Attentively Attentive to all Things

I usually do not have any problems with Walmart.  I see them as a necessary evil, and so I do shop there for groceries, etc.  I'd rather have a Target, but I digress.... So today I went to Walmart to print out some pictures for Dave's Valentine's Day present.  My dear friend Sara, who is an excellent photographer, kindly took pictures of myself and Caris at my house a few weeks ago.  Today, I went to Walmart to have these printed, so I could frame them for Dave.  When I arrived, I was asked for a release to reprint the photos.  I was confused, as these prints were not taken at a professional studio, but in my living room.  When I explained this to her, I was told I could not have my pictures unless I had a written release from the photographer.  Umm...excuse me?  After explaining again that these were not from a studio (to which the guy standing next to her said "they're studio, they have to be") I became a little angry.  The girl wait...

....and I'm already behind.  This is not my fault, however.  I have only one class that I can actually do homework in, and that would be my film class.  The textbook for my ethics class has not arrived, and my professor for Shakespeare has had a power outage due to the storm, and cannot send me the syllabus because it's on her desktop computer. *sigh* So technically I'm not behind.  It's still worrisome, however.

In defiance of the continuous winter weather we keep having, I have changed my blog look to something flowery and summery. Take that, Old Man Winter!

So the adventure began Monday night when it began to rain.  As night fell, that rain turned to freezing rain, and proceeded to cover everything in sight.  Tuesday was mostly uneventful, until the sleet began later in the evening. After making an emergency pot of chili, we spent the evening watching the electricity go off and on, waiting for the  moment it would go off and not come back on.  That happened at 10:55pm.  *sigh*  Power outages don't bother me too much, because when you chose to live in the country, you have to learn to deal with these things.  What I don't like is power outages during the winter, when the temperature outside drops into the single digits.  That's what we were facing today.  We emptied the contents of our fridge and put most of it outside in a sheltered place so it wouldn't spoil.  After the genius idea of using our ice-covered gas grill burner to heat up lunch, I kept adding wood to the upstairs fireplace, and...