insidious truth

Christmas is cancelled

2011-11-29T07:46:00.003-05:00

Okay, not really. Just toned down a bit. Maybe more than I would like.

I'll get back to that later.

In the last post I mentioned being worried about my husband's job. Really worried. But now all seems back to normal, or at least, as normal as it has been for the past few months. The middle management of the old company went to a meeting with the new company, and we all sort of thought that these managers would be told that most of them would no longer be needed. But instead they went to this meeting and mostly heard "welcome to the family" type stuff. The week after that my husband went to a meeting of the new company, which was run by the managers of the old company, and he didn't meet anyone from the new company that wasn't already working for the old one. So he signed the papers and such, and then went back to work as usual the next day.

We're still being told that nothing will change until 2012. We believe that, as there is only a few weeks left of 2011.

There is now a rumour that major changes are coming in March or April. We will see.

Anyway, while I was getting out cookbooks wondering what I could make with beans and rice and such as that, everything seems to be back to normal, and we have mostly returned to our previous spending habits.

While I was in the stage of really worrying about money, I asked to be less involved in gift exchanges than I was last year. This seemed to upset my mom a bit, but everyone else seemed okay with it.

In fact, my friends went so far as to say that we shouldn't exchange gifts at all, which was not what I was trying to do. I wanted to limit the gifts to small things, hopefully small things that I had bought earlier. Or maybe I would knit them all hats, or make them soap or baked goods. The person I thought would be most in favor of the soap or baked goods plan wasn't there for the discussion. The person who is most into the whole Christmas exchange thing wasn't there either. That left a couple who only wants to exchange cards, a guy who said he was going to be out of town the weekend we normally exchange gifts, and a girl who says she'd rather do the cards this year just because she's running out of ideas of what to get people.

So the gift exchange that I usually enjoy the most has become a card exchange, which wasn't what I meant to do at all. I hope that the other guy speaks up and says that he's already got something for me, so I would at least exchange gifts with one of them.

I've said that I would not do the charity thing this year. And I probably won't, even if the money situation is better. I'm just not that into it.

And that leaves my family, and my mom doesn't seem as upset as she did. We usually draw names and get one person something that's about thirty dollars. And then we also bring a five dollar gift for something that is usually called the Chinese gift exchange. (That's when someone opens a gift, and then maybe someone else "steals" it, and then the first person opens another gift.) The "stealing" bit is a lot of fun, but there are only six of us. My brother and I think that instead of drawing names for the thirty dollar gifts, we should each bring two of the five dollar gifts for the "stealing" bit. So that would save us all about twenty-five dollars and be more fun anyway. My brother thinks that we are all adults, and we don't really need the thirty dollars gifts, cause if those are things we really want we've probably already got them.

I think that he's right.

Anyway, when Black Friday came, I didn't have as much money as I would have liked to spend, but I didn't think that I had as much to buy either. I was only spending twenty or so on my family, and almost none on my friends, and none on the charity.

Still, for the past few years, I've been going to Walmart early on Black Friday to buy jeans (two or three three for myself), a small appliance (for myself), and several DVDs (some for the charity, some for friends and family, and some for myself). Except for the DVDs, there usually isn't that much on my Christmas list that is worth getting out at four or five in the morning for. But I've long had the tradition of buying stuff I needed for myself, like underwear and a crock pot.

Except for the toys, I wonder if anyone is actually buying the Black Friday stuff for other people. I mean, who gives away giant TVs for Christmas? And, if your family has enough money to give away giant TVs, is saving a hundred dollars or so worth standing in that really long line, possibly all night?

I do not have enough money for a giant TV, and on Black Friday I always wait at least an hour for the really crazy people to get done shopping. But if I ever did have the money for a giant TV and cared enough about it to wait in that long line to get it, the giant TV is going in my living room, and it's going to stay in my living room. I'm certainly not buying three or four TVs to give to friends and family.

Anyway, this year, I went to Walmart at five or so in the morning and found a mostly empty parking lot. I didn't need a small appliance, I couldn't find the jeans I wanted, so that only left looking through the DVDs.

I wish I'd had the money. I hadn't seen anything that interesting in the ad, but once I got there I found complete seasons of Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, Fringe, and The Big Bang Theory. If I had bought everything I wanted, that would have been about two hundred dollars, and that's before buying extras for friends. I didn't have two hundred dollars. I ended up spending about twenty, and I haven't yet decided if I will keep them or give them away.

Next I stood in line at Half Price Books, not quite an hour early, so that I could get a five dollar gift card and have a chance at getting $100. I didn't get the $100, but with the $5 and a coupon I got one of the Chinese exchange gifts.

Next, I bought calendars with coupons in them, a few dollar DVDs at Best Buy, and then headed to another Walmart. I found the jeans there and bought two. Again I looked at the DVDs, but didn't buy more. I had a bit of money left, but I just couldn't decide how to spend it. Which season of Supernatural is the best? Season two maybe? Is that better than any seasons of Stargate Atlantis? Or Fringe? I just couldn't choose.

I think that might be it for the Christmas shopping, except for one or two more Chinese exchange gifts, a gift card, some candy and other food, and maybe some yarn if I knit a few more things. I think I'm done.

This year is probably going to be dull.

Two paychecks from being homeless

2011-11-12T10:53:00.002-04:00

It has been a while since I posted anything. There were a couple of things I wanted to write about that turned out to be very long projects, and somehow, I just never got around to writing them. And then I missed blogging about a couple of trips I took (and a few trips that I wanted to go on but missed). And then there were a few more things that I meant to write but somehow didn't.

I guess this just isn't my routine anymore. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and actually have something to do. Or, sometimes, I manage to get back to sleep for another hour or so. Or, maybe, I wake up early and watch whatever it was that I missed on TV the night before.

Mostly, not being obsessed with the blog is a good thing. Last month I actually had time to both get the house clean before the bug guy came and put up about half of the Halloween stuff. And I wasn't even home all of the time, having gone on a trip to middle of nowhere Texas and attempted to go to the Texas Renaissance Festival.

Still, I have forgotten to blog about a few things, and I regret that. It's good that right now I don't feel the need to bitch about every little thing that happens to me, but I like to look back and see what I did the year before and other things that I would like to look up, but I can't do that now, cause I didn't bother to write anything down.

Okay, so the big thing that I have to write down now is not our little trip to Houston, but I will talk about that for a bit. Earlier there was a planned trip to Houston, which was scheduled and then unscheduled and then rescheduled, but I got sick and didn't get to go. I really wanted to go. We had paid for a room in Webster, a bit south of Houston, about half an hours drive from Galveston, and if I had gone there would have been many trips to the beach and probably long soaks in a hot tub. But I didn't get to go then, and this trip didn't seem to be as good, being on the north side of Houston and much to far away for morning trips to the beach. But we could at least spend Sunday afternoon in Galveston, and I always have this thought that I shouldn't turn down any trips to places I like, no matter how dull I expect most of the trip to be, it might be my last chance to go for a while.

And I think maybe this is it, no more trips, even mostly boring ones.

The big news this week is that the company my husband works for was bought by another company. The second company is one that my husband has worked for before, two or three times, so we already know what to expect. More work, less pay, and no insurance.

The holiday season is already a tough time for us, not only because of the extra expenses that most people have, but also because of the expected two or three weeks off with no pay. But most years we have thought that if we didn't do anything too stupid that it would all be okay again by February. This year we don't think that it will all be okay again, and that if he even still has a job it will be with a much smaller paycheck.

So half of the time my husband talks of gloom and doom, and half the time he acts as if things are really good, and we go out and spend too much on lunch. I rather think that we should start getting used to peanut butter sandwiches, but I don't argue with him, and we go out and eat seafood or barbecue instead.

The new company is saying that no one should worry, and that there will be no major changes until 2012.

Like we can't all look at the calendar and figure out how soon 2012 will be here.

So I don't know what we are going to do. It will be a while before we learn anything useful.

A few weeks ago I was happy that we had been able to pay off one of the cars a few months early. And then we had to pay for some car repairs. And now this.

Are there any real people who work at eBay?

2011-07-05T08:10:00.005-04:00

I don't think so. If there are, they are a bit dim. And how do you get to talk to a real person at eBay?

Okay, so I've already written about buying a bootleg Star Trek Voyager dvd from a seller I don't believe knew that it was bootleg. And I was going to give the seller neutral feedback, but after talking to a few people it was decided that positive feedback was okay, as long as I still said that item was not as described and probably bootleg.

Here's what I wrote:
probably BOOTLEG, probably NOT seller's fault, offered refund, early shipping

It's hard to write what I'm trying to say in the limited less than one hundred characters we are given to write feedback, but I think that I got it all in this time, and still managed to say something nice about seller and that it really was supposed to be positive feedback.

This is a message that I got from eBay yesterday, after I had already told the seller that I would keep the item, and after I'd already left positive feedback.

MC015 Security notice: eBay listing removed
From: eBay
Sent: Jul-04-11 01:56 PM

eBay sent this message to (buyer).
Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay. Learn more.
MC015 Security notice: eBay listing removed

Hello buyer,

We're writing to let you know that this listing for an item you won or bid on is no longer available:

150621737804 - STAR TREK VOYAGER COMPLETE DVD SEASONS 1-7 NEW

We understand this may be disappointing, but occasionally we need to remove listings. In some cases, the item itself is fine, but was listed in a way that didn't follow eBay's guidelines.

Here's what you can do next:

-- If you already paid, received your item, and you're satisfied, please disregard this notice.
-- If you won the item but haven't paid, don't pay. Since eBay removed the listing, you're no longer obligated to go through with the transaction.
-- If you already paid for this item through eBay, and it's past the estimated delivery time, you can open a case in our Resolution Center. Click the link below, and select the "I haven't received it yet" option. This will guide you through the process of opening a case.
http://resolutioncenter.ebay.com

If the seller offers you the item outside of eBay, we strongly discourage you from accepting the offer. These types of transactions are extremely risky and aren't covered by eBay buyer protection programs.

If you didn't pay through eBay or PayPal, and:
-- You paid by Western Union or MoneyGram, contact the company directly (Western Union 800-325-6000 or MoneyGram 800- 926-9400).
-- You paid by check, contact your bank to stop payment.

Thanks,

eBay

To learn more about eBay Buyer Protection, please visit:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/buyer-protection.html

I can only guess that I set some automated thing in motion when I checked a box that said counterfeit item, or whatever it was. But shouldn't there be some real person somewhere reading the feedback before sending out this stuff?

Wonder if I should write seller an apology?

Great Minds Think Alike

2011-07-03T07:20:00.005-04:00

On Buddy's first birthday, I was invited to a party. They made a big deal of it. He was surrounded by just about everyone he knew as the traditional picture of trying to eat cake was taken. He was presented with every age appropriate toy on the market.

The following Christmas, there seemed no point in getting him anything, as he received just about everything I could think of already for his birthday. Still, his grandparents managed to find a few toys that he didn't already have. I don't remember getting him anything.

For his second birthday, I don't remember them doing much of anything, and I don't remember getting him anything. As it turns out, his birthday was celebrated in combination with some other event, to which I was not invited. So that explains why I don't remember it.

The following Christmas, I didn't think that he needed anymore toys, even if I could have found something not already given to him by one of his grandparents. I knit hats for both him and his little sister. I was surprised that he seemed happy with it and wore it the rest of the day in the house.

For his third birthday, I did not expect to be invited to a party, but I thought that I would get him something anyway, if I found something I thought that he'd like. While shopping on eBay, I found just the thing. Benji. I used to like that movie when I was younger. And I found a dvd with three other stories that I don't remember seeing. It sounded like a good deal, and I ordered it.

The week before Buddy's birthday, while I was waiting for the dvd to come in the mail, I get invited to a party put together at the last minute. It isn't going to be the big deal that the first one was, and I would have to miss out on something else that I'd already planned. But, I decided not to miss Buddy's birthday. He doesn't speak a lot of complete sentences, but he does know everyone's name, and he knows who is missing and asks about them. It is usually men who are missing, and we usually tell him "he's at work." I have no such excuse.

The day before the party, the dvd had not yet appeared, and might still not come in the mail for another week. That didn't matter before, when he either wasn't having a party, or wasn't celebrating with a bunch of adults. I'd just give him the gift later.

But now that there was a party, I'd rather be there with something for him to unwrap. And it was too late for me to go in with someone else and buy something nice. Not that I'd know what that should be anyway. He sort of has five grandparents, and they buy him a lot of stuff.

While at a nearby store buying groceries, I found a slip and slide. Okay, not really a slip and slide, some rival company, but you get the idea. Also there were small blow-up pools made to look like turtles and such. I called his mother, and she said that she did not really want a pool that looked like a turtle. They already had something similar, and they didn't use it much because it was such a hassle to empty the pool later, and you can't leave even a small pool with water unattended. But the slip and slide sounded like a good idea.

So I gave him a slip and slide. Just after that was all wrapped up and ready to go, the Benji dvd arrived in the mail. Oh, well. Benji can be a Christmas present.

Yesterday, we all went to dinner. I asked if Buddy'd had a chance to try out the slip and slide.

Out comes his dad's phone, with pictures. "He ended up with two of them, but we decided to keep them both. Everything breaks eventually, and he'll already have a spare."

Okay.

"It's broke," Buddy said.

"Yes," his dad said. "He gets stuff handed down from cousins who don't need it anymore. Both the other kids used stuff for years, but he gets it and it's broke a week or two later."

Okay.

His mother then tells me that the thought of the Benji dvd was appreciated, but it turns out that they already have that one. His Aunt K already got it for him.

I think Aunt K must have also got him the other slip and slide. She wasn't at the party, and they were planning to see her somewhere else the next day.

I hope that Aunt K doesn't knit.

Moral dilemmas on eBay

2011-07-01T16:42:00.003-04:00

Okay, if you've been reading, you know that I've spent too much money on eBay in the past two or three months, and you know I've had some problems with plants being shipping too late in the season, or just being shipped bad plants, or whatever.

Okay, I'm having another problem and would like to hear opinions from others. I bid on Star Trek Voyager seasons 1 and 7. Not seasons 1 thru 7, but just the first one and the last one. I thought that was an odd combination to have in an auction, but I bid on it anyway. I stopped bidding at seventeen dollars, and someone else won.

I guess the someone else didn't really want it, and I got a second chance offer. So I bought two seasons of Voyager for seventeen dollars plus three dollars shipping. And it arrived two or three days later, sooner than I expected.

The package was smaller than I expected. I've seen Voyager seasons before, and they are in plastic things that take up space. These were in cardboard boxes that had the same artwork.

So that was odd. Either I got really nice looking bootlegs, or there's some sort of new "green" packaging that I wasn't aware of.

I asked the seller about it. Seller didn't know.

I did stuff like Google--Star Trek Voyager cardboard box. I found a lot of unhappy people talking about bootleg copies of Voyager. Not bootleg copies in general, bootleg copies of Voyager in particular, mostly on Amazon. Like, most, if not all, Voyager for sale on Amazon turn out to be fake.

I thought at first I had somehow lucked out and either got a really good fake, or maybe the real disks in a fake box? The first disk was just fine.

Only the second disk, not so much.

Third, fourth, and fifth disks also have problems.

But, I have this used divx player, and I can still watch most of them.

So now I have to decide what to do about feedback on eBay.

Now, I don't really think that this particular seller is a crook. I don't think that seller has boxes and boxes of fake dvds to sell. I haven't seen anything else like this in the past month or so, and I didn't find anything like that listed now. Also, seller would refund my money (shipping was not discussed).

I don't really think that I'll take the refund. Someone, probably me or the seller, is going to get stuck with this copy. I don't think that either of us deserves to be out money, much less any more money for return postage. I at least have the divx player so that I can watch most of the disks.

Still, I think that I should report the bootleg dvds, at least in feedback. I think, just in case I'm wrong and seller has more bootleg Voyager to sell later, I should warn buyers. I don't want to leave negative feedback for someone who a.) probably didn't do this on purpose, and b.) would offer a refund. But I'm also thinking that no one reads the positive feedback, except the seller. Buyers just look at the number of positive feedback and then go read the negative and maybe the neutral.

I'm thinking of leaving neutral feedback, saying it is bootleg, but then giving seller high marks and a nice comment about the shipping.

What do you think I should do?

More drama about the trees

2011-06-26T05:42:00.004-04:00

Okay, I've now cut down most of two trees and a large bush. To finish cutting down the two trees I either need a chain saw or an axe. I have access to a chain saw, but I'm afraid to use it, and I do not have the clothing made to protect myself from accidentally sawing through an arm or a leg, and I'm not sure that there is proper safety equipment for protecting fingers. So I think that the chain saw is out, and I should acquire a big axe. Or, at least, a normal sized axe, as opposed to the current small axe with the twelve inch handle.

I'm getting warnings that I should not be much safer with an axe, but I would feel safer. My plan is to first try to borrow one, but if that doesn't work by next week I will probably end up buying one.

But I'm not really that worried about those trees now. Most of the current hassles are about the little fruit trees I bought on eBay.

As I have mentioned earlier, I saw a five-in-one pear on eBay. After I won that bid, I also bought two Stella cherries and a five-in-one apple from the same seller, to make good use of the combined shipping discount. So I ended up spending about thirty-five dollars on the plants themselves, plus shipping, which then came to about fifty-two dollars.

The trees were all supposed to be dormant. They weren't. The cherries were dormant. The cherries were thin little twigs that arrived dormant and have now grown into healthy little plants. I think that they are to small to be of much help to me, and after next winter they may decide that Texas is not to their liking and not bloom and never have fruit. If they do fruit it will be years and years from now, as they are just too small, and not a season or two away from having fruit as in the plant description. But I really have no serious complaints about the cherries. For an extra five bucks and two dollar shipping, I thought that it was worth trying.

The other two trees were different. It's odd to get such different quality stuff from the same seller. Again, the trees were smaller than I expected. Not really smaller than described, but the smaller than I had pictures in my head from buying bare root trees in local stores. They were just thinner than I had imagined, and I wonder how you can have a healthy graft on something as small as the pear. The pear had leaves all up and down the plant, in about twelve places. It didn't look like I'd expected a five-in-one pear to look like. I wondered if I got a single variety pear by mistake. And plants that already have leaves usually don't like being sent in the mail, and they especially don't like it in May or June in Texas, it's just too hot. So the plant looked quite limp and sick. The apple looked a bit better, but it only had three sets of leaves at the top. Again, not the dormant plant described, and not what I expected a five-in-one apple tree to look like. And while the roots of the cherries were still moist, the apple and pear were maybe just a bit damp.

I gave all the plants water, and having almost no planting instructions (other than to plant with the burlap on), I kept the trees inside for three days, thinking that water and air-conditioning would help the plants recover, as I'd been instructed to do that with some other plants I'd bought from someone else.

In three days the cherries were starting to grow, and you could tell that they were in fact dormant trees instead of dead sticks. The apple looked about the same. The pear had lost leaves and the remaining leaves were turning black.

I suspected that in it's weakened condition the pear had caught fire blight. I wasn't sure if there was anything wrong with the apple, just that it wasn't thriving like the cherries. I put all four trees outside in part shade. I worried that it might be too hot for them, but I knew that other plants I've kept inside for more than three days suffer.

The cherries immediately improved and started to grow leaves. The pear turned even more black. The apple did not appear to change at all.

I gave up after a few days of this and complained to the seller. The seller said this was all normal, and that the leaves would grow back.

Another week went by, and the pear was totally leafless and black. The apple was starting to dry out. Again I sent a message to the seller, who again said this was normal and that the leaves would be replaced. If I would do a scratch test I'd be able to see that the plants were still alive.

Okay, the plants were still a bit green on the inside. But I still think that they are dying, and that if they don't actually die at least parts of the plants I wanted are probably dead. The rootstock might still be alive, it might grow more leaves at some point, but the leaves weren't going to grow back where they had been. The grafted parts were probably dead, and I'd never get five kinds of pears or five kinds of apples.

I sent another message to the seller, asking that I not be required to mail back dead plants for my refund. Proof of death could be provided with photographs. I just wanted my money back, and if I got it that day or the next day I'd still leave positive feedback. I thought if I worded it just right, that I'd get my money (except for the cherries, which were still small but healthy), and that would be the end of it. Otherwise I'd file a complaint.

Instead I got an offer of new plants. According to the seller, the new plants had been kept in a cooler and were just starting to have buds. And I would get them soon, possibly Tuesday.

Okay.

I did not get the plants Tuesday, and I did not get the plants Wednesday, but they did arrive Thursday. And they came in a big tube, and I imagined that they had sent me bigger plants to make up for the hassle.

The apple was about the same as the first one, only this one has four sets of leaves. Leaves. Not dormant, not just budding out, leaves.

The pear was just budding out, and it was a bit larger than the first pear, but it already had blight, right there in the tube. At least, I think it is fire blight, cause it's a pear. My husband thinks that it is freezer-burn, cause it's been in a cooler. Whatever it is, it's making the leaves black and curled up.

I sent the seller another message, and again the seller says this is normal. Trees just look like that when they start to bud out.

Well, that has not been my experience before. My experience is that if it looks like blight then it's probably blight.

Anyway, on my eBay account I noticed something about the deadline for dispute resolution being on the twenty-seventh. There's no way that I'd have healthy plants by then. I've thinking that I should complain, just to get an extension. So I started doing that, though I'm supposed to be checking little boxes, and the little boxes don't really fit my situation. I finally settle for "item not as described" as I think that is the main problem, that the seller didn't originally send dormant plants, and now it is just too late and too hot to have healthy plants sent in the mail. And I would never have started this whole thing if the ad wasn't for dormant plants.

Then there are more boxes, and a place to describe the problem in more detail, and at the end you are asked if you want a full refund, if you want a replacement item, or other. I check other, and write that I want a refund if the plants die.

To be on the safe side I send two complaints, one for the pear and one for the apple. And eBay says someone will contact me by July 2. And I figure that will be good, because that will give me another week to see if the plants are going to die, and then I can say for sure that I want a refund, or maybe they really will get better and I'll just keep them.

Except I guess that at least part of this process is automatic, and the seller says I can have a refund if I send the plants back by the June 28. Only now I have to send back four plants instead of two. And while I just found it annoying and an unnecessary expense to ship back dead plants, sending back live plants is a problem for me. This will probably kill the plants. I don't really like to kill plants.

On the other hand, if I pack them well enough and they don't die, I'm now thinking they'll probably be sold to someone else.

This sucks that I'm supposed to do this by the 28th. I was thinking that I'd complain and get an extension. From the 27th to the 28th isn't much of an extension.

But most of the time I think that mailing the plants back and getting some of my money would be better than keeping these two plants, as I can't imagine that either one would actually grow into five-in-one fruit trees, and one of them has fire blight or something that looks like fire blight.

I just feel bad.

Wasting my time for mom

2011-06-18T06:39:00.004-04:00

My mother called last Saturday and asked for a favor. I don't mind doing my mom a favor. I just don't see that I should have to waste the whole day to do it.

My day went something like this:

I get out of bed and do the usual stuff while I wait for my husband to get out of bed. This doesn't take as long as usual, because on Saturday he has to work earlier than most other days. So I read the "news" on Yahoo while he takes a shower. I don't have a bath right then, there isn't time, but that's okay, cause I had a bath just before going to bed the night before. I brush my teeth and get dressed.

He is soon dressed and such, and we go get a McSomething for breakfast. We then come back home, make sure that he has everything he needs for the day, pack his lunch, etc.... He leaves at about 8.

I water the plants and look at a few things on eBay. At almost 9 I still haven't had a bath. I figure that I should get a few more things done outside before I do that. I'm still trying to remove two trees from the backyard, and I've cut down a large bush in the front yard, so I have this almost daily chore of cutting branches down into smaller pieces and tying them up for removal. There's not much point in taking a bath before I get this done, as I would just need another bath after.

I'm thinking that before I do any really hard work (and getting really sweaty and really needing that bath) I should go to Home Depot. In my head I start organizing my day. I'll go to Home Depot first, while I'm still clean, and buy string and check for clearance paint and lumber in the scrap pile. If I find lumber, that will be a lot of work, work results in sweat, things that result in sweat should be done before taking a bath. So Home Depot first. Then the rest of the outdoor work. Then the bath. Then lunch. Then indoor work that will probably not result in sweat. Then at some point I'll probably go to my brother's place. Then after all of that I might need another bath before bed, just because it's June and it's Texas and it's hot, even if you don't do that much stuff that usually results in sweat.

So at just about 9 I have a mental schedule of my day in my head, and I'm getting my keys out so I can go, and just before I leave the phone rings.

My mother doesn't feel well. She hasn't felt well all week and should probably have gone to the doctor earlier. But she didn't do that, she waits till Saturday to decide she needs a doctor, and she can't see her regular doctor on Saturday so she'll have to go to the minor emergency clinic type place.

Seeing someone other than her regular doctor probably isn't going to do much good, but she has decided that she really needs to go, and she has insurance that will pay, so she's going. She wants me to drive her to the clinic.

The clinic is right next to the Home Depot. Not only do I not mind doing my mother a favor, this happens to be where I'm going anyway. And I now feel better about the plan to go there, as earlier I'd wondered if it was a waste of gas just to go looking for clearance stuff. I could probably get the string someplace else.

My mother doesn't want to leave right away. She wants to take a bath first.

My mother is one of those people who always takes a bath first, even before going to the doctor. The is because a.) having a bath almost always feels good, and b.) my mother is one of those people who thinks that when you feel bad you should get up anyway and do all the stuff that you would have done if you felt good, and maybe while you're doing that you'll sort of forget that you feel bad. So maybe having a bath would really make her feel better, and maybe she'd stop feeling bad and not even need to go to the clinic.

But I'm thinking that she's sick and that she really does mean she's just going to take a bath first. I know that on a normal day (when she is not sick and asking for something other than a ride to the doctor) that the delay is going to be two or even three hours, and that I should say no, or that I should agree to whatever she's asking only if we have a set time later in the day and I can get my work done first. Usually, if she wants to do something at 9 she won't really want to go anywhere til 11 or 12. But I'm thinking that she's sick and that she's not going to be putting on makeup and doing her hair and such, or whatever it is that she does for those two or three hours. I'm thinking that she's literally going to take a bath and brush her teeth and get dressed and comb her hair, and that she'll be calling me back at about 9:30.

So I agree. My mother is sick, and I'll do her a favor, but it is early in the day and I'll probably still have time to do some of the stuff I'd planned to do before lunch.

I don't take a bath myself. All of the earlier reasoning and plans still apply, I'm just delaying for half and hour or so. And I don't even know if it's going to take that long. She's sick, she might be in a hurry, and she might call back very soon.

I watch TV for about half an hour.

I remember that there's stuff in the car that can't be in the car if I'm to have a passenger. The bag of clothes that I keep intending to drop off at Goodwill is still in the front seat. The stuff I bought at the garage sale two weeks ago is still in the back seat. Other stuff is in the floor. I've totally forgotten about it. I never have passengers. I just don't think about it anymore.

I run outside and look at the mess. A lot of it is junk that I don't really know what to do with. Some it is actual trash that needs to be thrown away. But I don't have time to sort it out. My mom needs me, and she'll be calling soon. I get a container, shovel everything in that I can, dump everything on the living room floor, and take the container back to the car and shovel in more stuff.

I find some glasses of the prescription before this one. I had wondered where those were. And here they were in a hard case in the front seat of my car, most days inches away from me, unseen. But I don't have time to do anything other than notice what they were and shovel them into the container. Then I take the container into the house and put it on the living room floor.

Okay, that was work. Not a lot of work, but it was starting to get warm outside. So the result of working outside when it is warm is--sweat. I don't like it. It isn't much sweat, but I don't like it. I haven't planned to have a bath this early, but now I want one. I decide that I can't have one, there isn't time. I have a Coke and watch more TV. The sweat dries up and probably isn't noticed by anyone but me. I don't think that I smell bad or anything. I remember to check the answering machine just in case my mom called in those few minutes that I was outside making sweat. Nothing. I go back to watching TV.

Sometime later I notice that it is about 11. I am sort of halfway mad at my mom and halfway wondering if her guts exploded and she's bleeding to death on the bathroom floor. Maybe I should call her.

But, she does finally call me. She is ready. She wanted to call and make sure I was still at home before she called the clinic.

Okay.

She calls back. There's about a two hour wait at the clinic. But, she has heard that before, and she knows that she can "sign in" online, and that she can wait at home for the clinic to call just before it is her turn.

Okay, so I've just wasted two hours of my day because I thought she was really sick and needed to go to the clinic. But she wasn't that sick or she would have wanted to go at 9 or 9:30. And now I find out that she can do something online to reduce the time in the waiting room, but she didn't think that it was important enough to do that earlier, so there's probably going to be another two hours of waiting.

I don't ask her why she didn't do this online thing as soon as she got out of the tub, but that is what I'm wondering.

She says that she'll call back.

I still haven't had that bath. I still haven't done any work, other than getting all that stuff out of my car. And I can't either do my outside work or have a bath, because she thinks that it might be a while before she calls, but she doesn't really know that for sure. And I really don't want to start anything else that I would have to stop in the middle and/or put things away if she called.

I'm thinking that I should eat something. In my earlier mental schedule of the day, I either got things done well before lunch, or if I had taken mom to the clinic when I imagined she might have got done right about lunch time and we might have had lunch together. But now if I have lunch with mom it will be after noon, or even after 1, or even later than that. So I have some soup, and that way I won't starve, but I can still have lunch later with mom if she wants to do that.

While I'm heating up the soup she calls back, and says that she feels better. She still wants to go to the clinic, but she thinks that she feels up to driving by herself. She suggested that I go on and do whatever it was that I was going to do, and then if I get done in time I can drive her after, but if I don't get done in time she'll go by herself.

No, either I am driving her or I'm not. I'm not going to drive to Home Depot, buy stuff, take it home, pick up my mother, drive back to the Home Depot, and then wait for a hour or so. If she isn't sure she can drive, I will just wait some more.

She's sure. I go and eat my soup.

Before I finish my soup, she has changed her mind and calls back to ask if I can still drive her to the clinic. Since I haven't left yet, that's okay.

I go back to watching TV. I can't see getting anything useful done while I'm waiting for her to call. And I still haven't had a bath, cause I don't know for sure when she's going to need me. It will probably be still another hour, but it might not be.

She calls back and asks if I could come to her house and wait with her. Sure.

It is about 1 when I get to her house. The clinic calls not long after that. I drive my mom to the clinic. I know where I'm going, but she complains that I'm taking the wrong street. I'm driving. This is the street I'm driving on. This is the way I drive to Home Depot. The clinic is right next to the Home Depot. They have the same parking lot and everything.

Mother is still explaining how her way is faster when we get to the clinic. I am distracted a bit. Someone else doesn't stop at the four-way stop sign. He didn't hit us. Clearly his fault if he did, but I rather not be hit just the same. And I'd rather not have someone in the passenger seat talking about directions, especially to a place we're already at.

My mom gets out of the car, and I drive a bit closer to Home Depot before parking.

I decide against the scrap lumber and the clearance paint. I wonder if there had been more stuff available at 9.

I wander around the store looking at odd things I have no intention of buying anytime soon. I just need to kill some time while the doctor is talking to mom.

I think an hour passed. That's long enough I think. I head to the clinic.

Mom isn't anywhere I can see. I sit down. Someone puts in The Blind Side dvd. After a while mom calls my cell phone. She's waiting on an X-ray or something. I watch about half of the movie while I wait.

At about 3 my mom is done with her doctor visit. I think that it was a waste of time. She has a stack of papers of tests she should have in the future and such. I don't think that they did anything to make her feel better that day, except to tell her to take some over the counter meds that she already had at home. She does get sick like this a lot. Probably these suggested tests are things that have been done in the past. They probably aren't going to learn anything this time that they didn't already know from last time.

Whatever.

But now that's she's seen a doctor, and they did not rush her to the hospital to have some test that's supposed to be done on an empty stomach, and they told her it was okay to eat something if she felt like it, I thought we'd be either rushing to someplace for lunch or at least rushing to the grocery store. But she doesn't seem in a hurry to do either. There were coupons at the clinic for Chick-fil-A, cause there is one in the same shopping center, so she decides to go there.

After we order our food she remembers that she should take some tablet before eating, and she can't find any in her purse. They sell them at Target, also in the shopping center, and if she'd thought of it she could have bought some earlier. It isn't that far, and I volunteer to go get some.

So I walk to Target and buy her some pills. When I get back she's going on about how she didn't think that I meant to walk. But it isn't that far, and it's less trouble than moving the car again.

So she thanks me and pays for my lunch and I take her home. It is nearly 4 now. There's no point in doing anything before going to my brother's place. Except when I got home I did finally have a bath.

I said something like she couldn't have really been that sick if she felt like waiting two hours to do her hair. She disagreed. Or, she should have at least signed in online before she did her hair. Again, she disagreed.

She just doesn't seem to get it.

When I got home I found that I had dropped the missing glasses and they were on the side of the street. I had run over them. The case is ruined, but it seems like the glasses themselves might be fixed. I think that they just need some adjusting.

The Wicked Witch is dead

2011-06-09T07:06:00.002-04:00

Okay, not really. Nobody died. I'm just happy that the election is over, and S didn't win. Not even close.

I ended up voting for A, R, and M. The winners were A, R, and J. J got 69 votes. M only got 26. D, who didn't send me a flyer (or anyone else that I spoke to) got just 7 votes. I can't remember what the others got, but S got less than 50, and I think the other two got about as many. I should check on that later. Of the people who voted, 85 chose A, and 88 wanted R.

I was worried about choosing between J and M. It was hard, and I was afraid that the votes split between them would allow S to remain. J ran last year, and it seems like he got more votes last year when he didn't win, but I guess more people in general voted last year.

M can run again next year, if he wants to. I was surprised that of all the people who didn't win last year, only T and J ran again this year.

Of course, the person I most want gone runs again next year. Or, at least, next year is when his term is up, and I assume that he will run again.

There's a story going around that S was not a good loser, and almost had to be carried away from the voting area. I was in the general area, and I would have thought if there was anything interesting like that going on that I would have heard it a couple of doors down, but I did not. So I don't know if it's true. But it wasn't even close, and a recount wasn't going to help, so I don't know what it was that she supposedly hung around to complain about.

Next year should be interesting.

Confusion and Disappointment

2011-06-04T08:24:00.011-04:00

Before anybody gets really excited, this post is mainly about eBay purchases, and mainly purchases of plants.

And to answer an earlier question, the seller in Michigan was not the Michigan Bulb Company. This was someone on eBay, I'm guessing that they only or mainly sell from eBay. They have high positive marks, and have been in business for a while, though I've learned this doesn't always mean what it seems, as sellers can buy their high positive marks and such from someone else.

I don't know why that was such a surprise to me. People can buy and sell eBay businesses. Just as people buy and sell regular businesses.

Anyway, I have no reason to suspect that the business has been sold, and that I didn't buy my plants from the same person who actually received the high marks, just that it is possible.

Okay, so I ordered two Stella cherry trees, a 5-in-1 pear tree, and a 5-in-1 apple tree. I have always wanted a 5-in-1 pear tree, and when I saw one on eBay that no one else was bidding on, I bought it, maybe without really thinking it through. Having bought that tree, I thought I'd take advantage of the discounted postage and also buy the cherry trees (at the time I noticed them no one else was bidding, but I ended up paying five dollars), and then I noticed the 5-in-1 apple tree (people were bidding on them, so it took three tries and about twenty dollars for that). So instead of the one tree for ten dollars plus about twelve dollar postage, I bought four trees for about thirty-five dollars and another sixteen in postage.

Now, I have bought plants online before, mostly recent purchases from eBay, and they arrive in different conditions, mostly I think depending on the type of plant more than care given by the seller. I have had great success with daylilies from three different sellers, but I've had trouble with about half of the other plants I bought this year, mostly from the same people who sold me the daylilies. So I think that it's just that daylilies and other bulbs don't mind the shipping process and other non-bulb type flowers and such aren't too happy about it.

So I think that bare-root trees are one of the things that don't mind being sent through the mail, if it is the right time of year. But May and June probably aren't the right time of year, at least it doesn't sound like a good idea to ship something from here, as we should all be done with most of our planting here and a lot of the plants left in the stores are on clearance. But the seller was from Michigan, and I know that things start growing a lot later in the season there. So the seller claimed that the trees were sent still dormant, and I thought that it might be true, and if so it was probably okay for them to keep sending plants.

I also know that dormant bare root trees pretty much look like dead sticks. This has always been a bit of a problem for me. How do you know if you've bought a healthy plant or a dead stick, if they all equally look like dead sticks? For example, asparagus really looks dead right out of the package, but if you buy it at the right time it rarely is. Usually you follow the directions and plant them at the right time, and they emerge, though this is weeks or even months later. However, this year I bought two packages, maybe a bit too late (though not late enough that they were on clearance), and one package was fine and more than half of the other package was dead. I have no idea if they were dead when I bought them or if I did something wrong when planting or what. They all looked the same.

So the description says that what I will get in the mail will be dormant, and that it will look like a stick, but not to worry because it will sprout leaves after planting and will probably have fruit in two or three years. So I have a picture in my mind that I will be getting four sticks in the mail, and that maybe they will have some greenish buds on them, or that they might really look dead, or that they might have leaves already and that would probably be bad. And I thought that two of the sticks would be five-pronged at the top, because they were supposed to be grafted with five different varieties.

Well, I got a mixed bag (or rather the products in the box were mixed), and nothing was quite what I expected. They came Thursday afternoon, a day later than the predicted "between May 25 and June 1." Not sure why those dates were predicted, since I bought the items on May 17th, but they weren't sent out till May 28th. Obviously the package cannot be delivered on the 25th if it isn't sent out before then.

I was expecting the trees to be one or two feet long, which they were. I just didn't expect them to be so thin. The apple is the thickest, and almost what I expected, but not quite. The pear is much thinner than I expected, and the cherries are just little twigs.

However, the cherry twigs did arrive mostly dormant, and now that I've put them in pots one of them is starting to show signs of life. Or maybe it is just my imagination.

The apple tree has leaves coming out of the top of the tree in three places. Not five places like I would think. I suppose other leaves could appear later, as there are bumps lower where there could be growth, but I wouldn't think so, not if all five varieties are supposed to bloom together to cross-pollinate. I'm wondering if I got a 3-in-1 tree by mistake, but I didn't see any of those advertised.

The pear tree is just the opposite. Unfortunately, it has leaves growing almost the entire length of the tree, in about thirteen places. Not at all the five-pronged stick I was expecting. I suppose each variety could have been tiny little grafts two or three places each, but my first thought is that I got a single variety by mistake. If so I've paid way too much, and I don't even know what variety it is. And of course the leaves are dying, though I don't think the whole thing is dying, maybe just the leaves.

I've got all four in small pots in the living room, thinking that it is too hot for the poor trees to go outside after their traumatic trip.

Well, I don't quite know what to do. First, I think that I've spent my money unwisely. With shipping and everything, I spent less than fifty-five dollars, but I'm thinking I could have done better with it. I might have found something around here on clearance. Or, I might have saved the money til next year and ordered trees in March or something. I am worried that the pear tree was a bad idea. Half of the varieties are good for this area, but the other half will probably get blight. I don't know if the blight will just kill half of the pears or kill the whole tree. And that's if I actually have a 5-in-1 pear tree and not just a mystery one variety tree. The cherry trees are just tiny twigs, and I might have been better off buying one larger tree. And I didn't really need an apple tree, I hadn't originally planned on it, but it just suddenly seemed like a good idea after buying the other stuff and qualifying for the discounted shipping.

So I might just be having some regular buyer's remorse, and not really have a reason to complain. I don't want to complain. I don't want to give someone bad marks if they don't actually deserve bad marks. But I was supposed to get dormant 5-in-1 trees, and they were not dormant, and it now occurs to me that it will be years before I have any idea if they are actually 5-in-1 trees.

Anyway, I haven't yet contacted the seller, and I haven't yet left feedback.

In other news about eBay, I lucked into some dvds, and I'm now looking into buying more. No one was bidding on Surface, which wasn't my favorite show, but no one bidding and the starting bid was two dollars and the shipping was a reasonable three dollars. No one bid against me, so I paid a total of five dollars. After that, I decided to look at other dvds. While looking for Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I found Invasion the series (again not my favorite show, but a good deal) and the same seller had Invasion: Earth, which I did really like when I saw it the first time and I wouldn't mind seeing it again. The dvds were Buy Now under four dollars each, reasonable shipping, with discounts for multiple purchases. So I bought both for just under twelve dollars.

All three are coming media mail, which means that I might have to wait a while, but I noticed that both sellers sent the packages the next day, and there are tracking numbers. I am now worried that Surface is lost. Yesterday it said out for delivery, which could not have been possible, from Missouri. Today is says status not updated. I'm wondering if this is just what happens with media mail, or if maybe the shipping label was lost. If my address is lost and the seller's address is still readable, they should just send the package back to the seller to try again, and it should all be okay. If both addresses are missing, I don't know what happens. Should I try to contact the post office in Missouri, or should I ask the seller to do that, or is just hopeless? I have bought from this seller before, and I'm sure they would do something, but I think they'd just do the easy thing and refund some of my money, if not all. But I don't want the five dollars back (and I certainly don't want just the two dollars back), I want the dvds.

Anyway, is it stupid to think about doing anything so soon?

My other dvds are now being sorting in Greensboro and are probably fine.

Today is the day of our little election. We had some discussions about absentee voting, and we were told that we could not do that. There's an exception for the disabled, sort of, but the disabled still have to be in their homes at the time of the election. I'm told that we cannot have absentee voting because of a by-law that says you cannot vote by proxy or by email, though in some cases if the member is out of town a spouse can vote for him or her if the election officers are told in advance.

I am thinking that does not totally cancel out the possibility of absentee voting, and if arrangements are being made for the disabled a similar arrangement cold be made for other people who are going to be out of town. For the disabled person(s), a form is taken to the home and filled out, and the ballot is placed in a sealed envelope and taken by an office employee to the election officer and put in the ballot box. So it isn't a proxy, and it wasn't by US mail, and technically the disabled person wasn't absent on the day of the election, just unable to leave the home.

I would think that the same sort of thing could be done for people going out of town. Prior to the election, they could go to the office, vote, place the ballot in a sealed envelope, put the envelope in the locked ballot box, and put the ballot box in the safe. And that would not be a proxy or a ballot delivered by mail, and we could have absentee voting without changing the by-laws.

But no one listens to me now, and I doubt that my health is up to being on the board on top of dealing with my personal situation. Besides which, I never know when I might get the chance to go out of town, and would not like to take into account meetings and other board obligations when I go on trips.

I have received flyers from all nominees except D, one strange letter of general complaints about board members and nominees and pizza and too many kids at our one meeting which kids are invited to, and one additional flyer begging people to go out and vote (though the author neglected to mention if he or/she was for any particular nominees). Off the top of my head, I'm saying yes to A, will probably vote for R, and my third vote will probably go to that other guy's son, cause he did later come around and campaign for himself. My brother suggested the third vote go to the other R, who did later send out a small flyer (and with very small print to keep costs down, but at least it was sent out), because he was the least liked person mentioned in the complaint letter, and we don't agree with much said in the complaint letter.

We had a similar complaint letter last year, but we are not sure it was the same author (both were anonymous), because most of the complaints were about different people (unless maybe the author has switched sides?).

So voting for A, probably R, probably the other guy's son, or maybe J. Not D because he didn't send a flyer and I don't know him. Definitely not S, cause she needs to mind her own business. And definitely not T. Even if I liked T, it would probably be a wasted vote. She is odd, and I doubt she will get enough votes to be a serious threat to anyone else.

Really, I wish I could just somehow vote against S three times without having to think too hard about who to vote for.

Next year we get to vote again M.

Plant problems

2011-05-26T18:51:00.005-04:00

My husband went out of town yesterday. I didn't go with him. It would have been nice, but I'm probably stuck here until further notice, because of the plants.

This week (and probably some of next week too) in particular I am stuck here because I'm waiting on another package of live plants. I worry even about going to the grocery store, that I'm going to be gone too long and I'll miss the package, and that extra time being in a box without enough water will damage or kill the plants. Being gone for two or three days is obviously out of the question.

And it's not like I really needed to go out of town, but originally it was just for the one day, and it would have been nice, just to get away for a bit.

And then some really annoying things happened.

He'd thought that he was going to a suburb of Oklahoma City. Suburbs of Oklahoma City were hit by tornadoes, so we wondered if the job would be cancelled. Turns out that the job wasn't where he thought it was, and he had to leave the day before. So we went to lunch, and he left right after that.

Turns out that we'd been to this place before, but I don't remember it. After a while, you forget a lot of places. But I guess when we were there before, we'd noticed a few things that we wanted to do if we were ever in the area again and had more time. Like, now would have been a good time, if I weren't stuck at home, mostly because of waiting on this package.

Well, he probably won't want to do any of that stuff without me, so he'll be coming home tomorrow.

And now about the battles with tree limbs.

Well, it would have been nice to finish up with the garden and such for the year. It just gets too hot, and I don't like to work on it much after April, and so I had planned to stop all of the major work the first week of May. And then the weather changed, so that it seemed very cool again, even though it wasn't raining as much as I had expected. So, I thought, as long as the weather permits, I should do more work.

After having tried a couple of times to cut down two trees growing too close to the back fence, the trees grew back at odd angles, and some branches grew through the fence and did some minor damage. That is one of the reasons I bought a reciprocating saw last year, so that I could cut the limbs that start growing too close to the fence. So I had some work to do just for that, and a few weeks ago I decided to get started on it.

I had tried the saw last year, but I didn't really use it much. It's not bad. I just have trouble with physical work in general, and after using tools I need a rest. My hands ache. I have to shake it off, literally. So after sawing off the small limbs that would have caused us trouble later, I gave the saw and myself a rest.

After going back into the house and putting the saw away, I noticed that my right hand was swelling up. I did not quite look like young Captain Kirk having an allergic reaction to a vaccination, but one hand was noticeably larger than the other for a bit. Odd. I don't remember having that reaction using the saw last year, but I didn't use it much last year.

Anyway, the problem went away, and I decided to try it again the next day. Again my hands and arms hurt, but more what I had expected, and I didn't notice that much swelling.

After getting done with what absolutely had to be done I cut down some dead branches. And after that went well, I decided to keep going and just cut down the whole tree. I was planning on doing that at some point anyway, so I might as well get started now. And then at a certain point, it does seem like a lot of work, but it's better to keep going that to stop and have half a tree.

So I've cut all the branches off of the first tree, leaving the main trunk, which is really going to be a lot of work with my little saw. But, it will have to be my little saw, or combination of the saw and a small axe, because I'm afraid of chain saws. Or else, I will just have to leave it the way it is, checking once in a while to remove new growth.

I tied up some of the smaller pieces for trash removal, and then I went on to cut down the second tree. This mostly went well, until the last of the main branches, which was too big to get in one cut, and also slightly leaning in the wrong direction, and would possibly get caught in power lines or phone lines or whatever they are.

It took a while, but I got a lot of the second tree cut down, until there was just the main branch left. And it was leaning slightly in the direction of a power line, or a phone line, or cable or something. Anyway, instead of making a straight cut, I made this sort of V cut pointing away from the direction I would rather the branch fell, thinking that if that works with trunks that are straight, maybe a really big V cut would still work on this branch that wasn't quite straight.

But after a lot of work making cuts on the branch, I figure out that my plan isn't going to work. So I'm thinking if I make an even bigger V and get some rope or something and pull in the direction I want the thing to fall, maybe that would work. I've cut almost halfway through, but it doesn't want to budge, so I go back in the house to look for the some rope and get my husband to help. He says he's about to take a shower and will help right after that.

I hear a noise.

I go back outside, and that branch that would budge earlier is now starting to lean over, and not in a good direction.

I yell for my husband to skip the shower.

My husband comes out and looks at the branch which is breaking and now leaning on the line of whatever it is. Other branches I cut did the same thing, but they were much smaller and came loose without too much trouble. This branch is heavy, even though I cut it far away from the rest of the tree, about level with my head. My husband climbs a bit of the tree to get a better look, and tells me to cut where the branch splits off into smaller branches.

Like, if I could have reached that high, I would have done that to start with.

So he's telling me to hand him the saw and he'll do it.

He's never used this saw at all, and just doesn't get how that's a bad idea. The thing shakes a lot, even with both your feet planted firmly on the ground. You can't use the thing at an odd angle while you're trying to balance on a tree.

If I had to do this over again, I would get the step ladder and stand on top of that while I had someone holding onto my legs and I would cut the smaller branches first. But at the time that looked like a silly thing to do and it would have taken a long time.

So I tell him to get off of the tree, and I'll just keep cutting the branch the way it is. Maybe he can stand under it and push it away as it falls?

So that's what we do, and it sort of works the way I pictured it in my head. Only when the branch comes loose it just seems to fall really fast, and I'm thinking, that was dumb, I just told my husband to stand under a falling tree. But he says he isn't hurt, and the branch is free and we get it off of the line pretty quick.

So I didn't quite get that last one right, and into the lines it went, but nothing broke, and I can't tell that anything is wrong because of it. I don't know what the line is for, but the power is still on, the phone still works, and the Internet still works. After getting the branches off of the lines, that one line hangs very low. It might cause me problems later.

Working on another outdoor project now. Since I don't have money for a storage shed, but I do have this cement slab where one used to be, I built this thing to hold up an 8x4 piece of plastic lattice. To one side of that is a fence that used to have plants that blocked view, behind it is the original wall of the house, and to the other side a bit farther away is a wall to the added on room of the house. So the junk on the slab used to mostly be blocked from view, because of the vines on the fence, which aren't thick enough now for that. So I'm building another thing to which I will add lattice next week when I get more money. So that's what I was building today. Forgot about the low line, didn't see it, and while hammering some boards together got caught on it. Again, didn't seem to do any damage to anything, and the power is still on, phone still works, etc....

Anyway, when I get that done, the junk will be mostly blocked from view except on one side, and you can only see that from a certain angle if you are in my yard or my next door neighbor's yard, or in the alley just behind them. In other words, after I put the lattice up and put all the junk back on the cement slab, most people won't see the majority of the junk unless they are out looking for it.

And I suppose that I could spend another thirty or forty dollars and build a third wall. But that is not planned for now.

Anyway, the backyard is full of branches, as I have now cut down most of two trees. My hands hurt from using the saw, so I am mostly resting now. But I will have to cut the branches into smaller pieces, and then I will put them out a little at a time for the trash collection. I would rather do something else, as it seems a waste, but I haven't had any better ideas. I would think that some people who do ren faires would maybe like walking sticks or wizard staffs, but I don't have any way of getting the branches to them, and I can't have an open invitation for them to come here either. So I think that it will be a month or so of slowly getting rid of these branches by putting a few at a time out for regular trash collection.

Glad most of the hard part is over.

Still can't do anything interesting. I'm still waiting on that package of live plants.

Where is the Tardis? Where are our Klingsons?

2011-05-24T20:29:00.008-04:00

Okay, so I was answering someone's email, telling a long tale of battles with tree limbs and such, and I lost it. And it was several paragraphs long when I lost it, and I haven't the patience for typing it again just now, so it will probably be in a later blog post.

On another important matter, there is the Tardis.

Not my Tardis exactly, but one made by some friends of mine. There's a contest of making a Tardis and then taking interesting pictures of it. Here's the link to my friends entry www.wheresthetardis.com/entry/100407 and the rest of the contest is at www.wheresthetardis.com.

I'm a bit disappointed. My friends probably deserve to win, but probably there are not going to now. There are some really great pictures, but I don't think that people are going to see most of them. The team worked really hard on this. The entry was supposed to say something about the club, and they entered before the deadline and received confirmation, but a week later there were still no pictures on the site. So they tried again on another computer, and nothing. The deadline was extended a bit due to receiving many more entries than they had expected, so my friends went to another house and tried a third time on yet a different computer, this time not using the club's name in the title, so the entry is called All American Tardis. Boring name, and many other entries were also called American Tardis. So if you are looking for my friends pictures, they are a little hard to find.

Also, the first picture, the only one a lot of people will see, is rather dull. They are on page three. There's the Tardis. No big deal. They took a zillion pictures and this all most people will see, cause most people won't click to continue looking at the construction and so forth. And even that page doesn't have the more interesting pictures. For that you have to go here http://ussjoshua.org/2011_TARDIS_Project/All-American_TARDIS.pdf , but it doesn't show up as a link at the Where's the Tardis site, so you have to type all of that in. From there you have to click on other links, a few of which do not work advertising the places that allowed them to take pictures.

http://ussjoshua.org/2011_TARDIS_Project/TARDIS_Frontiers_of_Flight/index.html

has pictures of The Doctor, a younger version of The Doctor, The Master, a guy from UNIT, a Federation captain, a Klingon, some actual space stuff, and the yellow brick road and a munchkin.

http://ussjoshua.org/2011_TARDIS_Project/TARDIS_Halloween/index.html has pictures from the Halloween party, including another Doctor, and a couple of girls in Dalek dresses.

http://ussjoshua.org/2011_TARDIS_Project/TARDIS_All-Con/ has photos from a recent convention.

http://www.ussjoshua.org/2011_TARDIS_Project/Construction_Photos/ has pictures of the team putting the thing together.

There are more links to even more pictures, but I've had trouble with copy and paste stuff on Blogger, and I'm tired of typing all this stuff in twice.

Anyway, it is all very cool stuff, but I don't think that many people are going to see it.

Part of the contest involves getting votes from the public. But in order to vote, you have to be on Facebook. I think that I've already had a rant about Facebook, so I won't repeat it now, but let's just say that the Facebook thing is also causing some problems.

Anyway, if you're on Facebook, please go to page three of the contest and vote for the All American Tardis and maybe look at some of the other entries. It is a bit fun.

Now I want a Tardis. In my backyard. Maybe I could put my lawnmower in it.

Hail

2011-05-02T09:05:00.006-04:00

And hell, and all of that too.

It did finally start raining, instead of being just cloudy and dark. And we watched the weather reports a bit before watching other things and then going to sleep. I had to take few pills before nodding off, and then there was this noise. And I can't quite identify the noise, as it isn't something I'm used to hearing. It wasn't quite rain, though there was finally some of that, and most of it seemed to be coming from another room. It rather sounded like someone was tossing pebbles at an air-conditioner. And then it sounded like pebbles being tossed at the other air-conditioners as well. And then the roof, though that hasn't quite the same loud sound as something hitting the metal of the air-conditioners. And then as it slowly dawns on me what that noise is, it really started coming down and was loud. My husband woke up and turned on the television. Seems like that storm we watched on the news that was just going to miss us was the first of several, and we were in the middle of one of the others, in places having golf ball sized hail. I don't think that we got anything that big, but I could be wrong. I picked up two pieces that fell just by the front door. They were a bit more than pea sized, but not by much. There seemed to be a few slightly bigger pieces, but I didn't want to venture out to get them.

The noise died down and it went back to just raining, and we went back to sleep.

I haven't been out to inspect the garden damage, or to see if there's any real damage anywhere else, as it is still raining, and raining a lot at the moment. It's probably going to rain all day, so I might get a short look later, but probably won't get a good look at everything until tomorrow.

Gardening and other stuff

2011-05-01T08:05:00.006-04:00

Note to self, yesterday was annoying, in spite of finding plenty of on sale chocolate still at Target.

Well, a while back I had a cough and was a bit sick for a little while, but nothing major. Still, the cough has not quite gone away, and it is starting to cause me some problems. So yesterday I had planned to dig a big hole in the ground in the front yard, cause I'm thinking that anything major done in the front yard is best done on the weekends, and hopefully finished on the same weekend, as this would prevent any complaints to the office from being noticed until after the work was done. But I got up yesterday and realized that I just wasn't up to it. So I drove off to run a few errands instead.

I have just this week found my missing debit card. Or rather, my husband just found it and gave it to me. The way I remember it is this: I noticed that the envelope had come in the mail, and perhaps I had even seen the card itself when the envelope was opened, but I never actually had the card in my possession, and I certainly never had it in my wallet or went out and bought anything with it. My husband would then complain whenever I would ask him to get money out of the ATM for me, as I should be able to do it myself, as he had given me a card. And I'm sure that he meant to give me a card, and I think maybe he even said something like the card came in the mail and it's on the desk, but he did not ever actually put the card in my hands, and I didn't have the card. So after months of this, he goes to the bank and says something like please give my wife a new card, and they say something like we can't give you a card for your wife (even though it is the same joint account that he already has a card for) your wife will have to come in and get it herself. And somehow this doesn't get done right away, as I would think that we would both have to go to the bank at the same time to do this, as it would speed things along if one of us had a card so that they didn't spend a lot of time looking for the information and so forth. And then before we went to do that he found the card stuck some odd place in the desk where I would never have looked for it or anything else.

So now that I had my debit card, I went to get clearance Easter candy and some sand and other things that I needed for the garden, and as long as I was at the Home Depot and have money I might as well buy a few more stepping stones. And I think that I should just do that whenever I happen to be out and have money, buy a few more stepping stones or a few more cinder blocks or whatever I feel up to dealing with at the time.

It is annoying that in the garden a.) I seem to be running out of usable space while at the same time b.) there still seems to be way too much grass to deal with. The cheapest way to totally cover up the grass is cement, which is a hassle. Stone or blocks are easier and usually look better to begin with, but then later grass grows through and or they look uneven. To prevent grass growing through and to make the ground nice and level, you are supposed to spread sand under and then put more sand on top so that it settles into the gaps between. But that makes it more expensive, and more work, and if you really want it to look nice you buy this really super expensive special sand that blocks water, which wouldn't be a good thing at all in a garden and around trees and such. So once in a great while I'll deal with the cement (when it's not right under a tree or someplace that needs water), but most of the time I'll probably be using blocks, and the cheapest blocks are the ones that are 4 x 8 inches, and not very attractive.

Anyway, I'm running out of space, sort of. There are raised beds that are not permanent, and in fact some still have plastic under them, which will not do at all. Of the permanent beds I have dug, one is 3 x 12 feet and currently has tomatoes, peppers, and squash (not yet producing anything). And it will also have cucumbers, but right now I'm having a problem with the trellis failing over and I've removed it until I can figure out how to prevent that. On one side of that bed is the asparagus. I'm always kicking myself for putting the asparagus there, right in the middle of the yard, as the asparagus plants are not that attractive and tend to fall over a bit, and I think that I need a fence around it. This year I lengthened the bed, because I found purple asparagus at Walmart. On one half of the new asparagus area all eight plants have emerged, but on the other half I only see three, and those three are very small and struggling. I had even worried that the whole package was dead, but then seeing three emerge I hoped it would all be okay. I haven't given up yet, and I'm thinking that the other side just didn't get a long enough soak before I planted them, so maybe a lot of water would help. Anyway, I haven't yet given up on the purple asparagus, I'm just saying that half of the new area is disappointing and might have to be finished next year, and might even have to be finished with regular green asparagus.

Anyway, with the new asparagus, the asparagus bed is now four feet wide and twelve feet long. On the other side of the asparagus bed is an herb bed. Last year it had some herbs and a lot of cucumbers, but the trellis there was old and part of it rusted and fell apart. After having to remove the trellis, there didn't seem to be any reason for the cucumbers to be there, so I added more herbs and one of the artichokes. Oregano has taken over much of that bed, and I'm hoping that it and the thyme will cover all the spaces between the piquin peppers and the artichoke and the other herbs. And just past the herb I have dug a space for a Navaho thornless blackberry. I have to dig a bit more for it to make that area twelve feet long to match the asparagus and the bed on the other side of the asparagus, but I plan to do that soon enough.

On the other side of the herb bed is the most recent permanent bed, and I guess that I will call this the short bed, as it is only about four feet by nine or ten feet. And while I suppose I could dig more and make this one a bit longer to match the others, I'm not planning to, as I want a wider walking space on that side, so that one doesn't have to make turns and noticeably walk around things getting from the front gate to the back gate. And then there's going to be room for a bed between that walking space and the fence, which this year will probably be a temporary bed with pumpkins. The short bed has popcorn, soybeans, spaghetti squash, another artichoke, a few peppers, and a few herbs, so nothing producing yet.

And that's about it for the vegetables. You might have noticed all the vegetables that I didn't mention, like lettuce, spinach, and other salad greens, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, radishes, beets, carrots, potatoes, regular corn, green beans, peas, melons, etc.... I don't seem to have room for those at the moment. I know that most people who garden have a little of all those things in half of the space I mentioned, but they probably don't have a quarter of that space taken up by asparagus, another quarter taken up by herbs, they tend to grow regular corn instead of popcorn, and they grow peas and some other kind of beans rather than soybeans, and they don't have near as many pepper plants as I do. So it isn't entirely a problem of space, just that I've done different things with it than most people.

I know I've made it sound like my backyard is about 15 or 20 x 12. It isn't, it's bigger than that, though off the top of my head I'm not sure how big it is. There are paths between the beds that are about two feet wide, and there's a bit of space closer to the house and there's space under trees and such. There are six more beds (four of them still need serious work), but these are smaller (three are 4 x4, two are about 3x5, and one is about 4x4) and mostly have flowers in them. There is room for one more 4x4, which will probably have herbs in it, and that's nearly all the room I have left that isn't either reserved for a fruit tree, or too close to the house or else in too much shade to be useful. And these areas either have grass growing in them now or else will have soon if I don't do something about it, and all the areas in between other areas also either have grass or need something to prevent grass. And in these areas I need to either a.) do a lot of work and/or b. ) spend money on cement or pebbles or blocks or sand or something.

So at the same time, my yard seems too big to deal with and too small to have the plants I want. When I am digging and weeding and buying blocks it seems too big, and when I'm planting and harvesting it seems too small.

It is cold today. Not really cold, but it feels cold, and it is cold for May (only a high of sixty something degrees) and it is cloudy and dark but not yet really raining, and it is windy. I turned on the heater in the car this morning, and I still feel cold most places other than the house because I'd put away most of my sweaters and can't easily get to the stuff I wish I had put on. Other than being cold it's been a pretty good day, as I found some pumpkin seeds I'd been looking for, had a nice lunch, and watched the Adjustment Bureau.

I might be out of contact for a bit

2011-04-24T08:59:00.002-04:00

My main computer seems to be dead. I'm not sure what happened or if it can be fixed or if I'll be getting a new one. I suppose now it is actually time for a new one, just the money situation isn't that great. Anyway, I won't be on the computer that much for a while, whatever happens, won't be checking my email as often, won't be posting much, won't be chatting, etc.... Just thought I should say something about it. I'm not dead. Yet.

Note to self

2011-04-05T18:45:00.002-04:00

Today I went to Bonham, just to get out of the house for the day. I probably should have stayed at home. There's a lot of work to do at home, but I got a lot done Saturday and even a bit on Sunday. Monday I took a break and went to see Source Code.

Today I am bored, and I hate my life.

Maybe tomorrow will be nice.

The weather sucks

2011-03-30T09:09:00.006-04:00

It is nearly the end of March, and we've had point zero something of rain. That's for the whole month. Some of that was yesterday, making this the second driest March on record, instead of the driest, which it looked like it was going to be. It's just sort of cold and damp all week, and not much actual rain. Looking online, I thought that it was going to rain from eleven in the morning til hours after dark, but that isn't what happened at all. It just rained a tiny bit, a sprinkle here and there, and then after not much it would stop and then maybe sprinkle again later. So you would go inside and then come outside and see that things had gotten just a bit wet, but not enough to water the plants or anything like that. I suppose that there's a chance of a tiny bit more rain today, it isn't as likely as it was yesterday, so we probably won't get much, if we get any at all. The good news is that without rain to interrupt me, I got a new asparagus bed dug. The bad news is that I think it was too late for those particular plants, that the roots might have been to dry, or the weather too hot, or whatever. So I might have wasted ten bucks on the plants, in which case I'll have a bed already dug for trying again next year. I'm about to give up on waiting for rain and just give all the plants a really good soak with the hose. I haven't even taken the foam thing off of the faucet. I don't expect a frost in April, but you never can tell. And I'm thinking that's one of Murphy's laws or something, that after you get everything in the ground there will be a late freeze. Anyway, whenever I take the foam thing off we get some near record late freeze, so I tend to leave it on for a very long time. So it's going to be cold and yucky for another day or two. I've had enough of it. Cold and yucky when it comes with beneficial rain is one thing, but this is just a waste. But I suppose in a couple of days it will be dry enough to dig again. Might as well get started on where the fruit trees will go next year.

The end of the world as we know it

2011-03-25T10:07:00.004-04:00

I thought that with all the accidental traffic to my blog, I should write something important (like the 300th post message to home-wrecking sluts wasn't important enough). So, I've decided to say a bit about a book I recently read about surviving disasters.

Sadly, though I just read the book a month ago, I've already forgotten the name of it.

But, that doesn't matter much, and maybe I'll remember it and add it in later. It was a very general overlook, and if you are worried about a particular kind of disaster, you should get another book (or many books) specifically for that. Cause if you have a plan for surviving a world of mostly blind people that has been overtaken by man-eating triffids, that probably won't be as helpful in surviving nuclear bombs or anything else involving radiation. More than half of this book was about storing emergency food in case something happens, probably something that involves the electricity being cut off.

There was a lot of stuff, even for a very general book. The author made a couple of points that I thought I'd mention. One of them was about having a portable kit with stuff to survive for three days. Most of the book talked about nutrition and calories and make sure you have enough of this and enough of that, etc.... But, for the three day emergency pack, most of that goes out the window (except for obvious things like pack plenty of bottled water). Unless you have an allergy or diabetes or some other medical condition that requires you to eat special food every single day, don't worry about too much sugar and not enough veggies and such. Pack something that you like that you will eat for three days, stuff that needs no refrigeration, stuff that needs no preparation, and maybe stuff that requires little preparation but no electricity (and make sure that you pack whatever is needed for food preparation and maybe some paper plates and plastic sporks.)

In other words, pack peanut M&Ms.

Okay, maybe not just that. Pack energy bars and granola and raisins. Pack cans of tuna and a can opener. Pack a jar of peanut butter. Pack crackers to put the peanut butter on, and maybe some store bought cookies. (Crackers and store bought cookies will go stale, so every couple of months you'll have to eat those and buy new ones to pack.) Pack banana chips and other hydrogenated snacks that you've been told are bad for you. Pack nuts, even if they have salt on them. Maybe pack some canned pineapple (just remember that it isn't as important as important as the canned tuna, so if you haven't got room for both, stick with the tuna). And if you think you can get hot water (remember that you probably won't have electricity), maybe pack a bowl and spoon and some of that instant oatmeal with too much sugar and ramen noodles with too much fat and salt.

With the stuff that's been in the news lately, I wonder if packing for a whole week might be better. Except that I'd never be able to carry a week's supply of water on my back, so I don't guess that I'd be doing that.

The other really good point made by the author was that you probably don't want to buy someone else's prepackaged emergency food. You would probably pay too much for it and/or not like the food. It might be low quality stuff that couldn't be sold for profit at places that you would normally buy food, but after it's been repackaged for "emergency supplies" not only do people buy it, but now they pay extra for it. And the calorie count is probably lower than what you would need in an emergency, so you'd probably have spent all this money and then still not have enough food. So then there's all these tables and charts (most of which I did not read, cause I'm not going to go out tomorrow and buy all of this stuff) suggesting that you might need this much of something and that much of something else, and how to store it, and canned is probably better than dehydrated if you have the space, though you probably want to try a bit of both.

There was a whole chapter about frozen food. I'm not sure why. In most disasters we'd be preparing for, there would be no electricity, the freezer would stop working, and then you'd probably be stuck with a lot of food that would thaw out and then go bad. Have you even seen this type of disaster movie with the electricity and everything still working?

Night of the Comet. Maybe? Flip a few switches at the mall, and the lights came on, music played, and the escalators worked. Maybe a week later, the traffic lights still worked. This never made any sense to me. I'm assuming that when whatever it is comes that without the guys going to work at the power plant the electricity will soon go off, and there will be no traffic lights, no music at the mall, and no working freezers.

Okay, there might be a few working freezers. There might be some rich "green" people who have totally switched to solar and wind power, and they will have working freezers. And there will be a few people who bought gas powered generators for Y2K who will have working freezers and other things until they run out of gas. But for most of us, our freezers probably aren't going to work. Little is said about this in the book, just if you have a bunch of frozen stuff and the power goes off, you'd better have a plan to store the food some other way, like drying and canning. I'm not sure how to can a frozen steak, so I'm probably better off just buying Spam and canned tuna to begin with.

Anyway, you're supposed to store enough food for about two years, and then not everything you want to store will last for two years, so you'll have to store a lot of different things. And then before the two years are up and you're out of food, you'll have to do stuff like learn to plant corn. And so you'll also have to store three years worth of garden seed, cause you're first attempt at gardening might not be what you hoped for, and the second year there might be a drought and/or a late frost, and so forth. You'll always need to store several years worth of extra seed, just in case of one year's crop failure.

I read this book and thought it was all a good idea, though even with all of that it would only work for certain disasters. A few months ago, I read One Second After, about trying to survive following an EM pulse, and I think that it would really help for that (and maybe the world taken over by triffids), but I don't think it would help much in a nuclear attack (unless I knew ahead of time where the attack would be and moved all of my supplies someplace safe). I think that I'm too far inland to worry about tsunamis, but if I were hit by one I guess that my supplies would get all wet and ruined, or at least scattered and/or buried under debris. Also, if terrorists poison the air, I'm not sure what I'd be able to do about that, unless again I knew ahead of time and were able to leave the area being attacked, or maybe do some short-term thing involving gas masks and/or oxygen tanks. And if there's an outbreak of smallpox, I'm unlikely to be in the minority who survive.

Two years supply of food and three years supply of garden seed won't help me survive either poison or plague. In the unlikely event that I survive either of these things while the majority of other people die, I won't need to worry about my own emergency supplies, cause I'll just take stuff that used to belong to the dead people. So again I'm back to thinking that this plan is mainly good for surviving after an EM pulse (or maybe survive hiding in the basement from people infected with Rage, except that I don't have a basement to hide in anyway).

So after reading this book, I'm thinking that I need that three day emergency supply pack for short-term emergencies, and that if I want to prepare for a long-term emergency, I'd better decide which emergency to prepare for, probably the EM pulse.

Only just before I started writing this, I made an attempt to find the name of the book I just read last month, and I came across a website that reminded me of the other emergency I should be planning for.

The Tribulation is coming.

Not that I'd really forgotten about it, just that I wasn't specifically thinking too much about it when I was reading through this book decided what might be useful. So that might be similar to the plan for surviving the EM pulse, except that I'd need seven years of supplies in someplace so remote that I'd never see any other people. So I guess if I win the lottery I'll be buying a bunch of "green" stuff and moving to an underground bunker in someplace like Montana.

I think I'll buy a Spam cookbook.

What is an All-Con?

2011-03-19T01:16:00.004-05:00

Following recent posts, a reader has asked, "What is an All-Con?" Reader must have sci-fi conventions explained to her, as she has recently moved to the land of the Big Chicken, just down the street from Atlanta. Atlanta, of course, will be home to Dragon Con in September, and she'll need to know stuff in order to decide whether to attend it or get the frak away from it. (And in case you didn't know, frak means f**k, in some other language, long ago in a galaxy far away where machines have taken over and decided to wipe out the human race.)

Okay, first off there are professional cons and fan run cons. "Professional" doesn't mean better, it means that it is someone's job and they expect to make money from it and keep doing it on a regular basis. Some fan run cons are very good. If there were not some very good fan run cons out there, it would never have occurred to anyone to start companies to have professional cons. See?

Okay, the professional cons I am most familiar with are Creation Con and Vulkon. On the one had, most of the cons I have been to were Creation Con. On the other hand, most Creation Con events I have been to were a bit on the boring side. I know that sometimes in other parts of the country, Creation Con has really big events and that they sometimes work with fans to do something different, but for the most part they don't do that here. At a Creation Con you have a star (or maybe stars plural), an actor from Star Trek or Stargate or whatever you are a fan of, and you go to hear that actor talk and maybe pay extra to get his or her autograph. You hear the actor speak in the main auditorium, and while you wait for that there are other things going on in the main auditorium, but if you aren't interested in that your only other option is to visit the dealer's room and maybe buy some t-shirts. There is nothing else going on, just programming in the main auditorium and shopping in the dealer's room. Sometimes the dealer's room is just the back of the main auditorium, so it's all just the one room. And, if all you want to do is hear the actor speak and maybe buy autographs and t-shirts, then you're fine with that, and Creation Con is just what you want.

Vulkon was a lot like that, except that they had two other rooms for fans to do stuff. So if you weren't interested in whatever was going on in the main room, you could go to another room and play a game, hear Klingon poetry readings, or watch a makeup demonstration. And of course, there was the dealer's room.

More recently I have been to another professionally run con. I don't remember the name of it, and I guess I've been ignoring it for years thinking that they only did Star Wars and comics. It was somewhat in between Creation Con and Vulkon. There's the main auditorium and an autograph room and a photo op room and a dealer's room. There was no fan run room when I went, but there were at least fan tables set up to promote local clubs. Creation Con and Vulkon usually have a costume contest (though it is usually short), but I don't remember this other group having one, though last time there were plenty of people running around in costume.

Fan run cons are usually different. There's always something going on in five or six different rooms, and you have to get out the schedule and figure out what is most interesting to you. You might even go to the con for some reason other than to see the actors. There are movie screenings, writing workshops, makeup demonstrations, model-making demonstrations, costume workshops, singing, and sometimes even children's programming. And there's usually a big costume contest, followed by a dance, and lots of parties. At the end there might be something called the Dead Dog, which I have never been to, as it sounds like a lot of people getting really falling down frakking drunk (but I can't say for sure, cause I have been, see?).

Some of the conventions are mainly for fans of a particular thing, like Star Trek or Star Wars or Babylon 5 or some animated shows from Japan. Or, some cons try to have a little bit for everyone. Some of the cons have gotten very big, and have just everything for everybody, like Comic Con in San Diego.

Dragon Con is sort of like Comic Con's little brother. Only it's getting bigger. Really Big. It's taken over four hotels and the underground. And there's a parade. A big parade, with costumes from just about anything you can think of.

Dragon Con is too big for me. My friends say that it's great and I have to go, but I don't think that I ever will. I don't really like crowds. And I can watch the parade on YouTube.

Okay, so what is an All-Con. All-Con is a fan run convention. It is not a big convention. It is more my speed. I liked All-Con the one time that I went, though not everything there is for me. Like, I did not watch the performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (I'm still thinking that there might be a prize for the oldest virgin). But, there are five or six rooms, movie screenings, workshops, parties, a costume contest, a dance, etc....

After a while, all the cool con names are taken. You have to call it something. Since this was one of those cons that tries to have a little bit of something for everything...All-Con.

This year's main guests at All-Con are Richard Hatch (of Battlestar Galactica, not the naked guy from Survivor) and Anne Lockhart (of the real Battlestar Galactica, not the recent re-imagining). But if that doesn't interest you there will also be Stormtroopers, Browncoats, people fighting ripe produce with swords, etc...

Okay, I hope that explains. If you like, I'll try to find some YouTube links for you.

I'm not going tomorrow. I don't know if my friend is going either, she might still be too upset about the whole ticket situation. I already have Anne's autograph. I would like Richard's, but the ticket price, plus another thirty or so for the autograph, plus standing in line, plus I can't tell from the schedule even when I would be standing in line. Now there's a $15 Sunday only ticket, but on Sunday there's no costume contest, no Battlestar blooper reel, and I'm not sure when or if Richard and Anne are going to speak. At this point I'm going with my original decision. No $20 or less Saturday ticket, so I don't need to go.

Update on the All-Con Situation

2011-03-17T21:13:00.002-05:00

Okay, after months of asking about one-day tickets and being ignored, and then being told that there will be no one-day tickets, and then even some people were told that they were being a problem for only coming to All-Con on the one day and having the bizarre thought that they should only pay for the one day that they attend the convention, All-Con will now be selling Sunday only tickets for $15.

You still can't buy a one-day ticket for Friday or Saturday, when the stuff that most of us want to see is going on.

What the frak???

So I don't know if at the last minute they've figured out that they screwed up and just can't do anything about it because they didn't have any one-day tickets made up and so the only thing that they can do is sell left over badges on Sunday, or if they don't think that they screwed up but they might as well try to make a few extra bucks on Sunday.

The person who told me about the Sunday tickets is really, frakking mad.

Still not going. If somehow there had been a Saturday only ticket, I'd have gone. If somehow there had been a Friday only ticket, maybe. Okay, Friday is tomorrow, and I have stuff to do, and this is short notice, so probably not. But at least there's stuff that I want to do on Friday, so I would have had to seriously think about it, even if I ended up decided against it.

Anyway, if you're out there and you're not totally mad like my friend, and Sunday is the day that you really wanted to go anyway, now you can go for $15. Just thought I'd pass that on.

Don't go to All-Con this weekend

2011-03-16T15:28:00.003-05:00

Unless, you have already bought the $40+ ticket, or you were planning to buy the three-day ticket, or you don't mind paying the $40+ for just one or two days. Apparently, this year you can't buy a one-day ticket.

Attempts to find out about one-day ticket prices were at first ignored. Some people persisted, and were finally told that there would be no one-day tickets, and that if you just wanted to come for the one day you would still have to pay $40+ for the whole weekend.

The last people to inquire about one-day tickets reminded All-Con that some of the people wanting one-day tickets could only get one day off from work or other responsibilities, and if one-day tickets were not offered people would stay home rather than purchase $40+ tickets, an amount unfair and charging for events that they mostly would not be attending.

These people were told that "the higher demand put upon us by the people who support us the least (one day)that was the basis for the decision to do away with the discounted tickets."

I'm not sure how to interpret that.

For one thing, I've never thought of the one-day ticket as a discount. You go for one day, you pay for one day, and that's fair enough. That isn't a discount. You go for three days, and if you pay for a weekend pass ahead of time, the three-day pass is usually less than the prices of the individual three days added together. So buying the three-day pass is the discount. Like, maybe a Friday ticket is $10, a Saturday ticket is $20, and a Sunday ticket is $20, but a weekend pass is $40, making either Friday free after paying for Saturday and Sunday, or Sunday half-price after paying for Friday and Saturday.

I'm not sure about this "higher demand" part either. If it's just that they sell more one-day tickets, maybe they should be nicer to people buying one-day tickets instead of acting like they are some sort of burden. If a bunch of people were buying $20 tickets, and you do away with the $20 tickets, that's a lot of twenty dollar bills that will be spent somewhere else. And I can't quite picture what extra work the one-day customer is causing for the convention, unless maybe the customer actually had a good time and decided to come back the next day and pay for another ticket, and the cashier had to do the same job twice for that customer instead of just once for the customer buying a three-day pass.

If read another way, it just sounds like the one-day customer is just somehow more trouble to have at the convention. Like, people who just come for one day to get an autograph and buy a couple of things somehow make trouble for the convention and require more security than the people who stay out partying and such for three days.

Anyway, not much of it makes any sense. Several of us have just decided not to go. A few people are going cause they already bought tickets, but probably wouldn't have bought tickets if they had realized their friends were going to be treated like this. And then of course they will not get good word of mouth advertising, cause people this year either won't go or will go and get really mad cause either they were overcharged or they didn't get to meet with friends who had planned to buy one-day tickets. Bad experience this year means less people next year.

It's sad. I only went the one year, for the one day. I thought it was a good convention, and I missed some things that I would have liked on Friday, and I wished that I'd bought the three day ticket instead. I was planning to go the next year, but life happened, and I didn't go the next year, and so forth. I could have gone this year, probably just Saturday, but I currently have a limit of about $20 for such things, and so I am not going, and my $20 will be spent at another convention later that doesn't sound as interesting.

If All-Con hadn't made this stupid decision, they might have sold some one-day tickets to people who liked the convention enough to make plans to come back. But people who make stupid decisions are usually quite attached to them and usually keep them. So I don't expect that our complaints will do any good.

Next year, when the club is voting to move things around to accommodate All-Con, I'll vote that we not move anything, and that we might not want to bother with it at all.

Stressed out

2011-03-14T11:05:00.004-05:00

A while back I went to Planned Parenthood to do the usual embarrassing stuff I have to do once a year. I don't like it, but this year I tried to get it over with as soon as possible. Usually, I pay about a hundred dollars, and I get a pelvic exam, some lab work done to look for cancer and such, a prescription for birth control pills, and a packet of pills, and then maybe make another appointment for a mammogram. Then I go home with my pills and hope that the phone call telling me I have cancer doesn't come.

I have to go back every month or so to pick up more pills. I shouldn't have to go every month, but that is the way it has been for a while, as I do not seem to have enough money in my pocket to pay for more than one packet at a time. It's not so bad. While I'm in the general area I watch a movie and do some shopping or go to the library.

Anyway, this year I got the exam, but I was told that no lab work would be done, cause there was nothing wrong with me last year so there was probably nothing wrong with me this year either. That doesn't seem very scientific. There could be something going on this year that didn't happen last year, or the year before, or didn't get caught the year before, or whatever. Safe last year does not mean safe this year or next year.

I didn't argue. I came to get pills. Trying to talk sense to medical people leads to arguments, and an argument would lead to high blood pressure, and high blood pressure would mean having to wait for my pills, or maybe getting no pills at all.

I'm not sure what the pelvic exam was for, if not to collect samples to send to the lab. It seems like a pointless exercise, sometimes an embarrassing and painful exercise. It would be like going to get a blood sample taken, and going through having a needle stuck in your arm only not having a tube to collect the blood. But medical people seem very fond of giving pelvic exams, any time anything might be wrong with a woman. I don't know what they are looking for. My appendix is not in there. My tonsils are not in there. If I have food poisoning, it is not in there.

So far the dentist has not suggested a pelvic exam. I'm pretty sure we all know that my teeth are not in there.

So, I had the pointless exam, no samples taken for the lab, and did not ask for any blood to be drawn or a pregnancy test or anything else that might be done there. I did get a warning that my blood pressure needed to be good or I wouldn't get anymore pills. My blood pressure was a little high that day. People who work at this place don't seem to grasp that it has something to do with being there for an exam, and that blood pressure goes up if the patient is upset, and telling her that she might not get her pills might upset her. And this has come up before, and I have told them that this is the wrong thing to do, and that if they leave me alone it will go back down. I have something called "white coat syndrome" and I've had it for at least five years and I've told everyone about it. Still, they hover around and make it worse.

For some reason, the bill for the exam was almost a hundred dollars. I can't see why. It is usually just about that, with the lab work and a packet of pills. This was the same amount of money for no lab work and no pills. I didn't have another thirty dollars, so I left without my pills.

A bit later my husband and I went to run some errands before going out of town. We went to the library and some other places, and then my husband turned the car to go home, forgetting the most important thing. I still needed my pills. I didn't have thirty dollars, so he would have to go to the bank. He didn't want to do that, and he talked me into waiting til after the trip. We were only going to be gone a week, so that shouldn't be a problem, just that it worried me a bit.

Anyway, we stayed longer than that one week, and I worried that we wouldn't get back in time to get my pills. That, and the long drives, and the caffeine and some other things probably weren't good for my health. So when I went to get my pills I felt a bit nervous. I didn't feel bad physically, I just worried that the blood pressure would be a little high and that I would be stuck there a bit while I waited for it to go done. And then when I got there the woman who went to get my pills was gone a long time, and I worried about the delay.

By the time someone took my blood pressure it was 170 over something. They would not give me my pills. That upset me. So they took it again. I was so upset that it jumped to 190 over something. They still wouldn't give me my pills. Now they want me to go to the emergency room.

I have not spent a lot of time in emergency rooms, but I know that they don't do anything good for my blood pressure.

I can't believe that the nurse didn't just come out and apologize and give me my pills. If someone really thought that I was in danger, surely they would have done something to calm me down instead of suggesting I drive someplace.

That really made me feel bad. I told them I wasn't going to the hospital, that I was going to the movies instead. I had to do something to feel better, and I usually go to the movies anyway. Playing with a dog would have been better, or maybe a cat, but neither was available. I didn't feel much better after the first movie, but some was better than nothing, so I stayed for a second movie. I can't say that I felt good even then, just not as bad. So I thought that I would go somewhere else to see what my blood pressure was without the hovering people refusing to give me my pills.

Only the first place didn't have the machine, and the second place didn't have the machine, and the third place had the machine but when I tried it something seemed to be wrong with it. I tried it three more times and finally got it to work. By that time I felt even worse than before, and it was 185 over something. It was then too late to get pills anyway, so I gave up and went home. I'd probably feel better after some rest.

Looking online I found out that I'm not supposed to be using benedryl with the high blood pressure. So, I got some sleep, just not as much as I'd like. Still I felt so much better.

Until Planned Parenthood called, and apparently not to apologize and tell me my pills were ready. They just aren't going to part with those pills, even though that is why I'm getting the really bad high blood pressure. So I guess they just called to make themselves feel better, making me sick in the process.

After I calmed down some my blood pressure was measured at 163 over something. On a normal day, when there are not hovering people and idiots telling me that I can't have my pills, my blood pressure is 120 over 80. When I was on blood pressure medication a few years ago, it was 150 over something. I quit taking the stuff I gradually felt better, and a year later it was back to 120 over 80. So this is not something that I imagined. It is my body and I know what I'm talking about.

Funny that when you go to Planned Parenthood they totally buy that whole "it's my body" thing if you want to kill a baby, but if I want pills when I have high blood pressure it somehow isn't my choice to make.

Anyway, since my choice was taken away from me this month, I'm probably going to stay upset for a very long time, possibly get sick, etc.... And of course I don't have any birth control pills, so that's going to cause me a lot of other problems. People don't seem to understand that birth control pills are a medication that I need just like other people might need antibiotics or pain meds or anything else. People just think that you stop taking birth control pills and start using some other birth control method and that it's no big deal. It is a big deal. It's mood swings and physical pain and other problems, and for me it is also sometimes staying in the house and being afraid and depressed.

I'm going to have to get a new doctor. I'm going to have to go through this whole messy business with someone else, and I'm going to have to start from the beginning and say a lot of stuff that I don't like talking about, which probably will not help with the blood pressure. And I will have to pay for all this, after having already paid for Planned Parenthood to do this stuff, only I guess they think I just paid them a hundred dollars cause I wanted someone to look at my a**.

And then of course, there's no way of knowing if I will get a new doctor with half a brain, so I still might not get the pills, which means I will have to go through it all again.

Seems to me that I know a few bloggers who are in Mexico now. Maybe they could just buy some birth control pills for me.

Note to self

2011-03-14T09:04:00.003-05:00

Today was Pie Day. Get it? 3.14. Today was also the first day of asparagus. And I found some purple asparagus at Walmart, so I'm going to try to plant that, even though it is probably too late in the season to start doing that. My first attempt at grafting was a fail, but I think that I will try again next year, with something smaller.

Home now

2011-03-11T08:37:00.003-05:00

Well, we almost went to El Paso for a few days. The trip that was only supposed to be for one week was extended for a few days because another photographer was called for jury duty. We thought that was going to be on Tuesday, and that someone would tell us Tuesday either that we could go home or that we would be heading to El Paso. Only the photographer wasn't called on Tuesday, she was called on Wednesday. What she was saying was that she needed someone to cover for her on Tuesday because she couldn't work in north New Mexico (almost Colorado) Tuesday afternoon and evening if she had to be in a courthouse in Albuquerque on Wednesday morning. And then she might still get on a jury, but isn't less likely that you'll get picked for a jury on Wednesday than on Monday or Tuesday. So, pretty early on Wednesday she was told that they didn't need her. Not early enough that we could be told at eight in the morning when we called, so we headed to Albuquerque and called again when we stopped for lunch. We absolutely had to know then, as from Albuquerque we would either head south to El Paso or west to go home.

I suppose if it still wasn't decided, we could have maybe headed south to Socorro, called from there a couple hours later, and then either kept going to El Paso, or traveled home with a detour through Roswell. And Roswell can be fun when you are in the mood, but really we weren't, and by the time we got there we wouldn't have had time to do anything anyway. Really we just wanted to go home, though if they had told us early enough El Paso would have been okay for a few days.

Anyway, before noon we were told the jury duty was over, and we could go home. We were about ten miles away from Albuquerque, and according to Mapquest the drive home from Albuquerque is ten hours. But we know that Mapquest rarely tells us how long the trip really is. The drive is usually a bit longer than that, and then you have to stop to eat and to get gas and sometimes just stop to get out of the damned car for a bit. The trip from home to Albuquerque was well planned and we got an early start, but the trip took twelve and a half hours. The same twelve and a half hours, from when and where we started Wednesday, would have ended near Wichita Falls at about 10 pm. But my husband was already tired, so we only got as far as Amarillo. As originally scheduled, we would have had to drive at least to Wichita Falls, as my husband had been scheduled to work in Dallas Thursday. But the boss agreed to change it a bit so that he didn't have to work til Friday. He'd just done too much driving.

We'd stayed at the Fifth Season, or something like that. That's one of those older hotels that isn't the new cool place to be and isn't anywhere old enough to have historic interest. Someone is trying to fix up the lobby and the pool and the rooms near the front of the place. The rooms in the back are not too good, do not have microfridge or ironing boards or any of that stuff. My husband stayed there before, at my suggestion, cause I found a coupon and it had nice pictures and came with sausage and eggs for breakfast. He didn't like it, the air conditioner didn't work very well, and he couldn't get an Internet connection. It did have a hot tub, and it did have a nice pool, but he really isn't into pools that much and doesn't use the hot tub that much either when I'm not there. So he didn't like being stuck there for a week.

But on the way home I found the coupon again, and he didn't think that staying there just the one night would be a bad idea, especially since it wasn't warm enough to need the air conditioner and for just the one night we could live without the Internet and the microfridge and ironing board, etc....

I thought that it was okay. I really liked the pool area. The breakfast was nice, but I'd get tired of having the same thing all week. It isn't the usual stuff with sausage and eggs included, it is pretty much just the sausage and eggs, and toast, and oatmeal. No other cereal, no waffles, no bagels, no donuts, no muffins, no fruit. So I'm glad I got to stay there, but I probably won't stay there again (unless again it is just the one night when we don't need the air conditioner), unless maybe the amount we are allowed to spend on motels increases a bit and we can stay in one of the front rooms.

The next day we packed everything up, or I thought we did. I guess that I left my pillow. On the first day we lost one of my swimsuits, and sometime after that we lost one of his. And now my pillow is missing. Probably other things will turn up missing, but so far nothing really important.

I thought we would stop in Wichita Falls for lunch, but we didn't get that far. We stopped in Vernon, and I guess he was really hungry, cause he stopped at the first thing he saw, a McDonald's. Really, Vernon is a small town, but it isn't that small. It does have restaurants. Half an hour later, after we had eaten, we pasted what he really wanted, a catfish restaurant. Oh, well.

We saw a lot of stuff this trip, and I will have to blog about it all later. Just for now I thought I'd mention that we were home.

Summer season begins next week

2011-03-08T14:06:00.002-05:00

It doesn't seem to matter what we are doing or when we are there, but we just always seem to be there at not quite the right time. One place we visited last week had half of the place closed off for the winter season, which ended on March 6th. Yesterday we visited a Navajo Museum that had a small free zoo, except that the zoo was closed March 7-14 to get ready for the summer season. A lot of restaurants seemed to be closed on Sunday, while other things seemed to be closed on Monday. Sunday and Monday are usually his days off, so that's annoying.

And then there were a few things that we might have done yesterday, except that it rained a lot, and even after driving only three hours or so we were tired.

But we did visit Window Rock. If you're a Trekkie, imagine the Guardian of Forever's bigger less talkative brother. I've wanted to see it twice before, but just didn't have the time to make a detour of an hour or so, much less time to get out and take pictures and such. But we spent the night in Gallup, and we had all day to get to the next place about two hundred miles away, so we had some time.

While looking at Window Rock, a cow wandered past, and I wondered if we shouldn't tell someone about it. Only it turns out that cows just have the run of the place, that the fence only discourages them from being in the parking lot and doesn't actually keep them in any particular place. We later saw several more cows in odd places, and then four horses. They didn't attract any more attention than the stray dogs.

I've seen a lot during this trip. Strange that I almost didn't go.

It's been a nice trip, but...

2011-03-05T14:12:00.003-05:00

I should be going home tomorrow. I'm not. My husband has to at least work in New Mexico again on Tuesday. And then, we will either have a long trip home Wednesday (and probably some of Thursday), or, he will be working a few more days in a part of Texas that we rarely go to. We won't know which until Tuesday night, and I'm not really sure which I would prefer.

I am getting tired of the long drives. If we go home on Wednesday, that would be the longest drive yet, and the least interesting.

The drive home next weekend would be slightly shorter, we would probably have two days to do it, and a detour would allow us to do something silly we've never done before. Also, we could think about going to another place we've never been before.

But, driving next weekend would mean that I'd be getting home a couple of days later than I should. This could cause me some problems later. And four days already in motel rooms without knitting have been a bit boring, so I can imagine how I'm going to feel after four more.

We've totally thrown out the diets. I'm sure that the little bit of weight loss that I've had will have disappeared by the time I get back home. I think that we've had Mexican food five or six times already, usually with Cokes, chips and salsa, and sopapillas.

Saturdays are usually the worst for me, with little to do other than watching whatever odd thing is on SyFy, usually movies they made with plots that make little sense. My husband gets home earlier on Saturdays, but usually he doesn't feel up to doing much if anything.

Tomorrow we will spend most of the day being tourists. Since we've already taken the direct route to where we are going Monday (and will be taking it again on Wednesday) we will take a detour and do whatever looks interesting between here and probably Gallup, and then drive the rest of the way the day after. So that will be probably be a rather dull day, with little or nothing to do after lunch, but it is probably a good idea to take it easy since either way will mean a lot of driving on Wednesday.

And there will probably be more Mexican food.

...and technically Utah

2011-03-01T15:25:00.003-05:00

Saturday, I was supposed to move things around in the living room and scrub the floor and get everything ready so that the thing could be moved out of the back room and the living room floor could be painted. As it turned out, I wasn't going to get everything done that I wanted, so I decided to not do much of anything. It would have been nice to have it all done and have the final bit of paint drying while we were both out of the house, but I was nowhere near that. If I had known sooner that I was going out of town, maybe I would have done some of the other stuff faster, but I didn't. It can wait.

So, other than wash dishes and try to get things packed, I went to run an errand, and then I didn't do much of anything. I thought about what knitting project I could take with me, and then I decided that I wouldn't take any knitting. I was going to spend one day in a motel in Colorado, and then three more in New Mexico, but then we were told that one of the days in New Mexico was probably going to be cancelled. So that was only going to be three days in motel rooms, and it didn't seem worth the effort of going to get yarn and such.

Anyway, the almost cancelled day in New Mexico got uncancelled, and the schedule might change even more after that, leaving me alone in motel rooms for even more days without much to do, so I'm really wishing that I had packed some yarn, or at least a loom or something so that I might go buy some yarn later.

Anyway, tomorrow I was planning to spend the whole day in Durango. Now it looks like we're maybe planning to have lunch in Durango before we have to be somewhere else.

Sunday was a very long drive to Albuquerque, but we left at 6 in the morning as planned and it really didn't seem all that bad.

The next morning we took some pictures and went to ride the Sandia Peak tram. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but that meant that we had a late start on everything else. Scenic drives and lunch and a slight detour to look at some ruins and then another slight detour to go to the Four Corners Monument.

Only we got there at 5:30, about an hour too late to do anything, and about half an hour too late to even get in. So we drove past some more really interesting views and checked into our motel, which did not have an indoor hot tub as advertised. But dinner was great. Didn't really want yet another Mexican restaurant (third already this trip), but we really didn't want to go looking for something more interesting, and this place was practically in the motel parking lot.

This morning we woke up early, and we went back to Four Corners. I didn't know that Four Corners was a flea market, or I would have brought more money. But we had enough money for fry bread, and we bought a few things, mostly a couple of necklaces from a woman who agreed to take a check.

I have eaten too much. Might be just as well that I don't have a hot tub. It probably isn't a good idea to get in the tub after eating too much.

So I've now added Colorado and technically Utah to the list of states I've been in. So that makes 42 of the lower 48.

It's been a busy few days.

Should I go on a little trip?

2011-02-24T08:50:00.006-05:00

Well, I should know by now to always have a bag packed and be ready to go, just in case. But usually, I'm not. Usually when the opportunity comes I either have a lot of work to do, or a lot of thinking to do, or both. Then there is a lot of rushing around to get packed and ready to go.

Okay, so I've never been to Colorado. My husband is going to work in middle of nowhere Colorado, for one day. It will take two days of driving to get there, there doesn't appear to be anything in town that is particularly interesting, and then that will be followed by another day of driving to get to the next place that he works, which is in New Mexico. I have been to that place before, but I don't think that we've been there very often, and we haven't gotten to see much while we were there.

Not that we'd get to see much this time either. My husband would have to work for three days, and then so far as I know we'd be driving back, either a day and a half trip or else a very long day, so that he could work in Dallas the next Tuesday.

On the one hand, this isn't a good time to go. And it isn't just that I don't have a bag packed. I'm busy. Really, I am busy. I am painting the floor. I couldn't take that last little bit of carpet anymore, and I've ripped it off of the floor. That took a lot of work. Then I removed all of the old tiles that were under the carpet. And then there was all of this dirt. I cleared away almost a third of the floor moving a few things into the kitchen and the back room and the hallway, and then pushed everything else to the other side of the room. The empty space on the floor has been scrubbed three times, then two coats of bonding stuff added, and then the little holes left in the floor where the carpet was nailed down had to be filled in. I took a few days to rest before I did all of that, and then I painted the first coat of paint, followed the directions and waited a whole day before painting the second coat, and now I'm waiting three days before moving the furniture back to where it should be on the one wall, and then I will have to move a lot of other stuff in front of that furniture so that I can scrub more of the floor as step one of preparing to paint.

So what I had planned for Saturday was to move the furniture, and then create a path through the living room and the kitchen so that my husband could remove something very heavy from the backroom to the front of the house, where it will sit for a while while I maybe try to get someone to take it away by mentioning it on Craigslist.

Getting all of that done is more important that going on a trip. However, I'm not sure that it will get done by my staying. I can't do much of anything until Saturday, Friday night at the earliest. The paint is supposed to dry a whole three days before I move the furniture and such. The item in the back room cannot be moved until everything else is moved. I cannot move the item myself, even after everything else is moved. So the item must be moved on Saturday night or Sunday morning, and it must be moved before I do anything else to the floor.

If the item does not get moved by Sunday morning, I can not continue with painting the floor next week, and the whole plan will probably have to wait until it is possible for everything to be moved out of the way and for my husband to have the time to actually move the thing.

It is very inconvenient to have all of these things in odd places and shoved against a wall where they cannot be used. Also, it is difficult to do things like laundry, as the pathway to the dryer isn't what it was.

The rest of the house is quite the mess, as I gave up trying to deal with it. There is just dirt on the floor everywhere, especially the kitchen, as we track it in from the area of the living room that has not been prepared yet. And while I'm not doing anything right now (as I have to wait three days for the paint to dry), I'm afraid when I was doing a lot of work on the floor I got a bit behind on the dishes and the other stuff. I could probably get caught up in a few days, but I still don't know about leaving the rest of the stuff. Everything takes longer than you expect it to, but I thought that most of it was going to get done next week when I had the place to myself and my husband was going to be in Lubbock.

Anyway, I've never been to Colorado and I want to go. On the other hand, I'd really like to get this painting stuff over with. If I don't go, I'll probably regret not going. If I do go, I'll be behind schedule on everything else, and I probably won't get to do that much anyway. I'm trying to decide if it is worth the effort to go one day to middle of nowhere Colorado.

We would have to drive two days to get there, so even if there's anything to do in middle of nowhere Colorado, I don't see when we could do it. There's just too much driving the first two days, and he actually has to work from about 11am to after 10pm on Tuesday. He doesn't have to work Wednesday, but then there's that five hour drive to New Mexico. So Colorado is going to be a few hours in the evening Monday, breakfast and hopefully cable in the motel room Tuesday, and a few hours before driving away on Wednesday.

I think that the only thing we'll be doing in Colorado is looking at stuff in the middle of nowhere as we drive by.

As for New Mexico, there's probably more to do, but again there's not much time to do it. Maybe a few hours Wednesday night, breakfast Thursday morning, whatever we might do before 1pm on Friday, and maybe a couple of hours Saturday night. And then it's drive back to Dallas.

Our we might leave right after work on Saturday night and have more time to maybe do something on Monday, but traveling on a Saturday night is not the best idea. You have to plan ahead, know exactly when you're going to need to stop and get a reservation before you leave, and that usually costs more money (and that money would come out of our pocket, since the company isn't paying for us to leave early).

And, if I go, I'll miss C's party. It was scheduled for a few weeks ago, but they changed the date because of the ice and snow. So now it's going to be next Friday, and if I go I'll miss it.

I suppose that isn't a great tragedy. I really don't even have anything special to wear.

I guess the work on the floor can wait. I was just looking forward to having it all done. The end was in sight. At least for the living room floor.

Work. Work. Work.

And then it was back again

2011-02-10T07:15:00.003-05:00

So that possibility of a little snow Wednesday turned into a lot of rain followed by sleet. I'm not sure we got much if any snow. But we did get the sleet, so the streets are covered with ice. Not like the really thick ice of last week, but ice is ice, and you can't drive on it. And then the temperature dipped again, to the possibly record lows, and so the ice won't all melt away for a bit. It might get a just a tiny bit above freezing today, but I don't really expect the roads to all be clear until Friday.

So this sucks, again, but maybe not quite as much as before. At least it will be over sooner. And with the ice not being quite so thick, there shouldn't be much of it left to refreeze Friday and Saturday. So I'm still hopeful that I will still be able to go on as planned Saturday night. Now I just have to decide what to bring and what to wear, as I hadn't bought anything new or planned anything really special.

My husband is home. They did at least have sense enough to cancel things before the ice came this time. So there's good news and bad news. With my husband home, I don't get much work done, so the floor is just as I left it Saturday morning. I've made no progress at all since then. The only work I've done is wash dishes. Like all of the dishes that I didn't wash last week (cause it was cold and I just thought I might as well not make myself more uncomfortable by having my hands in the water), and then all of the containers that my husband brought home from last week. And then there was all this stuff I had planned to cook, which I didn't, and has now gone bad, so I'll have to deal with that too and clean out the frig on Friday. So anyway, I haven't been working on the floor, which is just a bit more than halfway done and you'd think I would have finished it all by now.

The good news is that with my husband home a.) I'm not constantly trying to find out the road conditions in Abilene so I can figure out when it's safe for him to drive home, and b.) he's downloaded all sorts of things for us to watch while we're stuck indoors. So we watched a bit of Being Human (which gets a bit weird if you watch that and the American version at the same time) and Primeval and something new called Outcast.

Anyway, I think that things will mostly be back to normal later today, and totally be back to normal sometime Friday, and my husband doesn't work again until Saturday. So it's not so bad, not like the nearly all week thing that it was before.

Week five

2011-02-08T06:21:00.003-05:00

Okay, I'm getting sick of this diet stuff.

First week, I lost weight. Fine. Great.

Second week, I lost weight, just not as much as the first week. Or maybe I just read the scale wrong the first week. But there was definitely weight loss. Fine.

Third week, I can't really tell if I've lost weight, but if I have it wasn't that much.

Fourth week, again, I can't really see any difference in the scale. So then, what is the point? But I had made something to eat that had broccoli in it, and I had overcooked the broccoli, and I really hate overcooked broccoli. But, I made it, so I should eat it. And there was ice on the roads and all of that. It just wasn't a good time to waste food.

Saturday, when my husband came home, we went out and had Mexican food to celebrate surviving the week. I even had a regular Coke. This was the first caffeine I'd had in about a week, and the first regular soda I'd had in more than a month.

Sunday was the Superbowl, and I'm not into football, so I wasn't going to do much anyway. My husband made salsa and guacamole, so I had some of that and some chips. He went to my brother's place and they ordered a pizza.

Monday I had leftover pizza, and then we also had some hot wings cause there was all this leftover Super Bowl food marked down at the grocery store.

My husband is about at the end of his six weeks because a.) he started the week before I did, and b.) his plan wasn't really about losing weight, so he can say that's enough whenever he wants. So I guess that his six weeks were over Saturday, though technically I think that was closer to five weeks.

So I expect we're back to "let's go out" and "let's get ice cream" and such as that, though other than this last weekend I don't expect a big rush to do that, just that eventually things will go back to the way they were. I had hoped/expected that during the six weeks he was on his diet that I would lose about twelve pounds on mine, and that would make me feel better and I would want to keep going with it. But I haven't lost twelve pounds. I might have lost eight pounds, or, I might have read the scale wrong and just lost six pounds. Either way, most of that was the first week, and a bit more was the second week, and I can't tell that I've lost much if anything after that.

I wonder if it is some mental thing, and you lose five pounds or so just because you say that you're going on a diet, and then that's the end of it. Or, was I really doing something different that first week? Or did it have something to do more with what I did the previous week?

I must admit that almost every week I've had something come up so that I did not eat at home just one time. But I didn't do anything really crazy. When I went to Burger King with mom, I only ate half, and when we went to Outback Steakhouse I ordered the smallest steak and veggies and this tiny thing of seafood and salsa that just didn't look that bad. And on the day of the convention I had something called a Dutch Baby for breakfast, but again I only ate half so it would not be just tons of calories all on the same day.

You would think that I would lose a pound a week or so just from giving up regular sodas, even if I didn't do any other diet stuff. But that doesn't seem to be happening.

I think that it is unusual for an American woman to get to be my age without trying a bunch of diet pills and such. I really have not done that, except for buying some Slimfast bars and shakes, but that really wasn't about trying to lose weight, that was about having some emergency food that did not need refrigeration when were were traveling.

Okay, so I've gone to the drugstore and bought some snake oil. Not really, but I did buy some "detox" stuff (which is not really about losing weight it just sounds like a good idea anyway), and some other stuff that I think is mostly overpriced vitamins and caffeine. I haven't tried the caffeine stuff yet, and I might never try it, but it was on sale and I figured that I would go ahead and get it just in case. I was disappointed that there weren't more instructions inside the box, just how many pills were recommended. I thought it would say something like best results with certain types of diets. It doesn't even say much about eating sensible meals, just when to take the pills.

Okay, so I'm not trying the pills yet, but I'm just wondering if the first week's weight loss had something to do with all the Cokes I had the week before. Maybe a caffeine pill would do some good, when I'm totally giving up Cokes. So maybe I'll try them in a few weeks, when I'm not even having diet sodas. But not right now.

Anyway, I just feel like I've wasted the last three weeks (other than trying to clean the house and going to the convention). Between all the stuff in the frig and the party on Saturday, I'll mostly be taking a week off from the dieting. Though I do think that I'm going to try this detox thing and maybe eat some more yogurt.

And then it was gone

2011-02-06T07:18:00.006-05:00

Yesterday around noon it finally got above freezing and stayed above freezing enough to melt the ice and snow, or most of it.

It has just been awful here since sometime early Tuesday morning. There was a bit of snow and there was thick ice all over the roads. Usually, it will snow only very briefly here, and usually not enough to stick, and if it does stick it doesn't stay cold enough to stay around for very long. But it got very very cold, and it did not melt (except maybe in places where you put salt and such), and even what you got to melt would then freeze over again and make even more of a mess. And then Friday we were supposed to get a little more snow, and we ended up getting a lot more snow, about five or six inches of snow, and that covered the ice on the roads, which made them even more dangerous.

While all this was going on, my husband was out of town. He was supposed to work Tuesday through Saturday at a place on the other side of Abilene. So he had left to do that Monday, not knowing if all the talk of snow was really anything to be concerned about, and even if it was it probably wouldn't be the same conditions in Abilene. Having talked to several people in the company on Monday at noon, and not being told he should do otherwise, he drove out just after that. So at about nine-thirty or ten, one of his bosses called looking for him to tell him that the first two days of the job were cancelled.

Great. What are we supposed to do about that now? If you don't want him to be at a job Tuesday, you have to tell him Monday, or better yet Sunday, as he would probably leave early on Monday. Even if he had decided to drive out early Tuesday, nine-thirty is way past the time he would have had to leave, even on a normal day. If the ice had only been here, and not in Abilene, he wouldn't have been able to go, and they would have yelled at him for not leaving earlier.

Sometimes his bosses do not seem to grasp that their traveling employees actually have to travel, and that means that they are not here and should not be expected to be here and such.

So I told the boss where my husband was and the number he could be reached at and so forth. A bit later I called my husband to make sure he had gotten the message. He said that Abilene was also covered with ice, so he guessed that he wouldn't be going to work that day, but it was good to hear someone confirm that. But only the first two days of the job were cancelled, cause ice on the road usually clears up by then.

Except that it was really really cold, and the ice did not melt.

Apparently the bosses do not talk to each other, so another boss called here looking for my husband on Thursday to say that he did not have a contact number, so could I call my husband and tell him that the rest of the week was cancelled and that he should just come home.

Come home, in this?

He can't drive a few blocks to the job site, and the customers can't drive from the other side of town to see him, but it's okay to drive from one town covered in ice to another town covered in ice that is several hours away, even though all the road between are covered in ice. Sure. We'll get right on that.

I did not notice the message for several hours. My husband expected at least a message to confirm that he didn't have to work that day, but he wasn't going even if he didn't get that message. So he got the message from me, quite a bit late. Coming home was out of the question, even if he had gotten the message when he should have. But he somehow had the idea that it would be safe to drive home Friday, while I knew that it wouldn't be safe til ten am on Saturday.

My husband spent a lot of time in a cafe drinking tea and talking to other people about where they were going, and where they had come from, and when it might be safe to leave. And there was a couple who thought that it might be safe to leave Friday, and that was what they planned to do. Only they didn't get very far when they saw the remains of a wreck and decided to turn back and checked in to the same motel again.

So Saturday morning he stayed in the cafe talking to truck drivers, and he found one who said he'd just come from Fort Worth and that it was mostly safe to drive that way. So my husband called me just before ten (when I suggested it might be safe to leave) and I told him not to be in any hurry, but it did at least look very sunny even if it was still just below freezing here that it should warm up soon.

So I thought I would start to look for him about two, though I didn't really expect him quite then, as I thought that most of the way he would have to drive slower than usual. But he got home even sooner than that.

His six week diet is nearly up, so he suggested going out for Mexican food.

But first, I had a bath and washed my hair.

I hadn't had a real bath since Tuesday, and I'm not sure how much before that since I'd washed my hair. Monday, everything had been fine. Tuesday, there was snow and the roads were covered with ice and it was cold, but you were fine if you stayed inside. But it stayed really cold, and Wednesday morning there were those rolling blackouts. And it was cold inside, and the space heater was nearly useless. I mostly stayed in bed Wednesday, and I just couldn't deal with the idea of getting totally undressed, much less get undressed and get into water. I decided the bath could wait. Thursday, it still seemed cold to me in the house, though either it was not quite as cold as Wednesday, or else I had just gotten used to it, but I still spent most of the day in bed. Friday was better still (inside, cause it was a mess outside), but I kept imagining that the blackouts would come back just as soon as I would decide to have a bath, so maybe it could still wait a bit more. Friday I got out of bed and got some work done, and work means that my hair needs to be washed, even if it didn't already need to be washed. Saturday morning I decided to get just a bit more work done, and the bath might as well wait til it was officially above freezing.

That was probably the best bath I have ever had in this house.

But I was really hungry, or I probably would have just stayed in the bath for a while.

All the ice on the streets were melting. There were puddles of water everywhere, and mounds of slush in the parking lots, but there didn't appear to be anything unsafe anywhere. After eating our late lunch and going to a couple of stores, we came home a couple hours later to see that most of the snow in our front yard had melted away. In the backyard and across the street there was still some snow, maybe in places that had mostly been in the shade, but it was all going to melt away, and on my side of the street you just wouldn't have known that there had been more than six inches of snow Friday.

It was just a miserable few days that almost became a week. And there are people who decide to live this way for months at a time. And I don't get it. I know that they've gotten used to it, but I don't get why after the invention of the air-conditioner that there wasn't vast migrations south and the northern states still have all those people in them, much less that there's a whole country of people who live north of them.

After finally getting through all of that, today at about noon it will start raining and/or snowing again, and that will last on and off til about four in the morning. But it won't stick, and it won't get much below freezing for long, so unless people are actually on the roads when it is happening (which they will be, because today is that damned game), they should be okay. So I will be sure to get all of my business done before noon.

And then we will get more on Wednesday. But again the temperatures are not going to stay below freezing around the clock, so I imagine that it will all be gone long before Saturday, and I have nothing to worry about this weekend.

Yet.

Anyway, I have my fingers crossed.

More bad weather

2011-02-04T07:47:00.004-05:00

It had seemed to me that the conditions were slowly going to get better, or maybe I had just gotten used to how bad they were. But we have more snow now, and there is still the ice on the roads under the snow, so it is in fact a bit worse, because drivers cannot see now where the ice is, and while they drive over the snow that will sort of compact and make more ice.

My husband had heard that it might be safe to drive home today. I don't know what he was thinking. I know what the weather is here, and I've just looked at the forecast where he is now, and it won't get below freezing until 10 am tomorrow. So, if you happen to be reading this, don't check out until tomorrow morning, and don't actually start driving until sometime after 10 am, and if you are not home by 6 pm you had better see about getting another room and waiting til Sunday to make the rest of the drive, cause unless the roads are actually dry the melting snow will just start to freeze again.

We had heard that there was more snow coming, we just didn't expect this much. We have like 5 inches, and there might still be more coming.

Two days ago, someone in my family had ventured out, and had called to ask if I needed anything. I said no. I wish now I had asked for a pizza. I have food, and I'm supposed to be trying to lose weight, but I am so tired of it. And I haven't had caffeine for over a week now. No Cokes, not even diet ones. It's hard to sleep sometimes, so I figured that it was better off without caffeine if I could manage. But I really want a Coke, and a pizza, and chocolate, and maybe a hamburger. And some Chinese food. And some nachos. And some hot wings.

C's party has been rescheduled for next month. Now I'm a starting to worry about next week's party, as the weather is probably better next week, but it looks like it will snow again on Wednesday, and I don't know if it will all be cleared away by Saturday. I have already been told that there are absolutely no refunds for the room, so the party would either have to go on as scheduled, or they would have to somehow raise more money to rent the place a second time. The money lost on C's rescheduled party is just coming out of C's pocket. I'm wondering if we shouldn't pass the hat or something, but right now I don't even know how much money was lost.

I have spent most of my time in bed. The bedroom is not the warmest room in the house, but as I just recently decided to get on with taking up the carpet and such, the warmest room is unusable, and the rooms and hallway next to it are full of extra stuff. I got work done on Monday and Tuesday, as the house still seemed pretty warm for most of Tuesday, but not so much on Wednesday. So I just stayed in the bedroom under blankets. Yesterday seemed warmer, but I was in no hurry to get back to work, as I expected it was going to be even warmer today I thought today soon enough. But now I expect it to be cold until after lunch. Maybe then. Still no hurry I suppose. The trash will not be hauled away until Saturday, if then.

Okay, back to bed.

School closed for the Superbowl

2011-02-02T13:20:00.000-05:00

Okay, not really. Schools around here are closed because of ice and snow. And it hasn't been this cold here in ten years.

It is unusual for it to snow here, and more unusual for it to snow here and there to be ice on the roads and be this cold all at the same time. We expected to get into the single digits last night, and I think that I missed getting that cold by about two or three degrees, but it is expected to get that cold again (if not colder) tonight or tomorrow morning, and today we're only going to have a high of maybe twenty-one. It won't get above freezing until sometime Saturday.

I'm told that there was plenty of de-icing stuff out and ready to go, not so much for us, but because they were trying to plan for anything that might interfere with the Superbowl. Still, that stuff apparently stops working at about fifteen degrees, and we are still a bit below that now, so regardless of how many trucks go out with it, we'll still have ice everywhere.

So much for going to C's party Friday night. Even if some of the ice melts by then, it will just freeze again, probably during the party, and then I'd get stuck there. I'm still watching the forecast, but probably not, though I'm still surprised how many other people have said that they will go.

We are having what is called "planned rolling blackouts". So the power went off just before seven, and while it was only supposed to be for about fifteen minutes, it was actually a bit more than half an hour, and then at nearly eight-thirty it happened again, for maybe twenty-five minutes, and I suppose I can expect the same for the rest of the day. I have a gas stove, but the house has been modified so that I cannot hook up my gas heater. I am thinking that after this is over I might go and see if I can somehow hook up the heater from the same place as the stove, just in case this happens again, though having a heater in or near my small kitchen will be annoying.

Other people are not having "planned rolling blackouts." They are just having blackouts.

I had misplaced my lighter, but I have found it now. If I get a longer blackout I'll at least have candles and be able to cook.

It is all a bit annoying. When I don't have power, I try to think of things to do other than watch TV, only to figure out that most everything else I think of also involves electricity. I can't use the computer without power. I'm not writing anything at the moment, but if I were, I suppose that I could write without a computer, only that is too distracting now to write anything on paper, and I no longer even have the convenience of a regular typewriter. Or I might want to read something, only without power I don't have a lamp, and much of the time it isn't light enough to read without one. And this morning I couldn't even find my lighter, so I couldn't even have a candle for that. And I might knit something, but again without sufficient light I can't do it at all, and doing it for long without the TV or radio or audio book is rather sad.

So without anything else to do here, I would go run some errands, or go to the theater, or even just go shopping or to a restaurant. But all of that is out as well, with the weather and the roads the way they are.

I decided to drag out a space heater. I haven't used it in three years, and really the last time I had it out was to dry something after a flood. I can't remember the last time I used this heater for it's intended purpose.

Just to show how life is not fair, while I'm thinking that I will have to miss C's party, all will be well by Sunday, in time for that game at that evil to go on as scheduled. And, as I write this, the evil place is being spared from the "planned rolling blackouts" because of security or something, while all the houses nearby still have to do without power now and then. Why couldn't it have been the other way around, with nice weather on Friday and a blizzard cancelling the game on Sunday? I'd be stuck at home on Sunday anyway, avoiding the traffic and such. If the ice doesn't melt much on Saturday, I'll be stuck here til Monday.

I suppose it isn't as bad missing C's party as it would be missing the other party next Saturday, as I have already bought a ticket, and I've been trying to collect charity stuff.

I'm going to go back to bed.

Yesterday's convention

2011-01-30T06:44:00.004-05:00

I suppose everything went as well as could be expected. At least it was for me. I think other people might have had different feelings on the subject.

G picked me up at my place, on time, and drove me to a restaurant where he liked to have breakfast. I had never been there before. I liked the place, though what I ordered was not the best for a person trying to lose weight. Even after having breakfast, we were still a bit early, as I had been told that the general admission people would not be allowed in til 11:00, and they wouldn't even be sold tickets til 10:15. So we had time for G to run an errand, and we still arrived around 10:30. Not in any hurry, we spoke to a few people in the parking lot, and then a friend came to tell us that they were letting people in a bit early. So I told G that I would see him later, and I went off with my friend. By the time we found where to buy a ticket, there was no line at all.

At least, there was no line for buying a ticket. There was a long line for getting autographs. I wasn't sure that I wanted any because a.) getting an autograph costs a lot more than it used to, and b.) I wasn't sure if I wanted to stand in this line. So I went off in search of something else to do, thinking that the line would go down some and I might do it later.

My club had a table, somewhere. I looked around, but I didn't see it. I went in the dealer's room, not so much looking at the dealers, but looking around for my friends in case they had been moved to this room. I didn't see them. I ran into a few more friends and talked for a bit, then walked around looking again for the club table. I had walked back and forth the entire length of the place twice without seeing it. I found another friend, who pointed out the table for me. I hadn't seen it before because of all the people in the autograph line in front of it. Okay, mystery solved.

So after figuring out where most everything was, I went back to the dealer's room. I didn't see much that I wanted, which was good, cause I didn't want to spend much money. The main thing that I wanted was Nichelle Nichols' autograph. Getting Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) to autograph a picture would cost $30, and I wasn't even sure that included the picture.

There were other people there besides Nichelle Nichols. I had met Anne Lockhart (original Battlestar Galactica) before. Erin Gray from Buck Rogers was there. The girl who had played Batgirl in the 60s was there. The medtech from the now cancelled Stargate Universe was there. But I think most of us wanted to see Nichelle Nichols, Morena Baccarin (Firefly and the new V), and Trisha Helfer and Katee Sackhoff of the Battlestar Galactica remake.

Now, at about $30 each, getting all the autographs would have cost me over two hundred dollars. I already have autographed pictures of Anne and Erin, so that would bring it down to $180. Not much of a Batman fan, so I didn't really need that autograph either. And as much as everyone else loved the new Battlestar Galactica, by the end of it I was mainly still watching cause everyone else loved it so much I just wanted to keep up so I'd know what everyone else was talking about. So the remaining three autographs would have cost me $90. And even if I'd had $90, that's just too much. And really, while I'm still a fan of Stargate Universe, I don't really feel that I need that autograph either. If I spent all the money I had I could get two autographs, and it would have been really nice to have Morena Baccarin sign something, but no.

It did not used to be this way. When I first started going to conventions, the actors who did autographs did them for free (or at least, we did not pay them directly, it was included in the price of the ticket). So either the actors would autograph stuff for everybody, or they would autograph stuff for a limited amount of time they had been paid to do that, or they didn't autograph anything for anybody (I was shocked the first time I paid to see Leonard Nimoy and he didn't do autographs, and DeForest Kelley didn't do autographs at public appearances because he had arthritis), depending on how much the convention had paid them and how long they were scheduled, etc.... So if the actor was doing autographs, the only additional money you had to spend to get an autograph was maybe five dollars for a photo for them to sign, but if you didn't have that they might still sign your convention program.

Then came the VIP tickets and the Gold tickets and the preferred seating tickets, etc.... You had to pay to get autographs, and they probably weren't going to do autographs for everyone, so if you really wanted an autograph you should buy a special ticket that put you at the front of the line and such. I have never done that, but some of my friends always do that. The price of getting an autograph went from free to five dollars to ten dollars to twenty dollars.

I pretty much stopped getting autographs then, though I did still purchase a few, and I got five free for volunteering at a Stargate convention. But it's been about ten years since I've done much of this sort of thing. I miss it sometimes. (But I don't miss it enough to spend a lot of money and/or drive to the other side of Dallas.)

Someone from my club stood in that long line and spent $120 getting three autographs. He wanted two more autographs, but Trisha and Katee were late and he'd have to get them later. He ate lunch and then got back in line.

I talked to a few more people and then had another look at the autograph line. It was about half the size it had been, but it was still a line. And that was just the line to get into the room. You had to stand in line again for each autograph.

And the people with VIP tickets got to go to the front of the line, whenever they happened to arrive. So you could stand in line for a long time, nearly get to the front of the line, and then have dozens of people just walk in front of you. And the preferred seating group was also supposed to go before the general admission people, but there seemed to be some confusion about that. Anyway, I thought that maybe most of the VIP group had already gone through the line and there wouldn't be that many of them walking up to the front. But I still had to seriously think about standing in this line and spending $30.

While I was standing there thinking about it, one of the volunteers was trying to explain how the line was now being split into two separate lines, because Trisha and Katee still were not there. If you were waiting for either of them you stayed where you were, but if you just wanted one of the other autographs, you got to move forward quite a bit. You still had to stand in line again once you got into the autograph room, but still, if I got in line right then that cut the wait time by more than half. So I got in line.

Once I got inside the room and found out which line I was supposed to be in, it was okay. There were people waiting for Trisha and Katee. Nichelle and Morena both had long lines, but not near as long as the line outside. There was a very small line of people waiting to get Batgirl's autograph, and a few people talking to Anne and Erin. There was no one waiting for the Stargate Universe medtech. I felt sorry for her. If I wasn't so short on money I think I might have gotten out of line and gone to her table for a bit. It didn't stay that way forever, but she never quite had the line the the actors around her had.

When I was halfway through the line to get Nichelle's autograph, I saw Katee come in. Stuff happens. Planes are delayed, and there are accidents on the freeway, and people are late. It is annoying for them, and it is annoying for us.

I got Nichelle's autograph. I couldn't think of anything interesting to say. I had seen all of the other original cast members in person; she was the last.

Now that I had my signed photo, I went back to the dealer's room to buy a photo protector. I probably had several at home, but I forgot to bring any. It's been a long time since I've gone to a convention. I'm just not organized.

A bit later I see the guy from our group still in line in the hallway, waiting to get autographs from Trisha and Katee. That surprised me, as I had seen one of them come in and I thought the other one was just behind her. But just before he could get into the room, one of them was called away to do a photo op, and not only are photo ops scheduled for a very short time, they cost more than autographs, so the photo ops were not delayed anymore than necessary. He was still waiting in line when I went off to get a seat to hear Morena speak.

The schedule had been changed. There should have been someone else speaking in the main room when I arrived, but the room was nearly empty. There had been an announcement, but I had missed hearing it in the autograph room. But it was not important.

I went to look for G, and did not find him. This worried me a bit, that I would not find him before the other stuff started, and maybe he would want to leave as soon as Nichelle finished speaking but couldn't find me. I spent about twenty minutes looking for him, gave up, and went back to the main stage room. There were a few more people there now, so I did not have the perfect seat that I gave up, but I still had a good one. K came to join me, and I saved G a seat just in case.

Now there was confusion as to where the preferred seating people were supposed to sit. The VIP sections were clearly roped off, but I didn't see anything that said preferred seating. Someone sitting behind me had paid the extra ten dollars for the preferred seating, and she thought that she the general admission people would be asked to wait outside until all the VIP and preferred seating ticket holders were seated, and that this would be repeated again between speakers. I expected that since no one had asked me to wait that other than roped off areas it was first come first served, and I had a good seat and I would be there for the next three hours or so.

Morena spoke for almost an hour, and then Nichelle spoke. At that point I found G, who was not concerned one way or another when we left. We stayed to hear the last panel, which was Trisha and Katee. The other actresses did not speak that day, and most of them were not scheduled to speak on Sunday.

G and I left. I do not know when or if the other guy from our group (who paid a bit extra for the preferred seating ticket) got his autographs from Trisha and or Katee. Except for lunch the only time I saw the poor guy he was standing in line for something.

I was tired by then, and mostly glad that G was ready to leave. Others were going hang around for a bit and then head to a restaurant. It would have been nice, but I didn't need it, and I'm eating quite enough non-diet type food as it is.

I got home and thought how this wasn't my life anymore. I kind of miss it, but on the other hand I kind of don't. I wish I had something else entirely, but I haven't a clue what or how to get it.

But I am very glad that after all this time I have finally seen all of the original Star Trek actors.

New plans for today

2011-01-29T06:53:00.004-05:00

At rather the last minute, I decided I might want to go to a convention today. I've known about it for several months but didn't think that I'd really want to go. It's in Plano, which is not the other side of the world, but it is the other side of Dallas and way north of my comfort zone. So I thought I'd just see if I could get a ride. I was pretty sure that I could get a ride with K, but I'd heard earlier that he was driving S, and S has become a ranting atheist and I wasn't sure that I wanted to be in the car with her for that long.

As expected, when I asked the question K offered, and the offer was repeated my someone else going with him, but I decided against it, not because of the ranting atheist, but because it just sounded really inconventient for K in addition to having to run an errand before the convention in addition to already having to pick up S before meeting the other guy. And S lives nowhere near me, and arranging to meet up with the other guy (which the other guy did suggest) would have had the other guy driving in the wrong direction.

But at the same time as the guys offered, G also offered, and he isn't driving anyone else, he just wants someone willing to go to the thing early enough to get breakfast at a certain place near the convention. G and I are not friends, so it was very nice that he offered at all. I accepted his invitation. So far no one else is meeting us at the restaurant.

The diet is pretty much shot for the month now. For breakfast I will probably order something that is more calories than I normally have for both breakfast and lunch. And then tomorrow there is pizza at the meeting, and then the next two weekends there's other things going on which also involve eating stuff that one shouldn't eat while trying to lose weight. So I guess for now I'll just try not to gain anything back rather than stick to the diet and not participate.

Back to the convention.

It isn't much of a convention. It sounds like the Creation Cons I used to go to, with the only point of being there is to see Nichelle Nichols (and debate if I should spend that much money to get her autograph). Nichelle Nichols is the only one of the original group that I haven't seen in person. There will be other actors there, and it will be nice to see them, but I just can't seem to get that excited about seeing actors, or at least not the way I used to. And that's all there will be at this convention, or at least that's all that has been scheduled, so there's no contest or fan-run panels, and there's only the dealers room and the main stage.

Got to go now. Must get ready early today because of the breakfast plans.

Week three

2011-01-26T08:41:00.002-05:00

Okay, so at the end of week one I was trying to keep myself from jumping up and down, that I'd had some weight-loss but probably not as much as it seemed. But that first week was pretty much perfect, with me eating only what I was supposed to eat and not drinking any regular sodas.

The next two weeks were not perfect. By the second week I should have been doing the whole eight glasses of water per day thing, and then on the third week I should have been paying more attention to the whole 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables thing. Well, I'm only just now getting around to the drinking enough water thing. I have lost some weight, but either it isn't much more than that of the first week, or else I just read the scale wrong the first week. I've stayed away from the regular sodas, but it has been a while since I've written down what I was eating. And in an attempt at keeping my husband from going totally nuts with the food, about half the time I eat what he is eating. And his diet isn't about losing weight, so sometimes this is bad.

Sometimes he eats something that is in the 200-300 calorie range, and that's fine and I eat that too. Other times he eats something that is more than 500 calories, plus it has side dishes that aren't very low-cal either. The first few times this happened I ate half a serving of his food, and that seemed to go okay. But the last few days have been bad. We had this little fish, which I thought would be good, but I guess there was something high calorie on the fish, and then the fish came with potatoes. It was small already, so eating half didn't work. And then after that there was this small Asian chicken salad, and it was just too small, but it still had about four hundred calories. So not only did I eat the tiny salad, but then I was still hungry and ate a cereal bar. So that probably didn't do the diet much good.

After getting upset and having this discussion about the expensive food that he would probably end up throwing away, we have gone shopping again, and I guess he just doesn't get it. Yesterday we threw out what looked like a pound of spinach. And the frig is full of food, and I doubt that he will cook most of it before he heads out of town again.

Also my mother took me to Burger King, cause we hadn't seen each other for a bit and she had this coupon. The coupon was buy one get one free stuffed Whooper. The stuffed Whooper is 600 calories. My mother wants to lose weight too, so she asked for the sauce on the side.

A stuffed Whooper with sauce on the side is still a stuffed Whooper.

Anyway, at the time I was still being very good with the diet, so I ate half of the Whooper and took the other half home for breakfast the next day.

I think that soon I will have to stop eating stuff from my husband's diet, but the social stuff is still going to be a problem. There is a lot of stuff coming up soon. Saturday, I might go to a convention, and I guess that I'll have to pack lunch, and then there might be a dinner after and I have no idea where so I can't prepare much for that. Sunday is the annual meeting. I'd totally forgotten about the annual meeting, and of course I will be going, and I'm pretty sure that I will be eating, and it will be pizza this year.

More about the annual meeting on a later post.

Then there is the usual monthly stuff next month, plus a party, plus another party. Two parties. Two parties where the main thing I do is eat.

Here is how we ended up with two parties, and I forgot that it was two parties.

Some friends had a party in February. I don't think it had a Valentine theme or anything, but it was in the middle of February and there's dancing and dressing up and such (though this is a group of Trekkies, and our idea of dressing up is a bit different). The second year they invited more people, and I went either the second year or maybe the third year. And then one year they had scheduling problems and the party ended up being in August. I thought August was better anyway. So they've had this party four or five times and I've been to two or three of them.

In this group of friends there is C. One year C had his fiftieth birthday party at the same place as the other party. I think that his actual birthday is in January, but they decided to have the party a bit later so that it was on the same day as his son's birthday party, and that way they could just rent the room for the whole day and the kids could have their party at noon and C's adult party would be in the evening. For C's party we were asked to wear black. C had such a good time that the next year he had the "Goth Ball" again.

So it was pretty much the same group of friends at the same place, but they are two different parties. But now the first party has moved from February to August and now back to February. So now C's party is the first weekend of February and the other party is the second weekend. Somehow in my mind I'd forgotten that they were two separate parties, and that C's party wouldn't necessarily be cancelled just because the other party was the same month. And the other party is partially a fund raiser for a local charity, and you have to buy tickets, and I've already bought one, not realizing that I'd be going to parties two weekends in a row.

And this is in addition the usual stuff the weekend after that.

Also, there is the crew dinner, which is the day after one of the parties. I don't always go to the crew dinner, but this one is in Irving, and it is at Souper Salads, and they are pretty much expecting those of us on diets will want to go.

Maybe not so much.

I am sure that you can go to Souper Salads and eat something very sensible, but I never do. I can eat something sensible that tastes better and cost less money at home. My husband wanted to go there last week, which we did, but I really didn't see the point. He mostly ate sensible stuff that we already had at home. I ate a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I ate much less that I normally do, but I still still think it was way too many calories. After we got home I looked up the nutritional information. Some of the prepared salads were like a hundred calories per serving, but sometimes the serving was listed as 1/3 cup. I'm pretty sure that I didn't eat anything that small, and I had at least four salads. And that was me trying to be good, instead of eating what I usually eat, which also involves bread and dessert and seconds of everything.

Anyway, for the next four weekends, I have something to do socially, sometimes more than one thing, and probably all of the things will involve me buying and eating food with too many calories.

After that will be the end of my husband's six week experiment, and if he quits he'll be back to suggesting we go out for ice cream and such.

I'm going to have to give this whole diet thing some thought.

Water is being cut off again

2011-01-14T08:18:00.004-05:00

That will happen today, in a couple of hours. But at least we had a little warning this time. Soon I will have a bath and all of that, and then I will fill empty plastic jugs with water, and then after that I will fill the bathtub. So it is still a bit inconvenient, but not so much as last time.

My husband just woke up, which is good, because I forgot to ask him when he wanted to get going, and it would have had to be by eight or so cause I have to be finished with the water by nine. Anyway, he has to go out of town today, but only for the one night, and he's already done all of the cooking he needs to do so it shouldn't be the big hassle that it was before. Of course, we will have to do it all again for Monday, but I will worry about that Sunday.

Despite having a bit of help yesterday, there still isn't much of the cleaning done yet (and I just found out yesterday afternoon that about the water being cut off today so I don't imagine getting it all done today either), so I think going on the trip is out now. Almost for sure about that. I just don't think that I would get everything done Sunday, even if I have some help on Sunday, and even if I skipped stuff I plan to do Saturday, and I don't plan to skip anything on Saturday.

As for what I'm going to eat on Saturday, I still haven't decided. I'm planning to go to both restaurants, though I'm starting to wonder if I should just skip the second one. I'll see what happens. Once in a great while someone else cancels, and then someone else cancels, and then we all decide not to go. Except when it is Miss Allergies who cancels first, and then the rest of us pick a different restaurant and go someplace that we never go to when she's around.

Of course, if we go someplace else, I will have no idea what to order. I have ideas of what I could order after studying the nutritional information area of our usual restaurant's website, but if we go someplace else I'd totally have to start over. The stuff that you'd think would be low calorie sometimes isn't, and they usually don't tell you that on the menu. And even the lower calorie stuff usually isn't as low as I would eat at home. It usually isn't meant to make you lose weight, just that maybe you wouldn't gain much of it back.

Anyway, I can't decide. I'll just see what happens tomorrow.

Other things going on now

2011-01-13T06:51:00.000-05:00

The bug guy is coming a week from Wednesday, which means that I have major amounts of cleaning to do. So far, most of it isn't getting done. The whole diet thing seems to get in the way. There's always more dishes to wash, and there's all these groceries and I have no idea where to put them, so there are just all these bags of stuff on the floor.

Last week I felt good about the cleaning, having finally gone ahead and scrubbed off whatever sticky stuff was on the kitchen floor. Not that you can tell that now. We had some interesting weather and a couple of times we had to dash outside and deal with the pump, and afterwards we just tracked more dirt into the house. So the floor will have to be cleaned again, though I doubt that it will be as difficult this time, with just the dirt and not so much whatever the sticky stuff was.

Anyway, I haven't much made a dent in the backroom, the living, the bedroom, the bathroom. Except for the sticky stuff on the floor, the kitchen and dining area are worse than before I started. And of course my husband has done little or nothing in this room or the bedroom. It just seems to require mental energy that we don't have to spare after the whole dieting thing. It isn't like you can work until you get hungry and then go take and break and eat pizza. No, you can't start anything, especially in the kitchen, that might interfere with whatever you are supposed to be eating the next meal.

Sometimes I can eat something from his diet (or maybe half of something from his diet), and once he ate something from my diet. But most of the time he's eating something that I'm not, and then we both have to take turns in the kitchen, there's just not room for us both at the same time. And then there's a mess that has to be somewhat cleared away before one of us can cook the next thing.

And of course when we are cooking in the small kitchen we have to make use of the space on top of the washing machine, which means that until the cooking and cleaning is done we can't do the laundry.

But I must get on with it anyway, cause the bug guy is coming whether or not the place is clean and/or the diet is going as planned.

The other thing that is taking up my mental energy is deciding about social things and possible travel plans. I've never done much of either while I was trying to lose weight. So I'm trying to decide what to do about Saturday, and whether or not I should go on a trip next week.

Of course at this point I can't seriously think about the trip next week, because the house has to be clean before that Wednesday, and I would have to leave that Monday, so not only would I not be here to see the bug guy (and I don't suppose that is actually necessary, but it does make me feel better to be here and see that it is done with for another three months) but I would have to have the cleaning all done by Sunday, and I'm already feeling rushed to get it done before Wednesday.

Anyway, if I go on a trip, if I want to lose weight I'll have to keep it up even on the trip, which means that I won't be doing things that I would normally do on a trip. No restaurants. No sodas. No snacks (or at least, not the usual ones). No Starbucks type high calorie drinks. And then I'd have to cook food ahead of time and take it with me, as he will also have to do, and then we'll try and stuff everything into a tiny motel frig, and we won't even be eating the same food so I'm not sure that there would be room for my stuff anyway. We'll probably have to pack the electric cooler, which means that there won't be much room for my knitting, and without the knitting to keep me busy it is usually a really boring trip.

So that probably isn't going to happen anyway, but I haven't totally made up my mind.

But I do have to decide about Saturday, and then I have to decide about every other third Saturday, and a party next month, and maybe a family dinner (date unknown at this point). Saturday we are going to two restaurants. The first restaurant I had already decided did not have good enough food for me to waste my money on, and I now that I'm counting calories I have another reason to not want the food. But I do usually buy and drink a lot of soda while I'm there. So now I have to decide should I go there and not buy anything, not even a soda, which seems a bit rude. Or, should I buy a regular soda and just attempt not to drink much of it. I could drink diet soda, if I brought something to put in it, but I'm wondering if that might be messy. Or I could even attempt to drink diet soda as is, but I would probably give up and end up replacing it with regular soda.

The second restaurant as not my favorite either, but sitting there and not ordering anything seems even more rude, as we do not have a private room for me to hide in there. And the food is even more expensive. I had found something to my liking that didn't cost too much, but it wouldn't fit in with the whole dieting thing. I could spend more money to buy something that I like less, eat half of it, and take half of it home. Or, I could spend even more money to buy something that I like a bit better, and again eat half of it and take half of it home. Or I could buy this weird tuna thing, which sometimes is pleasant and other times almost makes me ill. Not that the food is sometimes prepared different, just sometimes I feel different about eating it, and I never know until I actually try some of it. Getting something that I know I'd like either is expensive and/or very high calorie.

Maybe just once or twice a month I should say the hell with it and not think about the calories. But even if I was going to do that, I'd rather save that for something I'm really dying to have (like cookies), instead of whatever looks good at this particular restaurant (which we have to go to because of Miss Allergies).

Next month there is a party, and I don't dance, and right now I'm not doing much in the way of dressing up, so that leaves eating weird food being the main thing that I would normally do at the party, and there's no way of figuring out the calories there. My main healthy option there would be to bring several things I know are safe and only eat those. But that sounds boring, and it would cost more money than I had planned to spend.

I'll have to decide this stuff at least once or twice a month, sometimes more. Should I be good, or should I just say the hell with it and have a good time?

So far the lack of regular sodas hasn't gotten to me, and I haven't eaten any cookies, and I don't think I've even had any chocolate, and the just plain being hungry bits haven't been that bad. So in some ways, the diet is going better than I expected. It just sometimes isn't as easy to deal with as I had imagined, and I wonder if the social stuff will turn out to be the main problem.

First week

2011-01-11T06:58:00.004-05:00

My husband is on some weird diet, and I am trying to lose weight. I officially started on the 4th, while he started a bit earlier than that. I choose the 4th to make sure that a.) I got to enjoy the New Year's Eve party and then eat whatever I wanted afterward to recover from it, and b.) starting on the 4th I had a few days to myself, and these things are always easier for me without other people around trying to get me to eat things other than what I have picked out. When my husband is around, he offers me food from his diet, and since his diet isn't really about weight-loss, it isn't always a good idea.

Anyway, I'm going to say that the first week was a success. I've had no regular sodas or other regular sugary drinks. I've had no cookies. I don't think I've had any chocolate, or if I had it was one square of dark chocolate, but I think the last time I even did that was before the 4th. I've not gone to any restaurants or eaten any fast food. I try to write down everything that I eat or drink, and then I write how many calories I think I've consumed. I think most days I'm just right around 1200, which is what I wanted. And I think that I've had three servings of lowfat dairy everyday, with one of the servings always being a cup of no sugar added yogurt.

And I think that I've lost a few pounds, though I doubt that I've lost as many as it seemed this morning. I think that it's just hard to read regular bathroom scales (unless they are digital, which mine is not), and there might be some other factors at work, like maybe weighing first thing in the morning is not accurate, or maybe I was wearing too much clothing during the first weigh-in but not enough now. But I'm not trying to do anything silly, only two pounds or so a week, and maybe even a steady one pound per week would be okay for a bit. So I think that I've at least done that much, and I can be happy about that.

One thing that I did not get done this week was the whole eight glasses of water per day thing. I'll try to work that in later.

The other thing that did not get accomplished this week was a neat and tidy frig. I had imagined the thing being half-empty, with about thirty things in containers just waiting for me to eat, and a few other things waiting for me to cook, and then a gallon of skim milk and the diet drinks and the V-8 and a few bottles of things like mustard and ketchup. Well, even after the cleaning, there's still a lot of bottles of stuff, some of which we are using right now, and some of it we expect to be using soon, and just other things that we like that we don't want to throw out cause we'll need them eventually.

And that's just my side of the frig. I tried to divide the frig into stuff I'd mostly be using on one side and stuff that he'd mostly be using on the other. But now it's a total mess again, and we squeeze in things wherever they will fit.

And then there are all these vegetables, which I hope will get eaten, but some of them won't. We haven't actually thrown out that much yet (a couple of pears and some watercress and chives), but that's mostly because I ate a few of his things when he was away, and then when he got back I just started pulling out stuff and asking him what he intended to do with it, and then he'd cook something.

Of course, cooking something usually meant that we needed yet something else from the store, so as soon as I get rid of something it is usually replaced with something else. But that did keep most of the cauliflower from being wasted, and yesterday we ate the zucchini and the eggplant. Still, I think that today or tomorrow I'll be trying to rearrange the whole thing again.

I remembered it being much easier before. But of course, last time I had the place to myself for most of three months.

It's called women's work cause men aren't bright enough to do it

2011-01-07T10:30:00.001-05:00

I think that I've mentioned before about the difference between how most men cook and how most women cook. It isn't that men literally can't cook. They can cook most things that do not require mixing ingredients, like, they can fry bacon and sausage, etc.... And they often can do some big production thing like barbecue. And maybe they can fix about three things if they had to cook dinner once in a while.

This is different from the day to day cooking that most women learn to do. Women figure that they'll have to make breakfast, lunch, and dinner, day in and day out, often for themselves and for their men and for their children (who complain about everything put in front of them). No big production stuff here. Just figure out how to get everyone fed in a reasonable about of time. Most women probably know how to cook lots of different things, depending on the occasion and how much money they have and how much time it takes to prepare, etc....

It seems like my dad knew how to cook about three things. I forget what one of them was. The thing that he cooked most often was pancakes. Mom usually didn't have to cook on Saturday mornings, cause dad made pancakes. If ever mom wasn't there or mom didn't feel well, dad could make a few other things. I don't remember this ever happening, but if mom had been sick for more than two days and unable to cook dinner, I'm pretty sure that on the third night we would have had pancakes, probably with a side of bacon or sausage.

So it isn't that men can't cook. We've seen plenty of men cook things that are perfectly edible. We've even seen them cook things that we look forward to eating. It's just that most of the time they aren't motivated to do much of it. My husband can cook. My husband can open a cookbook and follow a recipe and cook something nice. Recently, my husband made fudge and divinity. And not just desserts, he can cook regular food too. It's the mundane kitchen stuff that causes him to drag his feet, like making Hamburger Helper, or even opening a can of soup to put in a bowl and microwave.

And of course before one does any cooking, one has to go to the store and buy groceries. If this isn't their regular thing, men can be pretty clueless. They don't know where things are, they don't know how much things are supposed to cost, etc.... But the really baffling thing is that when they can't figure out when/if you've run out of something and to go buy more of it. I don't drink coffee, I don't make coffee, and I usually don't put limes on everything I drink except coffee and so forth. My husband likes coffee, and he really likes limes, while I rarely touch either of those things. So I would think that he would know when we've run out of those things rather than me. Also, he seems to be under the impression that I buy groceries so that I can hide them from him. I'm like "I bought this for you, and when you get hungry, eat it" and then I put it in the frig and it rots because he never eats it cause he never looked for it.

Sorry, the frig didn't come with neon signs. You have to look around for stuff.

Anyway, we've both decided that we need to go on diets, though we are not doing the same diet for the same reason. His has something to do with getting rid of wheat and dairy. Mine will be about trying to eat smaller portions and lowering fat and calories, etc.... To get started with this, I've cleaned out the frig and we've thrown away a lot of stuff, and I'm trying to even divide the frig so that stuff he mostly uses is on one side and my stuff is on the other side.

I haven't paid much attention to his diet, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do about mine. I bought a diet cookbook. I didn't really need another cookbook, and I even didn't really need another diet cookbook. But, briefly, I had it in my head that I was going to follow the six-week plan in the front of the book. The plan has a daily calorie intake of between 1300 and 1400 calories, plus there are a lot of veggies and some fruits that you can have extra of and not count. I'm guessing that the six-week plan would take you through most or maybe all of the recipes in the book and that after that you would pick your favorites and keep eating those. Or, maybe, someone went through and decided that this six-week plan would have a near perfect mix of everything. But I'm not going to follow the plan, cause I found a couple of problems with it.

Well, the calories aren't the problem. I'm thinking if I could get down to 1200 that would be better, but this stuff is not that far off. If I'm going to go on a diet, I think that it needs three servings of dairy a day, and that at least one of those servings has to be yogurt. I see that the plan has one or two dairy a day, and maybe if I really looked and added everything up it would be three a day, but rarely is one of the three yogurt. So, I would either have to take out one of the dairy to replace it with yogurt or else I would have to add a yogurt which would add around a hundred calories a day.

The other problem is the shopping. I'll give you an easy example that is not in the book or in my planned diet or his. Let's say that on day one of the plan you are supposed to eat half a grapefruit and a piece of toast. Breakfast on day two is different, and day three is different again, etc.... By the time you're supposed to eat another half of a grapefruit, the one you had has gone bad and you've tossed it out. And what about that piece of toast? You have to buy a whole loaf of bread to make that one piece of toast, and even if you had a piece of toast everyday for breakfast that would only add up to seven pieces of bread by the end of the week, and then the rest of the loaf is moldy and you have to throw it out. And I have tried freezing bread, and it usually doesn't work very well. So, if I did this, for day one and meal one, I would have bought a grapefruit and a loaf of bread, at least half of which will be thrown away. And then most of the recipes in the book aren't for one serving, but usually more like four to six. So if I followed the plan I'd be throwing away several servings of food with most lunches and dinners, as well as a couple of servings for breakfast.

I feel bad enough about the food I already waste without intentionally buying tons of groceries that I know I won't eat. But I'm probably not the target audience for the book, and probably they weren't thinking of single people either. Probably most people who buy this book have a spouse that will eat the other half of the grapefruit and at least seven slices of bread per week, plus they have children or other family members who will eat the three or more servings of leftover pasta.

But I don't have that, and for the most part all the food cooked will be eaten by me and just me. So for lunch and dinner I'll be making maybe mac and cheese and some other pasta thing and maybe a soup and then maybe a sort of Chinese thing or maybe Mexican, and then I'll rotate leftovers until it's time to cook something else.

Okay, no six week plan for me.

I guess my husband didn't think all of this stuff out the way I did.

So, he has a book (which I didn't really look at after I found out it wasn't what I wanted), and the idea is to get rid of wheat and dairy and a few other things and see if you feel better because maybe you have an undiagnosed allergy. And then you are supposed to add healthy Omega 3s and stuff like that. It isn't much about calorie reduction and it isn't much about weight-loss, other than what would come about just because you've stopped going out for ice cream.

Anyway, in this book, there's another six week plan. And there's a shopping list for the first two weeks. So my husband prints out the shopping list, and we head for several stores and spend lots of money, mostly at Central Market, cause we went there to get a few things that I'm not sure are easily found at the places we would normally shop at. Some of what we purchased were whole grains and other dry goods, and that's fine, but we also bought fruits and vegetables and fresh herbs, etc....

We're not Martha Stewart. We don't usually buy fresh herbs, except for a lot of cilantro, which is cheap at Mexican markets, and the rare bunch of parsley, which tends to cost about twice as much as the cilantro. That day we bought cilantro and two kinds of parsley and basil and bay leaves and watercress and a couple of other things and fennel.

I have never before bought fennel. Fennel seeds, yes, but not fresh fennel. I have no idea what one does with fennel.

After having bought fresh herbs and vegetables and fruits and dry goods and fancy cooking oil and tofu and a number of other things and filled the frig so that I cannot tell that I just cleaned it out, we were about to go shopping again for meat and fish, and it seemed to me that we really had a lot of stuff already, and that it seemed like he was planning to buy a lot of meat and fish for just a week or two.

And it was then that I saw the recipes that he was going to make, which were mostly recipes for four servings, and that we did not need anywhere near that much food.

Lets do the math again.

If you are one person, and you need breakfast and lunch and dinner, that's three meals a day, which would be twenty-one meals per week, or forty-two meals for two weeks. If you make recipes that are four servings, and you make a different one each meal, that's twelve servings a day, and if you make different things everyday, that's eighty-four servings per week.

So he was buying everything on the two week list, which would have made about one hundred and sixty-eight servings.

And he wasn't even going to be home for the second week, so I don't know why he was buying that food at all.

And in addition to the extra servings there's that whole thing about the wasted half grapefruit and most of the loaf of bread. Not that he bought either of those things, but he did buy that fennel, which cost four dollars, and you only use a fifth of it in one recipe.

At least I caught on in time to not have a frig full of rotting meat. But we do have watercress going limp, and pears going mushy, and then he bought sprouts and other things to take with him, which he forgot and left in the frig.

It was a big hassle getting him off to work for the week. It is always a bit of a hassle, but we've gotten used to it. And if you forget anything you can always buy something while you're away. Except, if you're on a diet, you aren't supposed to eat out and on this diet he isn't supposed to eat wheat or dairy, so no stopping at fast food places, not even Subway, and he can't even buy a loaf of bread. So I'm trying to get him to think about what he needs to take with him, to cook things ahead of time and such, and he just drags his feet. This isn't the fun cooking that he likes to do, and he waits til the last minute to do it.

I'm still finding food in the house that I think I should get rid of, but I don't want to until I know if he's only going to do this for six weeks or if this is going to be a long-term thing. I hate to throw out food that we could eat after the six weeks are up, cause we'll just have to go out and buy more stuff anyway. If I stick to my little project, I think it would be a minimum of five months, but probably longer. We'll just have to wait and see if I can handle that.

No money, no sugar, no fat, etc...

2011-01-05T15:37:00.003-05:00

Today Target's (or, the two that I've been to today), have 90% off Christmas clearance. Not that there's anything left really, but that was not so much the reason for giving up on the idea. No, I'm just out of money again, otherwise I would probably go look at one more store. Then I'm thinking that I might find just a bit more money, but that I still should just stay around here, maybe buy a few more things I saw at the grocery store, and then maybe on more grocery type things like a loaf of bread instead of Christmas stuff that I might not even use next year.

And I should have bought a bunch of nuts on the 31st, but again I didn't have that much money left, and mostly ended up buying things for the party. Anyway, both of us have decided to watch what we eat, and the nuts would have been something we would use anyway (him more than me), but I figured that if he really wanted them he could go back and get them himself, which he did not.

Really trying to restrain myself here and not go to that store.

Besides that it would probably be a waste of time, and perhaps wasted money (assuming that I can find some to waste), then there's the waste of gas. Nearly three dollars a gallon for the gas. Not time to drive around and look at stuff I'm probably not going to buy.

Anyway, I really should stay here and clean. The bug guy will be here in two weeks. And I've somehow managed to spill something, and it's gotten to that point where I've put off the cleaning so long I'm almost afraid to get started on it.

Must stop being lazy.

My husband is gone for the week, but it looks like it will just be the one week. The job sucks again. So, one week away, and then we don't know. Maybe nothing.

The club is having dinner, not right here, but close enough that I would normally go, but I don't think that I will go. There's the whole watching what I eat thing, and I can't sit in front of bowls of chips and salsa and not eat them. It will only be six weeks or so before my husband is back to asking me out for ice cream (if he even makes it that long), and I'm really trying to do nothing of that sort until then. So I won't be going out Sunday, and I even have to decide what to do about the next Saturday. Of course, I will go out then, but then I have to wonder if I'll eat anything or get a soda or what. To go out and buy nothing is rude, to go out and buy things I shouldn't eat is bad, and going out and then special ordering something like broccoli seems a waste.

Guess I will figure it out.

They are right, but they're wrong too

2011-01-01T08:49:00.003-05:00

So I was hanging out with my friends at the New Year's Eve party, and one of my friends is sort of asking advice about dating. This person doesn't date much. After having an account with eHarmony, she is switching to Match.com, because it is less money, and because in her opinion eHarmony takes too long.

Except for switching to a different dating website, it seems like this person had this same conversion last year and got mostly the same advice from mostly the same people.

This person doesn't date much, but I suppose that she's decided if she's ever going to have someone special in her life that it is time to do something about it. I'm guessing that she decided this a few years ago, but she still hasn't found anyone. And she hasn't dated much in the past, so she's a bit worried about dating now. She's also worried that if she does meet someone that she wants to be with that they will get married and she won't like being married after being single for so long. She has quite a list of things that she is either worried about or just flat out does not want.

I haven't seen her list. I haven't heard much about what is on the list. But I don't see that having a list is a bad thing. You probably go out on fewer dates if you have a list and stick to it. But I don't see that as a bad thing either. How can it be a bad thing if you don't date someone that you already know you wouldn't want to end up in a serious relationship with.

Everyone else seems to be telling her that she's doing this all wrong, and that she should just start dating and enjoy meeting different people, and that she shouldn't be so worried about what might happen. They tell her to stop worrying and just let it happen. She's not going to have a good time dating if she's always thinking about getting married.

I think that is the whole point of dating, so I think that they're wrong. Maybe it isn't as much fun, but if she's really looking for a husband, shouldn't she stop dating someone as soon as she's decided she wouldn't marry him? Wouldn't it be better to not date at all rather than waste time with people she doesn't want. And I'm guessing that dating isn't all that fun for her anyway, or she would have done more of it.

And I do think that she has valid concerns about finding someone nice, getting married, and then not being happy after finding out what actually living with this other person is like.

Maybe she has such a long list of things that she wants and does not want that she will never get a date, and maybe she should shorten the list, but I don't think that she should be talked out of having a list or even told what things she can have on that list. If she's that worried about ending up with someone who snores, why can't she be honest about it?

We're going shopping

2010-12-29T06:32:00.003-05:00

Okay, so it probably isn't what you're thinking.

So far, I've not gone crazy with the after Christmas shopping. I bought one thing of lights that I wanted, and I bought this thing of led lights that fits on your head (and I've already misplaced but I'm sure it will turn up), and three rolls of Christmas paper that because of the colors and/or patterns can be used for things other than Christmas. I intend to look for more lights, but I don't expect to buy anymore unless they are 75% off, which might be tomorrow or the next day. Or maybe I'll get lucky and it will be today, but I doubt it.

And I'm not going shopping for clothes, though I might do just a bit of that some other time. The thing that I had to take back was hassle-free (there was no one ahead of me in line) Sunday morning, and I have just a bit of store credit to spend now. But that isn't the plan for today either.

And we're not going out to look for electronic gadgets either.

No, we're finally going to do something about that diet. Or diets. He wants to do this thing where you get rid of stuff in your diet and see if you feel better. I don't want to do that. I want to lose weight and look pretty and such. So I won't be on his same diet, cause as far as I can tell his diet doesn't count calories much, but it does get rid of dairy, which I'm going to try to have three times a day.

But the point is that if he's going on some diet for six weeks, that should be six weeks that he won't be eating out much or suggesting we go get ice cream and such. So that would be a good time to change what I eat for a while.

Anyway, he's got this shopping list, and I've got a few things to get, and so that is the plan for today, after we finish cleaning out the frig. I did most of that yesterday, but there's still a few things to be thrown out this morning.

Well, I'm not officially planning to start anything til maybe the 3rd or the 4th. I've waited this long, so I might as well wait until after the New Year's Eve party. And then I usually don't feel so good the next day, so I don't want to start that day either. And then I'll want a day to practice cooking a few things, so it will be a day or two after that before I'm ready.

Anyway, this is the first time that we've done this major thing of throwing things out together, and I haven't done much of this sort of thing by myself in a long time either, not since many years ago when I had the house to myself for weeks and months at a time. So this does feel like a positive step forward, and this time next week I'll be doing stuff like making and eating homemade yogurt, and he'll be doing whatever it is that he thinks he ought to be doing.

Okay, so it's not as interesting as getting a big screen TV, but I'm looking forward to it anyway.

Christmas is nearly over

2010-12-25T08:26:00.003-05:00

Okay, so in my immediate family, the past few years we've done our main Christmas stuff during Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, for a couple of reasons, mainly that one of my siblings can spend Christmas with the in-laws. So today I don't know what I will be doing, if I will be doing anything at all. The guys are going to spend much of the day playing video games, and when they take a break to eat lunch I am invited over, and if they decide to watch one of the DVDs someone got for Christmas I'm invited over for that too. Other than that I will probably be here cleaning or maybe knitting. And I might go see Grandma, but one never knows if that will involve spending about five minutes actually talking to Grandma, or several hours spent with other relatives who came to talk to Grandma. Either way is okay with me, I just don't know which to plan for.

So, normally, this would be the end of it, except for the after Christmas clearance sales. Well, this year I will attempt to cut down on the clearance sale shopping, with a few exceptions, like if I see any solar powered lights I will get those. I'm thinking that I would like to have several of those, but I'm only planning to buy the one on Sunday, and there probably won't be much left after that. Solar lights would solve my problem of not having an outdoor electrical socket for Christmas decorating, and I also think that the white lights would look good somewhere year round. The office might not agree, so I'm not going to spend that much, and I'm not going to put up anything til sometime next year.

Solar lights are a bit expensive. New and in season cost $20 for a string of 50 lights, so they'll be $10 when I go and look for them Sunday morning, and I probably won't find any left when I go looking for them again at the 75% off sale later.

Ideally, you would have all different colors of solar lights up all year, maybe orange or purple for Halloween, red or green for Christmas, and white for all year long, and then you just cover up the solar panels for the lights you don't want after the holiday has past. But I don't doubt that the office would have a fit over that idea.

Well, a friend of mine got me a purple knitting loom for Christmas, and it is supposed to be the ideal size for knitting adult hats. And it just looked like they were the same as the old yellow looms, just a different color and in a new package for marketing purposes. And I didn't want to tell my friend that I already had two yellow looms somewhere, and that I didn't really think that they were the ideal size for making hats and that I rarely used them at all. But, it's always good to have spare looms, so I just said thank you and something about it being like the ones I made scarves with only bigger, and didn't mention that I already had two yellow looms. But as it turns out, after I got it home and compared it to the yellow loom it is just a bit smaller but has 48 pegs, which is several more than the yellow loom. So maybe it is the ideal size for making adult hats.

Which is not the same as saying the hats are very attractive. Making a baby hat with the red loom works fine, though I'm thinking that they quickly out-grow the hats. This year I also made a child's hat with the green loom, and that also turned out okay. But the loom hats are finished putting a strand of yarn through all the top loops, taking the yarn off of the pegs, and pulling the strand of yarn tight until all of the top loops come together. It doesn't look the least bit round, but on the smaller hats it doesn't look that bad. On an adult hat made with 48 pegs, this makes the top look a bit lumpy, and when it's on a person's head the head looks a bit odd, sort of square.

This is one of those times that I think it would be helpful to know how to crochet or hand knit with regular knitting needles (or maybe in this case circular knitting needles). Maybe someday I will learn how to do that and knit the hat part way on the loom and then finish it the top some other way. But for now the loom by itself will have to do, and I made hats for the baby and Buddy and Buddy's dad.

I didn't think that Buddy would like his hat, and that we would have a hard time getting him to put it on just so that I could see if it fit him. We put on the baby's hat first. Well, Buddy loves the baby, but he's supposed to be getting all the stuff and all the attention, so whenever something is going on with the baby, he tends to interrupt and say that he wants something. So, while mom is putting the hat on the baby, Buddy wants the hat. So when he finds out that he also has a hat, he puts it on. And he keeps it on most of the night. Buddy's dad wanted a picture taken with the three of them in their hats, and then the other two hats came off immediately after the picture. Buddy wore his nearly til bedtime.

I have a sock-loom. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but when I was out shopping Sunday I found a sock-loom I had seen online for $30, and it was $25 in the store. And I'm thinking that I'm going to come back some other day when I have a 40% off or even 50% off coupon and buy the thing. Except that they only had the one, and I'd never seen one in the store before, and they were having an additional 25% off sale, so I decided to go ahead and buy it. I haven't used it yet, and I doubt that I'll be making just tons of socks, but it is something that I have wanted for a while and now I have one.

Well, I still have a few people to exchange gifts with on New Years Eve. One gift is already done (and has been done since last year), I'll have to think of something for K, and I still might make that scarf for the pilot.

But other than that, Christmas is nearly over.

And I still didn't put up a tree.

I still have stuff to do

2010-12-20T07:53:00.004-05:00

Saturday at the pilot's house was nice, and the following Sunday dinner with more of my friends was nice, and this past Saturday was also nice, though I did feel a bit rushed with the whole thing of having to be in Irving and then in Arlington and then yet another place in Arlington. Following that dinner some of the group went to see the Interlochen Christmas lights, but not me. Maybe my husband will offer to drive me tonight, since we didn't get to go to that other thing in Oklahoma.

Right.

Well, something interesting happened during the meeting Saturday. I was wearing a Slytherin scarf, and I got some comments the nice looking scarf. And one of my friends asked how much I would charge to make a scarf if she already had the yarn for it, and I had to tell her that the scarves are eighty dollars, and if she bought the yarn already it would still be about seventy dollars, cause it takes about seven or eight hours to make one. And she said okay, she'd think about it, which usually means no. And then I thought how this particular person is usually good with crafts and such herself, and I went back and suggested that maybe she could just pay me thirty dollars to do the three or four hours of work on the knitting machine, and then she could do the remaining work that did not require the machine, which still takes about four hours but requires no special equipment and is not brain surgery (or at least for her it would not be brain surgery). And she said that she'd think about that.

So right after that, this guy that I don't know very well was trying to ask me something. And it's a very noisy room with all of us having different conversations, and I couldn't make out what he was saying at first. He was asking if I had a Hufflepuff scarf.

Now, normally, I don't have a lot of scarves just already made waiting for someone to buy them. Normally, if you want to buy a scarf from me, you have to give me the details of what you want, and then I'll make you one and you can pay me when it's finished. And usually, after people hear that it's a minimum of eighty dollars, they lose interest anyway. But it did just so happen that last year I'd made one each of the scarves from the third or fourth Harry Potter film, and that I was going to give two away at a Christmas Party last year, which I figured that everyone would want either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, but I also had Slytherin and Hufflepuff ready to go just in case someone wanted to trade. And as expected, no one at the party really wanted Slytherin or Hufflepuff, so I had them leftover. And it just also happened that I had both these scarves in the car (along with a few others) cause I had taken them somewhere to show someone else, and I just forgot and left them in the car. So when this guy asked about the Hufflepuff scarf, not only did I have one, but I was able to go out and get it for him, though I figured that he'd change his mind after hearing the price.

He didn't say that eighty dollars was too much, only that he didn't have that much with him. I let him look at the scarf while I talked to other people, and he said that he still wanted it, only he'd have to buy it some other time. And it was not a gift for someone else, he just wanted to wear the scarf himself, so he wanted to buy it before it got cold again. He asked if he could pay with PayPal.

Now, my husband has a PayPal account, and I certainly buy enough things with it, but I'd never before had anyone want to pay me with it, other than on eBay, so I didn't have all that information in my head. It certainly would have been possible, in the room with all those nerds and their smart phones, but I didn't have a clue how to go about it, and I couldn't get my husband to answer the phone (he was at someone else's house playing video games, but I'd forgotten and didn't try calling there). And this guy did not really live nearby, and he would probably lose interest if he had to wait another month to get his scarf. But we did manage to exchange emails and figure out a place to meet Sunday afternoon, and he has his scarf, and I have eighty dollars.

Or I did have eighty dollars. I've already spent some of it.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy about the whole thing. This is only the third time that someone has ordered a scarf and actually paid for it.

Okay, so I've bought some more supplies and will try again to make some ornaments, which will probably be a Christmas gift for K, though we will not be exchanging gifts until New Year's Eve, and it will be too late for him to use them this year. But he'll have them for next year. If that doesn't work I don't know what I'm going to give him, probably some homemade dessert, but he's said that he'd rather not have candy as he's already eaten way too much of the stuff and is starting to feel ill, and G already gave him (and the rest of us) cookies, so that's probably not a good idea either.

I'm still thinking that I might make a scarf for the pilot, but again that is something that won't be needed until New Year's Eve. There's still stuff that needs to be done by Friday. I need to get something for my brother in law (probably a gift card for a restaurant), I'm thinking of knitting three hats, and I need two $5 gifts for the Chinese gift exchange. Also I'm wondering if I should put a gift I recently got in a similar exchange in with my brother's gifts, or if I should just keep it. Cause as cute as it is, I don't really need a Star Wars computer mouse, but probably my brother doesn't either.

Okay, in order of things that need doing: buy gift card, buy two $5 gifts, make candy and maybe cookies, knit three hats, wrap gifts, make ornaments, knit scarf, and wrap more gifts.

I still haven't put up a tree.

Getting close now

2010-12-16T08:25:00.002-05:00

Okay, as someone pointed out earlier in the comments to my last post, it now really is two weeks til Christmas. Not even two weeks now.

I'm screwed.

Okay, not really that bad, just it doesn't seem right either. There's still a bit of stuff to do, and I don't quite seem to get it through my head that the deadline for a lot of it is here. Like the day after tomorrow here. And like, there won't be time to do anything for it the day of the thing on Saturday, cause it needs to be done before lunch, and so I don't want to be rushing around trying to do anything then. And tomorrow I have plans for going to a movie and such, so except for shopping that I have put off until Friday knowing that I would be in the same general area, I shouldn't plan on having much time to do anything tomorrow.

Which means that a lot of it needs to get done today.

Okay, what I have done so far is buy and wrap some DVDs for the charity thing, and knit a scarf for the charity thing. I have started a knit hat for the charity thing, but a hat isn't something that I committed to, so if it doesn't get done I won't really worry too much about that. Also, I meant to do some ornaments for the charity thing, but again, that wasn't something that I committed to, so if it doesn't get done it is not really a big deal.

For the official gift exchange, I've almost decided on a Darth Vader ornament and a ten dollar gift certificate to Half-Price Books. The thing is that I'm always going to Half-Price Books and forgetting to get the gift card, or else putting it off on purpose til I'm sure of the amount. So now I've put it off and put it off again, and I need the thing before lunch Saturday, so I'd better remember to get it tomorrow. I could still go by and pick up the thing Saturday morning, but if I do that I'll have to wrap the gift in my car, which is possible (especially if I just put the thing in a gift bag) but I'd rather not. Besides, someone might see me.

That leaves the question of whether or not I'm getting a gift for K, or if I'm just getting him a card, or both.

Last weekend we went to dinner. The pilot had us over. Some of us thought it was just for dinner, some of us thought we were supposed to exchange gifts, and some of us thought that we were supposed to exchange cards but save the gifts for later. I had some of the stuff ready, and some not. So I was going to bring some, and print out IOUs for the rest on this nice holiday paper that seems made for just that purpose. I had a gift for G, a gift for D, and Miss Allergies gift was made last year and she already knows what it is. So I wrapped those and put them in the car. And then I was making cards, but I only got two of them done, so I decided to only give to J and R (who said card exchange only), and to the pilot (cause we were at his house and he made the dinner, plus I'm still not sure if his gift is going to work out). I started another one for K, but I'm having a bit of trouble with it, and it still isn't done. So K didn't get a card, and I found out that the gift I originally planned for him won't really work for this year. So I either need to figure out how to finish this card, or else maybe he can have fudge as a present, or maybe I'll knit him a hat.

Then besides the usual bunch there were two other people at the dinner, and I didn't get them a card or anything. I didn't know that they were coming until just a couple of days before, and I wasn't going to try to make them one of these cards (especially at the last minute like that), and I don't do cards usually anyway.

So it ended like this: the two other people gave me a card, and I didn't give them one, and some of the other people did not give them one either cause they either did not know they were coming or did not know that it was meant for us to exchange cards that day. Miss Allergies did not want to unwrap her gift, cause she hadn't brought mine and she wants us to exchange gifts at the same time, so it remained in the car. I gave D her gift, because while we usually exchange gifts we usually are not together the day we exchange gifts, so the gifts are exchanged through messenger service (the pilot). And I wanted to see her open her gift for a change, so I did. And then G was getting the same gift (a Gryffindor scarf), which I thought that she might want to wear to the charity thing, so I went ahead and gave it to her then. I gave one card to J and R, and one card to the pilot. The pilot seemed to really like the card, and he probably thinks that is all he's getting, so he went and gave me the gifts he'd bought for me, though he's saving everyone else for later. And that left K, and I did not even give him an IOU, cause then I thought that the two extra people would wonder why they didn't get anything, not even an IOU, when everyone else got something. So poor K probably thinks that he isn't getting anything.

I really need to finish that card.

Anyway, everything is weekend is screwed up. The charity thing is supposed to be on the Sunday after the Saturday of the meeting. That way, the people not going to the charity thing themselves can still give things to the charity, and we gather all the stuff together on Saturday. There were two problems with that this year. The charity family is going out of town, and they want to start driving on Sunday morning, so they don't want to wait around for us to stop by Sunday afternoon.

The other problem is the damned Cowboys are ruining my life. We were told that going to the charity family's home would not be a good idea, as they live in a trailer, and there are other problems with that we'd really rather not deal with. So it was decided to meet at the apartment of a relative, and the apartment is on Fielder. The stadium is on Collins. Fielder is a major street that parallels Collins, but there are other streets in between them, like Cooper, so I would have thought that Fielder might have some traffic problems before and after the game, but not during. But apparently people will park their cars as far away as that and walk to the stadium rather than pay for parking, so we were told that Sunday would be a bad day to be in the area because of a noon game, even at 2 or 3 as far away as Fielder.

I am not in anyway someone who helps plan this charity thing. In fact, I'm just not that into the charity thing at all, I just sort of feel bad if I don't participate at all while other people are going out and buying really nice things for them. But I don't see how it gets to be this difficult and this complicated. Find us someone who wants free stuff, but not too much, who wants people in their home for a few minutes on the Sunday after the third Saturday of December. (And now add don't have them live anywhere near the stadium if the Cowboys have a home game that day). Is it really that difficult. Find someone who doesn't have much, likes people in costumes, and wants a little bit of free stuff.

Anyway, that is all the stuff that I need to get done for this weekend. And then there is Christmas Eve. And then there's a bit more for New Year's Eve.

I don't even have a tree up.

Christmas is two weeks away

2010-11-27T06:44:00.004-05:00

Okay, so if you've seen a calender recently, you know that Christmas isn't really two weeks away. It just suddenly seems that way to me.

My family has decided to cut back a bit on Christmas, so that we mainly buy one nice thing for one person, after we draw names out of a hat. And then we also buy a smaller gift, but we don't know who will get the smaller gift. So the spending limit with tax and everything ends up being just a bit under forty dollars per person, and should only require the one shopping trip. And all that is just fine, and I have most of a month to get that done.

It's the rest of it that I'm unsure about, and a lot of it I need to get done in the next two weeks.

Okay, so there's a group of friends who usually try to do things together two or three times a month. Due to not having a job and the price of gas and some other things, I rarely make it more than once a month now. Once in a great while, the pilot has us over for dinner. And, usually on the third Saturday of December, we exchange gifts. And this is in addition to the official gift exchange at the club, which is also on the that same Saturday.

It probably started when I opened my big mouth and asked the pilot if he was having one of his dinners in November, after I was looking at something and noticed that he'd had a dinner at that time last year. Now, I was not meaning to invite myself over for dinner, just that I was trying to schedule a few things, and I wanted to know if there was a dinner in November that I needed to to keep a certain date open for and not go out of town that week and such. So what he said was that he had meant to have a dinner in November, but this year it just wasn't going to work out, and he wondered if we wouldn't keeping open a Saturday in December for that instead. So now dinner with my friends is scheduled for the second Saturday in December at the pilot's house. So I asked if we should exchange gifts then instead of on the third Saturday like we usually did. At the time I did not have a preference, I just wanted to know.

At that point someone mentioned something about exchanging cards instead of gifts, cause some of us are short on cash, and most of us really don't want to spend that much time in the mall anyway. We had discussed doing this last year too, but we didn't really discuss it early enough for me, and I was already knitting things for two of them. And I didn't want to just exchange cards after I was already either buying or knitting things for some of them. And then I wasn't sure if I should just give the gifts I already had planned and give the others just cards. That didn't seem fair at all. So we ended up having the regular gift exchange and decided to talk about just exchanging cards the next year.

And really, I don't exchange cards. This comes from a time when I really had no money, and I watched other people spend more on the cards than I had in my whole Christmas budget. So with me you either get a gift, or you don't get anything. Even when I didn't have money I gave candy or small fruit baskets or candles or some homemade thing rather than exchanging cards. This means that I have a small list of people, and that there are a lot of people giving me cards when I don't give them anything, but I just can't spend time or effort or money on cards.

Okay, so G brought up the whole gift or card discussion, and everyone else jumped in, and for the most part people said cards were better. The exception being Miss Allergies, cause she picked out what she wanted from me last year, and so I put a certain scarf aside for her. R and J want to exchange cards, K also voted for cards, and the pilot said something about making cards, and G is in favor of either cards or baked goods.

I like baked goods.

Okay, so having heard that we would be mostly exchanging either cards or baked goods with most of these people on the third Saturday (except for Miss Allergies' gift which is already done), I mostly put the idea out of my mind. While I probably won't do cards, I had plenty of time to do small gifts or figure out baked goods or whatever else I might do.

The pilot is now saying that he has cards, but he also found a few gifts....

Okay, so I've been wanting to make him a certain scarf, and I will try again this year, though it might not work out. Also I've heard that K is now leaning towards gift exchange. That's fine, though at the moment I'm not sure what I would get him, as I gave him the handmade scarf last year and a different scarf another year, and even if I had the time he doesn't need yet another scarf. So far as I know, R and J still want to exchange cards, so I will get them something small or baked goods, and I will get something for G that would either be baked goods or something like that.

And then after looking at the schedule, there is something going on with R and J on the third Saturday, which makes me think that we'll end up exchanging gifts or cards or whatever on the second Saturday.

And this means that for the most part, I have only two weeks to do the Christmas stuff, whatever that will be.

For the official gift exchange, I still have until the third Saturday, or I can even decide not to participate. And for my family I still have until Christmas Eve.

Except that last year there was also this extended family Christmas party, and while I haven't heard that it is planned again this year, I was thinking that I should make a couple more scarves, just in case. And also I would like to make another scarf for this charity thing, which would also be due on the third Saturday.

While it slowly dawns on me that I have a lot to do in the next two or three weeks, my husband mentions going out of town. I hadn't really planned on it. In fact, I hadn't really thought about it at all. He's going to the middle of nowhere a bit north of here for two or three days, then has a day off on which he will have to move to another place also a bit north of here for another three or four days. If I had planned on it, I would have had knitting and such ready to go, but I hadn't planned on it. Middle of nowhere and all of that, and I didn't think that there was anything for us to do there. Only he found some Christmas light display between the two places, and he was thinking that we could go see it.

Now that I've looked it up, I don't think that they allow visitors on that day. It was nice of him to think of it, but probably I should not go. The house is a mess and all of that, plus that would leave all this leftover turkey to rot in the frig.

I don't want the turkey to rot. I want to make stuff with it and eat it.

There are plenty of Christmas light displays here, but for whatever reason, he never seems that interested in going to see them.

Okay, so I have a very messy house to clean, and a lot of knitting to do, and then probably more shopping and practice baking to do. Going out of town is probably not the best idea.

I wish that I had planned better.

Happy Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T07:15:00.005-05:00

Okay, so it's six something in the morning, and I'm wondering if it is too early to get in line at the cafeteria.

Probably.

Anyway, despite there being like four turkeys between us, we've decided that we will eat out, probably at Furr's, though I probably haven't been to Furr's in years and don't know what to expect, other than some really long lines. There will only be four of us, as the rest of our group have made other plans with in-laws and such. Mom isn't much into the cooking and such anymore, and this year in particular she just doesn't feel up to it. Either my brother or I could do the turkey itself (I see no problem just doing a very basic turkey and had already made one for myself, and my brother had other ideas and practiced two of them early this month), nobody is quite up to making mom's stuffing (or grandma's stuffing, depending on how you look at it), and while I like a plain basic turkey to make other things with, it isn't much of a Thanksgiving turkey without mom's stuffing. Also missing is grandma's (other grandma) potato salad and a number of other things. So it would have been my brother making a turkey and me attempting stuffing and potato salad, and then not much else interesting, and mom didn't seem that interested in the turkey anyway.

Still, I think my brother did an excellent job on the two practice turkeys, though one of them did turn out too salty. But, then, that is the point of doing practice turkeys, so you can figure out that kind of thing.

I was just this close to buying a roaster this year, cause I'd heard that it could also be used as a slow cooker. But then I heard that a.) this isn't really a good idea, and b.) the roaster that was on sale was not digital, which means that it wouldn't automatically switch to warm after it finishes cooking. So I did not get one, though I might look again. But I did find a rack that folds up when you're done, and it fits in the cheap aluminum pans, which I like cause I can be lazy and toss when I'm done with them. And I really don't have room for a roaster anyway, which I suppose is the reason I did not buy one some previous year.

Later I will be looking over the ads, but as far as I can tell I really only want one thing and from one store. Or, rather, I only want the one type of thing, and the big sale is at one store. The last few years I've gone to Walmart to get jeans for myself, and try to get a few other things, and while I'm there I look through the sale DVDs. Anyway, this year I did not lose any weight, I gained the weight back somewhat, which means that I probably don't need any jeans because I'm wearing those that I bought a year and two ago, and if I lose a bit of weight I'll be wearing the jeans that I bought last time. So now I have to decide if I want to maybe buy just one pair just in case I should lose more than that.

I really don't want to buy any larger clothes just in case I gain. My husband is planning some sort of diet the first six weeks of the new year. Not that he's really planning to lose weight, just that he's thinking he should get a few things out of his diet. This would be a good time to go on a diet too, though not the same diet. I want a lose weight diet. I want to look pretty and maybe have lower blood pressure. But, if I go on a diet while he's doing his thing, at least for the first six weeks I won't have him constantly suggesting that we go out for ice cream and such.

Anyway, without needing to buy jeans, I don't have much excuse for going out early Friday morning, except for buying DVDs. I'm wondering if I'm going to buy that many, or if maybe I should just try to get them online. Other than that, I'm thinking of going to Half Price Books, and I've heard that Racetrac has free coffee. I don't have any plans to camp out in hopes of getting a TV or any of that.

Lately I've been trying to find a certain diet cookbook. I don't know why. I don't need another diet cookbook, I probably just need to take one I already have on the shelf and cook stuff. But, I saw this one, and I keep bidding on it on ebay. But I don't want to bid much more than five dollars (cause with say ten dollars and shipping, I might as well just buy the book new in the store), so I don't have the thing. And then I had the idea of borrowing one at the library, cause I might not even like it that much, but for some reason I can't get the computer and the library computer to talk to each other. I already know that the two libraries I use most don't have it, but if I really want something I go to Fort Worth, which is a bit of a drive, and I'd rather not go all the way there if I'm only going to look for a book that the computer won't even tell me if they have.

That's enough for now. I'll probably post again later.

...and they eat us and they take our women...

2010-11-16T09:59:00.010-05:00

I saw a movie this weekend. From the above title you should be able to figure out which one. I was looking forward to it. It was okay.

Also, I have recently seen Monsters. After being told it was being released on a certain date, and then a later certain date, and then a third later certain date, my brother found it on pay for view, so we ended up watching it at his house. You would think that watching it at someone's house would be really cheap, but it was eight dollars. This is not cheap to me, since I usually watch new movies at a nearby theater for less than four dollars matinee, and more often than that just wait til things are at the dollar theater. Anyway, after all that waiting and wanting to see the thing, I was a bit disappointed. I liked the feel and look of it, and I don't have a problem with the low budget and such, it's just that after sitting through the whole movie I know just about as much as I did from watching the previews. Which is, mostly nothing, except that six years ago we sent a probe to get samples of some lifeform, then the probe crashed, leaving the lifeform to grow on Earth, mostly in the northern half of Mexico. There were hardly any action scenes in the movie, but for all of that time talking, no one said anything. No one said anything interesting about the creatures, and no one said anything interesting about themselves. We have your average jerk guy who apparently doesn't know where babies come from til he ends up with a now six year old son, except that he still hasn't figured out what not to do cause he's still sleeping with random people. And we have daughter of the jerk's boss, trying to get home after doing we don't know what in we don't know where and we don't know why. And they wait til the last possible day, have their boat tickets stolen, and have to get home by land through this area where the creatures live. And that's pretty much it.

Also on the movie front we have Harry Potter coming up. But I can't talk about that really, cause it hasn't happened yet. I should have made a new hat last year, but I didn't, and now I'm just getting started on it, and I need it done by Thursday.

Right.

Okay, so I was all in pain with the mysterious back/hip problem. That pretty much lasted a whole month. I never went to a doctor, just kind of waited for it to go away, which it finally seems to have done. Now I just feel rather blah bad, not like really bad, which I guess is mostly normal for me now.

And then I finally went to the dentist. I had my annual checkup (which I have missed for like the last four or five years) back in August, at which time I was told what needed to be done and the estimated cost for all of that. I would need at least three more appointments, and several hundred dollars for the first two, assuming that all went well and the insurance paid half and all of that. So, in August, I did not have several hundred dollars twice over, much less four times over if the insurance did not pay, which was not very likely but something I might have to be prepared for just in case. So I did not make those appointments in August, cause I said that I would have to talk to my husband and find out when we would have the money, and when we would be in town, and so forth. My husband was also supposed to have had his "annual" checkup that day in August, but his schedule was changed and he went out of town, and so he was not there for a while to have this discussion about the money. So I told the lady at the dentist office that I would call her back, but then I did not call her back for a very long time. First, we went out of town a lot, for most of September. And then my first week home I had a lot to do and went to visit Buddy and the baby. And then the week after that, my back hurt, and I was in such pain that I could only rest in certain positions, and the dentist office chair was not one of those positions. So I did not think that I could stand being in the dentist chair long enough for him to get any work done, so I continued to put it off until after Halloween. When a week went by without serious back pain, I finally called the dentist office to make an appointment, and they said that they could see me the following Monday. I should have scheduled the crown first and gotten it over with, but I didn't. I've had two of those before, and I was in pain the whole time between getting the temporary crown and getting the permanent crown. So I just needed a bit more time to get mentally used to the idea, and also I had to schedule it so that if I were in serious pain for the whole two weeks before getting the permanent crown that I wouldn't be missing anything important. They were wondering if I could come in that Thursday.

Two weeks from that Thursday would be Thanksgiving.

I'm thinking that they would not be open on Thanksgiving, even if I wanted to do that. I didn't want to have to wait more than the two weeks, and even if they could squeeze me in that Friday, I rather think that I'll be out shopping and such on Black Friday. Not that I told them that. I'm not going to tell my dentist that saving some money on clothes and getting cheap DVDs is more important that fixing my teeth. But they did seem to understand wanting to get it all over with before Thanksgiving. So they asked if I would mind coming in that Wednesday.

I wouldn't mind that at all, I'm just surprised that they could get me in so soon. If they had suggested coming back in the next day, that might have been a problem, since I didn't get to eat much solid food on Monday after breakfast, and doing the same thing again and not eating on Tuesday would not have been fun. But having the day between to recover was okay, as long as they were going to be open two weeks later to do the permanent crown. They said that they would be, so I made the appointment.

While they were working on my teeth they found another cavity, and I said that they should go ahead and deal with that since they've already given me pain medication, so that cost another hundred bucks. But we are still a bit under a thousand dollars, and the checks did not bounce, and so far the insurance hasn't refused to pay for anything.

Oh, I forgot about Halloween. I spent most of the Thursday or Friday before making finger shaped cookies for the party, which was that Saturday. And then at the party I spent a couple of hours handing out cookies and trying to get people to guess that I was Weena. I was surprised how many of them could not guess, and I stayed in character and did not tell them. And then I was going to get really strange about half an or an hour before the costume contest, only I didn't correctly remember when that was, so then I'm rushing around trying to get one of my props ready, and I didn't get to do all that I meant to. So no one saw me eating the Morlock foot till the contest. Get it? In an alternate timeline, the Eloi eat the Morlocks.

I guess just too many people there were not familiar with The Time Machine, so I guess they just didn't get the joke. Maybe they thought that the Eloi were supposed to eat the Morlocks. You would think that people would get it. I mean, there are mundanes that know about The Time Machine and that the Morlocks eat the Eloi. But I just wasn't getting the laughs. So, I ended up winning an honorable mention for the cookies, but I didn't win any awards for the costume contest, other than the sort of joke awards that they hand out later.

So I had fun, but it was also a bit of a disappointment that nobody got it really. And I didn't get to eat much, cause a.) I was busy handing out cookies, and b.) I was trying not to get anything on my very light yellow dress.

So that was Halloween, or at least the night before, and there was nothing to do on Halloween itself or any time near Halloween, as my back was still hurting a bit and I was afraid of going to a haunting house or anything that might make my condition worse. Too late I thought of going to the wax museum, as they are usually very tame, and I'm sure that someone would have let me out early if I was having a problem. So I didn't get to do anything at all this year, other than the party.

And I'm trying to restrain myself with the clearance sale shopping. I've hardly bought anything at all, and half of what I did buy was either for Buddy or the baby.

Other than that, things are mostly just annoying. Like, I can't find my Harry Potter clothes. Or, I can find some things, but I can't find other things, and most of the things that I do find don't fit. But, I'm not quite ready to give up on the idea. I still have my scarves if nothing else works.

Another thing is annoying, which I won't talk about now, except to say that it has been a whole damned freaking month. And I have had enough of it.

Anyway, back to looking through the costumes and working on my hat.

Monday Morons: Those pants are supposed to cover your butt

2010-11-15T19:55:00.005-05:00

I am not dead, I just haven't posted in a while. I will have to do a catch-up post soon.

Anyway, I had to go to the bank. Actually, I had to go to two different banks. The first one has limited parking, but a Taco Bell has just opened next door, and at three in the afternoon it has a lot of empty parking spaces. So I figured that I would park at the Taco Bell, run into the bank, and then go to the Taco Bell and have a snack.

So I got some money from the bank and went to the Taco Bell. I hadn't realized til then that I was even hungry. I ordered a drink and a taco and while I'm waiting for them to make the taco I get a couple of napkins and some hot sauce and a straw and all of that sort of thing. And there is this guy doing pretty much the same thing, and I don't much look at him or pay any attention to him.

This is a bad habit, but I'm sure that most women understand. You don't look at people, and you for sure do not make eye contact with people. You especially do not make eye contact with guys. And you really, really do not make eye contact with random guys while you are alone. If you make eye contact with people, then they might start talking to you, and I don't want to talk to anyone. And I really, really do not want to talk to random guys while I'm alone. I just want to have a soda and eat my taco in peace and then leave and get on with my errands.

So, I know that this is a bad habit. I don't look at people, and I especially don't look at random guys while I'm alone. So, if two minutes later, the police come in looking for someone, even if they have a picture of the random guy that was just there, I wouldn't be able to say that I had seen him. While I was up getting my food and such, I took no notice of him at all, other than to register that someone else was there and move around him.

Now, once I had sat down with my food, and the other people in the restaurant had also sat down at other tables with their food, then maybe it is a little bit safer to look around. Cause, unless someone recognizes me from someplace else, they probably won't get up from their table and leave their food just to come talk to me. So I'm looking around a bit, though still not making eye contact with anyone.

The random guy that I didn't look at earlier is sitting at a table with his back to me. This is one of those newer tables that is really tall with bar stools around it. And he is in the middle of the room, so regardless of where you are sitting, if you aren't facing the other direction, you can see him.

And it is starting to get a bit cool around here, but this guy apparently didn't get the memo, so while he's put on a jacket he's still wearing summer clothing, so the rest of his outfit was sandals and thin knee-length shorts. And I guess the elastic in the shorts is not so elastic anymore, cause he's doing the plumber imitation without even bending over. The quarter-slot is exposed to the rest of the restaurant.

And then I notice that the quarter-slot is for a really big quarter. Pretty much most of his butt is hanging out.

I'm glad that I didn't notice that last bit until I was mostly finished eating. I decide that I need to leave soon. I think that he's kind of creepy looking, and that he doesn't care that he's showing everyone his hairy butt. In fact, I think that he must be doing it on purpose. Some of his skin is actually touching the chair, so there's no way that he doesn't know what he's doing.

I suppose that you're supposed to call the police or something, but the police probably have better things to do. I have better things to do. I still had to go to another bank and run to Walmart and a few other places. I left.

Let the people working at the Taco Bell call the police. Besides, the creepy guy was probably just wanting attention, and he wasn't going to get more of that from me.

The Dallas Cowboys are ruining my life

2010-10-25T21:24:00.005-04:00

Okay, the Cowboys are not literally ruining my life. Like, I have not been kicked out of my home to make way for a bigger stadium and/or parking lot. That happened to a lot of other people, but it did not happen to me personally. They are just making life annoying at times.

The Rangers were annoying enough. Then the Rangers got a bigger ballpark and got more annoying. The Cowboys were in Irving, in a part of Irving right next to Dallas, and I hate Dallas, so I was rarely there. The Cowboys were still annoying, just not in the same way as the Rangers, as long as they were staying near Dallas were I would probably not have to deal with them or their fans or the traffic problems involved with games.

But then they moved to Arlington. They moved to Arlington right next to stores that I shop at and restaurants I eat at and so forth. So they are now a problem for me. And as I care nothing for sports, I don't remember which days they plan to be a bother, until it is too late to do anything about it.

So today was one of those days. But it was early in the day, and we safely escaped from it all (though it would have been nice to eat an early dinner in the area, but we decided against it). But they are still annoying, as right now I am not watching The Event and such on TV, cause my husband is watching the game. Yet another lie that he told me, so on top of all the other things I have to put up with from him, he now watches football games, even when there is something else to do or something better to watch.

Anyway, the main reason for the football fans being a problem that had to be dealt with earlier in the day is that on top of whatever ridiculous price the fans paid for their tickets, they are expected to pay yet another $67 to $82 for parking their cars (this amount will go up another twenty dollars for next year's dreaded Super Bowl Game). And, while they have somehow been persuaded to give up whatever amount they paid for the tickets, they don't really want to pay $67-$82 just to park their cars. And it is a really big parking lot, so even after paying the $67-$82 for parking the car, that doesn't guarantee that your car will end up being parked near where you want to be, and you might still be in for a long walk even after paying that much. So many of the local stores and restaurants were charging $35-$40 dollars to park in their parking lots, and from their you might have an even longer walk, but since you're going to have a long walk anyway you might as well get a parking space for half-price.

The best deal seemed to be that of Half-Price Books. If you spend $40 dollars or more that day, you got to park in front of the bookstore for free if you taped the dated receipt onto your windshield. And, to make things even easier, instead of looking all through the store for something that you want to spend $40 on, you can just buy a $40 gift card and spend the money later. So that almost makes the parking free, if you are someone who buys a lot of books, and if you are willing to walk the extra couple of blocks to get there.

Not that I picture many of these people being readers, but perhaps these people have friends who are readers, and they can give these bookstore gift cards to their reading friends for Christmas.

Then there were also people walking from really far away places on the other side of the freeway. I have no idea where they were coming from or how much they paid to park their cars, but I can't imagine that they got a better deal than what the bookstore was offering. And even if you really just do not like the bookstore and don't have any friends who read and therefore have absolutely no reason to go to Half-Price Books, most of the other stores and some restaurants had a similar deal, and you might find something that you would want to spend $40 on.

Anyway, now I'm going to find something to watch on Hulu or Youtube, because I can't watch The Event like I'm supposed to, because the Cowboys are still on.

TAZ still hate pain

2010-10-23T10:10:00.003-04:00

I can't believe I feel this bad. It has been almost four weeks now since my back started hurting. I don't know what caused it, since it didn't start hurting when I was doing anything interesting. Pain pills do not seem to do anything. I just seem to be in pain, except when I can get into certain positions, which isn't very often because I can do little or nothing in those positions, except that I can sometimes sleep in two of them.

Not knowing that I would feel this bad, I went out of town. I felt okay the day we came, but the next day I felt bad and now I feel bad. I don't understand why I felt okay on Wednesday and pretty good in the car on Thursday, and then feel so bad on Friday and Saturday. My husband thinks it is because I'm not sleeping in my own bed. But I was not sleeping in my own bed two weeks ago in Amarillo, and I did not feel so bad then. I just don't get it.

Today I did not even feel good when I first woke up. That is very unusual. First thing in the morning, I usually am too foggy to notice pain or illness much.

I should be working on my costume, but so far I haven't felt up to it. I have only the week left now to do it, plus making decorations, plus baking cookies, plus all of the things that I would normally have to do like laundry. And of course the house is in the usual mess, except that I have a lot of the mess neatly stacked, cause I had to move it out and away from the closets to make a clear path for the bug guy who came on Wednesday.

I didn't need to be here. I could have stayed home and slept in my own bed. But I thought a couple of days watching cable and using a hot tub would be nice. This is so damned annoying.

Halloween movies

2010-10-17T12:14:00.003-04:00

Okay, so probably nobody else would like to celebrate the season the way I would. As much as I enjoy the Halloween Party, it might be better for me if it were some other time of year, like maybe in March. They are not so much into the ghosts and such. I guess my idea of a good Halloween get-together would be if we all dressed up mostly in black, lit candles, ate weird food on my spiderweb design plates while maybe the theme to The Exorcist played in the background, and then we all watched movies like The Initiation of Sarah and the Vincent Prince version of The Last Man on Earth.

During my last trip out of town I turned on the Syfy channel, only to be disappointed in what they called The 31 Days of Halloween, which turned out that week to be some not very good movies, most of which didn't seem to be much in the theme anyway. I guess they were only choosing from movies they had made themselves (the before mentioned monster movies mainly about mutants and sea creatures passed over by Peter Benchley). Not impressed.

But it was early in the month, and I can only hope that some decent vampire movies are coming later.

So I'm going to try to locate movies that I would want to watch in October. I will come back and add links as I find them.

The Initiation of Sarah (1978 TV movie)(ending missing)

The Initiation of Sarah (remake 2006 TV movie)

The Last Man on Earth

A catch up post

2010-10-15T09:48:00.004-04:00

I am home, while my husband is off in middle of nowhere Oklahoma. I was briefly very excited about nowhere Oklahoma and wanted to go too, as I wanted to go back to the Castle of Muskogee for their Halloween stuff. But as I looked more closely at the schedule, I saw that a trip to the Castle could not work, because the Castle is not open on Sunday night, and that would have been the best opportunity to go, as he is scheduled an hour and a half away on Friday and Saturday, the only nights that they are open.

So I quit trying to figure out how I might get to the place and just stayed home to work.

Of course I am not working, as my back still hurts. Maybe not as much as it did. Sometimes I think that whatever it is maybe getting better. Other times I just think that I am having a few good days, and then I'll have a few bad ones. It is best to sit just a certain way in this chair (so there has been a lot of Hulu and Youtube and such), or to stand up straight (which does not happen very often cause how boring is it to just stand still somewhere), or to maybe walk around a bit at a mall or something, or to stay in bed in a certain positions. Those positions in bed are not good for watching TV or reading, so I'm trying to stay out of bed, but eventually I am there watching TV or using the heating pad anyway. And of course I am trying to sleep some, which does not seem to want to happen at the right times.

The first thing that happened after I decided to stay here is that I seem to have lost my marbles and forgot to pay rent. I could have sworn that was done before I left, but there was no money taken out of the account for it. And I thought that I had given it to the "temporary manager", but as I got out of there fast and did not ask for a receipt, that might have been an earlier month. Anyway, paying that late means a lot of late fees, and I ended up paying eighty dollars for my mistake. She at first said a hundred, and I know that she could have even said a hundred and twenty, but "temporary manager" wasn't around, so she didn't charge me for the first day and she didn't charge me for the day that I wrote the check. (I later heard that "temporary manager" had quit, but as that was after I went to the office I did not get that confirmed.) I just can't imagine having forgotten to pay that check, as I went so far as to make sure that my brother had an emergency check before I went out of town. So how did I remember the emergency check but not the regular rent check?

The next odd thing was I learned that mail delivery for our street had stopped. There was an incident with a dog and some man at the beginning of the street (technically his address is on the cross street), and so everyone else would have to go get their mail from the Post Office until further notice. That started Friday afternoon while I was away. The mail service just stopped, and you only heard about it through the rumour mill, not buy a note on the door or phone call or anything official from either the Post Office or the office here. I didn't hear about it until Tuesday. Wednesday, the man who lives in the apartment in question came around to apologize in person to everyone on the street, saying that it was not him and not his dog, but his daughter's boyfriend and his dog. The boyfriend and dog have left, and the man has apologized and made arrangements to have a box at the post office, and the mail service was restored on Thursday.

Tuesday I got my TDaP shot. I don't know the difference between the TDaP and the DTaP (maybe one is for adults and one for children?), but I ended up getting it from the Kroger's pharmacy for $50. That is considerably less that the prices I'd been told at other places ($80 and $129), so I wonder if they made a mistake. I got the shot before they could change their minds. So now I won't infect the baby with whooping cough, and I'll remember that my tetanus shots are due on years ending in 0. So that's all good, and I'm glad to get that over with.

The bug guy is coming next next Wednesday. I suspected that, and that is the main reason I asked to come home instead of going straight on to Oklahoma with my husband, but now I have that confirmed. So I should be doing a lot of cleaning, which I am not, because of my back. But I should at least try to clear him a path through the junk.

Tomorrow I should have my picture taken, but I really don't want to. I don't know what to wear. I don't feel like getting dressed up anyway. Maybe I'll wear Harry Potter stuff.

The baby is in the hospital

2010-10-08T14:51:00.003-04:00

First let me say that the baby formally known as the baby will now be known as Buddy. He is perhaps a little bit big to be called the baby, and as he now has a baby sister, calling him the baby would be confusing.

Anyway, just as Buddy was getting used to his baby sister, she got a temperature of 101, and apparently babies with temperatures above 100.4 get a trip to the hospital, even if there does not appear to be anything else wrong. And there does not appear to be anything else wrong, but they are not done looking.

The baby's temperature has gone back down, and if there is nothing else wrong she'll get to go back home tomorrow or the next day.

I will not say who the babies are or who their parents are. There are just too many weirdos out on the Internet, and I don't intend to help them find their next targets.

It just so happens that these are the only babies I've had in my life since I've been married. Not that most of my friends and family haven't had babies, just somehow they haven't had any when I was around. There are a few couples I am friends with who don't want children, but most have either had them when I wasn't around, or else they had babies and then somehow ended up not being friends anymore. It just seems to happen that way. Like people in the club who start families tend to stop being in the club. Family stuff is more important, and they just don't have time for some of the social stuff they did before.

So somehow there are these two babies who have come along at a time when I was not away on a long trip, and their parents didn't up and move, and while they don't have as much free time as they used to they haven't completely disappeared.

Now I have to be more careful about things. I've had a flu shot. Not that I shouldn't have a flu shot anyway, but in years past the decision to get one was made mostly on factors like whether or not I had the cash in my pocket when someone was given vaccinations at school or maybe Walmart. Anyway, I made a point of getting it this year, and now I'm thinking about the dtap. There's like an outbreak of whooping cough in California or something, and they are afraid it might come here. Besides, I should have gotten a tetanus shot a couple of years ago anyway.

The dtap is eighty dollars in Dallas (I hate Dallas) or a hundred and twenty-nine if I can get it at a certain Walgreens. I don't have either amount, so I haven't gotten it yet. I wish I had thought about it earlier. There's a place about a mile away from where I'm staying that probably has them here (though I don't know for how much), and I wish I'd have heard about it earlier. Maybe I could have gotten the shot instead of going to that restaurant.

Anyway, I will be heading home tomorrow, and Sunday I'll have to decide if I should see the baby, since I haven't had this shot.

I will be glad to go home. I had fun yesterday, but it will be good to sleep in my own bed again.

Out of town again

2010-10-05T17:41:00.005-04:00

I look forward to going out of town. Then I stress about going out of town, about the schedule, about how I didn't get something done before I left, or about how I need to get back before a certain time.

And then I get here and wonder what made me do this?

As much as I dislike being stuck at home all day, being stuck in a motel room all day usually isn't any better. I brought projects with me, my Halloween costume and stuff that goes with it, but once I started working on it I realized that I didn't have everything that I need with me, so that might not get done this week like I planned. Without my little projects to keep me distracted, I usually have a very boring day of watching TV.

Not that the whole trip is boring. Monday I went to a certain restaurant. I'd never been there before, and I'll probably go there again, but now whenever the subject comes up, I can say that I've been there. Probably Wednesday I will go to a state park, and probably Thursday I will go to someplace we once went to when I was a child. Then I can say how everything looks smaller. I'll spend some time in the hot tub, and once in a while I'll even have my husband with me.

Saturday will be a bit of a hassle, but I didn't want to go to on next week's trip, so we have get home in time for him to get going again. Anyway, the plan is for me to spend most of Saturday at a mall so that we don't have to spend money on this room, and then we'll end up spending the night somewhere between here and home.

Taz hate pain

2010-10-03T08:45:00.005-04:00

I am sitting here trying to be somewhat quiet. I unexpectedly have someone sharing my bed this morning, as my husband came home a day early. He is still sleeping, and as usual for this time of day I am not.

When I wrote my last post I was beginning my second week of being home after being away most of three weeks. My first week here my husband was here, and there was other stuff keeping me away from the house most of the time, so I did not get much done around here. The second week I was to have the place to myself, and as I had a lot of work to do and usually get more of it done when he is not here, that was to my liking.

I did a lot of work that Monday. I attempted to move the washing machine so that I could clean behind it and paint. I was able to move it some, but not all the way, as that would have require cutting off the water and such, and I was afraid that without help I would somehow do something wrong, like get the hot and cold water backwards, so I did what cleaning I could and painted the spots I could reach, and then I put the washing machine back in it's proper place. I did not quite finish painting the kitchen, as that would have required the ladder, and I don't do that when I am alone in the house, just in case there is an accident. So there are small areas up near the ceiling and around the windows and such, and those will take patience, but other than that (and the bit behind the washing machine that I couldn't reach) the kitchen walls are all painted, and I don't plan on painting the ceiling.

Having completed all of that task that needed to be done before putting the cabinet back in it's usual spot, I moved the cabinet. The kitchen is now back to being mostly the way it was, and now I can think about what needs to be done to the new wall, if I want to add hooks or magnets or whatever.

After all of that, the tiling under the sink still isn't done. I did buy another cutting tool, but I haven't used it yet. So still a lot of kitchen stuff is still tossed into the dinning area, which I can't use because it has too much junk in it.

After moving all the stuff in the kitchen, I decided to get the other major chore out of the way and mowed the front yard. Then it was time to eat dinner and pat myself on the back for a job well done. All that work done and it was only Monday. Off to a great start.

And then I felt like I was going to fall. I didn't fall really, I caught myself, but my back really hurt. Well, these things happen. But I was done for the day anyway. I was just going to eat and then watch TV for the rest of the evening.

Except that the next day my back still hurt. I tried some Doan's pills. I don't know what it is about Doan's pills, but they really do magic things and get rid of back pain. At least, they usually do, but not this time. I had an errand to run, but after that I spent most of the day in bed watching the last season of Saving Grace.

Wednesday morning I did not feel that much better still, but I had many errands to run, and I decided to go ahead and try to do them. While I was out, I got the coolest sandals on clearance for ten dollars. At about five or so I decided that I'd had enough. My back still hurt, but not so much as it had in the morning. I decided just one more thing could be done that day, so I went to Walgreen's and got a flu shot.

I ended up not getting home till after six, and after getting something to eat I invited myself to my brother's place to watch Stargate. We were going to watch some other stuff, but we ended up talking about this and that, and then we decided we should save the other stuff for another time. I borrowed some DVDs and went home.

I thought that I would try doing as little as possible Thursday to see if that would help my back, so I spent most of the day in bed watching those DVDs. It did not help. If anything I felt worse.

By Friday night I hadn't gotten anything done around the house except for what I'd done Monday. Since the day I felt the best was Wednesday, the day I'd spent the least time in bed complaining about my bad back, I decided to mostly stay out of bed and at least wash the dishes and do the laundry on Saturday. And then my husband came home a day early.

So if I'm going to get anything done besides laundry it will have to be today. We will see what happens. We are planning another trip.

Something interesting happened on the way to the store

2010-09-27T15:48:00.003-04:00

Well, I've been away for most of three weeks, and then this last week I was home, except that I didn't spend much of my time actually at home, and I was busy, and I didn't much of anything useful done around here. And after you have been away for most of three weeks, and then spend little of the fourth week at home and end up eating out, then you have to throw most of the stuff in the refrigerator away and buy groceries.

So I was on my way to do that, except that I wanted to have a look at my luffa plant, and while I was in the backyard I stopped to talk to my neighbor for a bit. And then I waved bye and was headed to my car, and I noticed one of the other neighbors with her baby. She was knocking at my neighbor's front door, and of course no one heard the knocking, because they were all in the backyard. So I said to the lady that they were in back. I don't know this neighbor as well as the one I'd just spoken to, in fact I mainly just wave at her and rarely talk to her other than at the annual meetings, and I don't even remember her name. But I've seen that this neighbor seems friendly enough with the other one, so I thought that she would just go on to the backyard. But either she didn't hear what I'd said, or going around to the backyard was too much for her to do, and she says that she has to run after her escaping dog, and could I hold the baby.

Sure.

And the lady got in her car and drove down the street, and I took the baby to my other neighbor's backyard.

Well, I don't have a dog, but if I did have a dog and she got out, this would upset me and I would immediately run after her. I don't have a baby either, but I guess if I did I would care a lot about her.

Now, if I had both a dog and a baby, and if for some reason I could only look after one of them, I'm assuming that I would favor the baby over the dog.

Not that I wasn't happy to help out and watch the baby, or at least watch the baby for a while til my other neighbor could watch the baby, as the other neighbor was the first choice for watching the baby instead of me. But I just don't think that I would have given my baby to someone who just waves at me from across the street, someone I rarely speak to, someone whose name I can't remember.

For all she knows I could eat babies for breakfast or be dating someone that Law and Order: SVU modeled one of their bad guys after.

All is well. She very quickly recovered the runaway dog and came back to the other neighbor's backyard, and then we all tried to get the baby to throw a ball to us. (She's very happy picking up the ball, but she hasn't quite got the throwing part figured out.) The lady took her baby home, the other neighbors went back to whatever they had been doing, and I went to the grocery store.

My routine is screwed up

2010-09-22T07:51:00.004-04:00

Okay, so I am home now, after having been away for most of three weeks. And I don't quite know what to do. I don't quite remember what it is that I'm supposed to be doing. I have to think about things that I used to just get up and do. But I haven't done them in three weeks, and I don't remember what needed to be done or where things are and such.

I've forgotten to water the plants. I was away all that time, and the rain mostly took care of them, and a neighbor watered a few things, so that when I got home some of the plants were rather sad looking, but very few were dead, and those dead ones were mostly either things that I expected to die or things that I just didn't care about anymore. The second thing that I did when I got home was water the plants. I gave them lots and lots of water. But then on Monday I totally forgot to get up and water the plants, and Tuesday I didn't remember until I was doing something else and could not stop to check on the plants. So now I'm sitting here remembering that I need to water the plants, and this is the time of day that I used to water the plants, only I can't water them right now because it is dark outside.

Why is it dark outside?

Okay, so I guess that it's just that time of year that it stays dark longer, and I just didn't notice that from the motel. But here, today, it is dark, and it is a surprise. So I'm just sitting here worrying about my plants and not able to do anything about it.

So I thought that I would sit here and try to be quiet, and do things like check my email and check a few other things. And I'm sitting here, and I forgot my email address. Well, one of them anyway. I don't use it much anymore, but I have to check it once in a while, and I have to know what it is to use some other things. And I'm sitting here, and I just couldn't remember. Not that I forgot my password, but I just couldn't remember the email itself. I couldn't remember where to go to check the email. I didn't remember if it was gmail or yahoo or hotmail or fastmail. It was hotmail, but I sat here for the longest time and just could not remember that.

For a moment, it was scary. My email address was totally gone from my head, and it wasn't going to come back. And here I had thought I'd left that particular address where anyone with half a brain could find it (never thinking that I would be the person looking), but it wasn't there. I don't remember moving it, it just seems to have been removed for me during some stupid update or something.

Okay, I have the email now. But that was really annoying.

I am painting my kitchen. It seems that I've been painting my kitchen for a couple of months now. Maybe not really that long, but I started a while back, and then I was gone for weeks, and now I'm back, and I'm still not finished painting the damned kitchen.

I could paint half of the house in a day, if the house were empty. But the house isn't empty. I've never before tried to paint with all of the stuff still here. Well, maybe that isn't true, but that was a very long time ago. And I've certainly never before tried to paint such a small kitchen with all of the appliances still in place.

I shouldn't be so obsessed with painting the kitchen, especially now. But I had been thinking that I should paint. Not a different color or anything, just it is time to paint over all those little marks that do not clean off, and in order to do that I need to paint everything so that I know everything is the same color white, and I need to know exactly what color white that is. And I was thinking that I should get started on it, since I'd already go to the trouble of moving a few things for the guys to repair the wall. And then once I got started I thought that I should not halfway do things, that if I'm going to do this I should really do this, and so I am moving everything and painting behind stuff and cleaning under stuff and cleaning over stuff.

Before I left, I had done some of the work. In the day and a half I was home between trips I did enough work so that I could put the stove back where it was supposed to be. Yesterday, I moved the refrigerator and cleaned under that and painted behind it and moved it back where it was. That is what is taking so long, that I have to move one thing at a time, clean, put tape on the floor and around cabinets and electrical stuff, paint, wait about four hours, paint again, wait a couple more hours, remove tape, and then move the thing back where it was.

And also I am afraid of being on a ladder when I'm the only one in the house, cause I really don't want to fall and be stuck like that the rest of the day. So any cleaning or painting that involves being on a ladder can only be done before my husband leaves for work or on his day off. So that is annoying and takes even more time.

So I have now painted most of two walls, and that took about five sections. Now I need to paint the wall with the sink and the washing machine. I'm not sure about moving a washing machine. It might be complicated, or I might have to unhook something. And I really shouldn't bother with it, except that a.) I will know I didn't do a proper job even if no one else notices, and b.) I really need to clean behind it. There's a smell in the kitchen, and that is the only place left that I haven't looked. So the area needs to be cleaned even if it doesn't really need to be painted, and I want it painted anyway.

So am I near completing this task? No. Today is the day of the thing that my mother insisted I be here for, even though now it seems that there won't be much for me to do, except that I need to feed mother's dog while she is out doing something. Except that she forgot to have a key made for me, so this might take a while. So I'm not sure that moving the washing machine is a good idea today, as it is right near the door, and it might get moved in such a way that it would prevent me from leaving the house for several hours, and I don't really know yet when I might be needed.

Well, it is less dark outside, so I guess that I will go out and look at the plants.

I wanna go home now

2010-09-18T10:22:00.003-04:00

Okay, so after our week in Oklahoma City, he was scheduled to work one day here, followed by four days in a not so interesting place two hours away. But I got excited and planned that we should leave day earlier and have a whole day off here before he had to work. I cancelled that extra day after I learned that he was also scheduled to work the next week here, and I figured that we would have a day or two off (and possibly more) here without having to pay for it, so why add an extra day that we did have to pay for.

It turns out that we only had that Sunday off (and we had to spend two hours of that day off driving here before we could do anything fun) and that he had to work Monday, which is usually a day off for him. And then we had a flat tire, which cost us another two hours off our fun time.

So when I heard that the schedule had been changed and he might work in another place about two hours from here, and that we might have another day or two off here, at first I was happy about it. But that would have meant that I was going to miss the thing that my mother wanted me home for, after I had already told her the schedule and that we would be home in time for that.

And really, it has been two weeks since I've been home, plus I was only home for a day and a half after spending a week in Oklahoma, and so I've been away from home for almost three weeks. So that's almost three weeks of not doing any work (other than making two and a half scarves), and three weeks of not eating spaghetti and yogurt and other such things that I am used to eating, and I missed doing the stuff I usually do with my friends this weekend, etc....

Two more days off here would have been great, but I guess that it's time to go home anyway.

So, I was not too disappointed when the schedule changes were made that did not include any time out of town next week.

It will be good to be home. It will be good to sleep in my own bed with my own pillows, and take baths in my own bathtub, and eat spaghetti and yogurt and such.

I am not sure what (if anything) we will do after work today, but we will head home tomorrow.

See you in the world.

2010-09-14T15:43:00.003-04:00

Wednesday through Saturday was spent in the middle of nowhere. Not as middle of nowhere as some places I have been, but not anyplace particularly wonderful, and not a tourist destination. There were two things there that I would want to do, and one of them was only open to visitors after lunch on certain days, so we were not able to do that at all due to scheduling problems. The other thing we did Thursday morning. The rest of our time off was either spent eating (mostly Mexican food) or doing nothing.

The motel mostly sucked (though I have been in much worse), but we knew what we would probably be getting, just that in our budget there weren't any other options (or the other options looked worse). But at least I had Syfy on cable, and other things on cable. (Now that I am in the nice motel, there is no Syfy, and most of the rest of the cable sucks).

At some point I tried to get some help from my cell phone company. I wanted the most basic of information, and they wouldn't give it to me. I wanted to know which chargers work with which phones. I had my phone, but I'd left my charger at home. I could use a different charger from the same company, but I just wanted to make sure they were compatible, cause I had been warned earlier that using the wrong charger would damage the phone (and also I had prior experience damaging a tape recorder by leaving it charging for more than a week).

So there should be lists somewhere of all the chargers that go with which phones, and which phones that can use what chargers, and there should be a master list of all the phones and all the chargers and which ones work together. But they refused to send me the list, because I could not give them some number off of my phone, which I could not read because my phone had no power.

My phone had no power. That was the whole reason for asking about the chargers.

There were suggestions of which buttons to push on the phone to get the number, or that I should call and talk to a real person, etc.... It took many exchanges before they seemed to understand the words NO POWER. Eventually, they called my home, but I'm pretty sure that in my first message I told them that I was out of town, and that was why I couldn't use my own charger.

Eventually a friend talked me through the process of Googling enough things that I found the information without their help. The charger I had worked with eight phones, and after Googling some images of phones I found that mine was one of the eight. At least, I hoped that was right, as Googling images is not always the best way of finding the name of something.

Three hours after I charged my phone, I got yet another email from them, that they were still trying to help me. Except that they still didn't send me the list, so they weren't trying very hard. I wrote back that someone else had already done their job for them, and that I would file a complaint when I got home.

They still didn't get it. They finally answered my first question, that not all chargers work with all phones, and that I might be able to get some of the numbers that they need to help me by removing the phone's battery....

I guess they missed the whole part that I didn't need their help anymore because someone else did their job for them. I haven't emailed them back. And they still didn't send me a list. This is just the most basic thing to know when you have a cell phone, and the company is telling me that they can't send me a list of all the phones that work with all the chargers because I didn't give them the number of my phone. They don't need my number to send me a master list, they're just lazy or something.

It's hard to believe that anyone is this stupid.

I'm really mad. I'm thinking about making a lot of trouble for them. I'm even wondering if I should find a really annoying lawyer.

It's sad, because right before this happened, I was thinking that I should start using this phone more. I originally got it as an emergency phone, but there really aren't a lot of emergencies, and over time I collected over a thousand minutes that I wasn't using. And my phone at home doesn't get much use either, mainly bill collectors leave messages. By the time anyone that I know wants to leave me a message, the machine is full. If not for the possibility that I might need to call 911, I probably could just get rid of it.

So now I don't know what to do. I was going to spend about a hundred and fifty dollars on new minutes for next year, but since they were less than helpful, maybe this isn't even the best for an emergency phone.

And we did have an emergency of a sort, though I ended up not needing the phone. We had a flat tire Sunday morning, but my husband managed to change it himself, even though we were on the freeway at the time and had to pull over onto the grass and work with other cars speeding past us.

If we had been stuck there with the flat tire and no phone, I'd definitely be getting a lawyer.

So we lost about two hours of our only full day off while we waited at the tire place. But now we are all worn out from our one day off and our attempts at squeezing in tourist stuff before lunch. Unfortunately, we will not have Sunday or Monday here like I thought. We have to drive back Sunday, and while my husband usually has Monday off, this time he has to work in Oklahoma again. So there will be this rush to get me home before he has to head out again.

Anyway, this morning was nice. A bit rushed, but nice.

Is it September 11th already?

2010-09-11T12:10:00.002-04:00

From the TV you would think that it was the 10th anniversary, but I counted on my fingers and it's the 9th.

I have already blogged about my 9-11 experience, so I don't think that I'll do that again.

In case you were wondering where I was last week, we went to Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City is not that far away, and over the years we have been there many times. But I was watching the series Saving Grace, and I realized that I'd never been to the memorial, where the Murrah Federal Building had been. My husband had been outside it, but never to the museum inside, and I had never been there at all.

My husband was scheduled to work in Oklahoma City for a couple of weeks, and then another week, and then another. But during this time I had to be home because of the termites or because of the kitchen wall being fixed, or maybe just that I didn't want to leave the plants that long without water. I said that if he went back again I wanted to go, and I wanted to go to the museum.

I got to do a few other things. We went to a couple of restaurants that we like, and it was nice to have access to a pool for a while, and we had other things that we would have liked to do if we had stayed a day later (which we didn't do when we found out about this trip), but the main thing I had planned was going to the memorial.

There's a room with pictures of all the victims. And there's a space for the family to put an item that might tell you something about the person in the picture. A golf ball, a baseball, another picture, a poem, a figurine, a Christmas ornament, a service pin, etc.... Two of the victims were Trekkies, cause they had little Starfleet ships next to their pictures. A few pictures had really odd things, like one girl had a credit card, and another girl had hairspray. And a few pictures didn't have anything with them, but most of those were adults, and I thought maybe they just didn't have family, or that they were not close with their family anymore, and so there was either no one to pick what should go with the picture, or no one knew what should go there.

But one lone picture was of a baby. Surely the baby had a family. Surely someone cared about the baby. How else did the baby get to the daycare (or elsewhere in the building) if he didn't have someone? But no one left a teddy bear, or a figurine, or a poem, just the picture.

There's a calender with the birthdays of all the victims. There were 168 victims, so that takes up about half of the dates.

There were many newspaper articles, some about people suspected of being responsible. I knew when it happened that it wasn't them, that it was one of us. I didn't get the whole Waco connection, I just thought it was someone who didn't like paying taxes. I was really surprised when 9-11 turned out to be foreigners, but as my husband pointed out, our nut jobs mainly like to kill other people, but their nut jobs will also commit to killing themselves.

The outside is pretty, sort of like the reflecting pool in Washington DC. And there are things that look like chairs, one for each victim, each with a name. And then there's a big tree that survived the bomb.

You could spend all day in there reading stuff and watching videos, but my husband had to work, and we only paid for two hours of parking.

Enough of that. I'm going back to knitting and watching cable TV.

The trip of things not working

2010-09-10T14:43:00.004-04:00

I have just started my second scarf. I've asked for help from my friends to find out if people I plan to give the scarves to actually want the scarves, but so far they haven't responded. Most of them were having too much fun in Atlanta to bother with checking their email and such. I guess I'll send another email out before I start the third scarf, and having an extra scarf won't kill me.

So at the motel before this one we changed rooms because we were supposed to get a whirlpool tub, but the jets didn't work. They gave us an upgrade, and we ended up in a room made for handicapped guests, so we had the extra large whirlpool tub for two. So that was nice. But the water wasn't very hot, and the cable sucked, and the frig didn't really work. It never got really cold, and it had old frig smell. Not really sure how to do describe it, sort of chemical, sort of just bad, and it just comes from refrigerators that are either old or haven't been used in a while. And everything in it picked up this smell, so I had to throw out anything that we put in there. But we were lucky that we hadn't done any major grocery shopping, and that we only had to throw out a few things that we brought from home and a couple of half empty sodas.

So, in spite of having a really helpful front desk girl and an owner who did try to make up for the inconvenience, we will probably not go back to that motel when we head back to that area Sunday.

The place we are staying at now isn't that great, and we knew that going in, but this was the only place here that we found in our budget on Priceline.com. And I thought that would be better than just roaming around town asking for a room under fifty dollars. At least this place has better cable, and there is plenty of hot water.

Sometimes the Internet here is weird. Sometimes it is just slow or something doesn't load images or whatever. It is annoying. And this is the new computer, so I know that it is them and not me.

The remote control didn't work the first day.

Okay, as it turns out, I was using the wrong remote. But I don't know why there are two remotes here, as the one doesn't seem to do anything other than turn the TV on and off. Using the other remote now, so that is better.

Again, I am having trouble with the frig, though it doesn't have the nasty smell of the other one. First, they just forgot that we were supposed to have a frig and microwave, so they had to move one in. And then the frig just never seems to get very cold. Found out that the plug was loose, and I switched outlets with the microwave, so that is better, except that no I have to hold the microwave plug to the wall when I use the microwave or it will slip out and not work. So the frig has power all the time now, but it still doesn't seem to be as cold as it should be. Again, since I was suspicious we did not fill the frig full of groceries. And we will be leaving here Sunday, and I hope that at our last stop we'll get a good room with a properly working frig and such.

Sometimes I think that I am tired and ready to go home already, even though we really haven't done anything yet. I guess it just seems like a long trip already, because I was gone the week before and only home for a day and a half before we left again.

But I am ready to leave here, because there were only two things that I really wanted to do here, and we've already done the one, and we can't do the other because of the schedule. My husband has to be at work at the only time the other place allows visitors, so that just isn't going to happen.

Time to go and be a tourist, at least for a day.

My mother isn't happy with me

2010-09-09T14:44:00.002-04:00

Big surprise. But it's just the reason for her being unhappy.

Okay, she's been telling me that something is going to happen in October. She told me months ago that something is going to happen in October. She repeats this several times. Okay, got it, something is happening in October. The something isn't happening to me, and it isn't happening to her, it's happening to someone else in the family. It doesn't really have anything to do with me, it is going to happen regardless of what is going on with me at the time, I don't need to be there, etc....

Okay, so now apparently, the thing is not going to happen in October, it is going to happen later this month, and I'm going on a trip, and then another trip, and for all I know after that week I'll go on another trip. I have no way of knowing that stuff very far in advance. My husband's schedule gets posted on Wednesdays, so that you know what you are doing that week and the next week, but you don't know what you are doing the week after next until the schedule is posted on Wednesday, and even then there are changes which sometimes happens at the last minute. So I might know where I am headed for the next day, I know where I plan to spend that week. Right now I know where we plan to spend the rest of this week and the next week and we would have to think about coming home probably a week from Sunday. And now it is Thursday, so I've seen the schedule, but at the time I talked to my mother I hadn't seen it yet, and there was a possibility that schedule posted on Wednesday would have meant another week in the same area or a week that is someplace closer to where we are now, and then there would have been no point in going home.

Anyway, I'm planning to be gone for about two weeks. That is the plan. Plans change. I have no way of knowing.

Before I left and I talked to my mother (and she was already not very happy with me), the plan was that I would only be gone this time for one week. See? Plans change. The plan at the time was to leave on Sunday and come back a week from either Sunday or Monday. But now he's working on that Monday, and we'll be doing tourist stuff on that Sunday, cause there just isn't any reason to come home for half a day and then turn around and head back the same way.

So I'm telling her the plans (at least, the plans as I know them at the time), and she's asking aren't I going to be home for the thing? And I'm like, I don't know, and anyway, the thing is in October. No, it is in September. Well, I don't know, maybe. Why? Cause we might need you to help out. Other people aren't going to be here.

Okay.

Well, I can't help that other people aren't going to be here. Last time anything like this was going on, I offered to help, though I couldn't really think of anything I could do. And there wasn't anything for me to do, and everyone was like thanks anyway. So I hadn't really thought about offering to help this time, cause I know from last time there really isn't anything for me to do except hang around and say, I'm here if you need me. But it was obvious that I was just in the way, and when I wasn't given something to do, I left.

So now my mother is upset with me cause I'm not promising to come home to hang around and say that I'm here if someone needs me. Someone does not really need me, just my mother wants someone to be here just in case, and other people have travel plans and aren't going to be here.

The other people who have travel plans are people with money who can travel any time that they want to. They picked now. I don't know why they picked now, but they did. I don't get to pick my travel time. Travel is offered, and it is rarely any place that I want to go, and I either go when it is offered or I don't. I can't turn it down and then expect it to be offered again at a more convenient time.

Not that later would be a convenient time for me. October is too late for some of the stuff that I want to do, and besides that I am usually a very busy person in October.

Oh, speaking of being busy in October, everyone seems to think that I'm co-hosting a children's Halloween party. I'm not, but that was announced. I just said that I was donating some stuff to the party, which I did, and I thought that was the end of it. I can't even say for sure that I'd be in town during the week of the children's party. At this point I'm not even that sure about helping out with the adult party, and I can't even say that I'm that excited about going to the adult party, which is something I look forward to all year. I'm just not having any good ideas this year, and it's all starting to seem boring on the one hand (if I don't do much) or a lot of work (if I end up doing a lot in spite of not having any good ideas or maybe having a good idea at the last minute). In fact, if there was really something interesting offered to me, I might go out of town instead of the party, which is something I would never do. But my husband was briefly talking about Orlando, but that wouldn't have been work travel and we would have had to pay for that all ourselves. But work travel is different (it doesn't cost near as much), and if something really interesting were offered right now I think that I'd do that instead.

Back to my mother's problem. I am supposed to give up my travel plans to hang around just in case someone needs me, even though I know from the last time that no one will need me and if someone did need something it would probably be something that I can't do and so they would still not need me, and the main reason for my giving up my travel plans is that someone else has made other travel plans and won't be here.

I don't think so.

So I'm sure that everyone thinks I'm a heartless bitch or something. But I don't see that I should give up something that I want to do just to be here for moral support. It is unlikely that I would actually be doing anything useful. And the person that might be needing the help didn't ask for help, just my mother is upset that I'm not going to be around to offer help. And the other person with travel plans apparently is not a heartless bitch for making travel plans and spending a lot of money to go out of town even when she knew that she had made the plans during this time that was not convenient, but apparently no one expects her to change her plans, maybe because she spent all this money.

I don't get it.

Now I can feel guilty some more

2010-09-07T12:45:00.003-04:00

Okay, so we were home, and now we are not. The original plan was to go home and get some sleep and immediately head out again, so that we would have a day to be a tourist before the work week started on Tuesday. Except this trip is now two weeks, so we will have at least Sunday to be tourists, and maybe the Sunday and Monday the following week, so we didn't need this Sunday too. Besides, this Sunday's motel room wouldn't have been paid for, and I thought a day at home would be better.

And I imagined doing all this work and cleaning and such. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but I'm trying to paint the kitchen. I wouldn't have started this particular project now, except that since I've already pushed the cabinet out of the kitchen and moved the stove away from the wall, I thought that it would be better to get that area painted before I had to put everything back the way it was. Still everything else is still there, so I'm having to paint this tiny kitchen in four sections. Section one I painted half of a wall under a cabinet where the stove normally is and most of the wall next to it. That went well enough. Section two involved painting an even smaller area, up near the ceiling, and mostly above a couple of cabinets. And that involved standing on a ladder, and though it was a small ladder I decided to put that off until someone else was in the house with me, just in case there was an accident.

So I did section two on Sunday, when we were both home. Only before I started painting I had to take everything down from on top of the cabinets, and found that to be a bit of a mess. I'd never been up there to look before, but in addition to the dust and such that I expected I also found bits of wood and nails and other things that I'm not sure what they were, but that must have been left there by the maintenance guys before we moved in. I don't even know why this stuff was there, much less why it was left there. I don't think much of some of the maintenance guys, but at least they usually clean up after themselves.

I didn't have the energy for that sort of thing, but I did eventually get most of it cleaned. Ten minutes of cleaning, and then ten minutes of rest. I really didn't care to be standing on that ladder for long.

So that ended up being most of what got done that day, cleaning above the cabinets, painting above the cabinets, waiting four hours for the paint to dry, and then painting the second coat. Other than that I finished the laundry that I didn't get done with the day before, and I went out to lunch and cooked dinner. And that was about it. Oh, we cut the grass, and that was about it.

So I still hadn't cleaned the bathroom, or finished packing, or a couple of other things. So after watering the plants I still had to do all of that. And then my husband had a few errands to run, so we didn't leave as early as I had imagined, and it was about four in the afternoon before we got here. Not much time to do anything. But it was raining off and on, so I guess we wouldn't have done much of anything anyway.

Anyway, while I imagined leaving a cleaner house this time, it looks about the same as it did before, except that it has been painted just a little bit more, the bathroom has been cleaned up a bit, and the stove has been pushed back into it's usual place. The rest of the junk is still where it was.

I meant to take a few more things with me. Like, I miss my pillow. Taking your whole bed with you when you travel is impractical, but taking a pillow is easy, and if that isn't enough you can even bring your own sheets. So I missed my pillow all week and meant to bring it with me this time, but somehow I left the house without it, and the extra clothes I meant to pack, and a few other things. Mostly I have the same things that I had last week, except that I've washed them.

And I meant to put something on the bed before I left, just to get it off of the floor, just in case my house floods while I'm away. Flooding in general is horrible, but as far as missing individual things I don't think that there's much I would miss, except for this one thing, and I forgot and left it on the floor, the worst possible place for it.

So of course it is raining here, which means that it will probably rain at home later, which is normally a good thing, but now I'm a bit worried about flooding.

We have to change motels Wednesday, but we were looking forward to staying here for a bit. It has an indoor pool, and we managed to get a whirlpool tub at no extra cost. Except that once we got all of our stuff into the room and planned to take a bath, the jets didn't work. So, to be nice, they said that they would move us into another room.

You wouldn't think that you could make such a mess in only a few hours. Our stuff was all over the room and we had stuff in the fridge, but I really wanted that hottub, so we moved.

The new room is designed for handicapped people. I didn't know that hottubs were part of the handicapped rooms, but there's one here. In fact, there's a real big hottub here. I've never had a private tub big enough for two. I like it. Still, I shouldn't be in a room meant for a handicapped person. But there are more of those rooms here, so I guess that it is okay to use the one, unless a convention comes to town before we check out tomorrow.

Wednesday I will get another room that isn't as nice in a town that isn't as interesting. But Thursday or Friday there will be ice cream, possibly lots of ice cream.

I am at home

2010-09-05T07:11:00.003-04:00

But not for long. Mostly, we have come home to pack and plan for our next trip.

I have just had the strangest dream. I had given up and moved back in with my mom. For a time, my sister had also spent some time at my mom's, but that was very temporary. So temporary that I'm not sure we were ever there at the same time in the dream, just that I was aware that she had been there.

And then there was someone at the door, some government agency there on official business, and people came in and started going through all of our stuff. (I've spent a week watching cable, where there is not only a show about hoarders, but also a few shows about animal hoarders, which I did not even know was a term now, or that it ever applied to anyone other than old ladies with cats.) In real life, my mother does not have a lot of stuff to go through, so I guess in the dream I had brought over a lot of my stuff, or maybe my mom was trying to empty the attic or something. But still, even in this dream, there was not as much stuff at my mom's house as there is at my house, and what stuff there was wasn't particularly bad stuff or trash or nasty smelling stuff. Not like the hoarders show or anything like that. But these people are just going through the stuff and saying how bad it is, and I'm like whatever and why is it any of your business. And then they do find something unpleasant, like a few plastic bags that have bad stuff in them. Like the stuff got wet and then started going moldy or something. And that is bad, but for me it was worrying how the stuff got wet and moldy to start with, like did my mom have a leak in the roof or some other problem with the house that we were not aware of. But the people didn't care about that, they just found something on their list of reasons to throw people out on the street.

And my mom just sort of nods, and she isn't happy but just doesn't seem to want to fight about it, and I'll have to find some other place to stay. I'm the one who seems to be angry, that people can't just come in and do stuff like that. And then it turns out that these people have something to do with child welfare, and they are quite used to doing stuff like that.

Except that I'm not a child, and my mother is not a child, and even my youngest sibling is not a child. And we were not children in this dream either. In real life, the only child is the one grandchild, who did not seem to be in the dream, and in real life has never spent the night at my mom's place. So it did not make sense that these people were going through our stuff with the intention of protecting some children. And at that point I start laughing at them, saying that they are probably at the wrong house, and that they have no business being here at all. But they don't listen and keep going through the stuff and taking pictures of the moldy stuff in the bags.

Well, that is what I get for spending a week watching cable TV.

Last day here

2010-09-03T08:53:00.004-04:00

I won't say where here is, or at least, I won't say til I get home. There are weirdos out there. I could run into some jerk at the pool, and he'd tell me he'd just read my blog. So I never say where I am at, only where I've been or where I hope to go later.

So we are here, and this is our last day here, and we have no big plans. Of all the stuff that we said we might do (other than go to restaurants) we have only done the one thing. I didn't feel well that first day, and that was probably the only morning that it would have been good to swim, so we haven't done much of that either. (I have been in the pool three times, but he has only been once, and it was cooler than I would have liked then. It tends to warm up later in the day, after he goes to work, which either leaves me in the pool by myself or with possibly weird guys.) There will be no swimming today, as it will only get to a high of 84, and not even that high before lunch.

The original plan involved going to another museum and/or the zoo. But the original plan also involved us staying an extra day to do that, which we have decided not to do now, because we will soon be spending at least two weeks in an area that we like even better, and I need to spend at least the one day at home before we leave for the next trip.

Anyway, I think that we might be able to squeeze in some of a museum today, but neither one of us felt up to the idea when we discussed it yesterday, so we will probably just stay here until lunch.

So that makes the big plan for today...lunch.

Anyway, I did manage to get the right yarn, after going to three stores to find it. So I plan to knit a scarf (hopefully two or three scarves) over the next few weeks, and they will be Christmas presents later. And this gives me something to do while I sit here watching cable, and makes me less upset that I am not spending more time in the pool. I got a fifth of one done yesterday, which takes about six hours.

And I have a computer to play with, which I haven't had much on many of my earlier trips.

Now I feel guilty

2010-09-01T09:09:00.002-04:00

Okay, so I had a week with mostly valid reasons for being lazy, followed by another week of mostly being lazy with no real excuse for it. Saturday I cut the grass and did the laundry and washed dishes. I even started painting the kitchen.

But the rest of the house was a mess. I debated about going on this trip. It wasn't anything really special, just that my husband was saying how if I went with him we would go to this restaurant or go do this and that, but without me he didn't much bother with such things. So I could have stayed home another week. We have bigger plans for next week's trip, but this week was no big deal.

But I really wanted to get out of the house, and sometimes there are last minute changes to the schedule. Sometimes he doesn't go where was planned, sometimes a job is cancelled and he works near home instead, or sometimes he just doesn't have any work. And if that had happened, I'd have been kicking myself that I gave up my last chance to get out of town for the summer.

But that isn't what happened.

The only thing that I cleaned Saturday was the kitchen, and then that got messy again with the painting. The rest of the house was still a mess, and then it was an even bigger mess once I actually started packing, as it had been a while and I tossed things around while looking for missing items I wanted to take with me.

But I was thinking that I would clean that up later, not the next week, but the week after, when I got home from the second trip.

Well now the second trip has been extended to two weeks. And of course, I have no idea what is planned after that. For all I know there will be a third week, or another trip to someplace even more interesting.

It is my fault entirely for being lazy last week. Not that I would have had a spotless house, but I could have cleaned the bathroom before I left, or gotten an earlier start on the painting and cleaned up afterward, or straightened the backroom a bit more, or a number of other things. But no, I didn't start the painting earlier, cause I didn't want to make yet a third trip to the store to return the paint, unless it was on a day that I was going to be right near there anyway, which didn't happen until Friday, so I didn't paint anything until Saturday.

Not that any of this guilt makes me reconsider next week's trip. I haven't been to that place in like four years. I'm really looking forward to it. Just not so looking forward to being away from home so much all at once.

I guess this will be yet another year when I don't fully decorate for Halloween because I'm too busy to get out the rest of the decorations.

Here I am in

2010-08-30T16:34:00.003-04:00

a motel. I'm not telling where.

Anyway, I gave up thinking about traveling to the ideal place and just got in the car and went to the place that was available for free. Sort of free. Nothing is really free, but hanging out on a trip that my husband has to go on anyway is a lot cheaper than taking a trip on our own. Most of the gas is paid for, the room is paid for, etc....

What is not paid for is the food and any tourist stuff we might do. And, of course, we would have to eat something anyway, even if we weren't out of town, so eating shouldn't be that much of an expense.

Except that we aren't eating the cheapest food. We spent two or three times as much on yesterday's lunch than I thought we would. And then for dinner we went out again. And we spent an extra eight dollars to get weird sodas. Okay, one of the sodas will be a gift for someone when we get back home, but the other three were just us being tourists.

I am sleepy. To be expected I suppose, but it's been a while since this was part of my regular routine, and I forget what to do if I don't want to spend the week being sick and tired.

Today we went to lunch at a Chinese buffet, which we should not have done, as we plan to go to a special buffet later in the week. We didn't need two buffets in the same week, it was just the only thing that I could think of to feel better.

And of course after the buffet, there is sleeping, or at least really wanting to sleep.

Trying not to sleep, or I won't sleep enough tonight.

Anyway, I have a pool, which is outdoor and not that great, but at least there is a pool and I'm going to get in it for a bit after a feel better.

Tomorrow I will pay for being lazy

2010-08-27T10:32:00.003-04:00

I didn't start out intending to be lazy. I had planned to work. I had imagined getting a lot of work done. The week before I had done a lot of work and put things aside to give away to people, and I had imagined two more weeks that would be about the same, though I was coming to the point where I'm running out of things that I really want to get rid of and still having too much stuff.

Okay, so I had imagined having two weeks to myself (later the trip was extended to three weeks), and I usually get more work done when I have the place to myself, and I pictured a lot of the stuff either being more organized or just somehow magically going away.

And then the maintenance guys were supposed to come and fix the wall that first Monday, and I did a lot of work trying to move stuff around so that they would have room to work. And while the stove and the cabinet were moved, I thought that I should scrub the floor, cause floors under appliances and cabinets get really dirty, and unless you feel like doing the work of moving these things on a regular basis to clean you have to take the opportunities when they occur. So I did some work that Sunday evening and a lot of work that Monday morning, and then the guys didn't even show up until Tuesday.

And I did no work that Monday. Having moved everything, including the microwave, I couldn't even cook, so I ended up going out to eat twice. When they did not show by five on Monday I moved things around a bit so that I could get the microwave, which I put on top of the washing machine. I still couldn't cook anything proper, but at least I could reheat things that were already cooked.

Later I would move the microwave and put a fan on the washing machine for the repair guys. The repairs that should have taken about four hours were stretched to four days. I kept moving the fan and the microwave back and forth from the washing machine. On Thursday it was all done, and I have done no work to speak of, other than washing a few dishes and moving the fan and the microwave. I know that I could have found some work to do, but I couldn't cook and I couldn't do laundry, and with the way things were moved around I couldn't do anything about the dining area. I finally just decided to relax and be lazy. I found something to watch on TV and started to enjoy it a bit.

By Thursday I was starting to not feel so good. Friday I was just a little bit sick, so I decided to keep being lazy for a bit. Saturday I had social things to do and decided there was not much point in doing any work Saturday morning that didn't have to be done just right then (like cooking something for the social thing). Being lazy continued.

Sunday, I was recovering from the social thing, cause I stayed out late and didn't get enough sleep. More time being lazy.

Monday, I had no excuse. I just enjoyed being in bed doing nothing.

Tuesday morning I had to watch just a few more DVDs before I got up to run some errands. The errands were near the dollar theater, so I watched a movie.

Wednesday, I bought the wrong thing, and had to go back to the store. While I'm in the area, I might as well watch another movie.

Yesterday I found something else that I needed to take back to the store, but three days in a row of this just seemed a really dumb thing to do. I stayed home. I didn't get a lot of work done, but some. Mainly I just didn't want to drive back to the same place, especially since today I want to watch two more movies that I've been waiting to come to the dollar theater. I can take stuff back to the store then.

So now it is Friday, and I've done very little with the two weeks. My husband has decided to come home for a day, so that he can do laundry and cut the grass, and then I can go back with him on Sunday.

And I haven't done any of my laundry, or packed, or even washed dishes in a bit. And I'm not planning to skip anything that I'd planned to do today (watch movies, go to the store, go to my brother's place, etc...), so that leaves a lot of work for me to do tomorrow.

But it was so nice to stay in bed and watch TV.

Thinking about traveling

2010-08-26T08:08:00.002-04:00

I would like to find a Woodrow Wilson dime, buy a train ticket for something leaving from the third level, and end up in some alternate dimension where I spend some of my time here but live most of the summer in Pennsylvania. Not actually in Pittsburgh, but near there, so that I can visit Kennywood and Idlewild whenever I feel like going.

I don't know how this would have come about, with me spending summers in Pennsylvania. I can see other paths that I might have taken and ended up with a certain career or married to someone else, but I can't quite picture the path that leads to me being a snow bird. Other than a winning lottery ticket, I see no way of it happening now either.

Maybe there was a winning lottery ticket in the alternate dimension, I don't know.

Anyway, I do tend to spend a lot of time wishing I could get away somewhere. And because of my husband's job, there are often little opportunities to go someplace, just usually not anyplace that great, and even then I usually end up not going because of something going on here. And then of course in the summer I have to stay home and water the plants anyway.

And so I have wasted a lot of time here when I could have been someplace else, though not anyplace as far away as Pennsylvania. And I would not have done anything grand, not visited Kennywood or anything like that anyway. Mostly I would have stayed in a motel room watching cable and maybe knitting. So far the only things I have missed out on were swimming pools (and sometimes a hot tub), having lunch at a famous restaurant, visiting the Cadillac ranch, and a few odd small town museums. And I've had to miss those things, because I wanted to do something else here, or I wanted to watch while the termites were taken care of, or make sure that repairs were done, or I had some work to do.

I always have some work to do, it just doesn't always get done.

So my husband is going someplace for the third time in two months, and I haven't gone, because of this stuff and because I have to water the plants. Only now I've about given up on most of the plants, they either aren't doing what they are supposed to do, or they have been doing what they are supposed to do and are about to die now. The main things not done or dying are the pepper plants, and the luffa, and the sweet potatoes. All of those things are in containers. The sweet potatoes and the luffa are in very large containers, but the peppers could be moved, and I'm wondering if I moved the pepper plants to the fence if my neighbor might water them for me.

There's even the possibility that the other plants might be okay on their own next week, cause it is supposed to rain some of the time, though not as much as I would like.

So I could go out of town next week, though it is not to anyplace special, it would just be nice to get out of the house.

And then the week after that I would really like to go away. There's one place I've never been, to take a silly tour, and another place that I used to go to often but now I haven't been there in four or five years. Or at least, I can't remember being there for a while.

Unfortunately, the time we would get to go there would be a holiday weekend, and we try to avoid such places on holiday weekends. But right now we are thinking that we will go anyway, even with the crowds and the extra expenses. Cause that isn't very far away, but it is not in my husband's usual area, and they probably won't assign him to work there again soon. And it is very near a beach, and I haven't been to a beach in a long time.

So that is it. Nothing really interesting, just the possibility of going away for a bit. And I am thinking that I will go.

Monday Morons--What kind of paint is this?

2010-08-23T20:44:00.004-04:00

Okay, if you've been reading, the kitchen wall that was half removed years ago to deal with a plumbing problem and never replaced was reported again about a month ago, was supposed to be repaired last Monday, no one came until Tuesday, a four hour break was taken to go do repairs at someone else's house, repairs at my place were not finished Tuesday and not resumed until after three on Wednesday, and then it still wasn't painted and so someone came to do that on Thursday.

Okay, so the paint he used was white. I think the can said pure white. But I'm pretty sure that the old paint was not pure white. It doesn't exactly match.

Besides the old paint not exactly matching the new paint, I have been here a while, and there are places that need touch-up paint. Or maybe it is just time to paint again.

Where I live, when you leave you have to paint the place either white or off-white, so that the place is all nice and new looking for the new person. If the new person doesn't like white, they can paint it again, as long as when they leave they paint it white again. If you use expensive paint, it probably doesn't matter what color you paint over, but usually it is easier to paint white over white than white over a darker color.

Anyway, I'm guessing that the people in the small apartments probably aren't planning to stay long, and they probably keep the white. The people in the houses stay longer, or at least probably plan to stay longer, and I'm guessing that more of them paint over the white with different colors or add wallpaper and such.

I just kept the white both times. I like white.

Okay, but trying to match a white or off-white paint is hard to do, unless maybe someone was nice and left you a bit of the paint in the can, or left you a note saying which white paint you used. If I remember correctly, I left almost a gallon of some sort of off-white paint for the apartment's new renters. It wasn't going to do me any good anyway, since the paint I used in the apartment was a few shades darker than what was used in the new place.

No one left me any paint at the new place, or the name of the paint, or anything. But I didn't think that getting the name of the paint would be a problem, since this place was not painted by the person leaving, but by the maintenance guys. I just thought that whenever I needed to know, I'd just ask the guys what paint they used when they had to paint a place themselves.

Well, I don't seem to have made myself understood. I don't think that the old paint was pure white, and the guy won't tell me the name of the old paint.

I've thought of four possible reasons that I am not being told specifically what kind of paint was used on my house six years ago.

Possibility #1--They are deliberately being annoying.

Possibility #2--I suppose that they might have used a different color back then, and then there was some financial gain for switching to a different color or a different brand, and they just don't remember the name of the paint they used before. I don't think this is really what happened, just wanted to show that I was smart enough to figure out that it might have happened. And even if there were some financial reason for switching paints, you would think that they'd still have records of what the old paint was and when they switched paints and such.

Possibility #3--They had to switch paints because the old paint either isn't made anymore, or isn't sold at the local store. Again, they should have records of this and should be able to tell me about it.

Possibility #4--They are just stupid. They use different color paints whenever they have to paint something. The paint is selected on a whim. They have a little bit of paint left over from several projects, and it goes to waste, because the next time they need paint they buy yet a different color.

I am thinking that if it isn't just the first explanation then it is the fourth one, cause the other two make sense, and they should have no trouble telling someone an explanation if it made sense like that. They are annoying and/or just stupid.

Okay, so now that I've had that problem with the paint from the people who supposedly work for me, I have more fun at Home Depot.

I'm thinking that the guys just went to Home Depot and bought whatever paint was cheapest. I seem to recall doing that myself (though I might have gone to Lowe's instead). If you just want white or off-white, and you aren't trying to match something, there are a few that don't cost too much that come in 5 gallon buckets. So probably, if I find the cheapest 5 gallon bucket, the lightest color that isn't pure white is probably the one that they used.

So I see at the end there's 5 gallon buckets for about fifty dollars, and they say something like professional grade. And I think that one of those would be it, if they were the same kind of paint sold six years ago. But I can't find any paint chips or a color chart or anything for them. I see that they come in at least three colors--white, aspen white, and antique white.

Aspen white sounds nice, but I don't want to buy any without at least a paint chip (and I would prefer an actual sample of paint to take home and try before buying five gallons of the stuff). I ask someone for help, but they don't have either samples or paint chips or a color chart or anything. And I can't get help from anyone else who knows anything about the paint. I can complain to this girl's boss, but that doesn't help me with the paint. She keeps saying that the paint is mostly used by professionals, so that they don't have samples and paint chips.

I don't see how being professional equals not needing to know what color paint is in the bucket.

Are the professionals psychic or something? Is there some secret handshake you have to know before being shown what color paint is in the container?

Another girl comes and wants to color match the paint for me. The first girl had wanted to do that too, but I didn't want to. Having the color matched doesn't tell me what color is in the 5 gallon container. It is a different kind of paint from a different company that can be color matched. But somehow I'm talking to this second girl, and she's doing the color match thing and telling me it will be eight dollars for a quart. I'm agreeing to it (I don't know why), but then she says the paint is ten dollars a quart, not eight.

Okay, I went thinking that I was going to spend two dollars on a paint sample for something that I could later buy in a gallon can and a five gallon bucket. Then it goes up to eight dollars for a quart, and then it turns out that the paint is ten dollars for a quart. And that still doesn't tell me what color paint is in the 5 gallon bucket for fifty dollars, so if I use a lot of the color matched paint instead of whatever is in the 5 gallon bucket, I will be spending thirty dollars a gallon. That's about three times what I had planned to spend.

At that point I leave and decide to go to Lowe's the next day.

I find some paint in five gallon buckets for sixty dollars, and there is at least a color chart for that. There are no samples, but by now I'm ready to give up and start with a new color paint if necessary to avoid spending thirty dollars a gallon on color matching.

I end up spending fourteen dollars on a gallon of plain white paint. Maybe it will match, and maybe it won't. If it doesn't, well, it's probably time to repaint anyway, and I will repaint it something that doesn't need color matching. I'm testing a bit of it right now. In an hour it will either dry too light or a shade darker and be exactly what I want, but I think I'm okay with it either way. I'm ready to just start painting and be done with it.

Repairs still aren't done

2010-08-19T11:32:00.004-04:00

Okay, they were supposed to come and fix the wall on Monday. They didn't come at all on Monday. Tuesday, they came before nine, so I had to send them away for a bit. They came back at about ten, did some work, said they were going to get some supplies, didn't come back for a bit so I assumed that they were on lunch break.

After being gone about four hours, I called and complained. They'd been sent to fix another problem somewhere else, without finishing at my house.

That's what caused the problem in the first place, but here they're doing it again.

They came back a bit after four, but having less than an hour to work, they didn't finish.

Wednesday, they didn't show up until after three. It doesn't look too bad, considering what crap they were given to work with. The new paneling doesn't match up with the old, but half of that will be hidden once the stove is put back in place, and I'm planning to do something with the rest of the wall, either magnets or hooks or something, so that I can store cookie sheets there.

But even if I don't do anything, and just have mismatched panelling, it is nice to have a solid wall again.

Now it is Thursday, and the wall still needs to be painted. And they don't know when or if they might get to that today or tomorrow.

You just would not believe the junk they used to fix this wall. And there's no order to it at all. No real plan. The studs are not evenly spaced. It all looks good from the outside, but inside it's all crap.

I could do crap by myself.

Anyway, if they do not come and finish the work today, I will have to put everything back the way it was Friday. I have to bake cookies or something for a social thing Saturday, and I can't do that with the stove out from the wall and my only counter space in another room. They will have to make an appointment for next week and do all the moving and such themselves when they get here to do the painting.

insidious truth

Christmas is cancelled

Two paychecks from being homeless

Are there any real people who work at eBay?

Great Minds Think Alike

Moral dilemmas on eBay

More drama about the trees

Wasting my time for mom

The Wicked Witch is dead

Confusion and Disappointment

More problems, not just the plants

Plant problems

Where is the Tardis? Where are our Klingsons?

Hail

Gardening and other stuff

I might be out of contact for a bit

Note to self

The weather sucks

The end of the world as we know it

What is an All-Con?

Update on the All-Con Situation

Don't go to All-Con this weekend

Stressed out

Note to self

Home now

Summer season begins next week

It's been a nice trip, but...

...and technically Utah

Should I go on a little trip?

And then it was back again

Week five

And then it was gone

More bad weather

School closed for the Superbowl

Yesterday's convention

New plans for today

Week three

Water is being cut off again

Other things going on now

First week

It's called women's work cause men aren't bright enough to do it

No money, no sugar, no fat, etc...

They are right, but they're wrong too

We're going shopping

Christmas is nearly over

I still have stuff to do

Getting close now

Christmas is two weeks away

Happy Thanksgiving

...and they eat us and they take our women...

Monday Morons: Those pants are supposed to cover your butt

The Dallas Cowboys are ruining my life

TAZ still hate pain

Halloween movies

A catch up post

The baby is in the hospital

Out of town again

Taz hate pain

Something interesting happened on the way to the store

My routine is screwed up

I wanna go home now

Is it September 11th already?

The trip of things not working

My mother isn't happy with me

Now I can feel guilty some more

I am at home

Last day here

Now I feel guilty

Here I am in

Tomorrow I will pay for being lazy

Thinking about traveling

Monday Morons--What kind of paint is this?

Repairs still aren't done