A Few Random Things

I keep meaning to do a Thursday 13 post to catch up on a few random things, but that hasn’t happened.  So, here’s a random catch-up post. 

Our hyacinths have bloomed!  I planted them a few years ago, and I don’t always have the best luck with bulbs, so it always makes me very happy to see them bloom.

The daffodils have also bloomed.  We didn’t plant these, but there are tons of them.  Fortunately, whoever did plant them has much better luck than I do with bulbs.

I love it when everything starts blooming!  We’re not beyond the possibility of more cold weather, or even snow, yet, but it definitely feels like we’re getting closer to enjoying warm weather every day.  We’ve even had a few days of perfect hammock weather.  I absolutely love spending part of a gorgeous day reading in the hammock.

Last weekend, Nick and I did a paint-and-sip event in Greenville, SC.  We have wanted to do one for a long time, but the timing has never worked out.  Lately, we’ve been trying to plan our weekends ahead of time, so we were finally able to find one with a painting we liked and get reservations for it.  It was so much fun! 

I’m not sure how much it varies from state to state based on liquor laws, but at this one, you bring your own beverage (I’m not positive, but I think it had to be beer or wine, not hard liquor), and the venue provides cups and napkins.   The event we did was adults (18 and over) only, and anyone drinking had to be 21.  Most people brought beer and/or wine in a cooler.  We opted for non-alcoholic drinks.  I love the mango sweet tea from Quick Trip, and we don’t have one near us, so I always get that whenever we’re near a Quick Trip.  You can also bring snacks, but I don’t see how you would have time for snacks.  I also kept getting paint all over my hands, so it would have been a pain to try and eat like that.

It's assigned seating (you’re supposed to let them know how many people are in your group when you make your reservation).  The easels, canvas, brushes, and paint are all set up, with a nametag and a picture of what the painting is supposed to look like.

Then they guide you through the whole thing.  This was a couple’s picture, so each person painted one half of it on their canvas, and they’d tell you when you needed to line certain parts of it up. 

You had to mix some of the colors, but they walked you through how to do that.  Then you had to dry the painting with a hairdryer before you put the leaves on the tree.

I’m almost as messy when I paint as I am when I cook!  It’s a good thing we didn’t bring snacks because I probably would have gotten paint on them. 

Here’s our finished painting hanging on our living room wall. 

I think it’s safe to say that neither one of us has a future as an artist!  But we’re both fairly happy with how our painting turned out, and it was a lot of fun.  We definitely want to do another one sometime.

We opted to go to Greenville in time for an early dinner and ate at Pita House.  The food is amazing!  I had the kibbi and grape leaves plate, and a pistachio baklava.  Everything was so good!  It’s right across the street from the main campus of Greenville Technical College, which is where I went for my Associate’s Degree, so it’s always a little nostalgic to go there. 

Lastly, I finally updated my Blogger profile and profile picture.  We were dressed up for something a few weeks ago, and I remembered to take a picture, so I used that one.  The last one was from 2007 when I had short hair and sometimes wore contacts instead of glasses.  I decided it was time for an update since I have longer hair, haven’t worn contacts since 2008, and am definitely not thirty-something anymore. 

So what have you been up to lately?  Does it look like spring for you yet?  

Catching Up

I didn’t mean to go quite so long in between posts, so this is a little bit of a catch-up post. 

Thank you for all of your kind comments about Frankie.  I love that people who never met him cared about him.  He was special, and we miss him a lot. 

I am so happy that we’ll be having more daylight now.  And very hopeful that warm weather won’t be far behind.  I’m not a fan of the cold weather or the shorter days, and it seems like January and February are rarely good. 

On January 9^th, we had torrential rain.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much rain at one time.  Our crawlspace flooded and shorted out the sump pump and furnace.  It took several days to get the crawlspace dried out enough for the HVAC company to even access the furnace. 

Here’s some video of the first day Nick set up a portable sump pump.  We bought a portable one to keep on hand for future storms, and since we didn’t know the status of the one installed under the house and there was more rain in the forecast. 

And here’s a video I took after the portable sump pump had been running for over 24 hours. 

It was a lot of water!

The HVAC company came out again when we thought we’d pumped out enough water to access the furnace, but after some more rain, they still couldn’t get to it.  They were able to access the sump pump and were nice enough to get it working again, which helped pump the water out sooner.  It’s the same company that the technician who remembered Duke after rigging up a temporary cooling system so Duke wouldn’t get too hot works for.  They are awesome. 

When the same technicians came back for the third time during the furnace underwater fiasco, we fixed up a bag of snacks for them since they had been so nice.  (It’s just one bag; just pictures of both sides.)   They seemed really surprised and happy with it.  I’m always happy when I can feed people.

The flooding had shorted out a circuit board in the furnace, and they had to order a replacement.  They were awesome about looking for ways to get it cheaper, and we ended up spending about half of what the highest cost would have been.  Like I said, they’re awesome.

By the time everything dried out and the part came in, it was January 19^th before the furnace was fixed, which was just in time for temperatures that dropped down to the single digits.  Being without heat for ten days definitely wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.  Our neighbors loaned us a space heater, and we bought two additional space heaters.  The house was chilly but not unbearable.  We weren’t comfortable with the idea of both of us leaving the house with the space heaters on, and we didn’t want to turn them off and leave the cats at home to be cold.  So, we had to do some schedule rearranging.  I turned a few usual office days into work-from-home days, and took a day off on a day that I had to be in the office.  January is one of my busiest months at work, so I’m glad Nick was able to take the day to be at home. 

One of the things that goes on at work in January is an annual meeting that covers mandatory training and any policy updates.  They also present awards named our motto of RITE (Relevant.  Innovative.  Timely.  Engaging).  Anyone in our organization can nominate someone for each category.  I was pleasantly surprised to be a recipient of the Engaging Award for my work on some of our programs.  It was a nice confidence boost!  All of my coworkers have a lot more education and experience than I do, and most of my work is the behind-the-scenes type.  So, it meant a lot to me that they nominated me. 

Work has been really busy for both of us.  Nick does a fair amount of teaching this time of year (in addition to his usual job) for mandatory training that has to be done.  Due to a shortage of people, he has done even more lately.  We’re short-staffed at my job, too, and I got assigned to a project that will last most of the year, with most of my part being toward the beginning of the project.  It’s a mix of terrifying and exciting to be involved in.  I’m learning a lot, which is always a good thing. 

The middle of February brought what we’re pretty sure was the flu.  Nick started getting sick the third weekend of the month, and I thought I had dodged it up until the following Thursday.  We didn’t get tested for the flu, but our symptoms matched, and our COVID tests were negative.  I did a home test, and Nick had to take one when he went back to work.  That one was apparently also supposed to test for if you had recently had COVID and was negative.  So we’re calling it the flu.  We’re both back at work and feeling better; we're just still coughing some and really tired. 

Charlie is the world’s best cuddle buddy and was very happy with the amount of time I spent in the recliner under blankets. 

Despite everything that went on in January and February, we did have two fun days of outings to parks.   I’ll post about those soon.  In the meantime, here’s a peek at one of the trails at Fort Ninety-Six. 

How were January and February for you?  Are you happy about the longer days and warmer weather?