Happy Thanksgiving and Many Blessings

Hope you all have a good, and safe holiday!

The Forgotten Holiday

Christmas decor, lights, six-foot tall Santas who move, or the kind you blow up and put out on the lawn, and fake Christmas trees have taken over what was the Halloween displays in stores.

Sure, people begin thinking it's only a month or so away, but Christmas isn't the next holiday. Thanksgiving is. Everyone I've talked to calls it "the forgotten holiday".

Well, what is Thanksgiving, really? Aside from the history, to me it's a turkey dinner that smells and tastes so good you can't not cook one. One year we went to a restaurant, and it just wasn't the same. No left-overs, for one thing. You wait hours for it to be done, and all the real work comes at the end when you try and get the potatoes mashed and the gravy done just right and heat up rolls....

Since it's only Dennis and I these days we do the easy microwave potatoes, now. And since he's staying away from bread (and really so am I), we don't do stuffing. Why be in misery afterward, right? But I miss it. I miss making it in the morning, and getting that turkey stuffed. Oh, yum!

I don't know why this holiday has come down to a meal (some are simple, like ours, some are lavish with lots of pie and deserts), and having family over, and football, and then wanting to just nap wherever you are while the game is on.

Maybe because there aren't any gifts involved. But isn't the gift in family? The people you love? As a tradition Dennis and I make a toast to either each other, or say something we want to be known, like how we've gotten through a year of hardship, or whatever the case was for our year.

Do you have any traditions for Thanksgiving you want to share here? Leave them in the comments, I'd love to hear about them!

As the Pumpkin Rots... I Rant

I was busy this past week trying to do several things on the Internet. Being that I'm lost as to how to do certain things these all gave me headaches.

First of all the company I work for has gone paperless. Meaning that they no longer give you pay check stubs. I remember when they went direct deposit, which was fine, but we still got a pay stub. This past September they told us we had to go on-line to view it. There was an instruction "packet" for this. Now, as you all know what is required is some sort of User Name and then your password. Any variation on these things gets you nowhere fast. So, when I did all that I was supposed to [which included my social security #], and got the message they couldn't find me I'm incredulous. I've only worked for this company for 16 plus years, now.

So, I go to work the next day, tell my boss about it. He had someone he could speak with and they'd get it all straightened out.

Sure enough, someone on their side boo-booed. For some reason they had my husband's SS # down for me. Now, how do you do that? And it worries me because I wonder if they are doing something elsewhere down the line. So, they "fix" it. I go home and do that first step, and they had me finally. But when I went back to search for my pay stub, I couldn't get through. I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong. I gave up. I talked to my boss, and I knew what I had done wrong. I went back and tried it again. Well, they have such a long dumb ass user name and since I'm dyslexic it took me a couple of tries. Finally I was able to view it!

We had been waiting for pay raises, after this union ratification. I could rant about this for pages. The union we belong to manage to take $35/mo., and I don't know what they do, but we couldn't fight to get much better pay. This company--TRANSDEV--is huge. They could very quickly bring in non-union people from anywhere in the country and drive our buses if we took a strike vote. I was not going to go that route. We had to take the $12.18--barely up a dollar from what I was making so far. And this had been ratified and whatever for a couple of years. Transdev (I like to call them TransDIVE), dragged their feet, sent a contract that conveniently left out three things, so they could postpone payments. We all got some sort of "sign on" bonus. Some were to get $300+ whatever other bonuses were owed us.

Well, finally, that went through... but our pay raise is delayed for NEXT pay week. Can you believe it? One of the richest transit companies nickling and diming us to death. It just goes to show you those people who are at the top making the millions don't want to give those of us who do the real hard jobs what they owe us. I really REALLY can't wait to get out of this business, and it may come next year at some point. I just can't do this much longer. Not for twelve freaking dollars an hour and deal with bad drivers everywhere (in the winter it's amazing we don't kill anyone), all the students who walk out in front of you, expecting you to bring a twelve-tone bus to a screeching halt just to avoid smashing them to smithereens.

The next thing I did--or had to do--was go to my PayPal account and retrieve my royalties which went through at some point last week. Well, I didn't see it, even though I got confirmation through an email that my publisher did, indeed send the money (he also had difficulties doing the transfer, and we had to wait until the end of the month for the PayPal people to resolve the "glitch"--so, I'm not the only one with headaches). Not seeing it there--it should show it right on your summary page--and then I'm wondering why. I eventually see that I have to confirm my email with them (rolling my eyes). So I do that. The next day, YES! It's there. Now comes the tricky part. I'm wondering how I go about transferring it into my bank. If you are not familiar with this type of transaction, I'll explain it the best I can. After you've logged into PayPal, you'll get your page, and it will show you your payments, who it's from. At this point a couple of days ago I called my bank and asked someone via email, how it's done, thinking that they were the ones to contact. Don't do this. It's unnecessary. She sent me an outdated screen on how it's done. You don't need to go through your bank. All you have to do is click on choose bank. When that page comes up it you'll see all these different banks to choose from. If none of them are yours, you simply click on the phrase that says yours is a different bank. I did that. Up came two lines I had to fill out. First is the routing #, and then your account #. As soon as I put these in, my bank's name came up. Great!

Now, at this point PayPal isn't going to take for granted the account is really yours, because glitches can occur. Due to the fact that I'm dyslexic, I'm glad they are being really cautious. They tell you they are going to transfer a small amount (anywhere from one cent to .99) into your account. I think it's two deposits. You are to wait 2-3 business days and check your bank account. If it went through you tell them what the amount is. If it jives with them, then you'll have that money in your bank account. I'm not at that point as yet. I'm hoping I was careful enough to give them the correct numbers.

This stuff all takes time away from other things I have to do. And I don't like doing this after I come home from my full day of driving. It's why I don't get on line too much. I'm trying to detox from my day. Forget what happened, even when it all went well, there's always one or two irritations that bugged me, so I sit and crochet, or whatever I need to do after I get home.

Then, yesterday, I got the bill for getting my Internet hooked up. I was charged for things I wasn't supposed to get charged for. Plus, it's not no $29.99 per month, I find I'm charged $34. The bill came to over $100. I did call, told him my beef. Asked why I was charged all this and I got nowhere. So sick of beating my head against the wall, I tell Dennis (in a heated discussion), I'm just going to eat the loss. Neither one  of us wants to go into town to try and get this resolved (which we know they'll only do the dumb act on it), I tell him my royalties will cover it easily. Which it will. I can pay for it on-line, but I can just imagine what sort of headaches that will cause. I just don't like doing that. The mail service in my part of the world works just fine and I still can write out a freaking check, put it in an envelope and slap a stamp on it. If you lose the Internet for some reason, and need to pay you're out of luck!

So, that's been my week, thus far. I've made gluten-free pancakes for my husband this morning (Bisquick has this and you can find it in your grocer's health food area). I've got strawberries to clean, and will be doing that eventually. I have not had a chance to work on the fifth book in weeks. I've simply been too busy. I don't know how people find time to tweet and do facebook for hours every day. I just can't. I have to do other things--cleaning the house is one thing I never have time for, and yet I do it in increments on certain days (bathroom, one day, dusting another, vacuuming another), and I do my yoga in the morning and try and get in a walk as well, if I have the time. Other things may include the afghan I'm making for a lady friend who's cancer has come back, and I wanted to make this for a Christmas give for her before we are down for 2 freaking weeks in December (without pay, by the way). I've had other ideas for crafts this winter and want to work on them. In fact, I've worked on some wood carving, too. Interesting art, I must say. My creative side has emerged again, over this past year, and it would seem my desire to do these things doesn't give me time to work on writing, or blogging or anything else. So, if you are reading this, you know what I'm doing, and why I'm not around much. I hope you understand.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Yes, my time of year. I'm putting up a short post today. Right now we are playing our videos of horror movies. They'll play all day long. Later on we'll have root beer floats, and pizza for dinner. Just a way of celebrating. 

Didn't get any creepy cookies for Halloween, but here are a few to make you drool on my facebook page

And here's a link to some yummy cookies over on flicker

And if you want to take the test to see what literary monster you most resemble, go to Grammarly. It might be a shocking revelation!

Here are some photos to enjoy from my collection of Halloween, plus comics.

A great place to take a nap, if you're a cat

Decorating is easy if you have a... coffin just lying around.

YUMMY

What a sweetie pie... just don't get close to her. She bites!

You definitely need one of these on Halloween.

Well, my husband needs to be gluten-free, so, why not witches?

Svengoolie was the host of all those old horror flicks I watched as a teen. 

He still hosts on a local station every Saturday.

Man, I didn't think it would take the yard man that long to dig up the septic tank... hmm, must have been pretty toxic, huh?

Whatever you serve this Halloween, eat well, and whatever you do, have fun!

It's Halloween... It's Halloween...

When I was a kid, Halloween was the big day/night I got excited for. Aside from Christmas and my birthday, of course, where there were presents. But Halloween was filled with mystery, scary things. Black and orange and white; fluttering bats wings, and the loud rustle of dried leaves underfoot.

At some point, in my teens Halloween had to become something more. I became too old to trick-or-treat, so, I began dressing up and giving out treats. But I went to extremes with the decorations. I recall buying that scary sounds tape, and running that through an open window. I had a "hanged man" up in a bedroom with a light on him. There was one Halloween--when I was much older--I got my brother and nephews to help out. One of them got to be the "dummy" who sat by the door. With a mask, hooded sweatshirt and gloves on, he draped his hand over the railing right by the door. I instructed him to stay still until they knocked on the door, and then just slowly turn his hand. Ohhh, the screams from the little tykes! I loved it! I made hand-dipped caramel apples or some home made thing. They had to earn their treat. Many loved that I could scare them, and then there were those too frightened to approach.

That's how I liked Halloween. Just a little scary. Not over-done horror with the chainsaw thing, and severed limbs in the yard. Although I did do some headstones and buried my other nephews in the leaves and make noises whenever the tricker-treaters came by.

Back then, you couldn't buy a goblin or ghoul from your local store. Now they have Halloween stores with maniacal butlers and witches spouting all sorts of gruesome stuff. I had also made my own bat that appeared to fly.

What do you like about Halloween, or what do you do to haunt it up for the day's festivities? Go ahead and tell me in the comments area. Love to hear from you!

Lorelei UnPlugged

And boy, was I!

Yep. I'm back and it wasn't easy.

What happened was this. Way back in September (it was the 12th) I realized I didn't have the Internet. So, the inner dialogue went something like this.
Well, shit. I'll have to call up Peoplepc--the guys from over there in India or Pakistan... But not today. Maybe tomorrow.

See, it is never a nice experience because they have an accent. I don't understand them, and you have to explain what you see on your screen--the whole thing--to them.

Well, the next day I call. I get someone on there who must be a pup (in training). I could tell he got exasperated with me for asking him to repeat everything. Just because you speak my language doesn't mean I'm going to get it the first time around. When these people get on my bus and ask me if I go to some place I always have to have them repeat it 3 times before I can understand them!

So, at one point he says he would have to have someone call me back. Mainly because I think he didn't know what the hell was the problem. I get a call back in a few minutes. We go through the whole thing. I've now spent an excess of an hour and a half, when I get a brand new error message up after everything we've gone through, and he says "Oh. Ma'am. You have an outstanding bill."

"A what?" He repeats it. I owe them $25.10. I said, I didn't get your last bill. Which, by the way, I had to pay them an extra $3.00 for a paper bill because I will NOT pay for things on line. So, I tell him I'll send them the payment. He said in 7-10 business days I'll have service again.

I check about midweek. Nothing. I check at end of week. I also, at this point check my phone connection, just in case, because we get mice chewing on lines outside... There is no dial tone. Nothing. Silence.

Well, shit! Now I have to call up the phone people--who by the way gets $44. in addition to my bill for Internet from Peoplepc. You do the math. I've wanted to get wireless, but my phone jack is in another room from the computer. I can't move my computer into the bedroom. It can't be more than 10 feet from the jack. I wasn't going to have someone come in and do the work, as they'd charge me.

So, on Sunday I call the phone people. I get someone who's first language is Spanish and I have trouble understanding her. I thought that maybe I'd reached Donald Trump's house and got the maid. Anyway, after the difficult give and take she locates the problem, and tells me it's inside the house. Which means if a tech person comes into the house to do the work, they will charge me.

I was livid by this time. So was my husband, as he overheard the whole exchange.

Over that weekend we decide to get rid of both Peoplepc and the phone company. It was much easier to deal with the phone people (by this time it was Monday, the 21st of September), than the Peoplepc people. The guy tried to keep me. Asked if I still wanted my email, or "free" Internet for a month. NO to both things. I just wanted these jerks out of my hair forever!!!!

That was the end of my Internet, and phone. We discussed getting a couple of cell phones, but we didn't really need them right now, as we had the park phone that we used--very rarely do we need to call anyone. We are not phone people. We don't have kids (who would probably not call us but expect us to text them--bullshit on that).

So, I wrote a letter of Shelly Arkon, to let her know what was going on with me, so that people in my network didn't wonder. I want to thank her here for getting the word out that I was okay and when I could, I would be back on-line.

Believe me, if I wasn't a writer, and making some money with it, I wouldn't even have the Internet. I wouldn't even have a computer.

So, my husband and I discuss my options. I tell him if I get a laptop I could go anywhere there's free WiFi. However, living 8 to 10 miles out in the country sort of has its limitations. I'd have to go to town plop down in a coffee house and spend hours there doing this. Not exactly fun. Free, yes. Not convenient.

In the mean time while we are lobbing ideas around, I get a bill from Peoplepc. It's still on the refrigerator, by the way, and the amonunt is wrong, as I don't owe them no effing $25.10. I didn't have Internet. I told the guy I spoke to that unless they send me a corrected bill, I'm not paying it. Screw 'em. When I called them, I'll bet I wasn't even on-line as yet! So, I figure I don't owe them anything.

In the meantime of all this going on, we had a new furnace and duct work put in. That was 2 days of noise and we had to get out of the house. Also, new windows upstairs, and a brand new front door went in--which seemed to take forever, and a new ceiling fan in my office. I've had to clean and re-clean areas of the house, so I was busy. I was busy outside as well, just being me.

On October 5th, we went to Frontier (our former phone people), to look into Internet w/o having a phone connection. You can, they said. It would cost us $28/mo. Just a little bit more than Peoplepc were charging me, and no phone connection. And he said all the work inside and out would be FREE. Great! The guy said he'd get someone to our house by end of the week.

We waited for a phone call. He called and left message that he was "trying to get in touch" with his tech guy.

We waited. Had no further message about when this would happen. Then, the next week we had a message we'd have someone in on a Thursday of next week. We'd asked for a Monday or Friday--I had to be here in order for the guy who did the connection to speak with me. Dennis doesn't do computers.

Dennis called the office and talked to Brittany. He told her the problem, we had to be home when this guy came, and what we wanted. He spent all day trying to find out when/if we'd ever see anyone at the house. By this time two weeks had gone by. Brittany said we should have been connected within 10 business days. Uh, right.

So, after Dennis' 4 hours of dealing with this. He gave up. Then, on Monday, October 19, we get a call that the tech guy would be there on Tuesday (tomorrow) between 8am and 4pm. It was an automated message.

Well, Dennis said he'd stick around Tuesday. He can, since his work is near the house. He waited. He did laundry, I think he moved furniture...

It was around noon and I was driving route # 6 through the parking lot of one of our grocery stores, and there I see him walking across the lot, waiting for me. I stop the bus, put it in park and get off. He isn't smiling. Tells me the guy hasn't shown up. We needed a few things from the store, so he was going to get something for dinner, and go home.

I'm devastated. Will I never get Internet? Why is it so difficult. Are these guys even on the same planet as us?

I drive home, feeling like the world is going to end soon. I'm sitting down to eat a sandwich I couldn't eat because I was too upset. Dennis is taking off his boots and says "He's here!"

Okay, hang on, this isn't the end, gentle readers.

Tall guy, easily 6'+ some inches, name is John, comes in and while I eat he goes and reconnects an older phone jack that is in my office. Then he goes outside and puts in a brand new box on the outside, because the other one was outdated. After that, he brings in a router box. He was asking my husband why we went to the frontier store. Dennis and I got the picture that that guy we spoke to that day was a salesman. The Tech guys hate them. They put too much work on them (over heard him on phone telling his guy--who must be a go-between--that he'd do 4 jobs a day, five at the most and work through lunch, but that was it).

He is at my computer getting the router up and working. Everything is green, but my Internet won't work. He tries this and that, going into areas of the computer that I wouldn't know how he found. After forty minutes he stands there telling me my firewall or something is blocking my computer from recieving the signal. When everything looked bleak and he was telling me that their tech guys (the ones you call and they talk you through stuff), are pretty good, I'm like this isn't happening. I'll never get the Internet again.

But John stays past 4:00, until 4:30. For some reason he feels sorry for us, I don't know. Probably saw our 20 year old furniture and ancient TV set, and figures we need this free help today.

He kept getting the error message that the "proxi server" wasn't connected. Something like that. By this time Dennis has gone and taken his shower, because he could be of no help. But before he left the room he said "Those Peoplepc people are messing with you."

True enough.
John says "I don't know what that means, "proxi server".
I say to him, "Proxi means main, or primary."
Something about what I said had him go somewhere into what he'd been looking at before. Somehow he found it, pulled up this window and right there it said "Peoplepc" on my proxi server.

Oh, he did it! Suddenly I had Internet!!!

I nearly cried I was so over joyed. We did a hi-five, and I couldn't have been more happy. I said I'd hug him, but not in front of my husband. We all laughed. I shook his hand. He was happy, I could tell, that he'd found the problem. "It was something that you said," he told me. But really, he did it. I couldn't have done it.

Aside from one glitch, and another phone call I had to make to a tech guy today, I've got Internet going.

So, I'm happy to say I'm back. But I never trust this crazy technology. Eventually, I think it will be the end of us all. I really do. That was Dennis' prediction way back in the '70's to the teacher who boasted about computers and how great they were going to make our lives. Well, I don't think my life is any better, really, if anything things are more complicated. I'll have more to say on that some time later.

For now. I'm BAAAACK!

PARAPROSDOKIANS

You're probably wondering what that is. Paraprosdokians are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected and is frequently humorous. You'll see what I mean when we get started here. These were funny when I found them in a local little magazine while waiting for my dentist appointment.
Enjoy!

Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you... but it's still on my list.

Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

We never really grow up - we only learn how to act in public.

War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

In filling out an application, where it says, "In case of emergency, notify..." I answered "a doctor".

Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they're sexy.

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute if you skydive twice.

I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian, any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

You're never too old to learn something stupid.

I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

The only thing missing was the drum doing one of those padum-pum at the end of each one.

Hope you have a good holiday weekend. Me? We've got fix-it guys in here putting in windows above my head (on second floor), but I needed to post this.