Author Archives: Alison

Holiday Weekend Stuff

Holiday Weekend Stuff

So. . .we finally got around to organizing the stuff in the Garage on Saturday.  Considering how much crap we’ve accumulated, and what it looked like before, it’s pretty darned good.  All the boxes of stuff (both stuff that belongs in the garage and stuff that doesn’t) is stacked neatly, together by where it’s supposed to end up, and now you can walk through it without being a circus acrobat.  Big props to hubby, who did the bulk of it!

Sunday, we headed up to Bloomfield (after working on Carolyn’s Tower of London Rollercoaster project).  Parties at Gayle and Barry and Sophie’s house are always relaxing and fun, and we and the kids all enjoyed ourselves.  We also got to pop in on some of the old neighbors.  We feel only a tiny bit guilty for leaving you all. . .heh.  We miss you, but there are other people we don’t, and it’s so quiet here. . .Gayle had to remind me that my old house is just that.  I looked at the front garden, overgrown, with the Joseph’s Coat rose blooming furiously, even though it had fallen over and laid flat on the ground.  The pond that I’d put so much love and care into was a mess of string algae, the poor water lily clinging to life.  The lawn, which we had spent a huge amount of money to be regraded, seeded, and maintained, was three feet tall.  I had to step back and realize that the things that had been precious to me were just that – precious to me.

One of the side trips we made yesterday was to Fairfield Garden Center.  There are a lot of places here that sell pond stuff, but none of them have everything I want the way Fairfield does.  So, I had plopped the plants into the pond in the dark when we got home, but I rearranged them this morning.  Later, I dug up some more moss and put it on the rocks, since I love the way it looks.  We also tore painter’s tape into thin strips and used it to mask out mortar lines on Carolyn’s Tower of London, then spray painted it with rock texture paint.  It looks quite cool.  We tried hitting the beach, but could stand it for only about an hour because it was wicked cold.  How wonderful, though, to be able to live close enough to not feel bad about getting only an hour on the beach!  If we’d had to drive an hour to get there, and then paid almost $30 to get on, we would have felt horribly ripped off.  As it is now, we have our season badges, and we’ll pop out there on weekday afternoons for a bit most days of the week.  Woohoo!

Oh, and did I mention yet that I love bittorrent, and I love David Tennant as Doctor Who?  Probably not.  But I do.

Why I Couldn’t Set Up an eBay Account. . .

Why I Couldn’t Set Up an eBay Account. . .

Someone else had already used my email address as his (!) own. For security reasons, eBay will not tell you this is the reason, but hubby finally figured it out, and we closed that account (guy couldn’t use it anyway because. . .duh. . .your confirmation is done through e-mail. When he opened it a year and a half ago, I’ll betcha I deleted the mail, thinking it was yet another “eBay” spam) and now I have to wait another couple of days before I can open a real one. THANK YOU SO MUCH, STOOOOOPID EMAIL THIEVES! Now, the lady in customer service in Oklahoma was very nice and helpful, gave me my tracking number and order number and all, even called me back when she got an update. However, because of this asshat in Ohio, I’m spending $130 more for this item than I could have gotten it for on eBay. He left his name and address on the account, and I entertained fantasies of sending him a bill in the mail, but that course of action is far more effective as fantasy revenge than real life revenge.

Technical Difficulties

Technical Difficulties

Alison’s Tech Support Guy here — hardware problems at our data center have caused comments entered today, 5/23/2006, to be sent to the big-bit-bucket-in-the-sky.

You may notice a few of Alison’s entries posted by ‘Alison’s Tech Support Guy’ – those are the entries I recovered from various hardware or user problems….


I *hate* computers. I *hate* them more and more every day.

The only computers I want to program or support from now on are the ones that control the heating sequences in kilns…