I never have been an Apple fangirl, don't want an iPhone, but have been having serious envy of people using iPads for art. We have styluses for our Android tablets, but they have none of the fine control that the iPads do with their corresponding "pencils." I've been wandering by a 6th generation iPad at MicroCenter; it was only $139, which seemed a good "beginner's price" for something you're not sure you're going to use. However, in chatting with someone, they advised me to buy a 9th generation which wasn't too much more ($60) with a lot newer everything. Like my dad, I never could resist a better gadget.

(Dad went out one Christmas to buy me a camera. Our old Brownie Hawkeye—the kind you looked down into the viewfinder to take the picture—with the attachable flashgun was venerable. The new Instamatic cameras had just come out, where you didn't have to string the film from the roll to the intake reel, but just pop a cartridge in and then remember to advance the film. There were four of them, each a little more expensive. The 104 was basic, the 404 had all the bells and whistles. Dad came home with the 404, saying sheepishly that it could be the family camera, but it did end up that mostly I took the pictures.)

So, I splurged on the 9th gen and saved on the accessories; I got a generic "iPad pencil" rather than the regulation Apple pencil (it was $85 cheaper on sale) and a plain cover in black, the cheapest price.

Notes: I hate Safari. It may be the most aggravating browser ever, even worse than Internet Explorer. I hate that you can't really access your files to make sure photos you save end up on the iPad, not in the iCloud. But the screen is fabulous; I have been reading my magazines on the iPad rather than the Android. And the generic "pencil" is faboo for drawing. Rather than buy an expensive copy of Procreate, which everyone loves, I decided to start out with an old friend from my Android days, Sketchbook, which—no surprise—works like a delight on the iPad. I love that I can rest my hand on the screen and all it pays attention to is the pencil.

Oh, and it's great to play my cross-stitch game in.

Officially I named it "Cider"—it's fall, after all—but I find myself calling it "Woz" for Steve Wozniak.

Labels: computers, gadgets

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:21:00 PM

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It was another doctory week, but not overwhelmingly so, like the "day of three doctors' appointments." James had dialysis the usual three days, on Tuesday we went to see Dr. Mobley and on Thursday James had an MRI on his back, ordered by Dr. Mobley, to see what's going on with his back. Friday before dialysis we had a visit with James' cardiologist and had enough time to stop at the Perimeter Barnes & Noble and stopped by MicroCenter on the way back to get a new bluetooth keyboard for my phone. My faithful Freedom Pro seems to have given up the ghost.

The house also had to see a doctor, or rather the garage did. There are thin, taut metal cables on either side of the garage doors that roll up when the door rolls up, and then unspool and stay taut when the doors are down. One, on the truck's side of the garage, had quit spooling up over the weekend, and the other quit as the week started. Apparently this is Very Bad and can warp/break the garage door panels. So we had to have "Don't Panic! Garage Door Repairs" come to fix it. It cost nearly as much to fix as the garage door panel repairs back in 2014. Gah.

So, we had some good things this weekend: while we had to give David's birthday party a miss (my lower GI was in an uproar) on Saturday, we had a great time at Aubrey's birthday "do" on Sunday. The cake was based on Hazbin Hotel, a fandom I hear about on Reddit, but haven't investigated, and, best of all, the company was wonderful. Alice made it so we could take the power chair up to the back door and then James was able to limp in on the folding walker.

I also finished and posted a story I began on September 15, finished on the 18th, and posted on the 21st. It seemed to be well received.

In a very annoying development, DaVita will not allow me to go back and help James set up his stuff any longer. They say it's against the rules. Now, when we first started going there in July, the rules clearly said that if the person having dialysis could not get to the chair by themself, they needed to have a helper come in with them. James can get from the power chair to the dialysis chair if the power chair is next to it, but he cannot park the power chair out of the way and walk the few steps to the dialysis chair without help. The nurses are not supposed to do this, so he would get out and I would park the chair, then help him get his stuff set up, wait for James to get a finish time, then leave. Now the clinic manager says I can't do this anymore. If I want to do this, I have to get a doctor's note. Once I have the doctor's note, we have to take a conference class, and then answer a questionnaire...what the absolute f*ck? Just to help him pull stuff out of his bag?

The funny thing was that when I went to pick him up, the clinic manager had gone home and the nurse on duty just let me in. She didn't want to deal with the power chair and didn't mind me coming in the back at all. So it's just one person with a stick up their butt...

Labels: annoyances, birthdays, books, computers, friends, health, home repairs, sickness

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:58:00 PM

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Yay! The grass is cut for the next two weeks and the pine pollen seems to be gone, so it's time for me—something I didn't do last year—to get the hose and rinse down the front porch, which is no longer brick colored, but yellowish. Alas, every single gasket on the hose and nozzle is shot, which means I got as wet as the porch in front (my capris were still damp around the waistband two days later).

We started out the week with one doctor's appointment and ended up with three: Wednesday it was James' physiotherapy followed by the rheumatologist. Dr. Salazar upped James' steroids to 7 1/2 milligrams since he's still in a lot of pain. Later we had supper from Tin Drum, which, to my sorrow, was less than sterling for me.

For years now Tin Drum's teriyaki bowl (under different names) has been my go-to treat. I would go there once a month, especially after I retired, and treat myself to lunch and racked up so many points I had lots of free meals. Over those years they made tiny tweaks to the dish (like adding a lime), but it was always okay.

This time it was disappointing. Instead of just adding a meat now, you have several choices. I got the thin-sliced beef. It was greasy, and at the same time there wasn't enough sauce to cover the rice, and they seemed to have put a little bit of pepper in the sauce (either that or it was grilled after something spicy without the grill having been wiped). It was blah instead of rah. Sigh.

Thursday was James' Procrit shot. Bruce, the nurse who practically bounces off walls, was telling us they are remodeling the Cumberland office, and they want to send nephrology, rheumatology, and a few other things, to Glenlake (and move cardiology and optometry to Cumberland), which means we would have to drive to Glenlake every two weeks for Procrit shots! Bruce is going to see if he can get permission for James to give himself the shots; we would just need to stop by Cumberland to pick up the dosage every two weeks (since the dosage is variable depending on his blood test that week). You give the shot the same way you give yourself an insulin shot, so it's something James can do.

Finally Friday James had a urology checkup. We talked with the PA instead of Dr. Jefferson, which was nice.

Saturday I exposed myself to temptation. James wanted to look for an SSD for his laptop. I have been suffering with envy watching people creating art on iPads because their stylus and art programs are so good. MicroCenter had some discount iPads, and I was very tempted. I'm also looking at new phones because I know the batteries give out after a couple of years.

But...we'll see.

Labels: chores, computers, food, health, yard

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:00:00 PM

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This week began with the Rose Parade and ended with party cleanup.

The Rose Parade was covered live on KTLA in Los Angeles and we watched that feed cast to the television instead of the commercial-ridden network broadcasts. Other than sorting medications for the week, did nothing on New Year's Day except eat junk food and watch Galaxy Quest. The day ended on a satisfactory note with the two-hour M*A*S*H retrospective: just the cast and the producers talking about the show and the changes of format, no dubious celebrities telling us how much they loved the show.

Tuesday I updated all the copyrights on my web page so I could do my monthly web site backup. Except when I went to do the backup, the backup drive was gone. It usually sits next to my computer desk and has been in that location for over a year. But, apparently, it, and the container it was in, at some point tipped over and fell in the wastebasket, and it was sometime previous to when I emptied the baskets for trash last Thursday. Annoyed that I now have to go waste money on a new one.

Kaiser still hasn't reupped James' referral to physiotherapy, so we went to MicroCenter on Wednesday instead; I got the cutest little two terabyte (it's about the size of a deck of cards) backup drive that can be hung up on the side of the tower instead of near the basket. It was a grey, bitterly cold day and it was good to get home after we went to Publix next door.

Thursday we did our monthly trip to Canton: strolling the aisles of Books-a-Million, then lunch at Uncle Maddio's Pizza, and finally a stop at BJ's for maple syrup and fruit cups.

On Friday James had his second iron infusion. I posted a short story on AO3 and cross-posted on Fanfiction.net. We ate supper out so as not to have to dirty dishes. Alas, it seems the Okinawa on Dallas Highway doesn't have beef bulgogi like the one on the East-West Connector. I had Mandarin beef instead, but it wasn't a fair trade.

And Saturday was our Twelfth Night party! We ran to Hair Day quickly to get James' hair cut, then came home to finish tidying up and then it was time for food and conversation. We had a couple of call-outs as the Spiveys and the Butlers both were under the weather, but it was a great time anyway. Clay and Maggi and Bill and Caran were here until midnight talking up a storm.

Sunday was cleanup day, and I went outside and took down the lights as well since there's a massive rainstorm coming on Tuesday.

Watched three good movies this week: Operation Mincemeat (now I can't wait to read the book!), Feast of the Seven Fishes (which kinda reminded me of Mystic Pizza but more low-key; I liked the Italian family dynamics more than the jerky Yuppie mother who was trying to force the rich boyfriend on the blond girlfriend), and Knives Out, which was so really convoluted (and I thought some of the families on Law & Order: Criminal Intent were bad).

Labels: books, computers, electronics, fanfiction, food, friends, movies, New Year, nostalgia, parties, shopping, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:08:00 PM

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Seeing the series again on "real TV" was wonderful, except for the commercials that are, as always today, thrown in with no rhyme or reason in the the middle of dialog, songs, etc. I was told it was obvious AMC had found the master copies of the episodes and even had them upgraded to 720p, and indeed the episodes looked quite nice and bright and appealing on HD television. They showed the Christmas episode and five others, including the election episode, which was appropriate, and on Facebook everyone compared notes. I've missed those Saturday nights on chat where we all watched episodes and then came in the chat room to talk about them!

Labels: computers, health, Remember WENN, shopping, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:35:00 PM

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In the middle of the night, James grumbled "It's too quiet." And not enough air circulating, either. Needless to say, we didn't sleep very well. Sadly, this is normal when we go away. The one perfect bed and sleep situation we had was in 2013 on vacation, and we were both so sick with headcolds we couldn't enjoy it.

So about 8:30 we sleepily shuffled to the new breakfast arrangement they had. Usually it's a breakfast bar, where you can take eggs and sausage, make a waffle, get juice and milk, pick out a fruit or cereal, make oatmeal or grits and toast, get butter, jelly, sugar, coffee, and tea. Today they had the back of the bar blocked off and a hotel employee handed you a pre-wrapped biscuit or sausage biscuit, the cereal, fruit bars, and milk. You got juice yourself out of the dispenser, and there were packets of oatmeal and grits out front with jelly and butter and disposable eatingware. We took it back into the common room to eat, although most of the others had gone out to breakfast (a little family-run place down the road, Wendell's, is a favorite; I think some others went to Hofer's, which is a bakery and restaurant).

Overlooking the Chattahoochee River.

The temps were going to hike up into the 80s today, so we decided to take our walk into Helen right after breakfast. Initially it was cool, with a nice breeze, but we were soon warmed up with moving. There is a back way on a small service road parallel to the main road, and we strolled along that, watching the birds (lots of robins, the occasional azure flash of a bluebird) and the leafing trees, including a lovely willow in the back parking lot of the hotel. The wind was in our face on the walk in, but as soon as we crossed the river, it was at our backs.

Even for a Friday it was very quiet. Cars were going by only in ones and twos. I had called to make sure The Olive Tree was open, so our first stop was the pseudo-castle building with the olive oil/vinegar store, the Christmas shop, etc. to refill our bottle of peach-flavored white balsamic vinegar. We couldn't get our own samples as is usual, and I sprayed the door handle with straight rubbing alcohol, but otherwise we had a nice chat with the proprietor. James also got a smaller bottle of chipolte-infused oil to use when making burritos and other spicy dishes. We also peeked in the quilt shop (O-so-pretty, but I can't even justify a hand-made king-size quilt for only $95), but the Christmas shop wasn't open, so we went on, briefly stopping at the glassblower's shop to see if they had any autumn leaf suncatchers (ours are dreadfully faded from the western sun), but they had only Christmas and Hallowe'en.

We strolled past the rest of the shops and then turned around and walked the remainder of the stores on the other side. The T-shirt shop was closed, but Hansel and Gretel chocolates were open. James made it up the steep ramp into the store, and I bought my yearly treat of dark chocolate almond bark. Again, I was feeling bad for these folks; there was no one else in the shop but us—how are they going to survive with no tourists to visit?—so I also bought some dark-chocolate enrobed orange creams, quite missing the orange creams from Sweenor's Chocolates in Garden City. They let us go out the side door instead of going down that steep ramp, which was much appreciated!

Daisy the bookstore cat.

We took our time coming back, then decided we would go "down the road apiece" to Cleveland. James wanted some cash, then we would stop at the bookstore (the Mt. Yonah Book Exchange) and finally have lunch at Wendell's, which we understood would be take-out from the reports of those who'd gone to breakfast. So we trucked (literally) back to Cleveland and did a withdrawal at the Regions bank, then did the bookstore. The owner was sitting outside, with a black-and-white cat mooching around near the door. He came inside, which did not please Daisy, the resident bookstore cat. (Many people say their cats have green eyes, but they are usually a yellowy-green. Daisy has real green eyes, a pale leaf green, and she's gorgeous and knows it; she even posed for me.) Oddly, this year I could not find a book I liked, but James got three, including the big picture book about the first World War that he didn't buy last year. (This was published in 1916 and has been so well-loved the binding is broken.)

When we got down to Wendell's it was 12:30, but they were already closed. So we went back by Wendy's to get James a drink, me a milk, and a medium French fry. The fries were a side to my leftover pad Thai, and James had a real fusion meal: his leftover Thai, a burrito, and the other half of the fries!

Spent the rest of the afternoon talking and paging through Facebook where the virtual convention "Concellation" topped 21,000 members. Tried to read, but it's hard to do that when so many interesting conversations are going on around you. Of course we talked about coronavirus reports a lot.

A group of people were going to Bodensee (one of the two big German restaurants in the area), but they are expensive, so we chose instead to go with the gang that went to Glenda's, a small country restaurant in Cleveland. To keep the table sizes down, we went in two shifts. Again, very sobering going to Glenda's, as there's usually a line out the door, but only three or four other people were there when we arrived just before six.

I was disappointed in my meal. The chicken there is only fried; if I wanted it grilled it would have taken almost a half hour. So I got popcorn shrimp, which I'd had on a previous visit. It was awful, with no shrimp taste at all, and the corn on the cob was tasteless. When the best thing in the dish is the mashed potatoes and the roll, you have a problem. Ken also had the popcorn shrimp and liked them, but I think he got a fresh batch and I got the end of the run. Should have had the pork chop, or the chopped steak like James did.

(Aubrey went with the Bodensee group and she reported to us that they sprayed everyone's hands when they walked into the restaurant, and then sat everyone one table apart, no more than ten to a table.)

Stormclouds over Helen.

Because I was still a little hungry, James stopped at the Zaxby's across the street and got me five wings, but they ended up in the fridge in our room while we snacked on cookies and grapes and tangerines and Fritos in the common room. Before we settled down there, though, I had to run outside and get some photographs of the clouds, which were building up and spoiling for some rain (it rained very little). The wind had picked up, too, and it was really quite pretty, although everyone kept telling me I should go inside!

We played Timeline for a while, and then I really wanted to play Uno or another card game, but got persuaded to play a strategy game instead, Forbidden Island, with Oreta, James, Pat, Alex, and Melinda. You are archaeologists trying to find four artifacts on an island that is starting to sink. Cooperating with each other, you have to get the artifacts off by helicopter before you are swamped with water and drown. Well, we made it down to the last step and then were drowned. It bothered Oreta because we had done everything right and still hadn't won. It wasn't until we were packing the game away that I noticed the side of the box: the game is for one to four players and we'd had two players too many, so I guess we did really well (and I did okay only because everyone strategized wayyyyyyyy better than I did).

Tonight we did a little better sleeping. I downloaded the app "Relax and Sleep" again (I'd deleted it from my phone because I never used it) and I set it to make the noise of an air conditioner running and also some crickets chirping in the rain. This was low enough for both James and I to hear it, but not so loud to keep us awake. And it actually did help, especially after I set out the little fan that stays in the suitcase.

Labels: apps, books, cats, computers, events, food, friends, games, health, nature, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:49:00 PM

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But, alas, it was another stock-up week: we needed toilet tissue, bath soap, Swiffer cloths, almonds, and orange cups. We got to Costco rather late as we were both up late reading last night and woke up to find the morning mostly gone. After circling to see all the toys, including one of the Scott Wilkinson-touted OLED televisions and a Surface Pro 7 and Surface Table, and all the books, we got down to searching for our targets, plus sampled some apple juice, gluten-free crust pizza, and a trail mix of very dark and not very sweet chocolate chips mixed with almonds, cashews, and walnuts. We also got vitamins, but were pissed that Costco did not have their own brand of soap. We were out, so we bought Dove, which I hate. I miss the soap they had many years ago, which was French-milled, lasted for ages, and wasn't goopy. I guess we will have to go looking for a new brand of soap again.

We also bought gasoline, then headed for Publix. Some of this was another stock up mission, plus we found a real bargain that was providential: we forgot to take something out for dinner/supper and their soups were BOGO. We got a chicken noodle for me and chili for James for today, and chicken and wild rice for another day. Also of note: BOGO chicken thighs or legs, which will make another nice supper.

Finally we stopped at Lidl for milk, bread, and ground turkey; also picked up chocolate, celery, grapes, Granny Smith apples, and onions. Some of the children's toys they had for Christmas are now on discount, so I decided to start collecting for Toys for Tots early and bought a cute little doctor's kit, and also a stuffed alpaca.

The result was that by the time we got home, changed clothes, and put the perishable foods away, it was wayyyyy after three. We had our soup and watched Caught in Providence for the afternoon, and then later on had a sandwich and did the game shows, Young Sheldon, and a Nature I recorded at Christmastime: "Snowbound: Animals of Winter."

Labels: Christmas, computers, food, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:39:00 PM

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Well, it was a diverse weekend, that's for sure.

Thursday we decided to go to Patak's Meats. We were, we declared, not going to buy a lot, just some mortadella and more Italian sausage and maybe some stew beef. Well, James wanted pastrami, too, and the chicken wings looked good, and he bought some bulk breakfast sausage, too. Luckily this is dirt cheap (at least compared to the grocery stores) at Patak's. We also ran into someone we know: Christy, who used to be the daycare person who cared for our friends' sons Neil and Colin for so many years. I thought she looked familiar when she said hi, and then she said hi to James, who blinked and said hi back; she smiled and said, "Don't you know me?" It was too funny: we are so used to seeing her at Ron and Lin's house it took a minute to click! And we spent the time waiting gabbing about the new Cystic Fibrosis drug that could be such a blessing for Colin, and about how much we love Patak's. It's like a meat candy store. (Christy likes Lidl as well!)

Oh, Pataks had all their Christmas goodies out already: stollen and liebkuchen [sp?] and big boxes of petit fours, candies, special sauces, condiments, jellies, jams... Almost wanted to start singing Christmas carols!

We hit Publix for BOGOs on the way home, and then I had to busy myself: I'd found boneless pork ribs on sale at Kroger on Tuesday and they needed to be cooked up, so spent the afternoon monitoring a nice pot of gravy, which simmered sweetly and gave the house a lovely tomato scent, and we had one portion with macaroni for supper and put two other meals away, one in the refrigerator and one in the freezer.

Thankfully all that was already put away when I had an intestinal annoyance and didn't think I would sleep much, but it let me get seven hours of sleep before cutting back in again about 7:30 a.m. So I was not feeling too "swuft" when morning came, and we blew off going to lunch. I wouldn't have gone out at all, but it was spoiling for rain and if it did rain James couldn't take the power chair to Kaiser, needing my assistance.

And indeed it was raining when we emerged from the house about quarter to one. We just popped the handicapped parking sticker into the car and I drove out to Kaiser Glenlake, where he had an appointment with the wound clinic. Luckily we found a parking space outside the front door instead of in the garage; I could run into the vestibule and find a wheelchair so I could push him through the building.

Alas, the blisters are healing, but not to the nurse practitioner's satisfaction. She put colloidial silver pads on the remnants of the two wounds, wrapped James' leg in compression bandages, told him not to get it wet, and he'll have to come back next Friday (and for two successive Fridays if it doesn't heal). Gah.

We salvaged the day by coming home by Trader Joe's and stocking him up on pumpkin fruit bars until next year (they have them only in the fall), and also stopped by Walgreens to get him a plastic cast cover. (I also found a nifty long metal shoehorn—James has never been satisfied with other thin metal or plastic ones we've bought—that he figures would make a deadly weapon if you could sharpen it, the metal is that sturdy!)

Today was rather fun. We had spent all of Friday afternoon and evening making chicken cacciatore thighs slow cooked in the Instant Pot for today's Hair Day, otherwise the Lin and Ron Butler Tonsorial Occasion/Lunch Club/Computer Tutorial Day. 😁 The latter is not a usual event. We arrived at the house to find Lin had invited a former co-worker to Hair Day, a sweet lady named Ruth who is 88 and who still works typing out "tickets" at David Gibson's law office. Ruth is very non-computer savvy, but someone had given her a laptop and she wanted to learn how to play movies on it; she had bought a portable DVD player to attach to it for that purpose. So while we were waiting for the chicken to get hot again, I popped open the laptop and had trouble getting the DVD player to work (it was plugged into a USB port it would not work with; it successfully worked on another USB port, so we labeled everything for her). Well, I thought initially the DVD player might not be working because it needed software, and opening File Manager found out the poor machine only had 63MB left on a [very small] 28GB hard drive. This meant I wouldn't even be able to install VLC on it for her to watch movies.

So anyway, the chicken got warm enough, James made me a dish of chicken and elbow macaroni, and I managed to delete enough stuff off it, and then Alex took over, and we managed to get it up to 5GB free and that was it, which means she can't even do Windows updates! We were ruthless: removed all extra browsers, anything she wasn't going to use (besides seeing movies she wanted to search for recipes online and read the news, all doable in Microslop Edge) and Windows was still taking up 80 percent of the 28GB. Sigh. I did load VLC, and we did show her how to use the DVD drive and she took dutiful notes, so I hope we were helpful!

In the meantime Juanita passed around little books for us to write notes in to send to Aaron Lawson in Wyoming and Colin up in Salem, MA (I bet he has fun this week!) to tell them we miss them.

We left about two o'clock, brought the leftover chicken home (everyone liked it, but I think it would have been better done in the oven; it would have been more difficult to cook, but I think the flavor would have been richer), and then took the chance and went to the Fall Jonquil Festival. It was heavily overcast all day and rained occasionally, and we thought we'd had it for a few minutes as we rolled past the booths and it sprinkled madly on us, but the actual rain managed to hold off. Smack Yo Mama barbecue sauce was there, so we got three bottles; the arthritis in James' hands is so bad he threw in the towel and decided to try a small jar of ointment with CBD oil in it; he bought a jar of very delicious cherry jam; and I got a little jar of espresso honey (and, oh goodness, is it coffee flavored!). We skipped sampling the dips this time, and have so much blackberry honey in the cupboard that I didn't buy a fresh one this time.

Of course the booths were mostly crafts: saw some very pretty gemstone jewelry, paintings, creations by The Button Girl, etc., and I was so tempted by a stained glass booth. They have all sorts of designs, but I was the most taken by a little window-shape of glass rectangles about 4x3 inches in a sort of Mondrian pattern—inexplicably it reminded me of Ste. Anne's Church in Fall River, MA. At the rear of the church they had tacked on rest rooms sometime mid-century (since when the church was originally built I'm sure there were still privies in the rear), and so there was still an outside stained glass window near the rest rooms, left there when they had bumped out that portion of the structure, at a level where you could touch the thick stained glass pieces leaded into patterns in the window. I used to love to run my fingers over the cold, smooth pieces of primary colored glass, bright ruby and emerald and gold, and these smaller squares of iridescence in the stained glass rectangle just brought that all back.

Then, very tired, we came home, had a light supper, and wandered about on the television dial from Good Eats to Keeping Up Appearances.

Labels: computers, food, friends, gatherings, health, shopping, sickness, television, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:07:00 PM

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Friday I'd headed up to Town Center in the hopes of hitting JoAnn, only to have forgotten the coupons. 🤔 Oh, well. Instead I went to Barnes & Noble (since I didn't forget that coupon) and then did most of the shopping at Publix. I got us some generic beef and gravy for supper, and some nice pork chops for the cookout on Saturday, plus hummus and crackers to share.

Also watched the last of the Charleston house segments on This Old House. This was what was called a "Charleston single," built in the 1800s. The house is actually turned sideways to the driveway and the "front door" leads onto a full-length porch before you get to the house doors. I understand putting modern appliances and plumbing fixtures in, but it pains me to see these beautiful old period homes with modern furniture in them and these stark white decorating schemes. I wouldn't want to dust Victorian tchotckes, either, but I wish there was more of a balance. All that chrome and white seems so cold (and I still hate stainless steel appliances). They also worked on a second house, in a historically black neighborhood. It was so badly damaged they couldn't finish it before the show ended, so they posted the "reveal" on Facebook. Why not just make an extra episode?

(Oh, and Friday afternoon I finally got the Audacity recording program to work on my computer after several years of not being able to use it. On this computer as well as the previous one, the newest version of the software (the older one would no longer work) would always say it could not find a source to record from. I finally bought the cheap version of Total Recorder to record and then would edit on Audacity. Well, last week TR quit working; stuff I recorded came out garbled. It's done this before, but the only thing I could do to fix it this time was make TR my default recorder. This disabled Audacity for editing. I'd looked for answers to the recording-on-Audacity before, even asked Audacity (they responded in technical gobbledegook I didn't comprehend), but I tried searching again—and this time found something that was understandable and worked. It was as simple as going into sound in Windows Control Panel and un-disabling the recording setting! Apparently this is something Windows does automatically. Stupid thing.)

Saturday morning and early afternoon we were planning to do some chores. This got postponed when James' replacement tablet showed up. He has an Ellipsis from Verizon, but it fell and the screen cracked. We have replacement insurance, and we had ordered a new one. To our surprise it was delivered before noon by the "brown truck of happiness," and we spent most of the time deleting all the rubbish they put on it, and putting useful things on instead (like James' e-books).

We had a great time at Alice and Ken's on Saturday night. Ostensibly it was a party to celebrate their new backyard, but it was spitting rain, so Ken grilled out under the carport again. I like the backyard. There's a concrete patio and the rest is in ivy and pine straw. No grass to cut in back! It was the usual crowd of friends, plus Clay and Maggi drove up from Warner Robins, and some of Alice's church friends came. James' marinade of the pork chops was prime, and we also enjoyed yellow rice, baked beans, the hummus, chips, fruit salad, watermelon, and Clay's bourbon fudge. (Yes, you could taste it.) Juanita surprised everyone by showing up without her cast (she had to have a broken bone fixed in her foot).

This morning we slept in, I walked the dog—on a rare summer morning that was sunny but only warm, not burning, and breezy, simply lovely; if it was in the 70s all summer I would not complain!—and we ate breakfast, then went off to Ikea. I can't proceed down in the library without buying a few small bookcases to fit in the spot where the desk once was. We got there at 11:30 and the place was already crowded; we didn't realize till we checked out that there is a Back to College sale this weekend.

Sadly, the restaurant doesn't offer any of the variety it used to. There was a nice looking salad that was ruined by feta cheese, a salmon plate with baby greens that would have been okay had I not wanted to burp up fish all afternoon, the usual meatballs, chicken tenders (ugh), and vegetable balls. I didn't want to eat fifteen meatballs, so just got cucumbers, tomatoes and carrots from the salad bar (other choice was lettuce) and ate one of James' meatballs and a couple of forkfuls of his mashed potatoes. We shared a slice of chocolate cake for dessert, and then marched on into the showroom. Saw a desk chair that looks promising. I don't want one with armrests—armrests are for supervisors who don't do any work—and this one had nice back support. Trouble is I'm in love with a drafting chair at Sam Flax, but it costs over twice as much.

Anyway, we picked up some S-hooks, an aluminum holder for wooden spoons, ginger cookies for me and chocolate ones for James, and three bookcases: a short full-width "Billy" and the same height but narrower one, and a full-size "Gnedby." I need to transfer some books (not sure which yet) so that my overflowing history book collection has somewhere to go. I've accumulated a bunch of World War I and more Victorian books since we got the original bookcases.

I also bought a cotton bedspread to correct a dumb mistake I made during the winter. I replaced our fall quilt (which had always been a bit too garish but was all I could find in my price range) with a comforter, which was stupid, as I'd already relegated our nice denim comforter to the closet because it was too heavy most of the year. This bedspread, in a cadet blue, has a nice waffle texture and is light enough to be used as an extra blanket if needed but not smothering.

Stopped at Publix for forgotten things and milk, had teriyaki chicken and ramen noodles for supper, I washed and dried the bedspread and put it on the bed, as well as sorting pills for the week, and then we finally watched A Capitol Fourth. I loved the Boston Pops and the super fireworks on Wednesday (Bloomberg is doing a great broadcasting job; go screw yourself, CBS), and Rita Moreno's performance was a blast, but Capitol Fourth, for once, had better musical guests: Jimmy Buffett, the Beach Boys, Pentatonix, and more. When Renee Fleming sang "You'll Never Walk Alone" I got goosebumps. And you should have seen Tucker and Snowy staring at us when we got up and danced to the Beach Boys! I think Tucker thought we were having a fit.

Labels: computers, food, friends, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:11:00 PM

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Third Sunday of Advent:Hygge and Hard Drives

Labels: Advent, Christmas, computers, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:33:00 PM

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Today was a crazy mixture of good and strange.

James and I had to be up early to get to Hair Day. We weren't going to be able to stay for lunch because he had to be at his club Christmas party today. Well, we did a stupid. James took his blood sugar, took his insulin, we fed the dog, we fed the bird, but we didn't feed either of us. So no sooner did he get his hair cut than his blood sugar crashed. I had to feed him two of the chocolates we brought and a can of Coca-Cola before he even got as high as 67. Plus on the way to Ron and Lin's he had barked his knuckles on his keys, and his skin is very sensitive on his hands since his first heart attack, so a tiny little spot kept bleeding. By the time we got home, he was back "on line" so to speak, but he ate a burrito and took his blood pressure to make sure it was okay, and I cleaned up the cut and rebandaged it, so he went off to the party as scheduled.

I was planning to go out to Betsy's Hallmark at East Cobb, but all the traffic was so bad that I just got exasperated and quit. Instead I drove to downtown Marietta, found a parking space in the square after two orbits, and wandered around for a bit. I went into The Corner Shop and bought a Terry's dark chocolate orange (there are other sliced chocolate oranges, but Terry's are the best) and some mint sauce for the next time we have lamb. Then I picked up my favorite Zesty Italian pretzels in The Local Exchange. On a whim, looking for sugar-free taffy for James, I went into the candy store, and was delighted to find Mint Juleps! These are squares of mint taffy that I remember buying from the penny candy counter at Tom's Superette when I was in the single digits. The Vermont Country Store used to sell them, then quit, and I couldn't find them online, so I thought they'd quit making them. Looks like Necco makes them now. I got a whole bag, which should last for months.

Finally I did a Christmas stroll around DuPre's antiques. I sadly noticed that they have removed the old receipts and waybills and price lists from around one of the doors, from when DuPre's was a hardware store. At Christmas they always pull out antique Christmas items or put little trees up in the different antique dealers' bays, and the decorations make me smile. Someone had crocheted bunnies for sale that looked just like Elizabeth's stuffed rabbit in The Bestest Present.

Then back to the car, which needed gas. I filled up at Kroger and since I was there, stopped for milk and sodium-free mushrooms, but they were out of the latter. They had a sale on pork loin roasts, $2/pound, so I got one.

Finally home. Yesterday at Publix I had found a little $2 package of pork rib tips. I cooked them in olive oil and basted them in Sweet Georgia Brown barbecue sauce and a little bourbon pineapple sauce. They were quite good and I put two aside. Then I felt like watching the Winona Ryder version of Little Women and that's what I was doing when James came home from his party, having had a good time and made out well at the "Dirty Santa" (gift exchange) game.

When the movie was over, we went out to MicroCenter and bought James a new computer. He looked at a Dell, but in the end he got one like mine, except his has a separate video card. Since he does game occasionally this works better for him. We got the computer home and cleaned out under the desk where the CPU sits, discarding a couple of old devices and putting a new network cable on it (the other was too short and kept pulling the router over backwards). James got into it quickly, but then the internet connection slowed to a crawl for no reason I can tell. This is like the third hour it's been updating, and it's only 89 percent. I've rebooted the modem twice and it speeds up and then immediately slows down again. We really need to install the new unit, but James wanted to wait after we got his computer up and running. It's getting old fast.

Then we tried to watch Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon off the DVR. Well, the satellite box has gone crazy. We'd watch about a minute of the show and then the DVR, on its own, would change the channel to 0 and we'd get ABC and that awful I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown was on to add insult to injury. I unplugged the unit and it didn't seem to make any difference, but it straightened out after I pressed the reset button. Well, at least for a while. We got to watch both shows, and the minute I deleted Young Sheldon the "0" thing started happening again. At first I though it was the remote getting stuck, but the box turned itself off and on when I started to change the batteries and the remote was empty! Dammit, the DVR still has a bunch of stuff on it I want to watch, movies I recorded when they had free HBO and Showtime weekends. I hope we don't have to replace it.

Labels: Christmas, computers, food, friends, shopping, television, traffic

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:39:00 PM

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I always save up my annual leave for Christmas. No use in taking time off in the spring or the summer when the weather is horrible; if it's going to be miserable anyway I might as well be at work. So, yay, I could sleep late, but not very. James was teleworking and I couldn't sleep.

He was teleworking today because earlier in the week we had noticed pink fluid dripping under the truck. Oh, no, transmission fluid is pink! Thursday he teleworked and I brought the truck over to NAPA Auto. Apparently in Toyotas coolant is also pink and that's what was leaking, from a hose that goes from the front of the engine to all the way in the back, so to replace the thing they had to take the whole intake manifold (? the top part of the engine anyway) off. So they didn't finish Thursday, but did have it by this morning so James could go off to his iron infusion this afternoon.

I had a Hallmark coupon for Amy's Hallmark on Dallas Highway, so I headed out there. I found a cute gift to put away. Then I walked down to Barnes & Noble to pick up a Christmas issue of "Smoky Mountain Living." The Dallas Highway store is the only one that carries this reliably.

I'd forgotten to put my 20 percent off all periodicals coupon in my wallet, so I swung by the house to get it. B&N is giving a 20 percent off discount to members this weekend, so it would be a good time to pick up the new "This England Annual" I saw on Monday. Picked up the January "Country Sampler" as well. (I'm enjoying 'em now. Won't be able to afford them next year.) Also used the 25 percent off coupon I got in e-mail and the 20 percent off coupon I got in the mail on two books about an American woman who marries a Frenchman.

I came home by Publix since I've managed to go there three times without dropping off the toys I collected for Toys for Tots—and I still forgot them in the car and had to bring them back in after I loaded the groceries in the hatchback (well since I was at Publix I might as well do the shopping, right?).

Once James got home we went to MicroCenter to buy a new hard drive for James' computer. James hasn't gotten a major Windows update since last November. Each time he tries it reaches 89 percent and goes to black. He has to reboot and put it back to the previous version. Well, when he tried it just recently it went to black and stayed there; it would not let him go back to the previous version. We figured the update fried the Windows operating system. So we were going to load Windows 10 onto a new hard drive; then we would get James' files off the old hard drive via an enclosure. By the time we got home, we were so bushed we just ordered chicken wings for supper and then got to work on loading Windows 10.

Except it wouldn't. I finally got on chat with Microsoft and this patient tech support guy worked with us for three straight hours to get this thing to load. But we kept getting an error message CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT. I looked it up and the tech did as well, and it...dammit...is a processor error. There's nothing wrong with the disc. There's everything wrong with the computer.

And...groan...another late bedtime.

Labels: books, cars, computers, food, magazines, shopping, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:59:00 PM

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So we were up at 8:20 this morning to have breakfast and walk Tucker before leaving for the RV Show. I wanted to get there as close to opening as possible, and we would have arrived there about 10:15 at the time we left. I put on "A Way With Words" and we headed down there via I-75.

Except I only remembered as we were approaching downtown that I left the free passes on the secretary. Right next to the stairs. Passed them leaving the house. Grrr. Given that getting in without them would cost $18, we turned around via Williams Street and dashed home as quickly as safety and law would allow so I could snatch up the passes and we could go back.

We got there at 11:15 instead, but it worked out okay after all: someone was just backing out of a handicapped parking space out front. We were there almost three hours and explored everything from those claustrophobic pods that are pretty much just a bed with a camping kitchen in the rear to a bus with three awnings that looked like it could be the party bus for the Rolling Stones (albeit cleaner). We actually found some kind of a little camper that was not claustrophobic and still could be pulled by our truck; we'd have to put a gardener's cart (like the ones they carry their lawn mowers on) on the back of it for the chair, though, or we'd have to stay stuck at the campsite. (I bet Tucker would love camping, though. I can see him trying to trail rabbits.) We saw a couple of pretty neat van conversions where the vans were more square, like a Transit. Some absolutely huge trailers, too, to be pulled by a large pickup truck, that had full-size refrigerators and electric fireplaces! And then there were the big buslike campers with ridiculous stuff, like lighted countertops and patterned ceilings and leather (ick) furniture. They did have washers and dryers, too, though, and nice queen-sized beds.

These shows always have gadgets (like knives and cookware) and services (like different campsites advertising) being sold, and I bought myself a little desk lamp to use at the sofa when I want to cross stitch and also three lights that look like light switches, but they hang on the wall and are battery powered. You switch them on and LEDs come on to light up small dark places. I want them for stacks in the library.

We got done a little after two and were ravenous, so we drove home—back through downtown and surprisingly encountered traffic (not so surprising after all; there was some do for the Atlanta Falcons heading off to Houston for the Stupid Bowl)—and had lunch/dinner at Ken's before going home.

Later on we watched last week's and this week's (the season finale) Alaska: the Last Frontier. As I was in the middle of this blog entry, the laptop dropped its wireless connection. I thought the router had died again, but it was fine. Either the Tenda wireless USB adapter has just quit or the laptop has quit responding to it. My "Q" key also doesn't work well anymore. It sounds like it is well and truly dying. :-( It's nearly nine years old, which I guess is geriatric for a laptop.

And, most aggravatingly, James tried connecting to the VPN at work one more time—and it worked flawlessly. That means something was wrong with the VPN yesterday, not either of the cell phones. Snellfrocky. Dirty socks.

Labels: computers, excursions, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:37:00 PM

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You know that old saying "May you live in interesting times"? Today was "interesting."

It actually started last night. Alice had her birthday dinner last evening and of course we went. An added treat was that dinner was at Keegan's, which has great food. We sat with Jerry and Sue Lawson (the tables were arranged bistro style). I got a steak sandwich with some really nice onion rings on top and James got bangers and mash. He said the bangers were not overly salty, a plus.

For some reason, James always tells me bad things at bedtime. If he's gotten reprimanded at work, or something's gone wrong, or the doctor has told him something worrying, he always tells me at bedtime. He says this is to not ruin my evening, which is fine, but it really ruins my sleep. So it was actually normal that it was almost time to get ready for bed when he told me he had this peculiar pulling pain under his right arm and under his right shoulder blade. Oh, hell. So very calmly I shut everything off, covered Snowy, got Tucker to bed, and then started asking questions. It had started when we got home. He had no chest pressure, pain down his arms, pain in his jaw, or any of the other symptoms the cardiologist warned him to beware of. His heart was not racing, he wasn't dizzy or woozy. It didn't get worse if he moved. There was just this low-level  pain.

So he took his blood pressure (a little high, as to be expected), pulse, etc. His sugar was high, but we really hadn't eaten until eight o'clock and it wasn't even eleven. Take a shower, I said, and keep the hot water on the painful area. Huh. The pain went away. Okay, we would avoid the emergency room, but call the doctor first thing in the morning. He called in sick to work. I don't know how he slept, but I was up once an hour making sure he was breathing.

He called Kaiser at eight, got a 9:20 appointment, and went back to bed.

Anyway, the nurse asked a lot of questions, and the doctor asked even more. She made him raise his arms all different ways, pushed on them, asked a bunch of questions about when the pain appeared and what he ate, checked his heart, etc, etc. Her conclusion was what I had been hoping: she said had the pain been under the left shoulder blade she would worry, but because it was under the right, started after he ate and went away with the shower she was pretty sure it was digestive, eating something too rich too late. Of course she warned us to get help immediately if it came back and was worse than before.

Since we were out anyway, we stopped at MicroCenter on the way home. I have been thinking of a new laptop and MicroCenter had a cheap one on sale, so I wanted James' advice. We looked at the two cheap ones and they were okay (they still had DVD drives), but they were so big! Then the salesman started pushing a more expensive machine on us and I walked away. We did come home with a new router—to try to install when we dare, since we haven't had much luck the last two times—and two new keyboards. James kind of messed up his Microsoft keyboard when he tipped some soda on it. I didn't need one, but I couldn't program the buttons on my old Microsoft keyboard anymore since I upgraded to Windows 10. These are ergonomic keyboards as well, with the "camel hump" in the middle. I'm hoping it will help the pain in my wrists. All three of them were on sale. Yay.

We came home for James to relax, but he was restless and took the turkey carcass and made soup from it, adding celery and onion. I found a real treasure online: someone has posted 127 of the 164 episodes of The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. Even better, these are copies of the original broadcast shows (even if some have been time-compressed and Rusty sounds like a squirrel), unlike the copies that have been shown on the side channels like MeTV and CoziTV. Poor Rinty and friends have been practically eviscerated by modern syndication—first the soundtracks have been completely replaced (not just the theme song or the credit music, but all the background music, too) with more modern music that is completely inappropriate for a 1950s show, and then for some reason parts of the dialog are redubbed. Adding insult to injury, Rusty has been dubbed in by a woman! At least these butchered ones I've seen were still in black and white; the ones they show in England have been colorized as well. Ugh. Anyway, I spent all afternoon and evening downloading them. The picture isn't good on some, and one is incomplete, and another lacks the credits, but they are all watchable and just hearing the classic closing theme makes me grin.

We had soup for supper, which suited James' digestion much better.

Labels: computers, dogs, health, sickness, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:48:00 PM

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So James got up for work and I got to sleep in. I really missed having him here today. Of course he's tied to the laptop for eight hours, but he's still here; it's very companionable between calls.

I wanted to make sure I got some bread today and we needed a paper, so after I took Tucker for a nice long walk—it was too pretty to just make it a short one, all bright and blue and breezy again—I skipped breakfast and went back to Publix. This time they had baguettes and I got the last double newspaper. I also picked up onions, Band Aids, Neosporin, and a small bottle of Dawn. Yes, I kept to my grocery list for once. Well, except for one thing: I bought a dozen of Davidson's eggs. These are safe to eat raw because they are pasteurized in the shell, so I made myself an eggnog for breakfast. This is what I had for breakfast all thirteen of my school years. We bought the eggs fresh from Stamps' farm and never worried about salmonella. Instead of that icky thick stuff you get in cartons and cans, this is fresh and light: eight ounces of milk, one egg, and less than two teaspoons of sugar. I remember that at Christmas mom would add nutmeg, and when it got really cold she would put some brandy in it.

And that was all I did outside today. I put the rest of yesterday's groceries away, aired out and made the bed, did my usual Sunday chores (counting out pills for the week, putting out my work clothes, getting my work bag ready for the week, setting up my lunch box, etc.), and spent the afternoon either listening to DishNet's Traditional Holidays music channel or watching back episodes of Elementary. Read a bit of Kirkpatrick's Thanksgiving, fiddled a bit more trying to get Paint Shop Pro 9 off my computer (it quit working and I've been trying to uninstall it and possibly reinstall it, but it keeps getting stuck in the removal process, even with a software removal tool I got from the PSP people), paid some bills through online banking, walked the dog again, did a blog entry for "Stir-Up Sunday," read the paper and cut out coupons, and a bunch of other little chores. Snowy sang to the Christmas music, and Tucker, looking depressed since James was not here, settled for sleeping on my right leg for a while.

James was home on time, having had a slow day, and we finished up the tortellini from last week and had a cucumber salad with peach vinegar dressing. Watched the lighting of the Christmas tree on top of the Macy's store at Lenox Mall, then The Durrells in Corfu (the final episode, it looks like), and a Thanksgiving episode of Alaska: the Last Frontier.

Labels: books, computers, food, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:19:00 PM

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You will be relieved that I'm not going to chronicle in excruciating detail this whole tiring affair. You'd be bored, and I don't want to go through it again.

It is a fact universally acknowledged by Microsoft users that Tuesday night is reserved for Windows upgrades. Last week was no exception.

Wednesday when I came home from work, I turned on the computer, saw the PowerSpec logo, then the Windows image that indicated the updates were being loaded to the computer. I went to change, and with one thing or the other, didn't notice until a half hour later that the screen was black, with a white blinking cursor. We rebooted, tried to reboot in safe mode, unplugged...anyway, nothing worked. I teleworked next day on James' computer, and during lunch, called Microslop. The tech walked me through all the stuff we did last night, and finally said that the update must have affected the system. He directed me to download a free copy of Windows 10, and I would have to do a clean install. It was about then I thanked God I made the New Year's resolution to back up every month. I had backed up on the first and had not transferred my DragonCon pictures from the camera yet. So I downloaded the Windows program on both a USB drive and burned it to a DVD disk, and then tried to get it to boot from my computer. It didn't work at first, and then I realized I had to change the boot order so it would boot from the USB or the DVD first. Trouble is, it didn't. That night James tried all sorts of tricks, but it simply would not boot.

So Friday at lunch I did some surfing and found a likely-looking desktop at MicroCenter and after supper we went to shop. As always, the salesman offered me a better plum—my dad liked to say that if you let me loose in an electronics store I would unerringly find the most expensive item there. No, I didn't buy a gaming computer; those prices are ridiculous. But I got a computer with an SSD drive (which I'd been wanting anyway) to use for Windows and programs, and then also bought a 1TB hard drive for files. (Windows now calls them "apps" instead of "programs"; bull—this is a real computer, one you can work on, not a measly tablet.) We brought it home, and, before plugging it in, started to install the hard drive. Which didn't come with a SATA cable. We couldn't cannibalize the SATA cable from the old computer, because the end which plugged into the computer wasn't the same as the slot on the new computer. Oh, well, we closed it up, turned it on, and logged on. It came up immediately. However, I didn't load anything, because I wanted to upgrade to Win10 before starting to do so. However, we followed the directions very carefully, and the computer wouldn't do what we wanted: ask us if we wanted to boot from the DVD-ROM drive. Finally James went into the BIOS of the new computer and discovered it boots to the main drive first. It must boot from the DVD to get this correct prompt, so James changed the order. But by this time it was midnight. We went to bed and left it for Saturday.

But not right away on Saturday—at first we had some fun at Hair Day. We hadn't gone since June and James was starting to get that hippie look, especially with the beard. We told Sheri we were going for the Captain Gregg look with the beard (but we had to show her a photo of Edward Mulhare ☺ ). We had sandwiches and fixings for lunch, and as always spent at least four hours gabbing. James now looks "shipshape and Bristol fashion, but I still never spied the Butlers' new cat, Sylvester; James did see him disappearing around a corner.

From Powder Springs we made our way back to MicroCenter and picked up two SATA cords with the correct clip-ends (SATA3 rather than SATA-whatever). We opened up the computer again and James supervised while I inserted the hard drive and also my card reader from the old computer (it was tight in there and my hands fit better). We had to open and close the enclosure a couple of times, but we finally got it up and going—so why weren't we seeing the hard drive in Windows file manager? I bounced around in setup for a while, including in Device Manager, and then James dredged a memory from his A+ training and went into a disk management area, and there was our hard drive. It needed to be initialized and formatted to show up. Alas, I connected the card reader to the only 9-pin connector I found on the motherboard, and it doesn't work, although it's got power.

Finally, we could load Win10—but it was still booting from the hard drive. Ah, same verse, same as the first; after we changed the boot order, the disk worked as promised and before we went off to Taste of Smyrna, we had Win10 installed and on the internet.

We always go to Taste of Smyrna about six o'clock, and that worked out really well this year; there were still plenty of parking spaces. A couple of the vendors had run out of food, but we still had time for our favorites: the drunken pork and creamy grits from Atkins Park (I loathe grits, but I love these) and the Pad Thai from a place whose I never remember. James had a chicken satai skewer with his Pad Thai, and he also had some Jamaican pork from Rodney's (they won this year's Taste of Smyrna award) while I had baked ziti from Maggiano's. We both had fresh lemonade to drink, and I brought a French silk pie tart home which we split. We left a little over an hour later, happily full, to go back to the computer grind.

Once I loaded CITGO I could coast. I spent the evening downloading a decent browser (Firefox) and then updating the bookmarks and passwords. This took a while. James went to bed early and I was still logging into websites. I got to bed around midnight.

I tried to sleep, but apparently I had microchips on the brain and only about six hours sleep. So I got up and walked Tucker, and then started loading software once more. After James had breakfast, it was still only ten o'clock, so we went to Sam's Club for mushrooms and Skinny Pop. Now, we had a petroleum pipeline break in Alabama, and gas for the Atlanta Metro Area has been getting scarce. We passed four or five gas stations completely out of gas, so instead of waiting to get gas at Sam's Club, James filled up at the next station with gas, and a good thing, too, because Sam's was completely out. There were no electric carts out front and one of the Sam's employees had to scrounge one up for James, and, like last time, the charge died halfway through the store. I had to grab a shopping cart and offload. But, excelsior, the Christmas stuff is finally out, so we were able to get slippers for James. (You never see slippers in Sam's or Costco except before Christmas.) His current ones are out on the sides from being worn so much; he's hard on slippers because he has to wear something on his feet at all times. We bought two pair.

Spent the rest of the afternoon...yes, loading software. I accidentally turned up my missing copy of WinZip, so that solves one mystery, and contacted Corel for the password to PDF Fusion, which I bought last year (afterwards I found out I had the password written down elsewhere). I got Eudora working and loaded all the personalities to go with the mailboxes.

For dinner we went to Longhorn to help celebrate David Gibson's birthday. We had a long, long table at the back of the restaurant, and had a great time. During dinner my supervisor called. There was a water main break at my building and the air conditioning died, and so everyone has been asked to telework tomorrow! Yay!

Yes, I finished the night loading more software! But then it was done.

Today was very slow. I have one order left and I basically supervised the questions going back and forth between the end user and a potential vendor, answered some invoice questions, and cleaned out my mailboxes. During lunch I transferred and backed up the DragonCon photos and the ones on my phone, then copied all of them to the backup disk. I also reloaded my organizer software. I had not put my saved calendar in a place where it would be automatically backed up, and you were not allowed to change the destination of the files in the program itself. So I un-installed and re-installed it, but did not have my old calendar file backed up, a bad oversight.

On the bottom of the printer shelves was a hard drive enclosure with my old hard drive in it (from the computer that died in 2010). I checked it out to see if there were any old files that I had missed copying over, and then took it out of the drive enclosure and replaced it with the hard drive from the recently-expired machine. The disk worked fine, so it must have been something wrong with the motherboard or the RAM of the old unit. I was able to extract my old calendar file from that drive and overwrite it into the organizer software. Now I don't have to put all those birthdays and anniversaries back in manually. Sadly, I could not recover my Inbox and Outbox from Eudora. It got creamed after Microsoft Security Essentials found a virus in one of my attachments and was never the same again.

When work was over, I connected my offsite backup drive to the computer and copied off all those files again. They will go to work and remain there as a safety net. So after four long days, the project is finished! Maybe I can go back to doing fun things like reading now. ☺

Of course now I'd love to do a clean install on James' computer...

I haven't mentioned that the new case has blue LED lights in it. After rejecting "Goulet" as a name, I instead, in a fit of whimsy when Windows asked if I wanted to rename the computer, called it "Converse."

Major bonus points to those who get the joke. ☺

In the meantime we enjoyed the season premiere of Big Bang Theory tonight. I spotted the fall preview TV Guide at Kroger Friday night (we were getting veggies for sandwiches and finishing up the shopping) and did buy it. But it's no fun anymore. I remember walking a mile to Food Town and later the mile and a half to Thall's to get the fall preview TV Guide every year. Just ain't the same 

Labels: computers, events, food, friends, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:01:00 PM

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Even sleeping until ten doesn't feel like enough sleep. Of course we did go to bed at two...

Instead of enjoying breakfast, James had juice and I had milk and then we went to Kroger. The weather report called for rain on and off all day. When I walked Tucker it was spitting, and it spit more as we used the car to go to Kroger. Picked up milk and bread and only a few other things.

I have a nifty app called "Flipp" that lets you look at the ad papers from the newspaper. So before we'd ever put the groceries up, I had looked through several of the ads. When James works at home, he uses the same desk I use when I telework (he bought it originally), plus a "side tray" that is supposed to be used with sofas and other living room furniture, but it is really too short; he has to crouch over it. In the Staples flyer we saw something similar that was labeled "laptop desk." I wondered if it was taller than the side trays.

There was only one way to find out. After we had the milk put up, we headed for Dallas Highway. It was still cloudy, but no longer spitting.

Alas, Staples was closed due to "technical difficulties" (probably no computers or no air conditioning). There's a Krystal next door, so we got a bite to eat, and then I turned the car's head toward Acworth—we were only twelve minutes away—for the store there.

Alas, the "laptop desk" was just as short as the "side table." However, we found a small square desk called a "laptop pedestal," on a tripod of legs, and that tripod had an adjustable center column. Problem solved. It wasn't on sale, but it did work, so, alas, "alas" is at an end.

Since we were next door to Books-a-Million, we stopped in for a frozen hot chocolate. On the way home we stopped at Michaels so I could get some paintbrushes.

Once home, we assembled the little pedestal. It's not tremendously strong, but it holds a laptop well. James also was able to log on with his work laptop after having password problems the last time he tried to telework.

For the rest of the afternoon we worked on a small decluttering project: between the two of us we had three small, very old "netbook" type computers that had not been used for years (one was eleven years old). One by one they were brought out of hiding and we factory reset them and they are in a box to donate (since they still work), although Goodwill will probably throw them away.

We had Italian wedding soup for supper and watched Aerial America for the evening. As we worked on our computer projects, it rained, clouded, sunned, clouded, rained again (including one explosive downpour right around dinnertime), clouded and cleared, and when I took Tucker out at 8:30, the sky was mostly clear and the awful stifling heat that made me so sick yesterday had cleared for a bit. Fireflies were already bumping around, and down near the retaining pond, a frog was croaking.

Labels: computers, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:15:00 PM

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So I slept until nine, had fairly nice dreams, and am still stiff and tired when I get up. Can't be the bed; it's so comfy I don't want to get up. Must be Simply Sixties.

By the time I walked the dog and ate some oatmeal it was much too late to "beat the heat" as I planned, but I went out anyway. I picked up a nice paintbox at Michael's, and then went to Best Buy to look at a tripod they had on sale. It was actually too expensive and I was seeing if they had anything less expensive. I did find one. Of course I had to traipse the store to find the cameras and the tripods. During the search I found a nice-looking stove that I would love to buy for James. It's half black enamel and half stainless steel and had a convection oven. In the stove area I also found these neat stoves with double ovens, but not a type I've seen before. They are called Flex Duo, and instead of having two doors and two small ovens, it has one large oven divided by a removable metal partition. You can either open the small top area with a special latch on the oven door, or not use the latch and open the full oven. If you have the partition in, both ovens have their own convection fan. Alas, the cheapest of them was $1,300.00. But it's sure a cool idea; if you are only baking chicken legs or lamb shanks you can just use the top.

Needed to use the bathroom, so went over to Barnes & Noble. Looked around and bought Girl Waits With Gun that one of the folks on my regular blogroll really enjoyed. Stopped at the mall to see if Cumberland's Tokyo Express has the $1.49 "skewers." Alas, no, but the samples I garnered held me over so I could go to Publix. They had the Post "Great Grains" cereal on BOGO this week, so I bought more crunchy pecan. Amazingly, got out of Publix having only spent $22. I ate one of the Chicago rolls I bought for lunch and went to Sprouts.

I love Sprouts' stuff, but they continually flummox me with some of their services. Today they had Italian wedding soup, so I wanted to get a big container for Sunday supper. They were out of large containers. They were out of medium containers. I asked at the deli if there were more large containers. They said no. "But," I said, "I wanted a large container." They looked at me like I had two heads. Is it completely inexplicable that I might want a large container of soup? Isn't that why they make it, to sell it? In the end, I had to fill four of the small containers and tell them at checkout so I could get the large container price.

But they had cherries! Lovely, lovely cherries! And I actually found a bag that did not look like pie cherries and the cherries tasted decent.

And then when I got home the internet was down. Or, rather, the router was throwing one of its fits. I have to reboot it while pressing this button on top over and over. The strange thing is, when I look up what the function of this button is, it has nothing to do with the router asking for a password, which is what the router does if I don't press the button in rhythmic progression when I reboot it. Strange.

Walked the dog. At this point it was 93°F. Even when I retreated to the shade of the trees around the retaining pond it wasn't any cooler. Came in to watch a couple of Lassie episodes, since they're finally not showing the same fifty or so episodes over and over any more, but having some Corey Stuart stories, and by then James was home.

This time it's James taking me to Panera, because he's really fallen for the Chinese Cashew salad. I had it, too, and it's still yummy, but it came up on me all evening. We had a brief retreat after I left my hat there, but then we went to Barnes & Noble so James could look around. He found a magazine with a big article on F104s, but nothing else, as there's a book he wants to save our via-mail coupons for that is being released next week. I was tempted by Social Security for Dummies, but found out a new version is coming out next week, so I'll probably save a coupon for that.

When I walked Tucker at nearly ten o'clock it was still 83! Lord, I hate summer!

Labels: computers, food, shopping, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:54:00 PM

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Since Monday and especially Tuesday are going to be stressful, I wanted to chill out today after I finished going to Kroger. I just wish I'd slept better. I didn't understand why I hadn't slept properly until I realized I forgot to take my pills last night. This explains why my heart was so jumpy when I got up.

After breakfast and the morning dog walk, I went to Kroger. It was chilly this morning, a jacket day to start, and I had a hat on when I took Tucker out, but by the time I got to Kroger just the jacket sufficed. I got the usual things—bread, milk, burritos, Those Damn Bananas—plus the stuff I needed for tomorrow: juice and Crystal Light to put into the "antifreeze." Once that was finished, I could go and have some fun, so of course I went to the bookstore. Picked up something I was looking for, plus a fat cross-stitch magazine compilation with a beautiful owl pattern in it, a Sherlock Holmes book off the remainder shelves, and, with a coupon, The Twilight Zone FAQ. Didn't even know this was out. Made note of a new book about the daily life of a NYC police officer, a real NYPD Blue, as it were.

Checked in Toys'R'Us for a few minutes (not much to be found there), then ate a teriyaki bowl with steak at Tin Drum. This is my last meat until Tuesday night. Arrived home after noon, intending to put the groceries away and then do a little cleaning. Instead spent most of the afternoon chatting with Jerry about our router problems.

Just had rice and soup for supper and finished Alex Bellos' The Grapes of Math. The news was followed by 10 Homes That Changed America and a three-hanky episode of Call the Midwife (which I thought was a bit manipulative). I will miss Sister Evangelina; she was my favorite of the nuns. Finally, there was the "two-hour event" Elementary, in which Joan meets someone she didn't know existed. Unfortunately this didn't end until 11:30, probably due to some ridiculous sports event that pushed everything back a half hour, so we were very late going to bed.

Labels: books, computers, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:38:00 PM

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I don't know what this foot pain (and elbow pain) is, but it's a fat pain in the...well, you know. Every turn I made in bed night I hit something that hurt: one ulnar nerve or the other, or what I've identified as the end of the metatarsal bone for the small toe (both feet, but the left one hurts worse), or my right knee, which seems to have gone on sympathy strike with everyone else. Finally, after James got up to start work, I limped into the bathroom, took four ibuprofin, and went back to bed until nine o'clock. I'd like to say it worked wonders, but I'd be lying. I limped through walking the dog and when I went to Kroger brought James' cane and took one of the carts. I bought a new sunhat at Costco Friday night, a tight-weave hat that is supposed to have an SPF rating of 50, and I wore that to keep off the steady light rain.

Popped around Kroger as fast as I could go without forgetting something, including picking up some Easter cards. Found our Easter candy, too, two small dark chocolate Lindt bunnies and six Cadbury chocolate eggs; there's Easter week dessert right there. :-)

Wanted to do something fun for about an hour, so headed to Barnes & Noble. Had to get past an accident on the East-West Connector on the way, but made it there in one piece. Such a PITA having to move so slowly! Just checked out the magazines, took a couple of notes of books I wanted to buy, and, even though I didn't have a coupon, bought the first Longmire book. Sometimes you just gotta buy a book without a coupon. :-)

James was at lunch when I got home, so he was able to help heft all those groceries up the stairs, and then I could change into comfortable clothes, have a sandwich, and check out the new mouse. For the afternoon, I put the 1940s UK radio station on and we listened to the Fabulous Forties all afternoon. I reloaded the new version of Citrix on my desktop, and that seemed to work fine, so then took a deep breath and tried loading Windows 10 onto the desktop again. I have been unable to do it for months because wayyyyyy back when this computer was on XP I had Nero 7 on it to burn DVDs. When I upgraded to Win7, Nero wouldn't work any longer. I tried to uninstall it, but the uninstall never completed. It didn't bother the performance of the computer, so I just left it. However, when I tried to upgrade to Win10, it stubbornly said it could not install without that fragment of Nero being uninstalled.

Finally I went to Nero's site and found something that was supposed to work, and I guess it did, because Win10 finally loaded this time. Except...sigh...now WordPerfect won't work. I get a Microsoft Visual Basic Runtime error. Seriously? I suppose I can reload it, but...what a PITA, guys. (Also, Eudora mailboxes won't compact again. I hope it doesn't end up being a problem like last time.) I'll wait to see if anyone on Facebook has input first.

We had macaroni for supper and are now waiting for the Disneyland anniversary special.

Labels: books, computers, health, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 7:56:00 PM

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