Blog Day Afternoon

New Batman Movie

Blogette — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:46:00 GMT

On Saturday we saw the new Batman movie with my parents. It was long but it was very good. Unfortunately, the bad guy (Joker) was extremely tough. He’s the only guy that we’ve seen so far who can fistfight with Batman, one-on-one, and actually win. The Joker gets his head bashed many times but comes up with no bruises or blood. Check out the bank robbery scene; it’s really cool and imaginative. All the original actors appear except the female lead; this was a different actress. One thing that bothers me is that the bad guys in this film, the Joker and Two-Face, were the bad guys used by two previous Batman movies. Why didn't they pick different bad guy characters to use?

The theater had an unusual display of entertainment before the movie. There was a group of young people celebrating the engagement of two friends. On the screen was projected a picture of the groom-to-be with a ring with the message stating their perfect love had started in that theater and that the guy wanted "start the next scene" or something like that. It was a rather unusual proposal, but it worked because she said yes.

After the movie it was time for dinner so we went to a Japanese restaurant on Monroe Street. The food was very good. For dessert the waiter suggested a type of Japanese ice cream. My husband asked for a simple, non-exotic dish of common ice cream. What came to table was a large square plate with small, bon-bon like, green tea flavored ice cream that was a combination of cake and ice cream. The ice cream texture was “spongy”. I’ve never heard of spongy ice cream before.

A World of Cats

Blogette — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:15:00 GMT

It is very good living here for the cat population. We still have about eighteen cats and there are more on the way. One of the mother cats is pregnant again and in a few weeks we’ll have a fresh batch of cuddly kittens to offer to everyone. Tastee Wheat’s first litter was seven kittens and the way she’s growing, it probably will be another seven. It’s time to spay. All the cats and kittens are so cute and nice that it’s hard to let any of them go to other homes, but it’s better for the cats to have new surroundings.

This morning was tragic. One of our males ran in the street in front of the house and was hit by a car. Killed instantly, he felt no pain. It’s very unusual for the cats to run in the road; they are so quick, but this was a freak accident.

If ever this house will sell, getting the kittens to good homes will be a huge problem. No one will love the little creatures more than us – they just need a little food and water daily. Other than that they take care of themselves, they stay outside, and they make sure we never have any rodents, or snakes. I wish we could take them all with us.

Snug as a Bug in a Clean Rug

Blogette — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:58:00 GMT

In my new house there is wall-to-wall carpeting. It is all off-white and you know it shows the dirt. It is a nice carpet but it is seven years old and it has seen some living by the people who owned the house previously. (They must have had a pet that was not overly concerned with going outside to do its business.) There are some stains and other blotchy areas. I wanted to rip it out and buy new carpet; my husband wanted to clean it. Since money is tight these days (when isn’t it?) we decided to go ahead and buy a rug cleaning machine. It is a shampoo machine, not a steam cleaner.

We have been cleaning one room at a time each week to see how it would look. It looks pretty good. The machine took out almost all the stains and the carpet really is in good shape. It was a wise, and frugal, decision to clean instead of buying new.

Each week we have to shuffle all the furniture and other stuff from room to room. The strategy of doing only one room a week is working well because the carpet can be exposed to the air for seven days so that it will be completely dry before we put the furniture back. We have only one more room to do and then we are finished. It is good to know that the machine does such a nice job; I know we will have to clean the carpeting from time to time. The rug cleaning machine is the same size as my vacuum cleaner so it doesn’t take up too much room in the closet.

On The Road Again

Blogette — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:56:00 GMT

Finally I have my scooter back. It has been so long, over four weeks, that my scooter has been in the “shop” awaiting repair. All I got was excuses every time I called to ask about the progress on what was supposed to be warranty work. I called the general manager and she took charge of the situation and, in two days, I had the scooter back.

Not everything is fixed but at least now I have a working brake light. I think that the brake light being on all the time was draining the battery. They had to replace the battery too. Now, if I can get them to fix the switch on the high beam/low beam (they are backwards) that will be another triumph. The lights work but the switch is wired backwards; the low beam position on the switch makes the high beam go on, and vice versa. No big deal but it should be made right. The gas gauge doesn’t work properly either. I never know how much gas I have in the tank. They said I could bring it back at any time but I want to ride it. I didn’t buy the scooter to have it sit in the shop all the time.

Sometimes It Gets Depressing

Blogette — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:09:00 GMT

My husband predicts that the economy will keep losing ground for the foreseeable future and that the job market will dry up. According to him, with taxes going up, jobs going down, and all the outsourcing that we are doing to other countries, together with gas prices continuing to rise, we should be in for another 1930’s depression.

He’s been around a lot longer than I have and he keeps talking about the “old days”. Things, he says, were much better years ago. I guess he’s talking about gas prices (they were about twenty-five cents a gallon), the housing market, (houses sold in one or two months), and life, which was a lot simpler. People were not anywhere near as paranoid as they are now, and jobs were plentiful. He told me that when a person back in the 1950’s and 1960’s needed a job, they just picked up the newspaper, went to the job section – which was sometimes twenty pages in length – and picked the job they wanted. One phone call, maybe one resume (when you made up a resume back then, you typed a single copy on a typewriter. Today, of course, we need to produce several hundred copies just to get one job.) and you went to work the next day.

Almost Happy Dance Time

Blogette — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:06:00 GMT

I hope I’m not being premature, but, Yay. We finally got a contract on our house. We still have to go through all the hurdles that will follow, but at least we can see some progress. It has been seven months with people coming to see the place and then not making an offer. The housing market is the worst that it has ever been in my lifetime so I understand why we have not had any offers before now.

Now that we have an offer, I just know that we will get a lot more people calling to see the house. When it rains, it pours. This is the worst time to sell a house, but it’s a great time to buy one. Only thing is, we want to get rid of a bunch of stuff, not accumulate more. This is just bad timing on our part. A few years ago it was a seller’s market and anyone selling could get whatever price they wanted and you could sell a house in twenty-four hours. Today it’s a buyer’s market and a seller is lucky to get half the asking price in twenty-four months. It’s interesting to see all the things people are trying to sell their homes.

Counting My Blessings

Blogette — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:29:00 GMT

Every once in a while it is good to count our blessings, especially when things seem to be all bad. Right now it seems that everything in our crazy society is turning rotten. The economy gets worse every day, banks are going under, land is becoming devalued, crime is up, and it seems to be nothing but idiots working at every store or restaurant. So I think it is a good idea to look at the positive side of things to try to balance the dark side.

On the good side, I am in good health, no major complaints to speak of. The worst thing I can think of is the pollen count on some days that makes me sneeze. I have a great job at a great company working with people that I really enjoy. I have a home and a husband and three wonderful dogs and about twenty wonderful cats. All these dogs and cats really make life a blessing; they are always there for me and I don't know how I would do without them. I have my parents and my siblings and lots of nieces and nephews that I am in contact with frequently. I have a plan for the future and my husband and I are working toward the realization of that overall plan. I guess when I look at the bright side, my life doesn't seem so bad after all.

When life seems to dip below the surface, remembering some of these good things really helps.

Good House Keeping

Blogette — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:33:00 GMT

All of you know that we are trying to sell our house so we can move closer to the water. Well, selling any house these days is a nightmare; we've tried everything we can think of. We have listed it with a realtor as well as placing it on all of the "For Sale By Owner" websites we can find (well, only the free websites). Our realtor told my husband not to improve the house at all. He said to just leave it as is and he would sell it when the price matched what someone was willing to pay for it. Okay, so we followed his instructions and we are still sitting here. Each time someone came to look at the house we tried to find the reason why that person didn't want to buy it, and my husband has been fixing and trimming to try to remedy some of these things. Over the course of the last six months we have moved most of our furniture out and we have cleaned everywhere. The place is really looking very good. It is an older house, so no one expects it to look brand new, but for what it is, it is a great buy. The price has been reduced below its true value, everything in the house works well, the water heater is brand new as is the hot water piping throughout the house. The roof is only four years old, and the house is truly in "turnkey" condition. Someone wanting a good house can move in without doing anything; there is nothing to fix. All buyers are welcome; all you need is your checkbook.

What is a Quarter Bath?

Blogette — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 14:32:00 GMT

I have been buying and selling homes for 12 years, just as an average home-owner. I have searched many MLS listings and worked with quite a few different realtors. I have shopped for homes in several areas of the country. I considered myself fairly knowledgeable about the whole home buying/selling experience. Imagine my surprise when I went to a homes-for-sale website and found entries in a "Quarter Bath" field. What the heck is a quarter bath? A full bath is a toilet, a sink, and a shower and/or bathtub. (Sometimes a toilet, sink, and shower only is called a three-quarter bath.) A half bath is a toilet and a sink. So what is a quarter bath? Just a sink? That wouldn't make sense. Just a toilet? Who would have a toilet without a sink to wash their hands?

I did some internet searching. Some searches returned results that said a quarter bath is just a toilet. Most people that commented on such a thing were grossed out, the same as I was. Are you supposed to spread your germs around the house until you can find a sink to wash in? Possibly a kitchen sink -- again yuck! A few other searches returned results that said a quarter bath would be just a sink, usually located outside of a full bath, such as in hotels. You have a room with a toilet, a sink, and a shower bathtub combination, and you will often have a vanity counter with sink(s) outside of the full bath. This would qualify as a 1.25 bath.

Whether a quarter bath is just a toilet or just a sink, it doesn't seem practical at all.

Stolen Credit Card

Blogette — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:57:00 GMT

I have a credit card with Citibank. They have an early warning fraud alert system. That means that whenever I buy large items from places I've never bought anything from before, or if I travel somewhere and I'm charging gas and restaurants as I go, it will by flagged by the system and they will try to call me to verify these charges. If they don't reach me and if I don't call them back quickly enough (usually within a day or two), they will start denying charges on my card. This has happened often enough that I thought it was a pain. However, today I fully appreciate this service. Citibank called to ask about a $7.26 charge. That seems a very small amount to send up a red flag, but they said the charge came from somewhere in the Czech Republic. I looked over some charges from previous days and I found one I didn't recognize for $15.57. The notation on it was for a PayPal service and it, too, came from the Czech Republic. The Citibank representative closed that account immediately and will be sending me new cards along with an affidavit for me to declare which are the bogus charges for which they will remove the charges. Thank you Citibank!

Lunch With The Grandkids

Blogette — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:55:00 GMT

I had an interesting lunch on Saturday. I met my grandchildren (well, sort of) for the first time. This is not easy to do, having grandkids, because I haven’t even had a child. It really is easy to explain, though, because my husband has a daughter who has four kids. We have been e-mailing for some time, and sending pictures, but I had never met these people in person.

His daughter is a dance instructor and her students (including her three sons) are competing for the National Dance championships in Orlando this week. She suggested that we meet them for lunch so that we could all meet each other. We decided on a restaurant in Gainesville. The meeting went very well and we all had a good meal and a good time. The kids range in age from six to fifteen years. I talked to these kids and they made some interesting conversations. Since they all dance, music is a big part of their lives. They all play instruments. Their mother started them all on the piano when they were very young and they have branched out now to choosing different instruments. One plays the drums, another, the guitar, the third boy hasn’t chosen his instrument yet but I think he will eventually. The youngest child is still making pictures with crayons. She made three colorings for my husband and me and we have them proudly displayed on the refrigerator.

It was a long ride to get to lunch, about two hours, twenty minutes, each way, but I think it was worth it. I drove there and my husband drove on the way back home. It was nice to meet well behaved kids who were relaxed and natural; they didn’t act moody and disruptive like many teenagers do. The little one was very animated and affectionately demonstrative. It took a big load off my mind that I didn’t have to deal with unruly people.

Business Opportunity

Blogette — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:41:00 GMT

Wanted: Anyone who can fix a motorcycle/scooter. Must have own tools and an ability to get the job done in a reasonable time.

You would think that with all the scooters and motorcycles on the roads these days that there would be a lot of places to fix these vehicles. If your car needs repair, there are plenty of places to choose from, even good ones. Once you find your favorite mechanic, you are good to go. How come we don't have this luxury in the scooter and motorcycle area?

When we bought our scooters we were very happy with the way that they worked. But after a few days I began to notice that my scooter had a few minor problems, like no tail-light, a gas gauge that didn't work all the time, and a hand grip that needed replacing because it was damaged. All little things but I wanted them fixed so we contacted the place that sold us the bikes and the salesman agreed to take care of things. Here's where the problems started. The place that sells the bikes does not fix them; they have to send them to another bike shop. Okay, but then the other bike shop isn't doing the job. I brought the bike in to this repair place last Wednesday and he said he wouldn't even look at the bike until the following Tuesday. A whole week and not even look at it? Are they kidding?

We then went to the computer to see if we could find a better place. Nothing. A few places say they repair bikes, but my bike is not a "repair", it should have been made right before I took delivery. This means that I don't pay anything but the place that has my bike right now wants to charge me for "repairs". I can see that it's time for me to get a couple wrenches and a repair manual.

Wild and Busy Weekend

Blogette — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:20:00 GMT

Some weekends are great, some are blah, and some are wilder and busier than all the rest. This past weekend was filled with activity. There were two birthdays last week in my family and we usually get together to celebrate multiple birthdays on the same weekend.

We started on Friday evening with a dinner at a local restaurant. Everybody likes Italian food so we went to an Italian restaurant that has a good reputation for consistently good food and good service. We exchange birthday cards and presents and enjoy a fine meal. Then we load our full bellies into the car and go home. The trouble with eating so much good food is that we’re ready for a nap within a few minutes. We have to stay awake to drive home and then, maybe we can catch a nap.

Saturday morning I needed to go to the grocery store so I took out my scooter and rode the four miles to Publix for some essentials. The temperature was around seventy-five degrees and it felt great going down the road. This is the first time that I rode the scooter with this temperature and it was so comfortable that I wished that the ride had been longer so that I could have enjoyed more of it. Then, my husband suggested that we shoot some pool. We haven’t done that in over a year. We went to the pool hall and discovered that we were the first people to decide to shoot pool that day. We had the whole place to ourselves; it was great. Actually, I think he suggested the activity just so he could get a glass of Guinness. It was an enjoyable couple hours of pool and eating. Maybe we can do this again before next year!

On Saturday evening some friends came to the house and we had a fine meal (they brought the main course and a birthday cake). Then we felt like – a nap. You can bet we slept well on Saturday night.

On Sunday we decided to ride our scooters down to St. Marks. This would be the longest ride (35 miles, one way) that we have taken thus far. There was also the possibility of rain and thunderstorms; we didn’t want to get stuck on the road during inclement weather. My husband advised against riding on wet pavement because of the possibility of skidding so we took a chance on making the trip. We got to our destination high and dry, no trouble. While we were at St. Marks, the clouds gathered and the rain came down in torrents. By this time we had taken shelter. We and the scooters were dry. We looked at the storm activity on the computer and picked a time when we had a window of dry weather. We rode back home with only a light sprinkle of rain. By the time we were halfway home the sun had dried up everything and we had no trouble getting back.

All and all, it was a great weekend. We did numerous things and had no mishaps. Maybe we can have more weekends like this one.

Things that Bother Me - Part 2

Blogette — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:17:00 GMT

I know I appear to be an old fuddy-duddy, but I've really got to comment on some of the clothes kids are wearing these days. The thing that bothers me the most is when the kids purposely wear their pants really low so that their underwear shows. Where on earth did they ever get the idea that that is attractive? This practice originated in prison and it meant that a male inmate would be available to have sex with other male inmates. Why would kids want to emulate that? Do they even know where it came from?

Second on my list are women that wear slippers to go out shopping. I even saw a cashier at the Wal-Mart that was wearing slippers while she was working. Flip-flops and other sandals are just as easy to slip on when heading out the door.

Third on my list are pierced tongues. I watch in horror as a person with a pierced tongue tries to talk. They are difficult to understand and it looks uncomfortable. I'm not thrilled about nose piercings (what do they do when they have a cold?) or eyebrow piercings, either.

Things that Bother Me - Part 1

Blogette — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:15:00 GMT

"This page intentionally left blank."

Why would anyone put that on a page? As soon as that appears on the page, then it is no longer blank, right? I really don't think a blank page needs an explanation.