She likes them!

The blueberry muffins are a hit with mom! Huzzuh and hurrah and all that sort of ballyhoo! And she says she thinks cranberry juice is delicious which is also a good thing. 

Lazy sort of day. Lots of things I could be doing and I am busy not doing any of them. Like get the room at the head of the stairs ready for a house guest. That would be a good thing to do. And look at the Serpent of Seneca movie. And sort papers. And do some Smith work. But instead, I am playing, eating, resting, etc. Yippee.

Interestingly, I haven't been feeling verbose lately. Hence the short posts. And I haven't been doing very well on correspondence either. Sigh. 

Next week is heavily meetinged I think. I hope I have them all in my computer and phone. (Good thing that they talk to each other from time to time...)(Yup, just updated my phone. Tuesday is the busy meeting day.)

Mom woke up long enough to eat some soup. Yay! But then she wasn't interested in shrimp. Boo!

March is ending

In case you hadn't realized, it will soon be April. Eeek! How did that happen? Hopefully, with the end of March will come the end of winter. That would be nifty. The mini-blizzard the other day and the cold temperatures really aren't as fun as they could be. 

Yesterday was a pretty long day at the Smith. I went early to finish up from the night before. Went in again to get ready for a show. Went in again to make sure that everyone was playing well together. I hope the event went well in the end. Today I need to go in and set up everything for a two showings of a movie. Yippee! 

I got mom some prunes. And some prune juice. I don't know that I have had much prune juice over the years. Worf thought it was good. Maybe mom will like it. Heaven knows she didn't like the ensure like drink that I got her. Sigh. I am hoping that her shingles will be over soon. That would be nice for us all. 

Sometimes I feel like I am that frog in the slowly heating pan of water. 

Tried to watch a movie with mom last night, but she slept through it. It was ok - The Soloist - Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx. Definitely had good music. And the story was decent. So, glad I saw it. Wish that mom had stayed awake for it. 

When it was time for sleep, mom complained that she could have gone to sleep "hours ago" which was funny to me because "hours ago" she had been asleep...

Got a lot done at the Smith in my one hour there. The legs and borders all look happy. I played a little bit of everything on the movie server and it all went ok. Now I am home where I am doing more Smith work. Yay!

I almost rode my bike to work this morning, but I chickened out when I saw the breath in front of my face. It has warmed up considerably since then, so a bike ride may just be in my near future. Yippee!

Well, crap. I just was moving my lap desk and it slipped from my hands and scraped up my laptops screen. Poo even. Oh well - this is not the end of the world. Right? Yup, I thought so.

Getting fat

Seems to me that I am eating for two - making up for mom not eating by eating everything in sight. It will even out eventually, I do believe in moderation in all things (including moderation). 

Smith day all day. Yippee. I got a couple of steps further along in the setting up the ticket booth as a place from which to sell tickets. With a lot of help from the Artsman tech support people. I didn't know there was a green switch that I needed to move in order for tickets to be usable. That would have been a useful piece of information to have from the beginning. And it turned out that there were a few things unstated in their tech notes - first - that you can only use the browser option without an ethernet switch if you have a mac - of course - and that only Firefox seems to work. After we got those things worked out, we actually got the printer to accept its changed IP address. Huzzuh! I tested changing my printer in Theatre Manager to the new printer and I got half of a yippee - I guess that would either be a yip or a pee. I will work on it more tomorrow or the next day. 

And that was most of my day. I did meet with a guy who is going to help try to get me the right boxes so that I can connect sound and laptop images wherever we want them to go. After our Electrician did his thing, we now have a whole lot of plugs in the projection booth - so I replugged everything into their own separate plugs which makes me happy. I also replugged some of the other cords to try to make things a bit neater. And it is a bit neater. And everything that I tested worked. I didn't test the BluRay player or the laptop - maybe tomorrow. We shall see.

Amongst that, I also went to the bank, made lunch for mom, went to the library and took a nap. Fun stuff. 

Soon it will be dinner time. I can hardly wait. Mom is getting salad, salmon and tater tots while I get chicken pockets, salad and I don't know what else. Maybe a tot or two.

Mom ate about two thirds of her salad, a bit of salmon and a few tater tots. She is, though, mostly asleep. Not sure what to do about that...And she hates the ensure stuff - too sweet. Hmm...

Look, more snow!

Now, "look" would make one think that I am putting in a picture of the new snowfall that we got last night. And, if I get my act together, I might just do that. Probably won't, but anything is possible.

Feeling a little tired this morning. Oh well - gotta push through a little work at the Smith - getting the projector back to baseline for the movies this afternoon and evening. The group that came in yesterday needed a lot of video tweaking to get it how they wanted it - and to accommodate using the cyc(lorama) as the projection screen. It would be really clever of me to write down these settings, wouldn't it. Sigh.

Went in and the settings were what they ought to have been. I don't know what that is about. Honestly, I am not making an effort to understand this projector that well. We will, hopefully, soon get a new projector. And server. And become, presto, DCI compliant. That would be nifty. Though movies that we get on DCP are probably going to be fairly costly. Rental and shipping. Anyway, it only took me half an hour to do all the movie stuff I had thought of. Then I took another half hour working on getting the second ticket printing printer set up - to no avail. I will try again on Monday. It really oughtn't to be as difficult as it is. Why they don't just factory install it with a large (high) IP address, I don't know. What ever. Maybe the Artsman support people will be a great help. Anything is possible.

Home became lunch land for a bit. I made mom a small lunch of crackers (she didn't eat them) a third of a banana, some ensure type drink and some orange glop. Oh, and hot coffee. She took a long time to take her pills, but did a decent job on the food. Still holding out hope that her diminished appetite is due to the pain from the shingles. Which, apparently, is getting worse. Fingers crossed that the shingles and the pain go away soon.

I am playing a sniper world war two game on my xBox. Not the best game, but entertaining in its way. I am also cruising through the first Harry Potter book on audio. Put a hold on the second. I wish that mom would like or understand Audio books. Sigh.

The second things that came out of the new oven - six chicken pockets and two pizza pockets! Yum!

These turned out much better than my last ones

More pictures! I am working on a de-cluttering track on Daily Challenge. Yay! I am only going to do it for 9 days for now, but will go back to it as it seems like it will be what I need a lot of in my life just now. I don't think Daily Challenge has a dating track. Hmm. I will have to see. But I am doing the challenges. One of them was to declutter my kitchen counters - something I did a few years ago when I first moved back. Here are the newly cleaned counters:

Left Counter all spiffy

Right Counter even spiffier

I hope to keep it about this clean, give or take, more or less...

Ditto with this counter - sans the laptop and the Harry Potter Book

Some of the stuff that came off the counters (not the puzzle stuff...)

Mailchimp etc.

Overall, I like Mailchimp. It does have a few quirks that I hope get worked out soon - like centering images is a pain in the butt and doesn't work as one would think it would. Also, I am trying to "embed" a video in a mail message and only by diligent searching did I find a Facebook post that suggested removing "styles" from the embed tag - and voila - that seemed to have done the trick. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out how to center an embedded video. Sigh.

"I don't want to be a non-person and I am trying very hard not to be." That is what my mom told me this morning at 4 am as she was sitting in her bedroom. Break my heart, why don't you. Why does she have to do this at 4 in the morning though? Why can't she try and not be a non-person during normal business hours. :)

Had my first "Mom is dead" dream. Joy.

Our substitute aide came and worked for a while. Yay. I have been doing some Smith stuff - like building a Storyboard for an ad that I think the Smith ought to run. Setting up heating for the next week. Etc. Fun, fun, fun! Ooh, and I have been doing a little bill paying. Always a joy. Actually, lucky that I can afford to pay our bills, all things considered.

Windows is so crappy!

I am so happy that I spend more money and buy apple products. I am currently (still) trying to get one of the two laptops that I bought for the Smith into a functional state. It is not functional when whatever website one tries to get to, ads and warning and such start to blare. Pisses me right off! I think, though, that I am getting closer to getting it working. We shall see, we are rebooting as we speak. - So, I took off the virus protection and that sped the machine up about 20 fold. Then I found the last two adware things. One was really well hidden with a name like myzdinfdlamls.exe. What? Anyway,  can't tell you how excited I am that I got rid of those last two evil programs. Yippee!!

Meanwhile, I just want to say that I am surprised that I am still taking care of mom here in the house. I really thought I would be moving her into a "facility" at the end of January. And here we are in March! Yay. I am starting to look into the next step stuff - and am meeting an elder law experienced lawyer on Tuesday. So, there we are. 

Oh, and another thing. My laptop had this odd behavior, where it would go to sleep when I touched it or held it in a certain way - at least I thought that was what was happening. But it wasn't. I looked it up on the internet. Guess what? Turns out that the way that the Mac decides whether or not to "sleep" is by sensing whether its lid is closed. And the way it determines that is by magnetic action. Well, apparently, it is very sensitive to magnets, so if the laptop closing magnet is near another magnet, it just goes to sleep. Voila! So, I just have to be more careful about moving the laptop near magnetic objects - like my old laptop and the closure on my phone case. Sigh and yay.

Why is mom so against lying down? I really don't understand it at all. Grrr.

Did my Smith stuff and gave a decent tour. I did forget one of my favorite things, though - the steam punk fire bell ringing contraption. Sigh. Nice couple - Tom and Pat from Illinois. I installed Theatre Manager on a lap top, got the theatre ready for movies, updated the slide show and did a couple other little things. A good days work. Next week, the printer. Oh, it looks like there might be a real landline in the box office. I will know if it is if I get the phone back from my West Coast Friend (I do actually have more than one friend on the West Coast) who offered to try her landline. And the box office needs an internet connection. I wonder who does that sort of work. Bob Bailey perhaps? I will ask him on Monday. 

Well that is sad

Poo, even. I got all caught up in the many hour downloading of stuff for my computer that I completely forgot about doing my daily challenge, which means that my really, really, really long streak was broken. Oh well. Life is that way sometimes. I am sure I will survive. (One of my DC friends suggested I ask for a mulligan - but I do not hold out high hopes for that - which means I might just stop doing DC.)(They wrote back and said they could try to restore my streak - we shall see.)

And Twitter finally listened to my support emails and reset their flag on my email account so I did get a confirmation email and was able to log into my account. Huzzuh.

Mom was up all night basically, sitting in the bathroom. Not sure what to do about that. And she refused to lie down at 4 in the morning - after having spent the whole day sitting up. I must admit to yelling a bit to get her to finally lie down for a while. My throat is still sore.

I am exhausted. And a bit on the sad side. About Daily Challenge mostly. Though my mom is always good for a bit of sadness.

Yosemite (Yo-ze-might) has been safely installed and I don't see any problems. It will grow on me, I am sure. So, all of my personal computing devices are up to date. Hurrah!

Oops. Spoke too soon - apparently there is a new thing that the Mail app does that necessitates making some tweaks to one's account settings for some email accounts. Not everyone sees the issue - luckily enough people have that there are pages and pages devoted to it on the internet. Yay internet!

Spent way more time at the Smith today than I had planned. I even get to go back in later tonight. I could really use a nap. Mom is exhausted and passed out in her bedroom - in her chair unfortunately. But I can't even think about sleeping until I finish up closing at the Smith. Sigh.

Yay Winter!

Did I mention recently that I love winter? Winter seems more subtle than Summer. Last night, the lights on the snow turned ice on the William Smith quad mystically illuminated. Or something like that...

I fought the law and I won! I got a ticket at the Smith for parking too long in a spot. But I hadn't. I had been there less than two hours. The person at the police station said she would take care of it. Huzzuh!

This is going to be a short post - I am trying to download Yosemite for my laptop and it is going to take a loooooong time. I upgraded my phone's system yesterday. I think I mentioned that. Anyway, I can't be on the internet 'cause that will make the download go even more slowly.

Toasty!

The temperature at 5:12am on Wednesday morning in Geneva, NY is a balmy 37°F. It is going to be above freezing most of the day! Huzzuh! I was just outside in a t-shirt and boots playing choochoo train in my walkways. Mom and I get to go to her dentist appointment this afternoon. Yippee! An outing! Always a reason to celebrate. This is going to be mom's first time downstairs in a few weeks. I am tempted to take her to Friendly's for dinner, but am concerned about all the issues involved in a meal out. We shall see. (They called to reschedule - seems like this is the second time that has happened...) For now, I think I will try to get a few more hours of sleep. That would be nifty...

The puzzle movie is on hold - not because I don't want to do it, but because creatively I am a little stymied just now where it is concerned. Fear not, it will get done. Eventually. I hear that patience is a virtue. Hahaha.

I took the plunge and am going to go further spelunking into the depths of software upgrades. This morning before I went back to sleep, I started the download and upgrade process for my phone - the download took 6 hours - well, it ended up actually only taking four (!) - which unfortunately was exactly when I was supposed to be getting a call from an Elder Care Lawyer. Oops. We ended up speaking on the house's landline instead. Choices and options. Huzzuh!

Tonight I think I am going to update the software on my laptop. I don't really want to, because nothing is broken on here - but life moves forward and I don't want to get too far behind the technological curve, do I?

It is so warm outside! Things are melting, slowly. I went out to clear a little of the driveway and discovered a few things: slush is heavy, my shovel is broken, and my car lost a piece of plastic that is making things tough for my right front tire. Yippee.

Shopping at Walmart is always a joy. I went to buy mom some more underpants. They had a price thing that was wrong. Hate that. It said what I was buying was $75 per hundred - when it was actually   closer to $40 per hundred. I bought myself some socks, too. One of the newest socks I had mysteriously sprouted a hole in the toe. Grrr. I liked that sock too. I had named it and everything. (Sockie, in case you were curious - or Harriet - it answered to neither.)

That's New

Mom is getting to be more disoriented more often. Today she asked when she we were going home. And where she could sleep. And if it was bed time. And she threw away her water glass. Not sure what that last one is about - but it seemed pretty odd to me.

Got the package of documents from the Alzheimer's Association. I will look through it and see what I can see.

I am, once again, working on cleaning up the brand new computer we (I) bought for the Smith. I hate windows so much! To remove a program you have to go to a window and choose to uninstall it. What crap?! Still a bunch of crap on there, I think - but I broke the machine and then fixed it again. Next step, installing the software that is needed for use at the Smith. It all takes so much longer than I would like, when using a PC.

Short post again tonight - most of the day was spent on the blinkety-blank pc. Poo.

Puzzle me this

Got some good puzzle work done. But my eyes were starting to cross.

My hate of windows machines continues. Just saying. The second computer I bought is terrible. It seems really slow and has lots of pop-ups and ads and things. I am trying to disable them all, but it is slow and seems really frustrating to get it to do the simplest of things - like download an app. Sigh.

I was in Wendy's this afternoon to get lunch for me and mom. Yes was playing on the music system. When did Yes become main stream enough to be played in a fast food restaurant?

Went into the Smith this morning, after getting a wake up call from the tech support people who took "I'll call you at 10 am" literally. Ooops. Anyway, I went in and built a little test playlist and lo and behold it played correctly. So I tried the playlist that we had been trying last night and it didn't work. Answer to the question: corrupted playlist. Further answer, Augustus corrupted it. Boo. Anyway, all fixed, all better. Started working on getting the TV looking right again. And it doesn't look nearly correct - so I will work on that tomorrow. We shall see if I can get it decent in an hour or so. Should be able to.

Watched Fury the other night. I liked it a lot. Not quite like Inglorious Basterds. Very interesting, about tanks. I thought Brad Pitt and Shia LeBeouf both did a good job. Glad I got it from Netflix!

I am kicking puzzle butt! I figure another day or two at the most. Then it will be time to look at the video I took to see if it can be made into anything interesting. Well, interesting to anyone other than me. I find everything I produce interesting. Sigh.

Tomorrow is another day. And hopefully the last day of a very long, long, long period of non-stop events at the Smith. Maybe next week I will actually be able to do some laundry. That would be nifty.

Windows Operating System No Bueno

Sue me, I would rather pay more and work less than pay less and work more. I am setting up the second PC Laptop for the Smith and I couldn't be having much less fun. The whole start thing with different boxes of different sizes and sometimes obscure or arcane icons - ewww. And IE (Internet Explorer) just sucks. The interface is boxy and ugly and I have no idea what the hell is going on. Poo even. Macs just work. Did you notice the period? Sure, anyone can fuck up anything. So if you really want to do stuff way outside the huge box that Apple provides - sure, you might run into problems. And lots of them. Because, guess what - that isn't what an Apple device is designed to do. It is designed to let people do lots of stuff that most people want to do. And it lets them do it easily. True, I have been using Apple devices since 1985 so I am used to them - though they have gone through a lot of changes during that time.

Meanwhile, the first (second) camera miraculously appeared in my iPhone app! How cool is that?! I have it in the living room right now. I wish there were one I could make mom wear...

I am doing home stuff today - I might actually get through my teeny list. If I do, I might also go into the Smith later today and see if I can get the two wifi extenders up and working. We shall see. I would really rather do nothing Smith-y today if possible. And I think I am going to do laundry tomorrow afternoon. I think we are in dire need.

Maybe the mattress pad I bought for mom will have to go. Shame because she asked for a foam mattress for so long. It has made the bed really high and mom seems to be scared of it. I will talk it over with Jennie when she comes in today. (I forgot...)

Sunday Night and Tuesday

I forgot to write about Sunday night. It was our tv night together. Starting with the news. Then 60 minutes. I like 60 minutes generally - though who knows how balanced their reporting actually is. Then we put it on PBS for the rest of the night. Starting with the British Baking show. Sadly, my favorite participant got booted. I saw it coming, though. Next we watched the most recent episode of Season 5 of Downton Abbey. Not too much exciting happened except for the middle sister taking control of her child and moving out. Yay! Poor Edith. Somewhere in there, they showed an ad for Grantchester - which is not a great show - but it is enjoyable. I think the lead looks a little like the guy on The Mentalist. It is at least somewhat entertaining. And that was it. Four hours of TV with mom. I think she slept for 3 of it all together. Sigh.

Great progress on the puzzle today! I finally found a piece that connected to the edge. Woohoo! Sadly, I was vindicated in my thought that I had the whole frame backwards. That was joyous, flipping it around. One of the problems with my rolling up mat is that it isn't slippy slidy - which is probably good in most cases - but is causing me a few problems with sliding big chunks of completed puzzle bits around.

Feeling sleepy today and there is a long row to hoe. First ho to roe is more sno-blow (ing). I don't think we got that much snow since yesterday, but the snowplows have done an excellent job of blocking the end of my driveway again. Joy and rapture.

After that, a whole bunch of Smith work - we have three movies playing 7 times this week and a mail blast that needs to go out today. For the movies I need to a) create movie playlists, b) create spotify playlists, c) make sure the heat is timed to go on and off, and d) make sure the pre-film slideshow is current. The email blast, always a bit of a pain, needs to be mildly creative and a little witty and needs to be out by 4 this afternoon.

Then, of course, there is all the stuff that I am supposed to be doing at home - making calls about mom's future, paperwork, bill paying, napping...oh, wait, I don't know that there will be a lot of napping going on today...

I am mildly irked because the Daily Challenge videos have stopped working - I have tried a couple of browsers to no avail. I am not irked enough about it to do anything. And Allison was getting pretty boring...

Snowblowing accomplished! Now for some Smith work. Ok, my brain is fried. We have a lot of movies coming up in the next couple of weeks. Still grinding away...

Finally! Gosh that is effortful - creating the Mail chimp email mailing. I also built six or so playlists for upcoming films. All I have left to do are the spottily playlists and making sure the heat will be on when it needs to be on for the upcoming events. Yippee!

Puzzle progress has been made - despite all my other stuff today - more will be made tonight, I am sure.

Yay progress

I might have started the puzzle on the wrong side. Who knew that there was a right side and a wrong side? Now I do!

Snow Day!

We didn't get that much snow. It looks like we got about 8 inches if I had to guess. And soon it will be time for me to go out and do some snow blowing. I can hardly wait! Ok, I can. I am not thrilled about it. More thrilled than I would be if I just had to shovel! Ick!

Meanwhile, mom is exhibiting new behavior - she doesn't want to get in her bed, for whatever reason. So I encourage her to do what she wants to do - sit in her chair all night. And yes, she has flipped time - day is night etc - despite the cool clock thing that I gave her. Sigh.

I am going to do a little work via my computer - I have to update the slideshow for the Smith. Yippee! Do I do that first, or do I work in the snow first? Hmm. Ok, I did the computer work. Took me all of five minutes. Sigh. Ok, time to stop procrastination and get some blowing done!

Why do I feel so virtuous for snowblowing the snow off my walk and my driveway? I really need to listen to myself, though, that battery powered is probably the way to go - this cord nonsense isn't optimal...

Oops, napped for a bit and now I think I need to head out to snow blow again. Woo hoo.

Snapchat anyone?

Seems like an odd application to me - but so do many of these "newfangled doohickeys!" I just watched a video on youtube about snapchat - and I did learn a little - but not a lot. I will have to do more research at some point.

I started the next puzzle! Huzzuh! I was going to write Huzzle! but that isn't a palindrome. In going through looking for edge pieces, I have found a lot of puzzle pieces that had not been successfully disconnected. What would you do? Rip the pieces apart and spread them out? Or leave them together? I am leaving them together - well, I rip them apart - cause most of them are stuck together - then put them back together again. Sue me.

You know, my life would probably be easier if I slept in my sweats or something. But I don't. Which means whenever mom wakes me up for some reason, I need to basically get dressed - not that I am too weirded out about my mom seeing me naked, but because wearing clothes makes me feel a smidge more dignified, powerful and awake.

Good things about being woken at 4 in the morning

Ok, there really aren't any good things about being woken at 4 in the morning. I would much rather still be sleeping - so I will type a few words and then slip back into sleep.

First, helping mom to feel a little less stressed is a good thing. I got her a yogurt and put more music on. Hopefully that will help her to feel more relaxed. Anything is possible.

Then, as I was starting to go back to sleep, I looked at my phone and somehow that reminded me (oh, right, there was a reminder on the screen) that the recycling needed to go out. Brrr. But I did get another little accumulated recycling out with the regular weekly amount of stuff. Huzzuh!

Off to sleep land, but first check snapchat - I don't get this app yet - out of the people I know on there, only one person consistently posts anything - and she posts two or three times a day. Then a quick look at a few other things - mostly instagram on my phone - then a game or two of Word Jigsaw. Then, oops, opened my computer - looked at Facebook - and found a cool animation that I shared on my timeline.

Woo hoo. What excitement. Now I am going to try to sleep some more before a long work day at The Smith. Zzzzzzzz

Oops, opened my yahoo home page by mistake - now I have a bunch of tabs open to be skimmed. Sigh.

And up again - mom wanted to tell me all about the messes she has been making. Yay. So I gave her some more fruit and some cold water and asked her to tell me more about it later. Hopefully, I can get another hour of sleep. Right. (I didn't)

Watched The Winter Bone last night and enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. I was going to watch it with mom, but at the last minute decided against it, which I think was a wise choice. I don't think she would have been able to follow it. I also watched a couple more episodes of Agents of SHIELD. Now I am up to the point where I need to watch a Marvel Movie (Thor: The Dark World - which I think I may have seen but can't remember - if I did see it, it didn't make that much of an impression on me, despite having Natalie heartthrob Portman in it) before continuing on with the series. I added it to my Netflix list anyway - maybe this time I will remember it. I wish Netflix kept track for me...

Four Sweaters Day

I'm I'm I'm just a-washin machine, baby don't work for nobody but me...

Because of the yogurt mishap yesterday, I ended up washing not one, not two, not three, but four, yes four sweaters. Two of mom's, two of mine. Yay clean sweaters. Boo brrr-y cold water on my little hands. And I can't find (ok, I barely looked) the second (I know we have another one, we have at least two of so many things)(like books, we have at least two books)(and I have at least two socks...) sweater/clothes drying rack like thing. One sweater is almost dry, a second is getting there, one doesn't seem to have any interest in being dry and the last is still relaxing in the tub, waiting for final wringing out-age before being stretched (hopefully not actually stretched beyond its original proportions) out to start the drying process. Yippee!

I am a computer god! Ok, not really, but I got to feel like one for an hour yesterday. A friend was having problems with her mac and I, Dudley Do Right (Jr.) rushed in to save the day. At least I hope so. We shall see if her problems persist. And I got cookies! Huzzuh!!

As far as the puzzle goes, I actually did combine a few loose pieces in various ways - too each other and to the bulk of the puzzle. Really, though, not much forward motion was accomplished. The year is young.

Two weeks (plus a day) of doing yoga - some meditation, some swinging, some complete breaths, a couple of sun salutes and a bit of a shoulder stand. Lots better than nothing!

Puzzle Point

Hey - I am at that point in the puzzle where there seem to be pieces missing. I have been through the pieces that remain any number of times and a few of the pieces that seem to be obvious in nature - because of color combinations or shape or both - just don't seem to be anywhere. I am pretty sure I am just not seeing them. But still - it is a frustrating point. I think I am about 60 percent of the way through the puzzle. Soldiering on! (I found one of the pieces! Huzzuh!)

I was all set to go into the Smith yesterday - and I do need to go in - well, actually, I don't need to go in, I can do the work I need to do from here - as long as no one is trying to use the computer. Turns out that Kelly was sick, so we didn't have to/get to meet. Yay! I stayed home and did a little Smith work.

I eventually went out to the grocery store and got the makings of tacos. Well, tacos without the taco shells - soft or crunchy (I like both). Unfortunately, mom can no longer navigate either a soft or hard shell - so I just put the taco stuff over rice. It had been so long, I had forgotten (mostly) how to use my rice cooker. But it was just like falling off a bicycle. We had taco stuff and salad for dinner. And it was pretty tasty. Huzzuh!

Yup, short post today.

Almost a Week!

Yes, I have almost posted every day for a week! Yay!

My nephew, Sam, told me that google has made it hard to comment on my blog posts. Has anyone else tried and failed? If so, please send me a direct message - if you don't have my email address, please find me on Facebook (there aren't that many Augustus Schoen-Renes on Facebook) and send me a message there, please. Sam would like me to move my blog to wordpress, but that isn't going to happen anytime soon...

Yesterday was back to the grind. Yippee! I got a little work done at the theatre (after running a few errands) and then had two meetings. The first, with Kelly, to go over the coming weeks and months and to talk about up coming events and such. Good stuff. Then a Marketing Committee meeting where we talked over a bunch of the stuff we had talked about but with more people. I hear to the "t" meetings! Sometimes.

Just now, though, I really enjoyed doing some of my work from home - I have set it up so that I can connect to work from my computer and do four different activities:

1) Set-up the heating/cooling schedule. We want our patrons to be toasty or cool and to not spend too much money heating/cooling an empty building.

2) Work on the Film server - for those of you who don't know, we show films at the Smith. Most of them are loaded on a server (we only show digital films currently) and playlists need to be created that show the people what we want to show them in the order we want them shown. Having the ability to do the work from home is great!!

3) Work on the pre-film slide show. I don't know how effective the pre-film slide show is - mainly because we have no real way to judge its impact (does anybody else do the his/it is thing to remember whether or not there is an apostrophe (the crux of the biscuit) in "its"?) - but I think it is a good thing. Luckily, no changes will be necessary until Thursday (after our first movie of the New Year plays).

4) The kiosk programming - last year, the Geneva Business Improvement District group got the funding to get the kiosk replaced - a tri-electric sign near The Smith that we can use for upcoming events, announcements and advertising. I don't actually do any of the programming, but I can access it if I need to remotely. Which means that the person (Amanda) doing the day to day work on the kiosk also doesn't need to be present at the Smith to do her thing. Yay!

But, once again, I got away from my narrative thread - I was talking about yesterday. Good meetings. I think that was it. We are mostly planning our Oscar Event, which hopefully will be more fully realized than our Oscar Event last year. Speaking of which, at some point, I need to see if the television antenna is working and that we can indeed show the Oscars...

I cooked a delicious, if I must say so myself, tuna casserole last night for dinner - with Salad for our veggie. There is way too much of it, so I am sure we will be enjoying it again on Wednesday night. Mom was eating up a storm yesterday - a yogurt, lunch, dinner, two bowls of ice cream (with cookies) and some marzipan - and a couple of fiber bars as night time snacks. That isn't a bad thing - just an observation.

I need an oven. I hate spending that much money, though. Oven/$$$, $$$/Oven. Hmm...But I probably will. At some point. Sooner rather than later. Maybe even today! Nah, not today - way too cold outside.

Oh, and I forgot to show how the mountain was transformed into many mole hills.

Look! Mostly folded! Now I just need to put the clothes away...

Also worked on the puzzle some and made a little progress.

Mom asked what percentage done I am - 10% maybe?

By the way, my fears were not realized. I found no trash blowing around my yard. I did find my two trash cans knocked over, one in the street - though I think that was just careless rubbish people...

Vacationland Maine - Wednesday and Thursday May 21 and 22

How long have I been here? How long will I be here? What state is this? Who am I? Yes, I am getting that jello-like and relaxed. Mellow jello! We drove up on Tuesday. Wednesday day was a decompressing day. I didn't do a lot of anything - except ate and drank a bit. Oh, and saw a movie. Well, a collection of five documentaries from the Camden Film Festival.

That was a nice relaxing day!

Thursday was another relaxing day. My main (tee hee) plan was to buy a new laptop and a new iPhone. (I am using the voice typing feature and it seems to be working pretty well)(How freaking cool is that!) At first I didn't know if I wanted to go to Portland or someplace else to find a Best Buy. So I used trusty online stuff and found out where all the Best Buys were and it turns out the Bangor location was indeed the closest. (OK, back to my laptop and no more voice typing.)(Wait, maybe there is an option...looks like there is - downloading something so that I can use it offline as well as online. Almost a gig download!) So I hopped in the car, programmed my GPS (love my GPS) and toodled off to Bangor's Best Buy.

Bangor isn't so very far from Belfast. The two cities, though, are not connected by major highways. They are connected by less than major highways. A lot of little towns are driven through as well. A 30 mile drive takes an hour. But at least it is scenic! Yay scenic! I tried listening to one of the CDs I recovered from my book bag - oops, they both were all beaten up. Sigh. So it didn't play as well as I would have hoped. I have a plan, though. I am thinking of turning my old 3gs phone into an iPod. I have never had an iPod. I know, I am a loser. Actually, I am just not that "into" music. Don't get me wrong or started. I do enjoy music - I also like silence. Most of the time I prefer silence. And when I am doing something, I don't need sound in the background. Usually sound in the background (rocking the rhyming) is distracting. But there are times when I would like some music. And creating CDs doesn't seem to be the thing to do. Especially since a) I don't have any blank CDs hanging around and b) my new laptop doesn't have a CD player. I would like to make all the music that is on my old computer available to my new computer. I think I need to upgrade my iTunes though to take advantage of iCloud. Hmm. Just going a mile a minute here in my thoughts. And typing them almost as quickly. BTW, I have installed the dictation thing on my laptop, though somehow I think that is cheating. And really, part of the reason I don't do a podcast or a vlog is because I like to ponder and correct and recording  what I say just seems out of control. Typing, now there is something I fool myself into believing I have control over...

Where was I? Oh, right, on the way to Bangor. I got there and was lucky enough to follow a group into the store who also were looking at getting a new laptop. We chose similar things - I chose to go for the larger hard drive, though. Which, on this machine, is a solid state one - quiet and fast - oh so very zippy! Technology is amazing!! Next stop, cell phones.

I was a little worried about changing phones. Change is scary. Fun, and scary. I didn't know what to expect. It actually was easier, but took longer than I had thought it would. Oh well. Still, I was told my options, changed my plan drastically, but now I have unlimited text!, and picked out a nice, white iPhone - for $1. Plus money to turn the thing on. Really? Jeezus!! Anyway, I am happy and it seems to work. Now all I need is a new case for it...

After bonding with the sales guy over this and that, especially Geaghan's, I headed off in search of food. Ok, I didn't really search, since I knew that I wanted to go to Geaghan's. What's not to like - good food, good beer, good atmosphere. True, no pool table, but other than that, it is high on my list of great brew pubs! (Maybe it is in my brewpub blog...) I had a great oatmeal stout - or two - and a yummy tuna melt with sweet potato fries (which were a little cool but life is that way sometimes...).

Back on the road and headed to dinner with my friend Susan. We have known each other for, oh my goodness, I don't know how long. We were friendly as kids - though she is a few years older than I am. Our families were friends. And we have remained friendly this whole time. Yay. She offered to make me dinner and I gladly accepted her offer. Yummy stuff, too! I need to find a good meatloaf recipe. I think mom would enjoy it.

Long day, though, so I then headed home, played a bit (phone, computer, xBox) and then hit the hay! Yay!

I might have some pictures for the next post. From my new iPhone. Huzzuh!!