The beginning of the week held great promise but alas it's turned into a snow and rain fest here in Colorado. I had to rush out and rescue some of my potted flowers and herbs the other day. They are in the garage deprived of sunlight. I can't keep them in the house because my cats literally destroy any plant even fake ones. I put cloth over my whiskey barrels outside but who knows if my flowers will survive. I'm too afraid to look under the cover and see. It's all so depressing. I am beyond sick of winter weather.

I had a dentist appointment yesterday. I got this huge obnoxious gold crown put on my furthest back molar. It seems I had no choice in the matter. I asked for a white one and was told there wasn't enough room back there. I really hate it. Maybe it won't be so bad when I have the silver crown next to it replaced. That one should be able to be white so less metal appearing in my mouth. I also had a quick cleaning done with that ultrasound pick thingie. My teeth are so bad she just got the main crud off but they do look much better. No more black gunk. (Have I ever mentioned how bad my teeth really are? LOL) It will take two more visits of a root scaling procedure to get them totally cleaned. I go back for those in July. They only found one obvious cavity yesterday though so I guess that is something to be happy about. I figured for sure there must be more. That will be filled in July too I guess. So let's see that makes a minimum of 4 more visits to the dentist this year. The two root planings, the crown replacement and a filling. They are urging me strongly to have my wisdom teeth removed but after all this other work my insurance will be tapped out for this year.

Tuesday, May 1, 2001 - 11:32 p.m.

Whew. After a long night last night, and several hours again today.....The Sims is working on my laptop! What a total pain but thanks to the friendly informative folks on the alt.games.the-sims newsgroup I was able to figure out what was going on and fix it. I am beyond relieved.

Tuesday, May 1, 2001 - 12:11 a.m.

I have just spent two hours attempting to install and recover my Sims game. I backed up all my extra objects, skins, etc when I upgraded to Windows 2000. Apparently, there is some kind of problem. I can install The Sims, Livin' Large and House Party just fine. The game starts up just fine. The problem is when I try to add in my backed up files. If I add even a handful in the same folder, the game will not start. I get the startup screen but then it aborts and goes back to Windows. ??? I am fed up. I have had to switch back and forth between my zip drive and cd drive, each time having to reboot my laptop. Not to mention having to install all three cds twice which takes forever in itself. I have spent two hours and am basically back to square one. Now I have to install the game yet a third time. I simply do not have patience for that tonight. It is way beyond my bedtime. Words can't even begin to express how devestated I am about losing over a year's worth of collected objects, furniture, skins and extras. I even created our own house in Sim World which was a painstaking project, let me tell you. And now it's gone, all gone. I could cry. Really I could. I know you Sim addicts out there feel my pain.

Monday, April 30, 2001 - 10:16 p.m.

Earlier today I noticed a huge spider stuck between the window glass and the screen in our upstairs bedroom. He was trapped so I felt pretty safe examining him closely. He was maybe one inch long, jet black with bright stripes all along legs and body with bright royal peacock blue in the front. He was frightening but rather unusual. At any rate, I was too chicken to open the window and get rid of him. So I left him there and forgot about it. Then this evening quite awhile after Tom had taken Brenna upstairs to bed, I told him about the spider. He then informed me he'd opened that window some time ago. Brenna is sleeping only about two feet from that window. I turned on the lights and tore the room apart looking for it but of course it is nowhere to be found. There is just no way I'll be able to sleep in there tonight and I am tempted to take her out to sleep someplace else although I am not sure where. Spiders just scare the bejeepers out of me. I've been online for some time now trying to figure out what kind it was and the closest guess I have is a wolf spider similar to this one except ours was jet black without any brown, and then of course the bright blue head area. The body style is so similar as are the stripes. So I am hoping the one here isn't poisonous or anything. *shudder*

Sunday, April 29, 2001 - 05:56 p.m.

I spent much of the afternoon outside today. It was so gorgeous. I bought a bunch of plants at Kmart and planted most of them. I ran out of planters and so still have to plant my herbs and some of the flowers another day. Click on the barrel to see photos from today. A couple of Brenna and a couple of the planters I made.

Sunday, April 29, 2001 - 10:45 a.m.

I finally decided to give WinAmp a whirl. I have to say it's really really cool. Then I made it all pretty with a lovely waterlily pond skin from Dmblnd's. It's so purr-ty! My desktop is so springy now with the garden pond wallpaper, lilypad winamp, country cottage Yahoo skin and my new spring themed Hotbar for Explorer. :-)

I never did a call back about my tooth yesterday so not sure what I need to do if anything. I thought maybe they'd want me to come in earlier than Thursday to get the crown. A few of my friends did tell me that either themselves or people they knew had swallowed crowns before without any problems. So let's hope it....ahem....passes right on through. Lovely thought, isn't it?

Saturday, April 28, 2001 - 12:59 p.m.

You will never believe what I did. I noticed just now that the temporary crown I had put on about a week ago, is GONE. My tooth felt funny back there so I looked. It must have come off while I was eating, and I must have swallowed it! It was freaking METAL! I just put a call in to the oncall emergency dentist, and waiting for a call back. I felt so STUPID telling them I ate the damn thing. Geez. Now I'm worried sick about some metal thing floating around in my body. Yikes. Should I be worried??