Yesterday

It looks like R and/or J stopped by again. Really guys, if you're going to read, stop and say hello or something.

Looks like I also have a new reader in Germany. That one makes no sense.

Yesterday my husband went out of town to middle of nowhere Texas. Only I had some confusion over when was where and which town had what name and so forth. So middle of nowhere that is west of here is next week, not yesterday like I thought. So I might end up going there anyway, I'll have to give that some thought.

So, my husband went someplace just east of here, near one of his siblings, so he would have gone to visit sibling if he had the time. Only it was just the one day schedule, so he probably wouldn't have any time. It probably wouldn't even be enough time to squeeze in lunch together.

And then, after he got and paid for a motel room, he went to work, only to find out there was no work.

This gets a little bit weird.

We used to work for other companies and sometimes the schedule would get screwed up. It rarely got screwed up to the point where we got the day off, and by that time half of the day was gone anyway. But sometimes at other companies, the company doesn't have anything to do with finding the location where my husband's job is actually done. At this company, someone in the company calls a bunch of different groups of people until they find a group that wants to hire them. And then it is up to that group of people to find a place for my husband and his coworkers to work that day. And then someone else in the company calls potential customers and schedules when they come in.

Weird problems sometimes happen. For one thing, the person that the company pays to find the groups who want to hire the company, he gets paid just for finding a group that the company will work for that day. And the people who schedule appointments get paid for just doing that. Neither of them actually care if the company makes money. It doesn't amount to anything on their paychecks. The first guy probably doesn't even care if there are any customers.

On the other hand, my husband and the sales people he works with only get paid a small amount (usually less than minimum wage) for showing up and doing the work, and the rest of their pay is commission. So, if there aren't any customers, or, if the customers don't buy very much, they really don't get paid enough to work that day. Only, they don't have the option of not working that day, if someone has found a place to work, even if it is obvious that no one is going to make any money (other than the guy who made the arrangements in the first place).

So one of these guys (one that my husband had never heard of before) arranged to have some people work east of here last week. Only, after the schedule was made, somehow my husband's boss and the salespeople's boss didn't get the message, and no one from the company was sent to that location. So the customers all showed up at the location, but no one from the company was there, and they all went home mad.

That was odd.

Then, a makeup day was scheduled for Monday, and my husband and some salespeople were sent to the location. Only, the people at the location didn't think that they were doing any business that day. They thought that they were just supposed to meet with someone from the company to discuss when they might reschedule, if they even want to reschedule. So there were some people at the location, just sort of waiting for someone to come and apologize, not actual customers and the usual volunteers and such that are usually at a location.

So last week there were customers and volunteers, but no one from the company to do any work. And yesterday there were three people from the company to do some work, but no customers and no volunteers.

So my husband didn't do any work yesterday. I'm not sure if he'll get paid anything. He's supposed to get some minimum amount even if there are no customers, but I'm not sure what happens when you're actually turned away from the location.

And he'd already paid for the motel room and couldn't get that money back. So he called to ask if he should just come home.

Well, probably not. The room is already paid for, and he's a little closer to where he would work Tuesday, but not by much.

He was, however, real close to the sibling, and now they could have lunch or dinner or whatever.

So I guess that is what happened, but I don't know as I missed his call this morning.

But that was weird. With other companies, we used to have this sort of problem a lot, cause they didn't even call to confirm that we were allowed to use the location for work that day. But I hadn't heard of anything this bad happening with this company. Work gets cancelled or added at the last minute, but I don't remember ever being told that there was a job on a day when there were no customers scheduled at all.

You would think that someone would notice that before.

Well, I said that I wasn't going to do any knitting yesterday, but I did some anyway. Not much, just a little. A lot of the stuff that I was going to do yesterday I couldn't do. I found out that I didn't have the supplies that I thought I had, so I will see about getting some at Walmart today. I didn't want to make a special trip to get anything yesterday. Yesterday was the only day that I could stay home all day, so that is what I did, I stayed home. Today there will be going to the library and going to get pills and possibly going to Walmart and having lunch at Boston Market. Yesterday, I looked for a certain file on the computer, which when I found it I couldn't open it cause Word Perfect had been deleted from the computer.

I wonder who would do that?

After that I just sort of went back to doing nothing. I got out stuff for the weird food, but then it is really to early to do anything but practice, which I think would be better to do on Thursday or even Friday. If I do it now, and it goes well, I'll just have to clean everything and put it away til Friday or Saturday. If I wait til Thursday, I can clean it but just leave everything out where I can use it again the next day. And having just practiced the day before would probably be better anyway. If the practice one doesn't go well, it doesn't matter when it gets done, cause I won't be doing it again. So either way I shouldn't do anything else til at least Thursday.

I don't know. Yesterday was just sort of a rainy depressing day. I should have done something more useful with it, like cleaning the bathtub.

The day did finally end with an episode of Heroes and some amusing emails.

I guess I will go put on my face and charge my phone and such so I can leave.

Last day for videos

Here I am typing on the laptop, which I really don't care for when I have the choice. But, this is where the Internet is connected at the moment, despite the fact that I've made it quite clear how I want things left, with the older computer connected to the Internet and the printer, and the laptop not connected to anything (except when we are uploaded videos or doing business stuff with it). Laptops do not so much function as laptops when there are all these wires and such coming out of them.

So, here I am trying to type on the Mickey Mouse keyboard that is part of the laptop, looking at the little screen that is part of the laptop, etc.... I did ask yesterday about the process of switching the Internet from one computer to the other, and I was told that I neglected to turn something off and on again. So, I tried that this morning, and it didn't seem to do anything. So, I thought that maybe in addition to that I was supposed to also turn the computer itself off and on, but again that did not seem to accomplish anything. So I guess I will have to watch him demonstrate the process, I will need to do that later today, unless I leave the Internet hooked up to the laptop all day, which I do not think that I would care for.

The extended deadline for the video contest is today, and I am debating about doing one last video. I have redone the three others, and posted two of them. I think I will leave the first one alone, just in case those votes do count for something.

The videos are not as fun as they were to begin with, but now I really need the money. So I have to keep trying. And even with that it is probably time to give up and go work at McDonald's. Not that McDonald's is hiring, and I don't speak Spanish so I wouldn't be able to talk to anyone anyway.

I went to Irving yesterday, and while it took longer than I expected and I got a bit of a headache and such for going out so long without lunch, I got most of what I wanted accomplished, except in the Halloween costume department. And with all that is going on, I shouldn't be thinking about Halloween costumes anyway. But I have this dress, and this idea, and this is really the only year that I would want to use this idea, and probably the only year I would want to use this dress. I could just wear it the way that it is and just try to find shoes for it, but I'm thinking at my current weight it would look so much better as a long dress with sleeves. But so far I haven't any luck finding appropriate material to make the alterations.

At this point, I haven't even had any luck finding a bra that will work with it.

But as for the rest of the shopping, it went well enough. Not finding a lot of things that you want also means that you don't spend very much money. So that part was good. He found a couple of books that didn't cost much, and I found a toy knitting machine for two dollars. And I sold two more boxes of books. I can't remember how many that is now, but it must be at least five boxes. Somehow after selling all of those books I still have three boxes that don't fit on the shelves, but I am making a little progress. And I managed to remember to pick up my pills, so I don't think I'll be needing to go back to Irving for a while.

After the late lunch I was still hungry. I seemed to stay hungry for the rest of the day. Then I remembered that this was the last few days that I could buy a three dollar pizza, so we went to get one of those. So (not counting the pills, which I already put aside money for) I gained fifteen more dollars from selling the books than I spent. Today I will go and use the last of my rain checks and buy another ten or twenty pounds of chicken. Then I will be out of money again for a few days.

I think that I will have a very busy day if I try to work on a video in addition to all of the other stuff I have to do. But it is just the one day, so I can probably handle it.

Let there be sound

If you have been reading, you know that my husband was out of town most of last week. And he works evenings, so except for watching House last Monday, he didn't get to watch any of the new TV shows. So I figured that he would catch up on some of the stuff by watching Hulu and such on Sunday. Instead he spent most of the day blogging, and then downloaded Merlin and Being Erica. The only thing he watched on Hulu was Dollhouse.

So I can't talk to him about anything I watched last week. I can't ask him what he thinks of Flashforward if he hasn't seen it.

So yesterday he is in here blogging again, and after he finishes a post I tell him he should at least watch Flashforward in the hour he has left before he goes to work. So he does that, and I watch most of it with him, though I have to leave the room a few times because I was cooking something.

Anyway, he gets annoyed with this computer. He thinks it is too slow and he thinks Hulu is to slow and he'd rather download everything, and I think most of the time he is being too picky about that. He decides that he should at least try to watch the stuff on the new laptop, which is annoying to me, since the laptop has a smaller screen. But I don't complain when he does it just this once, cause I have already seen Flashforward, and I have the cooking to deal with anyway.

So I come back, and he has the laptop hooked up to the Internet, and he watches Flashforward, and I watch most of it, and I go and get our lunch and we eat it in here while we watch Hulu. And then I have to go clean up from lunch, and he wants to know if I want the Internet left on the laptop, or if I want everything put back the way it was.

I want everything put back the way it was.

So I think that everything is put back the way it was, and I clean up some of the stuff from lunch, and he gets ready to leave for work. And he leaves, and I have some stuff I have planned to do, only I decide to look at some stuff on the Internet first. And I usually find some stuff on Hulu to watch in between doing other things, like I'll probably be watching the seventh season of Stargate later this week.

And then I noticed that the sound wasn't on.

So that is annoying. I try to look around and make sure that everything is plugged up, make sure that there are no loose connections, and check to make sure that all the blinky lights are blinking where they are supposed to. Finding nothing wrong there, I restart what I was doing. And when that doesn't help, I turn off the computer and turn it back on again, which usually fixes whatever is wrong.

And the sound still doesn't work.

At this point I should find something else to do, but I don't, cause I know this sound problem is going to bother me all day if I don't figure out what is wrong with it. I have videos to work on and cleaning to do and I need to plan exactly where I am going to go in Irving later this week, but I can't focus on any of that because the sound doesn't work on the computer.

And I am pretty sure that whenever there is something wrong with the computer it is because my husband has fiddled with something. Yes, he knows all about computers and is much better with them than I am, but he's always adjusting something that doesn't need adjusting, so that when I need it I can't get it to work properly. And he's like, why didn't you just do such-and-such? But why would I have done such-and-such, as it had never needed to be done like that before?

So I am thinking that he has done something, but I don't know what. And I think that while I am sitting there trying to figure it out, I might as well put the Internet connections back on the laptop and watch something on Hulu.

Only the Internet doesn't seem to work on the laptop, and I don't know why that is either. It should be something simple like taking one cord off of the one computer and attaching it to the other computer. But that doesn't seem to do it, so I put everything back the way it was and restart the old computer a second time.

Still no sound.

I'm afraid that I will accidentally knock over the laptop, so I take that into the other room.

The old computer has messages about new hardware. I don't have any new hardware, but maybe it will tell me something about the sound. After letting it reinstall something for both the DVD player and the keyboard (I couldn't see that anything was wrong with the DVD player, and the keyboard obviously worked just fine), I waited for a message about the speakers, but that was the end of the hardware messages.

There is something about a calender. If you tell the computer that it is last week or last month or whenever the computer was working properly, it will go back to working properly. Only I couldn't remember how to get to that calender. I found a calender, but probably not the right one as changing the date did nothing for the sound, it just changed the date.

So now I have a computer with the wrong date and no sound.

A friend made suggestions. I had already tried some of them, and the rest did not seem to do much.

I decide to have a lot at the back of the computer where most of the connections are. To really get a good look, I have to turn the computer so that the back part is now facing up and the front of the computer is now facing down. Everything looks okay, except that next to where the speakers are plugged in are two other holes that look exactly the same. Maybe the speakers are plugged in at the wrong place? But surely if someone had unplugged the speakers, like, to use them on the laptop, then someone would look to see where the speakers were plugged in to begin with and then make sure that they we again plugged in at the right place.

Well, I look at that sort of thing before I unplug anything from the computer.

The holes have symbols next to them, but they are too small for me to see what they are. And I cannot hold onto the computer and a magnifying glass at the same time, so I will just have to try one and then another.

So after again turning the computer on and off a couple of times, it turns out that the speakers should have been attached at the top hole and they were plugged in at the bottom hole.

By this time I have spent three hours turning the computer on and off and looking up stuff on the Internet and other things trying to find out why the sound doesn't work, plus I have talked to my friend for another hour. It is just about time to fix dinner. I get about two hours of work done before I mostly give up and just play around with the videos for a bit while I watch House.

My husband came home, and I asked him if he had done anything with the speakers. And he said he used them on the laptop and probably plugged them back in at the wrong place, cause he couldn't see, he was just doing it by feel.

I don't see why he couldn't just admit that when I stood here and asked him if everything was put back the way it was supposed to be. He didn't even tell me he had done anything to the speakers, just the Internet connections.

Anyway, it all seems to be working again. Except that the date is wrong.

I don't think that I'll tell him about that.

The second weekend of the new business

Okay, as you may recall, my husband started this new business.

At my husband's "real job" a bunch of people tend to sit around and complain that on a good day the three of them take in over three thousand dollars for the company, and of that my husband earns a bit over three hundred dollars, and I would think that the other two also make around that. If they had their own company, they could split the profits from the three thousand dollars three ways instead of getting a paycheck of about three hundred dollars.

But that's on a good day. On a bad day my husband only makes fifty dollars. On a less than average to not so good day, my husband makes between ninety and maybe two hundred dollars.

There haven't been a lot of good days lately. There have been not so good days, and a lot of bad days. And there have been a lot of days that he didn't work at all, but apparently there have not been enough days that he didn't work to qualify for more than four hundred dollars from unemployment, and he was out of work for three solid weeks when they paid him that much.

So my husband was talking to one of the sales guys. This guy has sales of two thousand and even three thousand dollars a day on a regular basis, so almost any day that these two work together is a good day, or even a great day. So this guy says that when my husband starts his own company he wants to work with him and split the profits. He doesn't want to start the business himself, but he wants to work with my husband.

My husband thinks this is a good idea, seeing that this guy has such a high sales average. They could split the profits of two or three thousand dollars a day, instead of just getting a percentage.

Of course, when it is your own company, no one pays your expenses. And if you have a bad day, no one pays you fifty dollars. And if you really have a bad day, you might even lose money. And you have to rent or buy your own equipment, and if it breaks nobody fixes it for you, you have to pay to have it fixed or pay to have it replaced.

And then of course, there is the cost of buying or renting the equipment in the first place, and that has to be paid before there is any profit.

Okay, so there were a lot of expenses to get this thing started. We bought a laptop. We went in to get a four hundred and something laptop and ended up buying a six hundred and something laptop. And we bought a printer, and we bought some other stuff like office supplies. I think we spent like a thousand dollars or maybe a bit more. I really don't quite remember. I just remember thinking that the major expenses were over, except for renting the equipment, which was about two hundred dollars per weekend, while I had somehow gotten the idea that it was only fifty per weekend.

And then there was the computer program, which was another five hundred. I had no idea that it was going to be that much. I know that it has all the bells and whistles, but when I had the job before I did it without all the bells and whistles...so...FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS??? But, there was a free trial period, and I calmed down a bit.

Oh, we are past the free trial period. We actually bought this five hundred dollar program.

And then he would be out some of his paycheck for asking off those two Saturdays. The first week this probably cost him a good account, and so we don't know how much money that cost him. All we know for sure is that not working on Saturday cost him at least fifty dollars. The other four days he worked were bad days. The second week, he didn't work at all, but maybe there wouldn't have been a full week for him to work anyway. Since he asked for Saturday off, they offered him two days, which he ended up not being able to work cause they were out of town. So that cost him a hundred dollars, maybe more, but there's no way to tell (unless maybe he runs until his replacement and he tells him).

Anyway, this is really starting to add up. But I was trying not to worry, cause he was supposed to work with this really great sales guy, and maybe they were going to split the profits of two or three thousand dollars each day.

Of course, if they had a bad day, they would lose money for each potential customer who didn't buy anything. I was originally told that this would be four dollars for each customer, in addition to losing the two hundred dollars per weekend for the renting the equipment. Later, I found out that the amount was eleven dollars per customer, not four. So while I had in my head that we might come out of this with an additional debt of almost six hundred dollars, the real amount was over a thousand. Still, we were hoping for sales between four and six thousand, cause this other guy had such a great sales average.

At the last minute, the other guy started to ask strange questions, and wanted to have the checks made out to him instead of the business. And while we had paid for everything so far, except for two hundred dollars of samples the other guy decided he needed, he suddenly wanted to be a full partner and have his name be on the business account.

We didn't know why he had suddenly changed his mind, but we decided we couldn't put his name on anything with that short notice. If the two weekends went well, they could talk about it, if he was willing to pay us for half of the equipment we had already bought, but we weren't going to do anything like that before the first day of business. The other guy said that he wasn't going to do any work without being made full partner. So we had to wait til the guy came back to town to get the computer from him and the samples.

Now we owe this guy another two hundred dollars for the samples. If I had known that we would end up paying for them, I wouldn't have bought as many, and I wouldn't have bought these in particular. I would have spent far less and bought things that I personally liked better, just in case the business didn't work out and I got stuck with them. I can't use most of this stuff for my personal use. I have no use for most of it except as part of the business. And now we owe someone two hundred dollars for it.

So I ended up doing the other guy's job, rather than giving him access to our bank account. I feared that we would lose a lot of money. The first day I worked I had sixteen customers, we took in a bit over a thousand dollars. We were supposed to see our last customer at five and hopefully be done by six, but it took a little bit longer than that. The other guy is probably better at this stuff, but it takes me about half an hour per customer to do my job.

We were supposed to have thirty-five customers that day, but a lot of them called to reschedule for the next weekend. There's no way I can handle that many people. I might get a little better with time, but I'm thinking that even if I speed up a little bit, twenty people is about my limit.

The second Saturday, we had another thirty-five customers scheduled. I couldn't do it.

So, we went and bought another forty dollars worth of equipment, hoping that we would be able to use our old computer in addition to the new laptop. So, in theory, this would allow my husband to be the salesperson for one or two people an hour, while I would sell to the other two or three people per hour, and that way we might be able to handle the five people per hour that were scheduled. And then we thought that maybe if that wasn't enough that maybe we could have an additional sales session on Sunday afternoon and see some of the people then.

We redid the sales book. We took some stuff out and added some other stuff. We had hopes of taking in two thousand dollars or more.

The lady we were working with on location didn't return our calls or emails. We didn't know if we would be allowed to work on Sunday afternoon. But, with the new equipment, maybe we wouldn't have to.

When we arrived at the location, no one was there. A few minutes later, someone arrived to unlock the building for us, but the rooms were not ready for us. Furniture needed to be moved, but no one would do that without authorization. We were just standing around doing nothing. I started to worry.

The woman showed up and had the furniture moved. We got everything set up in time.

No customers showed up for almost the first hour. Then they started to come in, but the sales weren't even as good as last weekend. Well, I suppose that is better than having all thirty-five people show up and buy nothing and lose money for each one.

And after a couple of hours, we had enough people that I needed for my husband to use the new equipment and do some of the sales. The new equipment had worked at home, and the new equipment worked for the first customer.

And then the new equipment not only didn't work, but it made us have to redo some stuff, which made us about half an hour behind schedule, and we ended up giving a couple of people some free stuff so that they wouldn't get upset. We tried the new equipment again, and it was sort of half on and half off, so we stopped using it at all.

At about two o'clock I stopped to have lunch. The equipment failure had caused me to panic, but as it turned out several people cancelled their appointments. We really weren't making any money, but on the other hand people weren't showing up, so they weren't costing us money if they didn't buy anything either. I calmed down. Our last customer was scheduled at five, and then we could go home. It wasn't good, but at least we hadn't lost money.

And then a few more people came in, and they didn't buy anything. But it was nearly five and I only had one more customer. Then I could go home.

Some people came in late. And then some more people came in late.

The lady we were working with looked happy, and didn't know why I was upset. I'm working late for people who aren't buying anything, and I'm going to lose eleven dollars for each person who doesn't buy anything.

Maybe she went and talked to the people still waiting. The next person bought something. He only spent twenty-five dollars, and he took forever to pick what he wanted, but at least I didn't have to give him stuff for free just because he showed up. Some more people bought stuff after that, but not all.

We ended up staying til eight o'clock. We had twenty-two customers. My husband only did the sales part for one of them, and that one didn't buy anything. I had twenty-one of those customers by myself. I worked a whole twelve hours with only maybe fifteen minutes for lunch.

We didn't quite take in a thousand dollars the second weekend, but the expenses were a bit less than the first weekend, so it looks like we made right at five hundred dollars, or about nine hundred for both weekends.

That isn't an actual profit yet. For it to really be a profit we would have to have made more money than we spent on the laptop and other equipment and supplies, the money he lost from his "real job", and the two hundred dollars we now owe the other guy for samples. So we are a long way off from really making a profit, but at least we didn't end up with additional debt or give the other guy access to our bank account.

So, I don't know what would have happened if the other guy hadn't bailed on us. I don't know if he would have had similar sales and instead of my husband and I having this nine hundred dollars my husband would have had to split the nine hundred dollars with this other guy. Or maybe the other guy would have had sales of four to six thousand dollars, and he would have split profits of three or four thousand with my husband. I don't know. I think that there's no way to tell, other than just I don't think he could have made less sales than I did.

Anyway, I had forgotten how much I really hate doing this job. I mean, I tell people how much I used to hate doing this job, but it has been seven years since I've really felt how much I hate doing this job. And there's no way to tell if we would even do this well on a regular basis. It might get better, but it might get worse. We might lose eleven dollars a person.

I'm trying to figure out how to make things better. Another laptop would make things better, but since we didn't make enough to pay for the first one, I don't think that we should buy another one anytime soon.

I don't think that he should try this on Saturday again, unless maybe he knows that he's going to have a certain Saturday off, well in advance, like maybe around Christmas time. But, the problem with trying to sell stuff around Christmas time is that people actually want to buy stuff for Christmas, not buy stuff that won't arrive until maybe three weeks after Christmas.

We have found out that while we like all of the rental equipment, we can replace some of it with stuff my husband already has. It isn't quite as good, but it should work. That would cut the rental equipment down from two hundred dollars per weekend to a hundred and fifty dollars per weekend. That helps some, but not that much.

And I'm trying to think of a way that the money we would lose if a customer didn't buy anything would be closer to the four dollars I was originally told instead of the eleven dollars it ended up being.

Also, we need to make arrangements so that people can buy stuff later if they change their minds. We need to have a way that people can buy stuff and pay the website instead of just in person. It can be done, we just hadn't thought that we would need it so soon.

We hadn't thought about a lot of things. But mostly I am tired and don't really want to do this again.

I had hoped that we would get to see if my husband could make money doing this by himself without the extra person doing the sales. But we didn't get to find that out Saturday because the new equipment didn't work with the old computer. I hate to have another test of it. It would cost another hundred and fifty dollars to rent the equipment again, he could only see maybe fifteen customers, and unless he can find someone who wants to do this on a Sunday afternoon (which would mean even fewer customers), he would have to take off another Saturday, which would probably mean he would make little or no money at his "real job" for a whole week.

I'm still not sure if this was a success or a failure. I just know it isn't even close to what I'd hoped for.

The Internet was broke

At least, that is the way it seemed to me this morning.

I try to stay in bed until at least five thirty or so, even if I've already been awake for two hours or so. And then when I do get up at five thirty or six or so, I still try to be quiet for two or three hours. So I come in here and do stuff on the computer. And I try to do stuff that doesn't require sound, so I'm probably not using YouTube or Hulu that early in the morning.

I'm just trying to be considerate and not wake up my husband.

Not that my husband appreciates this. Often he does something to the computer during the night, and he doesn't set it up so that all will be well by six in the morning. So that is annoying to say the least. I'm trying to be quiet, and he screws up the thing that I do in the morning to try to be quiet.

So this morning I come in here to turn on the computer and find that not only has it been left on but Explorer is already up and on Google. Great. Not that it takes a long time to turn on the computer and get to Explorer and Google, but today I didn't have to wait even those first few minutes.

Or so I thought. Nothing seemed to work right. I kept getting messages that the address was invalid or the page could not be displayed. I knew I had the right address. Same address as yesterday.

So I finally get a few things to work, but I can't seem to really do anything. I can't use any links that require a password. So I can't log on to Blogger and I can't check my email and so on.

Well, sometimes Explorer just seems a little bit weird, and I switch to FireFox, which is usually slower but sometimes has less problems.

Nope. Same thing. Can't log on to anything. Can't check email. I get weird messages. Pictures are missing. YouTube says that all of the videos are no longer available.

The Internet must be broken.

Okay, it seems very unlikely that the Internet is broken. It must be something with the computer itself. And it must be my husband's fault.

But usually it is very clear when he has done something to the computer, and there's usually an indication of what has been done and how much longer it is going to be a problem and so forth. But there was nothing like that.

I was about ready to wake up my husband by pretending to strangle him.

Anyway, I shut down the computer for a minute or two and started it back up, and now it seems to be fine. I'm sure I've ruined something my husband wanted done, but by now he knows to have whatever it is finished before six, unless it is something really important, and then he at least needs to leave me a note.


I'm hungry. I rarely eat this early, and I've already had the leftover's from yesterday's free Denny's breakfast. I could just go and eat all kinds of other stuff, like maybe blueberry pop tarts. But I probably won't do that. I'll probably just have my yogurt and wait for lunch.


I haven't done anything useful since Saturday. Okay, maybe that isn't entirely correct. I've done a few errands and such, but that is about it. I can't seem to get anything done except when I have the place to myself, and sometimes not even then. I can't seem to focus on work when he is here, even if he is not in the same room and is either on the computer or reading or watching TV. It shouldn't be a problem, but somehow I just don't get anything done.

I've become my mother.

When he isn't here, I think about what I want to get done that day, which just seems like something I'll never get done. But I break it up into stuff that I just do for a little while here and there, and in between doing that I blog for a bit or I watch TV or I watch stuff on YouTube and Hulu. So it is like watch something for ten minutes and then get up and wash some dishes, go back to the computer for ten minutes and then get up and wash some more dishes and then ten minutes at the computer followed by washing some clothes and then watch something on TV while I eat lunch and then take the clothes to the dryer, etc....

But I don't do that when he is here, cause he's probably on the computer all day, except when we eat lunch or have to go to the library and run errands. So maybe try to do something similar by watching a DVD and stopping it every ten or fifteen minutes to go and wash dishes or sort the laundry or take out the trash or whatever.

So he's here, and I'm getting nothing done. And we go to the library, and I check out some DVDs of Enterprise. Not my favorite show, but I don't have the episodes all memorized like I have done with other shows, so maybe it's time to watch the show again.

And it isn't my husband's favorite show either. But after I get the DVDs, he decides to watch some of them with me. Well, that wasn't the idea for getting the DVDs, but I'm not going to be rude and send him to the other room if he's trying to be nice and wants to watch TV with me. But now I'm not stopping every ten minutes to do some work, I'm just watching TV all day.


Yesterday we went to get the free Grand Slam at Denny's. We got done with that at about ten or so, then picked up a few things and went home. And then we watched stuff we had taped the night before like The Big Bang Theory and House. And then we watched some DVDs. And then he didn't want to watch anymore, but by that time I had already wasted most of the day and didn't bother trying to do much work.

Then I suddenly didn't feel so good. It was around four. Then I realized that we hadn't eaten anything since we left Denny's, and I had only eaten the pancakes. So then we had chili cheese dogs. A bit after that I had yogurt, some peanut butter and some leftover Christmas candy. Then I didn't feel like eating anything else. At least, I wasn't hungry enough to get up and do anything about it.

So I spent four fifty on my free Denny's Grand Slam, and I spent less than seventy cents for the rest of the day.

Okay, so I'm weird.

He's awake now, so I think I'll go watch Enterprise.

More headaches

I have my 400th post coming up soon, and I haven't yet decided what I should write about. I'm sure it will be nothing that could rival either the 100th or the 300th post. Not that it will matter much. Regular readership is down now that I've decided to focus on me rather than writing stuff to make fun of other people. Also a lot of the bloggers I like have other things going on in their lives which keep them busy and don't allow for a lot of blog time. Both things are fine by me.


I do seem to have gained a reader in Australia. But he doesn't comment. Welcome, reader from Australia.


Even if I do find something brilliant to write about, I may not get to. The computer is acting up again. The screen usually filled with icons now has only six, and one of those is the recycle bin. Both of my word processors are gone, all the video players are gone, Photoshop is gone, etc....


I'm afraid my exciting plan for today included doing a bit of laundry in between watching episodes of Life on Mars. I think that they have been erased as well, which is sad since we had only watched two of them.


Life on Mars is a British show, and it isn't at all what it sounds like. It's actually about a cop, who is probably in a hospital near death, but he seems to living back in 1973, trying to solve crimes without benefit of DNA testing, cell phones, computers, and other miracles of modern science. At least one of the 1973 crimes has a connection to a case he was working on in the present time.


Speaking of British TV, I found a DVD at the library of The Eleventh Hour, episodes 1-4, starring Patrick Stewart. After watching it, this appears to be the same show that is coming here in the fall, only with different actors and produced by Chris Carter of The X-Files.


I'm sure British people do all sorts of baffling things, but until a few years ago the main thing that I questioned was their television. It makes no sense. Not that the shows themselves don't make sense, because after you get past the odd word here and there like solicitor it usually makes total sense, and most of the time it is rather good. Of course, (other than Dr. Who and Baby Spice the Dinosaur Slayer) most of it that we see here is stuff from either Masterpiece Theater or Mystery, so it would have to be good. But they don't have normal seasons. They often make only six episodes or so, and then say that's enough for this year. I'm guessing that they have the same drivel soap opera stuff as we have here, but make something good that resembles The X-Files and stars Patrick Stewart, and then they only make four of them. The still popular Faulty Towers had only about eight episodes. It makes no sense.


But it is finally August now, so in a month or so I can go back to watching regular American TV and not worry so much about downloading British stuff.


Elsewhere in the world, my friends who have money are off to Vegas, where they are buying up what is left of Quark's bar and the like. They are having a big Star Trek convention there, right before The Star Trek Experience is going to close. I have been to Vegas once, and we went to the Star Trek Experience before they added the Borg and Klingons. I have never been to an out of town convention or anything as big as what is going on in Vegas. Going to such things requires money, which requires getting a job, etc.... Of course, even if I had a job I wouldn't make enough to go to Vegas, and if I had a job I'd been stuck going to work this week instead of whatever boring thing I'll be doing around here, so I still wouldn't get to go to the convention.


Well, back to, whatever.