The hunt was on

Song of the day: “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse...which sucks, since I only know parts of the song, making it a repetition of the same bit, over and over again.

Not much fascinating stuff going on…not that there’s much of that on any other given day, but what the hey. I’m going to tell you about it anyway. Hah.

First of all, Kollosus is in heat, meaning that she’s driving Arthur bonkers. Poor Breton, doesn’t know what to do with himself, he does. I do her interests stick with Arthur, or else we’ll have half the males going bonkers around her.

Panni, one of little sister’s cocker spaniels had to be operated today. A rotten tooth and a rapidly growing tumor that appeared just last week. It worried the vet a little, so they decided to do it fast.

There’s been quite a bit of moped hunting going on. What with grandpa’s moped close to the eternal hunting fields, (so to speak, anyway) getting an affordable replacement is starting to get a necessity.

We hunted through a variety of stores looking for something that would cost us a kidney, or maybe a liver. *sigh* Grandpa of course liked the Hondas and the Piaggios, but seriously, 1400 bucks, adding IVA and whatnot to get it on the road (leading up to a whopping 1600) would cut in our budget waaaaaay too much. So yeah, seven stores and three days later, we struck gold, figuratively speaking that is, and found a nice little Keeway Milan that will do trick…I hope. It won’t be here until the New Year, since grandpa insisted on a black one, rather than the readily available white one, but what the hey. Patience is a virtue and despite the song, you don’t die from it. Hah.

Cooking: Nothing really special, just throwing stuff together at the end of the day because we were hungry and not feeling too picky.

We did finish hanging those doors in front of the little storage, and though they still have to be painted that’s about done, finally. All this needing to go out is taking soooo much time, if we manage to get one thing done during the day it’s a lot.

There is of course always getting wood, the laundry, the dogs, the edits, and well everything else, but that really doesn’t feel all the interesting to tell about at the moment. To me, what with all the going away bits, it feels like I’ve wasted a couple of days, despite the fact that they were of course necessary.

I should get some reading done, I think I can because I finally warmed up (practically sitting with my butt against the stove here, hah) a bit, and then…well, I don’t think that there will be a lot of edits done since big brother is trying to fix the program of his Mac, which has been giving fits for months now. This means that nothing is working properly at the moment, and if he does manages it, he’ll be busy the rest of the night reinstalling all his programs. *sigh*
According to him, things are looking good, though, so with a little luck we’ll be doing edits again tomorrow.

Okay, a bit of news about my upcoming interview with author C.S. Marks. As soon as I get the answers back (I’m wondering when that will be btw, I haven’t a clue) I am free to post it on the blog whenever I want, so I’m thinking before Christmas, or otherwise between Christmas and New Years…ah well, we’ll see how that goes.

Big brother just reminded me that a nice tidbit to add in today’s blog was to mention that we slayed two dragons today, but who would believe that, right? That seems so totally out of there, not to mention like space fill, so scratch that…it wasn’t filmed anyway. Hah.

Well, I’m clearly starting to get a tad giddy here, (must be the blessed heat that’s making me sleepy too) to I better quit while I’m ahead.

Stuff

Song of the day: “What if” by Kate Winslet. It’s been going through my head for two days now, and…well, I still like it, so it doesn’t really matter.

Yesterday was grocery shopping day, and I will not give my usual response to it because it’s starting to become boring, regardless of how appropriate the scream is. Hah.

But anyway, yesterday was an incredibly long day. It started early with big brother and I heading out with the car to get a particularly good sale on light bulbs (can I just say for the record I find it stupid that I am now obligated to buy expensive light bulbs, that might very well be just as bad for the environment as the old ones, and are more expensive. Grrrr) in Marbella, and picking up tenant’s new washing machine. We finally got the call that it arrived, so we connected it with the sale, and managed to get it all done before noon. We arrived back home at exactly 5 past 1 in the afternoon, right on time to start on groceries.

Got all the shops done before seven, but were forced to unload in the dark due to wintertime. Dontcha just hate wintertime? I do. But what the heck. The big groceries are done for another month, and that’s well worth the nine-hour effort, thank you very much.

Editing just didn’t happen after it, though, both our focus was shot to blithereens, so after I took care of my messages, did a bit of chatting online, and messed around with the cover for the gangster novella, we decided to put on a new movie that little brother got.

Cowboys and Aliens. Not a WOW movie, but entertaining enough with some nice twists and turns that took me by surprise. I like it when that happens, and it so rarely does these days. Also, I liked that there was no gratuitous sex in this one. What little skin was showed, was tastefully done, and I can’t ask for more than that, I guess.

Was in bed an hour after midnight, and grateful for it. Decided to not let Labhana on the bed, which meant that I actually slept better than expected just because there was more room to sleep in. It helped too that it wasn’t so cold, meaning that Knight II didn’t insist on pushing himself against me.

But anyway, I was slow to start this morning, mostly because I insisted on wearing my Sancho boots yesterday, and paid for it today, hah. Not so much my plantars, but the rest of my foot, which made for a nice change.

Had a reasonable workout, despite me cutting most of the reps in half, since I knew it was going to be a busy day. We first installed tenant’s washing machine, almost got ourselves a heart attack to boot, because when we connected the water it started running. We messed around for a bit and then figured that it might be a good idea to connect it to the power too and have the program shut down the valve. Worked like a charm. *phew*

That done I went up to help tenant for a bit (caregiver at her other job again) and basically divided my time between that and going down to saw wood with the small chainsaw, while big brother worked with the big (motor) one. There was sawing, chopping with the axe, and on the overall enjoying the outside exertions. Seriously, the weather was once again perfect for it…and afterwards heading for the greenhouse, was just as grand. Toasty warm and killing bugs by the dozen. *sigh*

We had pancakes fur supper, which got tenant in a good mood, hah. And then it was time to head on out to the village. Grandpa wants to have his old moped checked out by a mechanic, but from the looks of it, he’s going to be better off getting a new one.

Took Knight II along (we were going to get rocks afterward), and I can tell you, he didn’t like sharing the car with the moped. In fact, he ended up with all four paws in my lap, while his butt was on the ground. He didn’t like it AT ALL! Hah. I had to laugh so hard I almost burst something painful.

He did do some walking in the end, while we hauled rocks into the car. He went back in as soon as we forgot the door, though. *sigh* I sometimes worry about that one.

Well, I better get to the edit now, enough dawdling, in particular since yesterday we didn’t get any computer work done either.

More mutilating

Song of the day: “Shaking the tree” by Peter Gabriel and Youssou N’Dour (sp?). I’m too friggin’ lazy to check, so what the heck. It’s a nice song and somewhat appropriate. But let’s start with yesterday, shall we.

A busy couple of days, to be sure. And I for one was pretty darn happy that yesterday was Sunday and it was a non-workout day. Yay. Instead I slept in and it was friggin’ blissful…despite Knight II, Chaos and Labhana, who refused to get off during the night, who kept pushing me to the side o the bed, to the point of toppling off. Gawd, I was wrecked. Hah. Still I got a solid eight hours of sleep and that went over pretty well, for as far as I was concerned.

After the usual laundry session, I made breakfast of veggie stir-egg, sorta, which did a good job of filling our stomachs along with fresh bread. I do love experimenting with stuff like that, and it worked out fine.

Spent a little while up at the wood supply, sorting through plywood sections we can’t burn due to the plastic attached to it. Had to throw that in the waste corner, so we could haul it off to the garbage later in the day.

Next we did some organizing, and with that done it was time to head on down into the yard.
The Acacia trees needed to be trimmed. Heck, they’ve needed a trim for more than three years and we finally got to it. It was quite a task, and big brother spent most of the afternoon in the trees (with a chainsaw, mind you) while grandpa, me and Ox worked stripping greens of the massive branches, and hauling the whole mess away.

Nothing like working with an axe, eh. I do enjoy it, and the weather was downright splendid for such activities. A bright sunny day, with hardly any wind. Since we needed to get under the Acacias too, I was forced to trim the bougainvillea and Oleander as well. Lost a few branches after all, once the big ones started coming down.

The three trees looked absolutely molested afterwards, but it had to be done. When the sawing was done the heavy work came, hauling it all away and disposing of anything that wouldn’t be suitable for the stoves.

We didn’t finish until five thirty in the afternoon, and then I had to head on up to start on supper with tenant’s help. She had spent the majority of the afternoon with us, and insisted on helping out with the cutting at least.

Mom and the sibs got back from a successful day at the market. Apparently they had lots of people interested in their products, so…Yay!

Once we had supper and big brother and grandpa hung a door of the small storage section, and Ox and I loaded up the car prior to him heading home. Big brother and I took out a big load of garbage and went to pick up a new rocks or the future was, at which time I was pretty much running on fumes, but by far not as tired as I was the past week. Bet that full night’s rest was just what I needed. Hah.

Had a good edit for a change. Got several pages done for V.L. and I finished the evening working on ideas for the gangster story’s cover. So difficult a choice to make, isn’t it? The cover is very important after all. Ah well, I’ll figure something out in the end.

On to today. Seven hours of sleep, not bad, and in a pretty good mood while I started on the day’s workout session. Went well, and the fact that it wasn’t friggin’ cold for a change, helped I guess. Hah.

That done it was down for laundry, only to discover that the friggin’ machine has broken down…again. Aaaargh! So big brother would haul that up later, and I went up to have breakfast and make preparation for supper and a late-night soup of fresh pumpkin.

I made all the preparations and then handed them over to tenant who spent the majority of the day cutting veggies, while I boiled the pumpkin soup and rice.
Since caregiver was working at her other job today, I didn’t have much time to shoot the breeze with tenant, but I think she enjoyed herself well enough between reading and naps and such.

With her settled, big brother and I tackled the mimosa tree over the small pool. This one too, appears to be suffering from a disease…or else, old age, which is weird, because it’s less than ten years old…but anyway, there’s lots of light coming through now that we removed all the excess dead branches, and the Oleanders underneath should start growing again. It took a little longer to get through all the leftover branches we dragged down the mountain for stripping, but we managed most of it. Whatever we failed to get to today, grandpa will do tomorrow.

We’ll be having a busy day tomorrow, what with a trip to Marbella again, and then a full grocery-shopping day afterwards. Grrr. I’m trying not to think of that, darn it. I rather spent a whole day chopping wood again, but what the hey, it needs to be done.

What else, well, by the time we were done for the day, we cleaned up a little and went up to start on supper. What with most of it all cut already, it took me only a short time to get it all done, and that was good, because I was running on fumes.

There was wood to fetch, but then the stove was turned on, and I dressed in a warm sweater that should see me through the evening. Now all I need to do before turning in is finishing this blog (almost done) and another edit. Then I’m calling it a day. Hah.