Assorted Thoughts

If you’d like to read about he Dru Sjodin case this is the link to the articles in the local newspaper

I have been super bad about updating. I have been working on a couple of different projects. For one I had to make a couple of greeting cards and I can’t just pick one and zip it off to the printer I have to personalize it and make it all pretty and different. I had to make it special for my sister who is now 38 years old and she is the baby ~ unless you count the nieces that my parents have raised and are raising.

I am also working on designing t-shirts for the 4-H basketball tournament that is coming up in a couple of week. I have one designed but I am going to do a couple more different designs and let the kids pick which one that they like the best. Then they will get to help iron the transfers onto their shirt. They will also be coloring the number of their choice onto sandpaper then ironing it onto the t-shirt.

Alexa is in a tizzy because the Choir Festival and a basketball tournament are on the same weekend. I told her that she has to go to the Choir Festival because I had to pay for her to go and I already paid for her to go and it is non-refundable. She is really working hard on getting to play basketball instead. Today she came home from school and told me that one of her non-basketball playing friends would like to go to the Choir Festival. “So if her mom pays you the money that you paid for me to go can she go instead of me? And can I play in the basketball tournament?” She’s had her gears just grinding. If I can get a refund on the money I will let her back out of the Choir Festival but if I don’t get the money back she has to go because she is the one that said that she wanted to go.

Mrs. Big had a kidney transplant almost two weeks ago. I talked to her Wednesday morning. Did you know that they do not remove the malfunctioning kidney? They just leave it in and eventually it just shrivels up to nothing.

I told her that I wanted to send a Congratulations card. One gets

Congratulated for a new baby. One should also get congratulated for a new kidney. We had a chuckle over that and she said that she tires easily and that her back hurts but other than that she feels good. I figured that it must be normal ~ especially tiring easily. Wednesday night she was taken to the hospital. I heard from a not so good source that she is in ICU. I don’t know if I should believe that or not but it is logical. The Big’s son was not in tonight and that is not normal. I hope that everything will be okay.

I did not make it to work Wednesday night. When I went in to do the banking it was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and it was 41°. I was even thinking about hanging clothes out on the line. By the time I left to go to work it was blowing. I am not sure that it was actually snowing but there was snow blowing hard and heavy. I did not even get a mile off the gravel road before I called in. Actually I called to let them know that I was on my way but it was not very nice out. I entered a white out so I pulled onto the shoulder of the road. While sitting there I could feel the wind trying to rock my car. I turned around and went home! So that is how I got a day off this week!

Now that the snow is melting the debris left behind after some terrible weather is very evident. I am certainly happy that it is not my bumper, fenders, or other various car parts lying in the ditches. On a couple of occasions because of the gale force wind drivers had to correct the steering of their vehicle. When they came to the shelter belt with the wind blocked the corrected steering and icy road slid them into the ditch. Then another vehicle would come along under the same circumstances and smash right into the vehicle that was already in the ditch. There were many rollovers this year including a semi-truck. I did not get to see most of it because I took the gravel road all the time. I am a chicken ass when it comes to driving in weather or on bad roads. The gravel road has less traffic so I have less of a chance of causing an accident by driving like a 90-yea-old.

I called Dick to let him know that it was nasty out our way and wanted to find out if it was also bad in town. I told him that I was heading back home.

He called around seven after stopping at his friend’s shop and having a few beers. I gave him two options. Come home right now without drinking one more drop of beer or he could go to “Buck Beers” with the guys but he had to stay in town. Can you guess which option he took?

I expected to have a nice leisurely night to just kick back and do whatever I wanted to do because he was not going to be home. I sat on the telephone with his friend for about four hours helping him with his computer. He bought a used computer from a computer store two weeks ago. It started acting up right away and he has had to deal with it shutting down and all that fun stuff that happens when a computer decides that it is just not going to work.

He had some generic virus scan on the computer when he bought it. I had never heard of it so I can not say if it is good or bad. But I did a search and found out that it is a free 30-day trial. He was armed with a Norton disc so I talked him through the uninstall for the one that he had. Then I talked him through the installation process of the Norton.

I did find some humor in the situation because he kept reading to me what this “generic” virus scan does. I could not get through to him that he has to keep it updated because even if it scans for viruses it can not detect new viruses. And he would go through the whole list again. I swear that I should know everything that it does because he recited it to me about four times.

I finally got through to him by using a new television and an old universal remote control as an example. “You can not use an old universal remote control on a brand new television because the remote will not even recognize it. You may as well try to start your washing machine with the remote.” I don’t even know if I got through to him or not but he seemed to understand what I was telling him.

I did get him to download the Ad-ware 6 program. SunshineGuy told me about it and I use it all the time. It removed 32 items (either spy ware or tracking cookies) when he ran it. Then I talked him through the disk cleanup and the disk defragmenter. The disk cleanup removed 7900 KB. I am not sure how long it took for the disk defragmenter to run because he had to play designated driver for Dick.

I on the other hand could not get my disk defragmenter to run past 37%. It kept restarting. I am not sure what I had running but eventually I got it to run. I think! I probably removed something that I should have just left alone but you know me. Always trying to get this machine to run just a bit faster. I know right now that I have more than a couple of programs that I need to uninstall. Since I use them only on occasion I can deal with that.

Now that I have used two and a half pages in Word I think that I will post this entry before I get sidetracked. I really wanted to cut this entry into a few different entries but I have just rambled so much I do not know where to cut. S