a gray weekend

Nothing but gray skies and rain in Pittsburgh for the past few days. There are a few more ahead according to the weather forecasts. The dark days start to get to me after awhile, even after all these years in the northeast. I am looking forward to sunshine later in the week. (Fingers crossed.)

There hasn't been a whole going on which is why I haven't posted. I don't want to get in the habit of NOT posting though, that's why I am writing now. It was a fairly mellow work week, a nice change from the week before. I actually got out of there by 1:oo or 2:oo every day. So I had ample time to work on projects around the house, one of them being cleaning out more stuff. I decided to tackle the file cabinet. My parents - or at least my dad - trained me to hang onto papers forever. Financial statements, receipts, bill statements...you name it, I keep it. And sometimes it has paid off. But it's a fresh year and it was time to purge. I threw out just about everything except the latest bills, the important receipts, a year's worth of financial statements and of course my income tax records. I also managed to completely burn out my paper shredder. I shredded the last of some pay stubs yesterday afternoon and they just barely made it through the final, dying gasps of the shredder. Alas. But man, it's so nice to have space in my file drawers again! My husband is the complete opposite of me and throws most of his paper stuff away. (Of course now I make him keep the statements for things that we share.) Do you all save paperwork forever or throw it out right away?

Oh, the other task I took on this week was to get all my old files off of floppy disks and onto CDs. I had maybe 20 or so floppies with email stored on them (yes, I save email too), and now it's all on one CD. Sweet. I still need to back-up my hard drive and then I will be ready to buy a new computer! Yea! My hard drive space is about used up and it is time for a new machine. (And speaking of paperwork, one of the items that got shredded was the receipt for the first computer I bought in 1997 and have not had since 2001. I need to clean out more often!) I can't wait to have more speed.

On Friday night, we went to Gooski's again and Nick served up the best damn wings I have ever had. I am not a wing person, but we had been told we should try the wings there and so we did. Jamaican Jerk. Delicious. Steve arrived safe and mostly sound from NC while we were there. It's great to have him up here for awhile. Later, we came back home with Steve and Bloody in tow and had a fine time sitting around the living room listening to records and telling stories. Due to beer consumption and a late night (for me), I was feeling a bit rough yesterday but managed to shake it off. I spent the day taking care of business, including laundy, and sadly, during this chore, the dryer bit the dust. Not a good week for appliances in our household. Hopefully we can get it fixed soon. In the evening, we watched football, of course. And there will be more football today. Both teams I was pulling for won yesterday: Indy and New Orleans. I don't care much about the Seahawks/Bears game, but I'll be pulling for the Chargers in the AFC game. And don't worry, I won't be totally consumed by football, I'll be doing some knitting while the games are on.

Have an excellent Sunday.

P.S. Today's photo was taken over the holidays when we were at the Werehouse.