7 Days of Thankfulness #2

Made week 2! Here are seven things I was thankful for this last week:

1. Hubby gave me my anniversary present early so I can get used to it before the trip in October because it’s a new Nikon – the D7500, which is not only new but an upgrade from my last one.

It came bundled with an 18-300 lens (which means no more lens swapping – I currently had two lenses, with the biggest being something like 50-200 and the other being like 18-50 [I’d have to look to see the exact numbers and I don’t care enough]), and it has some awesome features. The live view is MUCH improved – my old model was the first one to have live view on it, and it was pretty rough. Also it has Snapbridge, which allows me to send photos straight to my phone, meaning no more trying to take a picture of the view screen to share something to facebook in a hurry. And of course it has a higher ISO (wOOt!) more focal points (super wOOt!) and other upgrades. The functions are similiar to the old one, but buttons are in different places, and it has new functions, too, so it will take some time to learn. I am currently working through the very thick manual, though of course I’ve taken some weird test shots, like Dad at 300 zoom:

2. I was thankful that our fizzy friend Mustard has been all right. There is a chance we will take him to the vet next week and then try introducing him into the household. We’ll have to see.

3. I am grateful to Catie Muller for tagging me in the daily song challenge on Facebook. Without her tags I would never remember to do it, but with them I have reached Day 30 and beyond (it’s a sixty day challenge).

4. I was also thankful that the Mediterranean Chicken and pasta recipe I tried turned out good. It tastes exactly like a Bertolli bag dinner we used to buy (but which has been discontinued).

5. I was super thankful not only that hubby got Friday off unexpectedly, but that Niantic also continued the legendary birds for an extra day (they were supposed to end Thursday). And I’m grateful to the awesome Omaha Pokeon Go players for being willing to hit the raids that allowed me to get the Lugia I was missing, and hubby to get the Articuno he needed.

6. on Saturday i was thankful that we got a lot of pressing yard work done. The brother and I still need to put plastic down and finish up some things, but we’re a lot closer than we were.

7. I was also thankful to get the blue on deck 90% finished on Sunday (what’s left requires a ladder). Now we need to do the red on the bottom of the posts (we’re going to buy rosettes and paint them red for the tops) and then it’s on to the gray.

And that was the seven things I was grateful for last week! Let’s hope this week is just as great!

Have a Lugia kinda week!

Jo 🙂

PS – a bonus shot of my cool eye shadow:

 

Random Iowa Photos & Fulfillment

Finally. Today, after a year of playing Dragon City, I have accomplished my goal: I beat Candi Davenport’s dragons!

Gwahahahahaha! While this does not matter to her in the slightest, I am quite delighted. Especially since she’s still several levels ahead of me (and truthfully has probably not played it in awhile. Oh well.) Truth is, when I started playing Dragon City she was my highest leveled friend – at the top of the totem pole – and this is why beating her is a thing. Plus she beat my dragons up a few times when they were tiny, ha ha!

I also had some Pokemon fun:

The eggs are in front of the cafe… I call it “Tomorrow’s Omelettes.” And that’s Pikachu #3. One more and I’ll have enough candy to evolve him to a Raichu in a hat.

Not much else, so I will share some random Eastern Iowa photos from our trip. (Lucky you)

Skunk River

Oakland Mills bridge

Corn

A cool building

Oakland Mills Bridge

And now I am going to either edit photos of Mount Pleasant or get back to organizing Facebook photos. Hmmm.

Have a beating Candi kinda day!

Jo 😉

 

Pikachu in a Hat

Today I am grateful for having already caught the anniversary Pikachu:

Hubby has to work a lot of overtime this weekend so we probably won;t get time to go pokemoning in Omaha. Luckily, for once, I caught the special pokemon in my own town. Amazing.

A lot of people on Twitter are bitching because they want some huge thing for the anniversary. I wish they’d quit whining. I’m not in any hurry for the “Legendaries” they’re screaming for because it will just be uber powerful pokemon that people like us can;t get (We don;t know anyone to raid with but the three of us, and there doesn’t seem to be any other players around so we already can;t do the yellow egg raids as it is.)  And as for Gen 3 I haven’t caught all of Gen 1 yet! Let alone Gen 2! Great for them that they live in an urban area and have everything but most of us don’t. I’ve quit other games because they spend so much time catering to those with no lives who need in-game content 24/7 because, considering I get an hour or so a night in a rural town, I find it overwhelming. And I know I’m not alone. Who wants to be overwhelmed with a game that is supposed to be relaxing and fun?

The rash is getting better. Still there, but it is a bit lighter I think. Hubby thinks so, too. I hope it is gone by the time I go to Missouri but I doubt it will be. Bleh.

Have a pickachu in a hat kinda day!

Jo 🙂

AR Fun

I know it’s supposed to be Blogophilia tonight, but between one thing and another I’m not done yet. I have two of the prompts worked into the story (a continuation of last week’s) but haven’t made the third yet, so I’ll have to do that tomorrow.

Today was one of those one thing and another days. I had company (which I enjoyed, might I add), had to cook, pokemoned for about 45 minutes extra just because it’s the start of the Equinox event (more ice and fire types and extra XP),  etc etc. so I didn’t get a lot done. There’s always tomorrow, I guess.

Anyway, I thought I’d share my fun AR shots I took tonight. AR – Augmented Reality – is what the pokemon game is built around; the idea that reality has been added to – aka with the pokemon that pop up in real world places. They have a cool feature that let’s you play that way, or just take photos. I haven’t done much with the photos in the past, but I’ve decided to try to get some fun ones because while catching a pidgey may not be exciting, taking a photo of a pidgey perched on a tree would be a lot of fun.

Taking a shot is actually a bit challenging because you have zero control over where the pokemon shows up in the screen. And it isn’t a matter of, “Oh, he’s at the bottom, so he’ll stay there when I lift my phone up.” No, he stays rooted where he is, as though he was *really* there, and if you move your phone too far he just disappears off frame. SO a lot depends on where your phone is aimed when you switch to AR mode, and then it’s still a matter of getting it lined up by changing your angle, and… anyway, it’s a “thing”.

Also, I mentioned dinner? We had Native tacos, which are so, so good!

MmmMMMmmmMMmm.

Oh, and hubby said the soap from yesterday’s remelt blog worked just fine. he compared it to sandpaper, in fact, so maybe fewer coffee grounds next time. Then again, maybe the sandpaper is a good thing.

And now I am heading to bed and will write more tomorrow. I also need to get my party stuff worked on for Saturday.

Have a pulling Pikachu’s tale at Walmart kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Thankfulness #119: Time with Hubby

Today I am thankful for spending time with hubby. Despite what he thinks, I did enjoy watching TV with him all day and having junk food for lunch and pizza for dinner:

We caught up on NCIS New Orleans to the tune of five episodes. We also did a snidgel of pokemoning while we waited for the pizza to cook at Casey’s:

 

He was cranky about y politoad because it is a poliwhirl using a kingstone evolution item, which he has the time but enough enough poliwag candies. However, he had the same chances to catch them I did, so kind of his own problem.

And now I am off. Have a politoad kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Thankfulness #103: Pokemon Go Plus

Today I am thankful for hubby getting me a Pokemon Go Plus:

 

I’ve wanted one for awhile now, but it’s been cost prohibitive. However, he’s been working overtime lately (which is another thankfulness point because it was sweet of him to use his overtime money for that when he is the one having to do five 12 hour days and not me.)

He had to order it online and site to store it to Walmart, so went to pick it up and of course had to test it. I caught a couple of new ones:

 

And finally got my Ponyta evolved:

Yay! Also worth mentioning, I finally got a chocolate shamrock shake:

Isn’t that pretty? I think it’s the prettiest shake I’ve ever gotten from a McDonalds – and we got in Glenwood of all places!  Not that there’s anything wrong with Glenwood, per se…

And now I close this to go through and make a list of all the scenes I need to add into the book. Though I’d rather draw paperdolls, as weird as that is.

Have a Pokemon Plus kinda day!

Jo 🙂

 

 

Thankfulness #97: Pikachu

Yesterday we went to Omaha first the weekly shopping but since it was nice we stopped at the park and then the Gene Leahy Mall (also a park) where I caught…

And then made:

It took several tries because the buggers kept running away, but at last!

I’d say more but I have work to do. Have a Pikachu day!

Jo 🙂
PS.  Playing with hats at Walmart 

Thankfulness #87: Pokemoning Fun

Today I am thankful for hubby taking me pokemoning for a couple of hours. We just went to the park in Red Oak, where a lure was going. Apparently with the Valentines event, lures go for six hours (holy cats!)

So I walked back and forth between it and the other pokestop in the park. Thanks to that I got enough steps in to hatch some eggs, including a Machop that, with the double candy of Valentine’s event, gave me enough candy for an evolution:

I also caught a Ditto:

Yes, he’s a tiny ditto, but he is mine.

Along with the six hour lures and double candy, there are also lots of pink pokemon running around:

Can we say Jiggly Puff?

But, I think the crowning event was at the end. I have pokemon in three gyms, A Vaporean and Jolteon here in town, and a Rhydon in Stanton – that has been trapped there for a couple of months and will never come home to me. But I get a gold bonus for having them in gyms, so today we hit the ones in Red Oak, hoping to add a bit more to that bonus. Both were already red (as are we), but we battled up the first and I stuck yet another Vaporeon in it (it had three already). Then we went to the second where the line up was nearly identical, including three Vaporeons, with the exception of a Rhydon that made me miss mine even more. I battled that gym up, opened a slot, and went to pop a pokemon in  – only it wouldn’t let me. Hubby suggested I restart, but that did nothing. And then a nasty suspicion dawned on me… Sure enough…

That was already MY Rhydon. He’s not in Stanton – he’s in Red Oak! Well who knew???

So, anyway, we cut off after that to come for WWE Elimination Chamber, only then hubby crapped out after the Cruze/Ziggler/Kalisto match, so we’ll have to finish watching it tomorrow.

Have a finding your Rhydon kinda day!

Jo 🙂

 

Thankfulness #46: Cooking

Yesterday I was thankful for a few things: the pokey tree is gone, I hatched one of the new baby pokemon:

I got to do a little pokemoning around town:

We played with the slushy maker because the brother had never even noticed we owned it:

And I made a Beef and Beer pie which turned out lovely and delicious. It’s the same recipe we did for Halloween,  though then the bro did a lot of it.

And that’s what I’ve got. 

Have a happy penguin window display kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Christmas

Christmas has come and gone, but it went well. We got those cookies done:

I finished making Mom’s present – the body is paper mache, the wings are cloth stretched over wire, and the fur is feathers. I am pretty proud of how it came out since I had no idea what I was doing and no directions of any kind:

 

I can’t say the weather was as cooperative, but though we didn’t get snow, we got some beautiful frost on Christmas Eve:

That day I also got an awesome early birthday present. A pair of lucky socks and an amazing homemade heating/cooling pack set whose cover matches the super amazing towel quilt (which I have my feet covered up with right now, incidentally):

That night we had our annual party, which involves enough munchies to last the entire week as leftovers 😉

Since we have a dinner with extended family on Christmas day, we opened our presents that night, too. We were supposed to give exclusively homemade gifts (or at least mostly homemade – like I had t-shirts printed up, but I designed them and did the art work) but some of us *cough* the brother*cough* didn’t want to cooperate with that, and of course Dad always just gives everyone gift cards. So, in the end we relaxed it and said we could buy stuff, which turned out good for me, because my dad is impossible to make something for. However, he did good with an airplane calendar, Trek jammies, and one of the two 35 MM film frames from the OS Star Trek (the other is still – hopefully- being shipped)

The hubby got a clock, a minion dish to keep all the stuff out of his pockets in, and an awesome Weedle shirt designed by me (and printed at Allied Shirts)

The bro also got a shirt, a LotR coaster set, and a Millennium Falcon blue tooth speaker.

And I cleaned up with a neck pillow ala hubby (he pulled out the stuffings and filled it with corn so I could heat it up for my neck – yes, people have been thinking about my neck this year!), a demon Harry from mom (Harrys are a legitimate thing in our house, we have a whole bunch of them from when we were kids that mom made – I apparently don’t have any photos uploaded except for the last Harrys we got, which was probably ten years ago.), while the brother opted for a large towel pillow, however it is waaaay too big, so we have to do some alterations on it (yes, I have a thing for the towel-y texture of towels. I find it immensely comfy). And then Santa (aka also the hubby) saw fit to gift me with a Ninja Coffee bar and some coffee:

So I had to try that out:

Yummy!

Christmas day was really warm, and we had the big family dinner that I didn’t get any photos of. mainly because it was so short that what time there was I spent either in the kitchen cooking or eating. Not sure why it was so short, since the weather was nice, but it went well, so that’s what matters. Hubby and I had plenty of time afterwards to clean up, do dishes, do some internet stuff, and then go look at Christmas lights. Essex usually has an amazing display, but this year they didn’t have very much at all. I guess people there had the same problem I had with not really feeling it this year. Though I admit, I finally got to hear some REAL Christmas music on the drive there and back – you know, stuff that is actually about Jesus and the angels, and all the stuff Christmas is based on rather than “Happy Holidays” and “Baby it’s cold outside”, and all the other secular crap that Slacker and those kind of subscription services play (don’t dare play the real stuff, do we?) so that did give me a burst of Christmassy feelings right there at the end. Now I know next year to f*** Slacker and all the rest and listen to the local country station (yeah, not being a fan of modern country, who knew??)

Also, going to Essex gave me the chance to take some gyms, and have some fun Christmas Pikachu fights:

Monday we finally hit the AMC in Council Bluffs to see Rogue One:

It was a good movie, and we all knew how it had to end because none of those characters are in Episode IV. Which is a shame because they are good characters. Seeing a young Leia and Peter Cushing in the movie was surprising – the wonders of CG – and I did miss the last five minutes because I had to run to the bathroom *sigh* but we’ll buy it when it comes out, so not a huge deal.

So, there was my Christmas. Now we’re back to business as usual-ishness (at least until New Years weekend). Hope your holiday was just as good!

Have a ninja coffee maker kinda day!

Jo 🙂