Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Werewulf's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, March 25th, 2012
12:07 pm	My how time passes In about a week and a half, Dutton birthday season begins. Alys will turn 19 on April 4 Rick will turn 51 on May 2 (there he is going over the hill in front of me again...) Niko will turn 21(!!!) on June 12 I turn 51 on August 11 Kat will turn 23 (holy moley, that is unquestionably in the adult range!) on August 28 Also, on June 6 (D-Day and my parent's anniversary date as well) Rick and I will celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. All those years when kindly little old ladies would see me struggling with my toddlers while shopping and pat me on the shoulder and say "Enjoy it now Dearie, they'll grow up so fast" suddenly takes on new meaning. How the heck did this happen? I don't regret a minute of it all, but my goodness, when you look back at it, the years seem to have passed incredibly quickly! Looking forward to gajillions more! Current Mood: maudlin (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 9th, 2012
9:32 am	Inexplicable I'm as much a fan of bandwagons as all the other folks on them. So I thought I'd let you know that Kevin's peas are frozen. I don't even know why I'm telling you this, but it amuses me to do so. Current Mood: silly (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 28th, 2011
5:14 pm	House sold? Okay guys, Looks like it's some sort of a reality. The buyers actually signed all the paperwork over at 6306 Dry Stone Gate with Pindarus in attendance this morning. Tonight (due to a glitch from a very unprofessional and annoying notary) a *different* notary will be coming out with all the paperwork for me and Rick to sign. We should have our check by Friday if all goes well tonight and the Maryland house of the Duttons is completely no more. As soon as the New Year's madness is over with we will look to refinance the house in Park Ridge so that we don't have any large random amounts of money lying around to bother the tax collectors. Wish me luck, I"ll comment when the paperwork is all the way signed, sealed and delivered. (Or if you're a Buckaroo Banzai fan; sined, seeled and delivered...) Note for those of you who follow me on Twitter, this will be a duplicate journal entry so that I can catch as many friends as possible. Current Mood: ecstatic (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 12th, 2011
2:00 pm	Recovering from stupid things You know how sometimes you do really stupid things, and you're in denial so you don't even check to see what you can do to fix those things cause you're overwhelmed by life? I finally decided to deal with my problem and discovered that it was fine and that I had absolutely nothing to worry about. That's 3 months of stressing about something that I could have avoided. I'd feel even stupider, but I'm very relieved! And no, I really don't want to share what I thought I'd done, but rest assured that it was VERY stupid and hopefully all of you are much more organized than I am! Current Mood: relieved (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
3:56 pm	Question about your thermostat Hey all, The new house has temperature zones. Now that the worst of summer is over here in Chicago, it's time to start thinking about winter. Of course as always, I like it way too cold and Rick likes it way too warm, so I figured I'd check in with everyone else and see what you keep your thermostat at. I'm looking for your regular setting for Winter and for summer. If you have a programmable thermostat, do you change the temp during the day when you are out of the house, if so, by how many degrees? If you go away on vacation, do you change your thermostat or do you just leave it on your regular settings? It was a glorious 55 degrees last night. I kept the window next to my bed open all night since Rick was in Copenhagen, gotta close it soon and start warming up the house before he gets home in an hour or so! Current Mood: curious (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 10th, 2011
2:20 pm	Tomorrow is my birthday You'd think that the fact that tomorrow is my birthday might have twigged me to what the heck was happening when I got the mail this afternoon and found a big box from a vaguely familiar sounding address in Maryland. It didn't. So I opened it. The box opened and the AMAZING smell of genuine Constantia spice cookies wafted out! RIGHT... I have a BIRTHDAY coming up. Box has been closed back up until tomorrow! (and thanks Stan, I look forward to treating myself tomorrow morning FOR BREAKFAST!) Current Mood: hungry (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, June 12th, 2011
8:38 am	Driving to Chicagoland So there we were, about 5:30 in the morning, heading off to move away from Maryland *sniffle* The cats were each in their own separate carrier with a towel and a little bed and of course both of them were so restless and pissed off that they promptly squirbled up their bedding so that they were kind of crammed into the carriers with only the hard plastic to lie on. Whimsy managed to eventually arrange things so that she was lying in the kitty bed most of the time, but TSoD was determined not to be comfortable. We had arranged it so that Whimsy was the cat who could see forward, since she is usually the more curious of the two cats, and she meowed pitiably all the way to the first rest stop. Then we switched the cats and TSoD took over the meowing. In fact, aside from about a 2 hour stretch where they fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, both cats spent most of the trip complaining. In the mountains in Pennsylvania, we hit a big rainstorm (exactly when we were stopping for the first time to let the kitties out of their cages to drink a bit and use their litter box - luckily they weren't that interested.) The rain stuck with us all the way into Ohio, which is good since we were listening to the Hard Rain soundtrack and *properly* that should be listened to in Ohio! Once we got past the rain, it started to get steamier. Rick had warned me that they were calling for 100 plus degrees in Chicago that day and we were definitely heading towards that weather. We did minimal stopping along the way, because of the kitties, grabbed lunch in shifts with one person sitting in the car with the air conditioner running, and then FINALLY made it to the "Welcome to Chicago" sign. There's only one problem with that sign. It's south of the city and we needed to be north... and we'd arrived JUST at rush hour. Suddenly our "about 12 hour" trip turned into a "more than 13 hour" trip, but when we got to the other end of the city things finally cleared out a bit and we headed on to Park Ridge. I'm sure that at some point in my life, I"ll figure out the way AROUND Chicago, but so far, the only route I know to get to and from Indiana/Ohio is straight through. Gotta spend some time studying maps, cause Chicago is REALLLY good at rush hour. And by really good, I mean REALLY sucky!! Anyway, we finally made it to the new home. We brought everything into the house from the car and then carried the kitty carriers up to the laundry room where we were gonna put catbox and food so that they could start out in a smallish place and not be overwhelmed by the new place. Of course Whimsy is Whimsy and (just like when she was a new kitten in our old house) insisted that she get out to explore RIGHT AWAY. Both cats were somewhat put off by the slightly steeper stairs with no carpeting, but within minutes they were exploring away having a grand old time. We've started the socialization process, "no, you can't walk on the granite countertops where we cook food, yes you can walk on the granite countertop over by the window where we probably won't cook food." It'll take a while but they're sure to come around eventually! I wandered around and followed the kids as they also explored the house and we also frantically spent some time trying to figure out how to reprogram the thermostats, being as how it was a million frikkin' degrees outside (and in.) Eventually figured out the temporary program override, which is good since a couple of days later, there was an amazing thunderstorm followed by a drop down to about 50 degrees. We've settled out here at a reasonable 60-70 degree series. Weatherwise, I'm totally loving Chicagoland. Not much more for the week before the moving van showed up except to note that Alys had her college orientation scheduled for the same day that the van was *originally* supposed to show up (note that originally) and so Kat ended up driving her to Ohio while I remained behind. Of course, about an hour and a half after they headed out, I got a call from the trucker to say that he'd had a flat tire and wouldn't be here until Saturday. Ah well, at least I had a quiet day... went to bed way early and started to make up for the lack of sleep caused by the drive out. Next entry: Stuff Arrival Day! Current Mood: pensive (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, June 10th, 2011
9:55 am	That Toddlin' Town So after way too many adventures, here I am in Park Ridge, Illinois, just north of Chicago. The last few days in Maryland were insane to say the least. The movers took two full days to pack everything, and when they were gettting set to leave on the second day, we found three or four spots that had been missed. No worries, they said they'd just pack them before the loaded the truck.... I got a call from the moving company on Thursday night asking if they could bring the truck over on Friday (loading was beginning on Saturday) and I said sure, but bring it before 3 since we have a lot of neighbors who park on the street and we'd need to be sure there was room. So right about 9 AM this HONKING big truck showed up. Rick and I got Shadowfax and the Catbus out of the garage and they parked the truck in front of the house, blocking the garage. Friday night and Saturday morning we loaded the van with tons of stuff that needed to go to the dump, most especially a couple of pieces of furniture which were only hanging on for as long as we had stuff piled around them keeping them from falling over. In case you're curious, we lost the computer desk that Alys uses and the games cabinet in the sunroom. Stephen's parents came over and helped load my van and then drove out to the dump with me and helped me offload so that I could get back to the movers quicker. By Saturday evening, we had an entire table full of stuff that had been missed in the packing (actually a SECOND table since the movers had packed the first batch right away when they arrived in the morning) and the movers told us not to worry, that everything would make it on the truck and then they left. They came back Monday morning and loaded ALL DAY LONG, but the truck was locked and headed away at 5:30. Dangerous timing because I needed to get my cable modem and boxes returned to comcast which closed at 6. I drove like a (very sedate) maniac and managed to return the boxes in time... phew! Every day for the last few, we had bunches of friends come by to hang out. Monday night was no different. I had thought we'd relax a bit, but the poor folks who were there found themselves trying their best to keep a frantic Werewulf from going insane while we looked at the ENORMOUS pile of stuff we'd kept out (or the movers had refused to move) and tried to figure out how it would all fit in the van. We played tetris for a while with the lowest level of stuff but finally I thanked everyone and said it was bedtime... the plan was to get up at 4 AM and start on the road to Chicago by 5. Oh that alarm came early!! I wouldn't have gotten up promptly, but kdsorceress was spending a final night with V and tolkienkookad's boyfriend was coming to see her off, so up I got and headed to the shower. We were planning to leave air mattresses and bedding since the girls and I will be returning to Maryland the last week of June for Girl Scout daycamp, so we collapsed the bedding and put it away in the linen closet. And then the friends started showing up! You know you feel loved when your friends come over at 4:30 in the morning to say goodbye to you. We had the entire Holt family, Jeremy, macaroniandtuna, Stephen and his dad, and Alex. Everyone helped load up the cats into the cat carriers, stuff the remaining things into the van and then waved us farewell as we headed out of the garage. And so the drive began.... (I'll do another post soon about the drive out here, this was a lot of writing!) Current Mood: poignant (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
8:05 am	What a costumer! Got a friend who is having a breast lopped off right this minute. I can only assume she wanted an extremely authentic amazon costume. But seriously, if you're overdue for your mammogram... please go get yourself checked, and soon. Posted via LiveJournal.app. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 24th, 2011
8:48 am	A lovely surprise I was visited by a brownie last night... I've been pretty overwhelmed with the house and trying to clean up after everyone and trying to get the world a bit better for me. My room is a mess, most of the house is a mess and lots of things are just piled up everywhere with plans to deal with them "eventually." Last night, I was exhausted and couldn't face it and just headed off to bed and when I woke up this morning, I found a note on the kitchen table from a brownie. It reminded me of the Girl Scout story about the helpful brownie and apologized for not being around as often as he should have been. My kitchen was clean and organized and there was a cute heart made out of chocolates sitting on the counter for me. There's a lot more house to deal with, but somehow it helps to know I'm not alone in this. Thanks Brownie! Current Mood: less whelmed (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 31st, 2010
12:38 am	New Year's Eve Party Yeah well there's a New Year's Eve party here on New Year's Eve. I totally meant to send out F.O.G. mail but I spent lots of time being jetlagged after being trapped in England and then I was just way to damn disorganized. Please... if you're out there and wondering if there's a party, let everyone know there is. Theme this year is Time Warp'd: Come as any of the past or future New Year's Party Themes (if you come as one of the future themes please let me know what the theme is so that I can make sure we don't cause a rift in time by never having that theme as a party. OR if you wish, come as anything or anyone from Greykell's past. Hope I see some number of you all. Current Mood: bouncy (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 13th, 2010
11:30 am	F.O.G. - Friends of Greykell Just sent out my regular F.O.G. (Friends of Greykell) mailing announcing the birthday party. LOTS of bounces... if you want to be on the list, which sends out email 2 - 3 times a year mostly announcing the annual birthday and new year's eve parties (plus at least one shill a year for donating to the Challenge Walk team) then please send me email at FOGLIST@greykell.com and ask to be put on the list. I'll forward you the birthday email immediately and meanwhile you can enjoy the comfortable fact that you'll definitely be on the list to receive my coveted new address in Chicago when I move there next May/June! Hugs and Howls.... Current Mood: procrastinating (Comment on this)
Monday, August 2nd, 2010
12:36 pm	Fine Living One nice thing about the time I've spent at Rick's fabulous apartment in Park Ridge, it's pointed out a few things to put on my list of what I'm looking for when we buy a new house. Like, the counters in Rick's apartment are just a bit too high, they're beautiful, but I have to stand on tiptoe to spit in the sink when I'm brushing my teeth. That seems silly and I'm not sure I would have noticed the problem if I wasn't living in the apartment for a few weeks. Also, there's only one towel bar in Rick's bathroom and really no room for two because of the fabulous shower and the AMAZING tub (and to be honest, I'd rather have the great shower and tub, but it'd be nice for both me and Rick to be able to hang up our towels at the same time.) While we were on the road back, we stayed at a Hampton Inn that was being remodeled with all new stuff, the bathroom had one of those nice wooden square hole things with towels rolled up and placed inside each slot, then a towel bar hanging underneath. I got to thinking that THAT'S what I really want. To have a nice enough place that my guest bathroom has a fancy schmancy thing to hold towels. So what's that thing called and how can I find one for sale on the internet. I can't seem to find anything like it on my initial google searches. Other things I KNOW I'm looking for in a house... I finally had a chance to use a good programmable thermostat and it worked great, I think I want one of those. Even though Kat hated the lights in Rick's apartment I really liked them. Just about all of them are the type that you can set the level of dim, then when you turn on the light it cycles up from dim to whatever you set. It's so much nicer than AUGGHHH BRIGHT when you turn on a light. So those of you who are living in houses... what features do you wish you could change if you bought a new house today, what features can't you live without? I think I'm starting a real live no kidding around list for when we start house hunting in January or so... Current Mood: cheerful (30 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 1st, 2010
10:32 pm	Home again, home again, jiggety jog The Duttons who normally live in Maryland have returned to Maryland from Chicago. Time to curl up on my couch and watch my TV. Then I'll get food out of my refrigerator and go upstairs and sleep in my bed. I'm going to be very happy in Park Ridge, Illinois when I finally move there, but I want my stuff to move there with me! Posted via LiveJournal.app. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 24th, 2010
7:45 pm	Nostaligia!! So Kat and I were wandering around in a kind of a ratty Toys R Us the other day and found the 5 dollar dvd bin. Not much to buy there except for the Frank Langela/Dolph Lundgren version of He Man... EXCEPT!!!!!! I also found Season 1 (including the pilot I have never seen before) of ULTRAMAN!!! My earliest tv watching memories that belong to me were watching Ultraman followed by Dr. Who (Jon Pertwee) on Channel 5 back during the Watergate trial era. Both shows were constantly being preempted for trials which annoyed the heck out of me (and in the case of Dr. Who made it very hard to follow what was going on in the episodes.) I just finished watching my first Ultraman episode since sometime in the late seventies and it was glorious. GLORIOUS I TELL YOU!!! Current Mood: nostalgic (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 16th, 2010
12:58 pm	My Online Class and Poetry I have spent the summer so far, taking an online English course because my goal is to actually finish my AA in General Studies from Howard Community College before we move to Chicago next year. The course is online because of working at Girl Scout daycamp at the beginning of the summer and because the fam and I have travelled to Chicago to visit Rick and see the world I"m gonna be living in after May of 2011. Anyway.... we've read short stories and plays and have now moved on to poetry. Each week, we have to write a journal entry for the teacher's eyes only about the things we have read that week, then we have to do an online posting answering random prompts that the teacher posts. We also have to respond to our classmates, at least two responses per question. This is theoretically designed to get a good solid discussion going, although to be honest, most of my classmates are unbelievably stupid and it's sometimes a chore to find anything erudite to say when responding to their posts. So like I said, we've moved on to poetry and I've already turned in the poetry journal that was due this week and I moved on to the online postings. One of the prompts was to write a poem similar to What a Poem is Not by John Hegley. I had a great time writing the poem in a way to hopefully drive my classmates crazy. Kat suggested that I post it here. So for your random enjoyment, my poem for my English class: Not Is Poetry A poem is not a palindrome, yet Doppelganger shows me wrong, A poem is not onomatopoeic, but the words buzz, ping and zip along. A poem is not eponymous, but heroes Aeneas and Beowulf may disagree, A poem is not thersitical, but look at Decorum and see what you see. A poem is not Ragnarok, although this one ends abruptly, A poem is not a yashmak, Yet any Recondite student can Turn to Esoterica and Obfuscate through Poetry. I admit to being a lover of sesquipedalian words and used this unmercifully when given the instruction to “have fun.” If any of the words in my poem give you trouble, I recommend a visit to dictionary.com for definitions. Poems referenced in my poem: Doppelganger by James A. Lindon Decorum by Stephen Dunn also, the Aeneid by Virgil and the epic saga of Beowulf whose author is long lost in the sands of time. Current Mood: poetic (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
8:36 pm	My spring vacation (this is KILLER long, fair warning) Yeah so I wrote all about this in tiny little snippets on twitter and facebook, but I haven't been writing on LJ for a long time. Part of it is that I feel obliged to actually produce content when I post here. There's so much space to write in, as much as I want or need, and I feel guilty doing a quick, "Today I cleaned the house" kind of a post that works so well over on facebook and twitter. Still... a couple of weeks ago I flew out to Los Angeles for my friend Zeph's 30th birthday party. Zeph is an convention nee online friend who I met through Tribe fandom close to 10 years ago and she had a fantastic plan for a birthday party. For those of you who've heard me talking about Accomplice in New York City, there's also an Accomplice: Hollywood, and Zeph was having an Accomplice party!! I dithered back and forth for quite a while about going out to L.A. I'd need someone to watch Alys and make sure she got up for school in the morning, I'd need a ride to and from the airport, I'd need a pile of money to pay for said trip and of course, I have this REALLY pathological fear of earthquakes... so I'd have to go to L.A. That's the place that collapsed into the sea so that the movie Escape from L.A. could take place. After lots of thought, encouragement from several friends, and the help of my eldest, I decided I couldn't miss out on something this cool and headed off for L.A. on an early Thursday morning (left the house around 4:30 AM after getting to bed at 3:30 AM... I was SLEEPY!) But before I left...( To make a long story short (too late) ) Current Mood: geeky (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 10th, 2010
2:24 pm	Want to go see the Orioles tonight? Rick bought a big block of tickets to the Orioles game tonight (7 PM playing against Toronto) and we have 4 tickets left. We'd rather they didn't go to waste, so if you'd like to see the game with us tonight give me a call. STAT! (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
1:20 am	Meme When you see this post, post a poem if you haven't already done it... I LOVE Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I used to read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner to my kids when they had trouble sleeping, it just has such amazing flow in the language. There's no way I could post the whole poem, you'd hate me, but it essentially starts: It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. `By thy long beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ? For an internet version of the whole thing, you could drop by this webpage. edited to fix an errant html tag Current Mood: poetic (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010
7:46 am	Civic Duty: Finished for the next 3 years So yeah, Jury Duty. This has been the Trial from Hell! It was pretty clear to those of us on the jury that this wasn't going to be finished up by today (Wednesday) as we were originally told when we were selected. Each day that we returned, we'd get more and more stressed and a couple of the jurors had sent notes to the judge saying that if it went on to Thursday they would have extreme hardship in continuing. The other alternate got "lucky" with an aunt who was hospitalized and he was set free. Here's a quick overview of how it went for the rest of us. The trial was a very contentious civil trial between a mom and daughter from Korea and a Maryland resident (originally from Korea) who runs a homestay and tutoring business here in the U.S. Mom and daughter felt they'd been cheated, Tutor felt she'd been defamed, there's LOTS more about the case, feel free to ask me but I'm not even gonna try and describe what all we learned. There's just too much. And by too much I mean that after 4 days of listening to lawyers argue with each other and shout "objection" every 3 seconds, we were treated to the judge coming into the jury room last night and apologizing to the jury for the lack of preparation in the trial. She declared a mistrial and we got to go home. I'm FREE!!!!!! A few quick vignettes. *swore in a witness, asked 1 question which set off an objection string and set of bench conferences with the judge that took so long that they eventually decided to set the witness free and quit for the day. 2 hours... 1 question. *Spent 3.5 hours getting complete testimony from one witness, swore in a second witness and then decided it would take too long and that we would come back the next day to continue. The next day, we arrived at 9 AM and weren't taken to the court room until about 10:30 where we were told that all of the testimony from the previous day's witness was being thrown out on agreement by the two sides. *Translation aieeeeee. Half of our witness spoke only Korean, there was a LOT of time taken up in the lawyers (each side had a Korean speaker of their own) objecting to what the witness said before we even GOT the translation. When we were leaving, all sorts of courthouse employees stopped by to tell us that this was NOT how a trial usually goes. Everyone seemed concerned that none of us would ever come in for jury duty again. I'd been on a jury (criminal) many years ago, so I knew it could all go faster, but I'm relieved to find out that not all civil cases are as miserable as this. I came home so drained from the previous few days, that I fell asleep on the couch for 5 hours. Today I get to walk around! And eat decent food! And go outside if I want to!! Life is good. Current Mood: FINISHED! (2 Comments |Comment on this)