The joys of home ownership....

Last night our furnance stopped working. It simply wouldn't come on. Of course we had to realize this at 9pm. It ws 65 in the house and the thermostat was set to 70. We tried turning it up, nothing happened. We tried turning it to EM Heat nothing happened. We check the circuit breaker in the garage. Nothing was tripped. So we put an extra blanket on the bed and went to sleep. We woke up at 6am and still no heat. The house was down to 57 degrees. Sean went to PT and I called the company that installed and maintained the system for the owner before the last one. I was surprised to actually get someone but since it wasn't an emergency and I didn't want to pay the extra for them to come during off hours I agreed that they could call after 8am. Now of course I had to be at the Vet at 8am so I gave them my cell phone number too. Quincy has an ear infection and the vet was sympathetic when I explained that my heat wasn't working and they might call while I was in with him. Of course they did call in the middle of the appointment. How embrassing but everyone was understanding. So after I returned home the house was at 55 degrees. Darn cold!!! My coworker suggested that I reset all the breakers associated with the heat. I went out to garage and did all the ones marked furnance, heat pump, and heater. Nothing happend. I then went back in the house and open up the closet with the furnance. I noticed that there were two breakers on the bottom. I reset the first one nothing, however when I reset the second one the air magically came back on!!! Yah!!!! However Sean and I decided to keep our appointment to have everything checked out anyways since we don't know why the breaker got tripped in the first place. The heat went on back on at 9:30 when it was 55 degrees. It is now 11:30am and it is only up to 59! I'm hoping that the last 10 degrees back up to 70 will go quickier since it is warming up outside. It was around 16 degrees this morning. The sun has come out and it is suppose to get into the 30s today. We have a heat pump and they don't work very well in super cold weather. We have a auxillary heater to supplement when it is very cold.

Well hopefully the repair person will come soon and nothing major will be wrong. Sean is coming home soon to relieve me so I can go into work. At least it is finally starting to feel a little less frigid in the house!!! I wish that I had fur like the animals. They didn't seem to be in the least bit bothered by the cold.

finally they started coming....

What am I talking about? My seed catalogs!!! I requested at least 5 or 6 and had until this week only received 2. First I got the Burpee catalog. Plenty of pretty picture but they mainly carry hybrid and non open pollinated varieties. While I haven't completely made up my mind about hybrids I'm not sure I like the idea of messing with plant genetics. I sort of feel like we should let evolution run it course to make heartier, healthier, and better varieties.

Second catalog I received was seed savers. Seriously an awesome catalog with tons of information and pictures. Each variety has a short informative description about origin and characteristics. Never I have a seen some many types of tomatoes or melon or other veggies. So cool. I highly recommend requesting this one or at least browsing it online.

This week I have gotten 3 more catalogs. First Totally tomatoes, second seymour's selected seeds, and last baker creek heirloom seeds. Totally Tomatoes is basically all tomatoes and pepper. So awesome for a tomato lover like me....except eventually I will have to chose a few varieties. Seymour's is a flower seed catalog with beautiful flowers. Baker Creek is a smaller seed company out of Missouri that is family owned. They have an extremely thick catalog with tons of different types of heirloom plants.

Also I should note that seed catalogs can be quite amusing. The types often have crazy names like: mammoth melting sugar (sweet pea), sweet chocolate (brown sweet pepper), green zebra (tomato), mortgage lifter (tomato), and many many more.

For fun here are a few guess what type of veggie they are:

1. Arkansas traveler
2. Small shining light
3. Ram's Horn (Just for you Chris!)
4. Cosmic Purple

No cheating by looking them up on the internet. Oh and a hint is they are all common summer produce. Nothing weird like parsnips or rutabaga. Have fun!

Garden: Initial thoughts and rambling

I'm determined to have a vegetable garden this year. Last year started out with herbs and tomatoes in pots. They did pretty well while in my care. I gave them to Shari and a neighbor when we moved. I inherited a wild mess of tomatoes once we arrived. I can't remember if I posted on them before but it was a vining crazy super producing mess. Needless to say I really didn't do anything to keep them alive they just grew.

So with both of those facts combined I think there is hope that I might be somewhat successful. Also I think some of Sean's research maddess has rubbed off. I have requested at least 5 different seed catalogs from various source, bought one book, and checked out two from the library. I would have checkout more but there is a 2 book limit when you get your card and then they mail it too you. (side note: I think that is the strangest library policy I have come across yet. The only thing I can figure is that they had trouble with people putting down wrong addresses and loosing books.) I plan on checking out more book once I received my card in the mail. (hopefully it will come tomorrow)

I have received two seed catalogs so far. One from Burpee and one from Seed Savers. The Burpee one had plenty of pretty pictures but not as much information as I was looking for and also I'm not sure I want to grow any hybrid plants and non open pollinated plants. The Seed savers catalog is awesome. Tons of helpful information about favor and quality, plus all of their seeds are heirloom varieties. I also like the idea of supporting their cause of saving seeds to make sure certain varieties don't die out.

Anyways I think I have rambled enough for today! Any one else have any garden plans or resources they want to share?

Sunrise alarm clock: take 3

I didn't use my alarm clock over the weekend so I could sleep in and wake up naturally. Luckily we had sun shine over the weekend even though it was freezing outside (12 was the high on sunday.) So last night I switch it to do the sunrise over 15 minutes instead of 30. Well the puppies didn't wake me up and I made it until the soft beeping but I felt groggier than I did on the 30 minutes. In fact I ended up staying in bed an extra 5 minutes with the light on until Quincy and Toby got persistent. So I wish there was a setting between 15 and 30 minutes. I'm going to give 15 minutes another try tomorrow. I will still say that even with being less awake on the 15 cycle it was still a more pleasant way to wake up than loud beeping.

The alarm clock also has another nice feature which I have been experimenting with, it is sunset. The idea is the same only the light gets dimmer instead of brighter. The time can be set to either 15,30,45, or 60 minutes depending on what you want. I haven't sat and read as it gets darker which I'm going to try tonight. I have just been turning it to sunset as I'm getting ready for bed...and I haven't really gotten the full effect since other lights have been on.

Overall I'm still happy with the clock. I'll keep you posted on next couple of days.

Today's Smile: Comedian lives in IKEA store

I know we all love IKEA but do any of us love it enough to live there for an entire week? Well apparently comedian Mark Malkoff does! His New York city apartment is being fumigated so he decide to move into IKEA and film it for the week. He of course has a blog all about it with video clips. Enjoy!

Operation organize craft room

In our new house I have my own room just for me. I painted it a serene blue and put all of my Degas dancers on the walls. I have my papazon chair for curling up and reading as well as my own book case for all of my books. Sean banished my books for sharing any shelf with mine. Apparently his was embarrassed by the trashy romances and other girly books. In addition I have two desks. One is at the regular level and has a pull out drawer that folds down to form a keyboard tray for my ergonomic keyboard and track ball mouse (which doesn't roll as well as it use to thanks to puppy teeth marks.) The other is at counter height so I can stand and cut paper or do other crafts while standing. I also have bar height stool so I can sit at it as well. All of this is fabulous and should be very functional but it is generally a disaster. I need more storage space for all of my craft supplies as well as some other organization for all of my ongoing projects.

To get the ball rolling and add some more storage space, I had Sean take the doors off the closet. I don't use the closet for clothes and decided it would be a lot more function for storage if it was open. It looks good without the doors, minus the ugly beige which still needs to be painted. So this weekend I'm going to scout out a shelf of some kind to put in there. I'm also going to start watching target ads to get some more clear plastic bins with lids. I need more file folders to hold my paper and scraps. I discovered that one of my plastic drawer things has a big drawer that will hold vertical files so I doubled my storage. Hopefully all of that and more will help the space become more productive and less messy.

I have so many craft projects that I want to complete or start or try that I must get this problem under control!!!

Sunrise alarm clock: take 1

I received my new sunrise alarm clock yesterday! I read through all the instructions (5 pages) and set it up last night. I tossed and turned and woke up several times during the night. Charlie woke me up at 5am because he wanted me to put him in front of his food bowl and rub his belly (this is a nightly occurence so not out the ordinary) I woke up again a little while later thinking it isn't time to get up yet but I didn't really go back to sleep. I rolled over and there was light in my face. Once Quincy heard me moving around he came and put his paws on the bed and his wet nose in my face. I tried to tell him it wasn't time yet but his was very insistent. I then looked at the clock and it was 5 minutes before when I set the alarm. So I'm not certain if it was light that woke me or something else. I think the light woke Quincy. I could probably shut off the backup beep since it would appear that I have a backup puppy instead!!!

I will say that even after not the best night of sleep I didn't feel to groggy. Stay tuned for trial 2 tomorrow morning.....

A new year a new resolution

Last year my New Year's resolution was to watch less TV. Thanks to my DVR and cutting many worthless shows (Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, One Tree Hill, and a few more) I was able to do a pretty good job accomplishing this goal. This year my resolution is to tone up and be more fit. In order to accomplish this goal I decided the most important thing was to develop a routine. In the past I have tried to exercise after work or in the evening. I would always come up with excuses or need to get home to make dinner. I also don't really like to shower more than once a day because I have dry skin. So I decided that I should start exercising in the morning before work. Of course this means getting up a little earlier and being more consistent about my wake up time. However I find that I do better when I have a routine so this hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be. It also helps that most people I work with don't get to work until 9am or a little later.

So far so good. I get up at 7am, exercising by 7:15am, and in the shower by 8am. It is still a little dark in the morning to go walking or running so I've mostly been following workouts on the TV. Our cable has Exercise on Demand. They have a variety of classes at different exercise levels. I'll keep you all posted as to how it is going!

Anyone else want to share their resolutions?

Needed to vent

Tonight I was at book club enjoying the discussion of the book which lead to talk of other books and then movies made from books. One of the women brought up the Golden Compass. She was talking about some of the books her son was reading or was going to read the Golden Compass being one of them. As soon as she mentioned the book one the other women immediately said "You know the author is an atheist right?" She said it such condescending tone. The other women simply said that she was aware and the topic was dropped after a slightly uncomfortable pause. I was completely flabbergasted. It is one thing to object to the content of the book but totally different to object or discriminate against the author. If the woman had said "You know the author is catholic right" Everyone would have been shocked and appalled. That simply would not be an appropriate thing to say. Even worse if she had said "You know the author is black or Hispanic or Asian or the list goes on and on. However no one challenged her and in her mind what she said was completely reasonable and fine.

Now to make matters worse in my mind this women not five minutes earlier was talking about how appalled she was about the stereo types her kids (she is a counselor) believed in. In my mind discriminating against someone because they don't believe the same way you do is just as bad as her kids buying to stereo types. Both are forms are discrimination, why is intolerance of non-religion or religion more accepted?

What do you think about the issue?

A random book review

I have never done this before and may never do it again but I'm going to review a book. I just finished "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" today for my book club. It is the story of two girls who are best friends during their lives. It takes place in ancient China during the time of foot binding and arranged marriages. The book follows Lily and Snow Flower as their lives unfold. One girl has great success and happiness while the other has poverty and sadness. It is beautiful book and one that will have special meaning to anyone who has had or has a very close friend. I highly recommend the book even though I balled my eyes out at the end. Toby even came and sat on my lap to comfort me because I making such horrible noises. It is amazing to me that they have that much perception.

Anyways the book moved me and I will probably read it again someday. So pickup it up if you haven't already read it!

your demands answered!

At least the two of you who apparently still check my blog! Guys I seriously just read your 23 comments today at 9:09 pm. I felt so love and needed, oh and laughed my butt off....I mean who knew I had such dedicated reader that they would post me a comment everyday.

Now on to a more serious topic. Part of the reason I have not been posting is that I have SAD (seasonal affective disorder) Some days it was hard to motivate myself to do much of anything besides go to work. However the good news is that I'm getting help and treatment. I can't wait for my new sunrise alarm clock to come and I'm in the process of ordering a light visor.

To fill those of you in that aren't familar with SAD, it is a sub category of depression. Doctors believe that is has to do with not getting enough sunshine because is usually affects people in the winter. Although apparently there are some cases of people having depression in the summer. For the past three winters I've been down in the dumps. Last winter I went on a low dose of anti-depressants. At the time I didn't realize it was SAD. I just thought it had to with the prospect of moving again. However this winter when I was still on the anti-depressants and feeling crappy still I began to wonder. I was so happy all spring, summer, and fall and there is nothing wrong in my life. My job is good and furry babies are good, sean and I are good, so seriously what gives!

I blame it on all the Colorado sunshine. I mean its cold and it snows but it hardly ever stays gray for more than a day or two. This is definately not the case in Dayton and wasn't the case in Boston either.

So for now I will continue the meds, light therapy, and exercise. I'm also starting to plan my garden for the summer. Stay posted for reviews on the new alarm clock and garden plans.