Happy new week! It's 2010 all the way!

I woke up to the sound of the snowplow this morning. We're having real January weather and it's sooo tempting to just hibernate. But I made it to the gym yesterday, even though it was only 7 degrees, so certainly can do it again this morning. I only have three days to work out before my knee surgery so can't afford to miss any.

The de-cluttering and organizing project is going well! I got several closets done yesterday and plan to tackle more today. First up is gym and groceries, so I guess I better take a look outside and see what the street looks like.

How was your weekend? What does your week look like?

I stepped on the scale this morning and it wasn't quite as bad as I expected. I now have 2.5 lbs. to lose to get below red line and then another 5 (by May) to get to goal.

I am sooo ready to go back to work . I miss the physical workout I get with the dogs and I miss them. I'm going to look at the snow and cold as a challenge , rather than a hardship.

DH is taking a "getting organized" day (looking at his to-do list on the table) so I will not bug him about anything except putting the chair back in the living room. I got the darn thing on my back (solo) yesterday but was a little hesitant about carrying it up the stairs like that. I think this would need a visual explanation .

Have a great Monday all!

Dagmar

Good morning! One more day until the kids go back to school! Don't get me wrong, I like having them here and all, but I miss my routine.

It's 17 degrees this morning! After the gym I will hibernate and start organizing and purging. This house is bursting at the seams.

Meg, good luck with the surgery!

Hi Dagmar!

Hi maintainers,

Getting back into the routine as well.!
today is my official BOP (back on plan) week, and i started with 30 mins treadmill followed by getting the car out of the snow cardio.

Decluttered 1 room yesterday, and I'm planning on doing 1 room or even 1 closet at a time. Luckiliy it takes less time on every round, either I'm getting ood at this or my amount of clutter is decreasing.

Meg - when are you sceduled for the knee thing?

Dagmar - Photo with you & a chair on your back ?...I have strange visuals of this, you look like a turtle!

Ward - 17 F is about -8 C ??? We had -6 this night, and everything is covered in snow. Its COLD! Our floor heating is getting extremely popular with the cats...

Have a great day all,

Good morning everyone!

Meg, talk about hibernating, DH and I slept for 10-12 hours each night of our three-day weekend. It was tough getting up after only 8.5 this morning!

Dagmar, you asked this in the other thread, but if you want to search the recipes thread, click on the thread, then look in the upper right corner. There is a "Search this Thread" button. Too search all of the 3FC forums, go to the "Search" button which is in the middle of the purple strip at the top of the page.

Ward and Rabbit, it is cold here too! 11F at the moment (that's -11C). We took the dog for a very short walk this morning and my legs were so numb I wasn't sure my knees were still there.

Ah! So glad we don't have to deal with snow! (I won't mention that we're looking for a high in the mid 70's today).

We went to see Avatar yesterday. What a great movie! DH was feeling generous and paid for 8 of us at the IMAX (4 adults, 4 seniors, 92 dollars! Yikes!). Then we went to lunch and DD and I split an order of sliders and we each had our own salad. That felt good.

We also saw It's Complicated. Cute movie and I really liked Meryl Streep (she's good in everything she does IMO). But not the greatest movie--just cute and funny.

Okay, gotta get back to work. Everyone have a great day!

Hi all,

Happy 2010 everyone! It's been below freezing here at night, and will be for the next several nights. I've got my potted plants in the living room and have to crack the pipes at night to prevent pipes freezing (Florida construction: "why would we need to insulate pipes? it only freezes in this part of Florida a few times a year").

My visits with my family, sis's in-laws, and BF's family were all good. It was really nice to see my parents and it's still very strange to me that my sis is going to be a mom! I spent New Years at BF's sister's house near Tampa w/ BF, then I came home. BF is staying down there to work indefinitely, could be another week, could be a month+. I miss him (got to watch out for "I'm lonely!" night eating) but it pays well at a time of year when his charter business is completely dead.

Santa brought me... cash to buy a laptop (does that sound mercenary? it's all I asked for!)! It is ordered and shipped today, and then I'm going to get internet at home! Out of the dark ages at last!

Oh, I ate way way too much and am so beyond flubbery. I already confessed in the "5-10" thread. Trying to get back OP with food and figure out why my hip is hurting me when I exercise, too. I'm back to work today, rehearsals 4 night a week for the next month, and trying to get back to my early AM workouts tomorrow. Getting back to my "routine" will help reduce the flubberiness.

Jessica, my sleep schedule it totally thrown off, too. I was staying on the pull-out sofa of a hotel room with my parents, who don't go to sleep until midnight. My body wants to go to sleep later and sleep much later now. Must kick it back to an early wake-up and get back to my early gym workouts.

It sounds like everyone is trying to declutter! I'm trying as well. I have a load of things to take to the dump when they have "amnesty day" this month - broken TV, broken vacuum, set of stools beyond hope.

How was everyone else's holidays?

Allison, the reviews I keep hearing of Avatar go like this: "It was a great movie, but [200 things they didn't like], but it was a great movie!" Haven't seen it yet, do you think I should?

DH and I went to see Sherlock Holmes this weekend. It was a lot of fun! Nothing like the books, of course (since Sherlock Holmes is really not an action hero), but it was definitely entertaining. Plus, Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law? My fangirl heart is melting.

Also Allison, I forgot to tell you this before, but I thought of you on my trip out to LA when our plane got diverted to Palm Springs! Don't you live near there? We were stuck at an empty airport for two and a half hours before they let us continue on to LAX (there were dangerous winds over the inland empire).

Megan, what kind of laptop did you buy? Yay for internet at home!

Good morning!

Freezing today! 17 degrees for me this morning, too. It was 43 in my garage, so I wasn't feeling the exercise. Hopefully it will be up to 52 by the time I get home so I can workout.

I went way over the top with candy and such yesterday. Back on track today.

Jessica - I want to see Sherlock Holmes bad. I think we'll go this weekend.

Megan - we got my MIL a laptop for Christmas, she loves it. Hope you love yours too!

Allison - totally jealous of your weather...

Rabbit - decluttering sounds nice...

Ward - DSS went to daycare today even though school doesn't start back until tomorrow. I totally feel the need to get back to a normal schedule.

Dagmar - probably good to not try to go upstairs with a chair on your back.

Meg - good luck on your surgery!

Good day everyone!

Jessica~yes, I do live near Palm Springs, Palm Desert to be exact. I lived in Palm Springs for 11 years before moving "down valley." My DD graduated from Palm Springs High. Sorry you had to endure 2+ hours at the airport--but it's kind of a nice airport, don't you think? Of course if it was windy it wouldn't have been that nice. Do they still let you borrow putters from the gift shop and use the putting green? I can't remember.

And yes, I think it is worth it to see Avatar--especially if you like SciFi movies. The story line in a way reminded me of a video my DD had from like 15 years ago--animated thing called Fern Gully or something like that where the big machines killed the rain forest. The story line is something along those lines only a lot more intense.

Shannon~we'll probably go see Sherlock Holmes next weekend as well. Seems like every weekend we see at least one movie!

And all you computer folks--help me out here. Both my kids got money for Christmas which they used to build new gaming desktop computers. They haven't come yet, but they anticipate they'll be really nice. So it got me thinking that I ought to upgrade. I have a Dell desktop that is giving me fits. It won't stay connected to our home network and several of the USB ports are fried so I can't have all my peripherals hooked up at once. It's a real pain. I also have an ancient Dell laptop that still works but is bulky and heavy. So my kids think I ought to get a Mac. I like the convenience of a laptop but really like having a desktop as well. I was thinking of getting a Mac Book Pro and the Cinema screen to hook it up to so it'll double as a desktop, but it looks like I'll spend close to $5000 for that. Yikes!!! The cinema screen alone is close to $1000. I suppose I could get the smaller MacBook but I don't know. What do you all think?

Oh, and today is DH's birthday and I let him use my Amazon account yesterday and he ordered himself an elliptical! How funny is that? He's decided that the NordicTrak that he's been using for the past 2 years is about maxed out (he has it at the highest resistance and isn't feeling like it's doing him much good). He chose a nice machine after about 3 or 4 hours of reading reviews and doing comparison shopping. So as soon as I pay off that bill I'll really concentrate on getting a new computer for myself.

We saw Sherlock Homes on 12/26. I LOVE Sherlock Holmes anyway and I agree with the fangirl love for Robert Downey Jr. I never really saw anything with Jude Law before this (I know he did the voice in Series of Unfortunate Events), but he was easy on the eyes too. Fun, fun, fun!

allinell,

I'm not a great computer wizard but with a mac you do pay a lot for the looks, the design. As far as I know, you can get similar perfomance in a regular laptop for less money. Also, I connected my computer to my TV to have a big screen. I have a desktop and I used a DIVX to HDMI cable to hook it to my TV, it might be worth checking a similar option for your system if you want a big screen.

As for portability and price: I am typing on a netbook now, and DD just got herself one a couple of months ago. The performance is not great, but it is good enough for surfing and occasional officework. They are relatively cheap...we both have asus netbooks and I like them.

Last consideration...with 2 kids with gaming machines & you yourself on an upgraded system you might want to check out your router & internet connection arrangements. This is assuming that the kids will game over internet. A slow connection can really spoil a lot of the performance of the gaming systems.

Have fun on the upgrade!
rabbit

Thanks rabbit! I actually have a netbook also, but my DS is using it at the moment. I like it for travel, though!

I'm now looking into getting a "free" MacBook Pro. We do our business banking through Merrill Lynch and when we use the VISA card we get points and at this point I can get a 15" MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz for free as we have plenty of unused points. It only as 2 Gigs of RAM and I was hoping for 4, but I sent in an email to see if that can be added for additional points. If I can get that for free, all I need to do is buy the Cinema screen thingy.

I got this Gateway laptop from Best Buy. It's got 4 GB of RAM and a pretty large hard drive, 500 MB. I didn't such a big screen (17") but with the RAM, hard drive, and all the accessories it was the best I could find for the price, so having the bigger screen will be nice. As my sis explained "RAM is what you want to get the most of, you can add an external hard drive later but it's harder to get more RAM" (now I know what RAM is, anyway ). I would have liked a slightly lighter laptop in case I need to haul it further than around the house, but for the price I decided the RAM and memory were more important.

My DS & her DH are, um, techno-geeks (I'm not being mean, I'm a self-admitted science dork too!). They both have PhD's, she in biophysics, he in some combo of physics & math. They both swear by Macs, b/c they say they are much more user friendly, and conveniently don't have viruses. Another friend who's a graphic designer also swears by Macs, again, she says they're really user-friendly. I'm a life-long PC user but checked them out briefly but didn't buy a Mac b/c the baseline price was just beyond my budget, however, if I'd had more money, I may have considered "making the switch" more seriously b/c I've heard such good things.

When I was a kid I always had Windows. In college I switched to Linux (kind of obligatory for a computer science major ). Then I got a Mac. Now I'm back to Windows again.

I wanted to replace my old Mac with a new Mac, but it just wasn't worth the money to me. I got a nice Toshiba laptop (Satellite) with Windows Vista on it and features comparable to a Macbook Pro for about 1/3 the price. I installed a free virus protection program on it and I'm quite happy with it. IMO a Mac is only worth it if you are doing a lot of visual things (photo editing, watching videos, etc). Since mostly I just use my computer for surfing the web, email, and some word processing, it wasn't worth it to me -- especially since I can get iTunes and Picasa for free.