Category: Blogger Posts

Well, what an interesting week. I have been too busy – and then had PC problems which kept me from posting. Let’s start with Wednesday. Chelsey & I went to the rodeo to see Jo Dee Messina. Jo Dee rocked. Before we went in to the Dome we went to get my funnel cake (I told you they were good) and some food for Chelsey. We went to the stand with the Onion Blossoms, which were pretty tasty too. She innocently asked what came with the Catfish dinner. The chicky-poo behind the counter told her it came with rice an a roll and then proceeded to tell her that they were out of rice. Listed her alternatives – including Gumbo. Chelsey said she wanted the Gumbo. The woman working at the other register said that the gumbo wouldn’t work because they put the food into a to-go box with the one main compartment and 2 small compartments. So Chelsey asked if they could put it in a cup. Now mind you… we are watching the cook scoop gumbo into a cup right there behind the counter. And chicky-poo had the guts to say, “We don’t have any cups”. Ummmmmmm… “what are those?” we both ask in unison. We are looking at the cups! She then says, “those are limited.” I asked her if we could pay extra so they would just put it in a cup. She looked at the other woman and said “Aunt Shirley, do I have to deal with rude people?” RUDE??? Because we want to pay for a cup??? THEN… she tries to wait on the people in line behind us. Oh no, I don’t think so. Chelsey stepped in front of her and said “excuse me?” I then said that we wanted what we ordered. So chicky-poo slams my bottle of Sprite on the counter, making sure to shake it up some first. I was trying to open it gently without it exploding on me when she did the same thing to Chelsey’s Coke. Ohhhhhh no she didn’t. You don’t jack with my Chelsey. First we are going through hell just trying to get gumbo in a cup, then that??? I proceeded to try open my Sprite over the cash register then just slammed it on the counter and stormed off. I was soooo mad I was shaking. If I didn’t walk off I would have probably punched her. Poor Chelsey – she stuck it out and got the food and two fresh drinks for us. At least she had better not question the loyalty of my friendship – I was ready to *kick her ass* just for messing with my Chelsey. Poor chicky-poo didn’t know what she was asking for! She was goin’ down!!! Poor Chelsey – she didn’t know I had it in me. All these years, I have been so even tempered most of the time. I don’t normally get angry – it’s actually pretty rare. We got our tasty food, and I settled down. Back to being my normal self. The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful after that, but a lot of fun!

Moving on to Thursday – payback for complaining about the toilet? My PC conspired with it and died on me Thursday night. Just to get revenge. I am sure of it. This is how it went down… Thursday night I was watching my Defensive Driving videos. I went online to do the test after the first segment, and it locked up just as I finished. Hmmmm… ok, reboot. Ctrl+Alt+Del didn’t work – so I did a hard boot. Click-click-click-click-click … nothing. Dos prompt. So yesterday I got the emergency start-up disk, rebooted and reinstalled Windows98. (Yes, 98 – I want to make sure my son’s games are supported by ME or 2000 before I switch.) It reinstalled but was glitchy, so I got the photos off that I wanted and reformatted the hard drive and then reinstalled again. It was up but not running well when it went down again. I gave up & went to bed. This morning with Doug’s help (Chelsey’s boyfriend) I did an fdisk, and then when I went to reformat it again it started to give us error messages that it couldn’t recover allocation units. Damn. Doug came by a little bit ago and pronounced it dead. Fortunately, I did a big backup in December, but still… the laptop doesn’t have access to the cable modem and it is missing the “M” key – makes it pretty interesting to type. So now I have to get a new hard drive and some RAM (may as well upgrade that while it is open!) and find my CDs so I can reinstall all the drivers when it is up and running. The only good thing about all of this is that I wanted an bigger hard drive anyways – now I can’t procrastinate any more. I am thankful that I have the laptop to hold me over – I just hate this dial-up, it’s sooooo slow. Oh! And the laptop won’t let me see this site! It is so strange – my friends can see it, I know it’s here. I can see my other site on this server. Just can’t see this one. If you have any suggestions on how to fix it, let me know!

On a side note, I have on “Donovan’s Reef”, an old John Wayne movie right now. Hey, it was on A&E and I just left it on. I just have to say this – I have a hard time believing the Polynesians all wore nice cotton dresses and shorts out of coordinating fabric like they do in this movie. Then there was a scene just now at the end where John Wayne, in true manly form, said to the gal that “now I wear the pants in the family” and swung her around, put her over his knee and spanked her. Ok, what is up with THAT? Man, no wonder our society is so twisted. Look at what my parent’s generation were watching!

Friday was a very sad day at the office. They laid Kymberlie off. I am soooooo bummed. She has been my cubicle buddy for 6 months now. She was my protege. I feel like I let her down. I am quite stressed over it. Although, I will say that with her talents I am positive she will come out of this in a much better place. Kymberlie, I won’t forget about you and we will all be missing you! I’m here for you!

My cat, Murphy, is just chillin’ now – sleeping on the chair on his back with his paw over his face. What a riot. I would take his picture, but I don’t have any film. I have a digital camera, but I lost the software to get the images off with the death of the PC. Actually, it was corrupted before. Another thing to add to the list! I want a webcam too. Not sure why, other than to satisfy my gadget addiction. I was up at Best Buy today wandering around – had to pick up a cable to connect the VCR to my receiver – and I was drooling over the webcams and the digital cameras. I have too many other bills to deal with right now!

Added my AOL IM contact info over there. If you see me online, drop me a note. Speaking of IM, Super J and I were just chatting, and he was telling me I have to go see “Rent” when it comes to Houston. He said the messages changed his life. Live every moment like it is your last – because it could be. Don’t judge people based on superficial things. Good messages. I am going to have to watch for when it comes to Houston again.

After what my toilet did to me tonight (no, I have not ever even heard of an electric toilet plunger…) I really got a kick out of Aaron’s Wild Toilets article. Last fall when considering leaving apartment life behind I decided that as long as I am single an apartment is not a bad thing. I can call maintanence any hour of the night if there is an emergency. I got the toilet to behave pretty fast, so I am set for now, but if it acts up again you can bet I will be calling!

Hey Naomi! Look! An All Your Base Are Belong to Us T-Shirt on the LittleYellowDifferent Guy. (February 27, 2001 post) Too funny. Here I had never heard of it before last week, and now it is popping up where I least expect it.

Kymberlie & I went to the Duran Duran concert tonight at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. It was a blast. The funnel cake was fabulous – I can’t wait until I return and have another! The ride to the Dome was nice and smooth. And as Kymberlie put it, you just *can’t* go wrong with ’80s music! There were several songs I had forgotten that they sang. The odd thing was that they didn’t sing “The Reflex” – which was their first Number 1 song ever in the USA? I can’t figure out why. Maybe someone owns the copyright to it and they are not allowed to play it? They did “Rio” and “Save a Prayer” and a bunch of other cool ones though – so it’s all good. I visited this site, and I have to add that they look so funny now as an adult! I remember been a teenager and thinking how hot they were. They look hysterical in that picture with all that make-up! Now for the trivia question of the evening … just how old IS Simon LeBon? I went to CDNow to look at the Bio there on the band. He joined the group in 1980. Hmmm… 21 years ago. No data on how old he was when he joined though… anyone know the answer? I am really curious now. WAIT!!! I found it! According to this page he was born October 27th, 1958 – which would make him 42, going on 43 later this year. Oops, sorry Simon. I guess you are not as old as we thought you were! It must have just been the lighting…

Tomorrow it is the Jo Dee Messina concert with Chelsey. She will be happy when I tell her tomorrow how much smoother the whole bus system was running tonight. We went to the opening show, Clay Walker, and the bus system was not that smooth yet. This year with all of the construction at the Astrodome complex they are making everyone take the bus to the Rodeo. I normally take the bus and don’t mind it at all. I hated having to walk forever to get to my car and then sit in stop and go traffic to even get out of the parking lot. I truly prefer getting on the bus and letting them deal with the drive. All I had to do was walk a short distance from the steps of the bus and I was at the gates! You could never park that close if you drove. But that first night none of the drivers knew where they were going – it was a bit of a mess. She swore she wasn’t going to go again this year. Now she is … just so she can go with me … awwwwwwwwww. By the way Chelsey, I am working on that list for you, just like you asked.

Want to know what really SUCKS? When you go to the bathroom at 2 in the morning and the toilet, for no reason whatsoever, decides it should overflow. ACK!!! It is at moments like these that I really wish I had a husband to help me out. It is a lot of fun standing in half an inch of water trying to get everything from gushing everywhere

Want to know what is really COOL? When complete strangers stand up and give you support. No, not with the toilet crisis of the last hour. I am on a craft list where I posted some helpful information on web design. When questioned, I posted about my experience and some of the clients that I have worked with – the ones with names that people would recognize. I then posted that I was not posting helpful information to get business – the prices at the company that I work for are normally out of their budget by a longshot. One of the women on the list posted back that my comment was arrogant. Man, that made me mad. It was so wonderful to get a lot of e-mail from people that truly cared and thanked me for my posts in the past and asked me not to leave. No worries, I am not going anywhere. I will continue to post information on what I know – because I enjoy doing it. But the more I thought about it, you know what? They are right. I started saying years ago that I am a web snob. I hate poorly designed websites. I hate people that want to sell online but don’t take the effort to design a professional site or even one that showcases their products well. I really hate sites that use the “no right-click script” because it would take me about 45 seconds to still copy the images or the code – so all they are doing is preventing me from doing “right click – open link in new window” which really annoys me. Yep, I am a web snob. I am arrogant. I have worked hard to know what I do, I am primarily self-taught, and I have been pretty successful so far in my Internet career. I am proud of my arrogant title! Web Snobs Unite!

I don’t normally post things like this here or send them along by e-mail. But this one really made me stop and think, so here it is. I am proud to have been an Army wife, and I am proud of my ex-husband who is still serving in the U.S. Army at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina. I did not write this. If anyone knows the original author of this – please let me know. For my ex-husband and all the others that serve in the military…

On 18 February 2001, while racing for fame and fortune, Dale Earnhardt died in the last lap of the Daytona 500. It was surely a tragedy for his family, friends and fans. He was 49 years old with grown children, one which was in the race. I am new to the NASCAR culture so much of what I know has come from the newspaper and TV. He was a winner and earned everything he had. This included more than “$41 million in winnings and ten times that from endorsements and souvenir sales”. He had a beautiful home and a private jet. He drove the most sophisticated cars allowed and every part was inspected and replaced as soon as there was any evidence of wear. This is normally fully funded by the car and team sponsors. Today, there is no TV station that does not constantly remind us of his tragic end and the radio already has a song of tribute to this winning driver. Nothing should be taken away from this man, he was a professional and the best in his profession. He was in a very dangerous business but the rewards were great.

18 February 2001, Dale Earnhardt died driving for fame and glory at the Daytona 500. The nation mourns. Seven soldiers died training to protect our freedom. No one can remember their names and most don’t even remember the incident.

Ack! I just realized I am as bad as the person that tossed me into this funk. I told Tom on Friday that I would call him, and never did. Egads. Now I am in a funk and feeling guilty at the same time. I am a terrible friend. Tom, if you are reading this, here is my public apology. I should have called, and there is really no excuse good enough. Please forgive me… Man, I am a bad friend. (Hey Chelsey, no comments from the cheap seats…)