Day Two-Ten - Happy Halloween!

It's Halloween!  I know what you are thinking, why is she acting so surprised?  Well, to tell you the truth, until I was talking to a friend on the phone yesterday and asked her if she wanted to come over tonight it hadn't dawned on me.  Oh, I knew October 31st was Halloween and I knew that Wednesday was October 31st.  But for some reason it didn't all connect for me until she informed me as though I was a idiot that Wednesday was Halloween and I needed to go buy some candy.

The problem is that the cats won't let me dress them up.  I know this because I have sort of tried.  I mean, I haven't tried putting full costumes on them.  That would just be silly.  But when Jingle was younger, before the days of Shiner, I got him a little hood thing that was red, it had ear holes and it had devil horns on it and a devil tail dangling off of the back.  It had a Velcro fasten that went under his chin.  I could never even get the darn thing on him.  I just went and looked to see if I could find it in the cat toy box.  That opened a big old can of worms.  They always forget that the toy box exists until I open it up, then I can't get it closed for days because there is constantly a cat in it trying to pull something else out.  Little heathens.  I suppose, I threw the devil hood away after several unsuccessful attempts to get it fastened on either cats head.  You see pictures of these docile cats dressed in doll clothes and stuff with a little girl holding the cat like a baby.  I think those cats have been drugged for the picture.  If I ever tried to put clothes on one of my cats, it would look like Lizzie Bordon had gone through the place with an ax.

My cats are sort of alpha cats.  They don't stand for any of that.  They also don't wear collars.  I know that it is responsible to put collars on them, but they are house cats.  The vet lectures me about what could happen if they ever got out.  But let me tell you, Jingle has gotten out a few times and each time it happens he panics and can't get back in the house fast enough.  He really used to think there was something out through the front door that he desperately needed to see in person with no screen or glass between it and him.  Now he knows better.  On the few occasions that he made the escape, he immediately began this horrible sounding distressed meow that sounded as if he was being beaten and began to dart from one bush to another in search of a bush he could hide in that was close enough to get back into the door.  The entire time I was thinking, why in the hell did he want out so bad if this is how he reacts?  I'm sure he was thinking the same thing. Shiner, bless his heart, has never had any desire to escape outside.  I think he spent too many weeks on the mean streets of Shiner as a kitten to ever want back out of the protection of this house.

Now I'm in a quandry, I didn't intend to write about cats today.  I planned to write about Halloween but the darn cats got in the way.  So, now I am trying to decide if I go back to the top of the page and delete a few paragraphs or just continue writing and work my way into my planned topic.  I really think that I should leave all of that cat topic up there so that you will all have to see how scattered my thoughts are and what I have to deal with on a daily basis.  You see, I do this several times a week when I am writing my blog.  My brain gets hi-jacked by another topic and I wind up writing half a blog about the wrong topic and then I have to make a decision.  Do I just continue on and write the planned topic tomorrow????  Or do I delete and write the planned topic today???  This is why sometimes you don't get a blog until lunchtime.  It isn't that I am lazy and putting it off.  I just might have written two or three blogs before you actually see anything published. If I really wrote down everything that goes through my head, it would be like a Robin Williams stand up routine from the 80's when he was always messed up on cocaine with all of the constant topic changes.  It's not pretty people.

Okay, so getting back to my planned topic - Halloween!  I'm not the kind of person who gets all excited about Halloween.  I don't decorate the house or anything like that.  I know people who do.  There is nothing wrong with that.  I just choose not to do it.  I only decorate for one holiday a year and that is Christmas.  But I loved Halloween as a kid.  Is there anything more fun than the month leading up to Halloween when you are 5 to 8 years old?  I don't think so.  All of the planning that took place thinking about a costume was greatness!  

I think some of our greatest costumes growing up were the "fly by the seat of our pants" costumes that we made up.  Back then, your parents didn't spend a couple of hundred dollars on your costume and props and a costume for themselves so that they were an additional walking and talking prop for you.  Nope!  Back then, you dug through some old clothes that Mom was saving for a garage sale to see if you could make anything out of any of it.  When you found something that would work, you were given scissors, and make-up to complete the outfit.  For some reason the Meyers kids usually went on Halloween dressed as "hobos" wearing clothes that were too big but worn out and cinched up with rope for belts, you know, they looked like they had been dug out of a trash bin, which that sort of were.  Mom's garage sale pile was just one good purging from a trash bin.  For some reason, we wore clown type make-up with that outfit and you always carried a stick with a handkerchief tied to the end of it over your shoulder.  

When I asked once what a hobo was, it was explained to me as a man who gets on the train without paying and goes from city to city.  You have to remember that I probably asked that in 1971.  In 1971, I am sure that was the only explanation my mom could come up with.  Now I know that a hobo was a depression era homeless person and we for some reason portrayed them as clowns and people told us we were cute when we did it.  But you know what?  When a kid dresses up in a crazy get up that they come up with themselves, it usually is pretty cute.  So, maybe they had something.  I just can't believe that the ACLU didn't swoop down on Nottingham Dr. and sue the entire Meyers family for our uncaring exploitation of depression era homeless people.  

What really became funny now that I look back at it was when we decided we needed masks so we made them out of grocery bags that we cut holes in and colored with our trusty crayons.  Then our hobos would have a cigarette drawn onto the grocery bag dangling out of his mouth.  Really?  Why did we do that?  I still have no idea what made us decide to draw a cigarette dangling from the hobos mouth.  We would also draw hair on the grocery bag which begs the question; why didn't we just leave the grocery bag off and put make-up on?  Who can ever explain the mind of an 8 year old?

I just went to Wikipedia and looked up hobo.  My mom may have done one or two of the updates on this entry because parts of it are very similar to her definition.  It's always weird when you realize that your mom actually knew what she was talking about.  The most interesting thing I find on the Wikipedia entry is that there is apparently a distinct difference between a hobo, bum and tramp.  Apparently, tramps work only when they are forced to, bums don't work at all and hobos are "workers who wander".  (I guess by that definition I am a tramp....)  The greatest thing is that there is a photo of two hobos walking down the railroad track that is almost my exact Halloween costume for a number of years between 1971 and 1975.  Seriously!  Take a look!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo

Okay, well that's really all I wanted to tell you about Halloween.... maybe I should have stuck with the pathetic cat entry.  Have a Happy Halloween!

Day Two-Oh-Nine - Facebook Etiquette

This is for all of you Facebook junkies....  I am one of you, so I know what I am saying.  Facebook is not a way of life, no one lives or dies based on a Facebook post.  We can each say something on Facebook and possibly offend someone and tomorrow it will all be fine because Facebook is not the real world.  It is a forum for posting opinions, communicating with friends, touching base with old friends and meeting new friends.  If I think that this stupid storm on the East Coast was over hyped, I'm allowed to express that opinion.  My opinion hurts no one.  If on the other hand, you think my opinion is stupid, you are allowed to say so.  I have thick skin.  The worst that can happen is that I "unfriend" you.  Ha!  Not really.  I wouldn't do that just because you don't agree with me.  I'll only talk about you behind your back.  I still need for you to be my "friend" on Facebook to give me something to talk about, silly!!!!!  Ammo is important!

Here's another thing.  Sometimes, people express opinions on Facebook as sort of an outlet because it is the only time they can express an opinion without being interrupted by a spouse, child or significant other.  Come on people... give 'em that!  They just have to get that opinion out there.  Don't pee on it!  People with no outlet for expressing their opinions are the ones who go nuts and eventually find an automatic weapon and wreak havoc.  (And yes, we're all aware that many of you believe that gun control would stop this, because obviously mass murders would never dream of breaking the law by obtaining a weapon illegally!!!!)  Wouldn't it be more pleasant to just allow them the opportunity to say that they either choose to vote democratic or republican or even independent without crapping all over them?  Don't get me wrong, I totally get that there are those who abuse this privilege and post 1,000 things a day about their chosen candidate and comment on the least little thing that you post about yours like you are some kind of Nazi pig.  But that is easily remedied.  It's called "block".  Just block them until after the election.  Then you can remain Facebook friends and they will never know that you quit reading anything they wrote after their third offensive post.

What I am saying in the so eloquently put words of Rodney King is "Can we all get along?"  This process is what makes America so great!  We all have a right to express our opinions thanks to the miracle of the 1st Amendment.  So, express away!!!!!  Knock yourselves out!!!!  But don't expect me to agree with you.  As long as you don't become obnoxious about it, I'll continue to read your posts and perhaps have my thoughts swayed by your words if you make a good enough argument.  On the other hand, I might express a differing opinion.  But please, allow everyone else that same opportunity.  If you can't deal with an opinion that differs from yours in anyway, I'm not sure how you made it this far, but please just block all of us until after the election.  Or here's a thought.... shut your computer down!!!!  I know, it's a radical thought but it can be done.

Alright switching Facebook pet peeves, I try not to post endless pictures of my amazing "living for the minute", jetsetting, wild and crazy life and countless posts detailing the crazy parties that I attend with the likes of George Clooney and such, you know, because that would all be a lie.  So could you all do the same?  Quit bragging about your perfect lives!  Or at least post more pictures of your perfect lives if you are going to post comments about them.  If you could stand a foot or two from your perfect husband and children in the pictures, I would also appreciate that.  It makes it easier for me to photoshop you out and paste my picture in your place.  (I'm sorry, was that creepy?  I crossed a line, right?)  Anyway, you understand the point I am making.  We all know that you have a perfect life, tap the brakes just a bit, okay?

This is the final issue I have with things I see on Facebook that annoy me, but it is by FAR the most troubling.  DON'T POST LEADING COMMENTS!!!!!  I hate this.  If I see one more post that simply says, "Well, this day sucks!" or anything even remotely similar to that, I will hunt you down and tell you all about my life!  Don't force us to ask what is going on or if you are okay.  If it is worth posting so that your 500 closest friends can read it, then it is worth explaining.  In the future, when I see a post like that my response to you simply will be, "cramps?".  You and I will both know what this means.  You posted a leading comment hoping that people would beg you to explain things thereby prolonging your 15 minutes and I called you out on it.  We're keeping each other honest from here on out.  It is you and me friends, we're in this together.  We'll make it.  We all just have to make a serious effort.  Be strong!  Love you all!!!!

Day Two-Oh-Eight - Where I Want To Be

Saturday I began writing a new travel blog that I hope will support my new travel business.  At the very least, I hope it will get people as excited about traveling as I am on a daily basis.  My whole deal with traveling isn't that I just don't want to be at home.  If I could take all of the comforts of home with me, it would just make it that much better.  My deal is that I just want to SEE!  I want to experience what the world has to offer.  I always hear amazing things about amazing places and I think, why do I have to be stuck in one place?

I guess the whole point of it all is that we are only stuck if we choose to be.  I don't want to die having only seen most of North Texas.  Lately for some reason I have heard a lot of talk about legacies.  It probably isn't a topic of conversation anymore right now than it has ever been.  But it makes you think about what you would like for your legacy to be.  Do I want to be remembered as someone who worked for the same company for 30 years and then found out that they didn't really need her anymore?  Or do I want to be remembered as a person who knew her greatest passion and pursued it.  I think I prefer the later, which is why I decided that I had to try this travel business and see if I could make a living doing it.

So far the nicest part of it is that it allows me to think about and talk about my favorite thing all day everyday, traveling.  In my first two travel blogs I covered a few road trip memories and the Groupon experience I had in Hawaii.  I have in mind two trips I would like to take someday.  Both are in the same part of the world, but both also require a lot of time.  So, I think it would be silly to do them together.  One of these days I will go to Machu Picchu and the Galapagos Islands.

Yesterday I posed the question on Facebook asking where you would be right now, if you could be anyplace on earth.  I didn't get many takers... two, in fact.  Either most people were perfectly happy where they were at or were too busy watching football to respond.  Quite frankly after watching that Cowboys game yesterday, I would rather be anywhere than in Dallas, but I digress.  The responses that I got were good.  One chose Hawaii - to be exact she chose a specific location in Hawaii  http://www.koolina.com/ while the other decided on Ireland.  Both nice places.  To be honest, I would pack up and go to either right now if offered the opportunity.  But if I could have chosen anyplace on earth to be yesterday, I think I would have picked Santiago Island, Galapagos.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_Island_(Gal%C3%A1pagos)

The beauty of having a blog is that while my respondents gave brief answers yesterday, I get to spend an entire blog giving you mine.  The drawback is that you can close this browser window and stop reading at anytime, so I'll try to make my case for my location quickly.  The first reason that this might be considered a nice place to be is that the temperature during the bad part of the year is 72 degrees on average.  During the good part of the year, it is 77 degrees.  I know!  That right there sort of makes it a perfect place.  The average temperatures are the ideal thermostat settings in my house.  I choose Santiago Island over the other Galapagos Islands only because it had a lava flow about 100 years ago which created great lava beds in the bay that house marine creatures and make it a great place for snorkeling.

If you were to go there, you could see marine and land Iguanas, sea lions, fur seals, land and sea turtles, flamingos, dolphins and sharks among other things.  I love seeing wildlife in it's natural environment.  As I am sure I have mentioned here before, one of the greatest experiences of my life was seeing Orcas in the San Juan Islands.  Last year while in Hawaii, I made my travel buddy, Jenny stop at a particular location because I had seen in a travel forum on Trip Advisor that there was a new seal pup along with it's mother living there that had just been born a few weeks earlier.  We didn't find it.  But we spent about an hour looking.  I am particularly a sucker for marine wildlife.

The Galapagos are on the Humboldt current which means that the water is pretty chilly and they get a lot of rain.  So, those are drawbacks, in fact with the wind and rain that they get, the 72 - 77 degree average highs apparently seem somewhat chilly.  Combine, the wind and rain with the cold water temperature coming up with the Humboldt and it can get downright uncomfortable.  It seems that wetsuits are required there most of the time.  But the good part of the islands being in the Humboldt is that you see the marine wildlife that is a part of that marine eco-system.  That means that seeing a whale shark or schooling hammerheads is not completely uncommon.  What I wouldn't give to see that!

So, that's where I'd like to be right now.  I'm pretty sure that by now I have built it up so big in my mind that the Galapagos could never live up to my expectations.  But I'd sure like to find out.

Day Two-Oh-Five - A New, Old Project

You are probably getting tired of hearing about all of this but I can't help it.  The cleaning of closets opened whole new worlds for me and I have to tell someone about it.  The cats just walk away when I attempt to talk to them so you guys are just going to have to deal with it for one more day.

I told you about my propensity for putting a knitting project into a tote bag after it has been sitting around for several weeks without me working on it.  Then I hang it on a doorknob and eventually, I either rip it out and rewind the yarn or start working on it again.  Well while I was cleaning the closets I found a big tote bag that I was pretty sure was just full of yarn scraps so I didn't even look in it.  Yesterday before I started a new knitting project I decided to take one last "swim" through what I am now calling the "knitting closet" (guest room closet) since it is where I am keeping all of my yarn and supplies neatly organized now.

When I opened the closet, the first thing that caught my eye was the big green tote bag in question.  I knew that I still hadn't opened it up and gone through it.  But I went ahead and started looking through all of the yarn on display.  I decided that most of it would be good for afghans or there were other yarns that I thought would be good for a small project of some sort.  But I had a hankering to make a sweater.  So, I finally gave up and opened the tote bag.  Inside of it were 4 balls of unused beautiful wool and acrylic Reynolds Smile yarn along with a partially knitted sweater that I had apparently taken great care with prior to putting it away.  I remember buying the yarn and the pattern vividly.  But I do not remember starting to knit the sweater and I certainly do not remember getting it halfway finished before stopping and putting it away!

So, I spent about 4 hours last night going back through the pattern and what had been knitted of he sweater so far to figure out where I had stopped.  I basically had to go back through each row in the pattern and match it to the knitting before I could finally figure out what needed to be done next.  It is a very interesting cardigan that is being knitted in one piece from sleeve to sleeve.  The really terrific part is that it knits super fast since the yarn is so thick and it uses such big needles.  I knitted 4 or 5 rows last night after I finally figured out where I was and after doing so, I am sure that I could have this finished in another week or so!  I'm so excited about it that I have to show you a picture of what is complete so far.  Last night I bound off the front left side and placed the white yarn down the placket as markers for where the buttons will go.  It think it is really going to be cool looking and I like that the stripes are vertical.

So anyway, that is what I am working on now and it actually motivated me to work faster yesterday on travel stuff so that I could hurry up and get to the knitting.  So, that is a great thing.  I always need motivation to move faster.  As much as I love the travel thing, you can only do so many webinars in one week before you start to lose interest in completing the next one.

I did a webinar yesterday on using Facebook to promote my product.  It was very interesting and you might see me doing a few more things in the coming weeks with that.  If I start to annoy you with it, please be patient.  I promise, I won't continue to annoy you, but I do have to figure this out and let's face it, you are my guinea pigs.  :-)  So, please don't block me!  I will make all of this worth your while eventually by giving you some rocking information on a great place that you MUST go.

Oh!  Last night I also attempted to put the fish tank and stand that did not sell in the garage sale on Ebay.  I almost completed it before the template required that I put shipping information in.  It said that I HAVE to be willing to ship it in order to put it on Ebay.  I am NOT shipping a 35 gallon fish tank and stand!  So, I stopped.  I know I have seen lots of things on Ebay that said the seller would not ship it and that the buyer must pick it up.  So, I think I will go back and finish getting the fish tank listed just inserting that message in the copy.  But it threw me when I saw that.

Okay, well that's all I've got for today.  I have to get busy working so that I can shut down this afternoon and knit on my sweater.  You guys have a terrific Friday.  If any of my friends at the former employer who shall not be named are flexing today, enjoy yourselves.  Stay warm!

Day Two-Oh-Four - I Rant Because I Have Nothing to Say

My brain is still kind of sleepy this morning.  I have nothing in mind to write about.  I am not particularly aggravated with anyone right now.  When someone annoys me, I can usually go on for paragraphs and paragraphs about my annoyance.  I can tell you all of the things that I am unable to say to them.  It is easier to express my anger to a group of 20 or so people who I know I won't see for at least several days than it is to the person who made me angry in the first place for some unknown reason.  What's up with that?  Wouldn't the world be a better place if we sometimes just blurted out, "are you a freaking idiot??!?!?!?!?!"

I mean maybe some of the people who annoy all of us are completely oblivious to the fact that they are doing so and we would actually be doing them a favor by letting them in on the fact that the rest of us are walking around thinking that they are the downfall of society.  I think I would like to live in a world where we were all expected to blurt out, "your an idiot!" when somebody did something stupid.  And the idiots would be like, "now what did I do?" and you could explain it to them.  Maybe the idiots would learn a thing or two and the rest of us would certainly be a lot less stressed since we weren't carrying around all of that pent up anger.

The first guy I would talk to would be the idiot who tailgated me yesterday as I was driving through the residential area that I live in.  He was about 4 inches off of my back bumper in his big stupid, four wheel drive truck trying to intimidate me into speeding through the residential area just after school got out and all of the kids were walking down the street.  When I stopped at the stop sign and came to a complete stop, I thought he was going to start crying as he revved up his stupid looking truck and flipped me off for having the audacity to stop at the stop sign.  When I turned my blinker on and slowed to make the left hand turn into my condos, he sped passed me on the right and flipped me off again as I did so, because you know I was a bitch for driving the speed limit and stopping at stop signs in front of him.  I suppose I should have pulled over so that he could go around me and drive 45 miles an hour through the 30 MPH residential area and tap his breaks as he went through the stop sign, but I was having fun watching his face contort in my rearview mirror.  So, "hey dude in the obnoxious 4-wheel drive truck on Meandering Way yesterday at 3:30, YOU'RE AN IDIOT!"

Another person I would like to talk to if it suddenly became acceptable to inform people of their idiocy would be the person who schedules people to work the checkouts at Target on Coit and Campbell.  That person is a moron.  If your store has 30 checkout stands and you only schedule 3 people to work them between 4 and 5 p.m. on a weekday it is a little questionable.  But the fact that two of those people are working express lanes, one at each end of the row of checkout stands and the only non-express lane is on the electronic end rather than the grocery end where people are more likely to have more items tells me that you put absolutely no thought into this.  If there were no customers and you sent the other checkers to do something else until you got busy I could understand it.  But the fact that when I got ready to pay there were approximately 8 people in each of the three lanes tells me that there are no back-up people available to call or you would have already called them.  By the way, moron, you can find my cart full of groceries abandoned in one of the empty lanes and "YOU'RE AN IDIOT!"

The third and final person who would be on my hit list for today would be the idiot at Chili's who brings the diet coke that you ordered to drink to your table at the same time that they bring... are you ready for this because it's a good one... the appetizer that you ordered AND your meal.  Yes, I recently ordered a Bottomless Express Lunch at Chili's.  It is where you get chips and salsa (supposedly as an appetizer), a salad and a bowl of soup.  I also ordered a diet coke.  She was actually surprised when I got angry and she sent her manager over no doubt because I was mean.  Apparently, this is the norm.  I guess I am the only person who goes into a restaurant and expects to get my drink BEFORE I get anything else, then if I ordered an appetizer, that should come out after the drink.  I could even deal with getting  the drink and appetizer together.  But who in the hell wants the drink, appetizer and meal all at once????

Once I tried to outsmart them and order the drink and acted like I didn't know what I wanted.  Then when the waiter brought my drink, I ordered the chips and salsa.  When he brought the chips and salsa I ordered the salad and soup.  I got it all in the order that I wanted that way, but when I got my check they charged me the full price for each item instead of the express lunch price.  So, I had to pay $3 extra to get my meal in that method.  Logically, it seemed that I was being charged $3 extra because the waiter had been forced to make 3 trips to my table instead of one.  So, I figured this must mean that they were compensating him by the number of trips he made to my table.  Therefore, I left a note on the back of my receipt explaining why I wasn't leaving a tip... you know, since he had obviously already been compensated with that $3 delivery fee.  I'm generally a very good tipper.  But on that occasion, I felt the need to make a point and my dad always taught me that I should get the attention of the person I was making my point to before I started. I felt like not leaving a tip would get their attention.  Apparently, I was mistaken since they are still stupid.

I mean, making a point to an idiot is sort of... well, pointless.  At the very least you would think that they would post a photo of me at the Chili's in my neighborhood along with a note that says, this mean lady likes to get her drink BEFORE her meal and she really likes it if you give her the appetizer before the meal.  That way they could all get my food in the correct order and spit in it at the appropriate times before bringing it out.  Perhaps you are all reading this and thinking how did Susan get to be so picky?  Obviously, I expect way too much of people and I should just learn to go with the flow.  But again, I just didn't have anything to write about this morning and I have been keeping these feelings bottled up inside me.  We all knew they would have to come out at some point.

Have a great Thursday maybe I'll go harass the poor wait staff at Chili's.....

Day Two-Oh-Three - The Yarn Dilemma

Well, the scarf / shawl that I finished knitting on Monday is now officially completed with all the ends sewn in and it has been blocked.  It is on the bed in the guest bedroom drying as I type this.  I am very pleased with it.  But I have bad news.  This could be lethal for me.  I have decided on the yarn that I want to make my next project with and it is more Noro which is what the scarf / shawl is made from.  Noro is an expensive brand of Japanese yarn.  It is really pretty and it was on sale at the Woolie Ewe last year when I bought it all.  So, I have 12 skeins of this Noro Silk Garden but I don't have a pattern that I think is suitable.  I got on line last night to look for a pattern unsuccessfully so, I think my only option is to go to the Woolie Eye today and find a pattern to purchase.  People, I will be lucky to make it out of there without 20 more skeins of yarn.

The yarn that I want to use is 45% silk, 45% mohair and 10% lamb.  Now just tell me you don't want to wear whatever I make from that yarn.  I dare you.  Because you can't.  I can't believe that it has been just sitting in a closet in it's original plastic sleeve that it shipped from Japan in for a year!  What was I thinking?  The good news is that it is in tact.  No moths.  I hate those little creatures.  I have been known to put a bag full of yarn or raw fiber in the garage freezer in the past just to keep them away.  I don't mind telling you that it is a little freaky to walk out to the garage to get some steaks out to thaw and see a bag of something dark and open the top to see what is in to find hair.  Ick!!!!  But these are the trials and tribulations of a knitter / spinner.  You do what you have to do.

I have other yarn that I could knit.  I have some really pretty citrus orange yarn along with a pattern that I bought at least a year and a half ago that I could knit.  The pattern is for a sweater.  I would like knitting it.  But as I look at the scarf / shawl I really want to knit more Noro.  What's a girl to do?  I think when I finish this blog today, I will go upstairs and take another look at the orange yarn and pattern.  Maybe I can talk myself into starting it.

I have a busy balance to this week.  I have webinars today and tomorrow for travel stuff.  I am looking forward to both of them.  I discovered yesterday that I should have registered for more of the preferred suppliers than just the four that my training manual suggested I register for at first.  I needed to use one that I wasn't registered for yesterday and it is going to take up to a week to be approved and get my sign in information.  So, now I have clients waiting to book hotel rooms and I can't.  Ugh!  So, I will spend most of a day registering for the rest of the sites so that I can avoid this happening again.  I also need a spreadsheet with all of the sign in info for each travel supplier.  There are becoming too many to keep up with.  Tonight is dinner club.  We are going to a place over by Urban Crust.  I can't remember the name of it.  But it looks like fun.

The lunch yesterday on time management was good.  I have always had a problem with procrastination as you all know.  I think that was fairly well illustrated with the fact that it took me 5 months to finally get my garage cleaned out and it only happened when it did because of the garage sale.  I didn't learn anything new yesterday but a lot of things that I should be doing to keep myself on track were reiterated and that needed to happen.  I'll try to be better.  One of the things that I must do is start updating the task list on the side of this blog again with real tasks.  It helps to keep me honest.  Let's face it, making one of my tasks for any day to nap is not helping the situation.

I better get busy.  Have a great Wednesday!

Day Two-Oh-Two - WWBTD - (What Would Big Tex Do)?

Today I am going to a Time Management luncheon.  I can't tell you how badly I need to go to this one.  My time management skills these days are very lacking.  Lately, I seem to be able to spend half a day doing something that should take an hour.  I have a little bit of Places You'll Go stuff to take care of this morning before the lunch.  So, I'm looking forward to that.

I finished reading my book yesterday.  I have a Nook.  I love it.  But a few months ago, I filled it up with music and I was having trouble with it so I couldn't download any new books.  I couldn't listen to the music on it because when I plugged my earbuds in to the device, I couldn't hear it through the earbuds, the sound came through a speaker so that the rest of the world could hear it.  I didn't figure that anybody on an airplane would be too interested in listening to my entire collection of Jimmy Buffett and Fleetwood Mac, so I never listened to the music anyway.  I mean how hard is it to just use the Ipod for music.  I take it with me everywhere anyway.  Anyhow, I finally cleaned the music off of it Sunday and now I am able to download books again.  It was very strange.  All of the info I found on my Nook says it will hold about 17,000 books.  But there were only 73 on there along with about 500 songs and there was no memory left.  I guess the 500 songs take up a lot of space.  But that is not what I wanted to discuss with you all today.

I'm a big Fox 4 News girl.  I like it because with them all the news is always local.  I hate those glitzy national morning news shows with the beautiful people who actually look a little freakish when you see them live.  If you ever go watch the morning shows being done live in NYC, Matt Lauer is about 4'8" and has a head the size of the Goodyear Blimp!  He is a total freak!  And that Sam guy on ABC, is totally orange from all of the self tanner.  Anyway due to the locality of Fox 4 and the lack of banter in the morning when I am incapable of handling banter, I choose Fox 4.  As a result, anytime I am interested in seeing what is going on in Dallas or the world I head to Fox 4 first.

Last night I chose to watch the baseball game instead of the debate.  I already know who I am voting for and nothing either of them could have said with the possible exception of "I like killing kittens" would have changed my mind.  I am a baseball fan and I really wanted the Giants to win the NLCS after having gone to a game in SF this year (in which they smeared the Rangers).  During the game, which was on Fox 4, they teased a news story that would air on the news after the game.  It was about a memorial service for Big Tex.  I posted about this on FB last night.  Like I said last night, I am as big of a Big Tex fan as anybody.  But a memorial service seemed to be taking it all a little bit far.

So I finished watching the game and went through the entire presentation ceremony not because I cared about watching that but because I didn't want to miss the Big Tex story on the news afterwards.  After all, I live in this city and I think I should get a good look at the people who would attend a memorial service for a 50 foot tall metal frame covered in clothing in case I run into them in my everyday life.  You have to know which people you should avoid when you are on the DartRail.

When the Giants finally had all of their NLCS accolades the presentation ended and the news came on they spent the first 15 minutes of the news talking to two local politicians rehashing the entire debate.  Now, if I was interested in watching the debate, wouldn't I have done so?  I really don't need some former Democratic chief of dog catching from Fort Worth and a toilet cleaner for the RNC to explain to me what was said.  If I had seen it, I could probably figure out what was said as well as either of them could.  If I chose not to watch it, I probably wasn't interested in what was said in the first place.  But I suffered through the 15 minute debate of the debate between Jim Bob and Homer.

When that was finally over, the long anticipated Big Tex Memorial Service story finally came on.  I can't begin to tell you what a let down it was.  First of all, the memorial service took place in Oak Cliff.  There were roughly 100 attendees inside of an apparently un-air conditioned church all practically elbowing each other to get into each camera shot and saying things like "when Big Tex comes back he is going to speak with a Spanish accent so that we can all understand him".  Now, I'm just spit balling here, but if that is the case shouldn't he be called Grande Tejas instead of Big Tex????  There can be no doubt that these people were exploiting the horrific death of an icon for their personal gain.  How dare they???!??!  It wasn't a memorial service, it was a "hey, look at me" service.  Big Tex is rolling over in his grave right now.

So, anyway, that was what I wanted to tell you about today.  I am sure that most of you didn't get to watch that little story last night on the news and I wanted you all to know that shockingly enough there are about 100 people in sunny south Dallas attempting to exploit the death of Big Tex and Fox 4 News is helping by giving them publicity to do so.  I can only hope that on this Friday's edition of Tell it to Tim, a huge grassroots effort to bring this atrocity to light is televised.

Have a great Tuesday!

Day Two-Oh-One - It's an Addiction!

While I was cleaning closets and such for the garage sale I realized a problem.  Perhaps it isn't such a big problem.  But it is an issue that I felt needed to be addressed.  I love yarn.  I have mentioned before that I like to knit and even more, I like to spin yarn from raw fiber.  I haven't done any spinning in a very long time. While cleaning the guest room closet, I found a garbage bag full of the finest dark brown Alpaca I can ever remember touching.  It is perfectly clean, brushed and ready for spinning.  I would love to be sitting on my patio right now spinning it.  But I am not.  In fact this isn't even the problem I ran into.  I came across 2 or 3 bags of fiber that is in need of spinning.  Additionally, I have 1 or 2 of those Rubbermaid storage tubs filled with fiber.  It should all be addressed.  But the problem is the store bought yarn that I found in my closets.

I have enough yarn to run a double ply line to the moon and back.  The sad thing is that if I walked into the Woolie Ewe today, I'd buy more.  I am addicted to buying yarn.  That is where my addiction stops.  I am not addicted to doing anything with the yarn.  I just feel an incredible need to buy it.  When I buy it, I envision all of the wonderful things I can make with it.  In fact, most of the time, when I leave the store, I do so with a new pattern and a brand new set appropriately sized needles to finish the project....  You know, in case I am unable to find the correct size needles in the 3 knitting needle storage locations that I have in my home.

I know that this is an addiction for two reasons.  The first is that I never even considered putting any of the yarn in the garage sale.  Not even any of the scrap yarn that was left over from various projects was ever considered for the garage sale.  That fact just dawned on me as I wrote this.  I just put it away as I found it, daydreaming about all of the lovely things I could make with it.  The other way I know it is an addiction is that I never once acknowledged the addiction the entire time I was finding pockets of yarn hidden within the storage areas.  I would just begin to hum louder than before and more forcefully.  Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Susan Meyers and I am addicted to buying yarn.  There I said it!  Now I can move on to step two in dealing with this addiction.

Using the yarn that you have purchased during one of your yarn buying frenzies is usually quite a bit more of a challenge than anything else.  Actually, I have found in the past that starting the project is fairly simple.  I get everything out.  The next step is to read the pattern from start to finish and make sure that I understand each step.  I am very thorough about this sort of thing.  Once I have decided on the yarn I will use, get it out and have wound it off of the skein and into a ball either single strand or double strand depending on the pattern, I can actually start the project.  I don't mind telling you that this step in the process although it sounds very simple can take hours.  Finding just the perfect yarn and pattern to put together takes time.  Sometimes in the past this step has taken a few days.  But it is still exciting enough to follow through on, so it gets done.  Next I cast on and begin to knit.  I might knit for 5 or 6 hours on the first day of a project.  After that, I might knit for an hour or two on the second day.  By the third day, I have become remarkably bored and might only knit one row before setting the project aside.  Then about a month later, I pick it up and put it all in tote bag and hang it on the doorknob of either my bedroom or a closet and I don't look at it again until the next time I start a knitting project and need to find my scissors.  That is when I open each of the tote bags hanging on all of the doorknobs in the house in search of scissors.

At this point I will usually either start knitting on it again or rip all of the knitting out if I look back at it and find it lacking and re-ball the yarn for later use.  If I re-ball the yarn for later use, I put it away in one of the yarn storage areas I have.  If I start knitting again, sometimes I can actually work my way through the project and finish it. Other times, it gets set aside again until I once again need my scissors.  I have to admit at this point that my favorite pair of scissors has been missing for about 5 years.  I am certain that they are buried away in a tote bag full of yarn somewhere and I know that one day I will find them.  No doubt the yarn will be so moth eaten that it will be unsalvageable but I will be reunited with those prized scissors. Disney girls sing about someday finding their "Prince Charming", I just want to find those damn scissors.

The good news is that while I was going through all of my stuff looking for things to get rid of last week, I kept walking past a knitting project that I started last year and was so excited about that I never put it away in a tote bag but I also never finished.  I was down to the last four rows and was almost out of yarn.  I had stopped because I was concerned that I would run out of yarn in the middle of one of the last rows and I wasn't sure how to proceed if that happened.  It is a really unusual scarf that already contained close to $60 worth of yarn.  Since the yarn is $19 a skein I couldn't face buying another skein to finish just one or two rows and then just discarding the rest (especially since I would never be able to discard it).  So, I was still mulling this over after about a year.  So, yesterday, I bit the bullet and finished it.  I ended up knitting two more rows and casting off and it turned out fine!  I had about 14 inches of yarn left when I finished it and that remnant is already in the trash can.  Today, I simply have to sew the ends in and block it and then you will see me sporting my new scarf about as soon as the temperature drops below 80 again.  Maybe even before then.

I started reading a new book at about 10:30 last night.  So, I don't know if I will be able to start a new knitting project until I finish the book, but I think I already know which pile of yarn I am moving on to next.  We are moving into knitting season folks, the time of year when you can light a fire in the fireplace and knit all day with a cat cuddled up at your feet.  I have to knit as much as humanly possible while I can.  My goal this winter is to finish up at least two projects that are not socks.  Socks do not count since they can be knitted in just a few days.  No, this is going to be a sweater knitting year.  I have lots of yarn to get through and I am up to the task.

Have a good day.

Day Two Hundred! Garage Sale Recap

I've been dealing with the garage sale pretty steadily since last Wednesday so I haven't written on the blog or much of anything else since then.  When I signed into my blog site this morning to start writing I was shocked to discover that I am already up to Day 200.  Where does the time go?

I just have to tell you that garage sales can be very eye opening in a number of ways.  The first discovery that I made is that there are not that many differences between me and a hoarder.  Thank God that there are differences but they are much less distinctive than I thought.  Let's face it, I would have gotten rid of much of this stuff sooner if there were an easy outlet for it.  It wasn't stuff that I wanted to hold on to.  I just knew that I had spent too much on it in the first place to simply throw it away.  However, after a full weekend of sitting out in a garage and watching extremely poor people walk past a set of dishes priced at $8 that I paid $150 for so that they can give me $1 for a Lancome tote bag that I receive as a gift with a purchase of mascara and lipstick, I'm okay with just chunking the dishes in the dumpster.  Obviously, even the poorest people in Dallas don't need a full 8 place setting of dinnerware.  I'm not sure what they needed with the Lancome bag.

Actually, the dinnerware will go to Goodwill.  In my purging frenzy yesterday following the garage sale, it is one of the few things I was unable to throw in the dumpster.  The only thing I brought back in the house was a martini set.... go figure!  But I only brought it in to photograph it so that I can put it on Ebay.  I have never sold anything on Ebay, but I think it is time I give it a try.  I got this martini set at Pottery Barn.  It is whimsical and I really like it.  I just don't have anyplace to keep it.  I took a few pictures of my old fish tank with stand yesterday so that I can put it on Craig's List and perhaps sell it.  I also have never used Craig's List.  So we will see how all of this works.

So, in case you are wondering, the things that you are likely to sell in a garage sale are:
Lamps
Rugs
Framed "art" (I use that term VERY loosely!)
Knick Knack crap that people have given you over the years that you never really wanted in the first place
Small Kitchen Appliances
Electronics (working or not)
Vacuum Cleaners
Cell Phone Chargers
Shoes
Handbags

The things that you can't even give away in garage sales are:
Dishes
Drinking Glasses
Coffee Cups
Old Printers
Electric Litter Boxes along with all of their accessories
Flower Pots

Finally, here is a list of items that you couldn't even pay someone to take:
Old mirrors that were taken out of your bathroom and are too big to move to the dumpster
35 Gallon Fish Tanks on a Stand
Treadmills and perhaps any other kind of exercise equipment
Clothes
Martini Sets

If you have old handbags that you bought at Sam Moon several years ago when they first opened and there was that frenzy to go there and buy multiple handbags several times a year, you will do well at your garage sale with them.  I probably made $20 on cheap old handbags that I thought I should have just thrown in the trash selling them at $1 each.  Meanwhile I had a $250 Lark garment bag that I couldn't unload for $5.  What the hell?!!?!?!??!

So, I get it.  Many of the people who shop garage sales have no real since of value.  They are the people who go through life being distracted by shiny objects and reacting accordingly.  That is okay.  Many things that I felt I simply couldn't live without over the last few years have new homes today.  Some of them are in the bottom of a dumpster.  Others are boxed up in my garage awaiting a trip to Goodwill.  Hopefully, the weekend taught me to think a little more carefully before throwing away good money on something frivolous.  At the very least, maybe I got a sign from God that I needed to keep that treadmill and get my fat a$$ on it this afternoon.

Have a great Sunday.  Go Cowboys.... or at least don't embarrass me further....

Day One-Ninety-Six - Time to Get It Done

Well it's D-Day.  Mom and Dad will be here this afternoon and I didn't do anything yesterday except bake cookies.  I just didn't feel all that great..... and my knee hurt.  Yeah, that's it... my knee hurt.  So, anyway, thanks to the debate last night, I got very sleepy, very early and was able to get a good night of sleep and am refreshed and ready to get some stuff accomplished today.

First things first, I'll get the guest room cleaned this morning and then start pulling stuff out of that closet so that when Mom and Dad get here, they won't have to deal with me dragging stuff out of that bedroom too much except the big things that I need help with.  Then I'll clean my room and start organizing the garage.

I never did decide on a soup to make for supper.  Maybe we'll just order some Chinese food or pizza.....  And the good news is we have cookies for dessert.  I made M&M Cookies last night instead of eating supper.  They are my favorite cookies.  I'm also a big fan of the Peanut Butter Cookie.  But you really just can't go wrong with M&M Cookies.

When we were kids Mom baked cookies just about every week.  I was looking at one of my old cookbooks a few weeks ago and there next to a recipe was Mom's writing.  She had written numbers next to each of the ingredients to indicate the order in which I should add them to the recipe.  I remember the day she wrote that down for me.  I was probably 11 and had decided to bake some cookies and Mom was outside. I took the cookbook to her along with a pencil and she wrote that down for me since the recipe didn't direct you to mix the sugars and shortening first and then add the dry ingredients afterward.

A lot of baking has taken place over the years in our family.  We like nothing more than a home baked dessert.  If I am baking a pie, I generally will bake my own crust rather than buying one from the store.  Although, I do keep store bought crusts in the freezer for emergencies, there is really nothing better than homemade pie crust.  And while you can't beat Oreo's for a late night snack with a big glass of milk, there is just something about the smell of the house just after you have taken a batch of cookies out of the oven.  It only gets better when the weather is bad.  I'll never understand the people who buy a roll of cookie dough and cut cookies off to bake.  Don't they understand the joy of mixing up your own cookies and getting dough on your fingers when you are trying to get it off of the spoon onto the baking sheet?  Would we have ever discovered how great raw cookie dough was if not for that?

My Grandpa Meyers died when I was 5 so I don't have a lot of memories of him.  He had lung cancer and was very sick before he died.  Dad says that Grandpa was a gadget guy.  He always had to have all the latest electrical appliances and gadgets and that is what he generally bought for Grandma on birthdays and so on.  I remember one day when I was very small probably no more than 4 being in Grandma's kitchen at the old house on Hwy 6 in Hitchcock while it was kind of rainy and "helping" Grandma bake something.  She had one of those big KitchenAid electric stand mixers like everyone has now, except that it was about 1967 or so. These people were poor, but she had that top of the line mixer and she and I were putting it to use.

I really couldn't tell you what we were baking, but I got to stand on the old yellow metal stool/step ladder that she kept in the kitchen and help.  I think I mostly "helped" myself to batter out of the bowl everytime she stopped the mixer to check her batter. I remember being mesmerized by the pattern that the mixer blades made in the batter.  If you ask my parents or brothers they will tell you that Grandma Hamilton, my mom's mother, is the grandmother known for cooking.  But I think that Grandma Hamilton was very driven and in her mind each task was always just something to get completed, you know the way I should be about my garage sale duties today.  But Grandma Meyers was more of a "stop and smell the roses" type of woman later in life.  Helping her in the kitchen was fun.  I never saw Grandma Meyers get in a big hurry to complete anything.  Maybe that's where I get this from.  It certainly isn't from either of my parents.  Nothing eventful happened while helping Grandma bake that day.  There is no funny story to tell.  It's just a memory I have of baking with Grandma.

Okay, I'm going to get dressed and start working now.  I'll probably be busy for the rest of the week and won't have time for posting.  So you guys have a great weekend in case you don't hear back from me.

Day One-Ninety-Five - Stop the Noise!

Oh my gosh!  I got so much work done on the garage yesterday.  It is basically clean.  I still have two more big stacks of shredding to do.  But the garage is clean.  Now I can start moving stuff out of the house and into the garage.  I only have two folding tables.  So, I can't put too much stuff out there until my parents get here with more tables.  This of course means that ET may have to spend a few nights out in the parking lot.  I am not excited about that.  But you do what you have to do.

I'm going to have to stop sleeping with the windows open.  One of my neighbors has a Harley and he starts it at 5:45 every morning and warms it up for several minutes before he goes to work on it.  Once you have laid in bed for 5 minutes or so listening to a Harley that sounds like it is parked on the bed next to you, it is difficult to go back to sleep.  Then you start thinking about all of the things you could be doing rather than just laying in bed NOT sleeping.  For instance, you could be writing your blog and NOT sleeping.  Or you could be carrying stuff out of the spare bedroom closet and down to the garage and NOT sleeping.  You could even just be sitting in front of the TV and catching up on the news with a big cup of coffee and NOT sleeping.  There are really countless things you can do while NOT sleeping that do not take place in a bed.

I really don't have anything against people who have Harley's.  They just shouldn't be allowed to start them between the hours of midnight and 9 a.m. in a residential area.  That's all!  As a girl, I have never understood the point of a loud vehicle anyway.  You see people with huge mufflers on their cars or trucks presumably so that they can make more noise.  Really????  Because when my car makes noise, I take it to the shop.  It is 2012, doesn't the world have enough noise without people attempting to make more of it?  I don't get it.

I was in Barnes and Noble last week and there was a family there with 3 kids.  The mom was talking to someone and the dad apparently decided to entertain his three heathen children by chasing them around the store while they all screamed every time he came around the end of the bookcase they were hiding behind.  You are in a store with other people who may think your kids are cute, but none of us love them so they are less tolerable to us than they are to you and you are trying to make them scream.  That just doesn't seem wise to me.  There can be little doubt that this man has a loud vehicle that he starts 5 minutes before he is ready to leave for work every morning and he probably has to be at work at 6 a.m.

On that evening when I left Barnes and Noble, I went to meet a friend for dinner at Cedar's Woodfire Grill.  It has a good patio so with the weather being the way it has been for the last few weeks, we chose to sit outside.  So did the 3 women with six kids between the ages of 10 and 14 years old.  In fact they sat just a few tables over from us.  Several of the 10 to 14 year old kids were squealing girls, some of the other 10 to 14 year old kids were boys who like to make 10 to 14 year old girls squeal.  When they finished their meal, the women sat and chatted while the 10 to 14 year old kids walked and even ran around on the patio squealing.  The only thing more annoying than a squealing 10 to 14 year old kid is a mobile squealing 10 to 14 year old kid.  When they are mobile you don't know where the next squeal might come from which makes it just a little more nerve racking.

Once a number of years ago when I had to travel on business all of the time, I was staying in a hotel here in Dallas.  I lived in the Houston area at the time.  I had a meeting early the next day and had to leave the hotel at 7 a.m. so I had gone to bed around 10.  At about 2:30 a.m. a large party must have broken up downstairs resulting in people coming upstairs to their rooms very loudly.  These people were obviously misinformed and led to believe that they were the only people staying in the hotel on this particular night since the noise level as they got off the elevator and made their way to their rooms was almost deafening.  I laid in bed thinking that once they reached their rooms, I would be able to go back to sleep.  But apparently, they decided to continue the party in the room next door to mine.  They all went in there and turned on some loud music, and then tried to talk loudly enough to hear one another over the loud music.  I banged on the wall to let them know that as it turned out they weren't the only people in the hotel on that night.  They didn't get the message.  So I called the front desk and asked them to do something about it. They tried calling first.  I know this because I could hear the phone ringing through the wall.  But apparently, they were unable to hear it over the music since they never answered it.  I called the front desk again and they finally sent someone up to tell them to be quiet.  They did get quiet for at least 5 minutes.  Then they started getting louder and louder again until the noise level was at least as loud as it had been prior to the visit from the front desk.  So, I called the front desk again.  This continued all night.

At about 5 that morning, I started getting dressed and decided to leave early since I hadn't slept since 2:30 a.m. anyway.  Their party had died down around 4:30 a.m. but I had been unable to go back to sleep.  So at 6, I was ready to leave the hotel and go get some breakfast but I decided there was no point in leaving quietly.  So I turned the clock radio on and pushed it against the wall facing their room and turned the volume up all the way.  Then I went and opened the door to the hall and remembered that I had not brought everything with me, so I let it slam shut.  Then I opened it again and gosh darn it, I noticed that I had left something else behind, so I let it slam shut again.  After letting the door slam shut 4 times, I left the room with the music blaring and a smile on my face.  They were probably so wasted that they slept right through the door slamming and the music.  But at least I got a little satisfaction out of it.

I usually try to be considerate of other people although I am aware that my voice carries and so sometimes I can be noisy.  But seriously?  I would never dream of starting a loud vehicle at 5:45 a.m. every single weekday morning knowing that it is just feet from my neighbors bedroom window and then just letting it run for 5 minutes.  But now that I think about it, I will need to be up early this Saturday morning for the garage sale and my car will be parked outside because of the garage sale.  I sure hope ET's alarm doesn't go off accidentally just outside of the neighbors bedroom window at 6 a.m. Saturday.... that would be awful!

Day One-Ninety-Four - This is It... Like it or Not!

It is crunch time.  I have been saying for months that I needed a deadline to get my garage cleaned out and it would happen only when the deadline arrived.  Well, the garage sale starts on Friday.  My parents will be here to help me prepare on Wednesday afternoon and I told them that I would have the garage cleaned out and ready to go then so that we would only need to bring things out of the house to load into the garage for selling.

It really is remarkable what difference the little bit that I have accomplished has made.  I am already able to keep things in my garage that I couldn't previously.  I went outside yesterday to get something out of the freezer and I could get to the freezer!!!!  Victory!  The weather is perfect today for working on this stuff.  It is currently 62 degrees outside.  I should be able to finish getting the garage cleaned out today unless I am a total loser and let's face it, I may be.  I mean I do still know in the back of my mind that I have most of the day tomorrow and half a day on Wednesday still to work.  But I also need to do a little housework in anticipation of my parents visit.  Plus I have to go to the grocery store and I have a business series lunch to attend tomorrow.  So really today is the big day.

So here's the big game plan.  First thing I am going to tackle is old junk mail.  I'll run everything through the shredder and take it straight to the dumpster after shredding.  Then I'm cleaning cobwebs off of all the shoes that have been sitting out there for the last year which will all go into the garage sale.  Then... I'll clean the cobwebs off of me.  Next, I'll put away all of the tools which I haven't been able to put up for the last year or so because I couldn't get to their proper location.  After that I'll designate a side of the garage as sale items and sort through the other side of the garage either putting things away, taking them to the dumpster or moving them to the sale side.  After all of that is done, I'll clean the old fish tank out that has been sitting out there for the last few years so that I can get somebody to give me what it is worth.  When I finish all of that, I'll come in and take a long hot shower if I am still able to stand because it will be late!!!!

Tomorrow is going to be house cleaning day once I get back from the business series lunch.  I did start on that yesterday while the Cowboys were sucking the life out of me.  The living room is clean, swept, mopped, vacuumed, dusted....  I just need to get upstairs and give it a good once over.  But honestly, that is where a majority of the garage sale stuff will be coming from.  So, I am thinking that digging that stuff out will make a huge difference.

It has become soup weather practically overnight.  So, maybe I'll make a big pot of soup for Wednesday night.  That way I won't have to waste too much time Wednesday cooking instead of finishing up tasks around the house before Mom and Dad get here.  Wednesday morning, I'll have to go to the grocery store.  Really when I think about it, today is the only real tough day.  Once I get today done it will all be downhill from here.  You notice how I keep talking about today instead of ending this blog entry so that I can get out there and just get started.....  Well, it might take a small army today to get me away from this keyboard.  I DON'T WANT TO GO OUT THERE!!!!!!!  I HATE THAT GARAGE!!!!!  THERE ARE SPIDERS!!!!! Plus I could get cut again.  My index finger still hasn't healed.  My finger print has changed from this cut!

Okay, I'm heading out there.  Wish me luck.  The best thing that could happen would be if I got locked outside forcing me to stay out there and work all day.  That is probably the only real chance I have of getting this done.  Or maybe if a swarm of killer bees got inside the house forcing me to stay outside all day, that could work.  Okay, here I go.... I'm really doing it now.  I'll let you know tomorrow if I get more than one stack of junk mail sorted and shredded.  Ugh!  I want to be Samantha Stephens and just wiggle my nose and have it all done.  By the way, Darren was an idiot!  Who wouldn't want a witch around the house on a day like this????!?!?!?

Day One-Ninety-Three - A Day in the Life of Jingle

Hi!  My name's Jingle.  I'm special and don't you forget it.  I just got up.  It was a pretty rough night.  Sus - that's what I call her, (I don't ever want her to be so comfortable in this relationship that she forgets who's in control so, I have to remind her that I'm the boss by calling her a variation of her first name.)  anyway Sus didn't let us go to bed until around midnight again last night.  I was really tired and I sure let her know it.  When she finally walked upstairs so that we could go up there, I jumped up on the dresser and tried to move some pictures around on the wall to show her just how mad I was.  I also knocked her necklace off the dresser.  Hehe... that really pissed her off.  I thought it would get her out of bed for sure.  But she got right back in bed once she put it up.  Anyway after a few minutes I got pretty sleepy and got in bed with her.

The Brat - he's the one that she calls Shiner, got in bed on the other side of her.  The brat likes to run around and play a lot.  But he doesn't trust either one of us too much.  He's a little bit of a loner I guess from when he lived on the mean streets of Shner, Tx.  He tells me about it sometimes.  It must have been pretty rough.  Sometimes, he didn't get to eat anything except the lizards he caught.  When he gets sad about it I clean his ears for him.  He's not so bad.  He's just kinda spoiled.

So, after we got in bed last night, it started raining really hard.  The lightening and thunder were real scary so I slept real close to Sus.  She kept scooting over a little but I got right back up against her.  The Brat stayed pretty close too.  It sure was warm in that bed.  A little while ago we woke up.  The Brat must have really got scared by the thunder last night, because when I woke up he was real close to Sus and had his leg across her face.

When we came downstairs the Brat jumped up on the kitchen counter to watch her get our breakfast.  He always keeps an eye on things to make sure she doesn't cheat us.  That enables me to walk in the other room and act kind of aloof so that she won't think I really depend on her.  I don't want her thinking that I need her or anything.  Also, I like eating in front of the TV and this way, she brings my food to me.  I like it like that.  So, this was kinda funny.... when she brought my food to me this morning, I acted like I didn't want it and just walked away.  She did that girl thing where she acted like she was kinda worried about me and really wanted me to eat.  But you always have to keep them wanting it, ya know?  You can't make 'em too comfortable.

So after she went back in the kitchen to make the dark colored smelly stuff she stuff she drinks out of the white cup every morning, I went over and ate some of that food she brought me.  Then I jumped up on my window seat.  But that dumb broad didn't even open the window yet!!!  Can you believe this?  Do I have to tell her everything?????!!?!?!  HEY SUS!!!!  GET IN HERE AND OPEN THE WINDOW!!!!  JEESE!!!! Ah... here she comes, finally.  Okay, now that this window is open, I'll just jump down and go to the garage door and get that opened.  Clickity, clickity, click, click, clickity... That's me walking across the floor.  I won't let her trim my claws.  She got a few of them the other day while I was sleeping but I woke up and caught her so now, I'm really watching her.  I hate it when she trims them.  She doesn't hurt me, but it makes her think she is in charge and I don't like it.

Damn it!  She still hasn't opened the garage door.  I guess I should give her a warning, I'll just reach up and sharpen the ol' claws on the carpeted rabbit that she has hanging from the doorknob.  I love this thing.  But he is getting a little warn out.  I wish she would get a new one.  There isn't much carpet left on parts of him.  She's still not here.... SUUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSS!!!!!!  THE BACK DOOR IS CLOSED!!!!!  IT'S CLOSED, IT'S CLOSED!!!!  IT'S NOT OPEN!!!!!  Oh, here she comes.  Ha!  I love it when she runs like that.  Thanks old girl.  Alrighty, I'll just take a little trek out into my garage.  I like it a lot out here.  It is good and dark and sometimes it is really nice and warm.  The safest place out here is in the big metal green machine.  I like to sleep in the spot where she sits when she gets in it.  That way I can smell her and I can get my hair all over it so that she sort of takes me with her wherever she goes... heheheheh.

Okay, well, I'm not really sleepy right now since we slept so late this morning, so I'll just go inside and see what she is doing.  Clickity, clickity, click, click, clickity...  Ugh!  She is sitting under the stairs tapping on the black buttons in front of the big screen.  I hate it when she does that.  She acts like she loves those black buttons more than she loves me.  I won't stand for it.   I'll just sit beside her and yell.  SUUUUUUSSS!!!  HEY LOOK AT ME!  I'M DOWN HERE.  CAN'T YOU HEAR MEEEEE????!?!!?  Oh, hey that got her.  But she went right back to the buttons.  Maybe if I jump up there and get on the buttons, she will notice me.  gvbigvyigctuytdrxhnbygiuhjnjknjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj....  Oh yeah, she really liked that she talked to me for a long time after that.  Then she held me and petted me while she pushed the buttons.  I like it when we sit like this.  She can only push one button at a time instead of clicking on all of them.  I'm pre-tty.... sleepy.... don't know...if I can stay.... awake much.... long....er.....

Whew!  That was a great nap!  I feel so refreshed.  Hot dog!  It is almost time for the football game to start. I think I'll go sit in the window until game time so I'll be ready to start bugging her again as soon as she moves in front of the TV.  Wait, I better go check on the Brat first.....  Clickity, clickity, click, click, clickity... HEY BRAT!!! YOU STILL OUT HERE ON THE PATIO?????  Oh, hey buddy... how's it going.  Okay, just checking on you.  I'm going back in now.  Hey, Sus, the Brats still sleepin' on the patio in case you were wondering.  I'm just going to go look out the window and see what the squirrels are up to.  Hey squirrels, how's it going?  Okay, I'll be back, I need to go check on Sus.  Hey Sus, everything okay over here????  You need me to move any pictures or anything?  You alright?  I could move this Bob Hope autograph for you.  I know you really like it when I do it.  You good????  Okay, then I'm going to the garage...  kinda getting sleepy again.  Need a nap.

Whew!!!!  That was a good nap.  I better go inside and check on Sus.  HEY SUS!!!!  YOU IN HERE???  WHERE ARE YOU????  Oh, hey there you are right where I left you.  I must have slept for at least 15 minutes that time.  It was great.  Wanna play?  You get the idea, right?  This is pretty much the way the rest of my day will go.

I'll keep doing this all day.  Sus will come running everytime I start to meow.  It's a pretty good life.  Around 5, the Brat will tell her it's time to eat.  He does that by sharpening his claws on her leg.  That's fun....  I love watching her jump when he does that.  We will both keep cat napping and telling her which doors and windows we need opened throughout the day.  Then around 9 tonight, she will play with us for a while and then at midnight we will all go to bed again.  You guys have a good day.  I'm going to see if I can manipulate Sus to come and watch me use the litter box.

Day One-Ninety-Two - Part 2 - An Unavoidable Rant

I know that I have already posted a blog for today but I saw something on Facebook a few minutes ago that is forcing me to speak out.....

So, this afternoon on the Glacier National Park Facebook page, the park requested help from civilians in finding two hikers who had gone missing inside the park.  Many people responded with prayers and hopeful thoughts others responded by criticizing the park for not having plentiful cell phone towers like they have in... (are you ready for this????) New Jersey.  Yes, that is right, people actually responded to criticize a national park located in the wilderness of Montana that covers 16,000 square miles and includes two mountain ranges and 130 named lakes saying that the park is to blame because they don't have cell phone towers.

I'm livid!  Perhaps Karen Rome of New Jersey is simply a moron who doesn't realize that National Parks are just that, "National Parks".  They are funded through your tax dollars, user fees and donations.  I don't know, maybe we could take some of that Obamacare money and slip it into the National Parks budget for use in building cell phone towers in remote areas so that grown men who don't have the sense to hike responsibly can be found when they get lost.  Because God knows we need to save all of the idiots who are incapable of taking any personal responsibility for themselves that we can.

If you decide to go hiking in a wilderness area in the extreme northern US during the fall while there is questionable weather in the forecast, you must also assume responsibility for yourself.  Perhaps these men knew the chance they were taking and took it anyway.  I don't know.  It is entirely possible that the crazy woman from NJ, Karen Rome, who feels that the parks system should be spending tax dollars to install cell phone towers and her moronic followers have nothing to do with the two missing men.  But for anyone to believe that tax dollars or park fees should be used to install cell phone towers in order to protect people who take a known risk is ignorant.  Maybe this woman, Karen Rome of New Jersey, is willing to make a donation to foot the bill.  But that would present a new problem.

There is no doubt that cell phone towers would improve the scenic views in our National Parks.  I mean, who doesn't want to got to Yellowstone or Yosemite and view the cell phone towers?  I know that is all I hope to see when I go to a place like that.  Part of the goal of the National Park system, Karen Rome, is to preserve these areas of wilderness so that there are not a lot of man made structures in those areas.  If you are not willing to risk being out of cell range, then you need to stay in New Jersey, Karen Rome.  We don't want you to come west.  Most of America would prefer that you never leave your home state.  What I am saying is America is much better off if the idiots are all contained.

Maybe what we need to do is take one state, like I don't know....  maybe.... New Jersey and put all of the idiots there.  They could have as many cell phone towers as they wanted to build.  There could be a cell phone tower on every corner.  We could also put about 99% of the lawyers in New Jersey with them making it easier for all of them to sue one another over stupid crap.  Then we could all sit back and relax knowing that only the fittest are surviving out here in the rest of the US.  The gene pool out here in the "wilderness" known as Non-Jersey would immediately improve with the idiots all being either contained in New Jersey or killing themselves off since there would be no one out here interested in taking the sharp objects away from them.  The world would be a better place if all the Karen Rome's of this world were contained to one area.

Personally, I have nothing against New Jersey.  Karen Rome is the one who brought up New Jersey.  She threw it out there.  I'm just trying to make a suggestion that she might like.  In fact, I know a number of sane, hard working completely logical people from New Jersey.  But since Karen wants all of her world to have as many cell phone towers as NJ does, I'm just thinking that she would probably be more comfortable staying in New Jersey where she will never be out of cell phone range.  Karen Rome, what I am trying to tell you is that you are an idiot.  Please stay home where you belong.  We don't need you out here in the real world.

I have to go get a glass of wine and try to calm down now.  If you know Karen Rome of New Jersey, you are welcome to forward this to her.

Day One-Ninety-Two - Debbie Moreton is a Genius!

Good morning!  I got a lot more sleep last night and it is evident in the amount of brain to finger action I am getting.  I also, laid on the couch and slept all day yesterday.  I took the equivalent of a 6 hour nap.   I initially slept from about 10 until nearly 1 in the afternoon.  Then I got up and made a grilled cheese sandwich and some cream of tomato soup.  Then I went back to sleep after lunch and slept for three more hours.  After all of that I was a little concerned that I wouldn't sleep last night, but I went to bed around 12 and slept until after 8 this morning.  So, maybe I am caught back up.  I almost felt sick yesterday but I think it was totally due to the lack of sleep.  I feel back to my old self today.  

So, obviously all of that sleeping during the day means I got nothing done yesterday either on the computer as far as travel agency training goes or on the garage as far as cleaning goes.  That means I will be doing some work this weekend.  I'm okay with that.  I think yesterday's time spent sleeping was much more beneficial.

A friend of mine who reads this blog regularly has taken herself on an imaginary trip to the Bahamas.  This morning she posted a photo of the pink sand beach where she is imagining herself on FB along with a link for some tourism information on the Bahamas.  I must tell you all that I am jealous.  Why haven't I discovered the brilliance of the imaginary trip before???  Think of all the money you can save on air, hotels, ground transports to and from the airport....  The possibilities are endless!  If you are going to imagine yourself on a trip to the Bahamas, or anyplace for that matter, you may as well imagine yourself in the best hotel occupying the best suite.  So, I would imagine that Debbie is laying on her imaginary beach at this very moment saving about $10k a day just on the hotel alone!!!!  GENIUS!!!!

So, I have stowed away for her imaginary trip and I am having a blast!  I can't wait for her to post more information about the Bahamas on FB since it is my first time there.  Right now we are laying on the pink sand beach and cabana boys seem to be bringing unlimited pink drinks.  I did notice that Debbie's cabana boys are among the most gorgeous men I have ever seen and they all seem to be rather scantily clad.  Oh my, Debbie just dropped something forcing one of them to have to bend over and pick it up.....  Nicely done Debbie, nicely done!

Debbie also mentioned that since the trip is imaginary, it only took her about 20 minutes to get from Dallas to the Bahamas.  Most of the time, I can't even get to the airport in that amount of time so, this trip really is amazing.  I hope this afternoon she imagines going scuba diving.  I have always wanted to do it and her link says it is really terrific there.  At the very least, I would think that snorkeling is in order.  But since this is Debbie's trip, I won't be pushy.  After all, a stow away can't take over on the imaginary trip.  A good stow away just goes with the flow.

Well, I had better get busy putting some sunscreen on.  The sun is really bright here.  I think some SPF 50 is in order.  Have a good day....  Oh Caaaaabaaaaannnnnaaaa Boyyyyyyyyy.....

Day One-Ninety-One - Fingers Not Working, Brain May Be To Blame

You know you had a crappy night when you wake up at 6 a.m. finally drag your butt downstairs at 7:30 since you still haven't gone back to sleep and you are too tired to make your fingers type.  My fingers won't function this morning and I don't blame them.  If I were attached to a body that refuses to sleep for more than 3 hours at a time, I'd protest too.

If you are this tired, why won't your mind stop working so that you can sleep?  I don't understand it.  Even when Will and Grace came on this morning, my mind was moving so fast on other topics that I couldn't just sit back and laugh at whatever shenanigans Will, Grace, Karen and Jack were getting into.  You know it's bad when Karen Walker can't make you just forget whatever you were thinking about and laugh.

The worst part is that if my fingers aren't functioning now, there is little to no chance of making the rest of my body function for the balance of the day.  At 2:00 this afternoon, what do you think the chances of me standing out in my garage sorting and shredding junk mail will be?  Slim to none.... that's what.  On top of everything else, Jingle is grouchy today.  Probably because I kept him awake all night too.  There is only so much a small cat can take.

So, here's the deal.  I can't sleep, I'm too tired to do anything else and I am currently pumping caffeine into myself as though it were a brown, thin blood transfusion.  So in another hour, I'll still be exhausted and non-functioning but I'll be wired to boot.

I just rediscovered how to make an apostrophe while typing.  I've been typing for many years.  I took typing in high school, and if I must say so myself, I think I'm pretty good at it.  I set my fingers on the home keys before I start and I can type without ever looking at the keyboard or the screen if the need arises.  My boss used to come to my desk and start talking to me while I would continue to type but look at and listen to him at the same time.  He was always freaked out by it and would make me stop typing.  I always wanted to suggest that since he was interrupting me, perhaps he should stop talking instead (I still don't see why they didn't think I fit into that companies redirection).  But I digress....

Anyway, getting back to the apostrophe situation.  A few paragraphs back, I typed the contraction "I'll".  But I typed it 6 times before getting it correct because I typed I"ll 5 times using a quotation mark instead of an apostrophe.  If you know your keyboard, you are aware that the quotation mark and the apostrophe are both on the same key.  You hold down the shift key to type a quotation mark.  But for some reason, my brain went all backwards on me and I was holding down the shift key to make an apostrophe and when the quotation mark continued to appear on my screen I went back and did it again.  Then when it continued to happen I pressed the shift key even harder and did it again.  Each time the result was that I got I"ll instead of I'll.  And each time I thought, "what's the matter with my stupid keyboard???!?!?!!?"  I never imagined that the problem wasn't with my stupid keyboard at all, but with my stupid sleep deprived brain.  I think this is a telling sign that it is going to be a difficult day.

I have two travel vendors training programs that I would like to get through today.  I really need to get my bearings on booking land travel.  I think I am down with cruising now.  But land packages are still a bit of mystery to me.  Once I get through these two suppliers, I think I will really be able to start working at building client base and booking some trips.  So, I am going to attempt to get some training done before my brain shuts down again.

Day One-Ninety - They Call Me Swan....

Ugh!  I overslept this morning.  I knew when I went to Pei Wei last night and got tea that I would.  You see, two big glasses of tea after 7 p.m. spell disaster for me.  So, I was up until 3 a.m.  Then my alarm went off at 8 a.m.  I have been trying to get up at 8 all week so that I can get the blog entry done and the get busy on this training stuff.  My boss is a slave driver!!!!  :-)

Today I have another webinar at 11 and I need to get some Funjet pricing on all inclusives for a friend, but I'm having trouble with the Funjet website.   So, I'm going to have to call Ohio for help.  It is hard or me to call Ohio for help.  There are a lot of places where I wouldn't mind calling for help but calling Ohio seems sort of crazy to me.  After all, Ohio is home to the Bengals, Browns, Reds, Indians and Cavaliers.... if anything they need our help.  I'm just saying....

Yesterday I attended the University of WOW all day.  That is Royal Caribbean International training.  It was kind of fun.  since I have a RCI cruise booked for January, I was able to see what kind of improvements they have made to the ship that we will be on and find out some stuff I didn't know after 7 previous RCI cruises.  I also got to see the improvements that they have made to all the ships in their fleet.  Did you know that Rhapsody and Splendor of the Seas both now have IPads in every room now?  Of course, after you pay the internet fee for 7 days you will have been able to buy your own IPad to take home with you.  I wish cruise ships had free WIFI.  That is the one charge that gets me every time.  I can handle the bill for the alcohol and anything I purchase while on board.  That is no big deal to me because as I sign that check I make a mental note of how much I have spent and keep a running tally in my head.  But the internet fee always sneaks up and grabs me.

Sometimes it is only like $7 because I have learned from past experience that I need to limit it.  But still, I'm walking around that last morning going.... "What the hell is that $7?????" to myself.  If my bar bill is $200, I have no problem explaining that to myself.  But $7 on the internet kicks my ass.  I think I have such a problem with the $7 because it was spent sending one email.  For $7 I am able to sign into my yahoo account, send one garbled email in which I don't even spell check (because I'm paying by the minute and who in the hell has time for spell check????)  and then I quickly log out.  I come home and check my sent folder and the email I sent looks something like this....

"Dad,
Today Mim and I gote offf the shit in Jamaia mon.  It ws fin.  Mim says you would lick it.  We ned to come bach when you are wit us.  I would sent you a pic of me an Mim with some local Jamaa kids, but it takes to ling to uploac the photoos and I playing by the monute.  See you Sun!

Love Swan"

I exaggerate slightly.  But you get my point.  Perhaps the only thing about that email that is inaccurate is that he would only think it was from Swan if the note was handwritten.  Apparently, when I hand write my name quickly, people think because of my practically illegible handwriting that my name is Swan.  Seriously it is to the point that if I ever break the law and the police are after me, they will list Swan as an alias.  CVS thinks that is my name because when I filled out the thing for the CVS card in the store, the guy who typed it in thought I had written Swan.  At the CVS in my neighborhood they always thank you by name after you have used that little card but they wait until you are walking away from the counter and the guy yells, "THANKS SWAN!!!!"  Folks, if you are going to call me Swan, at least do it quietly!  Blockbuster thought it was my name for years.  I mean until all of their stores closed.  Now I suppose they don't care what my name is.

I was at Ulta a few weeks ago and the lady had to look up my Ulta shopper number using my phone number.  When she did, she verified that it was me by reciting my address.  I confirmed it was indeed me then she said that's an unusual name.....  I said "Susan or Meyers?????" and she said "Swan....."  Ugh!  Seriously people????  Do I look like the kind of person whose parents would have named her Swan?  And if you think they would have done that to me, then after seeing me, wouldn't you ask "Are you sure you want me to enter that name in our system for you????"

The people who do manage to get my name right always have this conversation with me.  "Oh my God!!!  That's the name of Terry Hatcher's character on Desperate Housewives!!!!!  Did you know that????"  I tell them that I actually do have a TV so, yes I am aware.  But it was my name before the producers of some lame nighttime soap stole it.  Then we chat briefly about my remarkable resemblance to Terry Hatcher.  Heheh...  For some reason that always get a laugh out of them.  I don't get it.

Okay, well I need to go get dressed for my webinar now.  I know that they won't see me, but with that little camera built into the top of my monitor and the webinar being live, I have a fear that they are secretly looking at me and it would really be embarrassing if someone saw me the way I am when I think I am home alone.  I am not "swan like" at all if you know what I mean.  Have a good day!

Day One-Eighty-Nine - Glass 2 - Me 0!

I got a lot of work done on the garage yesterday.  I think I could totally finish with one more day of really buckling under and getting some serious work done.  Those of you who have not been in my garage are probably wondering what in the world could be going on out there that I have been talking about cleaning it for so many months and then when I finally start doing some work on it, it takes multiple days to get it done.  Let me just say this.  I do NOT belong on Hoarders.

The issue is mostly centered around the fact that I have no attic.  The garage is the only storage area in my home.  Add to that the fact that I had an out of control Ozarka delivery man for several months last winter and my problem was compounded.  I finally got the Ozarka deliveries stopped.  The problem that this brought up is that when the deliveries stop, so do the empty bottle pick ups.  I now am almost to the point of calling Ozarka and having them send the guy out one more time for a final pick-up of the empties along with the cooler.  I only have one unused bottle left.  Once it is empty.  I will make the call.  But until then, I have 16 5-gallon empty Ozarka bottles taking up room in my garage.

Once you get past the water bottles, the next issue I have is with junk mail.  I have a couple of stacks of junk mail out there that needs to be shredded.  Thanks to shows like 60 Minutes, I am afraid to throw away anything other than fliers without shredding it.  But sorting and shredding mail takes time.  It's not a fun task. Once I go back out there, I would estimate that about 3 hours will be spent shredding.  I hate shredding.  Why can't bad guys just leave the trash alone?  I don't think that would be asking too much.  I just want to go back to a world in which we could throw away our trash and not worry about the consequences.

The final category of junk out there that will take a little time and consideration is shoes.  These aren't favorite shoes, they are shoes that I wore someplace and they were so uncomfortable that before I got all the way home they were taken off and left in the car.  When I finally took them out of the car, I still had so much disdain for them, that I just sat them aside in the garage rather than bringing them in the house and taking them upstairs.  So, you may think, those shoes would be easy to simply put in the Oct. 19th garage sale.  You should probably be right.  But yesterday as I sat out there and stared at those shoes, I kept thinking things like....  "Ohhhhhh.... those are the cutest shoes!!!!"  Meanwhile, I know that they have been sitting in the garage for 8 months because the last time I wore them was absolute TORTURE!  I mean, there can be little doubt that the binding of Chinese women's feet hurt less than wearing those shoes for a few short hours. And yet, I have already brought one pair in the house that I simply cannot let go of.  (Insert eye-roll here.)

So, I made it through yesterday's work with only one... okay.... make that two injuries.  Those of you who spend much time with me are probably pretty darn impressed at this statement.  I keep my medicine cabinets stocked with a greater supply of band-aids than most emergency clinics will ever see.  I do this for one reason.  I am accident prone.  So, the fact that I had to open a brand new box of band-aids yesterday and have since been through 4 band-aids in that box should come as no surprise.  I had this old floor lamp stored in the garage.  You might notice that I said "had" which indicates past tense.  The floor lamp is now in the dumpster down the parking lot from my condo.  But it didn't get there before doing some damage.

I had gotten it at Ikea several years ago and for a while it was a perfectly good lamp.  It was never a pretty lamp, but it served the purpose.  Eventually, the fact that it wasn't particularly attractive along with an issue of it falling over a lot due to a problem with the threading of one part that screwed into another forced me to move it out to the garage to await a possible garage sale or perhaps a random person passing through who might be in need of a somewhat unattractive and dysfunctional floor lamp.  A few weeks ago, I went out to get some meat out of the freezer in the garage and stepped on a piece of glass.  Fortunately, I was wearing shoes.  But the sound of glass against concrete was unmistakable.  So, I looked around and realized that the lamp, finally unable to continue to stand up straight with it's perpetual balance issue, had fallen over and the glass shade had broken.  I swept glass up and threw it away knowing that I can be somewhat accident prone  and wanting to minimize the risk.  I left the base of the lamp where it was and didn't move anything else.

So, yesterday I started moving things out of the way so that I could get to the base, which I had decided I wouldn't even be able to sell at this point.  I was going to take it to the dumpster.  As I moved other items that I knew I was going to put in the garage sale to one side of the garage, working my way to the lamp, I picked up a wireless speaker from Sharper Image that I have replaced with a better one for my patio.  The Sharper Image wireless speaker is garage sale bound.  When I picked it up I noticed a gash out of the side of the speaker as though it was hit with a heavy and sharp object.  I ran my finger across it and quickly discovered that it was damaged by a shard of glass from the lamp shade that apparently had become embedded in the plastic and was still there just waiting form some unsuspecting moron to run her finger across.  With blood literally running from my hand, I rushed into the house to wash my finger and find the brand new box of "finger bandages" I bought recently.

Once the bleeding had been stemmed enough to go back to work and all of the blood had been mopped from the kitchen and bathroom floor, I went back out and picked up the speaker again.  Thinking that I needed to get the glass out of the speaker so that I could sell it and someone (else) wouldn't be injured by it, I ran another finger across the glass shard to determine if it was indeed the glass that had sliced my finger open.  I quickly discovered that it was!  I must tell you that the glass won.  It is still in the speaker and I have two fingers bandaged.  Typing with two finger bandages is NOT an easy thing.  Beyond the killer glass shard sticking out of the speaker it is perfectly good.  But I don't feel that I can sell it with that glass there.  So, I am either going to have to get a pair of pliers out there today and remove the glass or throw the darn thing away.  We'll see how this goes.  I might have to get an ambulance on stand by.  Keep a good thought for me!