I apologize...

I apologize for my long absence and share with you my tale of woe. Last Friday my computer tried to update some software and decided not to reboot. Apparently it was a partition error. I immediately ran it up to the local computer repair store where I was told it would be a priority. Tuesday morning I still hadn't heard anything so I called and was told it was 'next on the list'. By Friday I was getting angry. I called again and was told they were working on it and I would hear yet that day when I could pick it up. No phone call. Saturday I was furious. When I called, I was told that I could pick it up by noon (it was 11:31 and we live about 20 minutes from the computer store) so I said we could pick it up a little later. I was told no, we close at 12:00, but their ad in the phone book said 4:00. So, we hurried up and picked it up. The upside is now it boots, the downside is half of my software didn't make it back on (I started reloading on Saturday and I'm still working on it). All reloaded software had to have the parameters set again. My font list has gone 'walk about' and can't be found so all my digital sentiments that have fonts other than the normal 'Windows' list are replacing the fonts I don't have with the fonts I do have. And remembering the names of the fonts I like best is going to be a problem. What a mess!

In the kitchen remodel, we finally got all of our ducks in a row and went after our backsplash tile at Lowes on Wednesday evening. We found out that our tile selection was discontinued and that the Peoria Lowes didn't have enough of the two tiles in stock to do our kitchen. I nearly cried. Our whole kitchen was designed around that tile, the 1x1" moonlight glass tile and the 2x4" accent tile. The young man at the desk was kind enough to call the East Peoria store and found out they had 24 of the 1x1" tile in 12" sheets. Still not enough. So we went to Menards and Home Depot with no results. When we got home, I searched on line but that tile must be made exclusively for Lowes because that's the only place we could find it. But we did find Lowes stores in Decatur, Bloomington and Champaign - each one had some of the tile we needed, none of them had both kinds. So, Thursday morning I went to Peoria and East Peoria and picked up everything they had. Decatur had 18 of the 2x4" tiles, Bloomington had 56 of the 2x4" tiles and Champaign had 6 of the 1x1" tile sheets. So, we are good to go. The range hood, switch plate covers and the new phone are in route. We picked up the floor tile on Saturday and work actually starts on April 6.

For those of you that have been so encouraging about the kitchen remodel, I thank you all for your kind words. We are very excited and will be sharing pictures as the work commences. For those of you waiting for more digital sentiments, these are for you: