Ramblings & Other Things

I'm almost 40.  I am also the youngest child.   Which means my parents are not exactly youngster beyond their spirit, anymore.  They are very knowledgeable, kind, good people. Last week, my Mom was in the hospital.  I had to rush take her to the ER on Wednesday night.  I sat in the ER with her and my Dad,  only to have leave her to return home at 3 AM.   It was a long stressful night.  I was bouncing back and forth between the hospital and home for about 36 hours, because they kept her for observations, then tests, prior to releasing her Friday morning.  Then it was the mater of keeping things going at home.  Keeping an eye on my Dad. Snuggling with Jim, and keeping calm and carrying on.  I fell behind in my personal class work.  So then I was trying to get that completed.   My laundry to do pile is nearly as tall as me.  The house needs to be dusted and vacuumed.  Not to mention that their is one problem fr...

Some times, it gets busy.  This week, for my current class I have about 20 to 30 hours worth of homework to do, in addition to discussion work, and the reading. Plus, since this is an area I am weak in, I have additional reading in supplement sources to do. Also, I have a race on Saturday that I need to train a bit for. Also,  I have re-worked my resume, and now am getting some additional interest from prospective employers.   Oh, and I am working on getting a study group together over the weekend to review before class next Monday.   Hence, I am intending to do some slow cooking this week. This is on the list to make:  To get something that looks like this you need some simple things:      ~ 2 cups Hot Sauce. We used Frank's RedHot Buffalo Wing Sauce-12 oz  for this verison, however what ever hot sauce you like the taste of.  We are about flavor, not heat.   ~1 tablespoon of Southwestern Seasoning.  We used P...

Since I have decided to go back to school, I have also taken it upon myself to try and save money, and earn money. 1)  Survey Savvy is a survey company I take survey for. They actually pay in cash rather than redeemable points.   https://www.surveysavvy.com/?m=5669477 2) I am in the process of learning/relearning the art of clipping coupons.  I get a bunch of them from here:  http://www.coupons.com/ .   In addition to that, I am also clipping store specific coupons, like Target, so that I can "stack" the savings by purchasing items on sale, and using a coupon.   I also visit  http://coupondivas.com/  as well as  cartwheel from Target and I just got approved for a Red Card which offers a 5% saving each time I use it.  HOWEVER, it's got a 22% interest rate, so it will need to be payed off each month in full. 3) I am clipping coupons for stuff I know we will eat.  Menu Planning is not our thing, however if the house is stocked wi...

It's such a pain when I cannot locate the source of such an incredible image, as usually when their is one, I tend to enjoy others.  Please, do not credit me with this beauty.     However, this beauty is the result of weeks worth of work, several hours a day, and the painting is all me. Love this piece, and it might be very hard to let it go, when it sells.  It can be found  here .  Also, in the link are more images of the piece.  Now excuse me, I have to wrestle with some Managerial Math.  Later~ Jen

My first class was last night.  It was scary, exciting, enlightening, and interesting.  It's a small class, with four female students and a female instructor.  The instructor gave us some documents to print, and I skipped over to my parents to print the documents out.  I ended up with this: Many noble trees died in printing this.   Yeah, that's a lot of paper.  188 pages in the big pile. That also did not show my handouts from class.  All of it necessary for my class.  I realized last night, but confirmed today, that with this much potential paper, that I would need a binder and to figure out a way to organize it, since a lot of this is reference materials. I went home and dug found my binder that I knew would work for this. I figured out how to organize it so that it would be practical for class.  I got out my whole punch, took the tabs I had in the binder and labeled them with pencil: lecture, HW (for homework), Mixed Review, and...

Well not really all that exciting. Grad School was the focus this weekend.  It was the first week of class, and well, we didn't have an on-campus session due to Labor Day.  So I had an on-line lecture, on-line discussion, and reading in my e-textbook, followed by 2 homework assignments. Mind you, the assignment in the e-textbook went from pages 1 to 131.  Plus, my laptop decided it didn't like the on-line class set up (browser setting need to be adjusted) and I found a work around on Wednesday, which had me at least 2 days behind.  Plus, since this is a math course, and since I must pass it with at least a B or better, I was doing the example problems, re-doing example problems, and trying to understand concepts I had forgotten over the years since I last looked at Algebra. This is my new BFF It was a long, tough weekend.  I had to run out and get a scientific calculator, and I made sure to get the model that could do statistics, because that class is ...

I was going to do a well researched, thoughtful post about time management.  Cause right now, not even before starting at Grad School, I am always racing against the clock.  I know part of my problem is that I have serious problem with the internet and get sucked in.  So I am working on that.   Yet between family obligations, housework, looking for work, helping with various projects, volunteering at the Squad, Mystical Wonders needs, the desire to exercise, social obligations I would like to do... I feel like I am being pulled in about 10 directions at any given moment. So I spent time reading about different methods of time management,  blocking out time, the value of multitasking, the value of not multitasking, and other things.  You know what?  I didn't gain any wisdom.  It seems like everyone, their brother, and great aunt has their own ideas about a "fail proof" way to get life in order and keep things humming along. From using post it not...