What a Day!

Sometimes at the end of a day, I will discount all the things I have done during the day. So I will list them:
1. Went over my August budget. Since I am now on a "fixed income." I want to monitor my finances carefully. I did that anyway, and it wasn't like I wasn't on a fixed income before, but now I am SERIOUS!
2. Made an appointment with B of A to see about setting up a rollover IRA. Their site was extremely helpful in guiding me to decide on a Rollover IRA. So I want to see if this is really for me.
3. Did some research on a trip I want to take. I want to see Europe. I wanted to see how much it would cost so I could budget (I hate that word!)--financially plan for a trip next year in April.
4. Worked in the Mandala Journal. I wanted to use a human figure as a starting point for a Mandala. It's probably not a real Mandala but it's okay.
5. Found a quote from Marianne Williamson and typed it up, printed it out and put it in the Judgement page of the journal.
6. Printed up some helpful pages from whenigrowupcoach.com, the coaching site from Michelle Ward. I will read them tomorrow during church (or after :)
7. De-trashed and washed all the dishes. I have a clean sink, Mrs. Fly Lady!
8. Talked to my sister on the phone about her new house. She is painting the inside yellow-ish. Nice!
9. Did my exercises! Ha!
10. Prepared the calendar for flowers for the Church florist. I use iCal.
11. Changed the bed linens and the quilt--with the help of the perrito blanco.
12. Went to church to deliver the linens I ironed and to set up the flower calendar for the rest of the year. I was hoping that the Altar Guild assigned people had done their job, but they did not. So I did that too!
13. Went to Stater Brothers to get the rest of the groceries that I needed for the next two weeks.
14. Made the P.F. Chang's Orange chicken for two. Not that Good! For One, two or seventy!
So this was a productive day! I did a lot! Whew! Now I need to soak my hurting foot and watch the rest of the movie I started.

Project Runway Episode 1!

Danielle came over and brought salad and a really good Caesar dressing and black olives and we sat down to pasta and rosemary rolls and lemon bars and swooned and heckled. What fun! Heidi's hair on the sides looked wonky (but I get my hair cut at Fantastic Sam's, so what do I know?), but the bangs looked okay. I think she will look back in couple of years and wonder why she wanted bangs though. And the color is different. But Tim! What a guy! The Times had a fabulously complimentary article about him here:Tim Gunn: 'Project Runway's' dapper dean - latimes.com . But really the woman from Utah with the dreadlocks? Come on! They should have let Casanova go but Danielle has a theory that they keep obnoxious people on for a while to give the show some excitement. Could be.
I am going out on a limb and choosing Gretchen as the winner. I think she is extremely smart and seems to know how to get along with Tim and the other people. I hope I am right. But really! Who cares?
So Danielle's surgery is today and all good thoughts and vibes go out to you, Danielle.
I was blog surfing and found Michelle Ward's career coaching site: whenigrowup.com. On her blog she lists 101 things in 1001 days. It's like a brainstorming/wishlist. So I decided to make a list and right now I am only up to 31.So I think I will add 32: I am going to blog every day!--yes--even on Christmas! Daily blogging from me about knitting, Stanley, art. How will you stand it?

Project Runway!

Starts tonight! I can't wait! Heidi has a new haircut and I have totally missed Tim--"Make it Work!" and "This troubles me." I invited my friend Danielle to come over and have dinner and talk back to the tv with me. I am making pasta and she is bringing some salad and I will make lemon bars--and she will take the left overs home. She is having minor surgery on Friday morning and she can have a lemon bar treat when she feels up to it. The good thing about Direct TV is that because it is on Eastern time, I can watch PR and know all about it by 7 p.m. This year I am going to predict the winner as I have done in the past. Last year I picked Seth Aaron from the very start and I held out even though all my PR friends thought I was wrong. Ha! Ah! So little excites me!
In the Art room, the mandalas continue. Yesterday's mandala was about eyes. The mandala is Sharpie pens and watercolor. When I was little I was carefully watched every moment and all my movements were commented on and judged. In their defense, none of the people who were watching me had a real childhood. So I think they were watching me to see what a real child would do. But there was a judgement aspect that transcended pretty much everything I did and it is difficult to leave that behind. So the Eye Mandala is about that struggle to go on and to do what I need to do and to do it whether people are watching or not. (But they aren't)
Anyway, I get to watch someone else tonight!

Mandala Journal day 2

I finished the cover on the Mandala Journal and worked on two pages today. The cover is brown paper painted with acrylics. The Heal my Heart page is scrapbook papers and a heart doily. The Heal my Mind page is a scan of a Leonardo da Vinci anatomical drawings book someone graciously gave me. The writing is sharpie ultra fine and then colored pencils.
The heart page came as an inspiration and I would like to try it again with different colored papers.

And now for a really funny joke about consultants, which pretty much seems impossible:

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in California when suddenly a brand-new BMW 7 Series advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Cartier sunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, 'If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?'

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, 'Sure, Why not?'

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his HP notebook computer, connects it to his Nokia N95 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany...

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-Tech Miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy and says, 'You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.'

'That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,' says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on amused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then the Bud says to the young man, 'Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?'

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, 'Okay, why not?'

'You're an IT Consultant', says Bud.

'Wow! That's correct,' says the yuppie, 'but how did you guess that?'

'No guessing required.' answered the cowboy. 'You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew,to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows...this is a herd of
sheep...'

''Now give me back my dog''.

New Art Journal

Every summer I make an art journal. I have more time in the summer and I like having a way to document my ideas for other projects. This summer I am making a Mandala journal. All the entries will be mandalas--at least that's the plan today! As usual, I rescued a book from the trash. This was the Richard Scarry Best Word Book Ever, which was my children's favorite book when they were little. It was in bad shape and sometimes I use the pages, but in this instance, I tore them out. Then I made two signatures of watercolor paper and sewed them together. I taped the pages inside the journal using transparent duct tape. The cover is not decorated yet, because I wanted to get started inside first. I will cover the cover (!) with fabric, I think and then paint a mandala on.
The first entry is a healing mandala I constructed.
I am looking forward to making more entries in this journal!

Saturday--or is it??

When one is retired, every day is Saturday, really. I have this whole routine for Saturdays that involves running around and getting a lot done so that I can rest (a little) on Sunday before I have to go back to work. But that's not the case anymore! So i was at odds today. I kept thinking I need to hurry, hurry, hurry and then I would remind myself that I did not have to go to work on Monday. Finally, I gave in to my confusion and took a half hour nap. When I woke up, I folded laundry (casually) and managed to go slowly through the rest of the day. I think it bothered Stanley as well. I am not sure if he is used to me being home so much! My mind and body need to get this retirement thing together!

Gratitude

Today I spent a lot of time trying to get organized. There is so much paper work in my life, and I really haven't been on top of it. So i used a lot of time to organize the various things I need to keep current on. I have a binder for bills and a binder for my investments. And I made a binder for my health/retirement benefits. I already have a binder for my "life." This took me forever! So when I was finished, I ran out to send the invitations for the party.
No trip out is complete without a trip to a thrift store. I needed to buy towels and I went to the Lutheran High School Thrift store and found some for $1.50. (The towels are for the party, since we are doing a spa thing.) Then I went to Goodwill in Glendora and got a "Kate Spade" purse (again!). This is gray flannel and adorable. I might give it to my sister for her birthday.
On the way back, I decided to make chicken salad for dinner. I was going to barbeque chicken breasts and then I would make Ina Garten's chicken salad recipe from the Food Network. As I was driving down Foothill (Route 66) a family was soliciting donations for a funeral. I cannot imagine what it would be like to have to beg on the corner to pay for a funeral for a loved one. Luckily I actually had money and gave some. I was so touched by the sadness in that whole thing. There was a little boy on another corner and he was soliciting too. Good Grief! How sad!