My grandson was here

My grandson Liam was here for a few hours today - Steve dropped him off and Meg picked him up later.  His sitter was suffering from a migraine at the last minute.  He doesn't start school until September so needed to be with someone for a few hours.  Meg works part-time and I knew I'd only have to "play dinosaurs" for a while.  We also looked up questions on the internet and watched a NOVA repeat of "What's bigger than T-Rex" on my computer.   I have a huge puzzle of the world with magnetic pieces, and he wanted to do the puzzle today.  He knows an amazing amount about geography for a 4 (soon to be 5) year old!  I think he is very familiar with the places where dinosaur fossils have been located - Mongolia, China, Germany, England, Russia, Argentina, etc., and of course Montana, Wyoming and Utah!  It boggles my mind observing and listening to him.

We drove to the Park clubhouse where I parked the car, and then we walked the short distance over to In-and-Out-Burger.  I didn't have his car seat so I figured I'd be ok if I kept to the private roads of the Park.  The traffic at In & Out is so heavy I was worried if someone hit me and I didn't have him in a child carrier, I could be in trouble.  He wanted to bring the burger & fries home, and I ate half the fries.  Their food is pretty good for a hamburger place but I still don't like eating out.  I haven't had a chance to go to replenish my food supplies because of the heat, and didn't have anything suitable for lunch.

Tomorrow I see my opthamologist and as my vision is getting much worse I will be glad to see what he has to say.  The chiropractor says the bones in my neck that are also giving me trouble with my heart are interfering with the optical nerve as well.    I think I will get relief on both counts, but all in good time.  Not much happens overnight, and I'm happy with the fact that I'm seeing such good results.  I need new reading glasses, but since I got a pair for distance early this year before taking my driver's test, I'm sure my insurance won't pay for another pair of glasses this year.  I'll have to see what I might have to pay for new lenses only.

There are programs I like on the Science channel today although I think I've seen some of them before.  I didn't like Science when I was in school, but I sure love to learn about it now.  I hate it that I wasted so much time when I was young and learned things so quickly.

The weather is better today, "only" in the 90's, but the haze and smoke from all the fires is giving a lot of people respiratory distress.  I haven't noticed that it's bothering me, although it might and I just don't realize it.  What you don't know can't hurt you, as they used to say.  Of course that's not true!

Trying to beat the heat

Ok, so if a few readers happen to be a bit chilled because you live on the Pacific Coast, especially if you're lucky enough to live on the coast in Oregon, let me try to warm you up.  Or at least make you appreciate the chill.  Since about noon the temperature has been 100F (and rising to 106 for today).

I like to get up early and enjoy what coolness there is in the mornings, so I went to the gym and to the chiropractor this morning.  Since I've been back I've thought about going to Costco and Home Depot, and even gathered up my phone, keys, and purse several times.  Then I think of the awful heat out there and come back and sit down in the flow of air from my swamp cooler. 

This is terrible because I'm out of ice cream!   Fortunately I have a few cans of beer in the fridge, although the canned beer is just the rot-gut stuff (PBR).  I bought a quart of Miller Hi Life last week and nearly choked when I actually started to open it.  The bottle is made of plastic!   It's bad enough to pour it into a plastic cup at a picnic or while camping, but from a bottle in the fridge?  I swear it didn't taste at all like Miller Hi Life.  I need to make a trip to my local craft brewery and buy a few bottles to bring home, although that means I'll stand around talking to the staff and have a couple of glasses while I'm there.

So I don't know if it's worse to be out of beer or out of ice cream on triple digit evenings.  I think I'd vote for the ice cream to tell the truth.

Traveling

Reading Al Bossence's post about their winter travel plans got me to thinking about my own travel choices.  After years of getting "hitch itch" at a certain time of year, I realize it never really hit me this year.  I still love going to other places, but I am not interested at all in driving anymore, nor do I like to fly.  I have no choice about the flying as it's either that or drive.  I used to love the cross country Amtrak trip until the last one, where I found that service had deteriorated to the point that I no longer want to be subjected to bad service in light of the high cost of 1st class train travel (and there is no other way to ride the train for 3 days, in my opinion).

I've done a complete run through of the thousands of photos we have, and yesterday Jeannie gave me a box she found of her dad's photos and papers.  I remember seeing his pictures of when he was in Korea and in Germany.

Bill graduated high school in 1959, and since all 18 year olds had to sign up for the draft and most had to serve 2 years (3 years if they enlisted), it was a given that he would go into the Army.  He served in the Medical Corps, and a couple of the photos from Korea show the tent in which the medics had to work.  Actually, they lived in tents, had restroom and shower facilities in tents, and just about everything else took place in tents.  Korea gets extremely cold in the winter and I can't imagine having to live like that, unless of course, you are backpacking for the fun of being deprived of all comforts!  He spent one year in Korea, came home for a  short visit, and then went to Germany to finish out his commitment.

I believe he told me he was assigned temporary duty (TDY) to a hospital in one of the nearby cities, so he was at least in a building some of the time.  In looking at the pictures several times previously, it never struck me that some of them showed bombed out buildings that still hadn't been rebuilt from the war.  He would have been in Korea in 1960-61 (I'm estimating here), so it would have been 1962 that he was in Germany, roughly 17 years after the war ended.  I'm stunned by the number of buildings that were still not rebuilt, and the extent of the damage on many of the adjoining and nearby buildings. 

Today is the start of a run of triple digit weather, and I'm hating it already.  I usually never have to turn on the swamp cooler until mid afternoon, but today I didn't make it until 12 noon!  I am so glad it is working well, but I have several places I wanted to go today and can't get myself to venture out in the heat!

Quitting time for today

I was sitting in my comfortable office chair sorting photos & misc., and when I swiveled in the chair I somehow knocked over a nearly full can of beer I had just opened.  Fortunately for me the beer didn't get on any of the pictures - that would spell disaster!  It was all over the floor though but I think I got it all with a big bath towel.

There are a lot of duplicate photos but they aren't together, so I look at a picture and know I've seen it in a different bin.  When everything is gone through, then Jeannie and I can look for duplicates.    I've thrown a lot of my pictures away - anything that I can't tell who is on it or where it was taken, pictures where the flash leaves a big orange blob, and many photos that weren't taken with a flash and are so dark as to be unuseable.     I hope I can convince Jeannie to do the same.  There are also lots of cards and letters she has saved.  I faced the same dilemma and went through each one I had been saving and discarded most.  I did save a couple of sweet letters from my kids though.

I have only one beer left, a craft beer called "Golden Naked Ale", but I think I'll wait until the sun goes down to open it.  I'll pour it into a glass (and get about 2 glasses from the bottle), so at least I won't lose the entire thing by being such a klutz. 

I'm One for One!

I'm one for one with Costco.  I just got my bill for membership which amounts to $110 for the coming year.  I have the Executive Gold Star membership, which gives me an annual rebate of a certain percentage of my purchases for the year.  So along with my bill for $110 I received a voucher for $120.80 which I can redeem at Costco for cash, goods, or services.  I guess that's a little above a one-for-one.  (A regular membership at Costco is $55)

I have been going through photographs, and have literally thousands of them to sort, eliminate doubles, throw away the not really good pictures, etc.  I have come up with an initial sort that I will probably refine.  Right now I'm separating the ones I'm sure are mine from those that are obviously Jeannie's.  If I'm in doubt I make an executive decision!  I will probably have some CD's made that I can give to other family members, and I will attempt to put the originals in albums or other storage medium.  Some of these old pictures are absolutely priceless, and some could be good for "hush money".   

One thing that surprises me is how young I looked when I was young!  In fact, in some of those old pictures I looked damn good!   (That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it!).  The childhood pictures of my kids are a joy to look at.  Gosh, they were (and are) gorgeous!

The weather was so nice by 6pm that I took a bin of photos outside along with a comfortable camp chair and sat on the driveway for about an hour while sorting.  I said that I didn't think I would want to sit out on the driveway, but when occupied with an interesting task you don't notice the surroundings all that much.  There was such a nice breeze.

After another gorgeous day the next two coming up are going to be in the low 100's, but then it should go back down again, if only just a little.

Through the car wash!

I had so much dirt and grime on my car from the trip as I hadn't had it washed since I was in New York.  You couldn't even tell the color of the vehicle because it had so much of a dusty film.  I don't like automatic car washes, but $7 is easier to choose right now than my usual $25 plus tip for the hand washing of the car, vacuuming the inside and cleaning the dash and other surfaces.  The selection at the automatics is very difficult to read, and I'm not sure why dark grey print on a light grey background is the choice of any I've seen.  I realize this is probably a problem with my eyesight and those of you with good vision wonder what I'm griping about.

I woke up this morning with a pretty bad pain in the side of my abdomen, but I just lived through it since I don't take NSAIDs or aspirin any more.  It eventually went away, and I was able to walk on the treadmill this morning.  Now I feel just great!

After all the problems I've been having with unwanted calls, I've received two from different area codes on my cell phone this morning.  I didn't answer either of them but looked them up and people have reported both to be a scam.  Why in the world should they have access to cell phones now.  I did add my cell number to the DoNotCall registry, but I have little hopes that it will have any effect.  There are so many exemptions and loopholes, and I suppose the only answer is to pay extra to have your number unlisted.  I'll try to do that if the cell phone gets many more unwanted calls.  

I washed two loads of clothes very early this morning, and when I took them over to the laundry room to dry I found two magazines in the rack - "Saturday Evening Post".  I had no idea they were still publishing.  I brought both magazines home to look at them, and will return them the next time I go back.  I was surprised to find them because someone, or probably more than 1 person, is loading up the racks with religious tracts and magazines - there used to be a little more variety but not lately. 

I went outside last night to see if I could find any early meteors (about 11 pm).  The newscaster said Midnight to 2 am should be the prime viewing time, so I was to early to see anything.  I'm always surprised at how much I can see in the skies over Sacramento, and I know like any city there is a lot of light pollution.  But I've always found I can see more stars in the sky here, than say back in Falls Church, VA.  Rural Ireland was the absolute best, and I could actually see the Milky Way, when it wasn't raining, that is.

I want to thank Moonfly for the suggestions about my ATT service.  There would be a problem telling them I didn't understand about the contract, as I had a contract last year and my renewal was the beginning of my difficulties.  I decided I didn't need the number of channels I had access to but would never in my life look at, but when I downgraded the service I didn't get the few channels I DO like to watch.  So a lot of my problems with TV are my own doing.  I don't ever watch movies, cooking, talk or game shows, sports, CSI type programs, and so on.  I like history and science (I've been watching a lot of "NASA's Unexplained Files" for the past couple of days).   I am totally sick of politics and thankfully my local news stations don't spend too much time on the circus currently going on.  I can imagine what watching CNN of Fox News for a couple of days could do to your head.  Barbara D., your methods of getting rid of unwanted callers made me laugh.  I may try one of them next time I hear from a telemarketer.

I'd really love to sit outdoors when the evenings get cool enough, but the area around my house is so dreary I don't know where I'd sit.  The back yard is rocks and the front porch is too close to the street with no privacy at all.  Last year my attempts to hang a roll up shade turned out to be laughable.   The driveway is probably the best bet except that for some reason the wind blows straight into my property, and the driveway is always covered with leaves and palm tree debris from across the street, as well as the junk that falls off my flowering tree.  To make matters worse, the drought keeps me from getting the dust off everything outdoors - I'd love to just hose down the driveway for a change. 

The last straw!

More about my ATT service:  I again called this morning to have my land line svc removed, but first I wanted to know what the difference would be in my bill.  The reps talk in circles and never give you a straight answer, so I kept at this guy until he told me that as it is now, my monthly bill will be $113.85; if I have the land line disconnected the bill will be $127.  Does this sound ludicrous?

I believe to cancel the entire ATT service - tv, internet, and phone, would cost me about $185 in penalties.  I did get him to admit that this amount will reduce each month, so I will keep in mind that in 3 or maybe 6 months I will cancel the entire ATT service and find an alternative.  The TV package and programs available are so poor (for the kinds of programs I watch), that I could get used to doing without TV.  Internet is another matter although I could reduce the amount of time I spend on it, so maybe a "spot connection", such as a Mifi, might be okay.  That way when I travel I could take it along with me, and it may or may not get a connection.

I know that all the major providers are essentially the same, and I wouldn't hope to get anything better by switching to another one.  Thank goodness I have my jitterbug phone, which for $38 a month incl. taxes, gives me 700 minutes, and the unused minutes roll over to the following month.  I don't text and don't use my cell phone for anything except to talk on the phone, so it's perfect!  And if I call with a question, my call is answered by a real person!!  I wish a company would do the same for TV and internet - but I'm such an idealist!   

I had to keep telling the ATT rep to quit talking in circles and give me the straight facts.   How can I make a decision if you tell me I will lose the "bundle discount" by cancelling the phone service, when you don't tell me how much the discount is and what the cost would be without it.  I would love to sit in on a training session for telephone reps.

Enough of my ATT woes - even though I'm listed on all the Do Not Call registries I still get calls, but they are down to 2 or 3 an hour.  I may just disconnect the damn thing entirely!

I'm going to go walk off my stress at the gym, and then allow myself a trip to Target.  I need a bunch of little things and can't avoid it any longer, so I'll just have to stick to my list.  We are in for about 3 more beautiful, tolerable days, until the weekend when the triple digits are back.  I really do hate the hot weather.