Hi!! My Name Is Rick And I Am A Hoarder

Hi!! My name is Rick and I am a hoarder. Not necessarily in the most traditional of ways, but a hoarder none the less. There have been times where I have procured and put away some small scraps of this and that for future use. I can never know when that special occasion might arrive, when I will need those "this and thats" to aid me in my attempts to do my best MacGyver impersonation. It is during those MacGyver attempts that the full wisdom of my saving them and the total usefulness of those "this and thats" become readily and clearly apparent to all of those who happen to be around me at that time. But this isn't the hoarding that I am really talking about. My main hoarding tendencies occur when I feel the need to save a web site into "my favorites" or bookmark it on my computer. I have so many web sites saved that it sometimes takes me forever to locate that special web site when I need it. I am sure that I could do a Google search faster than it takes to scroll up and down "my favorites" list. The Google search method might be quicker, but that would take away the need for the "my favorites" list and we all know that a true hoarder would not delete or get rid of any of those saved web sites. Besides the usual numerous financial sites, I have saved the shortcuts to weather sites for both the US and Canada, all of the major network sites for catching up on missed episodes...no Tivo here, Mega Millions web site...like I stand a chance in hell of winning anything above and beyond those slips of paper that my loser numbers are printed on, assorted fishing gear manufacturers, bunches of travel related sites and that includes all of those 3rd party sites that sell supposedly discounted airline tickets, car rental and hotel rates, computer wallpaper sites, interesting travel locations that I would love to visit one of these days, trip insurance sites to go along my travel sites, currency converter site, a shoe size converter site for converting mens shoe sizes to a womans size and vise versa..the vice versa was the real reason for saving that site..to convert Veronica shoe size into a mans shoe/boot size...and no I do not where women's shoes but thank you for asking, auto club site, tv guide site, jewelery sites, weekly ad circular sites for checking out the latest ads at our local grocery stores and many of the ads in the other 49 adjoining states and a Federal District, you tube, amazon.com, web sites that show the lyrics to some of my favorite songs, real estate property sites, my Luzianne instant coffee site...where I have to order my special Luzianne instant coffee with chicory...love the taste of that chicory, assorted photo sites, of course my frequently visited blog sites, an online rebate site, numerous sports and news sites, the Verizon web site...boy I have needed this site quite a number of times over the last 6-8 months or so...read earlier blog entries about that, an old time candy site, postal service sites, medical sites, many health sites and on and on it goes. I think you get the overall idea. I hardly ever delete one of these sites that are in "my favorites" list. Last time i had a long list of "my favorites" that was stored on my computer, that computer crashed and I lost all of those shortcuts to so many web sites that I was crushed and devastated. I had to start all over again on this computer but this time I had to make "my favorites" list twice as long as before. And because of my fear that this computer will crash someday in the future, I clicked on one of my stored "my favorites" sites...amazon.com and purchased a whole computer portable backup drive. NEVER AGAIN will I lose all of those important web sites that have been saved on "my favorites" when this computer decides to crash. All of the aforementioned web sites are important to me...maybe not right this minute but they could be tomorrow or the next day or the next day after that!!!! Yes indeed...my name is Rick and.....I am a hoarder.

The Garden Cried Out For Me

Today I did something that I have not done in quite a long time....I spent time in the front yard garden. This garden has been looking a little haggard for quite some time. Usually in the Spring, I put mulch around all of the new season growth and then I jut leave it alone until everything starts dying off, at which time I start to clean it out again for the Fall and Winter months. But this year the garden cried out for a new makeover or at least some serious tidying up. So today I spent about 5 hours giving the garden some serious attention. The main problem with this garden is that it is full of irises. Irises themselves are not problems but actually beautiful flowers. But when you start getting too many in there and they haven't been thinned and split up in a while, they tend to get diseases. Diseases such as leaf spot and bulb rot. The irises in this garden have been battling both over the last couple of years and this year has been particularly bad. I wish that I had known just a little more about irises before I had originally planted them, but like so many other flower varieties....if it looks nice it gets thrown in the garden, sometimes even when space is limited. I could have bought varieties that are more disease resistant than the ones that I picked but that would be just a little too easy and would have made way too much sense. Those are 2 things that sometimes I just shy away from....easy and sense. Today I went through and dug, sliced, snipped, clipped and plucked out all of the bulb rot I could find and weeded out the worst of the irises. I then went into the backyard where I have lots of different varieties and colors of irises and thinned out several areas back there before the diseases started on them. I must have planted 25 or so new iris clumps in the front garden. After the job was done, I looked over my handywork and came to the conclusion that I probably put in more iris clumps in that front garden than I took out. This is not a good thing because irises multiply as time goes by and they create more bulbs. This will once again lead to the over crowding and a hightened possibilty of disease amongst my iris population. Hopefully the new iris clumps will take at least a couple of years to multiply before they start crying out my name again, requesting some relief and attention. Hey...at least I should have a bunch of flowers in there over the next couple of seasons and a lot more variety in colors too.

On The Mend

Veronica and I went to the doctors office yesterday. We have some sort of viral bug. The doctor told us that they don't run any tests for the Swine Flu unless you are in the hospital. I also found out that not only will they be administering the regular annual flu vaccines this year but there will be a 2 injection set given for the Swine Flu, starting in October. This is the first time that I can remember, ever getting a flu bug during the Summer like this. It should be out of our systems in a week or so. Hopefully it will be sooner than that. Today I plan on getting outside and doing some work in the garden. Hopefully I can sweat this bug out of my system.