The differences

Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention lately realizes that it's been a really awful fire season for the folks in my home state of Texas.  It was brought home to me tonight what a difference there is between the two places, here and Texas, when I looked out my dining room window a bit ago and saw flames behind the house across the street.  In Texas I wouldn't have thought twice.....I'd have run for the phone and then for the hose. Here, I calmly got Chris to come look at it to see if it was controlled or if we needed to call someone.  He walked across the street, peeked around the house and someone was out there with the fire, so we didn't call anyone and went back home and closed our windows.   It's too wet and green here for anything to spread, and if they burn their own house down, well, it's their problem.  Burning in town is still pretty illegal here, but probably won't turn into a tragedy for acres and acres of homes and land, as it would assuredly do in Texas. 

This term of classes is done.  I took the final for Training & Development today.  I hate that professor's tests, here's hoping I don't run into her again.  Now I get a week's break! *Imagine me happy dancing here*.  Also a "short" week at work -three four hour shifts and two days worth of those don't start til 8 p.m.  So I should have lots of reading time!  At least I will if I don't answer my phone when they realize they're shorthanded and try to call me  in early...

Cleaning up after spring cleaning is mostly done.  I still need to clean off, dust, and polish my desk, dust the living room, and catch up on my laundry, but my kitchen is done except for mopping, and I've reclaimed the dining room again.  Putting the small bookshelf in there was a stroke of genius...all the assorted crud that ends up on the table is now neatly squirrelled away in there. 

On impulse yesterday, I bought a Mr. Coffee Iced Tea Maker (no, the Mr. Coffee people have never heard of me and this is not a paid endorsement).  I figured at the worst I'd gotten a nice tea pitcher out of the deal, and at the best, it'd solve my apparent proportion problems in fixing iced tea using loose leaf tea. I finally got a chance to try it today, and I pronounce it a success!  The only drawback is that if you use loose tea, the basket is a booger to clean up.  I ended up having to use a toothbrush to get tea leaves out of the grooves in the bottom of the basket. But assuming I can keep enough ice on hand, I think I have a new favorite way to make iced tea, and it'll help me use all that flavored tea I ordered this winter from Adagio.  Some of it it turns out I like better iced than hot. 

That's about all I know.  I hope all of you that celebrate had a blessed Easter; and those that don't had a nice weekend.

Our version of spring cleaning

I'm tired.  It's time for our bi-annual "move-stuff-around-a-thon".   It doesn't necessarily go by the calendar, we just do it when the mood strikes, which is usually about twice a year.  This is a small house, but it's got a pretty cool layout.  There are two rooms that are interchangeable: one behind the kitchen and one to the south side of the kitchen.  We've used them both for the dining room, our home office, and a spare bedroom.  Right now, the room on the south side of the kitchen is being used as a combination dining room/sewing room.  The room behind the kitchen now houses all our music stuff: a keyboard, two bass guitars, a regular guitar and my flute.  And the second bedroom (since we don't need a spare room anymore) is our home office. 
But anyway, about twice a year we decide that we need a change and start rearranging things.  This time it entailed getting rid of some things and adding some others.  We got rid of the futon that used to be our living room couch, my old corner desk, and our old bedframe, and added a very nice tall bookshelf (even with ebooks the physical books keep accumulating, especially when you add school textbooks), and a smaller worktable for Chris.
Accomplishing this was harder than it sounds. 
Chris brought home from work several years ago, a huge Sauder hutch/desk.  The thing is built like a tank.  He used it as his main desk for years, until he went to a dual monitor setup and the hutch interfered with that.  So since then I swear that thing has been moved back and forth four or five times, and each time we swear we're never moving it again.  At this point, I think when we move out of this house, that desk is staying!  It's been through several incarnations of usefulness.  This time it's housing the computer in the music room (we have a Mac in there with Garage Band and Logic Pro on it for recording).  But until about an hour ago, it's been in the office, taking up way too much space and providing us a horizontal place to put stuff on, which we end up doing with every horizontal space in this house.  So that had to be moved.  I also have a beautiful wood writing desk that we got free with my big desk (scratch and dent special, but I love it and it's beautiful).  Chris was scared it would get scratched worse in the music room, so it is now in the dining room/sewing room, with a sturdy tablecovering on it and holding my sewing machine.  Those were the two biggest headaches to move, I thought - until we went to move my doll case  back to the living room from the office (where Chris thought it would go well with the new bookshelf, and then we changed out minds).  In the move back to the living room, the top popped off the doll case. Chris panicked.
He got it fixed with a lot of swearing and some superglue,  and actually he was more upset than I was. 
Now everything is, hopefully, moved, except for the corner desk which is being picked up tomorrow.  Then I can finish putting the dining room back together and start the cleanup of all the things we displaced that now need new homes.  I hate this part...

Calibre progress report

I can't believe my last progress report on my calibre collection was in October!   At that time, I had 641 total titles in Cozies.  Now I have 2522 across Cozies, Mystery/Thriller, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Nonfiction, and Novels. 
The hard part is done.  My original folders have all been sorted and added to calibre. Now I'm just adding new acquisitions as I get them.  I am telling y'all, this is the best thing I've ever done for my ebook collection.  I can see what I have at a glance, sort by umpteen different criteria, it's all stored in a database structure that I can back up easily, and it's organized.  I can move the books onto my Sony Reader as easily as right click "send to device".  Love it!