

Bring a blender to the office & make a beverage out of all the unclaimed items in the refrigerator. Further, I dare you to drink it!

Family members will rally around you in a crisis. But I would still count the tableware before they leave.

Help perfume last longer by dabbing petroleum jelly onto pulse points before spraying on fragrance. (Perfume evaporates faster from dry skin). And don't forget to spritz ankles & behind your knees - scent rises.

Here in the valley, hot, I want to tell you - did you go out & read the thermometer out there? It says, "continued on next thermometer," that's how hot it was. -Johnny Carson 1974

Little kindnesses & courtesies are so important.

Most famous American men of all time top 10:

1. Benjamin Franklin
2. Martin Luther King Jr.
3. Babe Ruth
4. Albert Einstein
5. Mark Twain
6. George Washington
7. Elvis Presley
8. Thomas Edison
9. Abraham Lincoln
10. President John F. Kennedy

NADA Pricing:

Designed for franchised new-car and new-truck dealers, the National Automobile Dealers Association’s app for iPhone and iPad is a dealer’s No. 1 source for news, events and services provided by NADA. Read the day’s top headlines as well as original NADA stories. Watch videos produced by NADA-TV. Browse upcoming industry events, including NADA’s annual convention and training from NADA University. Gain access to virtual phonebook of NADA resources. Learn about other mobile apps NADA provides. Please note that this app does not provide vehicle values. NADA, “The Voice of the Dealer,” has represented the nation’s new-car and new-truck dealers for nearly 100 years.

SecureSafe:

SecureSafe - the leading free and highly secure online storage for all your passwords and files.
YOUR MOST IMPORTANT DATA AT A SINGLE PLACE
◆ Passwords
◆ PINs
◆ Credit card details
◆ Online banking access codes
◆ Images
◆ Videos
◆ Contracts
◆ Other important documents
SECURE
◆ Highly secure AES-256 and RSA-2048 encryption
◆ Only you can access your data - not even our employees
◆ All data between SecureSafe and your device is sent over HTTPS only
◆ Passwords are even additionally encrypted for highest security
◆ Strong authentication (with SMS token) available for PRO, SILVER and GOLD account holders
◆ Data storage in the former headquarter bunker of the Swiss army
◆ 24/7 monitoring of all our systems from three continents
◆ Data inheritance function in the event that something should happen to you
◆ Read more: www.securesafe.com/en/security.html
EVERYWHERE AT ANY TIME
◆ Access all your data using a single login on all your devices
◆ Offline access for all your passwords
◆ Fully featured web application available at www.securesafe.com/mylogin
FREE
◆ 50 passwords and files up to 10 MB
◆ Will always remain free of charge
UPGRADE POSSIBILITIES
◆ You can upgrade your account at any time in our web application
◆ Account Types: SecureSafe Password PRO, SILVER and GOLD
◆ Unlimited number of passwords
◆ Strong authentication with SMS token
◆ Additional storage capacity
◆ Secure PDF and image viewer on the PC/Mac
SecureSafe attracts thousands of new users every week - read more about the leading password and file manager here: www.securesafe.com

That mosquito that just bit you is a female. See, male mosquitoes only feed on nectar & plant juices. It's the females that need a "blood meal" before they can lay eggs.