Suebee's World

I don't "do" Black Friday. For the last 8 years, I worked retail, so I was working that day. I always joked with the customers that I don't leave the house on Black Friday unless I am being paid to do so. Even though I don't work retail anymore, the vow is kept -- I have to work Friday. BUT, it's not retail! WOO!

The weekly advertising paper I work for now publishes on Saturdays, so we are always putting it together on Friday. I normally work on Thursdays and Fridays each week. Since Thursday is Thanksgiving, I am working Wednesday, instead. Then we'll come in on Friday to finish up. :)

You might think it would be easier to just get the paper done Wednesday. Well, when working with sales people and small business clients, life simply doesn't work that way. *rolleyes* So, we're in on Friday.

The only bad thing is that my mom and grandma are on their way up here to visit from NJ as I type this, so they're going to have to entertain themselves on Wednesday and Friday. LOL! Mom is baking an apple pie tomorrow, but I don't know what grandma is going to do... maybe we can put her to work polishing the silver -- my mom is giving me her late sisters's set, which she's had in storage since I was a baby. :) I'm slowly collecting Aunt Elaine's things... heh. I have the diamond from her engagement ring (set in a different ring), and her sewing machine. I guess I get her silver now that I have a home, and a place to keep it. :)

So, yeah, anyway... that went off on a tangent. I don't "do" Black Friday, and I make a lot of my gifts, so I don't do a lot of shopping, anyway. I do tend to collect things throughout the year as they catch my eye, though. I am pretty much done with my MIL.

I still send out cards, and often hand-made ones. So no change there.

The only difference would be the Holiday playlist on my iPod. ;)

So, we took Holly (that's the name of my external HD) to the Apple Store last night, pretty much just to get a "genius" opinion, and see if it would show up on another Mac. The newer Macs don't have the 400-speed Firewire anymore, just 800, so he had to use a converter cable to connect. It showed up just fine. We were able to copy a file to it from their mac with no problem, and we copied over a HUGE folder of files from the HD to their desktop (the entire 2010 Rats Rule Calendar... 80+ photos, all pretty much raw JPG files, so there were a couple MB a piece).

We surmised, as I pondered during my "wild theories" phase, that it may actually BE a connection issue. Whether it's a cable, or the hub I am using. Or worse, my Mac, but I am not thinking about that right now. LOL! I bought a 400-to-800 firewire conversion cable like he used for $20 to replace the 400-speed firewire cable that came with the drive. If this is just a $20 fix, praise Jebus! :D I am also going to disconnect the firewire from the hub, and just plug Holly right into the back of the Mac. I used to have a firewire iPod dock, so I needed two ports, but I don't anymore since I got my new iPod.

I am also taking Holly, the old cable and the new cable to work today, to see if my boss will let me hook it up to an older Mac (the one I work on), and see if it shows up and lets me move files there. I'm sure he will, he's very chill, and understands. ;)

HOWEVER, The Genius did agree that there MAY still be issues, and the acting out may still be a sign of said issues. So since i have 30 days (28 now) to use the reference number G-Technology gave me to send in the drive for analysis, I am going to give it at least the weekend, and see how things go. If it's still acting up, it may be my Mini, which will make me very sad.

...

Why Holly? I know, weird name for a drive. :) I have gotten into the tradition of naming my computer hardware after things (mostly ships) from the BBC show Red Dwarf. So... my hard drive is the SSS Esperanto, our home wireless server is Starbug, and my external HD is Holly. :D

...
EDIT: I plugged the HD directly into my Mac Mini, and ALL IS WELL! Holly's on the desktop, and I can move files around! WOOT!

Anyone following me on Facebook and Twitter yesterday knows that my external hard drive (home to my music and photos) is being a turd. I don't know what exactly is going on, but apparently it's having read-write errors, which is bad.

Last week it started acting up when I was editing some photos for the Rats Rule calendar, and iTunes kept pausing (well, not actual, pausing... more like... being affected by Hiro Nakamura... LOL) while I was saving the files. Admittedly, they were not small files, but they weren't THAT big. Just a couple of MB. Yesterday, it started doing it again... then I started getting disk errors.

I can't copy files to it (filename is too long, which is bull... "file.txt" is a perfectly normal length filename).
I can't copy files from it (I/O error).

Thankfully, I was able to extract the info to reconstruct a class handout that I need for my polymer clay class tonight, but I am really worried about all my music and photos. Ok, the music I have on my iPod, and I could transfer it back manually, but the photos... *whine*

I tried to use a backup site a few months ago, but it was taking too long, and the site would only let me sync... it would not let me just upload the files I wanted to back up. Then, the syncing software kept crashing. I've been busy, so I never got back to finding another solution. *sigh*

We're taking it to the Apple Store tomorrow (where I bought it, and all my equipment) to see if they can get it to show up on one of their machines, ruling out my system as a problem (Intel Mac Mini single-core). If they can't solve it, I have an RMA# for the company that made the drive, so I can send it in for them to look at.

The drive isn't even a year old! I bought it after we got our tax return in the spring! Ungh. I have another external drive that still works just fine at SEVEN years old, but it's just too small. It's only 60GB, and my music is 49GB all by itself! *sigh*

So, happy vibes, please. Thanks!

So, last night we went elliptical shopping. We didn't really expect to purchase one last night, as it was primarily an informational excursion, but we did find one!

The other night I had seen one by Nordic Track in Sears on sale for $449. It felt good, but I thought I would look it up at home, first. Good thing I did. Turns out it has the lowest reviews of the entire Nordic Track line -- 2 out of 5 stars. Not promising. Instead, a different model had better reviews. Sears had that one on sale for $849 (from $999). But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As many of you know, we joined Direct Buy this year, so our first real step in shopping was to see what we could get from them. They had a few catalogs, but only the Horizon line fit our budget. We took note of one, and the associated costs with shipping. All in all, we were looking at about $800, which was really good for the level machine we were looking at. We set that as our bar.

THEN we went to Sears. They had the better-reviewed Nordic Track model, and the store had one left. They were not getting any more in, as it was being closed out for the 2010 models. We took the guy's card, and went to our next stop.

G+G Fitness is a small chain, and I honestly had never been in there. Well, now I know why. That place is hard core. Seriously, if I had $3,000 to blow on an elliptical, I'd be putting a down payment on a new car. LOL! I'm sure they're the highest quality, and will last forever, but still... WAAAAAAAAAY out of our budget range.

Two doors down was a Play It Again Sports. Our last stop of the night. I always thought they only sold used equipment, but apparently they also sell closeouts. They had a few models on display, which were pretty beat up... they get whole teams of young kids in there, and I am sure they take over like a troupe of untamed chimps when they walk in the door. So, I expected the models to look beat, and they did! LOL!

Like other stores, they're also trying to make room for new models, so they had all the fitness equipment (treadmills, ellipticals, recumbent bikes, etc.) on clearance. They had a nice Horizon model on sale for $499. We tried it, it felt good. The store owner pretty much gets the skinny on everything in the fitness equipment world, so he knew that there had been some consumer complaints about the model. However, he figured out two simple and virtually free fixes that eliminated the problems instantly. To be frank, they're both common sense, and barely fixes. Both fall in the realm of "regular maintenance, you dumb schmuck." LOL!

Apparently, in the manual it neglects to mention in the assembly stage that you need to spray some silicon on one of the moving parts... which, if you ask me, is one of the biggest no-brainers on earth. People were complaining that it was squeaking... well, yeah, if you don't lubricate a moving part, it can squeak. Fix #1 complete. The second complaint was that some screws (again, on a moving part) would loosen. Um, do you have a freakin' screwdriver? You use something enough, and things CAN loosen. Tighten it. Idiot. LOL! Fix #2 complete. Neither of these issues bother me in the least. Something we honestly expect to have to do from time to time when, again, dealing with a machine that has moving parts. *facepalm*

So... WITH sales tax and delivery, it was still going to cost less than Direct Buy. Brand new 2006 model, in the box. WIN!

They just pulled up! It's heeeere! Yay!

Horizon E800

Look at that original price. Holy shit! I knew the original price was over a grand, but OMG! WIN! They only show the terra cotta model on the page, but it comes in two other colors... white, and spring green. Guess which one I got? Hint: It will go nicely with my hat in my user pic. :D

John is going to put it together tomorrow night, as he already has plans this evening. I'm secretly hoping his plans get cancelled. LOL!

When I talked to the neighbors, they said we don't usually get many kids... less than 10. But I think we did pretty good tonight. I think we had about fifteen, maybe a couple more than that. A big group of six kind of threw me off in keeping track. LOL! That group was led by the one woman I see jogging all the time, so she must have decided to bring them down because she had seen my decorations on her morning jogs. She's the runner, I'm the walker. :D She did say she doesn't usually bring them down the street... something tells me they'll be coming from now on. ;)

We certainly did not get as many as my in-laws, who ran out of candy in 45 minutes, and then blew through $40 worth of quarters after that! Of course, they live in a town with a lot of row houses, so the population is a lot more condensed, PLUS they have a playground on the corner that was hosting a party of sorts for the neighborhood, attracting kids from every corner of town. LOL!

The first two kids that showed up I am pretty sure were the kids of the Wal-Mart employee who said she was coming to our house when she saw that I was buying fake tombstones. I didn't give our exact address, but I did give her a vague ballpark. They were cuties... :D I told them because they were first, they were getting one of everything I had. Of course, I pretty much did that with everyone, but they don't have to know that. I can just imagine them telling their mom... "Because we were first, we got one of EVERYTHING, Mom!!!!" :D

I got quite a few compliments on my decorations, which was great! I put a lot of work into it, as you know (including laying back down on the walk this afternoon after the rain stopped, to redraw my chalk outlines in the crime scene, which washed away utterly on Wednesday), so it was nice that it was appreciated. :D I set up my iPod with some speakers in the laundry room, opened the window, and played some mood music all evening - stuff from Coraline, Harry Potter, and some other fun Halloween music I downloaded from emusic a few weeks ago. :)

I got no comments on my costume, but it was dark, so maybe they just didn't notice. I know the younger ones were too little to get it. :) I really wish I hadn't screwed up the sweater order, though... much less cumbersome than my robes. Try loading a dishwasher with long, drapey sleeves sometime... LOL!

Speaking of... I added pics of my costume to an earlier writer's block entry, but if you missed them:




Of course, we still have candy left... it's about 9:45 now, and I don't think any other kids are coming tonight... but at least we don't have LOTS of candy left over. Maybe about half of it, a little less? I had bought three bags -- Reese's PB cups, Kit Kats, and Animal Crackers -- so that's not too bad. At least the animal crackers are kind of healthy. LOL! John made fun of me for getting them, but one of the older girls that came around was happy to see them! So there! :P```

So, all in all, my first Halloween as a homeowner, with door duties, was a success. Not a huge crowd, but about double what I was expecting! :D

Hogwarts uniform, with the whole shebang... including the knee socks and the school girl skirt (purchased from an actual school uniform web site). My husband is on cloud nine. LOL!

What is it with guys and school girl uniforms, anyway?

Edit: Pictures of the costume, sans sweater (read comment for reason). I decided to go with tights instead of knee socks after looking at pictures online of Hermione and Ginny. :)

A friend? Mock them. Openly. Maybe throw something non-lethal at them. All my friends who would crack corny jokes can take it. They're usually expecting it, anyway. LOL!

A boss... depends. With my immediate boss (art director), I know I can get away with ribbing. With the boss-boss, it depends. I think I can tell if he's doing it on purpose... but he's an odd one. At my old job? I worked for a soulless robot. She didn't make jokes. She was barely capable of conversation. LOL!

If someone is pretending to be amused to be polite and non-offensive, when it's a real stinker, yeah, it annoys me. If they're doing it to protect their own life, nah. ;)

Go to hell. Tied at 4 in the 11th inning. Fuck you.

Dear Fox:
If you're going to show playoff baseball... DON'T SCHEDULE NEW EPISODES OF YOUR HIT SHOWS! Gee, they could get tied, and go into extra innings, thereby fucking up your schedule, and pissing of A METRIC FUCK TON of people! People like me.

I want House.

*tantrum*

So... a month ago, on another Thursday, my radiator blew on my way home from work. $350.

This morning... on my WAY to work... my rear passenger tire makes this horrendous scraping/grinding noise. *facepalm*

Pull into parking lot on Scottsville Rd (across from the airport, near The Landing Strip bar for anyone familiar with Rochester), call AAA. They send me a really nice tow truck guy, who takes me to Pep Boys for my monthly visit. LOL!

Now, for a little while it has been acting up, anyway... if I braked a little to hard (say, a light changes faster than you expect... the person in front of you brakes harder than you expect... or, you know, some asshole in an SUV makes a left 6" from your front bumper at 30 mph...), sometimes the brakes would stick ON. I have never had a problem with actual braking, but getting going again, from time to time, took an extra rev to pop them back.

Yes, I should have taken it in as soon as that started, but I suck. Half the problems I have had with this car I could probably have prevented if I was better at taking care of my car. *hangs head in shame*

So... in what I assume is a culmination of a few months with this problem, my rear brakes are fubared. Shoe broken (which was probably the cause of the scraping sound), brake fluid leaking, all that jazz. Total replacement currently in progress. Cost? About $420, assuming the brake line comes out intact... if not, a little more. *sigh* I should be thankful it's not worse, like my $1600 head gasket replacement in January 2008, the week before Ships & Dip III. *rolleyes*

I AM very thankful that the failure did not result in a much worse situation, like going off the road. Eeek.

So... I never actually got to work today. John couldn't come get me at Pep Boys until 12:30 because he had a meeting, and when I called work back to see how things were going, they said there was nothing to do, so don't worry about it. I can use a personal day. :)

It's actually nice to HAVE a job now with personal days. This is the first one I have used, and I have been working here almost a year. :) After 8 years of part-time retail, with no work = no pay, period, ever, it's great to have that option. :)

So... I'm carless right now (though hopefully I will get it back this evening, so that we don't have to do the one-car shuffle tomorrow), but I am safe. :)

Edit: Brake line also fubared. Either blocked or collapsed... either way, needs be replaced. So, total is about $465. On the bright side, I should have it back tonight. They're going to call when it's done. :D So, no one-car-shuffle tomorrow morning. Win?

Edit: Car is home, safe and sound. Less than 12 hours... I'm impressed! *thumbs up*

One More Edit (Friday): Still have the sticking problem. It must be my front brakes doing that. Dammit.

Help me out, folks! I'll give it until tomorrow. :D

Poll #1470736 I Told You I Was Sick!
This poll is closed.
Open to: Friends, detailed results viewable to: Friends, participants: 13

Which name should go on the "I Told You I Was Sick" tombstone?

Thanks!

Edit: Well, with 5 votes (and one on Twitter that may or may not have been one of the folks who voted here, too), it looks like Otto is our dead man! :D

Thanks everyone! Happy Halloween! :D

On a road trip, reading material is out, unless barf bags are in. No thanks. All I can really handle is scenery and music... and a good nap (John is the road trip driver). ;)

On a plane trip, I don't read anything different than I normally like to read. Sci-fi and fantasy, and Stephen King. I don't have the patience for the trashy romance novel bullshit... if I'm going for fantasy, give me dragons and magic over Fabio. Every. Damned. Time. I also don't like mainstream mysteries, or anything rooted in "everyday life," unless it takes place on Mars, or the protagonist is a mouse. LOL!

Hopefully, I have a paperback handy that I haven't read yet, because though I tend to prefer hardcover books, paperbacks are a little easier to pack. ;)

Magazines are also great, too, though I stick with the in-flight (and home someone else hasn't mangled the crossword), or something that is noticeably absent of celebrity gossip. I'd rather have Smithsonian than OK! Lerning is gud. ;) My one guilty pleasure, though, is Weird NJ, where the "celebrities" are folks like The Jersey Devil, The Hookerman, or Tillie from Asbury Park. ;)

Honestly, yeah, I prefer to go it alone. Leave me be, either to sleep, or read, or whatever. No need to dote on me, but if I ask for a beverage, or another blanket, it would be awesome. Check on me to be sure I am not dead, but otherwise go away. LOL!

Generally, when I can, I keep going... I got to work, whatever. A basic cold doesn't stop me. But I also know when I am beaten. If I can't stand up, or have to run for the bathroom every few minutes, I stay home. Last time I remember I had to call in on a Saturday, when I had a demo to do (I still worked at Jo-Ann's), and there was just NO way. I was couch-ridden. I felt bad, but then I found out the same stomach virus hit about 25% of the store that weekend. Bleh.

Then I remember the time I was working while taking cough medicine with codeine for bronchitis. That was a joy. LOL!

I've known Karen since kindergarten, and we still keep in touch. We became close friends in high school, and have stayed that way ever since. :D

She's in NJ, and I am in western NY, but we still talk to each other online regularly, and randomly text each other. I only get to see her once a year or so, but when we do, it's like no time has passed at all. :)

Atolls forever! :D

I don't think my friends do change much over time, at all. Though, more people tend to pass out of my circle (not through anything bad, just crappy at keeping in touch) than new ones pass in. A lot of the people I am friends with now have been friends for a while, primarily from college. Real life doesn't seem to help me make the close connections that school did.

I'm really not good at making new friends - close friends, anyway. I can think of possible reasons (I don't really open up, I'm not outgoing), but mostly I just don't encounter a lot of people in social situations... most of my "closer" friends right now are scattered all over the world, and I talk to them online. If we see each other once a year, we're lucky, and it's usually everyone together at once (like the Ships & Dip cruises), so we don't all get a lot of "quality" time together.

I need to make more friends close to home. :)

I have a few I rotate through... but I used to work in a craft store that let us dress up on weekends in October. I ended up cycling through everything, which was great. I don't work retail at all anymore, so the call for dressing up is non-existent. My current job, no one dresses up. Oh well.

I have my Renaissance garb, my Hogwarts robes, and a few other things that can become costumes if needed.

I'm hosting the Halloween party this year, so we need to figure out what we're doing. I'm trying to talk my husband into being Snape, so I can be Hermione. LOL! Wait... that sounds frighteningly dirty. Too bad John doesn't have red hair. No way I could get him to wear a wig. *sigh* LOL!

I actually still have a nametag from my retail job that says "Hermione." My boss never noticed. Heh.

As I type, about seven apples are drying in my brand new food dehydrator. :D We have been going to a u-pick farm up in Greece (Green Acre Farm) for the last two years, picking my weight in apples of all kinds... this year we branched out into other fruits, too, as we got an earlier start on the season. Raspberries, peaches, blueberries, plums, etc. Right now I have a pile of Gala, Honeycrisp, and 20-Ouncers (which are the size of my head, tart, and great for baking). The Galas we picked a couple weeks ago, so there are fewer left, but we got 10 lbs each of the latter two last weekend!

However, with only two people in the house, we end up eating a LOT of fruit so it doesn't go bad. This is not inherently a bad thing, but you do tend to burn out. I still have some applesauce in the freezer from LAST fall (proof of burnout!), and I can also only bake so much (besides, there's a birthday cake sitting on the counter...), so I had to come up with a plan B (C?). I love Apple Chips, but they're pretty pricey, so I started shopping for a food dehydrator. I figured, I can have all the apple chips I want, plus dry herbs (I have a wad of oregano growing near the house from the previous owner), make jerky, and fruit roll-ups (can I get a "For Chrissake!!!!"?)! :D

I ended up going with the Nesco American Harvest Snackmaster Express because it had decent reviews... and... a jerky gun. Who doesn't want a jerky gun, I mean really? LOL! Seriously, though, this particular set had all the accessories I would probably buy, anyway, so it was a no-brainer. :)

I'm also excited that I can dry the cilantro I have in the fridge (I only need a small amount to make salsa, and Wegmans only sells it in a big bunch), AND the parsley I bought by accident because the stocker was in the way of the herbs, and this one bunch was near enough to the cilantro that it smelled like it. I should have known better... the leaves were not quite right, and there were no roots, but oh well. *rolleyes* At least it's not going to waste!

I'm also going to dry some peaches, some of which I've had in the fridge since Labor Day weekend. Oy.

So... anyone else have one? Recipes? It came with a great recipe book (including pet treats and crafts LOL), but I'm open to other ideas!

I don't. I use my Mac. LOL!

Hello, I'm a Mac. *thumbs up*

Mr. Crisman, aka "H." His full name was H. Bruce J. Crisman, and he let us call him H. He was my sophomore year English teacher, and he was a unique guy. I heard some stuff later about him that may or may not be true, but I never had any of "those" issues with him, so I'm ignoring it.

One project he gave us was rewriting Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in a different genre. Karen and I chose Valley Girl (she might be able to remember the title... something like "Totally Righteous Night" or something... it's right on the tip of my brain), and he always encouraged us to "write your own script." I kind of adopted that as a mantra of sorts... which helped me not give a crap about what other people thought about the things I was interested in. :D

- Karen and I were huge NKOTB fans, and were teased often, but we didn't give a crap, because we totally wrote our own script, fer sure.
- In college, many of my friends were PC people (IT majors), and I was a Mac person (art major), and they teased me. I didn't give a crap, because I was writing my own script without Microsoft Word. LOL!
- These days, I love pet rats. It gives people the heebies. Do I care? Nope. My script. ;D

So, yeah, it's been... um... almost 20 years? And I am still writing my own script, thanks to H. :D

Ok, so, when we first moved into our house, the previous owners left a pile of junk at the curb. We dug through it to see if there was anything of value, just in case, and John spotted a box that, while made of cardboard, was very much the same basic shape as the case of my 1971 Singer sewing machine. He pulled the top off, and there was a really old, non-working Singer sewing machine under there! I couldn't let that go to the junkyard, even if it's rusty and doesn't work.

Since then, I just have had it set aside, as other priorities have taken over. But today a thread on my pet rat forum prompted me to locate the serial number (unlike modern machines, the serial number was EASILY found right on the front), so I could look it up on Singer's web site.

14964061

Look it up yourself... it was made in 1898! I'm floored... it's over 110 years old.

Now I really wish I could get it to work, because how friggin' cool would THAT be?! It looks to be a treadle machine, which, of course, makes sense, based on its age. But the fact that it's in a portable case makes me wonder. At the same time, I see no wires or anything, or remains of wires. No foot pedal. When I turn the wheel on the right, the needle does not move... which it should regardless of power. So it's bro-ken.

I wonder if anyone would be willing to try to fix it and clean it up?

Pictures!

Since we moved into our first home in May, after apartment living for almost 15 years, it's been much easier to start doing greener things in our lives. Granted, our footprint in an apartment was smaller, but that's why we're doing as much as we can to compensate. :)

1. We set up a compost bin, and compost most of our yard waste, as well as veggie waste from cooking. We also tossed in some dirt from planting some new perennials, because it had a lot of worms in it. Get to work, wormies! :D

2. We recycle a lot more things (particularly cardboard, in addition to the cans, bottles, and plastic containers we always recycled), because it's a lot easier with weekly pickup, instead of lugging everything to a community bin a quarter mile away, when we remember.

3. We keep our grass cut higher, and let the clippings compost back into the lawn, which provides just as much nitrogen as commercial fertilizers, and is much safer for wildlife.

4. We save energy by washing all of our clothes in cold water only, and always drying on low heat (which is better for fabric, anyway, so double win!)

5. We have solar lights on our patio and pool deck.

6. I replaced almost all of the bulbs in the house with CFL bulbs. Working on the rest. :)

7. Planted bee-, bird- and butterfly-friendly plants (coneflowers, bee balm) to attract and feed them. We plan to set up a wildflower garden along the back property line with more butterfly friendly plants next year, including milkweed.

8. We support local farmers by going to a u-pick farm for our fruit when it's in season, and getting to the public market downtown when we can.

9. Plan out our errands to minimize fuel use.

10. Planted trees from the Arbor Day Foundation. :)

Future Plans:
- Raised vegetable beds in the back yard (GREAT southern exposure). We planted tomatoes at the back of the house this year, and they did great!
- Instead of tearing down the shed in the back and building new, we have decided to fix up and complete the existing structure
- Rainwater barrels at the base of a few of our downspouts

I think about sustainability issues quite often, actually. It's hard not to when you're reminded of it every day, through TV programs, magazines and everything else. For once, it's a good thing. :D Our society is pathetically wasteful, so we're doing what we can to try to offset some of it. An uphill battle, but a worthy one. :)