R.I.P., my Brandi girl

1998(?) – 2014

When I adopted you in May 2000, they knew you were at least 2 years old but could not give any better estimate. I had a mental picture of you before I even went to the shelter, and I knew you were the dog for me the moment I saw you. I thought I was getting a companion for the little boy, but that was a silly idea. He was simply born a total cat person, and your personality turned out a canine version of me. I will always remember taking you on hours-long walks, frustrating chases through the neighborhood when you’d dug out of the yard and we couldn't catch you, and your never-ending desire to be wherever your people were. As long as no car rides were required, of course, since those did not agree with your tummy. The old age that caught up with you this past year was hard for you to handle. I’ll miss you, but now you can rest in peace.

First rule of driving? Don't hit anything.

Eleven years I’ve had this car, and driven it safely that whole time. Today… crunch. 

There’s a super busy road that runs through downtown, right past the campus of one of the local universities. On the edge of said campus is a Starbucks that does not have a parking lot nearly large enough for the traffic it needs to handle. It is well-known throughout town as always creating a traffic hazard. It does not help that the store is right at a traffic light. Today, I was stupidly going down this busy road, in the right-hand lane, and was stopped at that traffic light. I was the third car in the line. The light turned green. What does that mean? Generally, it means apply pressure to the gas pedal and move forward. That is what the other two lanes next to me did. That is what my lane started to do. Then the driver at the front of the line decided he wanted to pick up a coffee. Except the lot was full, so he had to stop in the street. The driver ahead of me saw this, and applied his brakes. I did not see that we had gone from, “It’s green now, let’s drive” to “Let’s block up the road” until a nanosecond before plowing right into the car ahead of me. Thankfully his feet were still on the brakes so he did not also bash into the person (the thirsty jerk) ahead of him. 

Fortunately for him, it was just a tiny dent near his tail light. Unfortunately for me, my front end bent into and poked a hole in the radiator, plus damaged the A/C system. I will have a good week’s worth of auto body work. Yippee. At least insurance will cover all but the deductible. It looks like just a little bang up, doesn’t it? Looks can be deceiving.

The line forms where?

Alex wonders if they will figure out why business has been a little slow lately.

Keep On Truckin'

My car hit the 100,000 mile mark this weekend. I don't recall now what the mileage was when I drove it off the lot in 2003, but it was in the double digits. Now there are six! She's still running well, though, and here's hoping she stays that way.

No, I haven't been boxing

Did you know that while poison ivy reactions on your regular skin (arms, legs, etc) creates the little bumps and itchy rash, getting it on the bridge of your nose and corner of your eye also causes the area under your eye to swell up? I feel like Rocky Balboa.

Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but it is quite disconcerting to be looking straight ahead and have your face within your line of vision. Especially when it is just on one side.

Particularly annoying is that I knew I was pulling out the ivy, I've tangled with it several times already this spring and summer, and thus I was being crazy cautious about handling it. I was almost successful, too. I have only one little dot of outbreak on my right arm near my birthmark, about half the size of a dime, and it didn't even get me enough to be itchy. Except for my eye. I wear glasses, so how in the world did it get under my glasses to get near my eye yet didn't touch me anywhere else? Inquiring minds want to know!

How to feel like an idiot

Ever since my disastrous problems with the previous laptop constantly crashing hard drives, I've been trying really hard to make sure I have relatively recent backups of my current system. Yesterday, I realized it was a month since I'd backed up my email, and figured I should update that. I plugged in the backup drive... and promptly copied the old version onto the laptop, rather than the other way around.

Intelligence is highly overrated.

If you've sent me anything in the past month that I had not responded to, you probably aren't going to get an answer now. So sorry! I've now learned to change the name of the backup file so it is more obvious which one is which. I did look at the path names, but the string is so long I couldn't see the beginning of it, which is what included the drive designation. I did realize the error as soon as it started copying, but the "cancel" option wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped; the transfer stopped, but apparently Windows deletes the original file before moving the new one over and the delete had already taken place.

I would try to blame the head cold/sinus infection for my befuddlement, but sadly, I really don't think that had anything to do with this particular act of genius.

World Nutella Day

Today is World Nutella Day. I invite you to join me in celebrating this tasty, chocolately confection. If you need some ideas, there are plenty of recipes for you to try. Yum!

New Computer

The HP manager called me back and offered two choices: I could get an off-the-shelf model of a computer with some newer features than my original one but without a few things I have on this one, or I could have my computer rebuilt again to my original specs.

After thinking about it, and reviewing the details with the computer people in my family, I decided to go with the newer model. I should have it within a week at the most. (They won't ship it until I send them a tracking number for this one being returned.) Now, I'll get to learn how to use Windows 7.

Assuming this new one works properly, I can take HP laptops back off the Never.Ever.Purchase.Again.Ever list...

Did you notice?

It was fun to write the date today. Well, assuming you write it in the US format of MM/DD/YY.

01-11-10.

Yes, little things like palindromic dates make me smile.

At which point, the patience runs out

The last couple of days, I've had some interesting quirks with the computer. Notably, the unexpected Blue Screen Of Death with weird error messages about missing a disk in a device. Huh?

The first time was on New Year's Eve. Well, ok, who knows what happened, but it seemed a good time to make sure my backup was as up-to-date as physically possible. You may recall I do not have a good history with hard drives on this laptop.

It crashed once again over the weekend, and then I got a BSOD again Tuesday. Three times in less than a week is no longer a "no worries" affair. I went to the diagnostic screen and had it check the hard drive. Once again, I got an error that the disc is bad and needs to be replaced. I both expected it and yet couldn't believe it at the same time.

I promptly found the records of all my other calls, and gave the HP support people a chat. I said apparently they are great fun people that I should put on my speed dial! I explained the problem and the tech recorded all the data error messages I've gotten (I took a picture with my cell phone so I could read him what it said).

I then politely but firmly said I've had absolutely enough of this and something needed to be done besides simply replacing the drive yet again. He informed me that he was submitting a case report to a supervisor, listing the many service calls on record for the same problem with the same machine, and I should get a call in the next 24-48 hours from a manager who can review options with me. At this point, I'm thinking my options need to include starting over from scratch with a brand new computer at no additional cost to me. Replacing the hard drive every 3 months is simply ludicrous.

I really do feel I've been fairly patient with all this up to this point, but that patience has run out. Meanwhile, anything I save on the computer now will also be saved to the backup. Who knows when this thing might go completely kaput? Argh!

Computer problems again!

Unbelievable as it may sound, my hard drive has died again. Yes, the one that I just got 3 weeks ago after the last one died. Yes, this is now the 4th one since I got the machine in summer 2008. I was in a distinctly unpleasant mood when I phoned the HP tech line to complain.

This time, instead of simply sending me a replacement hard drive, I'm going to send in the laptop for them to check the motherboard and anything/everything else to see if they can determine what might be causing the drives to repeatedly "poop out" (quote from the tech).

While this will hopefully fix my problems, it also means I'll be without my laptop for probably a good two weeks between shipping and repair time. We do have Alex's desktop, so I can still log on thru webmail to check email, but I find that screen difficult to use, so will probably not be checking it much. I'll still read everything when I can download it properly, of course, but might not have much contact in between.

So if you don't hear from me for a while, you know why. Not that I've been particularly chatty the past few weeks anyway, but... that's because I've been working 60-hour weeks and that's left me a little too tired to deal with a computer!

Beautiful Ice

On our way home from my parents' house, our flight plan took us across the tip of Canada. As far as we could tell, these are just small icebergs floating in the northern Atlantic. Our neighbors in the aisle seats were leaning over our shoulders to watch the view for a while. Isn't it gorgeous?

   

   

So Square

Apparently, today is “Square Root Day” courtesy of the date: 03/03/09. I don’t think I’ll be cutting my veggies into squares today as suggested, but… whoo hoo… yippee... hoorah...

There. That's probably the extent of my celebration for the day.

Oh wait, the bell peppers on my lunch salad were in squares. So there you go. What a party.

Crystal Diaper award

I've volunteered in the nursery since before I had Alex. I started with the little babies, but I was asked to help out in the 2yo room a couple of times and decided I liked it there. So for the last 8 years, I've spent the first Sunday of every month helping out in the 2yo room. Since last June, Alex has also been helping me out with the kids. We go to the first service, then volunteer for the second one.

Our church recently held a volunteer recognition service to thank all the volunteers that keep the church running. They gave a description of the various areas people serve - some I never even knew we had - and everyone that worked in that area stood up to be recognized and receive a certificate of thanks.

Pastor Ledford's comments when discussing each area were amusing. Clearly, he has no secret longing to ever work in the nursery with not-yet-potty-trained kids. Absolutely.None.What.So.Ever. Much like my desire to stand up and preach to the church.

Then came the surprise... the staff members that run each area had selected a Volunteer of the Year for their area. Their names were called out, 'the winner is' music was played just like at some entertainment awards show, and the person went to the front of the church to be specially recognized for their efforts. You'd think they might want to warn people of such a thing, but no...

And so I suddenly found myself in front of the church, getting a hug from the pastor and receiving this beautiful plaque. How cool is that? When awarding my plaque, he said they really should have a Crystal Diaper award to present, but I'd have to settle for the plaque. I was so surprised in the first place, I thought this was just fine!

Swiss Drum Corp

If you enjoy a nice drum corp presentation, you'll want to watch this display of Swiss drumming skills. Impressive and entertaining even though it goes on for almost 6 minutes. I loved the sword fighting part that was about halfway through.

Pleasant Surprises

I had two lovely surprises yesterday:

1. I normally have a difficult time getting Alex up in the morning. It takes a good 20-30 minutes usually to rouse him out of bed. Neither one of us are morning people, and it shows very clearly on weekday mornings. Yesterday, I woke up when the alarm went off, only to find him just getting out of the shower. He'd woken up a little early on his own, and decided to just go ahead and get ready for school. Shock!
   
   
2. I had participated in a local survey about something or other, and they said they were putting together a focus group and would I be interested. I filled out the information, they called me back to review the screening questions, then scheduled me to be part of the group. They were paying $50 for each participant. Yes, I'd love to be part of your study! I arrived at the meeting time, only to be told that they needed X number of people and they had scheduled a few extra just to make sure they had the correct number actually show up. The X number had already arrived, so they handed me the $50 check and told me I was free to go home. Seriously? Please let me know if you are ever doing another one...

Both my morning and my evening contained pleasant surprises. Ah, for more days like that!

2008 BCS Bowl

As a diehard FSU Seminole, I cheer for the Noles and for whomever is playing against the Florida Gators... unless it is a National Championship game. For the #1 spot, loyalty to my state kicks in. I'm not pleased that they've tested me on that for the 2nd time in 3 years! I suppose it is a small consolation that at least the Oklahoma Sooners put up a good fight and made them really work for tonight's win. *sigh*

Go Gators.

Random Bits

Jenni posted this at One Thing and suggested that we might want to put our own versions up. This reminds me of all those “let’s get to know each other” emails that go around. Most of you know I hate those things and rarely do them. I figured I’ll post this one and then won’t feel the slightest bit guilty about not responding to those emails for the rest of the year. (I do still read them, though) *smile* Feel free to do your own versions if you like.

Items I HAVE done are in bold. I was only supposed to mark what I've done or not done, but you know me, I have to comment...

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii - some day, I hope to do this
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity - I don’t know how to answer this one. Really, how does one define “too much”?
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain - not like Mount Everest or anything crazy, though!
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo - I'm guessing singing by myself when nobody can hear me doesn't really count. I've played instrumental solos, though, does that count?
11. Bungee jumped - I can't imagine I will ever, ever make this one bold.
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty - I know I saw it when I was very young, but I don't know if we went up the inside. I'm not marking it since I can't remember it even if I did it.
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train - I was unfortunately not in a sleeping compartment, though, just a regular seat. It's similar to sleeping in a car or on an airplane... not very comfortable!
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill - we had "paid time off" that encompassed both sick and vacation time. You earned the time off, you could use it as you felt like. So I did take off a day on extremely short notice a time or two, but it was "legal" to do so even if not a practice they encouraged.
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run - yeah, right. I'd just pleased if I can actually hit the ball, never mind if it goes anywhere.
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors - what a generic question. My parents are ancestors, so how far back does this mean? Been to some reasonably far back, so I'm marking it, but really, more specifics would have been nice.
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language - if I had teachers but I still had to learn the language, does that count? Didn't learn it exceptionally well, granted, but I can read it to some extent...
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt - not yet, but it's on my list of things I'd really like to do
43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater - assuming this means when a movie is actually playing and not just to see an empty theater...
55. Been in a movie - my college roommate was a film major. I mostly helped out with work behind the camera, but I was in brief flashes of some of their films.
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business - my contract work and my Stampin' Up! membership are technically businesses even though they aren't what most people envision as a business
58. Taken a martial arts class - only took one class myself, although I certainly watched enough classes when Alex was studying for his TaeKwonDo black belt.
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen - wanted to do this and volunteered at one once only to be told they had enough help so thanks anyway
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Gotten flowers for no reason - "gotten" is vague. "Purchased for myself", yes. "Received", no.
64. Donated blood, platelets, or plasma - in fact, should have done it again last month. Need to see where the drives are now. I used to organize them at PATLive, so I just did it when the bloodmobile came to us.
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check - not my proudest moment and thankfully a long time ago
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London - been to London, but I don't think we saw the guard change while we were there
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle - and the even more fun "fell asleep while a passenger on a motorcycle" that scared the daylights out of my poor father and he wouldn't let me ride behind him for quite some time after that. To clarify, I wasn't aware of speeding when I rode with my dad, only when I rode with my husband. I still wish I'd kept my MC license when I had it, and frequently think about getting it again. Not having a motorcycle to ride is a bit of a damper on that, though.
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible - working on it again
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating - my husband caught some fish and I helped clean them, so I think that counts, unless seafood doesn't count as an animal. Depends on who you ask, I guess.
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury - only received a summons for jury duty once and didn't even have to report
91. Met someone famous - maybe someone I've met will be famous in the future
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one - horrible, horrible experience
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

Strays welcome

"Mom, who's the guy sleeping on the couch?"

That is a sure way to wake up in a hurry when you know there was nobody on the couch last night when you went to bed.

I usually leave my bedroom door open, but the door had swung closed last night. The dogs were in the room with me, and started barking up a storm around 4am this morning. I got up, checked the house, but everything was quiet and dark so I figured it must have been a neighbor setting them off. There are college kids next door who sometimes have parties, and I just assumed they were having another one last night and people were probably making noise as they went home. I let the dogs outside to go potty and to reassure themselves of nobody prowling around the yard, and thought I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. That seemed silly since even smoking friends don't smoke in my house, so I figured a neighbor must have had a fire burning. I brought the dogs back into my bedroom, went ahead and pushed the door closed again, and went back to bed. One of my dogs kept looking at me like she was expecting me to do something else, but again, it was 4am and I was sleepy...

Then Alex's question this morning. Sure enough, an unknown guy was sleeping on my couch. We kind of stared at him, not sure what to do. He looked early to mid 20's, was in "going out" clothes, and seemed like a normal person. Except I've never met the guy before. Finally I shook him a little bit and he opened his eyes. He looked around and was clearly very confused. I asked him if he'd slept well and if perhaps he wanted to go home. He asked where he was, and finally woke up enough to realize he had somehow wandered into a complete stranger's house and gone to sleep. And then he started to freak out a little bit. He kept assuring me that he was an honest guy, he had a job and paid his bills, he had no idea what had happened but he was so sorry, etc. He wasn't driving, he had been at a party somewhere and gone with someone from there out to another party, and had no idea where he'd last been or how he'd gotten here. He seemed to have lost his cell phone, so I loaned him my phone so he could call home but he got no answer. He put his shoes back on and prepared to leave immediately, but he was going about 3 miles away so I offered to drive him home. Alex took the guy's picture because he said nobody would believe him if he didn't.

The front door was locked and closed, so I'm not sure how Chris got in. The door sometimes sticks, so it is possible it wasn't completely closed last night even though it looked it. And that bothers me. I do live in a neighborhood that has had very little trouble the entire time I've lived here, so I'm still not excessively worried about security. I do believe I'll be triple-checking the doors tonight, though. I'm also enormously surprised that apparently my dogs bark loud enough to hear a mile away if someone dares to step onto the property, but they didn't have much to say about someone actually coming into the house. I guess they figured they'd warned me; I got up right when the dogs started making noise, but the house was dark. So how did this guy enter an unknown house, find his way to the couch in the dark, take off his shoes, and get comfy and go to sleep in the moments it took me to put on slippers and come out of my room?

We've had a number of stray animals gravitate to our house over the years, but this is the first time a human stray has shown up. I guess if you are in the neighborhood, feel free to nap on my couch! Just make sure to close the door behind you.

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I debated whether to post this, since I'm sure some of you won't find this nearly as funny as Alex & I did. Yes, it's a bit discombobulating. Yes, I'll make sure the dogs have free reign of the house tonight. Yes, the front door situation will be getting fixed very quickly. But no, I'm really not afraid. Either I have great faith in my guardian angels and God's timing, or I'm foolish and naive, but we were more bemused than scared. It occurred to me that this could be an interesting premise for a story line should I ever decide to write a book.

Laptop Withdrawal

Tuesday before Thanksgiving, my laptop died. Yes, I mean the laptop that was only purchased in July. It was working in the morning, I left to run errands, and came home to a non-functioning machine.

After spending over an hour on the phone with tech support (thank you God for Daniel in Indiana or something answering and speaking English!), it was determined that the hard drive had met an untimely death. Yippee... as it is clearly still under warranty, they sent me a new hard drive along with recovery disks to get the machine going. Those arrived after Thanksgiving, and then the new hard drive wouldn’t work either. It would start to load the recovery disks, then give a fatal error, then reboot itself. Over and over and over. This phone call to tech support landed in India to someone who didn't listen to the problem and merely assumed the recovery disks were bad and sent new ones. That’s not what online research was suggesting, and sure enough, 3 days later when the new disks arrived, I still had the same issue. Again, India answered the Help! call. *sigh* They sent a specific shipping box for me to send in the laptop so they can figure out where the problem is, and gave a 2 week estimate of when I'll get it back. The machine was sent in on Monday, so here’s hoping I can at least have it back by Christmas!

Ok, enough whining. Here’s a funny for you: A case manager – from America – called me after the 2^nd India experience. He apologized for troubling me, but said he was having difficulty understanding the case notes on my account and could I please give him a synopsis of the problem. Nice. How much money are they really saving by outsourcing?? Not as much as they think, if they have to call people back anyway...