Computer Woes

Here's the deal.  Apparently there is a storage limit on the pictures you can upload to a blog.  Considering a normal post for me contains about 15 pictures (sometimes up to 40!) this has become an issue and I'm right now forbidden to upload any more pictures unless I 1. buy more storage (ha yeah right) or 2. decrease the size of my photos.  Apparently there is a pixel count that you have to be under to make it "free."  I now just have to figure out that pixel count and only upload pics like that from now on.  You can also upload your pics into google+ and then upload them to your blog since google+ automatically changes the format into the correct number of pixels (shameless push for google+ if you ask me).  One fo the problems is that a lot of the pictures I've uploaded I've since deleted (I mean who needs to save numerous pictures of me adding flour to a mixing bowl!).  So now I'm faced with taking all the photos in all my posts, saving them to my computer, changing the pixel count, and re-uploading them.  In summary, this is going to take some work.  And time.  And PATIENCE.  OMG you have no idea the amount of patience this will take because none of you are working on my computer.  This thing is slooooooooow, like epically slow.  Remember the days of the computer modems that went erww erwww eeeeeerw and took a minute or two to switch to a new internet page?  Well my computer is slower.  Poor thing, it's lasted years and years and has traveled as many miles cross country as I have.  It's suffered being stuffed in suitcases and having tons of student edition software downloaded then deleted on it.  It's gotten me through scholarship letters and typing and formatting my Master's Report.  And it's slowly been showing it's age.  I stopped traveling with it unless absolutely necessary.  I even stopped moving it unless absolutely necessary!  The switch that connects to wireless networks is very temperamental (apparently all VIAOs have this problem according to the tech guys) and will switch on and off if so much as breathe on the thing.  It also takes eons to start up and then decades to open the internet and years to allow you to click on something.  So now it sits on a drawing board on the side table next to the couch and there it stays.  Dad has refused to even consider working on it (probably good for his stress level) and I sometimes threaten Becca when she asks for an ipad to do her hw that she is free to use mine!  Her face is priceless.
I fully intended to buy a new computer after graduating and saving up some money but then Windows 8 had to start rearing it's head and all the tech blogs were saying don't buy a new computer, wait till Windows 8 comes out and all the other computers will go on sale.  Buy one then.  Well I waited, and I waited, and my computer was getting slower, and slower.  Finally Windows 8 debuted and I realized that I should have factored in quite a few more months before being able to buy a new computer.  There weren't enough new computers on the market that ran Windows 8 to make the price of the other computers go down.  I'd saved up enough money that I could invest in a computer that ran Windows 8, which I decided I wanted to do anyway (why buy a brand new computer that will be outdated in two years because it doesn't have the correct operating system?!), but Consumer Reports wasn't going to finish testing the new crop of Windows 8 compatible computers and publishing their findings until January and it's becoming very clear that I'm not sure my computer will be functional come January.  So I made a new plan and implemented it over the Thanksgiving break. 
I'd been seeing a lot of lightning deals on Amazon the week of Thanksgiving and decided that I would purchase either a great deal from them or get a computer on sale at Best Buy, keep it for a year or two, then purchase a new Windows 8 computer and sell my year-old computer to my parents (at a discount of course). 
And success!  I found a good deal on Thanksgiving Day (which means I wasn't tempted to shop at all on Black Friday ;) ) and am now anxiously waiting for it to ship!  Until then I will try, try again to upload the pictures for a pumpkin pie post.  Google+ crashed on me last night so maybe it will work today if I stand on my head and hold my breath.  Wish me luck!

Halloween Celebrations

Well I've mentioned how Sandy kinda put a wrench in our Halloween preparedness, but we soldiered on.  I mean we had to have Halloween.  We had to carve pumpkins, we had to hand out candy, we just had to!  It's funny how you cling to normal and routine and traditions after things go wrong or change drastically.  It's like when I moved out to KS my first year of college.  I was halfway across the country away from the family I'd lived with my whole life.  The only places I felt calm and not stressed for the first few weeks were Target and church.  There was comfort in the familiar and the routine.  So anyway we had to carve pumpkins.  I knew I couldn't do it all by myself when I got home though.  People trick-or-treat early nowadays and I get home around 5pm and I had to have the pumpkins out when it got dark around 6pm and one hour is not enough time to hollow out three pumpkins and carve them.  So we hollowed out the pumpkins the night before and carved one so I only had to carve two when I got home (which gave me a bit of a reprieve since I still hadn't thought up my design yet.  Have I ever mentioned that I procrastinate?  No?  Well I do.)

So this was Tuesday night before we all faced the reality of going back to work the next day.  We set up the pumpkins on the table after having spread newspaper down.  I had one bowl for guts and one for seeds.  And lots of random spoons because I can never remember which one worked the best from the year before.

Then we cut the stems out.  We always cut them in diagonals.  I've seen people just cut around the stem in a circle.  This is weird to me.  I'm sure it works fine but ever since I was too young to carve my pumpkin by myself we've always done diagonals so that is what I will do forever more.

Then we pulled the tops off to get to innards.  Gooey, squishing innards.
 

It's a messy job but someone's got to do it!  And it is messy.  You get messy all the way up to your elbows.  You know, it's a good thing I 1. never became a veterinarian and 2. never grew up on a ranch.  Just saying my definition of "messy" might be a bit different considering where veterinarians and ranchers have to stick their hands . . .
 

Look, Innards!  Guts!  Glory!  Me looking absolutely stunning with no make up . . . HA!  Not.

Haha I find this picture amusing.  It reminds me of those cartoons of miners with their gold tooth glinting in the sun.  Then someone would see the glint, realize the miner's tooth was gold, and subsequently punch him to make the tooth pop out.  After which the puncher would walk away one gold tooth richer.

Ah no gold tooth shine, that's better.
The pumpkin on the left is Medium Well's and the one on the right is mine. 
(Yes I'm starting the whole "don't use actual names on the internet" thing.)
Medium Well was struggling with food poisoning at this point so she couldn't send a pumpkin idea, but Dad made one with a cowboy hat because it's what she would have wanted ;)

This is Small Fry's pumpkin.  Her's was carved later because she was being a booty-head (worse than normal) and didn't give me her design until I had already carved mine and put it outside with Medium Well's.  So I only have a picture of her's by itself.  Anyway, that's a mustache in case you couldn't tell.

Here's the pic with the lights off.  I don't know why Small Fry's pumpkin has a weird glow around it.  I took about ten pictures from all different angles and her's was the only one that had a glowing halo.  Oh well, no biggie.

And here is the table right by the door with the candy bowl all ready to give to trick-or-treaters!  Of which we had a grand total of . . . . seven.  Not kidding.  Only seven.  I was bummed.  What good is having a house if you don't get trick-or-treaters?  All the parents nowadays are taking their kids to the mall to go "trick-or-treating" which is a load of bull.  Seriously.  When I have kids I'm dragging them around the neighborhood.  So watch out future neighbors, you'd better have candy ready for when I take my future kids trick-or-treating!  Or you'll have to answer to me!

 

Miss Apple Festival 2012

 

We take our apple picking seriously:

 

A second worker is required at all times to stand and supervise. (Day-glo orange vest optional)

 

 Stealth tactics are encouraged...

 

 and "Be careful!!!"  is hollered repeatedly.  

 

We are this serious because we are all vying to win the Roger Ley Best Apple award.  Not long after we moved to Virginia, Dad came to a conference and brought Mary and Emily along (or the other way around).  On their way out of town, we made them stop for a round of apple picking and, for some unknown reason (perhaps the Ley DNA???),  things got slightly competitive.  At the end of the day, daughters and granddaughters had to admit that Grandpa Ley had picked the best apple.  It was the roundest, shiniest, deepest colored apple in the orchard and Dad was the champion. 

 

We don't make it apple picking every year, but driven by Beth's new obsession with juicing, we made time to go pick a few apples and the hunt was on ...

 

 

and the contestants for this year's Roger Ley Best Apple award are:

 

Contestant from the Great State of Colorado

Contestant from the Great State of Kansas

Contestant from the Great State of New Hampshire

Contestant from the Great State of Louisiana

 

and the winner is ????  Unfortunately, we're still counting the absentee ballots...

Here's our haul:

 

and a few weeks later, those pumpkins were all decked out like this

 

We might need a pumpkin contest next year :)

Sandy Monday afternoon update

More of the same this afternoon.  The rain has slowed down but the winds have picked up.  The lights have flickered two separate times but thankfully we still have power.  We're off to go do p90x and try and get through our showers before our luck runs out!

This was the rain total at 8am this morning: 1.6"

This was the rain total at 11am this morning: 2.2" (I emptied the rain catcher at this point).

I then stopped working since our servers were shut down at the office which meant I couldn't work remotely anymore.  So I started baking to take advantage of the power we still had!

This was the rain total at 2pm: .8"

This was the rain total at 4:30pm: 1.3" So we now have totaled 3.5" of rain since last night.

Dad went out this morning three times and filled up the cars with gas and bought ice which was awesome.  I also took all the water bottles I bought last Thursday and stuck them in the freezer.  They can last as ice until we need them to thaw.

Dad turned on the fireplace which I must say just makes me feel better.  Instead of cold and dark and depressing the fire makes me feel comfy and just like I'm bundled up for a winter snow storm. 

So far my zinnias are the only things that have been a casualty in the yard, as well as lots of leaves.

My baking efforts of today finished!  Two loaves of banana bread, two loaves of pumpkin bread, one batch of sugar cookies, one batch of gingerbread cookies, and one batch of frosting.  I baked the breads (mom baked the banana bread) because they don't need to be refrigerated, I baked the cookies because Dad needs food for a Halloween party on Wednesday but if we have no power tomorrow today was the only time to make them.  This is also why I made the frosting because it needed power to whip and I didn't feel like lugging the mixer to a Panera just to use their power to whip some frosting ;)  And I baked the gingerbread just because everything was already dirty and we like gingerbread cookies!

The only casualty of my baking spree, a small burn.

They say that the 12 hr window of the strongest winds and wind gusts is going to start in the next few hours.  We're just holding our breath every time the wind blows.  I think we've done as much as we can and now we just have to wait!

Sandy Monday Morning

So far so good. We're pretty calm here with just a steady rain. I got up at 7:30am to try and get some work in before my office shuts down the computer servers at noon. About 1.6 inches of rain overnight into this more and not much wind so far. Baltimore is getting torrential rain right now though (2" per hr) so we'll see if that rain band moves its way to us. Again the storm isn't supposed to get to us until this afternoon so I'm gonna be baking as much as possible between now and then! Pumpkin bread here I come!

Preparing For Sandy

*Update Monday 12:00am:  As of right now Becca has off of school Monday and Tuesday, Mom, Dad, and I all have work canceled for tomorrow so we're going to be sitting tight inside and trying to not drive each other crazy!  The weather forecast has been updated to say the winds will be worse and the rain totals will be higher than previously stated.  So we're all staying inside and just waiting for the power to go out.  We're pretty sure that it's imminent and since the power companies are not going to be working during the storm so, if the power goes out, we'll probably be out of power till Wednesday or Thursday.  We'll see. We're all just hoping for the best.  I'll keep updating as long as we have power! 

So Sandy is supposed to hit the east coast tomorrow, but I've been warily watching for it since last week Monday.

I admit I'm a bit of a weather junky. There is a blog, the capital weather gang, that's part of the Washington Post that talks about weather. Now this isn't just ordinary 'oh the highs are going to be in the mid -fifties' kind of blog. No this blog details everything. They stay stuff like this 'the North Atlantic oscillation interacts with the jet stream creating an area of high pressure that is intensified due to the occurs nice of El Niño this year.' Yeah stuff like that, it's all very meteorological.

Anyway, this blog has been tracking Sandy since last week Monday before it was even a tropical storm. If the then unnamed storm did turn into a hurricane there was a chance that it might hit the east coast. Most if the weather models had the possible hurricane turning out to sea (or ocean in this case) but the capital weather gang felt that there was enough of a chance that it would come towards the coast that they kept tracking it. Sure enough, as the week went on more and more models showed the hurricane hitting the US. It became not 'if' the hurricane will hit but 'when.'

Now capital weather gang reached the conclusion that an almost direct hit was a sure thing Wednesday night, so on Thursday after work I decided to hit the grocery store to pick up some essentials in case we lost power. I also knew that people would go into crazy freak out mode on the weekend and parking lots would be the stuff of nightmares. So I went to the store and loaded up on a few things, feeling a bit sheepish the whole time. I lived in DC for two years before going off to college and every year since I've been in KS during hurricane season so I felt like the typical Midwestern girl freaking out about a little ol' hurricane, but after seeing the tweets if empty shelves yesterday I feel vindicated!

Here's some of the stuff I bought:

Tomato soup and butternut squash soup that just need to be heated.  No water added!

Peanut butter!  It needs no cooking at all and is really nutritious.  You can put this stuff on bread and crackers and eat for a week.  I got the big jar ;)

More water bottles!  This is a pack of 35 and it's added to some of the ones we already have.

Boil in the bag rice.  Normally we buy the microwave kind but that probably won't be possible.  Again, just add water.

Stuffing!  I was trying to think of what to get to fill out a dinner.  This would add bulk and make you feel like you've eaten a meal.

I read on Pinterest that you can make oil candles using olive oil and t-shirts for wicks.  It's also non-combustible so I was a lot more comfortable buying this than I was buying lamp oil.

Now I didn't think of these at first, but I saw a woman with them in her cart so I made a detour and got some for myself.  Nothing is worse than dirty dishes piling up in a sink and no way to wash them.  Best to just use recyclable ones you can just get rid of.

Chicken in a can.  Less smelly than tuna!

Instead of water to add to stuffings or rice or pasta, you can add chicken stock for more flavor!

I've never eaten chili out of a can but I'm sure it wouldn't be too bad and hey it needs no added water.

I've only used this to eat s'mores at a restaurant.  They bring out a tray with chocolate, graham crackers, and
marshmallows.  They'd light the small can of sterno and you'd roast the marshmallows right there are your table!  Kinda cool.  But I was thinking that in a pinch you could maybe boil/heat soup over this in a pinch.  We also have a fireplace if all else fails and we can live like pioneers!

All I can say is that I've gone for more than 24 hrs without power, I will be eating this by the spoonful.  No-touchy, it's mine!

Apparently in a power outage you need toilet paper.  Don't know why but I got some anyway.

This is dry soup mix that just needs water.  (sensing a theme? lol)

And last but not least, my favorite, tomato soup.  Just add water.

I wanted to stick with food that can be prepared with only water and boiling using no electricity (gas stove). See our biggest threat for this storm is a power outage and downed trees. We're not boarding up our windows or anything! The problem lies in the rain. If we get soaked with rain before the storm reached land the ground will be saturated making it a lot easier for trees to fall over when the wind gust do come, and when trees fall over they fall into power lines and cause massive power outages. Lets just say that VA has millions of trees and just as many above ground power lines. If this doesn't say 'stupidity' to anyone I don't know what does! We'll get a thunderstorm and power will go out because the stupid utility providers don't underground the lines and the stupid government officials don't force them to! Ugh! Politics make me angry. Breathe, Happy place, happy place, breathe. So yes I'm preparing for a power outage using some insightful tips found in Pinterest and just waiting to see what happens. Right now even the weather forecasters don't know what's going to happen or how intense it will be because they've never seen a storm like this that meshes with a cold front. It's turned into a hybrid which is why you'll hear everyone saying 'I've never seen anything like this before!' No worries it's not going to be a huge disaster (fingers crossed). We'll prob get about 5 or so inches of rain and some wind gusts of 70 mph at the most but I'm worried as long as we can stay in our house. I am interested in how this will all play out though this whole week. I'll keep you posted!

Colors of Fall

Last weekend Loudoun County was having a farms tour.  Which is essentially just a chance for all the historic properties to be open to the public and for us to ooooh and aaahhh over how extraordinarily wealthy these families are (did I mention that the Kennedy's had a summer vacation home near Loudoun?  Yeah those kind of people).  The house we went to see has been donated as a museum with the National Historic Trust etc or something like that.  Anyway, Loudoun is only about an hour away and I was VERY persistent about seeing the Autumn leaves so I cooerced the family into going.  We spent a good three hours walking the grounds, taking pictures, taking a tour of the house, having an alfresco lunch, and touring the gardens before we were kicked out by an impending Scottish wedding that was going to happen on the property.  We weren't told to leave in so many words but the intent was clear once the caterer and the DJ and the wedding party and the guests and the party planners all descended on the main house with nary a thought to the insignificant tourists just wandering around.  We didn't mind too much though, honestly there are only so many pictures of trees that you can take.

Speaking of massive amounts of pictures, Dad had one camera and since I think I can do everything to perfection I had another camera.  Between the two of us we took a lot of pictures of foliage.  Which means I have at least a few hours to spend on Lightroom getting the best pictures ready to show, but in the mean time I wanted to share a few of the finished ones.

Hope it makes you feel like Fall in New England (which is what I was going for ;) )

<3 B