We arrived home last Friday night - much earlier in the evening than usual. It was a combination of exhaustion, the heat, possibility of heavy rain later in the evening, and knowing that we might have to be up and about early on Saturday for the delivery of our new refrigerator. Normally no matter how late it is when we arrive home we clear out all - or just about all - of the stuff in the RV. This time we only brought in what we needed to have for the night and Saturday morning. We did not want more stuff in the house - which was still discombobulated from when the new fridge had been delivered the week before. There was no computer phone call with the time that the delivery would be made the next day as we were suppose to receive and had received the night before the first refrigerator was received. Knowing that the crew also calls about half an hour before they actually come, we went to bed expecting a call the next day.
I was woken by someone ringing our doorbell and pounding on the door at 7:30 am. I was unsure if it was the delivery as no one had called and was physically too exhausted to get up and look out the window. At 9:30 am my alarm went off. I telephoned the store and was told that I was not on the delivery list for the day. (Glad I didn’t force myself out of bed at 7:30.) The delivery manager who told me this seemed to have no memory of who we were and what was going on. He put me through to the appliance manager. She remembered us, but it was as if we had not been told the week before that it would be delivered on Saturday - the day I was calling her. She told me that she had the fridge and it would be delivered the next day - Sunday. (Quite frankly we were surprised that they deliver on Saturday or Sunday - it used to be week days only.)
The time frame for the first refrigerator to be delivered was 11:30 am to 4:30 pm. We figured that there was a delivery time which ended at 11:30 am and one that started at 4:30 pm. We were called and told that the time range was 12 pm to 5 pm. Lunch was problematic - there was food in the basement freezer and some packaged food in the house - but we had not had a properly working fridge in over a week and a half and did not really have food in the house for the lunch, but we figured we could hold out - and what were the chances we would be one of the last deliveries of the time frame?
We woke up before noon and dressed and went into our home office to work on our computers, sort mail that arrived while we were away, catch up email etc. Around 3:00 husband said that he really needed to eat something as his blood sugar had dropped. Crackers were not enough - so I made him a can of pea soup. I had a small individual applesauce. We went back upstairs. Now, I did get work done - I managed to transfer files to a DVD for my annual archiving of last year, caught up on email, etc. At 4:00 the phone rang. It was the delivery company’s computer again - delivery was now to be 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm!
I telephoned the store - they had the same info, but they did give me a phone number for the delivery company. I called same - 3 times as the first two times I was dropped off hold. I got a nice woman named Becky. I explained that entire saga- damaged refrigerator delivered, having to wait a week for a replacement, delivery not set up for the day before as we would be told, the change in time at the last minute, we are both Diabetics and have not eaten and are becoming ill... She went and checked. There had been a problem on an earlier delivery that set the crew back 90 minutes! She also told me that there were 4 deliveries ahead of us so it would be an hour to an hour and a half before they came and we should be able to go out and eat something. I thanked her.
We did not go out for lunch as we did not trust doing so. Glad we did not. We received a call around 5 pm that they would be here within half an hour. Husband went outside to wait. Good thing. The numbering is odd on the houses here plus depending on the GPS it can show us up the street or about 5 + blocks of where we are. Husband saw a truck stop about 2 houses up the street from us with the men in the truck looking confused and he waved them over.
As opposed to the first crew which was just the other side of perfunctory - meaning a little short of same - this was the type of the delivery we expected (other than the time problem). Two friendly delivery men. Robert had explained to them that they were taking back the same model that we had recently received because of damage. They came in and measured the doors again. (The last one came in, so this one had to - they were twins.) The one in charge looked at the damage and shook his head that it had been delivered like that. They took the old one out. They unpacked the new one. The one in charge called husband over - there was a scratch in the freezer door of the new one - he and we had the same idea - the freezer doors were switched. They brought the new fridge in. They removed the plastic wrapping from it. It was plugged in so all knew it was working. They saw that it was not level and leveled it. (The prior crew had told us it could not be leveled when we asked them to do so.) They did not set up the inside, but I had been told by the manager that they are not suppose to do so. If this crew had come with the original fridge and same had not been damaged and had worked right - I would be just as happy with this store as I was after I bought a washing machine from them. (Which is why we bought from them again.) We tipped the two men - husband is not one to tip for deliveries and such, but we agreed that they did that good a job - especially compared to the last crew. After delivery and setup the fridge is suppose to sit set at the middle range for 24 hours without opening and closing the door or putting any food in it. We shut it off and set up the shelves inside, put in the remote thermometer and shut the door. We went out for a much needed dinner at the Asian buffet we go to.
It is more or less working properly. Apparently it is suppose to go up and down more than our older fridge to keep the proper temperature - although not as much as the first one did. It is also suppose to do so less after it is filled - it is suppose to be at least half filled and food added a little at a time. We have put a lot of bottles of water (made by us, not commercial) in it to add food to it as we have not yet been food shopping and even then, do not have a lot of food in the fridge at any one time in hot weather (in case storm takes down the electricity), and not that much in the winter either other than at certain times as there are only two of us.
So Monday afternoon after picking up the mail at our box - from over a week - and lunch out at Wendys, we came home and I was ready to start catching up on work at my computer. Our bank statements, as well as those for our business and for the two clubs of which I am treasurer had all come in and I planned to work on them. ( I had caught up on email on Sunday while we waited for the delivery.)
I turned on my computer. Some message went past too quickly for me to read. I then tried to go to the Win XP virtual machine in my computer to catch up and sync my Organizer entries in my old Palm Centro with Organizer - but the computer would not switch to the XP side. Husband came to figure it out. Unfortunately I have been having problems with my old, analog monitor recently and it decided to die in the middle of this. We managed to turn my computer sideways and hook it up to the monitor from husband’s second computer - hanging on the wall on his side of the office. He fixed the computer problem.
He had been looking for a new monitor for me. I really did not want a digital one, but that it is all there is. The big problem was that unless we were going to rearrange a good part of the office, I needed a small monitor - about 18 inches across - or it would not fit. There were two candidates he had found. One was Walmart and one was from Staples - but the latter had to be ordered. So Walmart it was. We went in to a local Walmart. We found the monitor we had been looking at - on our trip last week we actually had a chance to see it running and it looked okay. We also found one that he had not seen anything about that was smaller. He looked it up online on his cell phone - well rated and only US$60 (plus sales tax). We decided to go with same. It could be returned and at that price if we decided that I should have the other monitor (it can be turned vertically which might be good for me when reading full page things such as IRS manuals), this was cheap enough to keep as a spare emergency monitor around the house. We took it to the electronics desk - it was $90? Husband pointed out that it was $60 online - we were told that we had to ask for a price match (to Walmart’s own online price). He walked away in reference to a call he had taken. Husband checked and he told him that we should take it to customer service and buy it there, asking for the price match.
This Walmart is in the middle of being updated. The entry now has a gate that when closed only lets one into the store, not out, and when open bings when one someone walks out. Plus there is a security device on the box - how do we get to the service desk - without security descending on us? He decided that he would stay inside of the entrance and I should go out, get in line and explain and ask what to do. I walked over to the first register aisle (empty of customers) and walked out and got on the service line. I was 3rd in line. But there were problems with everyone ahead of us. Finally after he watched people walk out the entrance, set off the alarm, and have nothing happen, he met me at the line. We bought it for the online price and started home.
My old monitor sat on a small plastic shelf, which I do not want to get rid of. (I keep my 2 external hard drives for backup under it, as well as it having sections to hold both kinds of paper clips, pencils, pens, etc. ) Apparently the old monitor bent the shelf and the new monitor rocked. We finally got it balanced and working. I then ran to cook dinner and add some items to the refrigerator after shutting off the computer.
Yesterday, Tuesday, we finally went for our annual eye exams. We were due last November - back when husband’s shoulder was in pain and we could not go that far. Since then this and that has happened, so it took until now. (All was good at the appointment - thank you for asking.) We drove home afterwards despite the drops in our eyes.
On arriving home I helped husband set up our portal air conditioner in the living room so he could finish a weaving project on his loom and went upstairs to try to catch up on computer - and pay a bill. I had trouble seeing anything on the screen - it all seemed overwhelming (husband had changed the settings to make the icons larger - something I really did not need or want). Colors were too bright. The white was too bright. I figured it was all related to the eye drops. I managed to work around it - checked email - first time since Sunday, paid the bill, etc. Husband later changed the icon settings back for me.
So today when we came home from a couple of errands I was ready to go to work on my computer and get work done. It was still too bright - the white too bright, the colors too bold - and I am talking about type - not pictures. I ended up switching to my distance glasses (normally use reading glasses - as I am doing now with my laptop - when working on the computer) and pushing my seat back as far as my arms could reach. He spent a good deal of time - dinner was late tonight - trying to get to the colors and white so that they are not too bright/bold for me, but not so that the white is grey either. Not sure if he/we are done with it with yet.
And he does not understand why I say - change is never good.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
For some reason change is easier for some people. There are people who look forward to something new - new clothes, new car, new computer, new household appliance, new house, going someplace new on a trip. Are you one of them? Or are you like me - someone who wants everything to stay as it is and has trouble adjusting to change?
Showing posts with label archive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label archive. Show all posts
Thursday, July 11, 2019
Thursday, February 28, 2019
DO YOU BACK UP?
You know “the curse” I have been talking about? Well it hit again. Due to all of the craziness and lack of time in general plus time lost to the craziness and need to do things over and over, I had not backed up my main computer or my work laptop (the old one, not this new one which is still being slowly fed software) for the last quarter of 2018 - which I would normally have done around January 15 - nor did I do a monthly backup for December either. So last Friday I decided to do both. I backed up one computer to the quarterly hard drive and the other to the monthly hard drive at the same time. All went well. I also backed up my calendar, client who I have a separate flash drive for, and my data to each. All went fine. Saturday we were home as there was to be rain so I backed up each of the computers etc to the opposite drive. Still all okay.
I then went to back up for the week. I have a flash drive which holds 6 weeks of data, client, ad calendar files. I update the oldest one each week. This week if the data drive went bad and both of the regular “every session alternately” backups went bad I will have data from a week ago to work with. I back up with a software program that updates the files already in the file I am updating to. It finished running while we were out having dinner on Saturday.
When we got home the backup file did not show everything as finished. There were problems with several older tax client files - this is pdf copies of the returns, info used from the clients and my work papers. When I opened those files - it was all gibberish. Husband looked at them and told me that the drive had gone bad and the files were corrupted.
I did not panic - I have backups and they must be right as the backup program had not had a problem when making them. The back up from Saturday afternoon had the same corrupted files. I should say that, luckily, I had not gotten around to do any actual work on the computer for a couple of days - checked email, updated calendar, started one letter. I tried the backup from Friday and it was fine - whew!!
Husband tried to format the bad drive and it could not be done. So he broke it with a hammer to dust and threw out the dust. (Security is important when financial records are involved.) I had a new, larger flash drive and copied the backup from the day before to that drive. Husband suggested I use all new drives and change them annually from now on. I also have an archive drive - I will soon copy my 2018 files into my archive and remove them from the data drive I use to keep it more compact. Robert suggested that I get a new archive drive also. When I update the archive drive I also make 2 DVDs of it - one goes into my regular disk box and one goes into my “grab and go” accordion folder. This holds copies of our house and car titles, stock certificates, last month’s reconciled bank statements, wedding licenses (we actually have 3 - one government, one from each of our religions), medical insurance and the like. In case of an emergency we can grab this folder and have copies of our important papers to take with us - including DVDs of the archive and of my monthly backup to take offsite.
So I planned to go on Monday to a MicroCenter - a location of the chain and buy 3 new flash drives - one each for the session backups and a larger one for the archive. However, while at Costco on Sunday, husband noticed that my laptop dropped $50 in price since we bought it, so Monday we forgot about buying the new drives and went to back to Costco as they will refund the difference with the receipt. (This is a actually a very good idea. I could have returned the laptop and bought it again to take advantage of the price drop, and they would be stuck with a used laptop, this way I keep my laptop, am happy to get the lower price, and they don’t have to deal with a used laptop - and extra credit card fees for a return and another purchase.)
So yesterday, Tuesday, we bought the new drives. I made two new regular backups yesterday of data, client, and calendar files. I still have to check the hard drive backups and make a weekly backup for last week - though at this point, I will probably not bother and just do this week’s weekly backup on Friday. I also still have to copy the archive to the new drive.
I feel as if I am not getting anything done. I generally can tell how much I have been getting done by the number of papers I have to file at the end of a week, the number of items I have to mail out, and how deep the dust is in the house (okay, there is always too much dust in the house).
I have not finished client’s tax return yet - due March 15 - and need to have it finished and go to her with it before then. I have not heard from my other clients yet - they tend to contact me in March. I am still trying to get missing papers for our personal returns - one corrected IRA 1099 has not come yet - called yesterday about it - to be sent to us. I also have not received a corrected summary statement - but that is for something later this year. I did not get a dividend 1099 either, called up and I am not sure one was sent as the first thing the computer talked about was how much our dividends were and that we don’t need a 1099, but if we want one, they can send “a replacement”. So hopefully that will come soon. I know the amounts for all of these and can do the return without them, but need the paperwork for the same thing later in the year. We have two business returns to do for ourselves. One is due March 15 also and has no income - it is inactive, but we don’t want to close it down. So yesterday, just to get something done I did the inactive company’s tax returns. Well, something is done at least.
And - husband is thinking about going to a woodworking show out of state this weekend - which means Friday as we have the annual party for our reenactment unit on Sunday so we cannot go then and we cannot get up early enough to do that on Sunday and go to the woodworking show on Saturday. We will see. This was a nice show, but the venue it was in was closed and it moved to one that is not at all convenient to deal with. (A quilt show at the same old venue moved elsewhere and was awful and is no more.)
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
BACK UP! No, not away from the computer. Make sure that you are doing backups of at least important data and things like your important photos. We don’t use “the cloud” for anything including backup as another name for the cloud is “someone else’s hard drive, which is more attractive to hack than yours as they will get so much more” and most of the cloud drives have been hacked. An external hard drive is fairly reasonable to get and one can back up to it on a weekly or monthly basis if they don’t need to back up as often I do. (Remember a lot of this is work stuff I am backing up.) An external drive would also let you take the drive with you in an emergency.
I then went to back up for the week. I have a flash drive which holds 6 weeks of data, client, ad calendar files. I update the oldest one each week. This week if the data drive went bad and both of the regular “every session alternately” backups went bad I will have data from a week ago to work with. I back up with a software program that updates the files already in the file I am updating to. It finished running while we were out having dinner on Saturday.
When we got home the backup file did not show everything as finished. There were problems with several older tax client files - this is pdf copies of the returns, info used from the clients and my work papers. When I opened those files - it was all gibberish. Husband looked at them and told me that the drive had gone bad and the files were corrupted.
I did not panic - I have backups and they must be right as the backup program had not had a problem when making them. The back up from Saturday afternoon had the same corrupted files. I should say that, luckily, I had not gotten around to do any actual work on the computer for a couple of days - checked email, updated calendar, started one letter. I tried the backup from Friday and it was fine - whew!!
Husband tried to format the bad drive and it could not be done. So he broke it with a hammer to dust and threw out the dust. (Security is important when financial records are involved.) I had a new, larger flash drive and copied the backup from the day before to that drive. Husband suggested I use all new drives and change them annually from now on. I also have an archive drive - I will soon copy my 2018 files into my archive and remove them from the data drive I use to keep it more compact. Robert suggested that I get a new archive drive also. When I update the archive drive I also make 2 DVDs of it - one goes into my regular disk box and one goes into my “grab and go” accordion folder. This holds copies of our house and car titles, stock certificates, last month’s reconciled bank statements, wedding licenses (we actually have 3 - one government, one from each of our religions), medical insurance and the like. In case of an emergency we can grab this folder and have copies of our important papers to take with us - including DVDs of the archive and of my monthly backup to take offsite.
So I planned to go on Monday to a MicroCenter - a location of the chain and buy 3 new flash drives - one each for the session backups and a larger one for the archive. However, while at Costco on Sunday, husband noticed that my laptop dropped $50 in price since we bought it, so Monday we forgot about buying the new drives and went to back to Costco as they will refund the difference with the receipt. (This is a actually a very good idea. I could have returned the laptop and bought it again to take advantage of the price drop, and they would be stuck with a used laptop, this way I keep my laptop, am happy to get the lower price, and they don’t have to deal with a used laptop - and extra credit card fees for a return and another purchase.)
So yesterday, Tuesday, we bought the new drives. I made two new regular backups yesterday of data, client, and calendar files. I still have to check the hard drive backups and make a weekly backup for last week - though at this point, I will probably not bother and just do this week’s weekly backup on Friday. I also still have to copy the archive to the new drive.
I feel as if I am not getting anything done. I generally can tell how much I have been getting done by the number of papers I have to file at the end of a week, the number of items I have to mail out, and how deep the dust is in the house (okay, there is always too much dust in the house).
I have not finished client’s tax return yet - due March 15 - and need to have it finished and go to her with it before then. I have not heard from my other clients yet - they tend to contact me in March. I am still trying to get missing papers for our personal returns - one corrected IRA 1099 has not come yet - called yesterday about it - to be sent to us. I also have not received a corrected summary statement - but that is for something later this year. I did not get a dividend 1099 either, called up and I am not sure one was sent as the first thing the computer talked about was how much our dividends were and that we don’t need a 1099, but if we want one, they can send “a replacement”. So hopefully that will come soon. I know the amounts for all of these and can do the return without them, but need the paperwork for the same thing later in the year. We have two business returns to do for ourselves. One is due March 15 also and has no income - it is inactive, but we don’t want to close it down. So yesterday, just to get something done I did the inactive company’s tax returns. Well, something is done at least.
And - husband is thinking about going to a woodworking show out of state this weekend - which means Friday as we have the annual party for our reenactment unit on Sunday so we cannot go then and we cannot get up early enough to do that on Sunday and go to the woodworking show on Saturday. We will see. This was a nice show, but the venue it was in was closed and it moved to one that is not at all convenient to deal with. (A quilt show at the same old venue moved elsewhere and was awful and is no more.)
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
BACK UP! No, not away from the computer. Make sure that you are doing backups of at least important data and things like your important photos. We don’t use “the cloud” for anything including backup as another name for the cloud is “someone else’s hard drive, which is more attractive to hack than yours as they will get so much more” and most of the cloud drives have been hacked. An external hard drive is fairly reasonable to get and one can back up to it on a weekly or monthly basis if they don’t need to back up as often I do. (Remember a lot of this is work stuff I am backing up.) An external drive would also let you take the drive with you in an emergency.
Thursday, August 9, 2018
ACHOO!
Achoo! Last week I was feeling fine. Then it happened. You know, you wake up with a scratchy throat and wonder - is it a cold or did I just sleep on my back with my mouth open and annoy my throat. Then the coughing starts - and you still hope it is a just a scratchy throat from sleeping on your back, but you are pretty sure it is not. Once the sneezing starts and your nose is clogged... My husband lives in fear of me having a cold. He is a bit of a hypochondriac so he won’t let me do anything if I might “spread the germs” to him. But he doesn’t want to do what he is not letting me do either. Everything takes longer to do as a result and wastes time. Don’t worry - you can’t catch the cold.
He doesn’t want to cook (although he used to love to cook and is the better cook). He doesn’t want to do the dishes. but he doesn’t want me to do either as I will get him sick. The first night he made dinner - ham steak that we shared and a packaged macaroni with mushrooms - add to boiling water and let cook - and canned soup. I did the dishes afterwards with disposable plastic gloves on. One night he was on the computer with a client and I asked if I should make dinner or wait for him and he told me he was busy - so I made dinner and he ate it, but not happily. Then the weekend came and cooking was resolved as we eat out Friday through Sunday nights. This week he cooked dinner on Monday. Last night as we were trying to figure out what to have for dinner a rain storm hit. I mean A RAIN STORM HIT. He received a warning on his cell phone - I did not, although my, no cell service for over a year as it was not working for Internet or phone service and I had to switch, Blackberry received a notice. (I keep it charged for it games and camera.) We had major lightning and thunder for about 2 hours - remember I have fired a reproduction 18th century cannon - the thunder was like cannon fire. We lost our electricity - one of husband’s other great fears. We stood/sat with the front door open watching “the show” . We live on a main road. A UPS truck went past to the right, then to the left, then two of them passed our house, then another one and so on. Assorted emergency vehicles passed the house in both directions with lights flashing - police, ambulances, fire trucks, a couple of electric utility trucks... Cars kept driving in the mess, some would pull over a few minutes and then go on. I am a pretty fearless driver (scared husband the few times he had to drive with me as the driver) and I would have pulled over. Sooo, what will we eat? I was thinking - we have rolls, peanut butter - crunchy and smooth, jelly - strawberry and Ikea ligonberry, American cheese, mozzarella cheese - no problem. I suggested this to him. NO! We cannot open the fridge or his insulin would go bad. (Well, technically if it got too warm it would still be good for 42 days, but I was not going to argue.) Luckily the rain let up around 10:30 pm. We got in the car and drove to a nearby supermarket and bought more rolls and cold cuts for dinner. On the corner passed a 7-11 shut down do to lack of electricity, employees seemed to be sitting in cars in the parking lot. We got home and were getting ready to eat and - the lights came back on. Apparently we were in the largest outage area so we were put back quickly. I honestly do not remember a thunderstorm with so much or such loud thunder with rain that heavy for so long.
Tonight we took in Chinese food - simple right? Not really. The place we took out from for decades (while I was waiting for the gas company to come and turn on the gas in our first apartment I went and took out from this place for lunch - I did not even have tableware, dishes, glasses, etc in the apartment - I did have a borrowed bridge table and 2 borrowed bridge chairs) has changed. The original owners ran it for a long time - we knew their children, I remember hearing a car stop short in front of our apartment and the father coming running to the corner because his younger daughter had been riding her bicycle and just missed being hit by the car. When he died his older daughter would come home from college on weekends to help her mom. Then the son took over for awhile - even though he really wanted to be fishing - and the place often had fresh fish due to same. Eventually the place was sold - to the son’s sister in law and her husband. They were also nice and the food was the same and we kept going there. Earlier this year we went there and the husband was not there and an older woman (I presume one of their moms) was cooking. The food was not good. We tried another place and were not happy with them. We went back to them figuring maybe it was the change in cook. But the last time we took out the soup was too salty to eat and all the dishes were wrong. We don’t know what happened. This is the place we called on our way back from our 5 hour trip in July, 2017 to get dinner made before they closed - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/07/treading-water-5-hour-trip-to-nowhere.html So, we never know where to take out from and as a result we don’t. We receive an assortment of fliers from take out places and I keep them. One recently caught husband’s eye and he had been planning to try it - so tonight we did. Very nice people and food. Three street parking spaces in front of the 4 stores was the only parking. Then, since I was sick, husband did not hand me the food to hold on the trip home, he put it in a plastic laundry basket we keep in the back in the car, he did not put anything against the bag to hold it. Yes, the bag went on an angle and was soaked when he took it out of the car. After dinner we had to wash the vinyl cover I keep in the car, the basket, and back of the car. We will go back again - and I will hold the bag.
In the middle of all this I had to go to Manhattan to a client for work - I should have gone last month, but she had a cold (could I have caught this cold over the telephone :-) ). So I went yesterday. I packed a zip lock bag with sucking candy, lots of tissues, and an old prescription bottle with one dose of the cough medicine I am taking. In another zip lock bag I had a small bottle I filled with water. Did I mention the temperature yesterday was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit? Luckily I did not need any of the items.
As a result of this normal housework and keeping things in order are only done if absolutely needed. Instead of changing the bedding, I changed only my pillowcases. I suggested he change his, but he said it was okay to just leave them until next week. I had to talk him through changing the hand towels. We were in the downstairs bathroom - “Where are they?” “In the cabinet under the sink - see those 2 whiteish towels? Take them and the green dish towel below them.” (I put out a green dish towel each week in that bathroom to use for quick clean ups of water around the sink - it matches the bathroom.) Upstairs? “Which towels?” “The yellow ones.” (I figured yellow was bright and he would easily see them.) “You mean these yellow ones?” They are the only yellow ones we have.
Last week I had washed and dried the clothes the night before I got the cold. A load of jeans were in the dryer drying overnight. So we had clothes for the week. I did not wash the towels or the bed linens. Good thing I have 2 weeks of towels plus one extra set for up and down. I was trying to figure out how to mention to him about the laundry when he brought it up. I put the clothes in to wash. He will put them in the dryer - with me talking him through it - and then bring them upstairs afterwards. He brought up last week jeans load when I put in the load to wash. He says he will fold the laundry. I normally pull out his shirts as I put the clean, dry laundry in the basket to take upstairs so that they do not need to be ironed, as I put them over the top of the other clothes and if he does that, and sorts mine from his, I can deal with my clothes and he can deal with his or leave them in the basket and pull them out as he needs them.
Hopefully either this cold will be definitely over with or he will give up by Monday so life can return to normal.
On the other hand, I had some extra time in the office as we came home quicker in the afternoons. I managed to shred all of my 2008 records - other than few I kept such as the checks written that year for our income taxes - 3 tall kitchen bags plus, worth of shredding. I then packed my 2017 records into the same box, relabeled it, and put it back in the closet - ah, room to fit papers in file folders again.
I also had time to transfer my 2017 computer files to my archive file and make 2 DVD copies of the revised archive files. I still have to change my back up files so that the old files are gone from them, but that will happen as I make backup files.
I went through an assortment of old computer instruction manuals sitting on a shelf in the office - why? I needed space for 2 magazine holders. I pulled a number of the manuals - mostly from programs or hardware that I had - and I will put them out over a couple of weeks with the recycling. I still have a stack for husband to go through - understand this are DOS or pre Windows XP software and hardware that I cannot figure out what or where it is. The magazine holders fit nicely in the shelf now with room for the manuals for computer things we are actively using.
The office floor is a mess due to my cheapness in not wanting to waste extra garbage bags when doing shredding and pouring from one to another - as well as throwing handfuls of shreds from one bag to another. I had planned to vacuum up the shreds - but then caught this cold - maybe tomorrow I will get to vacuuming.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
One gets ill. It happens. I am glad that it only a cold so all it has been is inconvenient. In the larger world it is nothing, just an inconvenience. I am happy that is not serious and by next week either I will be better or he will give up trying to do things for me so he does not catch the cold. (I have never pointed out to him that I touch the light switches and so does he.)
Try to do as much as one can without overtaxing one’s self - this will vary based on what is wrong with one.
I leave you with a final achoo! If I rambled too much - will, hey! I have a cold! :-)
He doesn’t want to cook (although he used to love to cook and is the better cook). He doesn’t want to do the dishes. but he doesn’t want me to do either as I will get him sick. The first night he made dinner - ham steak that we shared and a packaged macaroni with mushrooms - add to boiling water and let cook - and canned soup. I did the dishes afterwards with disposable plastic gloves on. One night he was on the computer with a client and I asked if I should make dinner or wait for him and he told me he was busy - so I made dinner and he ate it, but not happily. Then the weekend came and cooking was resolved as we eat out Friday through Sunday nights. This week he cooked dinner on Monday. Last night as we were trying to figure out what to have for dinner a rain storm hit. I mean A RAIN STORM HIT. He received a warning on his cell phone - I did not, although my, no cell service for over a year as it was not working for Internet or phone service and I had to switch, Blackberry received a notice. (I keep it charged for it games and camera.) We had major lightning and thunder for about 2 hours - remember I have fired a reproduction 18th century cannon - the thunder was like cannon fire. We lost our electricity - one of husband’s other great fears. We stood/sat with the front door open watching “the show” . We live on a main road. A UPS truck went past to the right, then to the left, then two of them passed our house, then another one and so on. Assorted emergency vehicles passed the house in both directions with lights flashing - police, ambulances, fire trucks, a couple of electric utility trucks... Cars kept driving in the mess, some would pull over a few minutes and then go on. I am a pretty fearless driver (scared husband the few times he had to drive with me as the driver) and I would have pulled over. Sooo, what will we eat? I was thinking - we have rolls, peanut butter - crunchy and smooth, jelly - strawberry and Ikea ligonberry, American cheese, mozzarella cheese - no problem. I suggested this to him. NO! We cannot open the fridge or his insulin would go bad. (Well, technically if it got too warm it would still be good for 42 days, but I was not going to argue.) Luckily the rain let up around 10:30 pm. We got in the car and drove to a nearby supermarket and bought more rolls and cold cuts for dinner. On the corner passed a 7-11 shut down do to lack of electricity, employees seemed to be sitting in cars in the parking lot. We got home and were getting ready to eat and - the lights came back on. Apparently we were in the largest outage area so we were put back quickly. I honestly do not remember a thunderstorm with so much or such loud thunder with rain that heavy for so long.
Tonight we took in Chinese food - simple right? Not really. The place we took out from for decades (while I was waiting for the gas company to come and turn on the gas in our first apartment I went and took out from this place for lunch - I did not even have tableware, dishes, glasses, etc in the apartment - I did have a borrowed bridge table and 2 borrowed bridge chairs) has changed. The original owners ran it for a long time - we knew their children, I remember hearing a car stop short in front of our apartment and the father coming running to the corner because his younger daughter had been riding her bicycle and just missed being hit by the car. When he died his older daughter would come home from college on weekends to help her mom. Then the son took over for awhile - even though he really wanted to be fishing - and the place often had fresh fish due to same. Eventually the place was sold - to the son’s sister in law and her husband. They were also nice and the food was the same and we kept going there. Earlier this year we went there and the husband was not there and an older woman (I presume one of their moms) was cooking. The food was not good. We tried another place and were not happy with them. We went back to them figuring maybe it was the change in cook. But the last time we took out the soup was too salty to eat and all the dishes were wrong. We don’t know what happened. This is the place we called on our way back from our 5 hour trip in July, 2017 to get dinner made before they closed - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2017/07/treading-water-5-hour-trip-to-nowhere.html So, we never know where to take out from and as a result we don’t. We receive an assortment of fliers from take out places and I keep them. One recently caught husband’s eye and he had been planning to try it - so tonight we did. Very nice people and food. Three street parking spaces in front of the 4 stores was the only parking. Then, since I was sick, husband did not hand me the food to hold on the trip home, he put it in a plastic laundry basket we keep in the back in the car, he did not put anything against the bag to hold it. Yes, the bag went on an angle and was soaked when he took it out of the car. After dinner we had to wash the vinyl cover I keep in the car, the basket, and back of the car. We will go back again - and I will hold the bag.
In the middle of all this I had to go to Manhattan to a client for work - I should have gone last month, but she had a cold (could I have caught this cold over the telephone :-) ). So I went yesterday. I packed a zip lock bag with sucking candy, lots of tissues, and an old prescription bottle with one dose of the cough medicine I am taking. In another zip lock bag I had a small bottle I filled with water. Did I mention the temperature yesterday was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit? Luckily I did not need any of the items.
As a result of this normal housework and keeping things in order are only done if absolutely needed. Instead of changing the bedding, I changed only my pillowcases. I suggested he change his, but he said it was okay to just leave them until next week. I had to talk him through changing the hand towels. We were in the downstairs bathroom - “Where are they?” “In the cabinet under the sink - see those 2 whiteish towels? Take them and the green dish towel below them.” (I put out a green dish towel each week in that bathroom to use for quick clean ups of water around the sink - it matches the bathroom.) Upstairs? “Which towels?” “The yellow ones.” (I figured yellow was bright and he would easily see them.) “You mean these yellow ones?” They are the only yellow ones we have.
Last week I had washed and dried the clothes the night before I got the cold. A load of jeans were in the dryer drying overnight. So we had clothes for the week. I did not wash the towels or the bed linens. Good thing I have 2 weeks of towels plus one extra set for up and down. I was trying to figure out how to mention to him about the laundry when he brought it up. I put the clothes in to wash. He will put them in the dryer - with me talking him through it - and then bring them upstairs afterwards. He brought up last week jeans load when I put in the load to wash. He says he will fold the laundry. I normally pull out his shirts as I put the clean, dry laundry in the basket to take upstairs so that they do not need to be ironed, as I put them over the top of the other clothes and if he does that, and sorts mine from his, I can deal with my clothes and he can deal with his or leave them in the basket and pull them out as he needs them.
Hopefully either this cold will be definitely over with or he will give up by Monday so life can return to normal.
On the other hand, I had some extra time in the office as we came home quicker in the afternoons. I managed to shred all of my 2008 records - other than few I kept such as the checks written that year for our income taxes - 3 tall kitchen bags plus, worth of shredding. I then packed my 2017 records into the same box, relabeled it, and put it back in the closet - ah, room to fit papers in file folders again.
I also had time to transfer my 2017 computer files to my archive file and make 2 DVD copies of the revised archive files. I still have to change my back up files so that the old files are gone from them, but that will happen as I make backup files.
I went through an assortment of old computer instruction manuals sitting on a shelf in the office - why? I needed space for 2 magazine holders. I pulled a number of the manuals - mostly from programs or hardware that I had - and I will put them out over a couple of weeks with the recycling. I still have a stack for husband to go through - understand this are DOS or pre Windows XP software and hardware that I cannot figure out what or where it is. The magazine holders fit nicely in the shelf now with room for the manuals for computer things we are actively using.
The office floor is a mess due to my cheapness in not wanting to waste extra garbage bags when doing shredding and pouring from one to another - as well as throwing handfuls of shreds from one bag to another. I had planned to vacuum up the shreds - but then caught this cold - maybe tomorrow I will get to vacuuming.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
One gets ill. It happens. I am glad that it only a cold so all it has been is inconvenient. In the larger world it is nothing, just an inconvenience. I am happy that is not serious and by next week either I will be better or he will give up trying to do things for me so he does not catch the cold. (I have never pointed out to him that I touch the light switches and so does he.)
Try to do as much as one can without overtaxing one’s self - this will vary based on what is wrong with one.
I leave you with a final achoo! If I rambled too much - will, hey! I have a cold! :-)
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