Award Certificate

In 2003, Himself asked if I would letter a name on an award certificate to be presented to the top chemistry student.  The real award was a copy of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.  CRC had sent Himself the book and the certificate.  I cringed when I saw the certificate.  It was 5" x 7" and printed on glossy crack and peel paper.  It was supposed to be a book plate but was in reality a giant label.  The length of the line for both the recipient and name of the school was 2 3/4"  The perfect length if I was scribing names with a pin.

The book is expensive, several hundred dollars expensive.  You would think the company would have kicked in a few extra dollars to have the certificate printed on decent paper.  

I just couldn't letter on the crack and peel so I did what any calligrapher would have done.  With the magic of a scanner, PSP, Publisher, Diploma Parchment paper, a little forgery, and my Canon laser printer, I created an award I could letter on.

And this year's award is...ta-da! Finished 

What have you been working on this week?

Wednesday Weigh-In

I had such high hopes for this week. Thought I had lost one pound. Not so. I am the same as I was last week. It's good that I didn't gain. Constantly wrestling with the lose one pound, stay the same for a couple of weeks is frustrating. I was telling Himself when I was in my twenties, a very long time ago, if I wanted to lose a little weight, I wouldn't eat for one day and drop five pounds. Now I try to watch what I'm jamming in my face, hit the treadmill for 30 minutes at least 3 or more times a week and all I'm doing is spinning my wheels. Deep sigh. I know. Someone dial whine one one.

Survey for the Bored

Found this at Facebook.

1. What is on your desktop wallpaper? My logo on my PC and a picture of water on the laptop.

2. What is your favorite zoo animal? black bear

3. What was your favorite toy as a child? Etch-a-Sketch

4. What food do you eat too much of? Only one?

5. What kind of hairstyle do you have? Short

6. What was your favorite activity in gym? Archery

7. What is on your shirt? Creative yet Logical Paint Shop Pro XI

8. What is the picture nearest you? Pictures of Heath on the quilt

9. What is your favorite kind of salad dressing? Balsamic vinaigrette

10. What is your least favorite food? Cheese

11. What do you do on Sunday night? Chat on IM

12. If you could use only one condiment for the rest of your life, what would it be? Does fudge sauce count as a condiment?

13. What color are your sheets? Blue

14. How big is your computer display? On the PC, 19" on the laptop, 17"

15. what pair of shoes do you wear most often? fugly shoes, light blue faux Crocs

16. What is your favorite game? Bookworm

17. What is your favorite Thanksgiving food? the pie

18. What time do you plan to wake up tomorrow morning? Same time as every weekday morning 5:45 am

19. What is your favorite day of the year? First day in the sunroom

Want to play? Copy and paste to your blog. Then let me know

Seven

This week, The Young One introduced me to a new channel in our cable lineup. It's called Retroplex. Old movies, uncut, no commercials. Perfect. I love moves. Old movies especially. There are some movies I can watch over and over and over again and never get sick of watching them. The list is real long, but I'll confine myself to seven movies I can watch over and over again.

1. The Day the Earth Stoood Still. The real one. The one made in 1951 with Michael Rennie. I love Gort. I want a Gort.

2. To Kill A Mockingbird. The Young One and I watched this movie together this week. I used to wish my dad would be as calm as Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) when I did stupid kid things.

3. The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are coming. A Soviet submarine runs aground in a small New England town harbor. Missing sailors, young love, chicken littles, and detente. If you haven't seen this film, you're missing a real gem.

4. The Quiet Man. John Wayne and his wet, silk arrow shirt at his finest.

5. The Long Ships. Richard Widmark, Vikings, Sidney Poitier as a Moorish lord and the quest to find "The Mother of Voices" a great bell made of solid gold.

6. Wizard of Oz. I love the Scarecrow.

7. The Hunt for Red October. Next time, Jack, send a memo. One of my favorite lines.

What about you? Any movies you can watch a million times and never get sick of seeing?

Celebrity Birthday

Happy 70th Birthday to Lee Majors. Best remembered as Col. Steve Austin from The Six Million Dollar Man, he'll always be Heath to me.

70? I'm sure it was just yesterday I was in my bedroom, afterschool, watching The Big Valley on my small, blue plastic, black and white television and making cow eyes and sighing over Heath. Yes, I'm sure it was just yesterday.

Wednesday Weigh-In

Happy dance! I lost one pound. Yeah, it's not much, but when you've plateaued for a long time, it's very easy to lose the motivation. So down one is a good thing. And I can see the little horse in the counter moving. Like getting a sticker. That's fun too.

I still found myself wanted to grab the cookies. Did one night, but grabbed chocolate rice cakes last night and the night before. Not very exciting, but enough crunch to take the edge off. I didn't want to stay where I was last week. Really wanted to see a loss.

What gets you through the plateaus? How do you keep your motivation up and not sabotage yourself?

Open

Finally! What I've been waiting for all Winter. It's warm enough to be out in the sunroom! Had to run the spaceheater to take the chill out, but we were comfortable eating dinner and playing D&D out there last night. I had my breakfast there this morning.

The sunroom is officially open for the season. If you're looking for me, I won't be difficult to find. I'll be sacked out on the love seat.

Seven

Today's project is to clean the sunroom as it's almost warm enough to move out there. However, I've had a slow start this morning. Seven ways to put off attacking your to do list:

1. Read a book while having a leisurely breakfast. Afterall, you can't work on an empty stomach.

2. Update your Facebook status. Heaven forbid if people don't know what you're up to. Course this turns into check out and commenting on your friends' status updates.

3. Read a few blogs you follow. Afterall, you're on line and in front of the machine. Might as well not waste time coming back later.

4. While online, decide to pay a few bills online. Then while you're in front of the machine, update your accounts to Quicken. Find out for some reason the new version of Quicken (9) you installed, doesn't recognize one your accounts. Futz with Quicken until you can do a one-step update which goes smoothly though takes longer than you expected. While you're thinking about it, reconcile your accounts.

5. All that accounting has hurt your brain. Relax by reading some fanfic from your favorite television shows at Fanfic.net

6. Remember you need to call your dad. Call, but there's no answer. Try to remember to call back later.

7. Blog about how you procrastinate.

Do you put off attacking your To Do List? What are the ways you procrastinate?

The Graceful Envelope Contest

For better or worse, I went to the post office and mailed my Graceful Envelope entry. I was so relieved to see N working the counter though I would have asked if he or S was available.

N very carefully hand cancelled the stamps. He even tried hard not to obsure some of the artwork. And he didn't freak when he saw the embellishment on the front.

Funny, but after composting and working on the design for so long, I was reluctant to let it go. Now the hard part of waiting until the results are announced sometime in July. The worse part is not knowing if the envelope will arrive at its destination or if it will arrive intact. The contest organizers don't let participants know if their entry arrived. I suppose there are so many entries it's not possible.

Still, my entry for 2000 made it, and I used the elastic leg and waistband from a diaper to fashion my envelope.

If you'd like to enter, there's still plenty of time. Entries need to be postmarked by 30. April 2009. You can find all the rules and details at The 2009 Graceful Envelope Contest.

This year's theme is "Adress the Environment". I used one of the flag stamps and a sunflower stamp because the embellishments automatically make the envelope require extra postage.

Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Wednesday Weigh-In

No change this week. Amazing considering I sabotaged myself with candy sushi, and slabs from the lamb cake. I'm glad there are no more major holidays that revolve around candy until Halloween.

Candy Sushi

Since this year I didn't want to tempt myself with bags of Easter candy to fill Easter baskets, I decided to break with tradition (The girls still got a small gift, just not all the candy that usually goes along with it) Found a cute idea for Candy Sushi at the Vons Supermarket website. Both The Eldest and The Young One are enamored of anime, Japanese soap opera type cartoons. I thought I'd surprise them with the sushi on Easter morning.

The surprise was on me as The Young One came by while I was looking at the website and making a list of the ingredients. Easily solved, we decided we would surprise The Eldest. The Young One and I went shopping for the candy, mini donuts and other items. She even found chopsticks to complete the illusion.

We had a fun time making the sushi. I'm not very adept at unrolling the fruit by the roll so some of my sushi looked like fish stuffed inside a trash bag. The Eldest loved the surprise and even recognized our (mostly The Young One's) creations as sushi.

Seven

My computer is giving me fits and starts. It seems to get slower and slower, especially on boot. I am so tempted to try percussive maintenance but instead will whine about seven things to dislike about Vista.

1. Microsoft, the "we say so" company. I wish Bill wouldn't decide what I want my machine to do.

2. Vista 64, the quad processor isn't faster, and it doesn't interface well with some peripherals. Like my scanner which was working until the computer was moved for the remodel.

3. Like all the previous versions of Windows OS, Vista is a pig.

4. The machine is chugging, but I have no idea what it's working on. I miss the days of being able to press the escape key, put a Settrace and follow what the program was doing. I miss DOS

5. Even though you are allowed to schedule or cancel Windows updates, this is a Fisher-Price feature. Lights flash and wheels spin, but the program flips you the bird and does the updates anyway.

6. Vista makes the Unix OS on the old Burroughs XE-550 I used to work on, look like a gazelle.

7. Microsoft's new OS, Windows 7, will be shipping at the end of this year. A Vista by any other name is just as slow.

Wednesday Weigh-In

Wednesday weigh in is back. No more excuses about remodels, workmen in and out, inspections. Time for me to get back in the saddle.

I relocated the treadmill to the other end of the room. From there, I'll be able to walk and watch television at the same time.

This morning, since I haven't been on the treadmill in a couple of months, I took a leisurely 1 mile tread while watching Good Morning, America. I could feel the burn, debated about ramping up the speed, but decided against it. Slow and steady wins the race.

On the happy side of the scale, I only gained 1 pound since the last time I weighed myself at the beginning of February.

How are you doing?

Seven

The Eldest has asked us to play Dungeons and Dragons or D&D. So seven things about this game

1. It's nice to be included in her activities.

2. The game is very complicated. We spent over an hour defining our first characters, and we haven't even started the game yet. There are so many choices: Warriors, Druids, Elves, Thieves and then subchoices. Alignments of good, neutral, bad. I'm relieved to know that during this first game for simplicity sake we will all be aligned with good. Whew, I was getting a headache.

3. We really had a lot of fun cracking jokes and making comments while we were trying to figure out what we were doing.

4. I enjoyed watching The Eldest assume the role of teacher. She was patient, enthusiastic, and determined we would all enjoy the game. She kept stressing the point wasn't to win, but to have fun.

5. Board games have certainly changed from when I was a kid. This game has seven dice, all different shapes. There's even one shaped like a dodecahedron. There's no board, though there could be. No playing pieces like a top hat or a race car, though there are figures you can use if you want to. Board games were cooperative play when I was a kid. One set of dice, a board. You took turns. The Eldest graciously purchased each of us dice and a players handbook. These things aren't cheap! Why can't we share the books and dice? I asked. Because everyone having their own book makes the game go faster. See #2 above.

6. When she first said RPG, I immediately thought of Report Program Generator, a programming language I learned back in programming school using punch cards. I feel like a dinosaur.

7. I've been reading my player's handbook. Characters, proficiency, alignment, battles, equipment. My head is swimming. I think I need to purchase D&D for Dummies or go back to a game I thoroughly understand like Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders.

The Graceful Envelope Contest

I am so proud of me today. I have completed the major part of my entry for The Graceful Envelope Contest. I just have some gluing left to do, but all the artwork is done. After composting my idea for a long time, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I feel as if a weight has been taken off my shoulders. I'll post my entry (win or not) after the contest results are announced sometime in July. The envelope graphic is my honorable mention from the 2005 contest.

Still plenty of time to get your entry in. The contest is open to all ages and there are 2 separate categories for children. Envelopes must be postmarked by 30. April 2009. The theme is "Address the Environment". You can find all the contest rules and regulations at The 2009 Graceful Envelope Contest.

Day 40

Today, the contractor sent the cleaning ladies to shine up the bathroom. A perfect perc for The Little Princess. When they were done they left a rose on the toilet tissue roll. How clever and pretty is that?

The bathroom is pretty much done. Most likely new shower doors will be ordered so that will take a couple of weeks before they arrive. The dumpster and port-o-potty will be leaving tomorrow. So for all intents and purposes, the bathroom is complete. No more crews coming in and out. Time to get back to my routine and get back on the treadmill.