Photos and what not

Small world. When we were in Target last Friday I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up a prescription. I guess my old address was still in their system, so the pharmacy tech asked if I was visiting. I told her we just moved here almost 2 months ago. Turns out she used to live in a nearby city of my old address. Then she said she was grew up in another nearby town where I then said that we used to go there a lot - to the racetrack. To which her eyes got big and she said she used to date a racer. I said, well we probably know him and sure enough, it was a family we raced with quite few years. What are the odds?

DD and her BF got their closing disclosures on their house yesterday! Won't be much longer before they will be able to close. So exciting for them. It's been a quick, smooth process for them. They only made their offer on Nov 3rd. The house is just awesome. The door from the master bedroom into master bath/walk in closet area is one of those sliding barn doors that are so popular now. She is in love with it. LOL.

I am enjoying my "ME" time with DH gone. It's already so peaceful living here, you can imagine how much more it even is, with just me, haha. He arrived at his friends last night. They have a beautiful home with a pool and hot tub. He plans to stay a week down there, so I won't be seeing him until later next week.  I'm glad he's doing this - he deserves some fun time, after the crap we have been through he past few years. He's been friends with this guy since he was 17, lost contact for many years, but reconnected about 10 years ago and have kept very close now. I'm sure they will have lots of laughs over the next week.

Snow is supposed to be coming again this afternoon, so I plan to make the big 1 mile drive to the post office and stop at the grocery store for a few things, that I didn't do yesterday. I just didn't feel like going anywhere. I was waiting for UPS to bring the dog food and by the time he dropped it off, I just didn't feel like getting out. I also need to get out in the yard and scoop dog poop! that is always DH's job.

All the Christmas decorations are up. We did that Friday afternoon/evening after we got back from shopping, so it was nice to have DD's help with it all and the tree. When we got back from shopping DH had the outside lights about halfway done. Looks great. Doesn't appear many here in town put lights up. Kinda surprises me. The neighbor across the field from us put up a little bit of lights and told DH ours look really nice and that the old owners never put up lights. I'm sure the little ones next door are enjoying it, too.

OH! and DD brought me an early Christmas present!

I have been wanting this dish set for quite awhile. I just love them!

For my guest bedroom I have been looking at night stands and found some just perfect on a Black Friday sale at Lowe's, of all places.

Pretty much what I was looking for. Something small with one drawer and bottom shelf. My other criteria was that they had to be all wood (no particle board/mdf stuff). From my searching I was expecting to have to pay $100 or more each. These were only $39 each! Half off on sale and I also had a 10% off coupon, so only $35 each. They are really nice and solid and I feel like I got a really good deal. I still need something above the bed on the wall. I'm eying some art I saw online that are pictures on wood - though this one would look really good on the living room wall above our tv.

Today is payday. I was looking over my budget and realized I don't even have any bills to get online and pay out of it, other than I put something on my Target card a few weeks ago and paid that off. My new house payment comes out automatically, as well as DH's health insurance. Which reminds me. I need to get online and get him signed up for health insurance for 2017. I am praying it won't be very many months I have to pay that ridiculous $511 a month and new options are available. January 20th can't get here soon enough for me. I know it will take time, but it's nice to know it should be changing. I still can't get over that just a few years ago I was paying $270 a month for THREE people's insurance (better coverage too) and now I'm paying $511 a month for ONE person. It's a big old scam, that's for sure.

Managing some bills

I got online with my bank account this morning, as I do every morning, just to make sure everything looks right. Why is there another payment pending to the electric company? I made the payment due online directly with the energy company last week and it cleared my bank that day. Now there is another payment pending for same amount. I called and she said it looked like one was an online payment and one was a check received. Hmmm....ok...I thought I must have set it up to pay via online bill pay through my bank, forgot I had done that and then paid online on their website. I checked my online bill pay (which I didn't remember doing, except for our water/sewer) and I had not set them up as a bill pay at all. I also did not send them a check. WTH?! I guess I have a credit towards next months bill now, but still!

I had to "suggest" to DD last night she needs to stop being such a data  hog for our cell phone service plan. We share our bill for the 3 phones, she pays 1/3. BUT, she uses 90% of the data! A few months ago, when Verizon changed their plans, I upped us from 3gb to 4gb data. DH and I don't use very much at all, since we are mostly at home and connect to wi-fi. We were constantly getting right to 3 gb, so I upped it to 4gb. Now we are barely making it the month on 4gb. I looked at the details yesterday and I used 2%, DH 4% and the rest was DD! C'mon now.  She said "well, I guess we need more data" and I said "No, YOU need more data" LOL. I told her DH and I don't need very much, but we at least need to be able to have some available when we need it (like DH being on the road yesterday) and not have to go over. Turns out she is listening to music on her phone all day while at work, so that is what is using it up now. I told her she's just going to have to cut back some on that, so we have some data available when we need to use it, too. Sounds like she and BF might be going on a plan together soon (he's on his parents plan). Works for me.  Then I'll probably cut us down to the "small" plan, which I think is 2gb. That would be enough for me and DH. Right now we are typically using less than 1gb.

DH drove a whole bunch yesterday, about halfway to his destination. I think he drove almost 13 hours. Yikes, but that's how he rolls (and another reason I had no desire to go on this trip). He stopped and got a hotel last night. I don't know how he thought he was just going to stop at a rest stop and sleep in the pickup a few hours. Way too cold for that, obviously. He should get to his friends place, near Dallas, this evening some time.

I signed up for Netflix again yesterday, so I could watch Longmire, haha. I choose the smallest plan, this time for $7.99/mo. With DD not using it, I didn't need the $9.99 plan. I can't really tell the difference between SD and HD anyway and our internet probably isn't that fast to handle HD anyway. So, last night I started my binge watching :) I only got partway into the second episode, because I stopped to watch The Voice, which was 2 hours of my evening.

Yesterday morning's snow melted off by mid day. No snow today, but supposed to be some each day for like a week starting tomorrow. I went to get our mail yesterday and see they had sanded the street a bit. Since today is clear, I think I'll make sure to get the mail today and also stop at the grocery store for a few things. That way, if it snows a lot I can just stay put! I haven't learned to drive in the snow yet!

The dog food I use for the dogs I used to find at a couple of feed stores in my old area. I haven't been able to find it in this area. Supposedly a small grocery store in the city carried it. We stopped there last Friday, and they carried the brand, just not the chicken and rice flavor. The only other place is a Tractor Supply about another 10 miles farther, but Tractor Supply (where I used to buy it where I lived before) shows if they have stuff in stock and it showed out of stock at that store, so we didn't drive there. I ordered another bag via Amazon at the beginning of last week, thinking that was plenty of time to get the bag here before I ran out. Geez! They didn't ship it for 3 or 4 days and now it's on the slow boat here, supposed to be arriving tomorrow. 10 days is a little ridiculous. I should have ordered 2 bags (one bag lasts about a month). Next time I will. I have enough for a couple more days, at least.

Well, back to work!

Thanksgiving surprise

Lot's to catch up on after the long Thanksgiving weekend. It started out with a wonderful surprise visit by DD and her BF! They showed up late Wednesday night and stayed until Sunday morning. It was such a great surprise and we all had a great time.

I always buy a big enough turkey so we have lots of leftovers, so that wasn't an issue with originally just thinking it was me and DH eating dinner. The turkey turned out great, so juicy. After dinner we watched the "movie" DD had sent me several weeks ago. It was actually a mini-series of about 7 hours, called 11.22.63, based on a Stephen King book. We all enjoyed it and watched all of it until late that evening.

Friday, DD, BF, and I headed into the city to do some Black Friday shopping.  Easy peasy. Not much crowds - or at least compared to how it would have been where I lived before. DD and BF bought a washer and drying for their new house (BF has a pickup with a canopy). I had a 10% off coupon to Lowes (received in a moving packet from USPS), plus they saved almost 10% in sales tax. We did some other shopping around a few stores. I was picking up a prescription at Target and chatting with the pharmacy assistant. She noticed my old address was in system and asked if I was visiting. I told her we just moved a bit ago and turns out she was from near where I used to live. Then mentioned the town she grew up in and I said that we spent quite a bit of time there at the racetrack. Turns out she knew a family we used to race with. Small world, for sure. On the way back home we stopped in this small town about halfway that has a sign on the freeway for a used bookstore. I'd been wanting to check it out. It was so adorable. In this old narrow house. Bookshelves to the tall ceilings. DD bought a few old vintage books, just for decoration. One was a book of poems by Tennyson, actually published in 1899!

Saturday we took a drive, in search of snow. We didn't have to go too far, really. Got off the main road just over a pass and onto a logging road that DH used to frequent growing up. Very pretty!

We packed a lunch, so on the way back stopped at a visitors center and looked inside (mostly we had to use the bathroom!), then ate our sandwiches as we drove back. The dogs LOVED being out there.

The kids left pretty early Sunday morning, hoping to miss some of the holiday traffic, especially going over the pass. I guess they timed it right, because it wasn't bad at all and they made pretty good time getting back home.

DH sold the big 53' trailer this morning......or rather he traded it for a small dump type trailer you can pull behind a pick up. Figures he'll use it quite a bit when we start working on getting the property ready to build/landscape. Oh well, the money back would have been nice, but this will save money too, rather than having to hire someone to haul various loads in. He will want topsoil this spring for this house, to fix our lawn and add more grass, so he can go pick it up himself now. At least the big trailer is gone! I can now look out my window at my desk and see stuff. The grade school is down on the corner of next street and I can see the playground and all the kiddos outside playing and the mountains behind them. Those swings are busy :)

DH left this morning for his road trip to return his friends small cargo trailer he borrowed in our move. - going all the way to Texas (because friend moved there early this year). He'll be gone at least a week or more (so he says). Me? I'm going to enjoy hanging out by myself for awhile :)  Catch up on some tv shows, read some more books, just really relax. If weather permits, I will go into the city next weekend sometime, and try to get some Christmas shopping done.

Fences make good neighbors, right?

The fence guys came back today and so far about are half way done with the fence. It's going to be sooo nice. 1) it will keep the dogs in the yard and give them much more room outside. 2)  it will keep the neighbor kiddos OUT of our yard (have I mentioned them yet?) 3) it already looks much nicer than the old fencing. It has a top rail now and it's all pulled nice and tight, not all saggy looking, like before.

Yesterday I came across a good deal on a KitchenAid classic mixer through Kohl's. I've been sitting here all week trying to figure out what to use the $20 Kohl's cash I have to use by tomorrow (I bought DH some Romeo shoes/boots for xmas and earned the Kohl's cash). I thought DD might really like one of these (I know I really like mine) and I've also had in the back of my mind I'll need to get her a housewarming gift.

I texted her and asked her if she'd like one. Like me, she's not some super baker, but it is nice to have to use when you do bake something. Like me, she really doesn't need the super fancy, expensive ones. (though in my book, even the classic models are expensive!). The color choices were white (which I have) or silver (which appears to look stainless in the photo). She said heck ya, she would love one! She choose the silver, which should go good with her stainless appliances. All in all I think it's a nice housewarming gift.

The posted deal was using a 15% off coupon code, but I had a 25% coupon code that I had received as a moving promotion, making the deal even better. It was regularly $300, on sale for $229 - which doesn't fool me. I know you can get these classic models for $199 at several stores, but that's usually the lowest. This deal was $229, less the 25% off, less my $20 Kohl's cash, less a $30 mail in rebate (DD will save me the upc code and packing slip), and $45 back in Kohl's cash. Plus I think I earned enough points for a $5 Kohl's rewards back. Making this about $77 when all is said and done. Pretty good deal, I think. I just had it shipped direct to DD. Now I gotta figure out what to spend $45 in Kohl's cash on.....xmas gifts, most likely.


I'm ready for it to be tomorrow at noon, so I can be done working for the week and enjoy the days off and good food.

New normal

Yesterday was a very different day for us. An ordinary day for most folks, but a new kind of normal for us. We actually left the house for half the day, without a care or thought. We didn't have to worry about setting and watching security cameras, or who was that suspicious person (ie drug addict/thief) walking down our street just as we were leaving. Nope, we left and didn't have to give any of that a second thought! Wow, we haven't been able to do that in several years. I had forgotten what it was like.

DH took the dogs and went and visited a friend for a few hours. I went into the city and did some shopping. I actually got home before him. Last night DH was just about in tears as he was telling me how great it felt to be able to leave his house and have no worries and not feel like he was going to get robbed if he left his house unattended. He hasn't had that peace of mind for a long time. It was hell getting here, but I think we have achieved our goal.

Not sure what we are doing today. He doesn't have any projects to do. Maybe we just drive around and do some "sight-seeing" of our area. He mentioned there is an old ghost town nearby he'd like to check out one of these days.

TGIF already

I can't believe how quickly the week goes by now. I had thought maybe it would feel the opposite  now that I am working from home 100%. Another difference I have noticed living here is I hardly ever take a nap anymore. I think I've taken like two the 6 1/2 weeks we have lived here now.

Overall our internet seems be be fairly sufficient. Coming from very high speed cable internet, I was a bit concerned about it! We now have DSL throught our telephone, but it's only like 8mbps download speed (though when the guy hooked it up and tested it he said it was showing faster, but didn't say how much). It will be the same service when we build our house on the property. Our old IT guy at work hadn't really been able to give me a definitive answer on what minimum speed I'd need to work remotely. All in all it's working fine for me. At times it's a bit slow trying to use Quickbooks remotely, but not too bad. The upload speed is pretty bad, but thankfully I don't have to do that with working remotely too often. I did have to upload a file for my side job and it failed until the 3rd try. I was getting worried for a few minutes!  Watching streaming movies and shows has worked fine too, so all good. Supposedly there is some new internet service in town that is supposed to be faster, but I checked into it and speeds are same for much more money, so I'll stick with what I have.

It got cold here last night. down in the 20's and only 27 degrees right now, mid day. No snow yet, though still predicting some next week. Looks like it will be just me and DH for Thanksgiving dinner. DD has to work Friday, so they aren't coming, and our old good neighbor was going to come, but he couldn't get out of being on call that weekend. He's always offered to be on call since he has no where to go Thankgiving, so had already been signed up for it this year. No biggie.  While I love the food, the day hasn't ever been that big of deal to me.  DH and I will still have dinner with all the trimmings. We have a movie that DD sent to us we can watch that day, too.

Looking forward to a very short work week next week - 2 1/2 days!

Mid week this and that

Is it really Wednesday already? The days seem to be just flying by. It's getting colder. We had like 3 flakes of snow today, LOL. They are predicting some this evening, but the weather report seems to change by the minute around here.

I was going to go into the city this weekend and get all my Thanksgiving food, but I'm going to get it all here at the town grocery store. I got the weekly ad and everything Thanksgiving food is on sale. I stopped in today, after I went to the Post Office, to pick up milk and a couple of things and also picked up a Butterball frozen turkey. That's when I decided I'll just save the trip to the city and get my holiday dinner stuff this weekend. What little I might spend extra I will save in gas, so it probably all evens out this time.

I use Progressive for my car insurance and when I had to get a new policy for moving to a new state they also offered me to do the snapshot device again. I said I already did that, but apparently with a new state it's basically all new rating, so might as well do it again. They aren't going to get much activity on it - haha! I hardly drive much anymore and most times when I do it's one mile into town and back. Don't go over 25 mph LOL

DH is going to Texas after Thanksgiving. Take his friends little cargo trailer down to him and visit with him a bit. Last night he tried to talk me into going. Ehhhh, no thanks. We'd have to take the dogs and the thought of 4 days (2 days there and 2 days back) riding in a pick up doesn't sound good at all. Besides, I was really looking forward to some me alone time - well, me and the dogs).

Well, not much else going on today. I have some bananas I bought to get ripe so I could make banana bread this week and they are ripe now, so I think I'll go get that done now that I'm done working for the day.

Figured out the right time :)

Ok, so I finally made a decision on a wall clock! I don't think I ever checked Target's website (though I did check in store) in all my searching. I found this





24" clock. Pretty much exactly what I wanted in style and really what I wanted in price. $37 bucks is all. Plus I threw in $13 of something else I could use to make it $50 and got $10 off my order and saved the Target red card 5%.  I think that's a pretty good deal and didn't break the bank at all. Hopefully it will look as good up on my living room wall.

Here's the new guest bed we got for our guest bedroom

I'm short a pillow on one side to put behind the pillow in sham. I'll just pick up a cheap pillow next time I'm at Walmart or Target. As you can see I'm also short some wall decor! Eventually I'll get something for over the bed. Ross is a good place to find cheap wall art....as well as Goodwill :) I'm not totally digging the comforter.....I picked it up at Kohl's prior to the move, using up a $50 giftcard I had. It's ok I guess, but I do really like the bed, itself. I ordered it from Home Depot, of all places. I found it online at various stores and Amazon was cheapest but they wouldn't ship to my address for some reason, so I paid about $10 more and Home Depot had no problem shipping it UPS.

Today's chit chat

The fence guy (and his son) got started yesterday. They got all the post holes dug and posts in concrete. He had to re-do all the posts that were in the existing fencing. Again....done half-assed. Dug deep enough, mostly filled back with dirt and just a little concrete. Apparently not how you do it. Now he has to let them sit for about 4 days or so and then he'll be back to finish. It's going to be so much nicer for the dogs to have more space....though right now there is no fencing at all for them, as he had to take down the chainlink. So, now we have to be out with them each time they go out. That's kind of annoying, but hopefully he'll be back soon and finish up.

Today DH is starting on his garage shelf project. I had found this on Pinterest some time ago and he's doing something like this:





This should keep him busy for a few days, except of course he has to paint the wood!

We are supposed to get some snow tomorrow morning. We had a couple of weeks of really nice warm, near 60 degree weather. Then it started raining this weekend, but still fairly warm.Not really what I expected for November here, but works for me.

DD and her BF's house purchase is moving right along. Now closing has been moved up to Dec 13. After the inspection, I guess they made a revised offer and asked for $6000 towards their closing costs and the seller agreed, so they were really happy about that. She is pretty bored with her job. Just not enough to keep her busy. She plans to stick it out for a year and then look for something new and more challenging.

My half sister is a grandma now. That baby boy is the cutest thing and she is, of course, very in love with him :)

I'm going to our annual year end company meeting mid-December and my boss has been nice enough to book me a flight over there. I'll fly in Thursday evening, go to the meeting on Friday and visit DD and my mom through the weekend and fly home Sunday afternoon.

Back from a little blogging break

Last week was a busy one for my jobs. Trying to get financials done for both and I had gotten a bit behind with taking time off last month for moving. But I got it all done. Sure made for a quick week. Plus, Friday was my half day and I really wanted to get it all done so I could have my half day off. I drove into the city and got my 2 weeks of shopping done (sorta). I'm not sure I'm not sure I really like trying to do 2 weeks worth in one trip. It's too hard on me, physically, to tell you the truth. Just getting all the soda (DH drinks alot) and water on the cart makes it so heavy and then start adding in all the other stuff on my list and the cart is so heavy by halfway through the store it's all my muscles to get it turned around corners, etc. Then my back starts hurting. I take a cooler with me to keep the frozen and refrigerated stuff cold on my way home, but it's hard to get 2 weeks worth in there. I'm almost thinking that it would be better just to drive the 45 minutes each way once a week (at least during the good weather months). I could shop in town (I do a little bit) but most things are way more expensive. Though I did get eggs for .69 a dozen in town last week!

We had a guy come last week and kind of finish the walls in our attached garage. Basically prep them so we could paint. Originally DH had also wanted him to texture the walls, but the guy recommended us saving $300 to pay him to texture and just primer and paint as it was after he got done. Glad we did. Looks fine. We put on the primer Wed evening and then painted it on Thursday afternoon/eve (another reason I didn't have any time to post!). It looks a lot better than just drywall with some mud over the nails.

Saturday DH's friend came to help again (we have been giving him some money for helping, even though he doesn't want to take it, we make him!). First, the 3 of us went to breakfast at the restaurant in town. This time they fixed something that broke on the 53' trailer we had bought to move all our shop/garage stuff in. It's fixed and we have it for sale (praying for a quick sale on it) now. They also put base board trim around the garage floor/walls. We still need to put trim around the door that goes outside.

Sunday DH and I spent a good half of the day washing the concrete floor in the garage (he's so OCD!). I don't think it really helped much - seemed like a lot of work for not much result, that's for sure. DH is going to build some wood shelving up above where the garage doors open, so that will give him more storage space. 

Today a guy is here getting started on the fence project. The fenced in area we do have (just front and part of side yard) was done so half-assed! The fence guy is basically having to re-do it :/ Oh well, at least it will look good when done and be done right now - as well as give the dogs much more space outside.

I want a large distressed looking type clock to put on one wall of my living room. I am having a heck of a time deciding! The one or two that I really really like are  $300 range. I'm not paying that. I've found a few others I like in the $50-$150 range, but I just can't decide on one.  Now I keep flipping back and forth between a more barnwood face/rustic look and one that is rustic/antique looking, but not like slats of wood. Plus I don't know if 23" is really big enough. I might need to go 30". I tried to eyeball it using a tape measure, but I think I'd be better off just to cut a circle out of some paper and visually look at it that way. I also saw a you tube video on how to make one out of pallet wood (we have tons of that now!) and I'm considering that option too, but I'm afraid I won't do a very good job of it. I CAN'T DECIDE!! So, in the meantime I have this big empty wall, haha.


I was pleased with the election results and am hoping to see much more reasonable health insurance premiums next year. Guess we'll see what happens with it, along with that I'm hoping the economy finally picks up.

We also got our mattress for the guest bed and that is all set up now. So comfy! Hopefully those that sleep on it will like it. I think it might become my napping spot :)

Happy day

My little girl is getting all grown up, that's for sure. She turns 21 this month and she and her BF made an offer on a house that got accepted yesterday. They looked at 8 or 9 homes in the area they want to live, which is much closer to their jobs and will cut their commute time down by less than half. They found one they really liked last week (after looking at it and another one) but looked at 7 or 8 more on Wednesday and that was still the best one. It's really nice and will be a great house for them and something they can grow into over the years. It's 1700 sf, 3 bedrooms, on a decent sized lot in a good neighborhood. They are very excited to say the least. They are scheduled to close just before Christmas. Her BF works with a guy who does home inspections as a side job, so he is doing that for them this morning. I'm so proud of them.  They both work hard at their jobs and their lives to be productive and successful.

DH rented the forklift from the lumber store and spent all day yesterday getting that 53' trailer unloaded and figuring out how to fit it all in the shop and garage. True to his OCD and organizing skills, he even drew it all out on paper the night before. LOL.Most of it he's just going to leave on the pallets, so it will be pretty easy to get it all settled in their spots. Thankfully it was a sunny 60 degree day (though super cold in the morning!) to do all this. Very excited to have this trailer emptied out and up for sale soon! Recoup some of our moving expense money. Hopefully we can get out of it what we paid for it, but anything is recovered cost. I think if we had hired a mover it probably would have cost $5,000 at a very minimum to move all the stuff we moved. Probably more closer to $10,000, because all the shop stuff was a trailer load in itself, not even including our home stuff. I can't remember what we paid for the trailer. I think it was $4000 or $4500, we paid someone $1800 to haul it over here, paid to rent a 26' u-haul truck and a small u-haul trailer, plus gas. Whatever we can get back with the sale of the trailer will have us under what it would have cost to hire a company to move us.

This morning the guy was supposed to show up almost an hour ago to get started on tape and texturing our garage. No call either.  Frustrating, to say the least. DH spent a good half hour this morning moving stuff out of the garage to get this started. He's going to be pretty upset if this guy doesn't show up. At least a darn call to say he's running late would be nice.

This morning I pulled the sheets off the bed, have some laundry going, got the kitchen clean (though it wasn't that messy). I think I might make a cake today. I will probably take a trip to the store to see if they have any fresh mushrooms for my homemade pizza and pick up our mail at the post office. That will take a whole 20 minutes, LOL.

Still in project mode

We went into the city yesterday afternoon/early eve and got a queen mattress set. A little more than I was planning to spend, but I ended up getting a floor model that was over $900 for $449, so I'm happy. Felt super comfortable, so hopefully guests will like it. It might end up being my napping bed, haha. I already have the bedding for it, that I picked up with a Kohl's gift card I had before I moved. I do need to get a queen sized blanket though. I should be able to find something reasonably priced at Ross, Target or Walmart.

But, I don't have it here yet. DH has been storing his pick up, car trailer and our old "someday it will be a classic" car at friends big shop. He took my car to his place yesterday, left it there and brought home the trailer and old car with his pick up. Ready to store here, now, but he's not quite ready to store his pick up yet and doesn't want to leave it parked outside (especially because little 2 or 3 year old  neighbor girl is a rock thrower...gRRR....), so we took his pick up back to friends, but first went and got the mattress set. So, we just left the mattress set in the back of the pick up inside friends shop and drove my car home.  Friend might come over on Saturday, and if he does he'll bring it in his truck. If not, DH will be ready to park his pickup inside our garage later next week and we'll get it all then. I wish I could get the bed all set up now! oh well.

Winter has been holding off, so that is good. 60 and sunny for a few days. We've got someone coming Saturday to start on the tape and texturing of the attached garage. Then next week sometime we have a guy coming to finish fencing the property. Plus, he has to actually fix the existing fencing. The previous owner just did a half-assed job. When he got to a corner he just pulled it around the poles, rather that stopping, cutting, attaching to pole and then starting a new run. Plus he never put top rail on it, so needs that too. I'm sure it will look much better when it's all finished. Then we are done with our big projects for this house. We have a couple of small things to do inside the house this winter, but should be under $500. We're going to add a medicine cabinet to the master bath. The one I have picked out is $146 and matches the hickory wood vanity cabinet. DH would like a sink in the laundry room and that is $100 at Lowes. We also want to add some inexpensive cabinets up above the washer and dryer and I'm estimating less than $200.

Down the road there are a couple pieces of furniture I'd like to add. We have room in our living room for a sofa table and a book case - both of which I want for our new home, when we build it, so after we get done with the above projects, any extra money we spend will mostly be to go towards something for the new house/property. I think I will watch on Craigslist and see if anything comes up.

Here is my solution to the guest bathroom that doesn't have any linen storage. I bought this cute little stand at Walmart.  I need some nice new towels to roll up and put on the bottom shelf. I found a great priced set when I was at Ross last week, shopping for DD's birthday, I have no idea why I didn't buy it!

This way I get some place to leave some towels and it's something I can take with me to the new home. Double win.

Wednesday chit chat

One of the 3 choices of health insurance I have to choose from, for DH, was having problems with their website yesterday, when I was first looking. The other 2's premiums were about the same ($600). I was able to get online with the 3rd company yesterday afternoon and got at least some better news. Their premium for DH would be $511. Still a ridiculous amount, but at least quite a bit cheaper. Still just infuriates me that I have to pay $6000 a year for what amounts to catastrophic coverage, plus still pay a huge deductible, copays, coinsurance and prescriptions aren't even covered until deductible is met.

In other news. I had to buy a new pillow for sleeping. I left my pillow at my mom's accidentally the day I moved. It was starting to get old and flatter anyway, so I told her just to toss it out. I tried using one of our extra pillows from what was on the kids beds but for a good week or two my neck was hurting and headaches. Since I was a kid I have always used a latex foam type of pillow. Not that easy to find these days (with all the memory foam now so popular) but  Bed Bath and Beyond carries it so I ordered one online and it came on Monday. I feel so much better now!

I figured out a way to at least watch some on demand shows via Dish. I can watch some shows via my computer, but not stuff from HBO (the plug in won't install for some reason), but it loaded fine on my ipad mini, so I have been catching up on the last season of Game of Thrones using my ipad. Apparently the satellite box I got doesn't allow for on demand. I got the "Wally" since we only have one tv and I didn't think I needed the Hopper, which has dvr. I can apparently get on Demand through the "Wally", if I add an external hard drive to it and pay a set up fee...I don't know all what. Seemed way to complicated to me. I'll just watch the shows I miss on my computer or ipad.

DH is going to finally be able to start unloading that 53' semi trailer into the shop. He found a forklift to rent (for  like $100 a day) from the town lumber store. He's going to get started on that tomorrow - the weather is supposed to be really nice the rest of the week) and thinks it will take him 2 days. He wanted the inside of our attached garage finished, with tape and texture, so he can paint. A guy is coming to do that on Saturday. It will be interesting to see how it all fits in both the shop and garage! Square footage wise they both total what our old shop/garage did, so it should be pretty do-able. Plus the shop has almost a quarter of it with a loft area, he can also store. He is going to add overhead shelves in the attached garage, up by the ceiling (I saw it on Pinterest) to store extra stuff, too.

The bed I ordered for the guest room also came on Monday. Now just need the mattress. We are going to go into the city later this afternoon, after I get off work, at get a queen set purchased. I'm not going to spend too much on it. It will hardly get used, probably just a handful of times a year, when DD comes to visit. I see the store we are going to go to has a couple of sets on sale for around $300. I'll see how they are to lay on and hopefully one of them will be good enough as a guest bed, otherwise I might go up to the next price level. I called this morning and they have one of the queen sets in stock, so we could get it all done in one trip, which is what we are hoping to do. DH really liked the bed frame I purchased. I'll post a picture of it, when it's all set up and bedding on it.

It sounds like our old "good neighbor" might drive over for Thanksgiving. He's had Thanksgiving with us for quite a few years, so of course before we moved I mentioned to him a couple of times he's welcome to still come have Thanksgiving with us :) He and DH still text and email. He said our old yard hasn't been mowed since we left, LOL.

The company I work for had another huge sales month for October. Our year end bonus should be in the bag after that month. Still 2 months to go in the year and we are almost at our year end goal. Woo!

UGH!

I was able to check into 2017 health insurance plans and rates for DH today. UGH!!!!! Health insurance is much more expensive in this state, plus I only have 3 insurance company choices. I was paying $353 a month for a Bronze plan for him before. Here the cheapest plan is $603 a month. I checked 2017 prices on his old plan/state and it would have went up to $418 a month (18% increase). Now I am facing an extra $250 a month - for the same CRAPPY coverage.

Seriously,  who in their right mind, thinks this Obamacare is a good thing? It boggles my mind. I'm sure the reason it's so much higher here is because this state (and especially this county) has a majority of low income/subsidized residents, so I'll be paying for their premiums in the $603 a month for DH. Just wonderful.........

I'd save over $5000 a year just not having health insurance on DH and paying the 2.5% penalty and paying office visits, prescriptions, etc out of pocket. With the huge deductible everything common (an office visit or two per year, prescriptions) all are out of pocket anyway. Of course, that doesn't protect us if he had a major health problem and that's all this $600 a month/$7200 a year is really paying for.  SO Frustrating!

I could add DH to my work health insurance, but it would cost me about $1000 a month, so I've always opted for the individual plan health insurance and shopped around every year. Pre-Obamacare I paid $272 a month for DH  AND 2 dependents!

I pray pray pray that Trump gets elected and something gets done about this. Who knows if it really will, if he does get elected, but I know for damn sure if Hillary wins, it won't.