Thursday, December 24, 2009

For Bowzer

I took my wallet out of my purse and dropped it into a gift bag with Beth's Christmas cards that needed to be mailed. I said out loud to myself, "This is going to be problematic. I will forget where my wallet is and spend hours looking for it." That didn't slow me down. Off to the post office I went. Got home, set the bag, that now contained only my wallet and some stamps, on my letter writing shelf.

The next day I got a stamp out of the bag but never even thought about my wallet (it was invisible under the stamps). Looking back, I think God was trying to help me remember that my wallet was still in that bag. I took my stamped letter, got in my car and headed to Lawton to run errands and then go to work at the public library. I had an overwhelming feeling that I'd forgotten something. But what? No clue. Was that God again? I mailed my letter, dropped stuff off at the Good Will and then remembered I had checks to deposit at the bank. Definitely God saving me from a heap of trouble. At the bank I realized I didn't have my wallet. God finally got through to me. Luckily the bank teller didn't ask for ID when I requested cash back from my deposited checks. I was going to need some money to buy food for Christmas and gas. I wondered what I would say to a policeman, if I got pulled over. Luckily I didn't have to find out.

Will God one day get fed up with my constant need for help? I don't think so. And I certainly hope not. OK, I gotta go now and check to see if my wallet is back in my purse or if it's still in the bag.

Merry Christmas!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Word Nerd

I made word pictures with the text from the Lawton Public Library's newsletter, Musings, January-December 2009 at www.wordle.net



Which one do you like better?

Thursday, December 17, 2009

ATT

All because of a free holiday ringtone offer that I received in my cell phone statement last month, I just spent an hour on the phone with ATT. Several days ago I texted "gift" to a number as instructed on the free holiday ringtone insert. There were several holiday choices. Each one I chose told me "unavailable" until I was down to two: Jingle Bells and the Dreidel Song. I went with Jingle Bells. Hooray! Jingle bells downloaded. It costs $2 to access the media mall to get the free ringtone so in this case, free wasn't really free. And to top that, Jingle Bells was nowhere to be found on my phone.

I finally had time before 5:00 p.m. to call ATT. It was 4:45 when I dialed the 1-800 number. I explained my dilemma to the first guy. He had me look around in my phone. I found the confirmation text saying I'd purchased a ringtone, but I didn't find Jingle Bells. He removed my web connect charge. He discovered that Beth and my phones are listed backwards in their system and he fixed that. He tried to figure out where the ringtone could've gone and finally sent me to Isaac the Tech guy.

After much deliberation, Isaac tried to find Jingle Bells on his computer. He thought he could send it to my phone. He found two versions of Jingle Bells, one by the Chipmunks and one by George Straight. I chose George. When that plan didn't work, he walked me through going to ATT Media Mall and getting it myself. Jingle Bell Rock by George Straight, nowhere did it say free. I clicked on "purchase for $2.99" per Isaac's order and it downloaded. I even did a couple of things to store it in my phone. I was on the landline with Isaac and he called me on my cell phone, George started singing to me. Everything was good. Isaac assured me that he would get all charges removed so that this ringtone would really be free. He said it might take a month or two to get them removed. I should call back if it was still there after 2 months. He said he put a note in my account about all of our transactions.

I had flashbacks of phone calls with ATT when we bundled our cell phones, Internet, and landline together for the low monthly price of $135, but were charged $275 a month instead. I had to call every month for 4 or 5 months to get the bill corrected and was assured every month that the bill would be correct the following month. I was not very nice to the last person I talked to. I didn't believe him when he said, "The bill will be right next month," and I told him so. All the others said the same, and it never got corrected. Sometimes do you have to mean to get stuff done?

We're only talking a few dollars for this ringtone and I'm not sure I'm willing to hassle monthly phone calls again. My time may be more valuable than the few dollars. But still it's the principle.

And speaking of time, it was 5:45 when I said goodbye to Isaac. There went an hour of my life. But I think I'm going to enjoy hearing George sing to me whenever someone calls. I think I'll go listen to it right now.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Be Careful Who You Sleep With

I should've known better. But, no.

Daryl left for Lawton to pick up Owen at Beth's school. Owen's school had called Beth to tell her Owen was sick and she needed to come pick him up. Beth didn't think he was very sick. Owen was having a great time playing with Beth's Pre-K kids. Too bad he didn't enjoy Pre-K that much when he was in it. He did not want to leave when Pa got there but he had to. If he's too sick to stay at his own school then he's too sick to stay at Beth's school. Owen cried so hard, according to Daryl, that a huge river of snot dropped out of his nose and spread across the parking lot as they were leaving.

Later that afternoon, Owen came to see me. Through the coughs and the sneezes, I kissed him and hugged him and cuddled as much as he would allow. After his bath we got into bed and watched Yoyo Ma on Mr. Rogers. We both fell asleep before it was over.

Saturday was more of the same with sleeping together on Saturday night. He was still a snot factory at church on Sunday. We ate lunch in Lawton then I tended to my school activities (the newsletter) and didn't see much more of Owen.

Monday I was fine. Tuesday I got worse as the day wore on: achy, stuffy/runny nose, sneezing and coughing. Wednesday I was a little better but it's my long day. 8-3:30 at school followed by 5-9 at the public library. I was now producing the snot river reminiscent of Owen's. I stopped at WalMart and bought his & her Niquil for me & Daryl.

Did I learn my lesson? No! If I had it to do over, I'd do exactly the same. I can't resist that precious little boy.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

No Surprise











It isn't even Christmas yet and I'm going to blog about what I bought my daughters for Christmas and at the same time what I didn't buy them for Christmas.

It was black Friday and I ordered the QVC special value of the day. A purple Sylvania flip style camcorder for Mari, $29.68. I didn't know if Beth would like a blue one or a pink one (hard to tell what kind of pink it would really be). I figured at that price ($25.65 for the second and third cameras) I could get both and use the one that Beth didn't want at school.

These cameras don't have internal memory but use a standard SD card. That may be better than internal memory so I went ahead and bought accessories as well. For an extra $19.75 and then $16.75, I got carrying cases, 2 GB SD cards and packs of 2 AA batteries.

Oh yeah, I was excited. Expected delivery date, DEC 7. I printed and saved the receipt.

December 7 came and went. I wondered about it so I looked on the QVC web site. No record of me ever having ordered these cameras. WHAT?!? I checked my receipt. All looked good, so I called QVC. The guy asked me to give him my order number. When I found it on the receipt I knew things weren't good. The receipt number was just a bunch of zeroes. The guy told me that means the order didn't go through. Why not have verbiage saying, "Your order did not go through" instead of "Your order is complete, click here to view your receipt" with the order number 0000000000?

Needless to say, I'm annoyed and disappointed. Of course they don't have any more of these. They don't even sell them anywhere else. Nothing comes in a rainbow of color choices. And I can't find any flip style cameras anywhere close to that price. So this is what I did not get my daughters for Christmas, but I certainly meant to. Bummer!