1. "Sammy." The little white dog is back in his home tonight. It turns out that his real name is Snow. The Humane Society called me back this morning, and got me the owner's phone number to call. The dog (an American Eskimo Dog, they tell me) even has a microchip! He is obviously very much loved and wanted. The owner said she hadn't slept all night, as she prayed and worried and listened for the dog at the door. She and Snow were overjoyed to see each other when I took him to her home at lunchtime. Apparently the husband had been inattentive at the back door for just a moment, and Snow took off. I know what that's like! I recommended our dog trainer to the wife, and she seemed interested in following up.Snow's injured right rear foot was bleeding a little when John examined it again this morning, but he was all bouncy and happy and favoring it less. He overdid the jumping when he got home, though, and was soon walking on three legs again. The owner said she would try to get a vet appointment for Saturday.
Now that she's the only dog in the house again, Tuffy has stopped coming to see me every five minutes. She must be feeling more secure about her status in the family pack. So it's a happy ending all around!
2. The project. That awful year-end reconciliation that thwarted my efforts and kept me up nights is finally done. Today I made the final adjustments to make the numbers in program A match the numbers in program B. And I'm a little heartened to report that the guy who took over some of my other tasks found them almost as frustrating and confusing as I do, for the same reasons. He still did them more efficiently than I did, but that's a good thing, right?
The other farmed-out task ended up back in my lap once the basic data entry was done. Kind of makes me feel needed after all! I immediately found more than a few errors to clean up. Still, all the important numbers balance. My co-worker spent a lot of time trying to track down the last $9, but I told her not to worry about it. I'm just grateful that I won't have to spend eight hours playing the copy and paste game this time out, and another three looking for my errors.
3. An era - and a transitional period. Okay, my time as an AOL member isn't quite over yet, but something happened last night to hurry me toward the egress. I got one of those official blue emails from AOL. This one announced a price hike of $3 a month, to $25.90. This makes dial-up the same price as broadband. Talk about adding insult to injury! AOL makes the service more annoying, with ads and idle alerts (Do you want to stay online?), gives away most of the same services that AOL members pay for, and then raises its price! What part of the value equation (cost versus benefit) does the AOL brain trust not understand? Fewer benefits + more drawbacks + higher cost = less value = Karen leaves AOL.
Yes, I know I said I would quit in January, and it's now February. But it's not my fault, honest! I just haven't had time to transfer five hundred archived journal entries from Musings to Outpost, although I have made a modest start on the project. Also, it's become abundantly clear that I need a better connection than dialup. I've done the research, and everyone says that a wireless connection to get me on John's Cox cable modem is the only reasonable way to go. I'm all in favor, but that's going to require time and money, and a clean house so we can let the tech in. The last part is a problem, because stuff from the former storage room is currently filling the rest of the house. John is wallpapering that room, after which we're turning it into a library. That's the plan, anyway. So even if I get the postings reposted, I've got to wait for other stuff to happen before I'm actually ready to stop hearing Elijah Wood say "Welcome. You've got mail!"
Incidentally, anyone interested in a lot of 1980s comics, cheap? We're talking DC, Marvel, First, Eclipse, and probably several other publishers. John's in a hurry to cut down on our backlog of stuff we don't really need, which means that we're not going to spend a year selling issues of Teen Titans and Power Pack and Cerebus on eBay.
4. FeedBlitz backlog. I've started reading through about a week's worth of blog entries for which I have FeedBlitz alerts. I haven't commented to everything I read, but I'm definitely less behind than I was.5. The ankle sprain. The ankle barely bothered me today, although my legs in general are swollen since I fell. The knee looks a bit better, too. I'm still very sore, though.
6. The Week. My hellish week is finally over. Thank God. And I mean that most sincerely.
Karen
5 comments:
I find the part about aol interesting.. when i called about something and got 2 free months they said they were lowering prices and by the time i called back in 2 months to tell them (if i stay on dialup) that I was told i could have it for 17.95 which i did.. so.. i would call them back and tell them you know it's possible to have it for that price! It seems they are trying to rid theirselves of dialup. Since Feb 6th when i went back to paying as a dialup customer a new "timer" appears and if you don't click it you get booted off loosing anything you are doing.. I don't know about you but i have to walk away from my computer and don't expect to loose things.. after 10 years now a timer? gimme a break!
I so enjoyed hearing how you resued the white dog, Sammy, and how the owner was able to be reunited with it. Your husband is definitely an animal lover to stop on a major road and pick up the dog. I was a passenger in a car travelling along the interstate one day, a few years ago, on a very busy interstate, with a concrete barrier in the middle separating the east / west traffic. We were all talking, when all of a sudden, as traffic slowed, but did not stop, we saw for just a couple of seconds, a mother dog and her not quite grown juvenile pup standing close to the barrier. The mother was pacing anxiously back and forth along the wall's edge, the pup staying close to her feet. There was no way those dogs were going to get across the road safely. Their only hope was that someone could/would stop and either stop traffic, or pick them up. The two second glimpse caught our attention, and for many minutes, no one spoke. I couldn't, even if I had had something to say. I was fighting the urge to cry to out loud, imagining what would happen to those dogs if no one stopped, imagining what would happen if the younger dog did not stay close to the mother, or if someone stopped to help, would they dart away in fear? We arrived at our destination with heavy hearts, and we never learned what happenened. I've stopped and rescued animals before, but never on a busy street. So glad to hear this story turn out well for the dog. But not for your ankle! Hope it gets better soon. Injured while doing a good deed. When things like that happen to me, my husband tells me wryly, "No good deed goes unpunished!" But I don't let that stop me from doing good deeds. And I know it won't stop you either. Keep using your talents for the greater good. I'll be back, Karen. Thanks for the stories. Bea
Wow, things sound as hectic for you as they do me. I've been scanning my thousands of photos so I can preserve them better, since all the older ones are fading rapidly.
We're now getting AOL for free as part of our cable modem package, since our cable company is TimeWarner. But I'm not using it much. Mostly, I log into my AOL screen name in AIM. And we have only hubby's account now, since I dropped mine at the end of last year.
Hope the ankle is fine soon.
Glad to hear that you're past the major hurdles on the year-end books. And that "Sammy" found his home.
We finally dropped AOL a couple of months ago and the hoops we had to jump through were awful. I should state that I've had an account for years and years (I was a PC-Link beta tester), and giving up was hard. But once they put us through the obstacle course, I was glad to be out! Don't let them sign you up for the broadband add-on service. And once you're off, go sign in at AOL and preserve your screenname. You can do that for free.
Ah! Happy to see a good outcome for Snow. AOL sucks. Honestly, I bet John and I could walk you through the wireless installation over the phone. And...uh...I forget what else I was gonna say. LOL
Post a Comment