Stolen License Plate Sticker

Sometimes this neighborhood grates on my nerves. I've had more things stolen since I've moved to west Anaheim than I ever had stolen in my life. And now I have a new one to add to the list. My boyfriend and I were loading crafts into our truck for a craft fair tomorrow. We shut the tailgate. And I noticed his license plate registration sticker was gone. All that was left was two corners and a part of the '0' in 2010.

You'd think the DMV would just give you another sticker. After all, you are the victim. But noooooooo it's going to cost something. They aren't open on weekends, so I nosed around on the Internet. As far as I can tell, it will be $20. to replace it. Just what he needed, another bill while he's between jobs. I'm more upset than he is. I wish I knew the numbers on it, because I'm really curious to see if it's stuck on one of our neighbor's cars.

Happy Birthday Rose Sylvia

I just realized that today is my oldest sister's birthday. She's been missing almost two years. I don't think she's among the living anymore. Here name is Rose Sylvia and she was last seen in TX where she had a horse ranch. After she went missing she lost the ranch and everything and her horses were her life in many ways. She was an international speaker on the specifics of horse pedigrees and breeding. She was also very active on the Internet and was well known for her social networking under the name FlyingRose. I believe that was the name of her ranch as well. She owned a very useful website at one point called EquineInfo.com.

So I just wanted to make note of her birthday, Oct. 17, 1957. And ask that if anyone has seen or heard from her or about her please let me know. Thanks.

Peacemakers?

I was about to start a blog on Peace, to in a tiny way counteract all the publicity that War is getting. So I remembered a bible verse about blessing the peacemakers. So I googled that up and this was the first quote I came across, that to me in a nutshell shows how out of context the bible can be taken.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called Sons of God...
God Bless America and all of our soldiers fighting for our freedom and protection"
 
That was on a Christian site. In what crazy demented universe have we been taught that a person who kills for a living is a peacemaker? I guess in a sense that if you kill all your enemies you get peace by default. Sick.

Changing Backgrounds

I've been changing all my blog backgrounds to better reflect the real me, and not some mass produced blogger template. That took some study and reading lots of tutorials before I got it right. So to save you time, this is where I got the directions that made sense to me and finally worked. http://www.bloggerbuster.com/2007/10/how-to-use-background-image-for-your.html I realize a lot of men are more comfortable with bland boring backgrounds. But I am a complex person and those just didn't suit me. This isn't an accounting site after all.

Why I'm Ready to Live in a Yurt in the Middle of Five Acres

I don't know what the neighbors in the front house are doing. About every fifteen or 20 minutes they throw their back door open, throw something out on the patio that sounds like a pile of shoes and then they slam the door shut. This is about the fifth time already. It's dark over there...for all I know it's burglars. But why would burglars throw things in the back yard where they'd have to toss them over the fence to get them out? Strange. I'd really like to get some sleep.

Japanese Dishes

I'm been through a lot lately and although the timing wasn't the best and I have more bills than I know what to do with, I finally broke down and bought some Japanese dishes. I've wanted some for years and I was tired of waiting. There never is the perfect time really. Now I can't wait to make some rice or miso soup or something so I can use them. And I've decided every time I go to that Japanese market I'm going to buy a dish or two. I only go there about two or three times a year so I'll just slowly add to my collection.

Midnight Woes

Most of the time I'm in my apartment. It is only rarely that the apartment is empty and neither of us are home. So why is it, when home issues arise, it happens when we are not here to fix them immediately?

We left to visit friends at 4:30 and got home at midnight. I'm walking down the hall barefooted and my feet are getting wet. Major portions of the rug are a soggy mess. Also, the bathroom off the master bedroom is flooded, as well as a section of bedroom carpeting.

After a bit of investigating, we notice the living room ceiling is wet. Therefore, we are guessing maybe the issue is in the apt. over us. So I go to knock on their door hoping they don't shoot me since it's after midnight.

Well, evidentally their toilet overflowed. And judging by the volume of water it must have overflowed for hours. Usually when a toilet overflows it's right after flushing, so how could they not know their toilet was overflowing and turn off the water? I don't get it.

So we've spent the last hour picking up anything on the floor that might wick up water, like stacks of art supplies and paintings and boxes of books and paperwork. Even my guitar case was wet so I had to take my guitar out of it. And if it happened hours ago, why didn't they call the landlord? If he has to replace the carpet, where will we put all the furniture and stuff so they can rip out the old carpet? I mean how sanitary is it to have water overflowed from a toilet soaked into all our rugs and the padding under it? Eww.

Meteor Shower

There is a lot of light pollution in Anaheim, but even so I was able to see five shooting stars tonight. They were all between the moon and the brightest planet. After half an hour I was too chilly to sit outside and the motion detector lights kept going on and off, which was annoying. But at least I got to experience the earth passing through the tail of a comet.

Harry Potter Half Blood Prince Movie Review

This includes spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, you might want to go elsewhere.

I re-read the Half Blood Prince a few months ago so it's still pretty fresh in my mind. I went to see the movie today with high hopes. The special effects were certainly spectacular. But the telling of the story got lost somewhere along the way. Many parts were rushed through to the point that I'm not sure how someone who hadn't read the books already could have followed the plot at all.

Also, they made Professor Slughorn such a nice guy when in the book he was an arrogant buffoon that Harry Potter tried to avoid.

But perhaps the biggest disappointment was the final battle. In the book the whole school gets involved with the Death Eaters as Tonks and Bill and the rest of the adults on the side of good get into an epic battle inside Hogwarts. I couldn't wait to see how the movie would handle that battle. Well, they handled it by omitting it completely.

They went from Dumbledor falling from the tower, to the Death Eaters escaping from the grounds. I suppose they did that to simplify things and keep the movie the right length. But seriously, if I was the writer, I would have cried. We can only hope that the epic battle is in the director's cut but I'm kind of doubting it.

Complicated Potato Salad

This has been the trickiest potato salad I ever made. One night I boiled the potatoes but before they were done, my bf decided to make something else for dinner. So I cubed the cooked potatoes and put them in the fridge.

The next night we were both too tired to make it, but he wanted eggs in his. To me a potato salad is about the potatoes, and at most I would have put four or five in there. So after I was in bed last night he tells me he boiled some eggs for the salad tomorrow.

So today I go to make this potato salad finally, and he boiled 11 eggs. Eleven! I guess he wants a few potatoes in his egg salad. Now he hates peeling eggs, so I'm more than happy to do it. So I go to peel the eggs. I notice ice in the bottom of the bowl. So I start peeling and in 7 out of 11 eggs, there is a sheet of ice under the shell. I'm guessing you can't use frozen eggs in potato salad. So he's either going to have to live with 4 eggs in his potato salad or I'm going to have to boil more eggs. I've grown weary of the whole potato salad drama.

Blogging is Getting So Complicated

I am missing the days when you could just set up a blog and start posting away.

A few months ago Project Wonderful killed all my ads because they didn't want to be on the blog if I had Kontera, so I removed Kontera and reapplied. Then they turned me down again on my busiest blog. When I got to the nuts and bolts of why, it's because of the disclosure statement at the bottom of my blogs that I added a few days ago because Google Adsense kept asking us (I thought) to add some kind of disclosure statement. The PW people said it looks like I'm accepting paid sponsorship so that's incompatible with their program, but now I'm really confused because Project Wonderful is a form of paid compensation, so wouldn't they want the disclaimer on here? I've written to them for the fourth time this morning trying to clarify. Google said it would affect how my blogs show up in search engines if I don't add a disclaimer. I'm not a lawyer. Are the rest of you as confused as I am?

Tricky Situation

Something I saw tonight gave me flashbacks to my miserable childhood.

I was eating at a fast food place on a busy street. A white car pulls in. A man and boy get out. The boy looks to be about 13 so I'm guessing father and son. I can't hear them but I can tell the man is yelling at the boy. He makes him go in to get food. The boy looks anxious.

It takes a long time for him to get waited on because the drive-thru is busy. At that point I went to the counter thinking to make sure he got waited on so the man in the car didn't get any madder. But the boy was holding a receipt so I figured he's doing okay.

I finished eating and went out to my truck. There was a single spot between me and the next vehicle. The white car was parked a few spaces down opposite from me.
Now I can see there is a woman (the mom?) and another boy in the car. Family of four out for dinner? The boy comes out with the food. Instead of waiting for him the man jumps out. Now he's all smiles and opens his arms wide and yells out, "What a good boy come give daddy a big hug." I find this mood swing very disturbing. The boy doesn't want to do it, but he's afraid not to. He inches towards the man. The man throws his arms around the boy, who looks miserable, and covers the side of the boy's face with kisses. I sit there to see what happens next. The boy gets in and the man is now laughing a maniacle laugh. He gets in and revs the engine. Instead of backing up like a normal person to pull out, he comes flying right at my truck, swerves suddenly and dives through the small space between me and the next vehicle. I thought for sure he was going to hit me. At this point I think the guy is off his rocker or flippin' drunk. By the time I get turned around I can't see the car so I don't know which way it went on the busy street.

Minutes later I was so mad I had left my cellphone at home. I was also mad that I hadn't thought to jot down his license plate. At least in CA you can call 911 and report drunk drivers. I hesitated because I didn't have enough info for the police until the guy almost took the mirror off the side of my truck and then it was too late.

All along I could have been jotting down descriptions of the people, the car, the license number and so on.

The other problem I have is I don't trust the govt. much. Say they arrest the guy. Suddenly the family had no bread winner, and the kids end up in foster care where they get abused even more. It's hard to know what to do. But I'm pretty sure I failed.

Blog TV Experiment

I just signed up for Blogtv. So I'm going to see how this URL thing works.
Supposedly you can watch me while you are parked on my blog. If you can, or if you see me, leave me a comment if you please so I know it's working. Thanks.

My Computer is Sick

One of my Etsy chatroom acquaintances introduced me to blogtv.com. So I made my own broadcast that worked great the first night. The next night I was tweaking my profile and clicked on a button to put my broadcast in the proper category.

At that moment, my firewall exploded. I've got a doozy of a computer virus. Can't surf the Internet at all. If I open a page, the virus immediately hijacks it and tries to get me to buy some superpro antivirus program. Is that like a tire store slashing your tires to get you to buy new ones from them? I've run over 6 hours of virus scanners, which do find the threats and remove them, yet still when I reboot the pop-ups come back insisted my computer's been infected and I must try their program.

Now tons of people on are blogtv.com, so I have to think and hope mine is an isolated incident. I'm on a borrowed computer at the moment and he's forbidden me to go on that blogtv.com site because the last thing we need is another computer with a virus.

So if any of you know a fix, or have that issue, or know how to reach tech support for that company, please share the info in the comment. Thanks.

Trojan Fakespypro

Today was challenging to say the least. I just spent most of the evening trying to get rid of a trojan I picked up called trojan:win32/FakeSpypro. When I try to go to an URL a warning page comes up telling me to buy their product. It blocks me from opening the webpage.
This blogger page is the first page I've gotten to open all night. When I restarted my computer after a scan and deleting malicious files, the problem recurred so I didn't get it all off my computer. But it's 1 AM and I can't keep my eyes open so I'll have to try again tomorrow.

Kontera Vs Project Wonderful

I was quite content with my Kontera keywords existing hand in hand with my Project Wonderful ad squares. Until today when Project Wonderful deleted all my ads. Evidentally they take issue with having to compete with Kontera. I love the Project Wonderful format because I feel like I'm helping other small businesses have affordable advertising on blogs and websites. And it's definitely prettier and more creative in the way it displays on some of my blogs.

On the downside, I make more money (I think) from Kontera. I just got my first $100 check from Kontera a month ago. Right now my Project Wonderful account has about $20. in it. Granted half of that goes into the ads I run on other people's blogs. The advertising program pays for itself.

So my choice now is to take Kontera off some or all of my blogs and reapply to Project Wonderful. I'm still thinking about it. Eventually my Project Wonderful account will be empty as my paid ads will eat it up with no new revenue from people buying ads on my blog. What are the rest of you in this dilemma doing? I have a feeling PW just did a big sweep of blogs and a lot of people are in the same boat I am in.

New Dawn, Eclipse, and Spirits White As Lightning

I’m behind on this goal but haven’t given up. A few days ago I finished New Dawn, the second book in the Twilight Series.
I’m just about to finish Spirits White As Lightning by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill. I’ve started on Eclipse, the 3rd book in the Twilight Series. I’m also reading Coyote Waits by Tony Hillerman. No matter how many concurrent books I may be reading, I can still only read one page at a time. It’s frustrating.

See more progress on: read 100 books in 2009

Library Snafu

A few days ago I went to the library looking for the last 2 books in the Twilight series. Being popular books, they were already checked out so I put them on hold. A few days later I get an automated call from the library that both books are in. Usually it costs .50 per hold but if you go in right away and do the self check-out they don't charge you. Less work for them I guess.

So there the two books were with a white paper with my name on it rubberbanded around them like a sleeve. I took off the wrapper to make sure it was the right titles, then I grabbed some other books, and headed to the self check-out monitor.

I did the other books first, which went through just fine. So I put up the first hold book and the screen says, "Too many objects on the console, please remove and re-scan." So I did. This time the screen came up telling me to have the librarian check it out.

I tried the other book. Same deal.

So I waited until the librarian was free. She was young as librarians go. She takes my card and the books and tries to check them out. Then she tells me they are not on hold for me, and I have no holds on my account, and she personally put one of those books over on the hold shelf for someone else and did I have another person in my family with a different card that the hold was on.
Then when I said no, both by words and by facial expressions she implied I was lying about the whole thing. I could see this was getting nowhere. And that if I wanted the books, I had to go put a new hold on them and wait my turn.

Now I can understand library snafus and problems with computers. What I can't tolerate is when someone screws up and then their staff tries to make me out to be the villain. So I ask to see her supervisor. On the way I take the paper out of the trash that had my name on it to prove the books were indeed on hold with my name.

The supervisor is a young man and he in at another section of the library. So he goes over to the back counter, picks up the books she took away from me and goes to check them out for me. She jumps in and tells him I can't have them.

Non-plussed, he tells me he is going to take them to the back room and research the history of the holds and try to figure out what is going on. Meanwhile I'm standing at the counter where Ms. Snooty is helping others and glaring at me in spare moments.

Eventually the supervisor does give me the books. What he thinks happened is that the first time I scanned them, it checked them out to me, and when the error message told me to scan again, the machine checked the books back in, and the automated system erased my hold and notified the next person in line that their book was in. He said it was some kind of a glitch they'd have to look into.

Why on earth the first librarian would jump to the conclusion that I was trying to 'steal' the books placed on hold for another person is beyond me. Think of the logic of it? How would I know the books were even in if someone hadn't told me? Or if one book was for me, why would I look for the second book, remove the hold sleeve, and put it in the sleeve with my other book? She did go check the shelf and found both the name that she thought she's reserved it for under another person's label, and also one of the Twilight books under someone else's name. What a mess.
What really miffs me is she never apologized.

Weird Night in West Anaheim

After the neighbors woke me up at 3:15 AM with their pounding last night, I was in the Etsy chatroom. It was about 5:15 AM and the Etsy treasury was about to open up so I got all ready to make a new treasury for the first time in a month. Then my power flickers, I hear a popping noise on the street, and my computer loses it's ISP connection. I try to restart twice to no avail. I notice the house lights are now a strange yellowish color. So I go into the living room and the fish filter is making an awful grinding noise so I had to unplug that. My guess is a transformer on the street blew out. When I stepped outside the air had an odd smell to it like burning paper. Other apartments also had an odd yellow glow to their lights which were kind of flickering and yellowish. So were the safety lights over the driveway. So I came back in and woke my boyfriend up turning off his computer. I didn't want the power to suddenly come back on and fry everything. My phone kept trying to restart so I unplugged that too. A few of the apartment lights still worked so I took a book to bed and finally fell asleep about 6 AM. Then I slept until 11:30 AM when the neighbors once again woke me up pounding on something.

Why I Am Up at 3 AM

As you might expect, I was sound asleep at 3 AM. I was having some sort of a dream that I don't remember now when something woke me up. It sounded for all the world like the people in the apartment I share a wall with were hanging photos. The pounding seemed like it went on for half an hour. At least 3 times a week they wake us up with banging noises or loud talking or music playing. This time I had had enough so once I was lucid I wrote a letter, got dressed, and walked around to their front door. Just as I was turning the corner a man came out of that apartment I think and crossed the street. He didn't see me. And I wasn't entirely sure he came out of the apartment or was just on the sidewalk stepping out into the street. At any rate I shoved the letter through their mail slot and if anyone in there was awake they would have heard the metal slat bang shut.

I have no way to know if they read the letter. But now about fifteen minutes later I can hear them talking again loudly on their patio and they cranked up some kind of music. So either they haven't read the letter and it's just business as usual, or they have read it and are just being belligerent. They are from India so I don't even know if they read English.

I do know my boyfriend has an 8:30 AM dental appointment and I'm guessing the pounding woke him up too. But unlike me, he's pretty good at rolling over and going back to sleep. My problem is I can't sleep because I expect them to begin pounding again at any moment (and sometimes they do usually just when I've nodded off again). I'm beginning to think it would be better to live in a tepee on five acres than to put up with this anymore. Oh how I miss having my own house where none of my walls touched anyone elses.

Twittermania

When it comes to Twitter I have multiple personality disorder. First I made a name just to talk about my daily life. Then I had to have one just for crafts. Then I had to have one for when I'm feeling naughty and I don't want my every day followers to know how kinky I am. Then I needed a metaphysical one for those zen moments. Then I made a few names for random moods. I had to have one for poetry, just poetry. And now I feel like I need one for comedy...would that be sit-down comedy? Oh, and my finger puppet has her own twitter. Almost forgot about that one.

Am I Acting Weird?

My boyfriend is jealous that my daughter can make me laugh more than he does. It's really starting to bug him. He's getting competitive about it. He shouldn't feel like he's failing. I'm just not that jovial of a person. I don't sit around cracking up at sit-coms. And shows like America's Funniest Videos often make me cringe when people get hurt. I start to wonder if they had to go to the hospital afterwards or if there were any long term effects from falling into the pool after being hit by a drunk swinging at a pinata.

I'm never really sure what I will laugh at. If I knew what would make me laugh, I suppose I would seek out more of it.

My boyfriend often says I'm in an odd mood or a weird mood. I can't tell when I'm in these so called weird moods and I have no idea how to stop acting weird and just act normal, whatever normal is. He's uncomfortable around me and I'm uncomfortable around him. It hasn't always been that way but I can't see it changing anytime soon.

Ranting About Youtube Comments

Today I had to remind myself that we can't get our self-worth or our self-esteem or our sense of accomplishment from the Internet. I don't want to be on such a mood swing rollercoaster because one person gives my youtube video five stars and the next one calls me insane and gives me a one. Then there are the people that watch a tutorial, and instead of checking for other tutorials on the same topic until they find one that meets their needs or answers their questions, give me a low ranking because I didn't answer every question directly addressing their problem. Ditto for those complaining about video quality. I don't get paid to do videos. I don't have professional equipment. If they want to buy me a new better video camera, then I'd be happy to make better quality videos. I think people expect a lot for free. You can't learn everything on youtube. You actually have to go to a real class and pay a living instructor from time to time. Otherwise your learning is just going to be a mishmash of techniques. If a tutorial is for a complicated crocheted hat, don't chew out the person who made it because they didn't cover beginning crochet techniques. Look for a tutorial labeled 'beginning to crochet' or something. I see that a lot, not just on my stream but on many. One lady said, "Can you slow down. I just learned yesterday." If a person just learned yesterday they need a lot of practice. I think people want to learn instantly. No one wants to put in the time to really master anything anymore. They give up knitting after an hour because they can't make a sweater yet. I think videos make things look quick and easy because there is a lot of fast forwarding involved. It literally looks like they made the hat in 10 minutes, when in real time it may have taken 10 hours or 10 days even.

Then there are the people that are just haters. They hate women, they hate fat people, they hate black people or they just get off on being mean. Usually I just block those people.

My Sunday

I'm suddenly getting more followers to some of my blogs, which makes blogging even more fun. I tend to post more to certain blogs if I know someone is following them. Then I don't feel like I'm a voice crying out in the wilderness.

I have a goal of reading 100 books this year, so today I started with book one, Ender's Game, a Sci Fi novel my daughter recommended. And I like it so far. I got up to chapter 8 today and will try to read a bit more when I lay down. I fall asleep pretty quickly when I do that but at least it's an effort.

I was using an ATM machine to deposit a check and I accidentally hit the number one button on the keypad instead of the deposit button on the screen and $40 came out of the ATM machine and out of my checking account. Good thing I had $50 in there, but what a weird glitch.

It's almost 1 AM and my brain is turning to mush so I'm going to scoot off to read. Tomorrow is the day '9 to 5 ers' go to work after the holidays. I'm grateful that I work in my home office. No fighting the traffic to get to a cubicle. No timeclocks. But sadly, on many a day, no income. But I hang in there.