Tuesday, December 30, 2014

It's Official

I've entered another decade of life, as measured in years at least.  Funny, the feelings of 'being' 60 are different that the feelings of getting ready to turn it.  I'm kinda numb I guess.  Not sure how it all happened kind of numb.

I'm in the end of year trying to get organized to start next year on the right foot mode of things now.  I've spot treated my carpet, which has been bothering me.  Who puts down solid light beige carpet?  Not me, but the woman who remodeled this place did.  I bought a Green Machine carpet spot steam cleaner, and I tend to give it a workout.  I'm doing laundry (it is 7am) and finished hand laundry awhile ago.  I'm making lists of recipes and ingredients so I can start cooking at home and taking in my lunch (dinner?  whatever I'm eating in the middle of the night...) to work instead of buying pre-made dinners at the 24-hour health food grocery near work and spending at least $10/night.  I'll make yet another backup of my computers and store the external drive in my locker at work.

Las  Vegas was fun last week.  I did win a bunch of money, but it meant that I had fun playing on their money instead of mine.  I never come home ahead, but this time I came home not nearly as far behind.

The past year has been going through my stuff and organizing/getting rid of the top layer.  This next year I hope to make much more progress on getting rid of the things that don't work for me anymore, hobbies that I no longer to, finish projects that are half complete, etc.  The mobile home needs some maintenance that I'm thinking I'll do the last of January/first of February as that is when the weather here is usually beautiful.  The Jeep also needs some maintenance, so it will be worked in.  Mostly just the stuff of living, which it seems I've been too busy with moving and working and moving again the past few years to keep up with.

I have noticed that I posted less this past year than any other year since I started blogging.  I'll work on that as well.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Frustrating

I'm in the process of getting a new smart phone.  So far I keep hitting dead ends.  I thought that I had finally out-smarted AT&T, but no, I didn't.  I have Consumer Cellular for my cell phone service.  I am very happy with them.  It is waaaaay cheaper than any of the big boys, and uses AT&T towers so I have the same coverage as if I was with them.  My cheap(er) smart phone I bought from chinavasion.com out of China when I lived in Honduras has worked just fine as a phone, but a lot of the data stuff was iffy.  The location stuff for the GPS didn't work and I only got 2G speeds, but I'm not a huge data hog anyway so I didn't care.  However, I dropped that phone while I was on vacation and not only cracked the screen, but it started turning off randomly, as in the middle of calls.  It is also my alarm clock, so I wasn't feeling all warm and fuzzy about it anymore.

When I went to chinavasion.com to find a new phone I was doing a lot of research.  What I found is that the frequencies that AT&T uses for 3G and 4G are different than the international phones use.  Nothing on that site would give me the higher speeds.  Since 2G is going to be phased out, I decided I need to find a phone that will give me the 3G and 4G.  Which means I'm looking for an AT&T phone.  I thought I was smart and bought a cheap ($8) flip phone that is an AT&T Go Phone, and it worked just fine.  Woo Hoo!  So, I went back and got a nice HTC 610 Desire smart Go Phone, and started using it.  I had to go back again and get a nano SIM as my normal one wouldn't fit in the new smart phone.  No problem, Consumer Cellular gives me a discount on my bill for the $10 the new SIM costs.  Got it all changed over and life is good.  Except that I can't get the data to work.  It says on the Go Phones that they are locked for 6 months (basically $300 to AT&T before they unlock it), but I had hoped that since I'm using their towers it wouldn't matter.  Well, the phone part works, but the data is locked.  So, the phone will go back to WalMart tomorrow.  Back to square one.

I'll look online for an unlocked AT&T smart phone.  I've been told I should stay away from the Moto G that is Consumer Cellular's offering, and I can get an IPhone from them but I really want to stay away from the IWorld as much as possible.  This shouldn't be this difficult.  In the rest of the world it isn't.  Consumer Cellular has been great about all this, and I've called them several times in this process.  Their customer service is all US based, and very helpful and friendly.  Highly recommend them.

Tuesday, December 02, 2014

Quiet time of changes

I have again switched back to nights.  Hopefully they will leave me alone for awhile now and I can get a routine going.  At the moment I go to the kitchen and am not sure if I should pour a glass of wine or a cup of strong coffee.  Looking at the time doesn't help.  I think I'll opt for the wine when I post this.

Small organizing and projects.  I'm knitting a baby blanket for TurtleLady & Bill's first grandchild due in a couple of months.  My sweater is on hold as the blanket has a deadline of sorts.  I wasn't sure I liked it, but as it grows (the blanket, not the baby) I'm coming around to deciding it make the kind of statement I can send off with a smile.  Maybe a progress picture later.

Favorite Neighbor (her blog name for now) 's family helped me put together shelves and run an extension cord to the front of the shed, so I'm slowly getting things arranged out there.  I found the camping gear that was AWOL.  So, now everything has been handled at least once I think.

I keep thinking that I should be more reflective about the 60th birthday coming up on the 23rd.  However, my life is much more settled and most of the negative drama has left the building.  I'm not having much trouble at the moment with the idea that I'm entering another decade of life.  Ummm, don't look at the expensive face cream(s) I've bought in the past few months.  They don't count.