Cold and Thursday

It feels cold enough to snow and snow is actually being predicted as part of the new storm brewing our way. We should see measurable precipitation this weekend and I am rejoicing, even if I am also shivering.

I took this picture of the last amaryllis this afternoon



I can hardly wait to see it open because it is so much redder than the others have been. I hope that it doesn't simply fall over, because it seems taller and more top heavy than any of its earlier counterparts. It doesn't seem to like being cold any more than I do!

With Valentine's Day only two days away, I want to bake chocolate cupcakes. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. It is a lot of work and time, the kitchen is cold and then there will be a lot of cupcakes--I think the recipe makes two dozen. It may be easier to daydream about them and find something else to do to celebrate Valentine's Day.

Last night I heard rain on the roof and decided to go to bed early to read figuring that the rain would be so soothing. By the time I had settled down to reading the rain had stopped. More to look forward to.

I am grateful tonight that there will be more rain, that I have heat and electricity and that the bills are paid for this month. Praise God.

Gratitude and Learning New Things

Saturday I received an email from an old and dear friend who found me on the Net! Thank God for Google. She and I had lost touch from our grad school days, when we did CPE together. Her oldest son is now moving to my area. This is so cool!

As if that was not enough excitement for one weekend a dear friend in my neighborhood who with her husband, is in the vintage resale business, called to tell me they had found a television to replace my old one. Only now, with the new one plugged in and working do I realize how deprived I have been limping along with the old set that much of the time wasn't much more than an expensive, glorified radio! Of course, the remote doesn't work exactly the same way that it did for the old one, so in addition to my gratitude for beautiful color again, I am learning how to operate it. Learning to drive may have been easier!

My next learning curve was with loading images on Flickr. Grrrh! I did finally figure it out, but not after fits of language unbecoming, tears and the conviction that I should just give up and quit. Finally, I found a way that not only worked, but was quite easy to boot! So why couldn't they have pointed me to that first?

Now I only have one more new thing for today. Figure out how to load those into my header here as a slideshow. Probably will take me a week. Or a month of Sundays.

In the meantime, my Valentines are ready on Cafepress. I am especially excited about and fond of the new 3.5" buttons and the single card option. The two combined will make a nice small card and gift combination for under $10. Since we have all just survived the retail blitz of Christmas I don't see why Valentine's Day can't be just as satisfactory if it is modest. Most of us probably don't need another calorie blitz this close to Christmas either, so these things aren't edible, just pretty and sweet.