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A womans work is never done – more cleaning in the basement for me!

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It looks like I’m going to be spending yet another weekend cleaning up and organizing the house. Oh and when I say house I mainly mean basement because that is where the MESS is.

Honestly … I don’t know how or why the basement became the mess that it is, but it needs major work. I know when we first moved into the house 10.5 years ago we stored several boxes downstairs – boxes that contained items that we meant to pull out once all of the renovations were finished. Trouble is, those renovations were never completely finished and those boxes are still down there along with multiple other things. It also doesn’t help that this is an old 1927 house with only four small closets – all on the uppermost floor. Storage space is at a premium.

On top of all this … my soon to be ex – oh yes, I said that – ex – is going away this weekend and he won’t be helping me clean up the basement. He hasn’t really done much in the way of cleaning or sorting out stuff down there anyway so far so I guess I didn’t expect much help, but there’s a lot of heavy stuff to lift so I guess if you guys don’t hear from me call for a search party because I might be buried under a mountain of stuff in the basement. Yes it’s that bad down there. Semi hoarders delight.

There’s even a half decent sectional couch with a pull out bed buried under all those boxes, coats, Christmas decorations and renovation supplies. I hope that by the end of the weekend I might be able to see it!

Speaking of sectionals … I might be moving in a few months because of the situation I alluded to above – although I really don’t want to move. This is MY house. If I do have to move that old sectional is staying in the basement and it can be the new owners problem because it’s huge. However, I’ve been looking at this site – sectional sofa los angeles and they have a nice selection. Perhaps if I do end up in an apartment or condo I’ll get a small sectional – with a pull out bed if possible, as those are always handy for guests!

Ok .. I’m going to relax because tomorrow I have a lot of work to do. If anyone wants to come and lend me a hand you are more than welcome. I could use the help and the company.

Keeping a leather couch clean

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I’m trying to figure out how to clean my leather couches. I’ve had them for about six years – maybe longer and well .. when we first got them I used to clean them regularly with the cleaning fluid that came with them, but of course I ran out of that stuff and never replaced it and slowly slacked off in my cleaning of the leather surfaces.

I think that was a big mistake. Not only does that couch look kind of beat up and aged (to some degree) but I think there’s a stain in one area so now I need to try to remove a leather stain. That’s what I get for slacking off! If I get the couch clean and looking good again I’m going to clean it regularly again so that it never looks like this again.

Do you have a leather couch? Do you try to clean it regularly too?

Trying to fix a digital camera

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I have three digital cameras. I really only use one of them as the other two are older models. Actually, now that I think of it I suppose I can say that I have four digital cameras if you count my mobile phone as it has a camera on it that’s 8 megapixels and it really does take quite decent pictures.

Anyway … the other day I was speaking with my sister and we talked about going out one weekend to take photographs around the city. My sister used to be an artist but because of recent health problems she really hasn’t been sketching or painting so I suggested that she might be able to express herself through photograph and she seemed to like that idea.

This past weekend I pulled out one of my older digital cameras – a Sony Cybershot DSC-H5 and I discovered that it had a problem. At first, once I’d put in new batteries, the LED screen would flash on for a moment with the message – “Lens cap still on” – and I’d remove the lens cap and the power would go off on the camera. The lens wouldn’t extend out or move in anyway and the LED screen wouldn’t come on with the lens cap off and it wouldn’t do much with the lens cap on either.

After a lot of research on the internet I finally discovered a a page that suggested that I plug in the cameras AV connection so that the LED screen wouldn’t turn on when I pressed the power button and that that would give more power to the lens motor. I tried it and the lens extended but then the power shut off again and I couldn’t get it to retract! I’d read on several pages to try tapping the lens or gently twisting it to the right to get it retract so I tried that many times and after two days of trying the lens went back in .. but still, the led screen won’t work. Now I’m thinking that it might be one of the retaining rings or the internal battery in the camera.

OR … I just don’t know … maybe I won’t get this camera working again. I’d like to. It took great pictures and it was an expensive camera back when I originally bought it. It would be nice to get some more use out of it or at least to see if my sister might enjoy photography as much as I do.

If anyone has any ideas as to how to fix this cameras lens and led screen problem I’d love to hear your suggestions. I really don’t want to take it to a camera store or back to Sony as that would probably be very expensive.

Exploring all the new features on my cellphone

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I was playing around with my cellphone the other day. I had uploaded some pictures and videos that I had taken onto my computer from the cellphone and then I noticed that there was a major software update for my phone. So … I spent some time updating the software and then updating it some more. Luckily everything went ok!

Naturally once everything was updated I decided to explore all of the new features that were now on my cellphone. It’s a Nokia N8 BTW and it just got Symbian Anna. I know there’s yet another update that some people are getting but it’s not in my area yet.

The new maps are very cool so I decided to try them out when I was walking the dog. It was a very cold day so the gps was a little slow calculating my route when I made turns that it didn’t anticipate but otherwise it worked great. I really hadn’t used that feature or the maps for driving before, but I should because, well with this phone I don’t need a separate GPS navigation device.

Now I want to find new apps to download onto my phone. I was looking at an app that’s similar to Instagram earlier today that I might put on my phone. Watch my tweets for some cool pictures soon!

Have you investigated all of the cool features on your smartphone? There’s just so much stuff isn’t there?

Everything is on sale at this time of year isn’t it?

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I don’t know about you, but half the emails I’m getting are for post holiday sales. Always at this time of year the stores have huge sales – everything is 50% or more off or stores are having liquidation sales and everything must go. Am I right?

Are you getting all those emails too? Or flyers in your door?

Now I don’t have much money these days to take advantage of the sales, but I’m keep an eye on them anyway. I figure that I might see something that someone else might be interested in and I was right. I saw an ad for kelty tents at RockyMountainTrail.com for really good prices and I sent the ad to my nephew because I know he’s been looking into getting some camping gear. I don’t know if he’ll take advantage of the sale or not, but at least he knows about a great sale now.

Do you take advantage of some of the great sales at this time of year too?

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