I spent the whole day yesterday hanging crown molding in the master bedroom.  I am so sore from looking up.  My neck hurts, and the back of my shoulders are stiff.  But this morning when I awoke to bright sunshine and beautiful molding I was content (at least until I tried to get out of bed).

Several things I have learned over the years when working with molding:  don’t rush (rushing makes for sloppy miter cuts and poor leveling), three coats of paint (no matter how good the paint) are necessary.  Semi-gloss looks the best on molding and the third coat, add a little water, it goes on like melted butter, giving a wonderful sheen without brush strokes.

We have @ a twelve foot fireplace hearth.  We want to redo it, add tile, or something…but I can’t decide what to use.  I’d love to find some tiles that look like slates of marbles kids play with….but I don’t think it’d be good around a roaring fire.

The kids were home Friday, another snow day.  We received several inches of snow and then about a half inch of pure ice on top.  Our yard looked like milky white glass and the tree limbs like glittering moon dust was sprinkled liberally on the branches.  A winter wonderland, well almost, I still prefer summer.

I talked with my aunt tonight.  She hates the new JU layout.  Says it’s not user friendly and too hard to navigate.  She can’t even get on and find my blog now.

I like the colors and graphics.

I picked JU as a blog spot primarily because I liked the format.  Now it kinda looks like all the other ones, the ones I skipped because the format wasn’t appealing.

I really loved the featured articles on the homepage of the old format.  It was really nice to see it take up most of the page…it also seemed less cluttered.

Other things which really made the other version nice for me were all on the homepage.  The ads were at the bottom and didn’t interfere with reading.  The recent articles and posts were outlined and easily accessible from the home page…AND the best part was the little “more” button at the bottom of both those columns.  I hit more and could see every single article submitted while I was away, all with one easy click.

Now it seems like I spend more time searching than I do anything else.  Is that just me?

At the very least on the new version, I think it’d help if we used a border around recent posts.  It all seems to flow together and I just can’t make my eyes settle on any one area.  I find I am navigating mostly from the forums page and must go through every category…I miss the whole big list of recent articles which goes all the way back to infinity..hahaha

My aunt and I are a lot alike, so it wasn’t surprising to hear we are having the same difficulties.

Have you seen the video of the cop beating the woman?  Or rather the cop turning off the video camera, then turning it back on and woman is in a pool of blood?  http://www.rr.com/flash/index.cfm?rev=10253

Freaky.  What scares me about this whole thing…he seems so calm before he turns off the camera, and even when it comes back on.  Kind of how I see a serial killer being…methodical and unemotional.  Of course that may just be fiction….

Speaking of serial killers….

My husband and I have picked up a new activity to do together.  Every day I get the newspaper and start the crossword puzzle over breakfast.  When he comes home at night usually while waiting for supper, or after supper he sits down and works on it.  Then we both look it over.

I’ve learned a few things since we started doing this.  I am WAAAY smarter than he is…..nah!  Just kidding, though we trash talk about who can get the most answers.  And if one of us gets one wrong, hahaha.

He gets most of the golf and gulf questions.  I get a pretty even mix of everything except golf and gulf questions.  Heh. Some days though I wonder who really knows…satellite of Jupiter?  Or Sex researcher Hite?  Hahaha.

What?  Not serial killer enough? 

Ah, the sweet sweet serenity of a vanilla life.