End-of-Year Musings

Happy Christmas! God bless us, everyone.

It's a quiet, rainy day here in central Florida. I plan to spend the day finishing up Xmas gifts so they can get mailed next week.

Instead of working on them last week, I rearranged furniture in my sewing/compute/guest room. Then I got caught up in sorting papers that were uncovered from moving everything around. Now, I am planning on scanning everything possible and saving it to my computer and being as close as possible to paperless as I can get.

It is an interesting concept--being paperless. This morning, I went through the files on my computer and put them in order. I figure if I scan a few documents every day, eventually I will get them all done. This does not mean I am going to scan all my books or magazines. Just those pesky papers that I want to keep, but don't want to have taking up space.

I have two two-drawer file cabinets full of this and that and I wonder how much of that I can do away with. I have a box of papers and things that have been waiting to be filed since we lived on Tugwell street. Actually, some of that is to-be-filed stuff that I brought with me from Illinois.

Oh, and I have a whole fat file of recipe's that I can scan. How handy to be able to just scroll through them to find what I want. It would be nice, although I don't have a strong urge to do it, to type in all the recipes in a database program. I don't get that excited about cooking these days though to go to all that work.

And I have all my papers from college -- all those English essays and Anthropology research papers -- which would be perfect to keep in the computer instead of in files.

O gosh, I could scan all the 'important' papers too - old tax forms, licences, certificates, and all those bills that you are suppose to keep record of. wow, that would probably empty the real file cabinets. Then I could either throw them away or use them to store fabric! What a grand idea.

It will be just as handy to have these documents on the computer. For example, I made a folder for our trip to Las Vegas and scanned the airline tickets and the hotel bill and even matchbooks that I brought back. Now they are there for the memories, but not taking up space. I think that is very cool. Somewhere, I have a program called flip album that can take a bunch of pictures and put them in an electronic scrapbook with captions. At some point, I can do that with these kinds of things.

I shouldn't be, but I am absolutely stunned at the idea that 2005 will be here in a week. It seems to have snuck up on me. We (RB & I) have a tradition of writing a letter to the future and sealing it up on New Years Eve to be read the following year (I don't think we did it last year though). I need to start thinking what I want to create in my life for this coming year.

I tried to call my kids, and found that all the phone lines are busy. Must be a lot of people on the phones!

A Quiet Saturday in Paradise

What a lovely morning. The sun is shining, the breeze is barely moving through the open windows. As I did my exercises I watched a couple of cormorants (I call them diving ducks) fishing in the lake which was smooth as glass except where the birds emerged sporadically. I read an email this morning from a friend in Michigan -- they had their second killing frost today. I am counting my weather blessings, that's for sure.

Today we are having our neighbor Henry over for supper. I am going to cook turkey legs and sweet potatoes and make a big green salad. Maybe he will like to play scrabble or chess or some other game. I straightened the house a little yesterday, and will finish that today.

Tomorrow, I will start planning for my little trip to Daytona Beach for the Florida Seaside Stitchers' retreat weekend that begins on Thursday. I wasn't going to go this time, but at the last minute changed my mind about it. Now I am looking forward to seeing my crazy quilting friends again. We always have a great time.

I am just playing around with the possibilities of adding photos. This is a picture of me taken a couple years ago in Melbourne. I like the way the ocean looks in the background.

What the Bleep Do We Know?

I just got back from seeing this film for the second time. First time was in Chicago last week with my sister. Today I saw it in Winter Park (by Orlando) with RB. It is an amazing film dealing with quantum physics and the nature of reality. Very cool. http://www.whatthebleep.com/ Afterward, I had a wonderful experience thanks to the Cheesecake Factory -- white chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake! yummy.

Welcome, One and All

This is my very first entry in my very first blog. I never thought I would actually begin one, but here I am. I know the world is holding its breath waiting to see what words of wit and wisdom I will impart. So am I!

My intention is to make an entry at least once a week, making this a kind of rolling newsletter. We will see how that goes.