A Late December Morning: The Definition Of Bleakness

December 26, 2012December 26, 2012 / Ally Bean / 22 Comments

There is no sunlight here this morning. And I doubt that there will be any sunlight during the whole day. That’s the way it works around here in the winter.

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It is one of those gray winter mornings that people who leave this part of Ohio, never to return, always mention to me as a deciding variable. They hated the oppressive gloom of cold gray days, so they moved on to places that are sunnier or are decidedly wintry.

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None of this half-assed depressing weather for them.

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I don’t blame them, you know? It is difficult to live here when all you see for days– or for weeks– or, during some horrible years, for months– is an endless amount of bleakness.

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I don’t know how those of us who stay here survive it, but we do. Maybe it has something to do with enjoying the color that we create in our homes. Or maybe it has something to do with being accustomed to this sort of winter; we’ve become desensitized to the gloom. Either way, we stay.

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This is a photo of our backyard taken later in the day.

During the afternoon we got a little bit of not-so-pretty snow which has made everything slushy & even more bleak.

I didn’t think that this day could get any more dreary, but clearly I was wrong.

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The Lady Of The List

December 4, 2012December 4, 2012 / Ally Bean / 20 Comments

We’re expecting about 30 people at our holiday party on Friday. I like that number because that means there will be enough guests for everyone to know someone else here– & to meet someone new as well. But it does mean that there is a lot of planning going on around here. To wit, I’ve started living a list-centric life.

At first I was scribbling little lists every which way on scraps of paper, but I kept misplacing the scraps of paper. No surprise. I tend to be a bit scattered to begin with.

But being smarter than the average ~~bean~~ bear, I decided to designate one of our clipboards as my own. Then I purloined a pad of legal paper from Zen-Den, Esq. Putting these two items together I created The Official Party Planning List. ‘Tis a wonderful document– that I suspect only makes sense to me.

I’ve also decided that post-it notes are my new BFF. I write what food I want to be in a certain serving bowl/plate/platter and then put the post-it in/on/under the item so that when my helper elves arrive pre-party they’ll know what to put where. I feel very managerial.

And on that upbeat note, I’m off to the Kroger to buy a heaping cartload of ingredients to make yumminess. Which will go into/onto the aforementioned serving bowls/plates/platters. Which have already been given assigned spots on the tables & counters. Which is where the people will stand during the party while eating & drinking & talking with each other.

Which will make for a good party. *yeah*

This & That

November 26, 2012 / Ally Bean / 16 Comments

{november – monday – morning}

√ I’m still trying to get used to my iPad. I got one about 2 months ago, but have yet to really use it for much of anything. It seems to be a device on which one consumes, not creates, media. I didn’t realize that when I got it. I thought it was like a small laptop computer so I planned on using it to write blog posts and do photo editing. But so far I haven’t seen any way that I could use it for my intended purposes.

And as I don’t have a smart phone, I’m finding all this app crap to be rather tedious to learn about. How in the world do I know if an app is something that will be useful to me if I don’t know what the thing does/replaces/adds to my life? And more importantly, if I put an app on the iPad can I get it off/deleted/made to go away forever– not just hidden somewhere out of my sight, like a portrait of Dorian Gray?

√ I started re-decorating our home office about a month ago. First, Zen-Den and I re-configured the desks and the file cabinets. We left the 6′ x 4′ bookcase in the same place, but I decided to take out all the books so that I could re-do the shelves in a way that is more ~~user~~ me friendly. I re-commissioned an older table lamp that was catching dust in the basement because I thought that it’d provide better ambient light in the room.

When I began this project I was all optimistic that I could do it with what we have sitting around, but so far I haven’t been able to get a groovy vibe happening in that room. Pretty much all that I’ve managed to do is create a big mess that spills out of the office, across the foyer and into the LR. So much for flying by the seat of my pants.

√ We’re hosting a Holiday Party in a few weeks. I decided that we’d do what I’d call bar food. That is, a menu that is more filling than just munchies, but less bother than a buffet supper. We’ll have trays of small sandwiches & bowls of chips. Then hot dips & crunchy snacks. Plus a table of cookies & candy. We bought all of our beer & wine over the weekend, so that’s out-of-the-way.

Any suggestions for a great dip of some sort? I’m making Skyline Dip & Jalapeño Popper Dip already, but would like to add something more to the menu. Also, if I make some hot mulled cider what kind of alcohol would you want available to put in it? Rum? Red wine? Bourbon? Something else? [I’m not a fan of mulled cider so what to add to it is kind of a mystery to me.]

… enough babbling for now. later.

Reading Between The Lines. Literally.

November 19, 2012November 19, 2012 / Ally Bean / 12 Comments

Our current Kindle is one of the original ones. They’re called Kindle Keyboard 3G now, but when we bought it this style was the only one available.

After many years this Kindle [who I never named – missed opportunity there] has gone wonky. I think we overused the poor baby because she can no longer ante up all of her pixels. Whole horizontal rows of pixels have bugged out.

The result is a screen that looks sort of like the handwriting practice writing paper we used in first grade. Do you remember that paper? It had one solid horizontal line all the way across the top of the page. Then a dotted horizontal line below it. Then one solid horizontal line below that. The last two lines were then repeated down the entire page until the bottom.

That’s what this screen resembles.

Now add to this dodgy-looking screen words in any font size— and you have my first grade writing assignments. Complete with words above, below, through & on the lines. Marginally readable.

Cute? Yes. But not all that desirable on an e-reader. Rather annoying to be honest.

So I suppose that it’s time to buy a new e-reader. A Kindle Paperwhite 3G perhaps? Or maybe a Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight? I think I’ll let Santa take care of that decision.

And in the meantime until Santa decides what to buy next, I’ll go back to reading good ole paper books with words printed clearly between the lines. As if second grade me had printed them. 😉

[Hello FTC! Just talking about my experience here. Nothing more than noting what happened with this product. No one is paying me, or us, a cent or dollar to say this. No compensation whatsoever here. We good, my friend?]