9/11 - Never Forget

I'm on vacation right now....spent a nice relaxing week on beautiful Hilton Head Island, SC. As you sometimes do on vacation, I've kind of lost track of the date....actually, I barely even know what DAY it is! But as we were driving around the island today I noticed all the flags were at half staff. Then it hit me.....September 11.


Today I woke up in a nice condo sitting on a beautiful resort by the ocean. My mom and I got up at 6:30 at walked on the beach and watched a spectacular sunrise. We drove down to a lighthouse and bought some niceties....we grilled hamburgers and made deviled eggs and salad and had a nice lunch together....we played in the ocean and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on the beach and the sand between our toes.


And all of this because of those who have fought to protect what they tried to take from us on this day 8 years ago. I think of the innocent ones who will never see another sunrise, their loved ones who will never enjoy another sunrise, the responders who bravely ran into danger that day, and all those who have continued the fight since.


We still mourn your loss.....we still thank you for your sacrifice....we still honor your memory.


This sunrise is for you.


May God Bless America.

Ready For An Adventure

Friday we are supposed to leave for 9 days of vacation.

Friday.

THIS Friday.

Do you have any idea how NOT prepared I am??

I have about 6 days of work that HAS to be done piled on my desk at work.

I have not thought about clothes.

I need to buy shampoo.

Mom thinks the wheel bearing is going out in the van.

There may be a hurricane brewing on the coastline that we're headed to.

Did I mention I need some shampoo?

I keep telling myself when I'm laying on the beach the rest of it won't matter.

Except maybe the hurricane....

What A Difference You've Made...

Went to WalMart the other night for the obligatory shopping trip. Actually hadn't been in a while.....the last two weeks at work have been insane. I've not gotten home before 9:30 hardly any night, plus had to work one of the Saturdays. So as a result, I've not gotten hardly anything taken care of, and I needed a few things from the store to assist in my day-to-day survival. So, off to Mansfield Mom and I went.

We had been shopping about 4 hours or more, and were pretty tired and ready to go home. Fortunately, we got in Debbie's checkout line. I go to this WalMart a lot, and there have actually been times I've walked up and down the checkouts to see if Debbie is working. Why? Because she seems to be an awesome individual. First of all, she does her job well. She keeps her line moving. And she is always, always, always as friendly as you could want. Much more so than the ones that frown and growl and seem to hate their jobs. She was as chipper as ever that night...Mom commented on how happy she seemed. "Hey, life is what you make it," she said. "They ain't gonna dictate to me how my emotions should go. I'm happy to be alive!"

What an awesome lady.

I don't know if she knows how her attitude is a lift to mine when I go through that line exhausted and wore out from dragging all over the store. But I'm going to write management out there and tell them. Surely they know it, but just in case nobody's acknowledged it....I want to Debbie to know she makes a difference.

Going home we got to talking about the last time our church ladies group made pumpkin rolls. We go to Sam's Club and buy like 400 pounds of sugar and cream cheese and eggs and flour....people stare a lot at us during that trip and about half of the store strikes up a conversation trying to guess what we're making.

Well, last time we had a flatbed full, and I guess I was having a bit of trouble after I had loaded off about half of the sugar and flour and stuff. I heard this man standing in the next aisle handed his items to his son and said "Hold this...I'll be right back." Suddenly the 25 pound bag of sugar I was trying to heave up to the counter was light as a feather as he took hold of it. "Here," he said, "let me get the rest of that."

The kindness of a stranger. I thanked him several times before he and his son paid for their goods and vanished into the world...how often I wish I'd have gotten his name and took him a pumpkin roll. I pray God repays him somewhere in life for his kindness.

Tonight I helped Mammy fling buckets of water out of her pool so we could try and get the hose in it to drain. She helped me get my "new" $35 lawnmower in the trunk of my car and to my house, and move and assemble some furniture to boot. The world seems so much better we all just take a few minutes to help each other out, doesn't it?

So, when I'm feeling grumpy or grouchy or whatever the sour mood is, I try to keep in mind Debbie and the mystery pumpkin roll man. Because if they can take the time to make somebody's day a little better, surely I can too!

The Cable Saga continued...

Well, the cable issue is finally resolved. I guess.

I worked from home Tuesday so they could come fix this leakage issue I'm having. (That does not sound good at all.) So around 2 I was walking through the house and I see the van drive by. But it does not stop. Well, this alarms me....so I go running out the door yelling at the dude that this was the house he wanted.

My neighbors are probably REALLY glad I moved into this place by now..

Anyway, he didn't stop. Great!! So I go back to work, fuming, figuring I'm going to have to fight with them again over getting out here. About 15 minutes later the doorbell rings. Ah...he found his way back. The dude's name is Tim, and he's carrying a little device that is making a noise similar to the sound of a cat in a blender. Not that I've ever put a cat in a blender, but if I were to hear a cat in blender, I would imagine it would sound much like this "EEEeeeeuuuuuuaaaaahhhheeehhauuuauuehehhhhhh" sound that this thing was making.

Very annoying.

So I take Tim all through the house while he points the little thing and mutters a lot. After about 15 minutes he changes some ends to some of the cables, then says he thinks it will be OK but if I get tagged again to call him and he'll have to change outlets. I mention that his little cat-in-a-blender device is still screaming just as loudly as it did when he first arrived. He agrees that could be a problem, but he's not sure that it even works right to start with.

Dear lord....this is never going to end.

So Tim leaves, and I go back to work. Then about 15 minutes later the doorbell rings again. Another dude (don't know his name) who says he just talked to Tim and he doesn't think he did everything he should have, so could he come in and look at my cables. I ask him if he even works for the cable company because there is no identifying marks on him....he pulls out an ID tag, so I let him in.

Then I traipse him all over the house much like I had done with Tim. He doesn't mutter as much as Tim, but does start identifying things that need fixed. So off to work he goes. For 2 1/2 hours. Which means he cut off the cable for a while, and the working from home thing kind of went ca put at that point. Finally he tells me that he's got the Internet back up if I wanted to try it again.

So I come in here and fire up the laptop, and for some reason feel compelled to open my blog site. Of course, the last blog I had done pops up........titled.......I Hate The Cable Company.

Thank God he was not looking over my shoulder!

Then it starts opening multiple sessions, so it's popping up all over the screen. Good Grief! I frantically get it shut down just as he shows up asking, "Is it OK?"

Yeah, yeah....really good. Thanks for asking!

Anyway, whoever mystery man number 2 was seems to have known what he was doing and hopefully has taken care of all of the problems.

For the time being, anyway!

I Hate The Cable Company

Well, here's the next thrilling update on the ongoing saga of my ignorant cable company and the signal leakage that is threatening to command an airplane to land on top of my house....

At about 7:00 Saturday night, after waiting all day, I got fed up and called the company. The lady proceeds to inform me that someone came to my house and could not get in.

Uhm...I don't think so.

No - I inform her I was here all day and if they had called like they said they would and/or rang the doorbell and/or knocked on the door, I would have let them in. She couldn't tell me what time they came, because apparently there is no accountability as to logging such things when you work for this company. But they did leave another tag on the door.

Uhm...I don't think so.

I go to both doors and look...no tag. Then I kind of blew up on her. I'm really tired of dealing with these nuts. She of course does the obligatory apology and then asks if I want to reschedule for Sunday. The conversation proceeds as follows:

ME: NO....I have Church on Sunday.

Cable Chick: Oh, OK, well, how about next week then?

ME: Excuse me?? I can't sit here all day long waiting for you people to show up again! I have a full-time job!! How do you think I pay for this cable??!

Cable Chick: Oh, I understand ma'am...

ME: NO...I don't think you do!

Cable Chick: Well....I'm not sure what else we can do

ME: I'm sure you're not sure! I suppose I have to try and find a day that I can re-arrange everything for you guys AGAIN! I'll tell you this much, if I stay home all day long waiting for them again, they better break down the door if they have to to get in here and take care of this mess!

Cable Chick: I understand ma'am...

ME: And one other thing....that note they left the other day said my service would be discontinued if this was not corrected. I would expect that under no circumstances will my service be disrupted over this, because if it is I'm going to throw the biggest conniption fit you've ever seen!

Cable Chick: I understand ma'am....I'll be sure to update your file with that information.

ME: .................................(silence because now I'm just too mad to talk at all)

Cable Chick: Well ma'am, while I have you on the phone I would like to tell you about our latest movie channel offer for just $17 a month....

ME: Are you kidding me??!

Cable Chick: Oh, so you're not interested....

I hate the cable company. I really do.

The Waiting Game

Today has been an unusual day. I've been home all day. ALL DAY. That never happens. And truth be told, it probably only happened today because I'm being held hostage by the cable company. Again.

I came home the other day and found a little card on my front door that said I had missed my cable appointment. Which was very odd since I didn't know I had a cable appointment. Upon reading the other side, it had this note on there that said they had detected "signal leakage" coming from my house, which was very serious and my cable could be turned off if it were not fixed and they needed to get in the house to do it.

That's one of the weirdest things I've ever heard of.

So I called them and asked them if this was real or if somebody was just trying to break into my house. They claimed it's real. So they give me an appointment of Saturday from 8 to 8. Yes, you read it right....a 12 hour time span to sit here and wait for the guy to show up.

Now, since I've had all day to contemplate this, I wonder...why as a society do we allow them to get away with this? Imagine if we told our doctors..."Ah, I'll be there sometime between 8 and 8. Just hang out until I show up." It's kind of insane. I mean, are re-runs of Friends and documentaries about people going through psychotherapy for obsessive compulsive disorders really worth this?

Apparently they are.

So, I got up and worked a little in the office...and waited.

Then I started cleaning the kitchen....and waited.

Then Mom came by and pulled some of my weeds and looked through my shed, and I continued to wait.

Then she went to Mansfield and I had lunch and fell asleep on the couch while I waited.

Then she came back with a mirror for me and left her Wendy's trash.....and I continued to wait.

And now I blog.

And wait.

And hope I'm not being slowly irradiated by the cable signals leaking out all over my house.

I'll keep you posted...

Fortune Teller

Today I went to the local Chinese buffet for lunch. At the end of the meal, of course they brought out the little obligatory fortune cookie. I don't know why I read those things. I mean, a little slip of paper in a stale little glob of dough that, in my opinion, doesn't even have a right to really call itself a cookie...who came up with this idea?

I wouldn't mind so much if they were actually "fortunes". But mine never are. Today's was "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." That is not a fortune. That's a strange little saying that I'm not even sure really makes a lot of sense. Or maybe it does too obviously make sense. Either way, what am I supposed to do with that??

The worst one I ever got....no kidding....said "You love Chinese food". Tell me really, someone gets paid to come up with these things????

So at the end of every Chinese meal I tell myself I'm not going to read the fortune. Then I read it anyway. Someone should write me a REAL fortune. I can see it now:

"We knew you were going to read this. Now eat your cookie."