I try to live these things.
1. Be kind.
2. Help if you can.
3. Forgive.
4. Don't seek revenge or hope bad things happen to people.
5. Live a life of peace as much as possible.
6. Don't allow violent, angry, vengeful, or unkind people in your life.
7. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Not "treat people how they treat you." To do the latter means you're just as bad as they are. Be better than that.
8. Patience is a virtue.
9. "Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."
10. Two wrongs never make a right.
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~*~Nocturnal Queen~*~
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Thursday, April 26, 2018
Friday, April 20, 2018
No Air, The Park, Tornado
Tuesday afternoon, April 10th, I noticed that it was feeling kind of warm in our house. I turned the air down, but it didn't come on no matter how low I turned it down to. So Charlie contacted someone and they sent out a repair guy the next day. (It got down into the 40s that first night and was chilly in the house that Wednesday morning, but warmed up later.) He said something about a transformer and a fuse maybe and whenever he did get it running, something would trip and it would quit working. They had to order some parts, which they said could take two to three days for them to receive. So, we'd have it fixed by Saturday or Sunday? No. No weekend delivery or something. They weren't able to come back and fix it until this past Wednesday. We went more than a week without heat or air.
It got pretty warm in here during the day and we had a lot of fans going. Most rooms had two fans each. Of course, it was only cool in front of a fan or below a ceiling fan. But thankfully it's not summer yet or an above average spring. We've lost our air a few times in the summer (and at least a couple times in winter) and it was kind of miserable. I don't know how people survived without a/c or fans before they were invented.
Saturday and Sunday were the warmest days in the house. (About 77° or 78°.) Saturday night was pretty uncomfortable, too. It only got down to about 74° inside. We live in a one-story house and can't leave our windows up at night. It was either Monday night or Tuesday night that it got down into the 30s. It was kind of cold in the house when I got up the next morning (about 66° inside), but tolerable with the proper clothing and blankets.
Anyway, as I said earlier, the repair guy came back Wednesday afternoon and got it fixed pretty quickly. It's been nice having a/c (we'll need the heat at night as it's supposed to get down into the 30s and 40s) and not hearing multiple fans running in the house.
The repair guy said that since our heat pump is so old (20), the next big thing to go wrong, like a compressor, could be it and we'd have to buy a new one.
Thursday, April 12th, Kelly and I went to the park. We brought Milo (Charlie's Jack Russell) with us. He's getting fat and needs the exercise. lol Plus, he enjoys it. We didn't stay long, but it was a nice walk. I took only three pictures. Here's two of them.
Sunday, April 15th, we had some wind and rain. They said there was a chance for hail, severe lightning, and possibly tornadoes. Sometime after 5:00 that evening, I heard a strong gust of wind (stronger than how it had been blowing), but didn't give it much thought. A few minutes later, I looked out the living room window and saw that the chair that's normally on our front porch was gone. It had been blown into our side yard. We get strong winds from time to time, usually with thunderstorms, but that chair has never been blown off our porch. Even with gusts in the 40-60 mph range.
Shortly after that, a tornado touched down about 10-15 minutes northeast of our house. It was a high EF-2, nearly an EF-3. It's not unusual for us to get tornado watches every spring and occasionally there will actually be a tornado, but rarely one as big and strong as the one that hit our city this past Sunday. Over 1000 structures have been damaged, some schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year (possibly longer) - students from those schools are being sent to other schools, many are without power and can't live in what's left of their houses. I imagine some houses will have to be bulldozed because there's not enough left to just repair. The worst the thing about it is the tornado hit a mostly low-income area of the city. Thankfully, only one person died. Though even just one death is too many.
It's quite a shock, not just because of the damage, but because it's so rare for this area to get a tornado like this. Even with tornado watches, tornadoes don't usually touch down and when they do, they're smaller than this one and short-lived. I read that tornadoes here usually only stay on the ground for about 5 miles. This one was on the ground for either 16 miles or 33 miles. (I've heard both.) A tornado touched down in South Carolina from this same line of storms that came through here. After the tornado in SC and then the one here, a tornado also touched down in a town north of here. It did some damage there too, but it's a smaller town with much fewer people and didn't destroy as many structures as it did here.
Clean-up will take some time - weeks or months. Places are being opened as shelters for those who can't stay in their homes. Churches and other groups are cooking meals and providing water, clothing, and other necessities. People are donating money to the Salvation Army. Money that will go directly to the people affected by the tornado. The electric company is working hard to get downed power lines up, poles fixed or replaced, and the power back on.
I'm almost done reading After You by Jojo Moyes. Less than 100 pages to go. It's not as good as the first one (Me Before You), but I like it.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
~*~Nocturnal Queen~*~
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It got pretty warm in here during the day and we had a lot of fans going. Most rooms had two fans each. Of course, it was only cool in front of a fan or below a ceiling fan. But thankfully it's not summer yet or an above average spring. We've lost our air a few times in the summer (and at least a couple times in winter) and it was kind of miserable. I don't know how people survived without a/c or fans before they were invented.
Saturday and Sunday were the warmest days in the house. (About 77° or 78°.) Saturday night was pretty uncomfortable, too. It only got down to about 74° inside. We live in a one-story house and can't leave our windows up at night. It was either Monday night or Tuesday night that it got down into the 30s. It was kind of cold in the house when I got up the next morning (about 66° inside), but tolerable with the proper clothing and blankets.
Anyway, as I said earlier, the repair guy came back Wednesday afternoon and got it fixed pretty quickly. It's been nice having a/c (we'll need the heat at night as it's supposed to get down into the 30s and 40s) and not hearing multiple fans running in the house.
The repair guy said that since our heat pump is so old (20), the next big thing to go wrong, like a compressor, could be it and we'd have to buy a new one.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thursday, April 12th, Kelly and I went to the park. We brought Milo (Charlie's Jack Russell) with us. He's getting fat and needs the exercise. lol Plus, he enjoys it. We didn't stay long, but it was a nice walk. I took only three pictures. Here's two of them.
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Sunday, April 15th, we had some wind and rain. They said there was a chance for hail, severe lightning, and possibly tornadoes. Sometime after 5:00 that evening, I heard a strong gust of wind (stronger than how it had been blowing), but didn't give it much thought. A few minutes later, I looked out the living room window and saw that the chair that's normally on our front porch was gone. It had been blown into our side yard. We get strong winds from time to time, usually with thunderstorms, but that chair has never been blown off our porch. Even with gusts in the 40-60 mph range.
Shortly after that, a tornado touched down about 10-15 minutes northeast of our house. It was a high EF-2, nearly an EF-3. It's not unusual for us to get tornado watches every spring and occasionally there will actually be a tornado, but rarely one as big and strong as the one that hit our city this past Sunday. Over 1000 structures have been damaged, some schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year (possibly longer) - students from those schools are being sent to other schools, many are without power and can't live in what's left of their houses. I imagine some houses will have to be bulldozed because there's not enough left to just repair. The worst the thing about it is the tornado hit a mostly low-income area of the city. Thankfully, only one person died. Though even just one death is too many.
It's quite a shock, not just because of the damage, but because it's so rare for this area to get a tornado like this. Even with tornado watches, tornadoes don't usually touch down and when they do, they're smaller than this one and short-lived. I read that tornadoes here usually only stay on the ground for about 5 miles. This one was on the ground for either 16 miles or 33 miles. (I've heard both.) A tornado touched down in South Carolina from this same line of storms that came through here. After the tornado in SC and then the one here, a tornado also touched down in a town north of here. It did some damage there too, but it's a smaller town with much fewer people and didn't destroy as many structures as it did here.
Clean-up will take some time - weeks or months. Places are being opened as shelters for those who can't stay in their homes. Churches and other groups are cooking meals and providing water, clothing, and other necessities. People are donating money to the Salvation Army. Money that will go directly to the people affected by the tornado. The electric company is working hard to get downed power lines up, poles fixed or replaced, and the power back on.
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I'm almost done reading After You by Jojo Moyes. Less than 100 pages to go. It's not as good as the first one (Me Before You), but I like it.
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~*~Nocturnal Queen~*~
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Thursday, April 5, 2018
Easter, Music, Books, School Update
We had a beautiful Easter. Church was awesome. We had about 450 people there for our Easter service. There was great music (Risen, The Great I Am, Shine on Us, Clean), an awesome skit by the youth, a song in sign language (Alabaster Box), another drama/skit/sticks thing (a song about the blood), and then our pastor preached with the Spanish pastor interpreting like they do on the missions field in other countries. Our Spanish church was combined with our English church.
I think our church does it better. More "mmph"and power. :-)
Not really crazy about this song.
Not a favorite of mine, but it's okay.
Not our church, but this is the skit our youth did.
After service (which we didn't stay for), there was hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill (multiple grills), a bounce house for the kids, a petting zoo, candy rain from the roof of our building, an Easter egg hunt on the back lawn, a mini iPad giveaway, and I don't remember what else.
My family and I came on home. I made French toast and bacon. After eating, I went to bed for a few hours because I'd only slept about 3½ hours or so the night before. Thankfully, I didn't feel tired at all during church, but it hit me after eating.
My kids didn't get Easter outfits this year for maybe the first time ever. They weren't really interested. Which kind of makes me sad, but it's fine. Sean wore a black suit with a pink shirt and black tie. Kelly wore a turquoise top, black pencil skirt, long multi-colored cardigan (turquoise, off-white, black southwestern style print), and black heels. Charlie wore black pants and a purple shirt. I wore my new pink dress with a short-sleeved white shrug, new white heels with pink flowers on them (scroll down two entries to see the dress and shoes), and a purse I got at JC Penney this past Friday or Saturday.
The weather Easter Sunday was absolutely perfect! Sunny and temperatures in the low 70s. I can't remember the last time we had such pretty weather on Easter. Most Easters over the past several years have been cloudy and chilly and sometimes rainy. I'm so glad this Easter was what it should be. Growing up, that's what I remember Easter being like - sunny and warm. It's one of the things I always loved about Easter when I was a kid. I'm sure there were probably some not so nice Easters, but I must have blocked them out. lol
A day or two before Easter, I did a little shopping and got some pretty good deals.
When Easter Sunday came, I was leaning toward the pink dress that I ended up wearing, but had the shrug or the shoes (floral or nude) not looked right with it, I may have had a hard time deciding between the white one, the black floral, or the white with black piping I bought a couple months ago.
Since my last entry, I've read A Court of Mist and Fury and A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas and High Voltage (10th book in a series) by Karen Marie Moning. I loved the two Court books and would've given them 4½-5 stars at GoodReads if it wasn't for the fact that these sexually explicit books are being sold as teen/young adult books. They are very adult! The thought of teens reading them and some idiot thinking, "Yeah, these are good for teens" and deciding to sell them as such shocks me and kind of makes me sick. So that took away from the enjoyment a little bit. I gave them each 4 stars. Not a huge deduction, I know, but giving them less than 4 stars wouldn't really be accurate as the story itself is really good. I cried several times reading ACOWAR.
High Voltage was a real page turner and I was really enjoying it until the last few chapters. I really didn't like what the author decided to do with the main character. I would say more, but I don't want to spoil it. I gave it 3 stars at GoodReads.
I started reading After You (2nd book in a trilogy) by Jojo Moyes a few days ago. I'm not too crazy about what happened to the main character early on in the book (not because it's a terrible thing to have happen to a person, which it is, but because it just seems a bit much to me and I couldn't help but roll my eyes a bit), but other than that, I'm liking it so far.
Sean had been wanting to talk to the class assignment people and financial aid people at his school for sometime and finally got to speak to them a few days ago. (They weren't returning calls or emails.) Apparently, and I'm not sure I completely understand this, all but the math course he's taking are not necessary for his major. The reason they put him in English and Public Speaking and Humanities(?) and Psychology and whatever else he might have been taking is because they thought he was going for some kind of degree (he's not; he's going for a certificate in airplane mechanics/power plants/whatever) and to keep him from losing his financial aid.
I think he said that in May he'll be done or get to drop all the other classes and just do the math. (I forget what kind of math it is.) And then in the fall he'll start with the actual airplane mechanics stuff. And I think he said something about having to pay $200+ for something that I guess either financial aid won't cover or there won't be enough left over to cover or something. I'm not sure of the details.
So all this time he's been taking classes he doesn't need for his major because they thought he needed the credits and the knowledge for whatever degree they thought he was trying to get. I mean, sure it helped to keep the financial aid, but other than that it was a waste of time. And I can't help but wonder if he'd have been able to use the financial aid and just do math and go right into airplane mechanics. Would he already be learning the mechanics part right now with the financial aid covering it? Whatever. I reckon there's nothing that can be done about that. I just hope he has enough aid left to cover the mechanics course. I'm going to be kind of angry if it runs out because the school got it wrong.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
~*~Nocturnal Queen~*~
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I think our church does it better. More "mmph"and power. :-)
Not really crazy about this song.
Not a favorite of mine, but it's okay.
Not our church, but this is the skit our youth did.
After service (which we didn't stay for), there was hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill (multiple grills), a bounce house for the kids, a petting zoo, candy rain from the roof of our building, an Easter egg hunt on the back lawn, a mini iPad giveaway, and I don't remember what else.
My family and I came on home. I made French toast and bacon. After eating, I went to bed for a few hours because I'd only slept about 3½ hours or so the night before. Thankfully, I didn't feel tired at all during church, but it hit me after eating.
My kids didn't get Easter outfits this year for maybe the first time ever. They weren't really interested. Which kind of makes me sad, but it's fine. Sean wore a black suit with a pink shirt and black tie. Kelly wore a turquoise top, black pencil skirt, long multi-colored cardigan (turquoise, off-white, black southwestern style print), and black heels. Charlie wore black pants and a purple shirt. I wore my new pink dress with a short-sleeved white shrug, new white heels with pink flowers on them (scroll down two entries to see the dress and shoes), and a purse I got at JC Penney this past Friday or Saturday.
Originally $50, I paid $17.50
The weather Easter Sunday was absolutely perfect! Sunny and temperatures in the low 70s. I can't remember the last time we had such pretty weather on Easter. Most Easters over the past several years have been cloudy and chilly and sometimes rainy. I'm so glad this Easter was what it should be. Growing up, that's what I remember Easter being like - sunny and warm. It's one of the things I always loved about Easter when I was a kid. I'm sure there were probably some not so nice Easters, but I must have blocked them out. lol
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A day or two before Easter, I did a little shopping and got some pretty good deals.
I got these at Stein Mart. Brand is Amelia Grace. Original price is $59, but I paid about $40.
Dress by Pappagallo. Purchased at Stein Mart. Original price is $99, but I paid $50. I have a weakness for white dresses. And black dresses. :-)
LLoraine shoes from Shoe Carnival. Originally about $50, I got them for about $40. Color: Rose Gold.
Alyx brand dress purchased at JC Penney. Originally $74, I paid $30.
Because I'm short, all dresses go below my knees.
When Easter Sunday came, I was leaning toward the pink dress that I ended up wearing, but had the shrug or the shoes (floral or nude) not looked right with it, I may have had a hard time deciding between the white one, the black floral, or the white with black piping I bought a couple months ago.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Since my last entry, I've read A Court of Mist and Fury and A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas and High Voltage (10th book in a series) by Karen Marie Moning. I loved the two Court books and would've given them 4½-5 stars at GoodReads if it wasn't for the fact that these sexually explicit books are being sold as teen/young adult books. They are very adult! The thought of teens reading them and some idiot thinking, "Yeah, these are good for teens" and deciding to sell them as such shocks me and kind of makes me sick. So that took away from the enjoyment a little bit. I gave them each 4 stars. Not a huge deduction, I know, but giving them less than 4 stars wouldn't really be accurate as the story itself is really good. I cried several times reading ACOWAR.
High Voltage was a real page turner and I was really enjoying it until the last few chapters. I really didn't like what the author decided to do with the main character. I would say more, but I don't want to spoil it. I gave it 3 stars at GoodReads.
I started reading After You (2nd book in a trilogy) by Jojo Moyes a few days ago. I'm not too crazy about what happened to the main character early on in the book (not because it's a terrible thing to have happen to a person, which it is, but because it just seems a bit much to me and I couldn't help but roll my eyes a bit), but other than that, I'm liking it so far.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sean had been wanting to talk to the class assignment people and financial aid people at his school for sometime and finally got to speak to them a few days ago. (They weren't returning calls or emails.) Apparently, and I'm not sure I completely understand this, all but the math course he's taking are not necessary for his major. The reason they put him in English and Public Speaking and Humanities(?) and Psychology and whatever else he might have been taking is because they thought he was going for some kind of degree (he's not; he's going for a certificate in airplane mechanics/power plants/whatever) and to keep him from losing his financial aid.
I think he said that in May he'll be done or get to drop all the other classes and just do the math. (I forget what kind of math it is.) And then in the fall he'll start with the actual airplane mechanics stuff. And I think he said something about having to pay $200+ for something that I guess either financial aid won't cover or there won't be enough left over to cover or something. I'm not sure of the details.
So all this time he's been taking classes he doesn't need for his major because they thought he needed the credits and the knowledge for whatever degree they thought he was trying to get. I mean, sure it helped to keep the financial aid, but other than that it was a waste of time. And I can't help but wonder if he'd have been able to use the financial aid and just do math and go right into airplane mechanics. Would he already be learning the mechanics part right now with the financial aid covering it? Whatever. I reckon there's nothing that can be done about that. I just hope he has enough aid left to cover the mechanics course. I'm going to be kind of angry if it runs out because the school got it wrong.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
~*~Nocturnal Queen~*~
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