50 seconds worth of blogging

things have been busy and i haven't had too much time to update the blog. but here's a quick rundown of what's been going on.

i'm sitting here typing on our new-to-us computer. thanks to e&f for the computer. thanks to adam for the ginormous monitor. and thanks to bo for the keyboard. it takes a village to give the reids a computer, apparently.

mom came in last night for what was supposed to be about 12 hours of visiting (including sleep). from what i hear, she spent an extra 5 or 6 hours in town getting tires fixed. too bad i was at work the whole time. luckily i'll get to see her more next weekend when we take our yearly trip to south georgia.

we said goodbye to another father-figure this weekend. our priest of 4 1/2 years (10 years at our parish) has been transferred to another parish. there is a lot of sadness and of course, wondering what will come next. i'm becoming more aware of the cyclical nature of life every day. all things must pass, as a wise one once said. the only thing that''s inevitable in life is change.

my new addiction

i don't think i've mentioned it yet, but i have to give a shout-out to my new favorite thing in life, project runway. i first started watching in mississippi this december with erica and fuzzy. i have sort of a love/hate relationship with reality tv shows, so i'm not surprised that i was drawn into this show so easily. what's cool about it, though, is that these people really have talent!

so since december e&f have been feeding my addiction by recording the weekly programs and sending them to me. i have to say, it really is so fun to get the dvds of the episodes in the mail each week. i usually end up going right in and watching it. in fact, in the last shipment which i received tuesday night, there were 2 weeks worth of shows! i watched one show on tuesday night. i was half way through my day at work on wednesday and was so cheered when i remembered i had the second episode to watch that evening. it's like crack!

flotsam and jetsam

one of the good things to take so long to post is that some people have already done it.



thanks to melissa for coming down from nyc this weekend and bringing the cold with you. 'preciate that. come back again (but leave the weather from whence you came).

momma mia

mom on beach, late 1970's

baptism of the Lord and of katie

the catholic church celebrates the baptism of the lord today, thus marking the end of the advent and christmas season. it was fitting, then, that i took down the christmas decorations yesterday. the house is almost empty and a lot less cosy without the tree. :(

it was also fitting to celebrate the feast of the baptism of the Lord today because yesterday i had a sort of "baptism" myself. here's the story:

you may remember that i have been fighting a few battles with the house. after my defeat from the toilet and the washing machine last weekend, i vowed i would be more successful this weekend. i decided i couldn't yet win the washing machine battle, but i could "cut it off at the knees" and temporarily solve the problem. so we severed the outside pipe, thus not really fixing the problem, but at least allowing us to do laundry without getting water all over the floor. the real fix will come when we have the funds to call a professional.

and then there was the toilet. i went to the local hardware store and bought all the inside pieces to replace everything in the innards of the toilet. it took me a while, but after carefully reading the directions, i managed to actually take everything out and put all the new stuff in. the good news was that the toilet was functioning after my repairs and the leaking was less, but i could still see the water line dropping a little bit. so i knew there was still a leak somewhere. i went the hardware store again but had little success there. however, after coming home again i soon realized that there was water leaking on the outside of the basin around the nut where the water line comes in from the wall. so now i was really mad, but still determined to win this one. i called my stepdad and bitched to him for a minute and he gave me the brilliant suggestion of ensuring that i screwed the nut in completely (the directions told me not to screw it in too tight because it could brake the tank).

so, i went back to the toilet. i took the lid off but decided not to turn the water back off because all i was doing was tightening a nut. as i proceeded to turn the nut, i realized i was going in the wrong direction. so, of course, water started running out of the bottom of the tank. i was like, "oh no, wrong way." quickly turn, turn, turn the other direction. and then, splash! a fountain of water was coming up from inside the toilet and shooting all over me and the bathroom.

apparently, i had not really secured the water filter system inside the toilet and the thingy* wasn't really secured to the other thingy*. the water shot up so hard that the first thingy* flew in the air, out of the basin and thus causing said fountain of water. i let out a satisfying girl-like squeal but was able to turn everything off relatively quickly.

in the end, i won out against the toilet. the leak is pretty much all but gone and i'm satisfied enough to say i've the victor. for being my first initiation into plumbing i think it was only appropriate that i got initiated through water.

plumber

question for anyone living in the area. anyone know a good plumber?

i just checked out palmetto biz buzz, which i just heard about on sc business review this morning. but there were so many choices, i though it might be good to get some personal opinions as well.

thanks for donating

when you're going to donate an item (any item) to a charity (any charity), please be sure that all the pieces and parts of said item are present with the donation. there's nothing like getting something and then realizing that it's missing half the pieces and you can't put it all together, thus rendering this item completely useless. on the same token, if you're donating something, make sure the item is in relatively good condition. as in, "sure these socks have a hole in the toe but if you have no socks, holey socks are better than none." i guess that's true. but come on, people, everyone deserves and wants un-holey socks. no matter how needy you are. so please folks, when you give to charity give something that would actually work.

thank you.

house 3 - team reid 0

this sunday chris and i attempted to embark on several home-improvement projects.

1) fix a leaky toilet

2) put a wheel on our heavy fence gate

these seemed like manageable goals for a sunday afternoon.

so both chris and i spent a good portion of our day attempting to remedy these 2 seemingly easy problems. but, alas, it was not our good fortune to be so successful this time. unfortunately, the thing i thought was wrong with the toilet was, apparently, not the thing that needed fixing because by the end of the day it was still running. and after chris spent many an hour and lots of *choice* words, the poorly-constructed gate broke where the wheel was attached leaving us with not only a still-heavy gate, but a still-heavy gate with a big chunk of wood missing from the bottom.

we should've just walked away 2 and 0, but we rounded the day off by trying to do some laundry. in this house, that almost always leads to disaster. the problem that i thought i'd fixed weeks ago really wasn't a fix and now it's only getting worse.

so sunday night was not a happy night in the reid household. urghh. but we'll get you, house. team reid will win in the end.

a few new pictures

here's some holiday cuteness...


we're leaving the decorations up so we can enjoy them a few more days. we usually don't take things down until around the epiphany anyway. i never understand how someone could kick a christmas tree to the curb on the 26th anyway.

also...


doozer's fur really fluffed up while we were away. i even commented to chris that what if he's the wrong cat. (there are like 3 other long-haired black cats on the street and i wondered if grabbed the wrong one when doozer got loose a few weeks ago.) but then i remembered that only doozer will scratch at his litter box for like (no exaggeration) 15 minutes when he's done his business. he has to be ours.

also, not cuteness, but sweetness. look what my husband did for me today while i was at work. he turned this:


this picture was taken right when we moved in. add to this, more of an accumulation of junk piled to the ceiling and you'd get a better mental image.

into this:



good hubby!

family props

man, i've got some crazy-smart family.

chris's sister erica is featured in victor skrebneski's new book. i'd show a picture or post a link to buy the book, but apparently it's not available yet online. but go to your local bookstores and request it! of course, you'll have to pay the $125 for it, but it'll be worth it to see erica's 4 page layout! she's beautiful!

also, my brother put out his newest book.



it just arrived in the mail yesterday at our house (thanks ben!). this book is substantially smaller than the skrebneski book mentioned above (that book, i've heard, is a coffee table books and weighs a billion pounds). but it was a ton of labor on my big bro's part. great job, ben! if you're a mac person, go out and buy it!

happynewyear!

i thought i'd start the new year off right with a blog post since i've not done that in a while. we're back in the swing of things again at home and settling in again.

2007 was a good year for us, but it was also filled with a lot of not-so-good stuff and some of the most toughest times we've faced yet. so we're looking forward to 2008 being the best year yet!

last night was a good start to the new year. we had a fun and enjoyable team-reid-prepared dinner in our new house. then we went to a good friend's house for a new year's gathering. once the ball dropped and we rang in the new year, we headed home where we picked up a hitch-hiker (at 1:00 in the AM)! we were a little nervous but we've promised to be better people this year. and the hitch-hiker was a woman and she looked legitimately in need. so we took her a few blocks to a friend's home with no problems on our end. this morning we slept in ( really, really slept in. i won't give you the time we woke up!). we're about to head to church and then hopefully spend an enjoyable day playing and resting. all-in-all it promises to be a great start to 2008.

i hope you all had a happy and peaceful new years and i wish you all the best for this new year.