Summer days are shortening ...

It used to be full daylight at 5:30 am, but now it's getting on to 6:00 - 6:30 before it's fully light outside. Winter is approaching!! I'm being told that the winter days are short and the nights are very long. We'll see. Will I become a whiney baby? is it possible that even *I* will tire of the rain?? Hard to imagine!


Just heard today of a former co-worker who has cancer. I hate to hear that!! Someone who retired when the building closed. I swear, I am NEVER going to retire.


Last week was Bunco Thursday. We were short a person at the last minute (Carol forgot she had to take some medicine prior to some lab work on Friday, so needed to stay home) so I asked Carlos if he'd fill in. Being the good sport that he is, he agreed! Bless his heart. So here's Carlos playing Bunco with a room full of women. The only thing that would have made it perfect is for him to get a Bunco and have to wear the bright pink fuzzy scarf!! He had a good time and he's agreed to be a reserve player -- as long as there are no cats at the hostess's house. Highly allergic--and cats have a 6th sense about who doesn't want them around!


Carol's oldest son and her daughter came up on Saturday and the 3 of them took off for Seattle. To see an A's game, of all things! How crazy is that. They're coming back this way on Thursday, then heading off for home (home being Livermore) So I have 2 weeks without her around. Amazing how quickly we can get used to other people in our lives! So how am I spending this "alone time"?


I got 2 scrapbook pages done. Turned out REALLY cute! Was able to use up 10 of my Hawaii photos. Ready to do 2 more -- again with the HI photos. Trouble is, I can't find the ones I want. These pages will be perfect for the airport shots Stacey took. It's possible they're at home, but do I want to wait that long? Should I just reorder the 2 or 3 I want, along with the other 30 or 40 Stacey just posted? Aaaggghhh


There are several scrappers here so I'm having a group over on Saturday to play. Marletta has a really cool fold-out album that I want her to show me how to make. So, Sandy Benson, Audrey Guest, Marletta and another lady I don't know are coming. Jeanine Brown is maybe coming .. depending on their plans for the weekend. I mentioned that I'm a "copier", can't come up with an original idea to save myself, and Marletta told me about a web site called pagemaps.com. My kind of web site!


Jeanine showed us some cards her sister made, sewing geometric shapes with very fine silver and/or gold thread. I remember in my geometry class we had to use string and nails to do the same thing. I think some years ago there was a resurgence of "string art" in the craft community. This uses black shiny cardstock, pearlized with special paints and then sewing on it with the thread. Absolutely beautiful!! Marletta found the book and made two of them last weekend. She said she did one in a couple of hours. They could be framed they're so pretty.


I've read about 9 books since I've been here (not bad when you consider the 2 or 3 weeks I spent working 10 and 12 hour days) and I've listened to at least that many. I've been downloading books from the public library. Got hooked on a series by Kate Wilhelm. There were 10 in that series and I just downloaded 5 more by her. These are non-series and a couple of them are science fiction. She's a local author and the settings so far have been Oregon. I've enjoyed them all!

I've also been busy with my paperback swap. Just shipped off a book on tape (got me 2 credits!) and I just ordered 8 books with the credits I'd already accumulated. I'm reading the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich so I was able to fill in some of the gaps. I prefer to read a series back-to-back.


Lynne sent some photos from the reception at Puget Sound so let's see if I can post a couple.



Steve and Amber cutting their cake. They had their wedding clothes on earlier for pictures, but got comfie right after!






Lynne took this one of me because she wanted everyone to see that, yes, I take a book with me EVERYWHERE. I'll have you know that the few minutes it took to snap 4 shots of me standing by the driftwood with Puget Sound behind me, were enough to give me a slight sunburn. Yes, Heather, I KNOW I should have put on some sunblock, but I didn't plan to go out in the sun!

Gary's Aerobed gave up the ghost this weekend so he asked me to go with him to look for a new mattress. Took him over to SleepCountry and my buddies over there set him up. He's getting a new queen bed delivered on Thursday. Much more comfortable than the floor!

Oh! Melanie Prestidge arrived! I saw her today, but no time to talk as she was heading to a meeting. She said to say hello to everyone ... HELLO! (for those of you who have NO idea who that is, she's one of the supervisor's from Pleasanton who transferred up here)

Well, kids, that's it for now. I keep trying to be less boring, but this is all you get! I admire your perseverence to keep on reading. All I have left to talk about is laundry and housecleaning so I'd better move along. Stay tuned ... you never know what will pop up!

Pat Winnie, this one's for you!

I got an email this morning from Pat Winnie. For those of you who don't know Pat, she's a friend and former co-worker from Pleasanton. She said it has been 21 days, we need more blog! It made me literally laugh out loud, so here I am. I think part of it must be that you read about my mundane life and breathe a sigh of relief that yours isn't so dull. Again, I'm performing a service for you! And what thanks do I get??


I said I'd tell you about my trip back home back in July. I went home for Stacey's 40th birthday (my daughter-in-law). On Friday, Carlos dropped me off at the MAX train station ... I wanted to leave at 3:00, but he kept getting involved in one thing or another and it was closer to 3:30 by the time we left. It's an hour and a half to the airport and I was going to be cutting it close. Naturally when we got to the transfer station (blue line to the red line) the next train sat there for what seemed like an eternity but was more likely just 5 minutes. Finally made it to the airport and the line to go through security was LO-O-O-NG! Now I'm nervous. (Seriously, how nervous can someone be who's had the experience of flying with no money, ID or credit cards?) All for naught. I made it to the plane with time to spare. Trip home uneventful. And it took me an entire paragraph to tell you that! LOL


Stacey's party was really nice. Eric had blown up a lot of pictures of her from each decade (1 to 10; 10 to 20; 20 to 30 and 30 to 40) and had them strung and hung all over the house. A great day spent with family and friends. Lots of good food and even better company. The next morning I was on an early flight back 'home'. VERY short trip ... too short. Little Miss Ellie was very shy around me. I think it's as much the haircolor change as anything else.


Carol picked me up at the train station and we spent the next hour or so looking for a farm where we could pick our own fruit. It wasn't worth finding! The farmer spent at least 20 minutes talking about his loser son and another 20 sharing his political views. We finally picked some blueberries and raspberries (which weren't all that good) and left.


This past weekend I drove up to Washington. My sister, Lynne, lives in south Everett. Her daughter, Amber, got married the previous week (08/08/08) and they were having a reception on Puget Sound. It's about a 3.5 hour drive. Not bad! I used Maggie (Carol's nickname for the Magellan GPS) and chose "most use of freeways". Completely bypassed Seattle by way of Renton and who knows what all. I know for a fact that I could have just stayed on I-5 all the way but wanted to see where Maggie would take me. It was all good until we hit this 2 lane highway that is used by every trucker who drives through that state. Speaking of which, if you're ever driving in WA be sure to obey all speed limits. The WA highway patrol is out in full force all the time. I saw at least 3 people getting tickets.


Since I'd just completed my on-line traffic school (I told you about that, yes?) I was not looking for another ticket. I got one in CA last April about 2 weeks before moving up here. Signed up for traffic school and then forgot all about it. Had to request an exension and finally completed the darned thing. You have to print out the test, take it to a notary public, fill it out in front of them, have it notarized and then mail it back to the traffic school. If you pass, they send you a certificate which then has to be mailed to the courthouse. I sent it express mail just to be safe. Do NOT want to go through that again. That was my first ticket in 30 years so I figured I was well overdue. :0 )


Anyway, back to WA. I took Friday off and drove up. Got there around 2:30 - 3:00. I took Lynne and David to dinner. Ate at a really nice Italian place that Lynne said has excellent food and you never have to wait for a table. Yeah, right! There must have been 3 soccer teams having their team party! She left her name and phone number and we walked down the street to Starbucks while we waited! The food WAS good (garlic, artichoke, spinach and parmesan calzone-YUM). On our way home, Lynne turned to me and said "so, WHEN are you going home?" Huh -I had thought I was going to Amber's reception ... but ...


We laughed. She was thinking that she hoped I'd be there long enough to help her with her computer, but that's NOT the way it sounded. I warned her that it was going into my blog. I now have witnesses for how she mistreats me.


Of course we won't talk about how David and I laughed ourselves silly when Lynne was retelling the story of how Joan and I played a dirty trick on her. Lynne had showed us a house a block or two from hers that she admired and she really wanted to meet the lady who lived there so she could see the inside. We told her that we'd gone right up to the front door and told her how much our sister loved her house and she invited us to bring her over the next day for tea. WELL! She was so excited she could hardly stand it. Yes, I know it was mean. Unfortunately, at the time we thought it was hysterical. We finally broke down and told her because we couldn't hold in the laughter, and to be honest, I couldn't stand to see her so excited about a lie! She was heartbroken. She got the last laugh because she DID meet the lady, and she did get to go in and see how she'd decorated. Guess she showed us!

Going to Amber's reception was a bit of a challenge. David and Lynne have a TomTom GPS. It said we had reached our destination when we were on a gravel road facing a stand of trees with a driveway on our right and a highway on our left. No park in sight. I said TomTom is pretty dumbdumb; David said several things I can't repeat. He started calling it the "bitch in a box". Then Lynne told him we're trying to get to Kayak Point. Turns out David knew right where it is and TomTom had taken us way out of the way. Thus his epithet.

The reception was really nice. We were at Kayak Point park, right on the water and the weather was BEAUTIFUL. It had been so flippin' hot the day before (much cooler in WA than OR, though) and while I was basking in the shade and sea breezes it got up to 103 in Hillsboro! I know this because when I got home, Cal had IM'd me that it was 103 in Hillsboro and he would be Oregone! LOL Lynne took a picture of me holding a book with the sea behind me (yes, I was reading whenever the opportunity presented itself) just so people could see I was really there and I'm crazy about reading. Or maybe just crazy.

As for work ... I finally got access to the T drive (which is the telecom drive where all our files are stored) and Carlos told me to look at the on-call schedule. I'M ON IT!!!! I wrote Peggy and told her to picture my knees knocking, my hands shaking, my heart pounding and my eyes tearing up. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I know that we can get alerts (via our cell phones) that we have to "clear" and sometimes we have to call the vendor to fix things. She assured me that Donna is flying out that week to train me and for me not to worry. (Sure!)


I'm scheduled for 9/11 to 9/18 .. so every one of you had better say prayers for me that week. Being on call is a 24hr proposition and I think we're covering all 3 sites. Thank goodness it's just once every 8 weeks. I'm getting stuck with New Year's day but Peggy's got Christmas day.


Oh, I also need to let you know that even though I originally planned to come home Labor Day week, I've rescheduled. Eric is perhaps going to have elective surgery on September 24, so I'm going to come home that week instead. He has Chiara malformation (something for those of you who are intrepid, to look up) also known as Arnold-Chiara malformation. He's meeting with his neurosurgeon on the 19th and then he'll decide if he is going ahead with the surgery.

In one of life's odd twists (or as I like to say .. God's little coincidences) one of the girls I work with has the same condition and she had the surgery 3 years ago!! She gave me all her contact information so Eric could get in touch with her to ask whatever. He's emailed her a couple times. I'm sure being able to talk to someone who's successfully been through the surgery was helpful.

Calvin has to have eye surgery and he's talking about maybe scheduling it for the same week so I'll be home. Hopefully not on the same day! You can see that will be one busy week for me but I hope I'll be able to touch base with some of you. I plan to drive down the 20th and I'll have to drive back up the 27th.

I'm actually supposed to be working on some files for work and here it is 9:30! I've got to scoot, so behave yourselves and stay tuned!

FTD? Not!

Where does the time go? I don't feel all that busy, but when I log in to blog, it shows that it has been way too long since I've talked to you. It's that whole time speeding up as we age thing, isn't it!


So, in keeping with my long tradition of celebrating my birthday for most of the month of July, after calling Eric and Stacey to see if they sent the lilies, they sort of let it slip that they did send SOMETHING but it would be arriving on Saturday, my actual birthday. On Sunday I called them to let them know that nope, it didn't arrive! On Monday I let them know that nope, it still hadn't arrived.

Now Stacey is ticked. She had me go to the FTD web site so I could see what I wasn't getting .. a really cute bonzai tree kit. Not only is she ticked because I didn't get it, but she had paid EXTRA to have it delivered on Saturday! Between them, she and Eric had made 4 or 5 calls to customer service and got different answers each time. They offered to knock $20 off the delivery price. Yeah, I don't think so. Totally fed up by now, she told them to cancel the order and she wanted a refund. They said they'd send a confirmation ... no confirmation. They hadn't responded to her emails. She was venting on Instant Messenger and I said what she needed to do is write to the president of the company! I found his name on the 'net and she found the email address. So we BOTH wrote to him.

Here's what I wrote: "Dear Mr. Soenen:
You don't know me, but I am ... or was ... a potential customer. Along with the 20 or 30 friends, and friends of friends, who will be hearing negative comments about your company.

My son and daughter-in-law ordered a plant from your web site to celebrate my birthday. This was especially important because I've recently moved 500 miles away, leaving all my family behind. Stacey tells me she paid extra money to have the gift delivered on Saturday, July 19, because that's the date of my actual birthday. An especially loving touch, don't you think?

Unfortunately, I have not received the gift. It was not delivered on Saturday. Today is Monday, and I've still not received the plant that was ordered from FTD. Now, seriously, Mr. Soenen, if you had ordered a plant or flowers to be delivered to your mother or another family member by a certain date, and you had paid extra to have that happen, wouldn't you be upset if the delivery was delayed?

Mr. Soenen, I happen to work in a customer service industry and I know how important it is to provide stellar customer service. I would have to say from personal experience that your company falls far short of that goal. It so happens that I did receive a beautiful set of lilies on Friday from ProFlowers. They arrived in bud form and I've enjoyed watching them bloom day by day. I can assure you that my friends will hear from me that if they want to get timely delivery of beautiful flowers or plants, they should go to ProFlowers.com.

As if this situation weren't bad enough, I understand Stacey has been getting the runaround from your customer service representatives. No one seems to actually care that there is a problem and they do not appear to be stepping up to the plate to take care of it. I did read on the internet that FTD.com flourished under your leadership. Well, if the customer service stays at this level, it will begin wilting before too long!

Not only was I disappointed that their surprise was ruined by your company but I'm disappointed that a company as well known as FTD is so lacking in courtesy and service. There are other companies competing for my dollars, and rigt now ... they're winning!"

Stacey got a call right away from their customer service manager (at least that's what she said her title is) with an apology and assurances of a refund. She also called me and apologized on behalf of all the employees at FTD for spoiling my birthday. Uh huh. Too little, too late. No real effort was made to do the right thing until we wrote our letters. They should have offered a refund to Stacey right off the bat, or at least offered to resend the plant with no extra charge for the Saturday delivery that never happened! Personally, I doubt that I'll be using their services anytime soon.

I should write them again, but this time with a thank you! Because of their screwup, Eric and Stacey sent me a different gift ... I just got it today and I LOVE it!!! I got a digital frame. Never saw a use for them until I saw someone at work with one ... it scrolls through dozens of pictures while taking up the space of one. COOL! And the best part of all, Stacey had it preloaded with pictures! I have it set up in the kitchen right now, but I can hardly wait to take it in to work.

We just got home from dinner with Heather and Tami. I'd told them that the Farmhouse is apparently known for it's prime rib. I knew that they both like prime rib. SO, Tami said Friday night is prime rib at the Farmhouse...did Carol and I want to go?? Heck, yeah. Okay ... here's the fun part. I hadn't actually tried the prime rib, because I don't particularly care for it! Carol, Heather and Tami had prime rib and I had Yankee pot roast (it was really good!)

Tami's going to kill me for this, but I like living on the edge. The 3 of them were having adult beverages and after drinking 3/4 of her Mai Tai, Tami noticed she had a bug in her drink!! Not one, not two, but THREE! She said she saw them fall into the glass when the bartender was making the drink but figured it was something from the garnish and she didn't want to be troublesome. Nope. Turns out they were fruit flies and there were 4 more in the bottle (the bottle was mostly empty) I know this shouldn't seem funny, but it was hilarious. We got more jokes out of this one incident than any 4 people have a right to.

Well, it's time for bed and I have much to do before this head will hit the pillow. I must close for now, but I still have to talk about my trip home last weekend for Stacey's birthday. Why is it I feel like I have nothing to say and once I start typing I can't seem to stop? Alright ... I heard all of those snide comments out there!

Stay tuned ...