Frugality at it's best

I figured we better get the furnace up and running so that when our house sitter is here, she doesn't freeze to death. I always joke that I'm not turning it on until Oct. 1st. It's warmer when I get up at 7 than it is when Kerry gets up between 4:30 and 5, and he has less body fat so my Oct. 1st usually turns into a mid-Sept. I say "dress warmer".

Anyway, long story short, I have been up since 7 am and it's 9 am now and have already baked a pumpkin loaf, 2 batches of cookie bars, showered, had my coffee, got Emily off to school, did puppy school homework with Linus and Sally, ate breakfast, tidied up a bit, did dishes, read 2 chapters of a James Patterson book, organized my pantry, drank 1.5 litres of water, and checked my email. All because I thought baking would heat the house up.

I also figured that by doing all that stuff early, I earned the right to sit on my butt and scrapbook until the kids get home.

Other news...

-Shaun never makes anything to eat now that he's in Culinary Arts. This sucks.

-Emily squawked because I 'made' her take a second year of keyboard lessons, but she's a freakin' natural at it and I think it would be a shame if she didn't give it a couple of years. As much as she 'doesn't like' it, she does enjoy it when a song comes together. Although she doesn't like it when I recognize the song and decide to do a duet with her. This usually results in her saying "I'm not playing anymore if you keep making that noise you call singing". And then I run to my room in tears.

-Kerry took yesterday off to 'plan' our trip. We did get some trip stuff done, but we also...

1. Bought more bags of individually packaged Candy Corn from Walmart, it's really good.

2. Fixed our weatherstripping on the side door, Linus pulled it off. Which was okay because it needed to be done.

3. Picked up our trip info from Sears, and had a few 'rude' awakenings about our trip, this could be the reason the agent that originally booked us is no longer there.

4. Bought new sheets for Shaun.

5. Went to Genji's for lunch. Again, that place has it in for me and my patience (or lack of patience). It took about 15 minutes before anyone acknowledged were were there, no drinks, just menus. It was so bad that it was Kerry, not me, that said "how much longer do we wait before we leave?" But once we were discovered we did get great service. The food is weird, the first time I was not impressed at all. But I've had traditional Japanese food oh, all my life so this fusion thing was lost on me. Now, I get it, and it's I'm still not impressed. I still don't think Donburi chicken should have cheese in it, nor should sushi have cream cheese in it or a Thousand Island like dressing on top of it. I tried to explain it to Kerry using Leftsa and something else like spaghetti sauce instead of the usual butter they put on it and he agreed that his mom wouldn't like to see that, but if it tasted good, then who cares? Which I guess is the okay, but it's almost sacrilegious to me. He went back to eating his Bacon Coconut Curry dish in a tomato tortilla shell bowl. (Seriously, who thinks of these freaky combos?)

And because 'they' say people like pictures on blogs, here's Linus and his buddy, Kerry at the dog beach. Kerry is saying "Give me a kiss". He really is. Linus is saying "Piss off Man, I'm getting my picture taken!"