Sunday, January 23, 2011

Subsequent to 1/21 Post

Well, I was right about a lot of things with yesterdays appointment with ATT, with a couple exceptions.  Probably the most annoying was the un-appearance of the "guy" at 4.  Nope, not here, not at 4:05, 4:10 or 4:15.  In fact it was nearly 5 before he darkened my doorstep.  Disgruntled is a good word to use here.  Disgruntled and bad tempered.  Happily the "guy" was pretty funny and so quite handily disarmed my ill humor and we laughed and carried on and bad mouthed ATT and the stupid tests he has to perform that take a lot of time and generally come to the ultimate conclusion that the DVR is ...wait for it...DOA.  Might as well just continue to use ANAGRAMS at this point.  Anyway while he waited for the little computer stupid test thingy  to analyze, diagram, assess and diagnose the DVR box to come, roughly 30 minutes later, to the conclusion that it was broken, he had time to go out to the truck to get the dreaded new box.  At least he had one in his truck.   And just to let you know, we did lose all the stuff we had recorded, but due to semi good technology, Big Brother, I mean ATT knows what shows we record and will quite happily continue to record all our favorites.  We'll  enjoy everything from A-Listers New York to Two Fat Ladies and all in between for some time to come.  I feel like I did after that cleansing breath in Lamaze class.  My world is centered.
Note the beautiful surroundings.
So the son in law who keeps popping up in these posts has reared his ever loving head again and announced I would be living in a yurt in my dotage.  A yurt in the foothills, where it gets real cold in the winter, well cold for me anyway.  My blood, such as it is, is thin.  So he proposes a yurt.  You should google yurt and when you see the picture of the structure made of skinny twigs with a mud floor and a canvas shroud you will understand what Josh means to have me live in  while I wait out my golden years...What...a sweetheart.  He has indicated that as it is just the spouse, presumably, and I, we won't be needing any real bedrooms as our "bed" aka the floor will suffice with a little padding. As we also are meant to live "off the grid", evidently I will have to power my...yurt from a bicycle to generate electricity or some damn thing.  Then too is the opportunity to purify my own water from a stagnant swamp or collect it in musty barrels from rain water.  What I'm supposed to do in the case of a drought is any body's guess.  Perhaps I join the hoards of So Californians and buy water from some sort of water magnate.  How's this sounding to you so far?  All I can say is it is slightly better than the other son in laws solution which is his basement.  It's wet down there and they've boarded up all the windows so there is no light.  They do store their wine down there so it does have an upside.  The third son in law has wisely not offered to take me/us at all.

Woe is me.  I'm thinking here that living well is not exactly the best revenge.

We took the grandchildren who can talk but not talk back to the movies a week ago.  Now you probably gleaned from the Christmas issue (Christmas issue you say?  Guess you'd best be steppin' back in my blog posting world to read that gem) I have girl children. Steve has a girl child.  Every time a girl child had to go potty do you think it was the boy husband who took them?  Uh. No.  So imagine my absolute joy when little Jack, God love him, announced to the audience in the middle of "Tangled" that he had to go.  I smiled sweetly and reminded Steve that he too is a boy and therefore he could take the little tyke to the toilet.  Good things happen to those who wait.  Small victories and all that.

Tomorrow I visit the acupuncturist.  The acupuncturist at Kaiser no less.  Well this should be pretty good.  I have a pretty good story about Kaiser from when I shredded my ACL and surrounding bits last spring.  I think my recollection of that beauty should be saved for an entire posting of its own.  But this Kaiser acupuncture could be either really good or horribly bad.  Let me get this part straight.  I love acupuncture.  I think it is weird, it does not hurt and it works.  I actually had an old Chinese guy give me my first acupuncture treatments back in my other life.  He had this little room set up in his house on the freeway and had the requisite incense and all the groovy Asian things going on.  He also spoke absolutely no English except the part about Thirty-five dollar.  He was amazing.  I think.  At any rate he enhanced the treatment by hooking his needles to something akin to a car battery and my limbs proceeded to jump madly about until he came back in and adjusted the current.  I didn't think that was really so groovy.  I also don't remember what I was treating but with the myriad of real and imagined ailments I have had it could have been just about anything.  Or maybe one of those charges did some brain scrambling.  What an excellent excuse.  Tomorrow's visit is for chronic whiplash.  If you ride you have chronic whiplash and a screwed up back.  It just has to be that way.  So if you read this blog again in the future, I will regale you with the adventures I had with Kaiser in 2010 and now my new adventure which begins tomorrow for 2011.

Happy Trails,
Cheers,
Squidgy

Friday, January 21, 2011

Yesterday the DVR box that rules my world took a death spiral, and refused life support. It sits there in the living room, attached to the TV which has the giant red X of death on the screen.  That is to say we had to go an entire evening without Recorded Television.  Gads.  I considered wallowing in blackest depression, sitting on the couch, sucking my thumb with the lights out and refusing to speak.  That, however, seemed boring.  But in reality what were the spouse and I going to do without the comfort of knowing we still had 58 episodes of Cash Cab and 74 episodes of Curb Appeal to watch and in all likelihood they would be gone, gone, gone?  All I can say is I'm grateful this is not a three day weekend for Steve, because the ennui and moaning would be far to much to bear if he can't watch his favorite episodes of Swamp Loggers and Dirty Jobs.  I mean really...

To be honest I have recorded TV shows (for my own use FBI, I'm not sharing or selling...) since the advent of the VCR.  When the kids were little and the then spouse made me take a menial job at the Great City of Davis to support my horse habit, I would tape the soaps.  Then after dinner the entire family would sit around and watch the travails of Beau and Hope and the entire Horton Clan.  I really hated it when something the networks considered an event newsworthier than yesterdays cliff hanger intercepted the daily devotional.  Life was simpler then.  But there you are.

So here I sit today.  Being held hostage by the vague appointment set sometime between 12-4 when the possibility that a technician will arrive from ATT and fix the DVR.  As Steve helpfully pointed out, "They're just going to swap it out you know.  They wouldn't trust any of their guys to actually try to fix it..."  Cruel?...yes.   Accurate?...also yes.  Heavy sigh.  So here's what's going to happen.  The guy will actually show up.  At 4.  Then he'll futz around, moan about the overtime, moan about working 6 days a week, for no money to speak of, though he will speak of it and tell me that whoever hooked up the DVR, DVD and TV didn't have any idea what he was doing and proceed to moan about that for awhile.  Then he will tell me the DVR can't be fixed and assure me that a new one will find its way to my doorstep in a week or so and have a good time trying to figure out how to hook it up, because the box we currently have is obsolete and they haven't used it since the bi-centennial, even though it was just installed in August so a different one will  come my way with different verbiage as to what wire goes where and like that.  And oh yeah, have a nice day.  This is not my first rodeo, I know how things work.

Just because I feel like whining I also have to tell you that before the DVR died, taking the TV with it, I watched the final episode of 24 yesterday.  I feel like I've been watching it for centuries, and to be honest to watch 8 years worth of a TV show took me better than six months and now I am bereft.  I will probably have to cancel my Netflix subscription.  I've already watched all the Dexter years, tried to watch Big Love and I'm pretty sure I've seen all the Criminal Minds and NCIS episodes available.  So now what?  The first one of you who tells me to try getting a life?  Well just know that I know I need a life, if I didn't need a life would I be writing this drivel?  Well probably, but that's not the point.  I don't know what the point is either...so there.  wow such anger.

Happy wedding to Erin.  I wish I was in Hawaii watching you stroll down the aisle.  Or even just being in Hawaii right now would be nice, Mai Tai's and sunshine.  Yep.

Before I close, I have had 505 hits on the readership clicker thingy, thanks for that.  Also, after much badgering, two of ya'll posted comments.  Thanks for that too.  I know you won't be able to rest till I confirm the ATT appointment goes as I anticipate, but I will have to let you know later about that.  Take Tums and a nice Xanax.  It will help.

Cheers,
Squidgy

ps. the photo is from New Years Eve.  I don't know what happened to Josh's eyes.  They refused Red Eye Removal.  Look how forced everyone looks trying to pretend they don't mind having the old people crash an otherwise fun evening...

Friday, January 7, 2011

Happy New Year...What?

The spouse and I managed, somehow, to be awake on the stroke of midnight and thusly can state we celebrated with the best of them.  Amazing.  I forced the children and their collective spouses to let Steve and I barge in on dinner with them at the Buckhorn in Winters where we feasted on Vodka and red meat.  You may recall that red meat and alcohol are part of my happiness regime.  But never mind. So yeah, we crashed the party and left early.  The children went back to Woodland and had a proper see in of the new year en masse with clinking of glasses and what not.  I was curled up with my new Kindle and the spouse too was engrossed in suspicious You Tube Videos and we listened to NPR babble on about something or other.  At 12 we muttered Happy New Year Dear/Baby, depending on who you were listening to, turned out the lights and that was it.  Really.

Have a resolution?  Not I said the goose.  I quit doing that many years ago.  I think in my heart of hearts I do make resolutions.  But if you don't say them out loud it doesn't matter if you break them.  I think it's a little like if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a noise?  Try real hard to make that connection.  So any way I'll try not to bounce checks, try to keep my job, or find a better one, and try not to piss anyone off.  But I am not fully resolved.  So there.

I don't know what this year has in store for me.  I don't foresee any fabulous vacations or the purchase of an idyllic farm somewhere adorable on the horizon.  But it's really nice to be surprised, so I remain ever hopeful.  Perhaps new grandchildren will appear though.  That would be nice.  As luck will have it, they will probably  be born about the same time 1385.77 miles apart.  Now what would you do?  How do you pick which offspring you honor with a visit?  Goody, something to stress about.

I have googled folks I knew from ages ago and  friend requested them.  Sometimes that works out really well.  Others. Not so Much.  Entertaining though.  How about this?  My brother and I do not see eye to eye and have not spoken in probably five years or more.  Now considering the history I don't really get too fussed about it.  Well anyway, my cousin invited Steve and I to his house for dinner just before Christmas, fine I thought, they are probably going away to some place fabulous and won't be here for the big day, so they're doing a little something early.  Yup, you guessed it,  the brother was there.  Talk about your elephant in the room.  To say it was awkward would be an understatement.  To say that he got up, went outside and smoked furiously, that's what you do when you smoke, btw, and never came back in was the honest truth.  Soooo more stilted, uncomfortable chit chat ensued with the cousins, aunt and so forth, then the spouse and I made our excuses and hit the road.  I am not going to enthrall you with the history of the sibling and I, though I could be persuaded given enough begging and tithes, but suffice it to say I can be taken advantage of and probably deserved what I got, but I super resent being slapped in the face with it.  If you are reading this, family, that's where that stands.  Well, that was a happy little aside now wasn't it?

On the other hand some of my friends have very exciting hopeful plans this year and next year as well.  When you are young you can plan a couple years in advance.  My peers know what I'm talking about, the youngsters in the group figure that that is just some weird psycho babble old people wallow in.  You see this year is the Pan American Games.  The equestrian events will be held at the Guadalajara Country Club.  Just a little FYI in case you were wondering.  And 2012 will be an Olympic year as the Summer Olympic Games will be held in Merry Olde England.  What this means, in a nut shell, is that everyone who is a hot shot will be angling for team positions, new and improved horses, and working themselves in to a proper lather.  They will be stressing about  fitness, money, competitions, money, conditioning, money, soundness, money, travel, money, having a couple in the International string of horses, money.  You see the pattern?    Time to listen to more Pink Floyd if you get my drift. 

In light of the performance of the Americans in the Show Jumping and Eventing this past year at the World Equestrian Games, there is a lot to stress about.  In my not so humble opinion, the WEG results were just another day at the office.  Some days you got it, some days you don't.  I felt really badly for the rider who had a brilliant round on the cross country all the way around...till the last fence.  As I have told you before, you fall off, no matter how gracefully or not, you are eliminated from the rest of the competition.  So yeah, she had a silly mishap, but that was it.  Our teams finished, just not in first, second or third, but they did in fact finish.  And there were more behind them than in front.  We got beat.  Full stop.  Get over it.  You have this year and the next to do it again...maybe.  This is very easy to say from the comfort of the BarcaLounger, but I don't believe you can argue the rationale.

On that happy note, I'll sign off and wait breathlessly for your comments, which never come.  But here's to a productive, fruitful New Year to all ya'll...
Cheers,
Squidgy