Busy Week! Cleaning, Appraisal and IT Work...
With a great deal of determination (!!!), I've managed to get an awful lot done this week!
I can't believe I haven't written here since Monday (!!!), when I announced that we WON the Grand Pinnacle award! (woo hoo)
Tuesday and Wednesday were spent preparing the yard and house for the appraiser to come out Thursday morning to do his thing.
I think (???) I've mentioned before that this was the first year ever that Marilyn and I didn't do a single thing to our yard for the summer. We just had so much to do inside the house with the flooding and restoration efforts -- we had neither time nor the energy for outside the house. We didn't even water the grass in the backyard -- or any of the plants we've had from year to year (which I suspect may all die because of it).
Anyway, with all the boxes tossed out back (including the damn HD TV box they told us we had to 'keep for 30 days') -- plus a number of other items -- I needed stuff hauled away and the yard tidied. I got it all ready on Tuesday, and Hector came personally on Wednesday to haul things off.
Plus our friend Mark had promised us some pots with plants -- and he brought these by this week. These were HUGE, by the way -- and there were several. I couldn't even help out with them, as I couldn't lift a one of them! They added a lot to the yard. Happily things would normally be dying off now anyway, so it ended up with stuff looking just fine...
I spent ages cleaning inside the house on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Not only did I pick up, rearrange, dust, vacuum and mop -- I also got down on my hands and knees to clean the hardwood floors in the living room and scrub the floors in the kitchen and my bathroom. My bedroom got the least attention, but I did manage to pick up a bit in there, at least.
In the end the house looked quite nice (!!!), if I do say so myself. I ended up sore and tired, but it was well worth it.
I really liked Bill who came out to do the appraisal, by the way. He's also a professional photographer -- but was killed by digital cameras, so had to take on a second job. (Let me know if you'd like to see his work and I'll share the link to his website!)
Thursday afternoon we did our Airport Greeting for Jeff (our festival CEO) with the Royal Rosarians, which was fun! Late that afternoon Rich phoned me to have me send some of my personal photos to KPTV to be used on the news. They didn't end up using them last night, but this morning they did a report and I was smiling to see all three photos got used! (One featured Marilyn holding the Grand Pinnacle trophy.) Fun, fun! We had a call from KOIN TV today asking about our news after they heard about it from watching KPTV. (smile)
Today is all about IT -- working with Donn and Denise. We got almost all of the dual monitor setups done (woo hoo). And installed and setup UltraMon on these, too.
The QuickBooks setup didn't go very well, though... (sigh) We spent fruitless hours (and hours) and got nowhere...
Donn and Denise are a great addition here for me, I have to say. It's such a big help to have them here.
Marilyn and I have WORK (for the Auction) tomorrow -- and a Royal Rosarian event on Sunday. So it's going to be a busy weekend!
I guess that's it for now. I hope we'll be heading home soon. (It's going on 6:00.) I'm really beat...