I used to live in a small city for a short time. I lived in a questionable part of the city, but never really thought twice about going out walking after dark alone. That was over 10 years ago, though. Recently, the same block I lived on had a home invasion and murder. This is the closest to where my apartment was that has had that big of a problem.
That makes me wonder how I would survive if I was still living there. I never had any sort of self defense products or even thought of having them. I never gave much thought to there being any real problems. I mean, I know there is crime, but I was in an area that was 99% safe. Now? I’m not sure it’s even 1% safe.
At one point when I was younger, I used to collect the oddest things. One thing that I had a ton of was pens. I still have a ton of pens, too. But the odder one was the collection of golf balls that I had. I don’t know why, or where they came from, but I had a bunch of different colored balls. I still have a few lingering about, but I don’t know where they came from. My father wasn’t a golfer, no one I knew golfed either. So I really don’t know where the first one ever came from.
But yes, I had an odd collection of golf balls, including a fluorescent orange one that is still lingering around the house today. *shrug* I’m odd, so it fits.
I know there are book of the month clubs, fruit of the month, and flowers of the month. But I did not know, and I have to wonder how many do know, that there is a bacon of the month club out there. I know we live in a crazy world, but I think that beats all forms of crazy.
Can you imagine this conversation? Wife: Honey what do you think we should get your boss for Christmas this year? Husband: How about we get him the bacon of the month club. Wife: The what??? Husband: Bacon of the month. Wife: Uh.. okay.
I saw something yesterday that really made me wonder about how trashed our economy really is. I saw a couple of used Harleys along side the road for sale. It made me sad, really, because no one likes to or wants to sell their motorcycle. It’s got to be a bad state of the economy for people to do that.
I mean, I’ve seen people sell their bikes after getting a new one, but these were practically brand new, and I’m sure there was a heck of a price tag on them. How desperate can people be to sell a Harley? Seriously. They usually trade them in for new ones unless they’re really hurting.
One of the things I hate about the first part of the month is paying bills. Every month when I pay the auto insurance, I think to myself that I need to get auto insurance quotes to see if I can find it cheaper. The thing is, I can’t find a cheaper rate. Allstate is the cheapest rate that we can find.
It sucks, bills suck, money sucks. But ya know what? It’s what makes the world go round.
So, I have a lot of random thoughts bubbling around inside my head. Some days, I don’t know what to do with all those thoughts. I want to get them out, but it never happens. Today, however, all those thoughts keep bumping into each other and don’t want to come out. I want to stay quiet and wallow in my own thoughts. Instead of telling you about my thoughts, I’ll give you authorize.net to look at instead.
So, I surf the web and read a lot. It’s kind of interesting some of the things that I come across. One of the things are lipovox reviews that I’ve read. Why? I have absolutely no idea. I guess it’s just the fact that I like to know everything that I can about things. I educate myself about a lot of different things, even if they have no impact on my life.
I watch a lot of home decorating type shows. Mostly the ones where they’re trying to sell the homes, or first time buyers are looking. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that picture frames are often sparse. I wonder if this is because of television reasons or if it’s because it’s just plain good sense to keep them scarce when trying to sell.
Personally, I’d like to believe that it’s for television/safety reasons, because I don’t think I’d want to buy a house that didn’t seem lived in.
My 5th wedding anniversary is coming up in July and we don’t have anything planned. Rob has vacation the week before our anniversary off, but we’re not planning anything in particular. I’d like to do something, but we can’t this year. I do like the look of Mediterranean cruises, but we definitely can’t do it this year, even if I want to.
What we do plan on doing is going to pick cherries. Seriously. It’s been over 10 years since I’ve been.
So, lapintada got me thinking about Laurell K. Hamilton and I was looking at her event schedule. She is going to be at DragonCon 2008. I’m *not* a con type of person, but damn.. LKH.. it’s REALLY tempting. Anne & Todd McCaffrey are scheduled to be there as well. Sorely tempting.. Now if Stephenie Meyer, MaryJanice Davidson and Carrie Vaughn were added to the list.. yeah.
Ah well, not like I could go if I wanted to. Especially since Rob’s vacation time is at the beginning of June and I don’t like to travel alone.
I keep coming back to looking at treadmills that I’d like to have in my home. I know that when I go back to the doctor Monday, she’s going to tell me to walk more. I would, but I know my limits. I know the only way that I could possibly walk as much as I need to is to have a treadmill in my house.
Okay, so showering when you have back problems is never any fun, especially if you have a slippery tub shower, rather than a shower stall. It’s so easy for your feet to go out from under you and hurt yourself. This is especially true for older people as well, which is why it is so dangerous for them. One thing that you can do to keep the older people in your life safe is make sure that they have a shower stool of some sort so that they can sit while they shower.
I know that I will have one in my home sooner rather than later, so that I don’t have to worry about my mother falling in our shower. She isn’t as steady on her feet as she used to be.
One of the things that I’ve always done since I’ve had Internet access at home is to research anything that someone says to me. For instance, If someone says that they have a certain health condition, like mesothelioma, I will go learn as much as I can about the condition before discussing it with them. I have the need to educate myself about everything that I can.
However, I have let this slip to the wayside when it comes to my own personal health. This annoys me to no end because I know more about what’s going on with the people around me than I know about what’s going on with myself.
One of the things that I remember about home when I was growing up is that we never, ever had blinds on the windows. We always had roller shades instead. I never really understood why people would want blinds that had openings in them. Shades were awesome, in my opinion. They blocked the light far better than anything else could have. It wasn’t until we moved out of the house that we switched to blinds. I still don’t like them.
Spring is in the air, but it has not sprung here, yet. In fact, it even snowed some today, but that doesn’t mean that spring isn’t right around the corner. That means it’s time to clean out the air cleaners and get ready for the pollen season. Ugh.
I can’t wait for it to warm up enough that we can open the windows and air this place it. It’s so stuffy and stale inside. Maybe that’s why I’ve made an effort to get out more this winter.
I can’t wait until tax season is over. We’re having a heck of a time with our returns. I filed everything the way it should be filed, but PA suddenly wants more information. Sucks. But as soon as we get our refunds, I can be added to Rob’s health insurance from work and I can have accidental death life insurance coverage too. It’ll be nice to not have to worry so much.
Plus, we need to pick up Rob’s glasses that have been sitting at the eye doctors for a couple weeks now. *sigh* Hurry up, IRS, we need that money!
An odd thought crossed my mind yesterday while I was in the car. All these celebrities got their start somewhere, right? What kind of talent management sat down and looked at someone like Don Knotts and say “lets put him on television. Seriously!
I don’t really understand how some of these celebrities got discovered. I can understand children of celebrities, but there are some that I don’t comprehend. Especially those who are so big and popular and have little to no talent, nor reason for their standing.
Patek Calatrava does. Or at least, his watches do. They are absolutely amazing watches and absolutely expensive. Ah well, a girl can dream, right?
There was a point I was going to make about time, but I don’t really remember what it was. Time keeps on slipping away from us so quickly that you seem to forget what you were going to do and realize it’s hours later and you still haven’t done what you planned to do originally. Like this post, for instance. I started it a while ago and … poof, my train of thought is gone.
If I had a penny for how many times I’ve thought about running away on vacation, I’d be a rich woman. But, I’m not rich, so I guess I’m out of luck, huh? I do want a vacation and I think it’s time to start seriously considering taking one. I kind of want to go visit Las Vegas again. Go see Chad and Heather and Anna. Maybe we can find a cheap flights and go visit over the summer or in the fall.
It would be nice to get away for a few days and he does have vacation time coming. Maybe we can do it… It would be nice, for sure.
So one of the things that I have always enjoyed about role play is the whole idea of being whomever you want. You can dress yourself in some sexy costumes and be someone you could never be in real life for whatever reason. For instance, you can role play a vampire or a cat. You can even dress up as a nurse for some interesting fun. It’s all about imagination and how well you can use it. You never know what kind of mood will strike when you play a role.
In life, however, you can’t just decide to be a naughty nurse in a short skirt. You have to actually maintain some decorum and, ya know, be licensed.
So, living in the middle of nowhere, my cell phone reception is really shoddy and spotty. In fact, right now if I turn my phone on, I’d get about 2 bars of signal. Definitely not enough to make or receive a call and it’s barely enough to send and receive text messages. This is the way my phone behaves anywhere within 10 miles of my house. Sometimes, I’ll get lucky and pull in a bit of extra signal, but not very often.
Normally, this wouldn’t bother me, but there have been so many house fires in my area recently that I’m scared of being without phone signal. We can’t rely on neighbors to call the fire department in case of a fire, since we’re in such a rural area. Most of them wouldn’t even notice, to be quite honest. By the time any of us got to one of the neighbors, and got a call in to 911, it’s quite likely that our house would be completely gone.
With that being said, I’ve been looking at getting a mobile cell phone booster so that we can have a decent signal in case we have some sort of emergency and have to rely on our cell phones. They amplify the signals that are already in the area and draw them in for better reception and fewer disconnects. It’s definitely something that I’d like to have if something were to happen here.
The thought of watching our home burn and not being able to call 911 scares the hell out of me. It seems like at least once a week, there is another home that has burnt here. Just today, a high school friend and his wife lost their home. Thankfully, the only casualties were three cats and not humans. Perhaps, mobile cell phone booster could have helped someone who lost their home in this area, since the entire area is mostly a dead zone.
So, yesterday when Rob and I were out, I saw the new sign for the local nursing facility and just shook my head. They recently changed hands, so a new name was inevitable. The problem is, they gave the entire facility the name Elderwood. Now, I could see if it was a senior living community, but this is a full fledged nursing facility.
The majority of patients are lifers that need care all the time. Elderwood would be a fitting name for the assisted living facility that is part of the campus, but overall? I think they need to rethink it. Everyone thinks I’m odd for not liking it. Maybe I am. Maybe I just preferred Tioga Nursing Facility. Kind of hard to teach an old dog new tricks and I told my husband that. It’ll always be Tioga to me.
Hell, it was Tioga General Hospital when I was growing up, then Tioga Nursing Facility. Now it’s Elderwood? How are you going to break a 32 year old habit?
One of the things that I’ve thought about when I think of my dream home is having a theater room. Seriously. How cool would it be to have some really cool home theater furniture? Cushy theater seating, the sound system, lights and the big screen to watch movies on. Imagine watching your favorite movie in your own home theater.
Watching television programs in a theater room. Seriously, can you imagine that? Watch American Idol with surround sound. It’d be like being there live. Or Harry Potter. It’d be really damn sweet to have a theater room. Don’t you think?
I wrote a while back about why I don’t like working for other people. One of the reasons is the last corporation I worked for was notorious for hiring on a bunch of new hires then pulling some stupid corporate performance management crap and firing them right at the end of their ninety day period. They always made up some stupid excuse, such as bad performance reviews, to do it. Something you can’t fight against, then your file gets sealed. I think that the worse of it, though, was that they were working me 12 hour days, 4 days a week, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. A lot of times, I would work 5 12’s, and the day I was fired, I was on day 6. Two days before I hit the ninety mark. I knew they were doing evaluations that morning, since I had seen the girls on either side of me go into “The Office” and come out upset.
When I was called in, I figured what was going to happen. I had already gotten my stuff together so that I could just toss it in my bag, but yeah. I went into “The Office” and was told, by the floor manager who was never around during the 90 days, that my error rate was too high during the period I was monitored. Oddly enough, it was the day I got all the screwed up batches. Conspiracy? Sure. Corporate crap? Definitely.
Sometimes, I get to thinking about moving. Especially the days when it’s REALLY cold. I think about moving back to Vegas sometimes. I miss living in a city, especially when I want to go to a store and buy yarn or when I want to have more than one choice of stores to get yarn at. Locally I have the choice of Wal-Mart or K-Mart. In Vegas, there was Michaels and A.C. Moore and other stores.
I miss the fountain shows at the Bellagio. I miss standing on the sidewalk, listening to the music, watching the fountains dance back and forth. I miss the different free activities, including the water show at Excalibur. I miss having things that I can do when the mood strikes and being able to grocery shop at midnight. I miss being able to go out in the middle of the night and not be considered odd. I just miss living in the city.
Then I remember how expensive it was. I remember how hard we struggled to get by. I remember why we moved back and most importantly, I remember how far we’ve come together since we left.
