I Will Love It

We going to stay. I can't say I really "love it," but staying is the least bad alternative. I will have to pay a fair amount of extra money but not as much as I would pay if I were to move.

I just decided that moving was too much trouble. I don't want to do it right now. The whole idea just exhausts me.

Love It or List It

I'm ok with big changes like moving when those changes are my own choice. I'm not so ok when the need to make a big change is trust upon me, like it or not. I just found out that one way or another, a big change will be thrust upon me.

My apartment building was bought by a new company this spring. At first nothing happened. Now, I have been informed, big things are changing. The company is renovating the whole place including all the apartments. We are going to have a series of choices. All of them involve paying more money and some of them involve the trouble of moving.

House Hunters

How about this place?

Because I do have cable TV in my summer home, I do watch TV when I'm here.  HGTV is my go-to channel if I can find little else to watch, and as a result I watch far too many episodes of House Hunters .... this being about all that  HGTV is showing these days.

House Hunters clearly shows that I, like many people, do have a propensity for becoming addicted to something that is very bad for me. I know it's "fake". I've read the inside stories about how the person already has the property under contract before any filming is done. I know the formula very well. I know exactly what will happen before and after each commercial break. I still watch. I don't care. I'm addicted.

Blue Lady Travels in the Red Lands: Bison South Dakota

On SD 21 heading east

Before I tell you all about the town of Bison, I have to give you all some practical travel advice. Remember how I said I bought a bottle of Starbucks Frappucino in Buffalo? I'm hear to tell you don't be fooled by the appearance of  those sweet, little faux milk bottles. If you happen to have one of these wolf-in-sheep's-clothing items in an ordinary cup holder in a Subaru, opened up so that you can swig it while driving, you know, the way you're supposed to do with bottles of liquids you buy in gas station C-stores, and you decide to stop rather suddenly, said bottle will fly out of said cup holder and whatever contents are left inside that innocent little thing will go all over everywhere inside your vehicle. I'm just telling you.

Blue Lady Travels in the Red Lands: Buffalo South Dakota

The road, the grass, the sky. Welcome to South Dakota, a quintessential red state.

I got my new super secure, Homeland Security approved driver's license this week. It has at least two holograms on the front, a big picture and a small picture and half the back is mysterious bar code-y stuff. You can all feel more secure now about flying if I happen to be in the plane with you. I don't get on planes very often these days, so I don't suppose this will effect too many people, but, hey, I'm doing my bit.

I asked my friends on Facebook what this new little card could do for me. I got two good replies....one from Josie who said I could now drive like a madwoman, and then David just wrote "Road Trip!" So I decided to combine the two and take a madwoman's road trip.

I got out the map and decided to check out Buffalo, South Dakota, in honor of Sally T. whose home town is Buffalo, New York and who has been blogging recently about all the neat things to do around there. Next time you find yourself in her part of the country, go ahead and use her blog as a tour guide.  You'll have a great time. There are lots of things to do in the greater Niagara area, many of them involve getting to eat cheese and/ or cupcakes.

I Accept The Challenge

I was there .... on the beach at Santa Cruz CA

One of my very favorite bloggers, Sally, The Unbrave Girl, threw down a challenge recently. She asked all of us to post a full length photo of ourselves on the web and to just STOP being snarky about all the "faults" of our bodies. Here's the full post about the challenge and here is an update with responses from beautiful real women of many ages, from many places.

Goals? or Not?

I have to say that I tend to resist setting goals. This is gotten me into some frustrating circumstances at work in the past when I some years I just refused to do it at all. My real goal for work was probably something like "just keep doing what I am doing as well as I have been doing it (or some better on occasion) and stay employed here for another year" but that wasn't what was needed. I needed to find something that I could try to improve. My supervisor once said in a bit of despair "But how will I evaluate you next year if you have no goals that I can evaluate you against?" Good question. That's the problem with setting up the evaluation system that way in the first place.