An Upgrade

After many years, Microsoft is discontinuing its support of Windows 10 this fall. Of course, my Dell all-in-one computer cannot be updated to Windows 11. So I decided to get ahead of the game and get a replacement computer now.

Lew and I went to Best Buy this past Friday to look at the options. The biggest decision I had to make: laptop or another all-in-one? The only difference on my Pro/Con list:

Portability.  (Laptop: Pro.  All-in-one: Con.)

I asked Lew a simple question: "In the nine years (or so) that I've had my all-in-one, have you ever heard me say that I wished I had a laptop?"

His answer was equally simple: "No."

We came home with a beautiful HP All-In-One computer. The screen is bigger than my old one, and it is so very, very fast. It's all set up the way I want it — maybe a few tweaks still needed — and I already am using it to do all my computer work.

This blog post is my first entry using my lovely new HP. 😊

(P.S. Lew and I celebrated my purchase by dining out at Johnny Rockets in the Mall's food court. He had a burger, I had a grilled cheese, we shared some fries, and we both got milkshakes. Yummy.)

A Cat-Proof Solution

Lew and I finished decorating our "tree" today! It was a task that spanned several days.

I purchased the triangle shelf, light, and garland on Amazon. 

I strung up the garland on a peg board that we had attached to the wall several years ago. ("Strung up" = used paper clips!)

Lew installed the triangle shelf and light. He said it was a tougher project than it may appear to be.

The tree skirt is exactly that — a tree skirt that we already had. Lew suggested I cut it, but I didn't want to. I like the 3-D appearance.

I broke only two, inconsequential ornaments.

The light isn't on in the picture, but imagine a colored light fading into another color... and another... and another.

Not pictured: A bunch of ornaments hanging from the beam in our living room! 🎄

68 Cents

Forever postage stamps have been around a while now. Because of this, I usually have no idea what it costs to mail a letter. The price isn't on the stamp, so... out of sight, out of mind.

I picked up a roll of stamps for my father today, so I learned that the cost is now 68 cents a stamp. Apparently this is up from 66 cents, and apparently this price increase just happened within the past couple weeks. Go figure.

Lew and I watched a news program earlier tonight, and the question was posed:

What is the price of a Forever stamp?

I knew the answer!

What a difference a day makes.

It's the 12th of December

December 12th already?!  Didn't the month just start?!

Fortunately, I'm almost done with my Christmas preparations.  Just a few more items to get.

One item I need to buy is something for myself... a present for Lew to give to me.  I'm going to get myself something real nice!

😁

P.S. Not sure what the "real nice" thing is going to be yet....

Doctor Josh and Surgeon Glen

Over three months ago I wrote a blog post about how my computer was Whirring and Buzzing. I mentioned the possible need to purchase a new one, which would be fine since I was back to working full-time.... Ha! Regular readers of my blog know that I only lasted three weeks in that job!

Not wanting to spend money on a new computer, I've been trying to figure out how to get my current computer to run faster.... Unsuccessful.

Two days ago (Tuesday) nephew Josh came up in the afternoon to give his opinion on the state of my computer. Diagnosis: the hard disk drive (HDD) was dying.

Brother-in-law Glen suggested replacing the HDD with a solid state drive (SSD). He even offered to do the swap for me. This would be much, much cheaper than buying a whole new machine.

So Glen came up Tuesday night to do the work. He had a disk duplicator machine which would clone my old Toshiba HDD to a brand new Samsung SSD. The HDD was so near death that it took about three hours to clone!

And then the SSD didn't work in my computer. Turns out that my Dell Inspiron model doesn't like Samsung. (We read online forums that provided this assessment.)

Today Lew and I went to Best Buy and purchased a SanDisk SSD. Josh set up the cloning process this afternoon, and Glen came up after he got home from work to install the new SSD.

And the SanDisk SSD worked! If I could do cartwheels, I would have done one! 🤸

It is so nice to have my computer working normally again. Many thanks to Josh for the initial diagnosis and to Glen for performing the much-needed surgery on my machine.

HOORAY!!!

🤸🤸🤸🤸🤸🤸

Happy Veterans Day!

Our grocery store was offering 10% off your total shopping trip today if you are a veteran, so Lew and I took advantage of his service to our country. Lew says that I "slow him down" when I accompany him to the grocery store, but I think we did pretty well today! Well, that's my analysis anyway, LOL!

Happy Veterans Day!

Mouse Pads

I bought a new mouse pad this week. It has a picture of Grumpy Cat and says,

I HAD FUN ONCE

IT WAS AWFUL

I just put this new mouse pad in a pile with four other regular-sized mouse pads. The other four themes are Marilyn Monroe, Sylvester & Tweety Bird, Red Sox, and Geek Squad.

Despite owning five of them, I don't use any of the regular-sized mouse pads. Instead I use something that covers my whole keyboard tray. I also have two other larger-sized options at my disposal.

So that means I own eight mouse-pad options.

I suppose I could get rid of some of them, but I don't want to.

😁

Clothes and a Cat

I went clothes shopping this morning with a friend. I needed some jeans and some shorts for the summer. It was a successful venture! I got great deals on everything because I "bought it, when I saw it, at Marden's!"

Sister Debbie got me hooked on the Netflix series, "Get Organized with The Home Edit." I've watched four episodes so far. If you've seen the show, then you know why I decided to order new clothes hangers today. 😁

The title of this post includes the word Cat. This is because I am sharing a photo of Jerry in his new favorite pose! Meow!

Cat Food

We feed our cats dry food and canned food.

The dry food that we buy has always been in stock.

The canned food... well, we are now having to look for our 5th option! Options #1 and #2 are never in stock, so we found an alternative. The alternative (#3) was discontinued, so on we went to #4.  But I just got an e-mail that #4 is being discontinued!

😾😾

Back to the drawing board. Kitties must be fed!

Coming Soon to a Laundry Room Near Us

Last week I mentioned that our dryer has been acting up. Lew ordered a part and tried to fix the machine (I tried to help), but it didn't work. Josh even came up to offer his expertise, but the dryer was a goner.

So yesterday afternoon Lew and I took a trip to an appliance store. By the time we left the store we were the proud owners of a brand new washer and dryer. They are supposed to be delivered this coming Tuesday.

We will have two weeks of laundry to do when the machines arrive!

A Puzzling Suggestion

I ordered seven puzzles for Mom from the Cobble Hill Puzzle Company.  All seven are cardboard "tray puzzles" which are really great for Mom.

Cobble Hill's tray puzzles are very clever. The puzzle picture is printed in black & white on the tray itself, so the puzzle pieces can be matched up to the picture. These puzzles have 35 pieces — usually too many pieces for Mom. But because of the picture, Mom is able to handle these puzzles. She really enjoys doing them.

I learned of Cobble Hill when I got one of their tray puzzles for free through my town's "Buy Nothing" Facebook group. Mom always picks this puzzle first when I give her a choice of what to do. As Dad mentioned a few days ago, we need some new puzzles for Mom... so I went to Cobble Hill's website and submitted my order. (I had actually done this before Dad mentioned it!)

The puzzles arrived and they are wonderful. So as not to overwhelm Mom with too many new ones at once, I brought her the first new puzzle today. After I reminded her of how the puzzle worked ("match the puzzle piece to the picture underneath"), I pretty much left her to do it on her own. I helped out a couple times, but she did a great job overall. I'm looking forward to bringing the next new puzzle to her in a couple days.

I am thankful to have learned about the Cobble Hill Puzzle Company. They do have other kinds of jigsaw puzzles — not just tray — so I encourage you to check them out if you enjoy puzzling!

🧩🧩🧩🧩🧩🧩🧩

A Father/Daughter Laugh

My father has received some interestingly mail recently from more than one company. Apparently they believe he and I are married... to each other!

🤣

Shopping... Check!

I just finished my Christmas shopping!

All of the packages that needed to be delivered elsewhere have already arrived (per the recipients).

The rest of the expected packages are coming to our house.  May the deliveries begin!

Cyber Week

I didn't feel like doing much shopping while I had my sinus infection, which made me behind on getting my Christmas shopping done.

So starting Sunday (two days ago), I started my Cyber Week. Shopped last night and tonight as well. Made a really good dent! Tomorrow night I will try to fill in the gaps and be done.

Christmas is two weeks from Friday! Can you believe it?!

A Slim Chance

 A few days ago I ordered a package of 12 Neck Gaiter Face Mask Bandanas on Amazon. I liked the looks of them because they are solid colors. They are probably not the best for the virus protection, but I wanted something different for the winter.

The package arrived today. I grabbed one at random to try. It was bright green. Lew wanted to try one, too, so I handed him the bright neon yellow. (Not my color, ha ha!)

I pulled mine on and thought, "Uh oh." It was okay around my neck, but was really tight when I pulled it up on my face.

Lew said his fit fine. He was right. His mask was over twice as large as the one I had.

So I pulled out the remaining ten, which all happened to be of the larger size. That means I managed to randomly select the only one of the twelve that was of a different size.

There are at least two ways of looking at my feat:

1) Pro: Maybe I could win the lottery if I played, which I'm not about to start doing. 

2) Con: I probably would lose at Russian Roulette.

For those of you that are concerned about my not being able to wear the bright green mask, rest assured. The remaining colors are quite nice... except for the bright neon yellow. 😁

Two New Household Items

 Lew and I recently purchased an iron and a bathroom scale. We ordered both on Amazon.

The old iron was making funny noises after using it. The new iron arrived today, and Lew has already tested it out. He's very happy with it. He also announced, "I never liked that old iron." This was news to me! We had that iron for over 15 years. I asked him why he didn't get a new one earlier, and he said he couldn't justify buying a new one while the old one still worked. I now will point out that Lew is the only one who irons regularly. The wrinkled look is okay by me!

As for the bathroom scale, it lost one of its light-up-bar-thingies in the display (what are those called?) and a new battery didn't fix the problem. When our new digital scale arrived, Lew tested it against the old one. His weight on the old scale was 0.7 pound less than his weight on the new scale. Close enough, although I like the old scale's measure better, ha ha! But the new scale is pretty slick, and it cost us only $16.83.

A good thing about both of these purchases is that we were able to follow the guideline of "one thing in, one thing out" for our belongings. I guess it helped that the "one thing out" didn't work properly!

The Masks We Wear

Yesterday I went to Michael's during my lunch break. It was the first time I had gone shopping since the whole "wear a mask" thing started.  (Lew does the grocery shopping.)

I personally do not like wearing a mask. I am constantly pulling it away from my face so I can breathe better. My glasses always fog up, too.  (And, no, I am NOT putting shaving cream on my glasses, or any other substance that supposedly keeps them from fogging up. My lenses are very expensive and I don't want to compromise the coating on them.)

Despite my dislike of the mask, I wore it while I was in the store because I didn't want to get arrested. There were several children in the store, and all were wearing masks. This sight really bothered me.

I have been praying to God to heal our world of the Coronavirus. I don't want to wear a mask anymore. I want businesses to open back up (although many people have already lost their small businesses). Most of all, I want to be able to visit my mother face-to-face.

But no matter what the future brings, God is sovereign.... Believe it!  💗

Rehab Fashion

My mother's regular daily attire is a tee-shirt and scrubs (the trousers).

 

She has a plethora of colors in scrubs, and on Saturday she and I ordered three more pairs. She selected some beautiful colors: turquoise, grape, and hunter green. They arrived yesterday, I laundered them, and Dad brought them up to her today.

 

Tomorrow she plans to wear the turquoise scrubs with her Piglet tee-shirt.

 

My mom's got style!

A Hopping Busy Bustling Day

Done today:

Breakfast out with our breakfast buddies.
Attend Eli's flag football game.
Home to watch some of Josh's football game via streaming. (Lost.)
Go to Eli's birthday party at Happy Wheels. (No, I did NOT roller skate!)
Shop at Sam's Club.
Get gas for my vehicle.
Shop at Walgreen's.
Visit Mom.
Home for dinner.
Watch the U.Maine football game on DVR. (Won.)
Finish packing our Operation Christmas Child boxes.
Write this blog post.

Still to do:

Collapse into bed!

A Long Day

I left for work this morning around 7:45am.

I left work shortly after 4:30pm and went straight to the Maine Mall.
Lew left home about the same time and drove to the Mall, too.
We met up at the Super Shoe store, where I bought some sneakers that I plan to leave at work.

Then we met some friends for dinner at 6:30.
We got home a little after 8:30pm.

That's the longest day out I've had in a while!

I've done a few errands since I've been home, but now it's time to go to sleep.

Yes, I am tired!

Good night! Zzzzzzzzzz......