Well, we DID make it home before Christmas
To be more precise, around 7pm on Christmas Eve. Had our tenant pick up any packages left at the UPS store so they'd at least BE there when we got home. However one came in late, and a fairly important one at that, my present to the mate. Oy.
We got to MN in plenty of time, the roads going OUT there were no problem. HOWEVER coming back Montana was so daggone iced over that it took us two days to get across. We barely managed to deliver our load in the window given. But once we got over Lookout Pass it was boogie all the way. So, it's done now. Yay.
Found an American Legion hall on 12/26 that still had three Christmas trees left over, and took the best of them. It's still funky and leaning slightly, but we'll take it. I mostly decorated it up last night while the mate started the annual holiday cookies. M&M ones are done, and the sugar cookie dough is in the fridge cooling. Still have peanut butter and oatmeal to go. Interesting on the side of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Oats there's a recipe for oatmeal cookies with toffee chips in them. Never heard of such a thing, but it does sound intriguing.
Sigh. We have such large gaps in our Star Trek ornament collection. Have a stretch from 2003-2008 where we didn't get anything, then again 2010-2012. Missed the very first Enterprise in 1991, and supposedly that's a collector's item now. Have the D and the E though.
Anyway, the big item for today other than gathering up the last of the presents and getting them home is to call the Bastards of America and ask about why our house payment is going up yet again, when there's still all this unallocated money that they COULD put towards escrow. And looking at the history, the escrow account always had more than enough to cover taxes and homeowners insurance. WTF? Even projected for next year it should still be more than enough.
There's that, and calling Lenovo to see if there's some way I can snag a factory Win 7 image for the G770. Would be nice not to have to wait. I've got a repair part in the mail now, and it should arrive pretty soon, along with a part for our 12V cooler, which looks an awful lot like a computer case fan. They might even be interchangable. And silly me, I sent the audio card for the desktop and the 64gig thumb drive to my inlaws address, so I'm gonna have to wait till I get there at the end of January to pick it up, THEN wait till we get back home to actually install it. But at least I'll have it.
Now if I can just get $200 together for a copy of Win 7 and a hard drive...I'm pretty much halfway there.
We got to MN in plenty of time, the roads going OUT there were no problem. HOWEVER coming back Montana was so daggone iced over that it took us two days to get across. We barely managed to deliver our load in the window given. But once we got over Lookout Pass it was boogie all the way. So, it's done now. Yay.
Found an American Legion hall on 12/26 that still had three Christmas trees left over, and took the best of them. It's still funky and leaning slightly, but we'll take it. I mostly decorated it up last night while the mate started the annual holiday cookies. M&M ones are done, and the sugar cookie dough is in the fridge cooling. Still have peanut butter and oatmeal to go. Interesting on the side of Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free Oats there's a recipe for oatmeal cookies with toffee chips in them. Never heard of such a thing, but it does sound intriguing.
Sigh. We have such large gaps in our Star Trek ornament collection. Have a stretch from 2003-2008 where we didn't get anything, then again 2010-2012. Missed the very first Enterprise in 1991, and supposedly that's a collector's item now. Have the D and the E though.
Anyway, the big item for today other than gathering up the last of the presents and getting them home is to call the Bastards of America and ask about why our house payment is going up yet again, when there's still all this unallocated money that they COULD put towards escrow. And looking at the history, the escrow account always had more than enough to cover taxes and homeowners insurance. WTF? Even projected for next year it should still be more than enough.
There's that, and calling Lenovo to see if there's some way I can snag a factory Win 7 image for the G770. Would be nice not to have to wait. I've got a repair part in the mail now, and it should arrive pretty soon, along with a part for our 12V cooler, which looks an awful lot like a computer case fan. They might even be interchangable. And silly me, I sent the audio card for the desktop and the 64gig thumb drive to my inlaws address, so I'm gonna have to wait till I get there at the end of January to pick it up, THEN wait till we get back home to actually install it. But at least I'll have it.
Now if I can just get $200 together for a copy of Win 7 and a hard drive...I'm pretty much halfway there.