A Little Nectar

Situation Updates

First, but not most important, the laptop computer issue -

I wrote to CC on Sunday and told them I wasn't happy with the $39.99 optimization process.

Early this morning I opened up an advertisement from CC and discovered the same laptop on sale for $50 less than I paid for it, through a mail-in rebate. According to their "unbeatable price guarantee," rebates aren't considered when they are matching said "unbeatable price."

Later this morning I received a letter from their customer service. Essentially it said they would re-do the optimization process. Of course I have already taken care of the issues - Microsoft and Norton are all updated, I've added the icons I wanted on my screen desktop - so there is nothing for them to do.

It is still a good buy even if I do feel like I was taken for $90 now, what with the rebate coming up and all. It won't matter in a 100 years, or even next year, and that is the benchmark to go buy.

Second, Old Folks update -

I am happy to report my mother-in-law came home Friday. She is doing great in her recovery from her broken hip and partial hip replacement. She is definitely an inspiration, if not a lesson, to the whiners of the world (I include myself in that). She just does what she is told and moves on. I really admire her for that.

I am not so happy to report that my aunt who is charge of my great-aunt's care has decided to call in hospice for my great aunt, Susie. Hospice, for my friends not in the U.S., is palliative end-of-life care. Some folks like it, some don't. My two previous experiences with it have not been good but I do think the concept of it has merit.

Having hospice come to the assisted living facility is supposed to allow Susie to stay where she is, as opposed to being moved around and into the nursing home portion of the place where we stick old people (otherwise known as a retirement community).

Third, the helicopter rescue -

Sadly, my neighbor did not survive the physical ailment that had the rescue helicopter buzzing the area 10 days ago.

I had hoped that the speediness with which she received care would help her, but it was not to be.

The funeral was today. My husband and I attended, and I went to visitation last night. He knows the family much better than I, having played with the young sons all during his childhood, but then I too have known a few of the sons since elementary school.

It is always hard to lose your mama, I don't care who you are.

Fried Green Tomatoes

Saturday I decided it was time for fried green tomatoes.

My husband doesn't care for them, but he was working and so I had only my self to please.

I thought I'd fry up a zucchini, too, while I was at it.



Normally I do not eat fried food. I cook in a little olive oil from time to time but otherwise had nothing in the house for a big batch of fried 'maters. I bought some Smart Balance oil that was supposed to be heart healthy, although I have my doubts as to the healthiness of cooking oil in all shapes and forms.



Those tomatoes and the one zucchini made up a great big plate full of veggies.




I had purchased batter for onion rings, but didn't care much for it on the first batch. So I added flour and milk and an egg to what I had and went from there.

I liked that better.

It took me almost an hour to get the tomatoes and the zucchini fried.




Yum.

Family Reunion

Last Sunday, my grandfather's side of the family had their annual get together.

I go pretty much every year, but I honestly only know about five people.


I can only name one person in this picture.


The crowd grew to about 65 or more by the time dinner was done. Folks gathered around in their respective groups and talked while children raced around chasing one another.

Humidity made the day sticky but under the pavilion the breeze kept us from sweating too much.



My great-aunt Ruth is the matriarch. She is 88 years old and the only one of two of my grandfather's six siblings still living. Uncle Max is the other one.




This is Uncle Max.

I did not know I had an Uncle Max until just a few years ago. Apparently he and my grandfather had a falling out maybe even before I was born. It has only been in this millennium that Uncle Max has attended the family reunions even though they've been having them every year for more than 15 years.

My grandfather died in 1976. Uncle Max looks a whole lot like him and has a voice similar in timbre, too. It gives me chills to talk to him.



This is my cousin, Matthew. I visited him in the hospital when he was born. He is my aunt's son (my mother's sister's boy). He is a nice young man and we usually see him and his family several times a year. They always come down at Christmas.



This is Matt's wife and his baby girl, Madison. Madison will be two in September. She is going to grow up to be some kind of researcher, I think, because she is incredibly inquisitive.

She also seems to adore my husband as she kept calling his name and running to him while we were there. He loves children so that is no surprise to me.

Not Worth the Money

I recently (as in, last night) purchased a harlot red little Gateway laptop from one of our local electronic stories (the initials are CC).

The laptop itself so far seems fine, although I haven't had a chance to use it much. I think I got it at a decent price.

I enjoyed my experience at the store. I felt like the salesman was listening and I didn't have to pay the sales tax and they matched an ad for MS Office 2007. The computer was already on sale, $90 off. It seemed like a good deal.

What wasn't a good deal was the $70 I paid to CC for software installation and something called "quickstart".

As explained to me at the point of sale, the tech would remove extraneous advertising that comes on new PCs and make sure everything was updated and properly installed so that when I came home I could boot the system and vrooom .... I could get straight to it.

I have always done this myself for new computer purchases, but my husband said, "Go on, let them take care of it. It's a new operating system (Windows Vista, which I haven't used) and I know that takes you a lot of time."

He has listened to me voice expletives before as I sweated over a new computer set-up. This is my second laptop and I've had a number of desktops (2 HPs, 2 Gateways, 1 made for me, 1 Radio Shack, 1 Tandy, and 1 Commodore 64, 1 Vic 20 ... not counting the Toshiba laptop and now this new Gateway. I think that is all of them but I may be missing one in there somewhere.).

So I agreed and we spent $70 for this service, $29.99 for software installation and $39.99 for this quickstart set up. CC called late last night, about 2 hours after the purchase, and said the laptop was ready.

I had a hair appointment in Roanoke anyway this morning, so I went and picked it up. It is not like the store is next door; it's a 40 minute drive.

Upon my return home, I turned the thing on and after it connected to my wireless connection on my home network, the computer started downloading upgrades for Vista.

I was not happy about this. While it's something that, knowing Microsoft, will continue from now until the end of time, the fact is I shouldn't have turned the thing on and had that occur since I'd paid $39.99 just so that would not happen.

I called CC and was shuffled around and eventually told I got what I'd paid for. Essentially I was patted on the head and told to be a good girl and go away and leave the boys to their toys.

It's only $40, I know. But that is a tank of gas or a week's worth of food for us. I feel like I wasted that money and I will not purchase this kind of service from CC or anyone else ever again.

I would advise anyone who has even a small amount of computer knowledge to keep their money and do the initial set up themselves. If nothing else you'll learn from the process and still be able to buy gas.

NOTE TO BLOGGER USERS

If you're having problems accessing your blog this morning, remove Sitemeter. Apparently there is some problem there but once you get rid of the counter your blog will come back up.

Curious Joe

Getting a Buzz

Thursday Thirteen

1. I do not have a favorite author or book, even though I read about 50 books a year.

2. Instead, I take in new books all the time, like a word vacuum, constantly sucking up new ideas and words.

3. When I was young, I wanted to read and collect every Nancy Drew book. They were written by Carolyn Keene, which was a pseudonym. The books were actually written by a number of people.

4. I ended up with only 25 of the 175 original Nancy Drew books. I still have them. They fill a shelf in the living room and are so dusty I would sneeze if I tried to read them.


5. Every now and then I think about donating them to the library book sale but so far I have not been able to part with them.

6.Nancy Drew has a best girl friend named George. And another whose name I forget. Bess I think but I'm not certain.

7. Her boyfriend's name is Ned.

8. She has a father but no mother. Her dad is an attorney.

9. Nancy also has a car.

10. Her books are mysteries that in hindsight are rather silly but when I was 10 years old they were quite interesting and intriguing.

11. I tried to write my own series of mysteries at the age of 11.

12. I remember I used a red notebook.

13. I have no idea what happened to that little series of stories. I can only imagine how bad they were ...


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

Mother and Child

Book: Fearless Fourteen

Fearless Fourteen
By Janet Evanovich
310 pages
Copyright 2008

Number 14 in the Stephanie Plum series brings about a fast-paced story with little character development.

Stephanie finds herself babysitting a teenager who is her boyfriend Joe's cousin. There are bombs, the return of Mooner, Grandma learning to play video games, Lula chasing after Tank - the usual found in these books.

There was not, however, much growth in the characters.

Maybe I'm just getting tired of this series?

2.5 stars

At 10 p.m.

Around 10 p.m. last night, the house began to shake.

The sounds of a low-flying helicopter forced us to rise from our half-asleep stupor as we lounged on the couch watching Ice Road Truckers.

I figured it was Army choppers flying across to wherever they go. They do that though usually not so low that it makes the dishes dance in the cupboard.

My husband went to the garage and hollered for me to follow.

The helicopter had a search light and was flying all around the farm. We watched as it went down behind the hill in front of the house.

"It either just landed or crashed in the hayfield," I said. We couldn't see exactly what had happened.

Was it a police chopper? My husband thought it might be. He feared a break out at the penitentiary five miles down the road.

So he hurried into his clothes. "Lock all the doors and call Daddy and make sure he's alright," he said as he rushed out.

I roused my father-in-law, who sleepily said he thought something must be going on because he heard a racket.

My husband called just moments later. "It's Lifeguard 10," he said.

This service, Virginia's first helicopter transport, is called only in dire emergencies.

A neighbor was seriously ill and in need of evacuation. The hospital's helicopter had made a landing and was preparing to move the patient.

My husband, the firefighter-EMT, stayed to assist and to offer support to the neighbors. He even drove a mile or so down the road to one of the neighbor's sons' houses and picked him up and brought him back.

Several other neighbors have called this morning to ask what the commotion was all about.

It isn't often we have search lights and helicopters making the rounds in the dark on the farm.

No word on the ill neighbor, unfortunately. I do hope she will be well.

Old Folks Update

My mother-in-law remains in a rehabilitation facility, but she is doing great!

Everyone should be such a good and motivated patient. I have great admiration for her spirit and pluck. I look for her to be home soon, maybe even this week.

She is in her mid-70s.

Meanwhile, a visit to my great aunt, Susie, who is 88, revealed that she has gone downhill in a hurry. I just saw her two weeks ago and she was walking with a walker and animated, etc.

She was asleep when I went in and she's often muddled when I wake her. What really shocked me was the fact that she could hardly stand up to get in a wheel chair when they came to get her for lunch.

She said they had given her a different medication for pain in her legs. I am wondering if this new drug has contributed to her rapid decline.

Four Things

This meme comes from Sweetfluttersbys. She challenged anyone who wanted to follow her in doing this and I was feeling obliging.

So here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had

-sales and purchasing in a machine shop
-legal secretary/receptionist
-small town weekly reporter
-retail clerk in a downtown Roanoke store

Four movies I can watch over and over

- Dirty Dancing
- Steel Magnolias
- Flashdance
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (all three movies)

Four places I’ve lived

- Salem, VA
- On Lee's Gap Road outside of Fincastle, VA
- On Breckinridge Mill Road outside of Fincastle, VA
- On Blacksburg Road outside of Fincastle, VA.

Obviously I have pretty much lived in one place all of my life.


Four TV shows I love

- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Xena: Warrior Princess
- Cagney & Lacey
- Six Feet Under

Four places I’ve vacationed

-Myrtle Beach, SC
-Williamsburg, VA
-Gatlinburg, TN
-Virginia Beach, VA

Four of my favorite foods

-chocolate
-root beer
-strawberries
-yeast rolls

Four sites I visit daily

-Blogger/favorite blogs
-Google.com
-AOL
-wherever my work and research takes me

Four places I would rather be right now

-on vacation at Myrtle Beach, SC
-In a cabin in the woods where no one can find me
-Scotland, Ireland or England
-in bed with my husband ;-)

Okay, anybody else wanna play? Have at it.

Me, When I was Young

I would have been three years old in this picture of me with my baby brother.

My doll was what I called my "Grandma" doll. She was made of very hard plastic and looked old to me. She talked when you pulled her string but I do not recall what she said. Her legs were straight but hinged at the hip so you could move her.

I thought it might be a Mrs. Beasley doll but I looked it up and it is not. So I do not know the doll's real name.

My mother kept me in dresses for a very long time. I hated to get dirty and loved to be prissy and girly, I have been told.

By my pre-teens that was certainly gone. I started wearing blue jeans and never looked back. Today I don't even own a dress, although I will wear skirts.

My hair turned from blond to brown (and now to gray) as I moved through the years.

I recall a few things about those early years. I remember a snake curled around a tree while I was playing, getting sand in my eyes and crying for my grandmother or the fire department (it must've burned like h*ll), and eating a wild onion in the back yard. (And it took me very long time to eat onions again.)

I also remember a box kite flight, my mother fainting in the floor, my father playing guitar, washing the dishes while standing in a chair (I must have been five or younger because we were gone from there by then), and learning that the tooth fairy and Santa Claus were myths.

I figured out the latter because I knocked out my tooth and the tooth fairy left me a 50 cent piece. I found a bowl of 50 cent pieces not long after while I was dusting for my mother. I immediately put it together and told her there was no tooth fairy and no Santa and no Easter Bunny.

I promised not to let my brother know the truth and he was nearly 10 before he found out, I think. He was devastated by the news.

I was a very smart and precocious child and a handful, I suppose. I was reading by the time I was four. I began reading newspapers before the age of six, even if I didn't understand what I was looking at.

I don't remember this but my mother said when I was three I began talking about Scotland and living in a castle and walking in the moors and losing my head in a beheading. She told me once it scared her and she thought I must have been reincarnated.

I wish she had written it down.

I also remember falling and hitting my head; I still have a small and unnoticeable ridge in my forehead where I cracked it.

And then there was the ghost that sat on the edge of my bed at night and the man who was playing poker with my father who shot himself in the leg.

We had two Dalmatians and both of them were run over by the milk truck. They were named Prince and Princess.

And I had a little plastic bank in the shape of Dino the Dinosaur and a blue stuffed puppy dog that I carried around until my brother decided it was his.

I received a blue bike with training wheels when I was five and it had a Batgirl doll sitting on the seat when I woke up that Christmas morning.

I loved kindergarten but hated the first grade because the teacher, Mrs. Zircle at East Salem Elementary School, was very mean. I later was told that her husband had died that year and I was able to forgive her for her many unkindnesses because obviously she was very sad.

And then we moved to the country, where my mother's father grew up, and I became a country girl.

Thursday Thirteen

1. I wonder what it says about us as a society that http://civilization.com is about a video game?

2. I like Pop Tarts but I don't eat them very often. Blueberry is my favorite but it can give me heartburn.

3. Today is the day my parents' house burned down in 1989.

4. It was hit by lightning.

5. My wedding gown burned in the fire. My mother was storing it for me.

6. I saw nine turkeys in the field yesterday and was greatly relieved.

7. I was afraid the logging efforts next door had forced them to leave.

8. I haven't had any chocolate to speak of since the middle of June.

9. I haven't had any root beer, either.

10. I have, however, lost nearly 10 pounds.

11. The sun is shining very brightly today.

12. My efforts at Thursday Thirteen today are pretty lame.

13. I give myself an "E" for the effort and a "D" for the results. I haven't played for a few weeks because I've had many other things on my mind. It shows.


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; you can learn more about it here. My other Thursday Thirteens are here.

A Quiet Moment

Recommendations?

I am contemplating a week away from home sans work and husband in some nice quite B&B or small cabin. I want a writing retreat, is what I want.

A place to write poetry or short stories or work on my forgotten novel without interruption and worry.

I need a place that is no smoking and no inside pets (cats and dogs) because of my allergies. Preferably a country setting but the beach is good too. Mountains are negotiable.

Also not overly expensive.

It should be within a day's driving distance of Roanoke, which leaves open a very wide range of territory.

If anyone knows of such a place that they recommend, I'd sure like to hear of it.

Shroom

My Trees, Part II

I am happy to report that the loggers pulled out.

They left behind a mess.

My view my window went from this in the spring:



To this in summer:



To this, which is pretty much what it looks like now, except that the leaves on the dead branches are dying.



They left the trees that had no value. The remaining two oaks forked and so were not good sawmill logs. I am thankful they did not cut them for pulp wood like they did so many others. At least I still have a tree to see, although I worry that it will die without its friends to help protect it from the weather.

Though the loggers call this "selective" cutting, by the time more than 250 trees were murdered, the selectiveness of it is pretty much semantics. The loggers left the Paradise trees and small trees. They also left a stand of poplars because bees had built nests in them.

Hooray for the bees.

I have no idea how many animals were displaced, all the squirrels who lost their homes and winter stores, the owls and birds and chipmunks and other creatures.

Not to mention all those mythical gnomes and fairies that I was sure lived in enchanted areas. They are gone too, off to find a new home where the sounds of chainsaws do not make raucous racket.

I am sure the air has grown thicker and more polluted just in recent days. And the sounds around my home are stronger; I can hear neighbors in distant subdivisions. The other night I heard The Star Spangled Banner from the Botetourt Sports Complex waft across as clear as if I were standing in the stadium.

Sounds I had not heard before.

I am glad they left a few trees, but the environmental damage has certainly sickened my soul.