OK, quick catch up for all the stunning news of the past few weeks I've been too busy to blog:
Ann Coulter attacked by two men armed with custard pies (hee hee)
Minnesota woman writes the names of all of the coalition soldiers killed in Iraq on her car
Oh, that's why Dubya looked odd from behind in the first debate... was he hearing voices?
Iran endorses Dubya (hint, hint...)
Or... trade crack for new voters (?)
The Red Sox win, fan killed accidentally during celebration
And, oh yeah, Bill O'Reilly is a pervert (who knew?)
Clyde Peterson's eerily accurate vision of Cheney from today's Houston Chronicle
Update on bizarro world this evening when I get up, I'm tired of fighting with the computer for this evening and it's really been an "alternate universe" last week or so...
I've been on a "buying things I need" shopping spree the last couple of week alsos. Then, after I'd finished, of course, eBay demanded I pay them their $350 worth of fees for last month two weeks early (or they wouldn't let me list anything new) so that threw me for a loop. Well, crap, I had hoped to go to the Houston Postcard & Paper Show this weekend, but I guess that's out now. They're in a beautiful new convention center just a few miles from my house now. But we have our Halloween party coming up next weekend and I haven't planned the food, music or what I'm going to wear yet.
But I've been stocking up on all of my shipping supplies, ordering boxes, bubble wrap and mailers for the holiday eBay rush. And buying toner, a new Dayrunner calendar, new pretty colored file folders and a little Brother P-Touch to make nice new labels (PT-1180). (My handwriting is completely illegible) I always wanted one of those, though I think the one I got is probably too small for anything but file folders (it was less than $30 at Sam's Club, though, and came with two refill cartridges). Redoing my files is going to be one of my "leisure" activities, I actually like to sort and file things, I had even considered becoming a professional organizer once, but I think avoiding obsessive activities is probably better for my health. One of the reasons I quite my first job as a library assistant was I got all obsessed with the books, I think I checked out as many as I put away. And it drove me nuts when people would put things back in the wrong place.
And with the Halloween party coming up, Sparky gets to do his semi-annual cleaning of his bathtub, so I got new shower curtains for us both. He refers to his tub as the "Shroud of Turin" because for some reason the master bathroom gets some really heavy duty staining as compared to (my) hall bathroom. And his curtain started off as clear but is now sort of a yucky beige color. So I went to Bed, Bath and Beyond armed with the coupons they send me weekly and found a nice clear patterned one for him, but could not find my usual pretty frosted one I usually get for me. I don't see it on their site either, but it had little clear prisms that caught the light prettily. So I decided to get a black striped vinyl curtain and I think I like it even better. It looks very modern and the black looks sharp with the 1950's powder pink tile, especially with the sleek little silver roller rings I already had.
In the same trip I also got a Fossil watch and an engraved antique white gold wedding band (both bought on eBay months ago) sized at our neighborhood jewelers, who kind of hate to see me coming because I can never seem to get my watch bands just exactly how I like them. I think I may have gotten this one a bit tight, but winter's coming soon. We've had out first semi cold front (down to the 50's - ooh!), but it only lasted a few days. Then I took the $10 off coupon I'd earned to the Beauty First next door to BB&B, and they were having a "buy one get the next half off sale", so I bought even more hair care stuff, and got a Matrix shampoo, conditioner and a Chi heat styling spray for like $13 total, yippee! (Just what I need, more hair products, when I'm unhappy with my hair I change products in hope of making it look better. Lately it's been really misbehaving and curling because it's too short :-(
By then it was Sparky's dinner time so I ran by OfficeMax and used another $10 off coupon I had to get an black ink cartridge for my dying Epson printer (it has a short and turns itself on and off, which is both annoying and alarming). And I actually remembered to bring my old cartridge and got my free ream of paper too. And I also spent like $200 on postage this week, I had like 60 auctions close this weekend. So it's been a damn expensive week, I hope my sales keep up, Sparky has been bugging me to go get groceries again...
Well, damn my computer just froze as I was adding on to my want list, so I'm retyping this all again and then going to bed, someone's trying to tell me something... But on the theory that what I put into print comes true, my other big want is an electric piano. (No, I don't play, I've always wanted to learn badly) It all began when we went into Radio Shack to get something for Sparky and, being bored, I wandered over and played with an electric piano they had on display. When I was a teenager my parents gave me an electric organ, which I have no idea what happened to, but needless to say, it was uninspiring and felt and sounded like a toy. I had no idea portable pianos now sound as good as and even better than the real gigantic thing (and never need tuning!). So that started my obsession earlier this summer. And since then I've been researching and studying and even doing finger exercises. I've always been a closet piano junkie, but never got to take lessons. I did guitar instead, and never did well at it. I also have always wanted to play drums. But a guitar was more practical in my parent's opinion. And it was the 70's and guitars were "cool". But I completely sucked at playing them. I've always been more of a percussion person anyway.
So I read and researched and even went to the local music store where I got the $5000 standup sales pitch and was told that Yamaha pianos were junk, which actually made me want one more, damn old fart salesman (he was pushing Rolands). My initial choice was a Yamaha 88 key electric piano, which I've been able to play with regularly at Best Buy and Sam's while Sparky did his DVD and big screen TV shopping. It's really a gorgeous sounding thing, with weighted keys, lots of voices and bells and whistles. But I soon realized it's WAY too big for the area I want to use it in, and then began thinking perhaps a synthesizer/arranger keyboard would probably be more fun and I could hook it up to my computer (and it would fit on my desk). So I've chosen a mid-priced 61 key Yamaha synthesizer (which costs twice what the piano cost) and have been yearning after it. It's basically going to be my birthday gift to myself this year, but I don't want to wait till January. For one thing the one I picked is last year's model and is in limited supply now, this year's model is also great but it's $500 more. But with my current computer mutiny (and my promise to never open another credit account ;-) I'm trying to restrain myself from wishing out loud too much. So we'll see if my "putting it into writing" theory works, hey, it got me a car ;-)
OK, I'm not dead, I've just been overworking. WAY too much eBay stuff lately. Out of town guests, who were lovely BTW. I've been getting hit really hard with both comment and email spam lately, I had to compact my Entourage database last night because I started getting phantom invisible emails in my Delete box. Macs rarely get viruses but I've had other email programs get corrupt databases before (Netscape scrambled all of my mesages together like three times, that was fun, let me tell you) so I freaked out when the invisible message count went from 1 to 10 within 24 hours. I had never compacted my 250 mb of emails before, but it worked and the phantoms went away.
And having other weird computer problems... Why do things have to start acting up when I want to buy something else, dammit? My printer I use for my massive amounts of eBay paperwork (which I thought I was replacing when I bought my HP Photosmart, but it's too slow!) has been shorting out regularly enough that it was at the top of my "to replace" list, then my external hard drive started freezing and causing finder problems, so I started looking at hard drives. Sparky even agreed to buy me a new one.
BUT the last week or so my monitor has been flickering so the price of poker just went way up. When my last monitor died it just went black one day and that was it. My lovely 19" NEC monitor has been jittering and flickering so I'm guessing it's on it's way out. I can't remember when I bought it but it wasn't too terribly long ago. So of course, I want a nice flat screen LCD monitor to replace it. And the ones I'm looking at start at like $600. I really don't want to go down in size, bigger would be easier on my screwed up vision, and the LCD monitors are supposed to be much sharper (as well as giving me half my desk back).
Then I made the mistake of looking at the new Apple Cinema Display monitors (which start at $1300, gasp!). I remember when the wide screen Apple monitors first came out and I thought they were just odd looking and overpriced, sigh. But then I still had most of my vision back then and could read without glasses, and didn't have double vision. My poor husband, he's going to kill me when this thing goes out. I actually hope it does just die peacefully instead of blinking on and off for months, it's giving me headaches already. I've mentioned the flickering to him several times, I need to get him to sit down and look through eBay for an hour or so to actually see how bad it's getting.
What else... (outside news in the next entry), kitty Phoebe has finally discovered how comfy the bed I bought her a year ago can be. She never got in it, I guessed it was because she didn't like the fake fur stuff, and had put a pillowcase over it, towels in it, but no go. I was going to use the old torn fitted sheet from our bed and sew a little cover or something for it, but I just folded the sheet and laid it in the bed and she jumped right in. OK, whatever works for the kitty works for me.
I've also been trying to find a replacement for my discontinued eBay management program (AID), which is nearly impossible for us Mac people. I downloaded a trial of Auction Genie, which is the closest I've found to what I've been looking for, which is basically a desktop database program, and have been playing with it, but the detail page is tiny and hard to read and I haven't been able to get it to do everything I want. The online instruction manual is 90 pages long! It's not terribly difficult, but it doesn't feel at all intuitive. I'd really like to simplify my job, not make it even more complicated. I know I'm just too picky, but it would be nice to have more than one program to choose from. And eBay's own programs they are pushing don't support Macs at all.
And with all the problems going on, and a bad case of PMS (my pharmacy substituted my generic BC pills for a different brand so I've had a really uncomfortable month), I decided to upgrade to the brand new version of Movable Type tonight. I know I shouldn't do anything that requires real thought when I'm PMSy but I like nice repetitive tasks, they calm me down. And all went well so nothing to freak out about.