General

This day and your life … are God’s gift to you, so give thanks and be joyful always!
– Anonymous

Eat lots of turkey and pumpkin pie, and be thankful for everything wonderful in this world.

If all goes well, by the end of today I will no longer be held captive by my current evil cell phone company. And I’ll get to keep the number I’ve had for the past 6 years!

I’ve got my plan and my phone picked out. I was briefly tempted by the camera phone, but…I just can’t see myself being happy with such low-res pictures, especially since it (obviously) doesn’t have a flash. Besides, Denis and I getting the same model phone means we can share car chargers, batteries and desk chargers…which is a big deal, not to need two car chargers in each car (believe me, this has been a problem, switching cars, forgetting to switch the chargers, needing to make a call on a dying cell phone…and not being able to plug it in.)

The only catch might be if they can’t promise the switch will be completed by tomorrow afternoon – we’re headed out-of-town, and it’s not a good idea to drive 300+ miles without a cell phone. But taking the new service along for the trip would be a good way to test-drive the coverage along our normal route, so hopefully this will all work out.

Literally, as I went to post my previous entry, the power went down. And stayed down…for 6 1/2 hours!

Thank goodness for generators. Heat is a good thing. Oh, and so are malls which have large generators, and will cook you food. (Biaggi’s, the new Italian place at the mall, is fantastic!)

The power (and the internet) is back now, but it was fun, figuring out how exactly to make hot water without a stove or a microwave, but with power to several outlets. (The answer is to use the coffee pot. Mmmm. Cocoa.)

An added bonus: all the winds this morning blew the leaves clear into the next county, I think. At least, they’re all out of our yard…including the huge pile we had raked over to the street for the town to collect.

Small sad note: the roads are too icky to try and drive to Sit & Knit. Guess I’ll just have to sit at home and knit. Not nearly as social, but productive. That is, if I ever put down the computer and get back to knitting!

Today definitely qualifies as a blustery day! Between the massively high winds (supposedly gusting over 60 mph) and the power hits, Molly and Murphy were understandably nervous this morning. In fact, they were nervous enough to crawl into my lap…at the same time. 100 lbs. of dog is a bit much to have in your lap at any given time, especially when one of the dogs decides that the other dog has more than their fair share of lap, and they start fighting…while still scrunched up on said lap.

I was so tempted to call in “stormed in” and stay home on the couch, cuddling with my puppies and knitting. Ah, well.

Speaking of knitting, I’m this close to finishing another Christmas gift. Hopefully tonight, at Sit & Knit…assuming we don’t all blow away before then…

I took my glasses off briefly last night, and when I went to put them back on again, I thought, “gee, these feel kind of weird…” I looked down and found one of the plastic nose-piece thingies (technical term) in my lap, instead of on my glasses frame like it’s supposed to be.

Seeing as I’m blind as a bat without these things, I guess I’d better head down to my (thankfully local) eye doctor/glasses place when they open and get them fixed! (Don’t worry, I can wear my glasses while I drive, they just make me dizzy because they’re crooked on my nose.)

Why do I have this sinking feeling that it’s going to turn out to be one of those days?

I just had the most treat-filled evening! Jo and I got together to do some shopping and knitting. First we grabbed dinner at IHOP. I mean, IHOP is a treat in general, but tonight they had pumpkin pancakes. They were absolutely fantastic! Then we went yarn shopping (I was good, and only bought crochet cotten for part of some Christmas gifts and a cute little basket that was on sale to store some of my current yarn in.) After shopping, we headed out to Starbucks to sip some coffee and knit…and here’s the best part: gingerbread lattes are back!

Fueled by caffeine, I got some serious knitting done. One more Christmas gift is finished! That makes 2 done…out of…who knows? I don’t even have the slightest clue how many projects I have started at this point, or how many are left. I’m just going to keep knitting until I run out of yarn or time, whichever comes first. Then I’ll go buy gifts for whoever I haven’t finished something for.

We’ve upgraded all the macs in the house to Panther. So far, so good…and Exposé is extremely fun to play with! Other neat improvements are threaded mail and a ton of Finder changes; I’m sure I’ll discover more as I go.

One of these days, maybe after all the Christmas crafting is done, I’ll play around with the new developer tools. Yep, I’m a geek.

It was a close call, but the costumes are done…note to self: next year, do NOT wait until the weekend before to start costumes! I think I have enough candy (and I only snuck a couple of treats all week – you know, quality control!) The pumpkins are carved and ready to be lit. All we need now are some trick-or-treaters, who should be out in full force tonight since it’s unseasonably warm today!

I really didn’t do much decorating other than the pumpkins, though…I kind of feel like Halloween snuck up on me this year. Or maybe it’s just the general feeling I’m having lately where it seems like time has accelerated all out of proportion to the seemingly slow pace of most days, because I’m pretty sure that it was June just last week…

Am I the only one who, when faced with excessive and annoying advertising, will intentionally not buy, watch or do whatever it is the advertising suggests I buy, watch or do?

See, these television banner ads (I don’t know what they’re called…and can’t seem to find any information about them on the web) that have become incredibly common in a seemingly short amount of time are driving me crazy. You know the ones: they cover up 1/4 to 1/3 of the bottom of the screen, sometimes all the way across, in the middle of a show. They usually cover up the text at the bottom of the screen in “Whose Line is it Anyway”. I’d hate to see what it would do to closed captioning. To me, it’s as annoying as those @#$!% pop-up ads on the internet…which I no longer have to deal with thanks to Safari.

Maybe it’s just the shows I watch. But even when I randomly watch something on actual TV (as in, not TiVo’d) that’s not one of our “normal” shows, they’re still there. Last night I saw an ad not for another show on the same station – which is generally what they are – but for an actual product… Pretty soon, I expect that the shows will just have floating <blink> ads, centered over characters’ faces. Actually, why bother with the shows at all? Just run long, continuous blocks of blinking, scrolling banner ads in between the commercials.

But don’t expect me to buy, watch or do whatever it is they’re advertising. I’ll just unplug the cable box and watch old DVDs instead.