Journal: New Computer Shindig, Christmas Cards, & Pictures New and Old

Last week, I mentioned to Lydia that I’d spent over 100 hours on my customer’s quilt.  If that quilt had’ve turned out perfect, and if I could’ve gotten paid just $10 an hour, I could have made over $1,000!

“Wow!  That’s a lot of time,” she responded.  “The Mexican who helps Jeremy has a girlfriend in Guatemala who works for her brother or uncle for the grand sum of $35 a week!!  She does sewing at a factory type place.”

Isn’t it sad, what dire circumstances so many of the world’s population is in?  But then they wouldn’t have the expenses we do, I guess.  Still, that’s got to be poor living.

“She thinks it’s great pay, too,” continued Lydia, “so some people must get by with even less.  The man sends her money, though.  He has random large amounts of money sitting around, and doesn’t know what to do with it all!  😀  He once told Jeremy he would pay him $3,000 for a truck, but he had to go home to get cash.  He was pretty sure he had enough in his tailpipe of a car he never drives, but he would have to check.”  😂  

“Do you think we might get rich,” I asked Lydia, “if we wandered through town by the dark of the night, checking random tailpipes?”

“Probably just get shot,” she told me.

I have a bad habit of starting to read an email someone sends me... immediately think of an answer to the first paragraph... click reply... and start typing.

But sometimes I get so taken up with what I am writing, I forget that there is more to my friend’s email!  Is that self-centered, or what?

Fortunately, I generally scan back through them.  I wonder how many things I have missed through the years?

Last Monday Victoria made multiple loaves of bread, and a whole lot of dinner rolls – from scratch.  She’s having all sorts of fun, in her own little house.

Have you been reading about the fires in Tennessee?  The worst of it was only a couple hours south of where Dorcas, husband Todd, and baby Trevor live.  They could smell smoke even in the house.  The baby had bronchitis, Dorcas was wheezing and coughing, and Todd hasn’t felt well, either.  If the wind would just change a little bit, that would offer them some relief. 

Today, some of the people who evacuated were allowed back to see if their homes remained.  At least fourteen people have died.  1,684 homes or other structures have been damaged or destroyed by the fires, and at least 134 people have sustained injuries.

I watched a video someone took from their car as they were escaping that inferno – and they barely made it.  Imagine being in that big resort near Gatlinburg, and suddenly finding that the place was totally surrounded by flames nearly as high as the building itself! 

The people in the resort survived, as help arrived soon enough for them, and firefighters were able to fight back the blaze.

They are looking at possible arson as the cause of the biggest fire.  That’s so awful.

You’ll recall I mentioned a tornado in southern Nebraska a week ago Sunday?  Turns out, there were actually three.  The following day, somewhere around two dozen tornadoes through the southeast killed three people in Alabama and two people in Tennessee, and injured many.

It was about 11:30 p.m. Tuesday evening before I was finally ready to open the lid of my new laptop, after getting a heap of Stuff and Things out of the way.  Pesky things like dishes, and clothes, and a floor that was crying to be swept.

And then, with great anticipation, I opened the lid... and pressed the Start button.

Ready... set... GO!

And then, for cryin’ out loud, the new laptop had to ‘Install Windows’.  Fifteen minutes later, it informed me in a cheery little message that it was all the way up to 2% done.  ???  Did my last computer have to do that, too??

Answer:  How should I know??!  I’ve slept since then.

I discovered when I opened the box Saturday night after we got home that it had been opened already.  The papers inside were crumpled, and the box holding the charger and cord were ripped open.

But... obviously, no one had actually used this laptop.  Or if they did, they certainly erased all their tracks.

So, while the new computer put its assorted brains into a semblance of order, I paid bills on the old one.  When I run out of money, I’m finished.  :-D

A while later, the new laptop informed me Windows was loaded, and ready for me to sign in.  I typed in my name... checked a couple of boxes... and then was asked for the Product Key.  This, I must have, in order to get the thing going.  But... it was missing.  As previously noted, the box had been opened, and the Windows DVD was missing.  The DVD itself is only needed for possible recovery, but the Product Key was printed on the DVD box!  The computer suggested various other spots to find the key:  inside the battery compartment.  The only thing in there was a product number for the battery itself. 

“It’s probably on a sticker on the box I came in!” the laptop cheerfully told me. 

I found a spot on the box where a sticker had been ripped off.

I tried the HP call center, but it was closed.  It’s the year 2016, and HP doesn’t have a 24-hour service line?!  Good grief.  We need a 24-hour service line!  So, on the old laptop, I initiated an online chat with someone named Ebnffwieh Orheiwgn (I think) in India, and he helped me find the product key in the computer registry itself.  Then he thought perhaps he should help me get online... make connection with my printer... with my mouse... with my keyboard... with my external hard drives...  Sir.  (or ma’am)  I know how to do this.  Me do by self!

It would have been about 1 or 2:00 in the afternoon there.  Maybe he (or she) was bored?

I thanked him (or her) politely and closed out of the chat.

By the time that ordeal was over, it was getting into the early morning hours.  So I got the machine online, downloaded Chrome and Firefox (Edge and Internet Explorer was already on the laptop; I use Edge, but not Internet Explorer), set them up as I like them... and went to bed not too awfully long before Larry’s alarm went off.

The next day, I began transferring all my data, and also putting in all the internal settings and add-ons, including such things as my dictionary in Microsoft Office.  I’ve been adding to that dictionary since I first started using Office in 1999, so there are hundreds of thousands of entries in it.  Bill Gates was practically illiterate, you know that?  Why, he didn’t even know such common words as Aaarrrggghhh, thingamarolphgidget, blather, and botheration!  Tsk.

There were my contacts in Outlook... and on and on.  I had to look online to find where some of the individual files were located.  I could have mirrored the hard drive, but I didn’t want to drag junk to the new laptop that I don’t need.  There’s a fine line between junk I want and junk I don’t want, you know that? 

I worked all day Wednesday on that laptop, with a break to go to church.  It wasn’t a quick process, as there was nearly a terabyte of data to transfer, and many programs to download.  And it was time for my Buoyant Blossoms BOM!  I wanted to use my new laptop to post it, too.  The lid/screen on the old laptop was about to part ways with the keyboard, so it was imperative that I get things transferred fast.

By Thursday afternoon, I had the Office suite all loaded and activated, and then transferred the custom dictionary and the autocorrect list.  I put the favorites and home pages back into the browsers, and set the options as I prefer. 

When I type fast on this new computer, the typing flows, rather than coming on staccato, one letter at a time.  Nifty!

I transferred pictures and documents... set up the screen saver and all that personalization stuff (first order of business is always to speed up the mouse!)... downloaded the Instagram App for laptops... weather favorites... and so on.  I set the quick-access toolbars below the ribbon in the Office programs, and then added a dozen of my favorite tools.  One thing I do before ever starting to type a document is to change the auto-save time to 1 minute.  I can do a lot of typing in one minute, and if something happens and a page goes down, I like to be able to recover as much as possible. 

And then everything was in place well enough that I could get my BOM posted.  (But it sure was bugging me that my Outlook rules aren’t working.  Other things first... other things first...)

No, never mind.  I found I just couldn’t bear not having my email set up right... so I went through all the rules and notifications and options, and got it just the way I like it.  Outlook 2016 has quite a few more options than 2010, the last version I used.

Okay.  NOW I would post the BOM.  It takes a while, since I have so many places I have to post it, and I must update the price on last month’s pattern.  Furthermore, it’s been an entire month since I posted the last one – and by now I’ve forgotten which file should come next!

By evening, the 12^th and last flower appliqué block for the Buoyant Blossoms BOM, the Pansy, was uploaded:  Pansy Appliqué Block

It will be free for one month.  Here it is quilted:

That afternoon, Keith’s girlfriend, Kim, wrote and asked me for my recipe for strawberry pie.  The recipe came from Grandma Ruby, Larry’s maternal grandmother.

After Grandpa Jenkinson died young, Grandma had to work.  She did the cooking and baking for the local hospital, and sold more on the side, too.  She would make 60-65 pies a day.

From the time she was quite young, her life had not been easy.  Her own father died young, too.  The family had little money, and little food.  At 11, she was the oldest, and she had a number of siblings.  They lived in southern Colorado on the eastern edge of the Rockies.  She’d ride out on the pony with a sheet over her so as not to spook the geese that were feeding in the fields and drop off the pony into the middle of a flock – right on top of a Canada goose.  She’d wring its neck... and take it home for supper.

Okay, now that I’ve whetted your appetite, here’s the recipe:

Grandma Ruby’s Strawberry Pie

For a 9-inch pie:

1 C sugar

1 C water

Bring to a boil.

1 heaping T cornstarch mixed in a little cold water; add to sugar mixture and cook until clear.

1 sm. box strawberry jello; add to mixture; stir until dissolved.

Cool until it starts to thicken.  Pour over 1 quart of strawberries cut into slices.  Put in baked pie shell, refrigerate until set.  Cover generously with Cool Whip.

The thing that makes it yummy is that the strawberries aren’t cooked and limp, but fresh and crisp.  My favorite crust recipe is here, along with another favorite pie, Pumpkin Chiffon.

The recipe is quick and easy.  The hard part is letting it sit long enough to actually set up and get cold!  (And it is better, once it’s set up.) 

I have used that same recipe to make strawberry rhubarb pie:  I first make a rhubarb sauce, boiling the rhubarb and adding sugar... boiling... adding sugar... until it’s yummy.  I’m fond of it a bit tart, but it still takes a lot of sugar.  Then I add the rhubarb sauce to the jello.  I don’t mix it with the strawberries until the sauce has cooled.  So we still wind up with those yummy strawberries.  Mmmm, mmm.  I’m getting lockjaw just thinking about it.

When the pattern and pictures were uploaded, I got my discs for Electric Quilt 7 and PaintShop Pro X3 (photo editor) and downloaded them.

I activated EQ7 ... checked it out – and all my files and patterns were neatly in place, as big as you please.  Wheeee!!!

But the photo editor was an old (very old) one, and it wasn’t compatible.  The newest version is X9.  The built-in Windows 10 photo editor doesn’t have nearly enough options – and what’s more, it compresses photos whether you want them compressed or not, and saves the compressed version over the good version! 

I suspected as much, so gave it a try on a throw-away shot – and sure enough, that’s what it did.  I looked in the options... but there’s no way to change it.  I looked it up online, in case I was missing something – but all I found were people throwing fits and tantrums because the dumb thing had ruined stacks of their photos before they’d realized what it was doing.

Next, I set up all the sounds (and a few extra, besides) that I had on my old computer.  I can shut my eyes and still know exactly what’s happening, just by the noises that issue forth.  It makes everyone else bonkers, so I entitle the sound theme, “Drive You Nuts.”  :-D

Friday I discovered that the laptop wouldn’t recognize the printer, so I had to install a new set of drivers.  Soon everything was back in business.

I hunted around for a photo editor, and found that Corel PaintShop Pro X6 can be downloaded free.  How ’bout that!  It’s close enough to the old X3 version that I wouldn’t have to relearn it.  It has a few extra bells and whistles, and with this fast computer, seemed to work much quicker than the old version on the old computer.  That’s always been a bugaboo to me – the slowness of editing photos and saving the new versions.

Within a day, however, I would learn that, though I’d received no notice when I downloaded it, nor had there been any notification on the website, X6 was not free after all.  What I had, mind you, was a trial version, and it would expire in 30 days.  27, now.  Furthermore, if I want to keep it, I must shell out $69.99! 

Okay, that’s unacceptable.  Do I look rich, or what?!  I pulled up Amazon... typed in ‘PaintShop Pro’ – and discovered that I can get the X9 version for only $50.  If I could be satisfied with X8, I could get it for – get this – $15.99.  Yes, I could be very satisfied with that.

But I don’t have to worry about that for 27 days.  So I got busy and put together a collage of the grandchildren to put in our Christmas cards:

Three little babies, born just this year! – Ian, Trevor, and Elsie.  By the time the babies are just a few months old, they are so full of personality, it’s hard to believe you didn’t even know them a year earlier!

That done, I ordered reprints, along with prints of our entire family at Kurt and Victoria’s wedding, and also pictures of Rita, my blind friend, with her dog Jackson.

Next, I printed Loren’s signature onto stickers for the insides of his Christmas cards.  Oh! – just remembered – I have Rita’s signature, too, for her cards. 

Have you ever watched a blind person sign his/her name?  I remember watching my blind friends sign their names when I was a little girl.  They had little cards with rectangular windows in them, and they’d place their pen tip in the window and write, making the motions they’d been taught for each letter, ever so carefully.  I promptly went home, made myself a card with a window in it, set it over a paper, grabbed a pen, closed my eyes, and wrote.

Wow!  I could do it, too!  I was quite sure I’d be a raging success at being blind. 

Nowadays, I have enough trouble with Blepharospasm (benign eye disease brought on by rheumatoid arthritis) that I belatedly appreciate the good eyesight I used to have!

I keep thinking I’m done setting up everything on my new computer... then I open up another program – and discover there’s something else to add in or revamp.  The latest was Office tabs.  I’ve now added them to Word, Excel, and Publisher.  I have most of the Quick Access buttons back where I want them, too.  Can’t live without them thar Quick Access buttons!

Things look different in Office 365 – Outlook and Word and Publisher, etc.  For instance, when there’s an unread email in a certain person’s folder, their name isn’t in bold, there’s just a little blue 1 beside it.  So it’s harder for me to notice when there’s a new email.  Usually, I’m pleased with updates, and figure, Well, this must be better.  But sometimes, there are a few improvements – and then, lo and behold, they leave out something I really liked!!  Bah, humbug.  Why can’t I be a Microsoft consultant?!  I don’t know how to do much, but I could sho’ ’nuff tell ever’buddy what needs ta be done, I could!

Another problem:  I’ve set up all those sounds on my computer, including a pretty little tune that signifies some function happening ----- but evidently that function happens a whole lot more often than I knew, and the pretty little tune is waxing old fast.  Gotta turn it off... gotta turn it off...  AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...  My Sound Theme is called ‘Drive You Nuts’, not ‘Drive Me Nuts’!

There.  It’s off.  Let us proceed.

In clearing out a downstairs bedroom and searching through a lot of totes, Loren found his own Christmas tree, so Larry stopped by after he got off work Friday and picked up the one we loaned him last year.  Saturday night, he set it up.  I brought up the box of decorations tonight, and Larry brought home a new strand of lights; we’ll put them on the tree tomorrow.

Somewhere in this house (or at least on this property) is our old Christmas tree.  Some buddy put it away – and doesn’t know where.  (It wasn’t me.)  We have a lot of cubbyholes up under the second-floor eaves; perhaps it’s there.  It’s possible Larry put it out in his shed, too.  Trees are pricey!  I don’t really like it when they go AWOL.

I remember when we thought $20 for a tree was too much.  When I was a little girl in the 60s, we always had a real tree.  I recall my mother paying anywhere from $5-$10 for them.

When our children were little, we once came home from church and found our tree – one of those few times we had a real one – sprawled on the floor, balls and decorations all over the living room.

Calico Kitty, who always came to greet us at the door, ... didn’t.

We found her perched high on the back of the sofa, looking extremely bug-eyed. 

I think her climbing adventure had become entirely too adventuresome for her.

Hannah called late that night, which always gives me a start.  She told me Aaron had been playing football with some boys, fell, and hit his head.  Judging from the symptoms, it was surely a concussion, and the doctor later verified it.  He couldn’t remember exactly what happened, and didn’t feel well for a while.  Concussions are always a worry.  He’s better today.

By 2:00 a.m., I was finally in my recliner, sipping Uncle Lee’s Legends of China Organic White Tea, with Truvia sweetener.  Mmmm.

Here’s a good definition of ‘a revoltin’ development’:  It’s when you sit down to start in on the audio book you were in the middle of – and discover it’s no longer there, because either the user deleted it, or the user’s account was suspended, or some such anomaly.  Plumb aggravatin’, ’tis!  I consoled myself by watching a video clip of car crashes in the snow.

Saturday, I came wandering through the kitchen, glanced out the window – and discovered it was snowing!  I rushed for my camera.

We got maybe an inch of snow, but by afternoon it was melting.

The screen on my new laptop automatically enhances the way pictures look.  So I’m thinking... just because the picture looks good to me, it may not necessarily follow that the picture looks good to you, unless you have a screen that enhances, too!  Right?

That day, I scanned some old family pictures that Loren’s granddaughter Brittany had seen at his house, and asked for copies of. 

I found a bunch more on my computer, too, and emailed the works to her.

Here’s one of Larry and me with our parents on our wedding day.  Daddy and Mama are on the left; Norma and Lyle on the right:

When that was done, I printed 76 envelopes and signature stickers for Loren’s cards, and put cards in envelopes.  I printed 114 signature stickers for Rita; her cards and the rest of ours are on the way.  Finally, I printed 103 stickers for our own cards, and 113 envelopes – and ran out of cards and envelopes.

So I was standing in the storage room under the front porch, looking for one or two cards I’d seen there, when suddenly I realized – my elbow was nearly resting right on the box of organic beets I’ve been hunting for all over the place.  Turns out, they’re in a little white cardboard flat with plastic over them, not in a brown box like I’d thought.  Still, they were right in plain sight.  (rolling eyes)  I immediately got hungry for beets, grabbed a jar, dashed upstairs, opened it, got a fork, and ate some.  Mmmmm... those are good beets.  They’re supposed to be Christmas gifts.  But... does anyone else like beets, I wonder??  There are now 4 jars left out of 6.

My new laptop has a touchscreen.  First touchscreen I’ve had (though I’ve used Larry’s table and smartphone and Victoria’s iPad).  So there I was going through my Christmas card list, using my left forefinger to keep my place in a document on the left side of the screen, comparing it with a document on the right side of the screen, which I was scrolling through with the mouse.

And you know what happened?  I totally scrambled the whole screen, running my finger down that left side!  Scrambled my brain, too, for a moment, until I realized what was going on.

Reminded me of the time I was sitting at the kitchen table typing away lickety split... and Caleb went dashing through the kitchen, and, unbeknownst to me, snatched my mouse as he went past.  He thundered on up the stairs to his room.  I forgot about him... went on typing – and all of a sudden, things started going plumb berserk on my screen.  I grabbed for my mouse to put a stop to this whatever-it-was —    No mouse.

So I did what mothers of Calebs do best.  I bellowed, “CAAAAAAALEEEBBBB!!!!!!!!”

Said kiddo came giggling back down the stairs, mouse in hand.  He’d been running it along the banister upstairs, zigging, zagging, and clicking, just for the sheer devilment of it.

’Course, he says he was just getting even for the time I flipped the screen contents upside down when I knew he was going to be using the computer for a school report.  Then I put the machine in sleep mode.  He came along... pressed a key... the machine came on...  He stood there a moment and stared at an upside-down screen consideringly.

Then, as expected, “Mama?”

And of course that time it was me giggling. 

Kids are such fun!

Here’s another of the pictures I sent Brittany – this was Daddy’s church at Pleasant Heights, Colorado, one of his first churches.  This was in the early 50s.  Daddy had a radio station, for a little while; somewhere I have an old recording of him preaching from Isaiah, about the “light shining forth as noon day”.  He still had much of his southern Illinois accent, in that recording.  Upon listening to it when I was little, I exclaimed, “I didn’t know Uncle Don (Daddy’s oldest brother) was a preacher!” – and everyone burst out laughing, to my immense surprise, because Uncle Don didn’t even profess to be born again. 

Daddy once left his big preaching Bible, with margins full of his handwritten notes, on the running board of his car, and in traveling the bumpy dirt roads between a couple of little Colorado towns, the Bible fell off.  A road worker found it, and realized whose it was, knowing Daddy from his radio broadcasts.  He decided to keep the Bible, as some sort of souvenir.  And then he decided to read it — and in so doing, concluded he was a thief if he kept that Bible, and brought it back to Daddy a couple of days later.  Daddy was pretty glad to get his Bible back!

Dorcas sent some pictures of Trevor.  She’d taken over 200 and was going through them, and having a hard time deciding which to use in their Christmas cards.

“Are you trigger happy?” I asked.  “Snaphappy?  :-D  Maybe it’s hereditary.”

After church yesterday afternoon, we stopped at John H. and Lura Kay’s house.  She had a suit jacket for me to try on – red Pendleton wool.  It fit, so now I have a jacket for the Christmas program.

Last night after we got home from church, Larry bundled up and headed off on a bike ride.  It was 37°.

He went almost 20 miles, and was just about a block from home when his derailleur went to pieces.  Again.  Aarrgghh, they just don’t make a road bike tough enough for him!  And he’s been trying to be ever so careful.  :-\

Okay, time out:  I just spotted Tiger in the pet bed and have to take a picture of him, and then send it to my sister, because she laughed at the size of the pet bed (LARGE!), and wondered if we planned to get a dog.  But Tiger fills it right up.

I think the Christmas tree skirt will be a grand piano topper or a back-of-the-loveseat throw this year.  The cats keep coming in with muddy little paws, and the more I wipe up paw prints, the more I don’t want to see such things on that satin tree skirt.  Right now, it’s lopped over the back of the loveseat, and I admire it every time I go past.  I pondered aloud whether I ought to give it to someone (one of the kids?  My sister?), and Larry helpfully suggested, “Or sell it on eBay?” 

I think he was kidding. 

I think.

But I immediately declared hotly that I was going to list his prize 1988 Dodge dually crewcab with the big Cummins motor he put in it on eBay, Craigslist, Purple Wave, Big Iron, and Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers. 

“If it sells more than once, then I collect more than once!” I announced.

I don’t believe we’ll be hearing any more about selling Christmas tree skirts on eBay for a while. 

(But he had the audacity to laugh, the piker.  The cad.  The lout.  The Philistine!)

Late last night, Hannah wrote to say that Joanna had found a wallet with $505 under her mattress!  There was also a pressed penny with the Lord’s Prayer engraved on it.

“Wow, what on earth??” I wrote back.  “It’s not play money?  Where did the mattress come from?”

Turns out, the former owner of the house, a friend who has moved to a state in the southeast somewhere, had left the furniture in Joanna’s room, selling it with the house.

And sure enough, for the last couple of years she has wondered what became of that wallet and money. 

“It was quite a jolt!” said Joanna, describing her reaction to finding the wallet.

“Have you checked all the other mattresses and box springs?  Torn up the floor boards?” I asked Hannah.  :-D

By the time the lady returns to visit and recollect her money, her house’ll be in a royal shambles. 

It’s not really her house, of course.  But she has that ol’ OMHAMH Syndrome.  (Once My House Always My House)

I like my new laptop.  It has a 2.5GHz with turbo boost up to 3.1GHz, and 16 GB of RAM.  I have no idea what all that is, I just reel off statistics and act important.  :-D

My computer sits on the table in the kitchen... on one of the cutting tables in the basement... on the dresser near my quilting frame... and even on the bathroom counter while I’m drying and curling my hair, where I like to read the news and the funnies (not necessarily in that order).  At night when I throw in the towel, but am not quite ready to hit the feathers, I sit down in my recliner with my laptop.  We fit, the laptop and me, but sometimes it gets crowded when Teensy decides he fits – between the laptop and my stomach! 

It has a touchscreen, but I think that’s overkill (and it does run the battery down a little faster).  I really wouldn’t have needed that...but it came that way; what could I do?  ;-)  Still, it was kinda nifty yesterday when I’d laid the wireless keyboard atop the laptop’s keyboard on the table while I was eating lunch, and then needed to click on something, but the touchpad was covered and the mouse had run away from home... so, finding I had one pinky that wasn’t sticky/ greasy/crumby, I vewy, vewy ca’fully touched the link, and presto, there we were then, on the page I wanted.

Larry, taking note of this, immediately exclaimed, “Ah-HA!!!  I knew you’d use it, if you had it!”

Well, of course.  One has to use one’s newfangled gadgets, doesn’t one, just on matter of principal?! 

It has a backlit keyboard, too.  I was really hoping for that, because I often have it with us when we are traveling, and when it gets dark, I like to be able to see the keyboard.  I don’t often look at it, really – but every now and then, I need to see an F button... or a combination of Alt + number-pad digit... or the odd key I rarely hit.  I used to pull the lid down a bit to shine some light on the keyboard.  A lighted keyboard is better.

Not too long ago, a lady I know was getting a new-to-her computer... and she said to me with a sigh, “It’s going to take me soooo long to write down all the email addresses in my contacts (she has about 300), and then type them back into my new computer!”

Besides the fact that that’s not what you do, her handwriting’s lousy, and her typing isn’t much better. 

She insisted that this was the ‘easiest way’ for her.

What could possibly go wrong?  Email programs just ship emails off to ‘nearest matches’, don’t they, sort of like Google ‘suggestions as you type’?

I thought about writing and telling her that the earth was round, but reconsidered.  The shock might be too much for her.

There’s a squirrel eating bird seed from my feeder, sitting on the railing of the deck.  He’s pretty cute, but... I bought that stuff for the birds!

Here comes Tiger, plowing through like a barge.  He’s just got to be eating somewhere else, in addition to at our house.  He doesn’t gobble down enough food here to get that fat.  My goodness, he’s so fat he waddles.  Clumsiest cat I ever did see.  He purrs around my ankles, tripping over my toes, slipping and sliding...  Whew.

I said as much to my sister, whereupon she retorted, “Well, he can’t help it.  When we eat so much that we get fat, we get clumsy, trip over things, slip and slid on slick floors, and waddle, also.  I know by experience.”

“Haha!” I responded.  (Lura Kay is not fat.)  “You look downright skinny in comparison with even average persons these days.  Just pick any of three-quarters of the general population to stand next to, and you’ll feel svelte, slender, and willowy.”

Last night I found a red and blue plaid pleated skirt on eBay that someone was selling for $25.  100% virgin wool – by Pendleton – and it should perfectly match the suit jacket Lura Kay gave me.  There was a ‘Make An Offer’ button on the listing, so I offered $17.50 – and the lady accepted.  (That always makes me think I should’ve offered at least $5 less.)  I just might take a few narrow tucks in the back of the jacket at the waist, after looking at it with a couple of mirrors.  But... there are a few other things I must do first, and it doesn’t look all that bad, I don’t think.  One just isn’t as picky about not-close-enough-fitted jackets when one is 56 as when one is 26!  (or 36... or 46...) 

Here’s the skirt I got.  I really don’t understand why people post pictures online of a garment that is wadded and rumpled – but I’ve usually been able to steam Pendleton wool back into shape without trouble.

I ordered one other red plaid Pendleton skirt on eBay too, just in case the blue/red doesn’t fit.  I can always make the skirts fit one of the granddaughters – but there’s elastic in the waist of one, and that means they always fit, right??

I went downstairs to get the Christmas tree ornaments tonight – and there behind the wood burning stove, right at eye level, sits the box with the old Christmas tree in it, big as you please.  The tree that has been lost for a good five years.

I’ve looked right there for that box, many times.  And I did know what the box looked like.  Someday, we’ll set it up in our new bedroom.  Someday, when the new bedroom ever gets done.

A friend who is also getting a new laptop wrote the following:  “FYI:  The salesman said that I could extend the life of my new computer by later replacing the hard drive with a solid state hard drive.  He said that the size of them is only 256 GB but is comparable to the 1TB the computer has now.  It also does not spin like the hard drive that will come in it.  And they are only about $100.  I saw some computers online that had that hard drive but thought it wasn’t comparable.  Now I know.  Will look into one of those hard drives sometime down the road.  You can do that on yours, too.

“You mean, somebody thinks I should again transfer data, to another hard drive??” I wrote back.  “Aarrgghh, is there no end?  Sigggghhhhh...”

Okay, electronic chatter that’s over my head makes me antsy and fussy and curious, so of course I had to look it up:  SSDs versus Hard Drives versus Hybrids

And now ah done know more’n ah yoosta do ’bout dat.

All right, now I must pretend I don’t know any of this, and plod along happily with my poor ol’ RPM drive, which had been impressing me. 

Here’s something that always makes me scratch my head:  I changed some personalization settings on the new laptop – and, whataya know, they changed on the old laptop, too.  That, because I’m using my Microsoft account to make things tick (deep technological explanation), and evidently those settings are stored ‘in the cloud’ (peering out the window suspiciously).  (I still don’t understand why flipping a switch on the wall makes a light come on over in the middle of the ceiling, after all.)

Larry fixed the lid on the old laptop with J.B.Weld.  I took a bunch of Stuff & Things off of it to speed it up a little, and pulled up his gmail in the Chrome browser, which he’s used to.  The computer still works pretty well, really – for sure a whole lot better than his old relic of an Emachine, and it’s much nicer than his Samsung tablet.  He’ll be happy with it.

Oh.  Never mind.  The Christmas tree box downstairs is empty.  It is, in fact, the box for the tree that now stands in our living room.  The tree that needs lights and decorations on it and presents under it.

Why does time fly so quickly??  I wanna embroider!

,,,>^..^<,,,       Sarah Lynn       ,,,>^..^<,,,