DOWN: Late Saturday afternoon I went from feeling fine to a full-blown head cold in the space of an hour.

UP: My husband offered to get breakfast out Sunday morning, the only time we usually have a sit-down family breakfast, and we had some “buy one, get one free” breakfast sandwich coupons for BK.

DOWN: I missed both services at church.

UP: I went back to bed and slept 2-3 hours, had a quiet restful day, spent a few hours in the evening reading, a rare treat.

UP: Hubby brought dinner/lunch in from KFC. Enough left over for munching on in the evening.

DOWN: I’m still not feeling so great.

DOWN: I was stunned to learn that a long-time very active member of the TMIC passed away, evidently from a blood clot. I don’t know how old she was, but she was younger than I am.

UP: One of my favorite people is coming for to speak at our ladies’ meeting tonight.

Planing to just lay low today except for doing laundry — getting extra rest seems to be the most helpful thing for me to get over sickness.I discovered that in the first year after TM when any illness would knock me flat — I got over colds and such much more quickly when I rested than when I tried to push through them. But I do plan to push through for the ladies’ meeting tonight.

Hope you have a good Monday!

Up and Down format borrowed from Bet.

• The colors in the dress I am wearing today…

…remind me of sherbet.

• I am up to almost a half-hour at a time on the Wii Fit. When I started I was doing good to last ten minutes.

• I told Jason and Mittu that if they wanted me to I would address the wedding invitations to our church folks and our side of the family. Then I decided I wanted to print the envelopes on the computer because my handwriting, I’m sorry to say, is awful. I’ve printed envelopes before. but these were a non-standard size, and though I configured all the dimensions, the printer kept saying there was a size or type misfeed. I got lost in the online “help” instructions that popped up and called my computer expert, Jeremy, and he did everything he knew to do, and it still wouldn’t work. So he tried it on my husband’s computer and printer and finally got it to work there. Somewhere in that hour’s wasted time and frustration, the thought occurred to me, “You know, all of these people have seen your handwriting before.” Oh, well…once I finally got going, it clipped along fine, and they do look nice, I think.

• A couple of weeks ago at the post office I saw a sign for wedding stamps. How timely! There were two designs, one with wedding rings and one with wedding cake. I thought it would be cute to put one style on the outside and one on the RSVP envelope, so I bought accordingly. I didn’t notice until I got ready to stamp the first one that the cake stamps were 61 cents. So I determined to exchange them during my errands this morning. As I dug the receipt out of my purse, I saw that it said at the bottom, “All sales of stamps are final.” “Uh oh — what am I going to do with 61 cents stamps?” I decided to make a try for it anyway (and if you knew me twenty years ago, you’d know I have come a long way to think that. I used to get intimidated when trying to return things, especially if they gave me any trouble about it. One such incident resulted in tears and my poor husband having to return it for me). But I’m familiar with the folks at the local P.O., having been up there repeatedly with ladies’ group packages to missionaries and students. The friendly neighborhood postman did indeed exchange them for me, bless his heart. I asked what the 61 cent ones were used for: he said they were for over-sized envelopes.

• Upon returning to the house, I saw our friendly neighborhood garbage truck had once again left our garbage can in the driveway. I don’t know how, when the truck is automated with arms that lift the can straight up, dump it, and then put it straight back down, the can lands a couple of feet from the corner, where we leave it, to the driveway itself. Nevertheless I sent one son, who shall remain nameless, out to remedy the situation. Instead of returning the can back to its place behind the house, since it was now empty, he put it back in front of the corner of the yard, where we place it for pick-up, and he could not understand my incredulity that he would walk all the way out to the curb, move the empty can two feet, and leave it there instead of bringing it back up to the house. Obviously, my work is not yet done…

Several weeks ago my middle son, Jason, told us some of his friends from Castlepoint were getting married in a nearby town, and another friend, Paul, was driving down from Indiana for the wedding, and then had to go to NC to the camp where he’s be working this summer, and Jason wanted to know if Paul could stay here during those days. We said sure, that would be fine.

So late Friday evening we get a call from a lady at church, whose daughter had also worked at Castlepoint for several summers and who was also hosting one of her Castlepoint friends who was coming for the wedding. She had been trying to reach Jason but couldn’t because he was working, so she was trying to ask in in a roundabout way about accommodations for Paul, who had traveled down with this other girl, who was her guest. My husband had taken the call, and as soon as I heard the word Paul, I thought….”Oh no! We forgot!”

I even knew Jason had the wedding to attend the next day, but somehow it just hadn’t clicked that that meant Paul was coming in. If I don’t write things on my calendar, I can’t be sure of remembering them, and I guess the conversation about Paul coming must have taken place while we were eating or I was cooking or putting away groceries or something. Even Jason had forgotten.

But we assured Paul that it was fine for him to come over, and I dashed around changing sheets, picking up, and running the vacuum over a few key areas. Thankfully things were still pretty well clean from when we had company a couple of weeks ago for graduation.

Paul was very gracious about our forgetfulness, and I really enjoyed meeting him and some of the other friends from camp who came over Sunday.

Thankfully I had just recently skimmed a post on Hospitalilty vs. Entertaining at Making Home — skimmed because I had read similar things before and had read the book she referred to, so it was more of a reminder than a new revelation to me that hospitality isn’t “showing off” a picture-picture home: rather, it’s about making people feel welcome and ministering to their needs. But I am thankful the Lord put that “heads up” in my path just before I needed it, so I didn’t stew about not getting everything done I would normally get done before company. And it was wonderfully restful and freeing not to have gone into a get-ready-for-company frenzy! I used to feel I had to practically spring clean the entire house before company came, and I tell ya, there is no greater deterrent to having people over than that!

Before I share with you some interesting stuff I’ve seen around this week, I have a question. I view most of the blogs I read through Google Reader, and many blog posts have ads there that are not on the blog – but not all of them. Is there some kind of agreement between blog owner and Google about ads or does Google place them at their discretion?

• Semicolon is compiling a survey of top 100 hymns and asks for input: more info. here.

• If you like Facebook for keeping up with friends but don’t like the “clutter” of seeing who took what quiz and who is a fan of what, Jeremy has found an add-on to streamline  it.

• Nancy Wilson had an excellent post about being a good wedding guest.

• Susanne at Living to Tell the Story shared this awesome web site called The Infinire Photograph that coule keep a person occupied for hours. Very creative, beautiful photography — a photo made up of hundreds of smaller photos from around the world.

• I discovered a neat new blog called Quoth She. Each post is just a beauitful photograph and a quote. It’s a pleasant spot in the blogosphere.

• Normally I am not a fan of mushrooms, but this one is just too cute.

• It’s that time of year — there are some great inexpensive gift ideas for grads (in the comments) and teachers (more links at the end of the page.)

• Jess at Making Home had a very edifying post titles Wise-Worded Women.

• David Hosaflook has a thoughtful, balanced post about Alcohol on the Mission Field — things to think about if your conviction is not to drink but the culture you’re in allows for it.

• The Common Room has a post about Strong-Willed Children with some good thoughts that are probably counter to what you may have heard before on the subject.

• Ivman has another list of Tom Swifties, such as “‘I forgot what to pick up at the store,’ said Tom listlessly” and “”That’s the last time I’ll pet a lion,’ said Tom offhandedly.”

• Finally, Lizzie at A Dusty Frame linked to this cute video of a couple married 62 years playing a piano duet.

I was all set to post more about graduation day and our celebratory dinner last night when some strange things started popping up on my computer — some fake spyware thing added several files. I ran the virus scan and it dealt with several of them, but something is still wrong — my computer now crashes in anything but safe mode. 😦

My computet wiz son worked on it til the wee hours this morning and is now backing up files and reinstalling windows — hopefully that will work! meanwhile I am using my husband’s antique old computer, but I don’t have access to my pictures from here.

I’m so glad Jeremy’s here and knows what to do! Hope to be back in action soon!

I noticed this “ad” on my egg carton one day and was a little taken aback. The eggs I was scrambling certainly looked natural! 🙂

It goes on to explain that the “natural” eggs came from hens fed a certain diet. Still, I am looking at these a little more suspectly…