I admit it – I’m a sucker for most every thing that Sonic makes. We love Sonic. They have good food, great drinks and even better desserts. We love all of their Blasts (like a Blizzard at Dairy Queen, which we don’t have here any more). And we love their shakes. This month, they have this:
Seriously – what’s not to love? Ice cream blended with hot fudge sauce and Oreo cookies. We had one this weekend… and I intend to have more before April is over! 😀
Hello? Anybody out there? Anyone, Bueller, anyone?! 😀
Our Internet service – computers and phone – have been down for the last 2 days or so. Thankfully our TV was not down, or else I might have gone stark raving mad!
To make a long story short – we lost power Tuesday evening early and apparently it shorted out our cable modem. Unfortunately, we got caught in the middle of the conversion of our cable/Internet/phone from Time Warner to Comcast. As I blogged about a few days ago, I’m not feeling very Comcastic 🙂 They had all sorts of trouble getting us a new modem (we drove to the office to get one ourselves, cutting our time from one week on a service call to a few hours for us to go pick it up), and then they couldn’t get the modem setup in their activation system or their billing system. Tim has spent countless hours on the phone with their customer service, trying to get it resolved. We still aren’t out of the woods yet – we still have to make the switch in our email address.
And, on top of that, Tim is so aggravated with the cable company, that he wants to shuck it all out the window and go get DSL through the phone company and mount a satellite on our house to get our TV that way. So, this may be the first of many outages for my Internet access and email. Oh, and to be safe, if you want to email me (provided I have Internet access), don’t use the roadrunner account any more. You can leave me a comment here and I’ll send you the email address I will keep and use through the conversion process.
On the bright side, I got a lot done around the house with no Internet access and no phone service! I watched some TV, did a lot of reading, caught up on the laundry and housework, baked some banana bread, and the biggie – started cleaning out our home office. You literally could not see the top of the desk, and I’m starting to see desktop wood now! Woo-hoo 🙂 I still have a ways to go, but I made a really large dent in it!
Hope everyone else is having a great week! Our technological woes continue around here. I hope they don’t rub off on anyone else 
I realize my little blog has been more boring than normal lately. I seem to just be posting memes, and of course, I do post a photo every day (usually with a little story or blurb) over at my Project365 blog. Go check it out if you haven’t lately (shameless plug!). 😀
I thought it was time for another Question of the Day… today’s question is all about puzzles. Do you work any kind of puzzle- crossword puzzle, other word puzzles, Sudoku puzzles, or any other kind? If so, what do you do and what do you like? Do you work them online, in the newspaper, in books, or what?
Here’s my answer – puzzles are sort of a happy thing for me. I like them and go through phases of doing them myself. I went through a huge Sudoku phase last year, where I worked a lot of Sudoku puzzles. Mostly online, or ones in the newspaper. I know my sister Gail bought a book, and I think my sister Suzanne bought a book for our dad. We are trying to get him interested in something! Puzzles are a happy reminder to me of my mom. My mother got up every morning and worked the crossword puzzle in the newspaper. She worked the “Jumble” too. She loved puzzles and she was really really good at them. She knew all of those obscure “crossword puzzle words” that they use that the average person doesn’t know. It’s an omnipresent memory I have of her, working the puzzle every morning, drinking her coffee and smoking her cigarette. (I won’t jump on that bandwagon today. Cigarettes are nasty things and they took their toll on my mother before she passed away).
Lately, I’ve been doing these “word-seek” puzzles. You know the kind, where you find them forward, backward, vertical, diagonal, in a block of letters. I used to do those when I was younger, and I’ve been on a little kick with them again lately. I’m sure this too, shall pass 😀
So, how about you? Do puzzles of any kind interest you at all? If so, what kind, where or how do you work them? Leave me a comment and let me know!
Now this is a holiday I can totally and thoroughly embrace – today is National Goof-Off Day! Click here to read a little bit about it. I thought it was sort of interesting that it all sort of stems from Nintendo and a study they did that showed males of a certain age would rather spend their free time playing video games than anything else. Well… DUH!
I’m actually going to do my very best to observe this most wonderful of holidays today. I’m hoping to goof-off and watch some TV, maybe catch up on reading blogs, and read a book. What about you? What would you do if you could goof-off some today? For an hour, for a few hours? What’s your favorite way to goof-off? That’s today’s Question of the Day! Leave me a comment and let me know – and be sure to enjoy today! Have fun goofing off! 😆
Not too much blog-worthy going on around here, but I thought I’d do a short set of bullets:
Yep, that’s me, a weather nut! I am the kind of person who really needs to know what the weather is going to be like. I watch the Weather Channel a lot, and I load weather information on my computer. I watch the local weather forecasts and I even glance at it in the newspaper, even though I can get more up to date weather from the TV or Internet. I just like to know what the temperature and forecast is going to be – which is in diametric opposition to Tim. Tim could care less and never has a clue what the weather is going to be. He will make plans to play golf on a day when there’s a 90% chance of rain. He never knows. If it wasn’t for me incessantly informing him of the weather, he would never know. Truth be told, I think he likes it that way 🙂
Believe it or not, it was Tim that suggested that I ask this as a Question of the Day; he thinks there are two kinds of people. Those who follow the weather, very faithfully, and those who could care less. Plain and simple.
So – which one are you? Do you care about the weather and watch the forecast or not? Leave me a comment and let me know!
We woke up this morning to find that our new cable provider, Comcast, has shuffled our channel line-up. And I’m not talking about a couple of random changes, or removing one channel to add another. I’m talking about a whole change up in our channel listing.
Let me tell you, for a TV-aholic like myself, this is not a good thing. We had upgraded to digital cable last year when we got our new hi-def plasma television, and it’s taken me a while to learn a lot of the new channels. There’s so many channels on here, that I don’t like just scrolling up and down through them — it takes too long. I like to memorize the channels that I watch often, and just punch in the number and flip right to them. WELL. Today, they are all different. They’ve totally moved such channels as our hi-def ABC, NBC, Fox, as well as channels like Discovery, TLC, History Channel, all of the sports channels, all of the news channels, Spike, Family Channel, Hallmark Channel, etc. It’s enough to make me not a happy camper for today.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg though, and I know the worst is coming. We also get our Internet service through our cable company. Soon, I’ll have to change over my email address and go through all of those hoops to get it all changed. I have SO many things tied to my email address, and its going to be a pain in the patoot to get it all switched over. I just hope that we don’t lose our Internet access for any length of time. I hate being without my Internet!
So, that’s my gripe for today. And it’s also a segue into today’s Question of the Day: Do you have cable or satellite TV? Do you have memorized the channel numbers of your favorite channels, or do you just surf through the channels? Also, do you get your internet service through your cable company, your phone company, or another way? We are going to look at changing to satellite later this year, so inquiring minds want to know!
You know that ole saying “O, Woe is Me”. That’s me today 🙁 My new laptop is not making my life very happy. It’s not the laptop, the hardware is fine. It’s the new operating system, Microsoft Windows Vista. Vista is, quite simply put, a nightmare! We have had problem after problem. I can’t get most of my programs to run under Vista. I can’t get a lot of my data transferred (from Outlook) into their new mail/calendar program. We’ve already had to wipe the hard drive once and start over. That worked for about 3 days and now I’m having more problems. Last night, my email locked up and I lost a lot of mail. So, if you’ve emailed me lately and are waiting on a reply, there’s a good chance I no longer have your email to reply back to. I’ve also lost all the emails I had stored in folders, to save.
I really am quite exasperated, and I don’t know what to do. I really want a laptop and I love everything about this one except Vista. Tim, I think, sort of wants to take it back, but we don’t have a lot of options. We can’t walk into a store and buy any brand of laptop that doesn’t have Vista on it. A Mac or iBook is not an option for me. Neither of us know the first thing about Apple computers. I come from a Windows background, as does Tim, as well as him being a Unix guru. We’ve both thought about wiping the hard drive and installing Linux, but we haven’t gotten that drastic. For one thing, I don’t think I can use iTunes (for my iPod) on Unix.
ACK! My head is about to explode. I’ll try to post later today with a fun question or maybe something remotely interesting. I have a book that I finished that I wanted to review, but quite honestly, I’m so distraught about the laptop right now that I can’t quite think straight. Later, alligators 😀
Tim sent me an email earlier today that had some one-liners in them. Some of them were funny, some of them were crass, and a few even tried to be profound. This one was my favorite:
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
So, I guess that’s the thought for today!
Oh, and happiness for me is what I’m doing right now — sitting out on my deck, reading my book, listening to Tim and Beau play in the back yard, hearing the birds singing, then hearing the bells at the church nearby chime and play a hymn on the hour. I just realized that it’s not going to be dark soon, and I can read for a while longer before I have to go inside and cook supper. Sounds like heaven, n’est-ce pas?!
That almost makes up for how tired I am from “springing forward”! 😀 Is anyone else feeling the effects of the time change?
Happy Anniversary to my darling Tim – the love of my life and the most wonderful man I know. Tim was brave enough to take me on and promise to love, honor and cherish me all the days of his life, on this day, eleven years ago. He’s done that and more – Tim treats me like the most important person in his life, every day of the year, no matter what is happening in our lives. He’s so good to me, and I love him dearly. Tim – I can’t imagine my life without you, and I hope I never will. I promise here again, to love you with all of my heart, for all of the days of our life here on earth, and afterwards for all eternity. I love you totally and completely, as I know you love me.
Happy Anniversary sweetheart!
Today’s Question of the Day is a bit different from the others I have asked in the past. Today, I’d like to give you a hypothetical situation and see what you would do.
Let’s say that someone you’re close to, a family member or friend, gives you a gift of a scented toiletry item. For example, a bottle of perfume, some scented body wash or body lotion. You’re thrilled because you love this type of stuff! But, after you use it a couple of times, you realize you don’t like the scent. What do you do?
Do you keep it and use it anyway? Do you use it and then once you realize you don’t like it, do you … throw it away? Put it away in a cabinet or drawer and forget about it? Do you give it to another friend for her to try? What would you do?
Leave me a comment and let me know!
Hope everyone has a great weekend! We’re going to be busy. It’s beautiful outside and we have some stuff to do – pruning, weeding, cleaning up, etc. I also have a really long list of things that need to be worked on and fixed on my new laptop. Then, there’s housework. Who knows how much of which will get done! 🙂
Well, today has been a day of good and bad things happening. Thankfully, the good totally outweighs the bad. 😀 Here’s a quick rundown:
The Bad:
1. Tim woke up with a bad headache and has had it all day. Tim NEVER gets headaches. Headaches make Tim a grouchy man.
2. My laptop that we got last weekend is driving me batty. I installed some programs I was using on my Windows XP desktop. Something went horribly wrong and the PC would blue screen every time it restarted. The problem got progressively worse, and last night, Tim declared that we had to totally wipe the hard drive and start over. Even wipe out what was already pre-installed on the laptop when we opened the box. The laptop that came with ZERO disks to reinstall stuff. Argh. He was a huge help and got all of that back on. Now, I’m slowly, one piece at a time, trying to rebuild what I had loaded over the last 5 days. At least 12-15 hours of work, maybe more, that was all lost. And we’re still not sure which program caused the problems. Argh. I am not happy with Windows Vista right now.
3. CBS did not show Survivor here last night, because of the SEC basketball tournament. I was not happy. Luckily, it came on at like 2 AM and we were able to tape it. Now, we have to watch the tape, and I’m avoiding all blogs that might mention Survivor.
The Good:
1. The sun is shining and it’s a beautiful day here. Tim is working from home and helping me with my laptop.
2. My library FINALLY got upgraded to a new online system. I went into the library to get setup for it. I can now renew books online, place a hold on a book online, and see what books I have checked out and when they are due. All online! This may not seem like much to anyone else, but this is a vast improvement over what I had before. This makes Stacy a very happy girl!!!
3. While in the library to get setup, I checked out 3 books. They are: The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, Morality for Beautiful Girls (part of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series) and 44 Cranberry Point (part of the Cedar Cove series by Debbie Macomber). Yeah for new library books!
4. While out running errands, I found a new Life is Good t-shirt and Tim bought it for me. These are my favorite products on the planet. Can’t get enough of them. YIPPEE!
5. While out running errands, I found two books I was lacking to complete a series of books by Wanda Brunstetter. I can’t stand to read series books out of order. I have this weird idiosyncrasy about it, and prefer to get the whole series in my grubby little hands before I even start it. Go figure.
6. Tim got his anniversary present today. He is like a kid at Christmas. Read a little about it, and see the pictures, here.
7. Tim took me out to eat for date night. We went to a local rib place and got some wonderfully delicious ribs for two. Baked beans, coleslaw, potato salad and Texas toast on the side. With enough left over for lunch on Saturday. And best of all, we saved all of the bones for Beau. Beau is a happy dog 😀
Anything exciting going on out there in your world? I am probably going to spend an inordinate amount of time this weekend, trying to reload programs and data on this new laptop. Which will put me even further behind on reading all of your blogs and catching up with what’s going on. I hope to come by and visit soon 😛
I haven’t been blogging a lot lately. Life seems to get in the way sometimes, huh? But, today, I wanted to ask a question of the day. I always love reading everyone’s answers! Today’s question is all about how you start your day. Do you eat breakfast in the morning? I know a lot of people don’t, and that’s ok too, but it’s just not us.
We’re breakfast people in our house. We were both raised by moms who thought we should start the day off right. Tim’s mom used to get up every single morning and fix them a big breakfast before they got on the bus. Breakfast was big in my house too, and to this day, it’s one of my favorite kinds of food. I have fond memories of my dad fixing pancakes on an old Presto electric griddle we used to have. We eat breakfast every morning here, and we often have breakfast foods for dinner. At least once a week, sometimes more. In fact, I love breakfast food so much, that one year for my birthday, I asked Tim to take me out to eat breakfast rather than dinner. 😀
On an average weekday, we have coffee, juice and a bowl of cereal. We keep two kinds of cereal in the house lately. Tim is on a Raisin Bran Crunch kick, and I’m on a Yogurt Cheerios kick, although I love the Raisin Bran crunch too. On the weekends, we either have cereal or maybe eggs, sausage and grits or even pancakes or waffles.
So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: Do you eat breakfast? Does everyone in your house eat something different? Do you eat at home, in the car, at your desk at work, or not at all? Do you eat the same thing every day or something different every day? Do you eat a big breakfast on the weekends? Do you just skip breakfast all together and wait for lunch?! Inquiring minds want to know 😀
In case you haven’t checked my Project365 blog in the last day or so, you might want to check out today’s photo here.
Then you can see a pitiful picture of my awesome new laptop! We are getting our anniversary presents a little early this year. Tim is getting a new set of irons (golf clubs) and I just got this incredible new laptop. I’m in the very beginning phase of trying to move all of my data and programs over from my old desktop to the new laptop. I don’t think anyone ever realizes how much they have on their computer that they use until it’s time to restore or move it over! 🙂 The only problem I’m having is that some of my programs don’t work quite right under Windows Vista, and I’ve learned that moving iTunes and the music from your iPod is quite an involved task 🙄
On the bright side, it’s a really cool computer. It’s got a great 17″ screen and tons of extra geeky things that we are going to have a blast playing with. Like a webcam, which is new for us, and a TV tuner too. It even came with 2 different remote controls that we can use on all of the media options. Tim is really looking forward to playing with the tuner, once I get most everything else setup.
In the mean time, I’ll be spending every spare minute trying to get my “stuff” moved over and setup. Maybe in a week or two, huh?! I’m going to get further behind in all of my blogging and visiting my favorite blogs.
Hope everyone has a great week!
I mentioned in a previous post that Tim and I ended up eating out on Tuesday night, while we were out shopping for replacement parts for our website’s servers. We tossed around several suggestions of places we both like to eat, that we had been to before. Believe me, we don’t have any trouble finding places to eat out! We both love to eat, we both love food and we both like to eat out. And we do, quite often.
Anyway, a new place opened near our house, a chain restaurant that is new to our area. Neither of us had eaten at one of these restaurants before, and since it’s a sports/family themed type place, we thought it would be perfect. There’s a local sports bar and grill near our house that we love, and we wanted to check this place out.
Well, let’s just say that I didn’t think it was that great. My food was mediocre at best, although Tim says his was good. We realize the place is new, and so when the service was slow, we were very understanding. We assumed the servers and kitchen staff were still learning, but we do get exasperated when we don’t see our waitress for the entire meal and we run out of our drinks (water/ Diet Coke). We’re not particularly fussy about restaurants in general – I worked in the restaurant industry some in high school and college and I know first hand just how hard it is to wait tables and dish up food. We’re really good tippers because of that, if the food and service are good.
I won’t name the place by name, because believe it or not, this post is not a rant and rave about this particular restaurant. Instead, it’s a in-general thing – in general, how do you decide about going back to a restaurant you weren’t overly thrilled with? Tim liked it better than I did, even though I told him I’d be glad to try it again and get something else on the menu. But – I do draw the line somewhere. I will give this place one or two more times and then if the food and service don’t get any better, I’d rather cross it off my list. There’s just too many good places here to eat, for me to keep going back to a place I really don’t enjoy.
So, that’s today’s Question of the Day: If you and your spouse/family go to a new restaurant and someone is not happy with the food/service/environment, how many times will you go back to try them again? Will you not go back? Will you give it one more shot and then that’s it? Three strikes and you’re out? Or will you keep going back because someone else in your family likes it and wants to go there? Leave me a comment and let me know!
