I found the new version of Doctor Who starring Christopher Eccleston while I was pregnant, and it’s something I’ve become addicted to. I’ve been watching faithfully this series…now in it’s third year, although Doctor Who itself has been around for a LOT longer in it’s various incarnations with it’s various doctors.

We’re now on the Tenth Doctor played by David Tennant, and this new series has it’s second companion, Martha Jones. I’m so excited to see the series, although this third season is almost at it’s end. The last episode will show tomorrow and I can’t wait to see it, although I must. I’ve been all aquiver with the return of Captain Jack. I just LOVE John Barrowman. I would marry him…if I weren’t married and he weren’t happily gay a girl can dream, and dream, and dream.

I want to ramble on so much about the series but I’m afraid of spoilers for people watching on Sci-Fi where I think the second season is where things are at right now. I loved Billie Piper playing Rose Tyler and the relationship she and the Doctor had. I was so upset with the way the second season ended that I thought I might not be able to continue watching this season with the new companion, but things have been brought together so nicely that I’m eating the episodes up even though I was so sad and frustrated with the way things were. I think the only thing I haven’t really liked, so far, was this past year’s Christmas Special with “The Bride” it had it’s good points, but it just wasn’t so exciting to me as “The Christmas Invasion” and I think I was still hurting from the way things were made to end with Rose.

Anyway, enough from me. I’m keeping myself from other things by rambling about Doctor Who and I really need to stop.

If you’re a fan of Doctor Who Outpost Gallifrey is a great site.

I hate packing. Packing sucks. Especially when you have about a month left on one lease and the other just starting up, because you start to wonder do I need to pack this? Can we survive without it? If we can survive without it why don’t we just toss it?
The tossing it is in direct conflict with my pack-rat nature.

Part of the packing I’ve been doing involves scanning pictures from old photo albums from England into the computer to put into the online album. The photo album is ten years old and aided by the munchkin it fell apart. I decided scanning the photos made more sense than trying to put the album back together or buying another one.

I’m not sure if I’m right or not at this point, halfway through the stack, and with more to extract. The album is one of those which has the peel and stick catch paper…

I’ve found a lot of baby things to pass along to Goodwill and have already taken one batch. Now we have a walker, a baby chair and a car seat that’s good up to one year/20 lbs I’m trying to find takers for.

I’ve been hearing about Blogsvertise on and off from several of my blogging friends, and given the way that things are going to be going on when our move is complete I thought I would sign up to see if I can make as good with them as I have been doing with other blog reviewing services that I’ve been working with. I’m at the point now where I’m feeling comfortable with my blog and writing and what I’m doing so I thought that it was time to branch out.
They have a slightly different way of doing things than some of the other services I’ve seen. You’re offered tasks, and can pick and choose. They have set guidelines overall rather than them changing from task to task, but what I like is in their rules it says that you have 5 days to complete an offer that is sent to you if you so choose. With the way my schedule can sometimes be that’s a very nice thing to see because there have been times lately where I have a couple of days that I can’t sit at the computer checking for offers.
As with most other blog review companies you have to have PayPal and there’s 30 days before you start to get paid; but I’m looking forward to the opportunities this relationship may bring to me.

I find that most of my recipes come from “random intuition”. I’ll decide to cook something and just go with the flow. I have several recipe books but the times I’ve actually cracked them open is nil. Take today for example:

Sake Pork.

I picked up a small pork roast from the grocery store a week or two ago, and decided I would thaw it out yesterday so that it was ready to cook today. When it came to cooking it I thought it would be best to add some thing to it, so that it wasn’t just ‘boring old pork’. So, I chopped up the two potatoes we had left (I’ve been trying to not buy so much and use up what we have so that there’s less to transport) and put them in the roasting pan around the piece of pork, poured a little bit of canola oil over the pork, probably about half a cup, sprinkled some paprika over the potatoes and sat and thought for a moment.
I had a small “personal” jar of sake in the cabinet I’d also bought from the grocery store and poured that over the pork, so the potatoes were swimming and then looking through the cabinet decided that ginger would be good in there too, and sprinkled a coating of that over the pork along with a little bit of nutmeg and coriander.
The pork packaging said for 2-2.5lb it should cook for 2-3 hours on 325. This cut was just over 1 1/2 lbs so I cooked it for 90 minutes and it was just right.

The one problem with “intuitive recipes” is that I’m usually nervous that I won’t be able to repeat them exactly right. So I try to at least jot some notes down. I’ve done okay so far with repeating the success my chicken wontons were, even graduating to turkey wontons and refining the recipe a little bit by using minced meats instead of baking, chopping and pureeing breast meat each time thus shaving an hour off prep time (phew!) but I get nervous that I’m going to poison people somehow. I don’t know why. It’s not as though we have arsenic in the kitchen.

I’m notoriously bad about giving people ideas for birthdays and such. “I don’t know…” etc. My husband usually has to intervene and give people ideas for things he’s seen me secretly lusting after but not voicing.
I’ve been being good, in a sense, this past year and actually when I see something that I would like to have I’ve been adding it to a list on Amazon.com so that when my birthday comes around I’m not in the same boat and frustrating people. It’s been hard work…it’s something that was drilled into me by my ex, that I shouldn’t ask for things. I don’t know if it was deliberate on their part, but it was a mentality I came out with.

So anyway, for friends who may ask, here is the list:

My mother-in-law was taken into hospital yesterday. Prayers and well-wishes are appreciated.
They are intending to drain fluid from her lungs.

The family is all rallying, of course, but considering the terminal cancer. It’s more just making her comfortable.

As an addendum over the next few days while we’re moving there will be posts, but a lot of them are ‘pre-recorded’ and set to post while we’re going to be AFK and without internet. I would like to shout-out Pelf for making me aware of this wonderful WordPress capability.

I know that things are a little weird for you right now; boxes are everywhere and Mum and Dad are running around on a knife edge trying to get everything ready. I would appreciate though if you would stop trying to unpack everything that I’m trying to pack.

You’re going to love the new apartment. It has two whole extra rooms for you to play in, and a playground outside. All the ‘no no’ stuff will be in a seperate room where you can’t get to it so no fewer of those gates that you hate so much. We’ll be able to go around to the playpark and you’ll have a lot of fun meeting the other children that live there.

I would also appreciate it if you didn’t tip out and play in any more food substances. It’s like you’re trying your hardest to make sure we lose our deposit in these last few days.

As we’re rearranging and moving I wonder about us switching certain things out. I wonder if we’re still going to be accepted at our current insurance agent with what’s going on within the family. So, we need to look around. It’s been great for us in the past because all of our insurances car, rental, life all go through the one agent. It’s meant wonderful discounts but it might not be possible any more.

It’s hard to get new everything, we’ve already gone through turning over electricity, weater and phone. At this rate the only thing we’re not having to get new of is cell phones (I hope).

My husband has some life insurance through his employer and I used to through mine. Our son, of course, is too young to have an employer, and me now being semi-gainfully self-employed means that everything has to come from our own seek-and-find. I’ve been looking around for Affordable Life Insurance Quotes, and that sight was useful because it has Rental Insurance Quotes as well, and probably have car insurance too, so may well be useful to us. We’ve been doing pretty well paying only around two hundred a month for three life insurance, one rental and two cars, so hopefully we can keep up with around the same amount. So far all our other monthly payments have been going down. We can swing one going up if nothing much else does.

So, here’s how things are going, cliff note’s version.

Things are not going well in certain ways while going well in others.
I’ve been spending a lot of time packing things up and I’ve been managing to save us a good bit on deposits and activaton fees thanks to the fact that I have good credit. Our debt has gone up quite a bit in the past month though thanks to getting my husband’s car. We’re now $6-7000 in debt, not counting the student loan which hovers there like a lead balloon in Forbearance Land.

We’ve agreed though that once we get moved we’re going to be working solidly to get that debt down. We’ll easily be able to pay off my car, and once that is paid off will start paying on the student loans again, all the while working to pay off the credit cards.
Yule is normally a big time where money was racked up on those, so hopefully this year given we should have my car paid off before Yule we can not put so much on the cards.

The other reason for my net absence is family related. I will not get in to too many personal details or conversation rehashes but I’ve been spending a lot of time with my Mum over the weekend because on Father’s Day her husband left to go to another state for a trip, which he was trying to say was just to “get his head together” but considering evidence found and things which have come out since was in fact to cheat on her with another woman.

Perhaps needless to say myself and my husband would be extremely angry about this, to say nothing of the betrayal to my mother. Her husband’s children, my step-siblings are equally angry about this and rallying behind my mother to help her in anyway they can. For which we continue to feel very blessed.

This weekend saw Him crawling back into town, with all other manner of horrid behavior which just cements the fact that he cares for no one other than himself and needs serious psychiatric help.

So, that big mess combined with the fact that we’re trying to pack and trying to get things together to go sign the lease this week mean that stress levels are through the roof and if I do get on the computer it’s to spend my time doing something mindless like playing Fingerjig 1.7 million ^_^ high score so far.

And before I forget again thanks so much to Kat for sending me those CDs. I’ve actually been getting to listen to them this morning.

…well…that was short-lived on my part.
I came, I saw, I left.
I know I was on the PPP community there and had friended several people I know from PayPerPost and their forums but I realized it was hypocritical unintentionally so, but it was.
There I am with my privacy protected domains, and my aliases, and asking that the staff at PPP would not use my full name online altogether especially if connected with a photo, and there it was on Facebook where far more people I would not want tracking me down would have access to it. I tried and tried to rearrange things with Facebook so that like on MySpace (and I can’t believe I’m actually extolling that service over another but there we go, first time for everything) you can not display your name, but then people who know it can search for you through MySpace…so not that much better, really…anyway. If you’re wondering why I disappeared off Facebook that is why.

I feel less and less safe publically using my name online. Especially not if my surname is involved, and the name I use with my business isn’t actually my given first name. So, now you know. I do prefer going by that name because I like my middle name better BUT it’s not legally the name I have to use to sign contracts, so there we go.

And now I must go because my son escaped his high chair and has just done with a thing of sour cream I thought I had already put away what he did with the chocolate yesterday >_<;; this is a FUN age.