Those of you who have been following me here on Gather Little by Little will recall that last year we decided to move up to the NC mountains. We put our home in Charlotte, NC up for sale and began house hunting in and around Waynesville, NC. Within a few weekends we found the perfect [...]
Photo by: My wife
First and foremost, Happy Mother’s day to all of Mom’s out there. I sincerely hope you have a wonderful day and that your children and significant others show their appreciation for everything that you do and have done! If not…well, take a few days off and I’ll bet they will real quick [...]
Well, this was a weird week for me. I really struggled with not publishing articles on my normal daily schedule. Everyday I didn’t publish an article, I had this nagging feeling that I forgot to do something. Just goes to show that if you do something long enough, it becomes habit. Ever since July 2nd [...]
Seems that the sickness time of the year has once again come upon the “Gibble family”. I spent all of last weekend and Monday and Tuesday down and out with what I think was the flu combined with bronchitis. I was miserable. I’m still not 100%, but certainly feeling a whole lot better [...]
Not sure about you, but here in the NC Mountains we had some absolutely beautiful weather the past weekend and early in the week. Unfortunately, it was 35 again this morning after being in the mid-seventies for the past week. We really enjoyed the nice weekend weather and spent almost all of the daylight hours [...]
Last Friday, I wrote about the joys of home ownership where I mentioned some problems we were having with our new home: the refrigerator not cooling, a terrible sewer smell in the house, and the clothes dryer not fully drying our clothes. I need to add one more.
My wife and I started repainting last weekend. [...]
I love owning a home and in general enjoy the challenges of repairing my own home, making improvements, etc. I say generally because what I don’t enjoy is the fact that most often the big problems happen at the worst times. Either that or they are beyond my ability to repair and require me having [...]
I think I’ve finally received all of the necessary tax forms, so this weekend I’ll head over to TurboTax online and do my taxes. I generally do my taxes the weekend after I receive my W-2s from my employer, but this year I had to wait a little longer to receive all of the forms [...]
This week was a much quieter and less stressful week than the last. We had a winter storm move in from the north and blanketed our mountain area with 3-4 inches of snow and it was beautiful. We hunkered down and enjoyed just spending some time at home relaxing.
One thing I did realize [...]
This week sure didn’t turn out like I thought it would. I expected a fairly routine and quiet week where I would have some time to get caught up on a few things at the “day job” and be able to knock out two client blog consulting projects I’ve been working on. Well, things didn’t [...]
Last week ago I went to the hand surgeon for a follow up on my broken finger. As part of the visit they check my weight, temperature and blood pressure. My blood pressure was little high, 142 over 105. The lower number was their concern. For those that may not be familiar, 120 over 80 [...]
The thermometer outside on our deck says 1 degree this morning. That is the coldest temperature I’ve ever been in while living in North Carolina. My auxiliary heating coils are on as the heat pump can’t keep up, I have the baseboard heater on upstairs to keep my kids warm, and a radiator heater in [...]
I have to be honest, I’m not a big fan of the whole “new year” concept. To me January 1st is just another day, no different than December 31st or any other day of the year. I realize many people consider this to be a fresh start and a time to re-energize themselves, set new [...]
As of yesterday, I finally started my Christmas vacation. I was supposed to start on Monday, but due to some ongoing issues at work, I needed to hang out an extra few days. I’m off until January 5th, a little more than two weeks. We don’t take a great deal of vacation and when we [...]
Nothing like a broken finger to make you appreciate our health care. I visited a hand surgeon earlier this week in Asheville, NC. The news thus far was good. He said it was a very bad break, but at this point didn’t look like it would need surgery. I have a follow-up appointment next week [...]
