I have always wanted a Dyson vacuum cleaner. With as much as Tiny and the cats shed, I need a vacuum that doesn’t get clogged up & as far as I know, Dyson is the only one that’s guaranteed to never get clogged. Right now, until the end of October, at The Domestic Diva, you can Win a Dyson “Pink” Vaccuum in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I’m trying to be the winner.

If you want to give it a try, too, head over there & read the specifics on what you have to do to enter. But I’m going to win. Really. I am.

Boy, this payday is 100% different than last week. We actually managed to get everything paid & buy enough groceries to fill the cabinets (I had to, I used up almost everything I had in food storage during the past 2 weeks!). There’s money left for gas and a few extras, too, just like almost every other payday of the year. We really rely on Troy’s overtime, so when we have a pay period when he hasn’t worked any, it really hurts us. I also think something got screwed up when he switched schedules, he may have ended up losing a day on that one. At any rate, things are back to normal now & it helped put everything back into perspective for us. At least we have a firm grip on what’s important again.

Yesterday, my car was back in the shop. The other day, Monday, I think it was, it stopped auto-locking when I’d take it out of Park & unlocking when I put it in. We took it in at 9am. By 1pm, they still didn’t know what was wrong with it & had to call the factory. Apparently, my car is blond. (my computer is, too) It lost the programming that controlled the auto-lock and my cruise control & had to be reprogrammed. I’m sure thankful for my warranty.

Today I’m tired and headachey, I didn’t get enough sleep, but I was sure sleeping deeply when the alarm clock went off. For one of the only times in my life, I was tempted to use the snooze button. I didn’t, because I don’t want to get into that habit, but I wanted to. I’m so happy that tomorrow is Saturday. I get to sleep in for 4 days, since we have a really long weekend here. Yay!

If you’re bored and want something to do, pop over to Christine’s blog and vote for me in her contest, I could really use the votes!

So, I did it. I signed up for this year’s NaBloPoMo. I think I can handle writing one post, every day, for a month on this blog. I want to try to find a theme that interests me and write a post in that theme, to really make it count & make it interesting. I’m really excited about it, too. I wanted to join last year, but it was too late when I heard about it to sign up. I can’t wait to get started!

I’m pretty sure no one in this house slept well last night. We all seemed to be exceptionally restless. I’m not sure if it was the extra day off this weekend (my daughter was out of school for “Harvest Holiday” – its really for hunting) or that we were all so well rested over our weekend, but no one is feeling peppy today. I just couldn’t fall asleep, first my head was hurting, then I was too warm, then I needed to use the bathroom. I think I finally fell asleep after 2am, and 4 hours just isn’t enough. I feel bad because my restlessness kept Troy from sleeping well, too.

My car is having problems again. It’s not locking when you shift it out of park & it’s making a loud clicking sound on the outside when you shift from one setting to the next. We’re taking it in to the shop on Thursday morning. I’m thankful that it’s still under warranty because I don’t think I could afford to have them fixed on my own.

Anyhow, not much going on here this week, we have a bridal shower to go to this Saturday & a four-day weekend coming up, and thankfully, Friday is payday, because I’m struggling with making meals out of so little, but we’re managing. A couple of weeks ago, my mom & dad gave us a little Toyota Dolphin motorhome (its a 1978) that needs quite a lot of cosmetic work & a little bit of mechanical stuff, too. My dad called me on Saturday & asked us to come out & look at it, because they’d been working on it a bit. We got out there & my dad had fixed part of a wall that had been missing, sanded out some rust, primered it & started painting. Mom had started scrubbing the inside & then they told us they were going to fix it up for us as our Christmas gift. We were so touched, and really, just thrilled. They’re both so good at that sort of thing & we’re just not. We can’t wait to get it up & running and be able to take it out!

And, if you’ve been living under a rock or are just not a non-believer: The Rockies are going to the WORLD SERIES!!

So, apparently the IDE controller on the hard drive decided to die on me. So, while the hard drive itself is fine, there’s no way to read it now. I’m pretty upset about it, after all, all of my files are on there, from the graphics I use for my web pages to all of my Guild Wars stuff, so I have to admit that I did cry a little bit for the loss. Hopefully we can find a way to get to my stuff & at least back it up somewhere.

We had our Halloween party last night and it was so much fun! Almost everyone that we hang out with these days was there, so we got to hang out with friends we don’t normally get to see that often anymore, which was really nice. We had some good food, although not as many entries in the contest as in days past. Dawn’s rotten ham won, it really did look pretty horrible, I had a hard time eating it – meat is not supposed to be green! Mark & Sarah made awesome faery costumes this year, complete with wings, of course they won the costume contest. I didn’t really make much of an effort this year, I just didn’t have the time or any ideas.

When we bought this computer, we did so with the intention of adding my slave from my old computer to it so I wouldn’t lose my stuff. After a whole lot of hassle, we managed to buy a device that allowed us to turn that internal drive into an external one. All of my files are on that drive, my pictures, my games everything. It’s not working anymore. The device won’t turn on. It tries, the little light comes on & then fades out, as if the struggle is just too much. I’m worried that I won’t be able to access that drive anymore, and a little bit freaked out, too, since my copy of Guild Wars (and all of the expansions) is on that drive, and a whole bunch more.

Another thing that has me worried is that I’ve only heard from the partner who’s sending to me in the Fall into Autumn Dishcloth swap twice. The last time was in September sometime. That doesn’t instill a lot of confidence about the whole process into me, let me just say. I sent mine a week ago & my recipient received it & thanked me, but she hasn’t yet posted her picture of what I sent on her blog. It’s no reflection on me, it’ll be her issue with the organizers, not mine, but it’d be nie to see pictures.

Halloween party tomorrow night. I’m trying to get some stuff together for the contest prizes, but I’m not sure that I’ll manage to finish them in time, I’m super tired again today. Yuck.

We had a really busy weekend. Friday was payday, so even though we didn’t have very much money to get groceries with, we still had to get some. We took care of that & then came home, put them away & had something to eat. After that we needed to go out to my parents’ house to look at the RV they gave us & see what needs to be done to it to make it usable for us. We spent a couple of hours with them, cleaning it out & trying to get it to start. It doesn’t need a lot of work, but it does need some & I think it’ll be worthwhile and fun to do.

That night we went over to Dawn, Jason & Ryan’s house to talk and plan for the next day. I cooked dinner for Troy & I before we left and told my daughter where everything was so she could fix something for them (she didn’t, I forgot to tell her the oven temperature & she never called to ask) and we left. We had a pretty good time, just hanging out and laughing with our friends, but then, we always do.

Saturday, we were up early and on the road for Las Vegas. We spent the day at their renaissance faire. We had a good time, but we all agreed that we like our faire better. I think its because we know everyone there & there’s no awkwardness like we felt at the LV faire. We just kind of felt out of place most of the time. I did manage to buy all of the things that were on my list, so I left pretty happy, other than a little frustration at the end & Troy losing his cool. We made it home at about 1:30am or so.

Yesterday was spent with Troy trying to get my computer to work right. It lost my display settings & of course, Dell’s “tech” support was no help, but he insisted on calling it. He spent at least two hours on the phone with them & nothing worked. I managed to get it to go back to where its supposed to be. We’ve ordered some more memory for me & Troy will allocate some more for my memory & his IT guy at work says that’ll probably fix it. Its good to know, I don’t want to go through that again, it pretty much wasted our whole day.

Troy’s working today, but that’s ok, overtime is always welcome, especially after a week like this one was, money-wise.

Erin made it home on Wednesday, it was sure good to see him coming around the corner at the bus station. The bus got in early & we were a little late, so he was starting to think we weren’t going to get him. He looked pretty relieved when he saw me. Things aren’t perfect & some of his stories have made me want to cry my eyes out because no parent likes to think about their child living the way he has for the last month, but its easier to worry about him here than when he’s hundreds of miles away.

Things are going fairly well, we’re broke, but the bills are paid. We’re going to the Las Vegas renne faire tomorrow, but won’t have any money to spend. That’s ok, the entertainment is free & gate is only $10 each, so we’ll be ok & have fun. Anyway, gotta go buy the few groceries we can afford for the next 2 weeks & put gas in the car.

What you do is take the following list of books (the top 106 marked most often as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users). Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you started but couldn’t finish, strike through the ones you really sort of hated, put an asterisk next to the ones you’ve read more than once, and underline the ones on your own personal To Be Read list.

Got it? Alrighty then.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula*
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down*
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood : a True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island*
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Erin called Troy awhile ago and said that he was getting a bus ticket through traveler’s aid & that the Reno police would be calling us to make sure he had a place to come to before they gave him the ticket. We’re hoping he’ll be home before the week is over, then I can stop worrying quite as much. I miss him so much & he sounds like he’s been missing us and his friends here, too. So, keep your fingers crossed for us that he’ll get his ticket & be on his way home.