Another long blogging hiatus. It's not that nothing has been happening around here, just never seem to get around to writing it down. I just finished refinancing my house and am now driving around in my fully registered, titled and tagged, new to me car. Plans for redoing my 70's vintage kitchen are floating through my brain. Planning for a big summer vacation with AM and the kids has been keeping my mind full of things to do, tickets to purchase, passports to renew... where is my daughter's birth certificate? Searching through my cryptic filing system to find it. (I did).

Then there are all the delightful weekend activities. Celebrated a wonderful Valentine's Day with my sweetheart, followed by her birthday a few days later. We had a lovely time together, celebrating, wandering around the historic part of town and shopping. Her youngest bought a puppet that I will wait for her to describe, but she has had us laughing many times with "Chris". We also got to celebrate her dad's birthday, with dinner one weekend and a big party the next.

Weekdays have been primarily work, taking care of the daughter, running back and forth to the farm. I kept the old to me car for farm trips, but we did decide to take it to the car wash and remove at least a few months mud from the inside and outside. I washed the other car too.. which led to the two bouts of winter weather last week, so the Maryland road crews could turn all the roads white with salt and turn my car into something that resembled a giant salt lick. Not complaining too much.. at least I could get out and about.

So, lots of fabulous things going on, many mundane things going on, all in all, life is good! :-)

It's always a challenge, and I don't do this very often.. probably only a few times since I have lived in Maryland. I researched... we both did. Thought we had crossed all the t's, dotted all the i's. But they always find a way, it is their mission... to crush your organizational skills and send you away dejected. You all know this.. I am sure it has happened to all of us! I had the proof of insurance, the title, the lien release on the title, the notarized bill of sale, the inspection certificate.. and I presented these to the Frederick MVA with the hope of getting tags and title to my new to me car. But, noooooo! I had the yellow copy of the inspection.. not the white one! It was a disaster.. everything started to spin.. they were all laughing at me.. the humiliation! :-)

OK, it wasn't that bad... it cost me an extra $20 for a temporary sticker and I have to go back with the white copy in the next month.. but I got the tags and picked up the new to me car at my friend's in Baltimore. This car is a Civic coupe, 5 speed, and it's been a while since I drove a stick regularly, but I got good practice driving it home in rush hour, in a freezing rain storm. What a day! Hope you are all home, safe and warm on a night like this.

Another evening at the farm. I will appreciate when things dry up a bit and I am not tracking so much mud around with me. It was warm today, almost 70 and the storms held off so my daughter was riding in the outdoor ring. Her and her horse were having a nice workout, when the wind started to pick up. After a nice combination jump, the horse got spooked and took off a bit. I was proud to see her sticking with it, but it was a bit of a battle... I stopped taping as they sped past, in case I needed to help in some way, but she worked him into a corner, hopped off and calmed him down. I remember a few years ago that this would have been a major trauma.. but her thoughts were... "I can't wait to post this to my YouTube account!". Boy have things changed since I was a kid. :-)

Here is the video, taken just a few hours ago and now available to the world!

Had another wonderful weekend. Went to my first yoga class on Thursday night and followed it up with a 6 hour "retreat" on Saturday. I now have a full understanding of how inflexible I have become, at least as far as my joints go. ;-) I have to say that I felt very relaxed the rest of the day and just a little bit sore the next morning.

Today I was running errands, picking up my daughter, taking her to the farm, general dashing around stuff. On the way home I was saying we needed to go to the grocery store, the daughter suggested we go during the Superbowl, since it wouldn't be crowded. I though this was not a bad idea, we weren't going to any parties.. so at 6:30, we went to dinner at Uno's (there were 5 groups of people there), service was excellent, and then off to the grocery store, which we completeted in 15 minutes. It was strange seeing how much of an impact this sporting event has on our society... it was a ghost town out there. Oh, and the soda and potato chip aisles at the store were barren!

Did watch the second half... the game was actually more entertaining than the commercials for a change. We enjoyed the horse race with Shaquille O'Neal as a jockey for Vitamin water. What were your favorite commercials?