Back when I was in the Navy, serving overseas, they only had one television station on base -- Armed Forces Network. Of course, you could always tune into the Italian stations, but if you wanted American shows, AFN it was.
As with anything, there were some people who were simply impossible to please. You should have heard the complaints! "Why are you showing religious programming on Sunday mornings? I don't want to watch that!" And "What's up with all the kids' shows on Saturday?" Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
Through all that, AFN had one redeeming factor -- their commercials. And I'm saying that with a huge dose of sarcasm. It was a long running joke among servicemembers about how bad those commercials were. A specific one that came to mind this afternoon was of a sailor dressing to go out on Friday night. He was smoothing his hair in the mirror and said to himself, "I got my pay today, and I'm going to spend, spend, spend like there ain't no end." Then his conscience appeared in the mirror and told him he needed to save first, so the young sailor sat down and wrote himself a check...all righty then...
But what does that have to do with today? Well, I'll tell you. It's because today, I spent, spent, spent, like there wasn't an ent ... or end, but that doesn't rhyme.
OK, here's how all that spending started, back when Beverly and James moved back to Texas, they gave me their old Christmas tree. The house they moved in to is much smaller than the house they had here, and they just didn't have room for it. It's a gorgeous tree, and I love it...but it's just too big for my little living room. I have to do some serious furniture rearranging every year to make room for it. The last couple of years, I keep saying I'm going to get a new tree, but I can't seem to find one I like.
There is one at Walmart that I like, and is the right size, but it's clear lights, and I like multicolored. I've been looking on Amazon, and places like Joann's and Michael's websites. This morning, I decided to get up and go to Lowe's in Batesville to see what they had.
On the way there, I made one additional quick stop. See, I was adding someone to my Christmas card list, when I found a little bag of Christmas themed rubber stamps. I've had them for a while, and have never used them. I thought I'd give them a shot this year. To do that, I needed some stamp pads. Walmart in Grenada had the pack on the right, but the other ones were out of stock.
Since I was going to be right across the street anyway, I stopped into Batesville Walmart to see if they had them, and lo and behold, there they were. Soon as I'm done here, I'm going to go try them out. I'll let you know how it goes.
Once that was done, I went on over to Lowe's. Where I found a tree I really like.
It's 7.5' tall, with a 54" base. My old tree has a 60" base, so this is exactly what I was looking for -- size wise at least. It's got multi-colored LED bulbs, but there are only 500 of them. No problem, though, as I can always string more. The only real problem I have with it is it's not very realistic looking. The needles are plastic, and you can tell. I'm thinking it's not going to make much of a difference from across the room, but I'm going to do a little more looking around before I buy it.
As it happens, I've been trying for a while to hire someone to come out and pressure wash my house. I had couple of people have come and give me quotes, but none of them have shown up to actually do the job. It seems to be a common thing around here.
As it also happens, after I'd looked at the Christmas trees, I turned around and there they were: pressure washers on clearance. The one I chose was marked down from $120 to $80.
It's just what I needed. I'll probably only use it a few times a year, mostly to keep the moss off of my back stoop. It did a bang-up job on that. Here's the before picture:
But at least now, I won't be slipping on the moss and falling on my behind every time I go outside.
My pressure washer has a detergent thing that I've got to figure out how to use. Then, maybe I can get the stains out of my car port, too.
And finally, a couple of days ago, one of my knitting friends posted some yarn she was trying to destash. I quickly asked, and the price was right, so I got it -- as if I didn't have enough already.
I was thinking I could add some of it to my sock yarn blanket, but a couple of them have enough to actually knit socks out of. I'm definitely going to knit socks from this one.
I like the way it was knitting up. I'm going to have to rip this out and start over. I can't wear plain vanilla socks because of my absurdly skinny ankles.
In the meantime, I need to get busy on my other socks...like finding a pattern to knit. That's help, wouldn't it?
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