I Did It! and Here I Go Again!

Three day weekends…aren’t they just the greatest? I think we should have one every month.

Since I had an extra day, I did it! I cleaned out my closet, and oh, what a chore it was. It’s the first time that I’ve emptied the whole closet since we moved in here three and a half years ago. My room was so full of stuff that I had a mere path from one location to the next. Looking at all that stuff strewn on every surface of my room, I had to wonder how it all fits into my closet, which is considerably smaller than my room.

And so I washed and sorted and pitched and piled. I have quite an impressive shoe collection: flops, sandals, tennis shoes, Sunday shoes, casual shoes, shoes for working in the yard, shoes for painting, shoes that need strings, shoes that need fixing, ice skates (hah! Like I’ll ever get to wear those again), roller blades, boots. I made myself throw several pair away and donate four or five pair to Goodwill, so my collection is somewhat smaller than when I got up this morning.

I also have a large sweater/jacket/pullover collection. I managed to slash that one drastically. I have a large pile to be donated. I look at some of the stuff from my closet and I’m thinking, “I wore that? And went out into public? Not kicking and screaming?” Of course, there are probably some people that look at what I wear now and think that very thing. Oh well, cool-ness never was my strong point.

I finally got everything back into my closet, or almost everything. I have a number of containers that need to be looked through before they go back in. I have this habit of letting papers pile up on my desk and then I suddenly need to clean it up because someone is coming over…so I stuff it into a container and stick it in my closet. So now I have the wonderful task of sorting that junk. {Sigh}

Since I’m starting back to school tomorrow night, that stuff will probably just sit here for the next month. I’m dreading school with a ferocity that won’t quit. It’s my current mountain to climb.

My inner child is pitching a fit at the thought of another English class. “Noo-ho-ho!” it wails, “Plea-he-hease don’t make me go! I will be good, I promise!” But tomorrow, I will put on my adult facade and trudge back into class. Surely I can endure eight classes. The thing that is so frightening is that Kris will take this class in the fall and will attend it three days a week for sixteen weeks and I’m supposed to learn the same amount of information attending twice a week for four weeks. This may just send me over the edge…the edge of what, I’m not sure, but over the edge nonetheless.

Yes, I need to be in bed so I can stay awake for three hours and forty-five minutes of class.

An Adventure

Does life slow down once the end of the semester has arrived? I think not!

Alvin and Doretta were here last week to help get some extra stuff done around Mom’s house and to attend Jolene’s graduation on Friday evening.

We managed to get Jolene graduated on Friday and had a successful party at the park. Mom didn’t have way too much food like she usually does and it was fairly simple.

Now...this week we get to enjoy our gift to Jolene. Early Thursday morning, Kris, Jolene, and I will go to the airport and board a flight headed for New York City. Sara will take a shuttle from Chattanooga to Atlanta and board a flight headed for New York City. We will meet at our hotel and then the adventure will begin.

Martin, Kris, Sara, and I will be paying for Jolene’s flight and hotel. (Martin is playing a major financial support role. God bless him!) I think this will be the first ever "Sisters Only" vacation. Sara, Kris, and I (accompanied by various friends) have been many places over the past six to eight years. We’ve taken a train trip from Chicago, IL to Seattle, WA; spent a month in Western Europe; taken various little Florida vacations, as well as other small jaunts locally.

Now, we will take Jolene on her first big adventure. Sara, Kris, and Jolene were in NYC many years ago when Dad was installing truck scales in the area and Kris has been back several times, due to having friends in Brooklyn. Kris and I, along with one of Kris’s coworkers, went to NYC last June. It was my first time in NYC and I loved it.

So, the next two days will consist of planning, washing, and packing.

Last year, we went to the Garment District. Now the Garment District is a Mennonite woman’s dream–lots of fabric shops, all on the same street, one right after the other. I’m going to try to be a little better prepared this time. I’m going to be a little more discerning in which fabrics I choose. I’m going to realize that there are more shops down the street and that I don’t have to buy everything that I find in the very first shop. I’m also taking an extra bag to put my fabric in. Last year, we quickly became bogged down with our fabric and had to end up stopping at Office Depot, boxing it up, and shipping it home. So, prepare, prepare, prepare.

Broadway, Times Square, Little Italy, Chinatown, Central Park, Staten Island Ferry, Battery Park, The Garment District–we want to do it all!! I’m sure we’ll embarrass ourselves somewhere along the way, maybe even get lost in the subway system, but that’s okay. We’ll be taken for nuns or nurses, but that’s okay. We may, at times, appear ignorant, but we’ll enjoy the adventure while it lasts.

Long Days

I’ve discovered how long a full day at work is again. I’m accustomed to a nine hour day on Friday’s but I’ve always got so much to do on Fridays that the day doesn’t seem as long. The problem is that I don’t have to do the deposit, payroll, and clean every day in addition to the daily activities so the past three days have seemed rather long.

One thing that has helped to occupy me has been setting up a nice new Dell computer. It arrived in the office last Wednesday but because of finals and my Kansas trip, I didn’t even bother to get it out of the box. So when I got everything caught up on Monday, I set the computer up but, alas, I couldn’t even turn it on because I had no power source for it. My boss said he’d bring a surge protector from home but didn’t remember it until after lunch on Tuesday, so after lunch I got to start her up for the first time.

What a sweet machine!! Everything is so clean and pure and unquirky...until I went to install Quickbooks, that is. We started using Quickbooks many versions ago and have been forced to upgrade it twice with the last upgrade going into effect the first of this month. Everything went fine for the original version and the first upgrade but when I tried to install the last upgrade, it would only request that I insert an installation CD. I rebooted, hoping to fool it into catching on that I had the correct CD in the drive, to no avail.

Now, one of my pet peeves is tech support. Not so much tech support itself (I’m utterly grateful for people that can help me), but tech support on the other side of the world just annoys me. I’ve had experiences with Intuit tech support that have been less than supportive because I couldn’t understand the person on the other end of the phone.

I made the dreaded call and lucked out. The lady that I spoke with could speak very good English. While I was uninstalling the troublemaker (the free Simple Start Edition), we chitchatted a bit. I found out that it was 2:35 AM there, with "there" being India. She was a very nice, helpful lady and was successful in helping me install the final upgrade. If I can speak to someone that I understand and that can help me, I don’t care where they are from, but good English is critical!!

One thing I don’t understand is how can it be 2:35 AM there while it is 4:05 PM here. Do they have half hour time zones over there? It doesn’t make sense to me.

So this lady was going to help me burn a copy of my current Quickbooks file onto CD, but no, Methuselah was not cooperating. It would not recognize that I had put a CD into the drive so she told me that she would e-mail me the rest of the instructions and I could see what was wrong with my old CD burner and finish up later.

I’m not about to put any effort into trying to fix a CD burner that I know nothing about when I can bring my USB drive from home and just transport it that way. I still have to buy some USB drives for work. I will be so glad to get rid of all those Zip disks. It currently takes nine of those to back up Methuselah.

Now the only things I have left to buy to get everything up and running are: several USB drives, Microsoft Office, Streets and Trips 2005, Sidekick 97, a good laser printer...I think that should be it. So, eBay, here I come.

Some days it’s nice to be the only one that know much about technology at work because I can pretty much say what needs to be done, but other days, I’d love for someone else to be in charge of it so I don’t have to make all the critical decisions. If I make a wrong choice, the blame rests solely on my shoulders.

The End of Semester #2

Blessed relief!! I have successfully survived my second set of finals. No more literature!

I took my last final at 4:05 on Thursday. As soon as I was done, I drove to Bowling Green and met Jolene and Kris. They were already loaded and somewhat impatiently waiting for me to come and load my luggage into the car.

After getting some food, we got on the road and started for Kansas for my cousin’s graduation. Kris drove as far as the other side of St. Louis, then we stopped and got a motel room for the night. We finished the long trek the next day.

It’s always great fun to go to Kansas and hang out with family there but it’s so very far out there. The trip out and back is always a drag and we usually only stay for a short period of time because of obligations at home. I think we need to find a vacation spot halfway in between and meet there to hang out. Of course, you can’t transport weddings and graduations to a halfway spot so I guess there is no help for it.