The declutter shuffle

 Just got a tip for moving rather than copying files. I'll check that out later today. It's super important to be MOVING files and NOT copying -- otherwise, you end up in a huge mess which is partially the problem I have with some of those photos. 

This is the status of my new hard drive. It's the D Drive in the photo, and it's almost 75% full - of PHOTOS. That's so silly, and I hope to make good headway in deleting want I don't want or need and then keep it neat and tidy going forward. 

Almost filled the new hard disk

I also have documents that need to be moved (I'll test my new skills), which also need to be dealt with. I'm pretty good at filing, but not quite everything is in the correct place, and a lot of it can go. 

So I didn't empty any boxes, but I did make some changes to the office, and in doing so, I found MONEY. Over $100 in US dollars. Who knew that was there? 

Found money!

I decided to tackle the outside of this buffet. This is not the most efficient storage space, but it used to belong to my grandparents, who purchased it from Eaton's, and so it has sentimental value to me. When I'm gone, I suspect the buffet will become firewood! 

Cleaning the outer parts of the buffet

Let's just say there is a bit of dust on it. 

A bit dusty

But the top is cleared -- well, there's a stack of magazines on the surface that I would like to read, so that will become my priority reading material. I must learn to SKIM the magazines and NOT read every word. I'm trying! It looks much better, and I'm OK with that. 

I consolidated the crap on the desktop, so it now holds a lot more, and I put two buckets on the floor on this surface. 

The fun that awaits me in July

I found these empty bottles of wine on the buffet. OK -- so I like the labels, but how do you remove a label from a wine bottle without damaging it? I don't think it can be done. OH -- I just Googled it, and apparently, if I pour boiling water INTO the bottles, that'll release the label. I must try that today, and then the bottles can go in the appropriate bin. So many new skills I'm learning!

Neat wine bottle labels

Then I moved everything sitting on the kitchen floor and the kitchen table to the table in the office. YES -- I know -- I couldn't help myself. But at least (and yet again), the office is the only dumping ground in the house. I'm seriously OK with this -- my brain seems to love having this dumping ground, but I'm trying to keep things off the floor, so it doesn't look super messy. It will get done -- I've made huge leaps and bounds. I know there are a few more boxes of stuff in Studio U that will make their way to the office to be sorted, but the space is full for the moment!

And this is my little workstation. The two tubs are what's left to deal with from all the stuff on the table. One is for writing, and the other is things I'd like to investigate further. So I'm in good shape, but I almost feel like I should deal with those containers before continuing. I'll see how I feel when I get back. 

Stuff to deal with

Miss Murphy and I went out for a bike ride last night. She LOVES it; the only thing we need to work on is directions. OH -- she must also learn to NOT stop and sniff at everything. She's pretty good, but when she spotted the rabbit in the forest? Well, it was a good thing we were going slow. I didn't fall, but I lost my footing on the pedals. Of course, that bike has pedals with clips which is NOT the best when wearing regular running shoes. 

But she is strong and loves to pull? And the small hills in the forest -- she just whips up them, pulling me along. Now the hill wasn't large, but still -- you could feel her power! I think I've just become further entertainment for the neighborhood. 

My two presentations are ready for this morning, and I managed to complete my embroidery project. I was hoping to make a jacket to take to Quilt Canada -- didn't even get started, but I now have all the fabric. 

I also managed to get the last customer quilt done that I planned to do. I still need to trim one more quilt today, and everything is ready for pickup. 

Customer quilt - DONE

On my afternoon walk, I stopped by Chapter's and spotted this little dish. I had seen it on the sale rack, and there was still a stack of them. So I splurged and bought one. 

A cute dish

And I filled it with my snack when I got home. I love eating off a small plate, and I think I might just make this my dinner plate. It was only $7, and I bought only one!

Filled with my snack

There has been no time for the gazebo these days. Lots to be done, and I didn't get any gardening done. But that's OK -- it was more fun to be out riding my bike with Murphy! I forgot to get a picture of her in her fancy red harness. And I'll see if I can get some video -- I'm sure it's hilarious, with me yelling "NO, Murphy," and my hands on the brakes at all times! 

I'm using my mountain bike which is totally different from my other bikes as it has a suspension system on it, so I'm trying to get used to that! Oh -- the fun we are having! 

Lexi and I spotted this beautiful flower on the walk yesterday. 

Gorgeous rose

So we all know that Lexi is a princess. I didn't quite get my camera out in time, but her head was inside the door, and she was whimpering. "I can't get in -- please open the door for me!" 

"Mom - help - open the door for me!"

Meanwhile, Murphy would have just shoved the rest of the door open, and she'd be in. And if Lexi really wanted to get in, she could have squeezed in there. What a princess!!! She is NOT happy with the situation in the backyard, and for a while, we thought she jumped that gate. She was tucked WAY under the deck and had zero interest in coming out. 

I've been having even more difficulty with my phone, especially around the house. My Libby app (for audiobooks) was a bear to get to work. Then for some reason, I checked and OH MY GOSH --- the WiFi was turned off. Now it's always in the ON position and should default to WiFi when I'm in the house. I see that I've already used 4 GB of cellular data this month! It's only ten days in. I wonder if that will affect the phone calls?? I sure hope so. I might have to test it out later today. Now, why did that happen? 

OK -- so what's the store of the brick?  - Wait -- I'll tell you that tomorrow. 

On that note, I need to get the girls out for their walk and then two presentations - back to back. 

Have a great day!!!

Ciao!!!

Murphy goes for a bike ride!

 OK  -- so yesterday didn't go quite as planned, but that's OK. I didn't empty the orange box, but I cleaned out another box of stuff on my computer desk, which was the equivalent of the orange box. I did NOT get the customer quilt quilted, but at least it's loaded on the long arm and ready to go today. 

What happened instead? I had a meeting to chat about classes for the fall as I wanted to get all classes organized by the middle of July. Mission accomplished -- we had a good discussion, and I've got a plan. Cathy came and picked up the boxes of scraps -- and she got two phone books for foundation paper. 

I made huge inroads in the paperwork that needed to be done. There are just a few more invoices to do, and then I'm up to date, and most of the paperwork that needed to be done before I go, will be done. Oh -- who am I kidding. I will need a couple more hours to get it all done.  

I also got more photos transferred to that little hard disk. I have a couple more folders to move, and then I'll have the bulk of the pictures in one spot, which has been my goal for a long, long time. I wish I knew how to MOVE files instead of COPY. I'll have to do a bit more research on that. Could it be as simple as holding down the SHIFT key while dragging? I'll try that later. 

Lexi is very skittish and WILL not come into the office. However, I threw a crochet rug on the floor that was on the back of a chair, and yep - she liked that! 

Lexi on the crochet rug

She even got so confident as to lie right out and go to sleep. 

Chilling out in the office with Mom

But mostly -- did you see how clear the floor was in the office? Oh yes --- there is loads of free floor space in here. It's all good progress, and I've gone from a table where you couldn't get past the mess to an extra work surface where I could do some work! 

Working at the almost clear table

It's a complicated story, but I cannot print anything from my big computer. So if I want something printed, I must send it to my phone. That hasn't been working the last couple of days, so I had to use my laptop. That still wouldn't work, but I suspect the issue was there was no paper in the printer! But my big computer just won't make the connection to print, yet it will scan. An issue to be resolved later. 

I also had files on the laptop that I needed to send to some students, and I had room to work up here! Yippeee!!

And then something bizarre happened in the kitchen. I stepped on one of the mats at the backdoor and felt something hard under my foot. Hmm - what's that? 

An earring? 

An earring, you say? Where the heck did it come from? Some boxes of M's stuff have been sitting in the kitchen for me to sort through (more crap to deal with), and perhaps Murphy stole it from there. That's the only thing I can think of. She is a thief, and it wouldn't surprise me. 

So what happened with the landscaping? I had some large rocks in the front garden, and I wanted to save them. Hey -- if I need them to repair the pond in the future (some stones are splitting), I would hate to have to buy new rocks -- they are NOT cheap. So the stones got moved to the backyard, into a corner that is not being used. One of them was reasonably large, and it was NOT an easy job to move it and ended up in a broken handle on a wheelbarrow!

Moving a big rock

Then the rest of the plants had to go. There was nothing special there -- cedars and some grasses. 

The remainder of the plants

It's easy to dig up that stuff when you've got heavy equipment! Murphy has loved watching the guys work from her window seat. 

Easy to remove! 

It all got loaded onto a truck. 

Loading the plant material onto the truck

And before we knew it - the front yard was gone! 

Bye-bye landscaping!

Next to go was the bin. The bin alone must weight quite a bit, but with all that stone in there -- it must have weighed several tons. The truck latched onto it with a big hook and had zero issues pulling it up onto the truck. 

Loading the bin onto the truck

A few stones were left under the bin that went into the other truck with the plants. 

Loading the bin onto the truck

And just like that -- bye-bye interlock driveway. And I will NEVER get excited about interlock again. You can see the four tubs by the porta-potty that my neighbor has snagged, and she is slowly moving them into her backyard. 

Bye-bye driveway

While many houses around here are widening their driveways, we are making our narrower. Yeah -- less snow to shovel in the winter! So this trench used to be part of the driveway, now it will become a garden with some trees. 

A trench for trees

Here's the temporary gate, which Lexi could scale without any effort. She doesn't seem too interested in jumping it (too much work for a princess), but if the gate is open, she takes every opportunity to escape. I caught her in the neighbor's yard yesterday. The girls see rabbits in that yard all the time, and I guess she thought she could wander over and check it out a bit more. Let's just say that yard is a mess. 

The temporary gate

And if you want a big step --- how is this? That bottom step is HUGE, and they've removed the dirt in front of the step, which had somewhat shortened the drop. Now there are two BIG holes for the Sonos tubes, so you can't jump down right in front. Hopefully, those new cement tubes and rebar will prevent the step from sagging like the old one did. 

A BIG step

However, getting in and out of the house has become challenging. We have a side door, but that gate is nailed shut, so that's not possible. We can go out the back door and through the gate on the other side, but it's not as convenient to open and close the gate. We could go out of the garage, but we don't have a keypad, so that's not an option either. Nope -- I jump down and hop up that huge step! Good grief!!!

And my neighbor moved yesterday, so it was a colossal mess of coming and going on our street, and I have to say that I don't function well with all that coming and going. Hence the lack of work that got done. I was still productive, just not as much as I would have liked. You know what? I think my brain needed that break. 

Lots of activity on the street

Coming home, I spotted this on the plywood surrounding a construction site. How pretty is that? It almost looks real. 

A painted construction fence

And the Panookie Cookie is back at Boston Pizza. They had told us last week that it was coming back, and while it's NOT quite the same, it was nice to enjoy an "almost" old friend. 

The Panookie Cookie is back

I'll be putting my car in the garage while I'm gone, and I mentioned this to the crew. Imagine my surprise when I got home, and they had moved all the stuff in the garage (mostly my bikes) to one side and SWEPT the floor. OK -- that was a bit embarrassing since the floor was a mess. But that got me thinking about my bikes. I have one set up to walk a dog, and there's an actual sport called bike-joring.

I decided to take Murphy for a test run. I hooked her up to the harness and attached her to the lead. We WALKED down the sidewalk so she could get the hang of it. And then I SLOWLY rode the bike while she trotted in front. We will NEVER go as fast as they show in those videos!!!

Murphy out for a bike ride

She was happy as a clam, and although she did want to stop from time to time, she was pretty good with the voice commands, and we had a great little bike ride  -- just on my quiet street. I think we'll try it again. Look how dusty that bike is -- I haven't ridden this bike in years. I had bought the setup for Lexi, but she is such a princess that it never worked, and she is always BEHIND, not in front, so that wouldn't work. 

OH MY  -- I just let the dogs out, and Lexi immediately went to the side of the house to see if the gate was open! That little Houdini!

Well, that's it for me -- I've got loads to do, and there's no time to waste! 

Have a super day!!!!

Ciao!!!