I had every intention of blogging last night, but then we got hit by a whopper of a thunderstorm which wiped out power until around 9:30 this morning. I can count myself lucky, though. Many areas in my town still don't have power, and in fact my mother's entire town is without. Mom has been told that she shouldn't expect power until tomorrow or Friday, so I expect that she and my siblings will be filing through here over the next couple of days to shower, relax and cool off. Which meant more scrambling to tidy up. I haven't vacuumed, and they'll just have to suck it up. No pun intended. For that matter, I don't mean it literally. I've just had images of mother and siblings on hands and knees sucking dirt off the floor like a vacuum which, while kind of amusing, is also fairly disgusting. I'm sure they'd think so, at any rate!
I had to stay up all night last night because Randy needed to be up for work at 6 AM, but our clock was out with the power. So I stayed up until 5 playing Pitfall on Game Boy by candlelight, or reading through use of a book light clipped to my top because the book was a paperback and couldn't hold the heavier light. The light was roughly over my heart and I thought "If anyone sees me through those blinds, they'll think I'm E.T." At 5 AM I set the portable oven timer for an hour, placed it at our bedside and went to bed. Voila! He was up in time. I, on the other hand, got only about 4.5 hrs. sleep and am groggy. This afternoon I wrote 2 checks at the same time, and dated them both 8/13/08! The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that I was trying to hold the fact that this is '08 in my head (I've had trouble with that lately, and I don't know why) and I thought somehow that today was the 13th, which it isn't. The ladies at the bank laughed at me and, to be honest, I laughed at myself. It's nice to be able to do that once in awhile. After (very little) thought, I decided to stay home from work today. I'll have no trouble getting the rest of my hours in over the next couple of days, and who knows if they even had power there anyway? I ran a bunch of errands and such instead, including the purchase of an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock.
I found out that gas- which is $4.44/Regular- is going up $0.18 today or tomorrow. *sigh* I topped off my tank and then picked up Randy's truck and filled that up for him as well.
At long last I was able to come home and fire up my computer to blog and be blogged. My internet connection has been acting up lately, but there's a quick fix for it to get it going, so when I got that imperative yellow exclamation mark next to my internet connection icon, I wasn't worried about it. But this time the fix didn't work. I followed the various troubleshooting suggestions, to no avail. I wound up losing my network connection altogether. I decided to reinstall the software for my router in case that was part of the problem, but it still wasn't working. Mind you, my husband's laptop was still working properly, so despite the troubleshooting suggestions I didn't really believe that the router was to blame. Then McAfee warned me with its ominous red box of death that my computer wasn't properly protected, and that I needed to dump my current version of McAfee and download it again. That wouldn't be a problem as it comes free with my cable internet service. But of course, I couldn't connect to the internet, so the warning was pretty pointless.
I'm not sure why it did all of that, or why it suddenly fixed itself. Because it did. My mother called me about her (lack of) power situation, and while I was speaking with her, my computer's network and the router made peace with one another, and McAfee has decided that it's okay and doesn't want to be replaced after all. My connection has been restored. I am now afraid to turn off my computer.
But I currently have everything back to normal with a purring cat in my lap. She demanded petting, and there was much fur floating in the air during the process. Another thing for my family to suck up. ;0)
The good news is that over the past couple of days Randy was able to hang all of the new doors and get them to fit properly. One doorway was an odd, in-between size so Randy had to borrow my uncle's planer to shave it down. All done, and looking pretty. It'll look prettier when painted; the primer now has dirty hand prints all over it after my poor husband's struggles.
Also, he found the last air-conditioner to be had at the store yesterday. Our only double-hung windows are a little too small for an air-conditioner to fit in, however a new one has been designed for windows such as ours. It stands alone and is portable. It has a plastic piece which covers all of the open space of the double-hung window, except for one circular spot. A large tube feeds from the conditioner to this hole, rather like a dryer's venting system. It's also remote controlled for those of us who thought we couldn't possibly get any lazier.
Ain't life grand?
I had to stay up all night last night because Randy needed to be up for work at 6 AM, but our clock was out with the power. So I stayed up until 5 playing Pitfall on Game Boy by candlelight, or reading through use of a book light clipped to my top because the book was a paperback and couldn't hold the heavier light. The light was roughly over my heart and I thought "If anyone sees me through those blinds, they'll think I'm E.T." At 5 AM I set the portable oven timer for an hour, placed it at our bedside and went to bed. Voila! He was up in time. I, on the other hand, got only about 4.5 hrs. sleep and am groggy. This afternoon I wrote 2 checks at the same time, and dated them both 8/13/08! The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that I was trying to hold the fact that this is '08 in my head (I've had trouble with that lately, and I don't know why) and I thought somehow that today was the 13th, which it isn't. The ladies at the bank laughed at me and, to be honest, I laughed at myself. It's nice to be able to do that once in awhile. After (very little) thought, I decided to stay home from work today. I'll have no trouble getting the rest of my hours in over the next couple of days, and who knows if they even had power there anyway? I ran a bunch of errands and such instead, including the purchase of an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock.
I found out that gas- which is $4.44/Regular- is going up $0.18 today or tomorrow. *sigh* I topped off my tank and then picked up Randy's truck and filled that up for him as well.
At long last I was able to come home and fire up my computer to blog and be blogged. My internet connection has been acting up lately, but there's a quick fix for it to get it going, so when I got that imperative yellow exclamation mark next to my internet connection icon, I wasn't worried about it. But this time the fix didn't work. I followed the various troubleshooting suggestions, to no avail. I wound up losing my network connection altogether. I decided to reinstall the software for my router in case that was part of the problem, but it still wasn't working. Mind you, my husband's laptop was still working properly, so despite the troubleshooting suggestions I didn't really believe that the router was to blame. Then McAfee warned me with its ominous red box of death that my computer wasn't properly protected, and that I needed to dump my current version of McAfee and download it again. That wouldn't be a problem as it comes free with my cable internet service. But of course, I couldn't connect to the internet, so the warning was pretty pointless.
I'm not sure why it did all of that, or why it suddenly fixed itself. Because it did. My mother called me about her (lack of) power situation, and while I was speaking with her, my computer's network and the router made peace with one another, and McAfee has decided that it's okay and doesn't want to be replaced after all. My connection has been restored. I am now afraid to turn off my computer.
But I currently have everything back to normal with a purring cat in my lap. She demanded petting, and there was much fur floating in the air during the process. Another thing for my family to suck up. ;0)
The good news is that over the past couple of days Randy was able to hang all of the new doors and get them to fit properly. One doorway was an odd, in-between size so Randy had to borrow my uncle's planer to shave it down. All done, and looking pretty. It'll look prettier when painted; the primer now has dirty hand prints all over it after my poor husband's struggles.
Also, he found the last air-conditioner to be had at the store yesterday. Our only double-hung windows are a little too small for an air-conditioner to fit in, however a new one has been designed for windows such as ours. It stands alone and is portable. It has a plastic piece which covers all of the open space of the double-hung window, except for one circular spot. A large tube feeds from the conditioner to this hole, rather like a dryer's venting system. It's also remote controlled for those of us who thought we couldn't possibly get any lazier.
Ain't life grand?
I like starting my work days reading your blog. :)