HoundBlog

Good morning! Working from casa Kemar this morning, so have the antics of the Cardinals at the bird feeder to keep me entertained as I labor away.

I did something yesterday that has me feeling pretty good. I paid off 3 credit cards and cancelled them. Oh the cc companies begged and pleaded and offered me the moon to keep the accounts open, but I perservered. That leaves me with one card whos balance is higher than I would want, but now I can send all my cc money to it and get it paid off as well in the forseeable future rather than in the murky distant future 😆

No, I didn’t win the lottery 😥 – I just borrowed from my 401K (which isn’t doing so hot anyway with the stock market flopping around like a dead fish) at 7.5% compared to the cc rates of 14-1/2 to 22-1/2% — a good trade I think and since I cut up the cards and closed the accounts, there’s no temptation to run them up again. And I scheduled that loan to be paid back in a timely manner, so even that payment won’t be coming out for very long. I know I should not be tempting the gods with this smugness, but I just can’t help but feel good about this move.

Am chugging along on my small project at work. I should have it all wrapped up by this afternoon. I have an interesting program at the SSIG meeting tonight that I don’t want to miss! It’s on Reporting Services and I know just enough about that to get into trouble 😆

Well, it’s back to the grind.

Love to all,

Margaret

Good morning!

Back from Knoxville where our quest for finishing points went unanswered. Next outing is in two weeks to Concord, NC. Keep your fingers crossed.

Ma was in good spirits when I saw her Saturday and I was able to get her back online. The issue was with her Juno program which somehow had gotten corrupted and would not launch. A reinstall did the trick. I also added connection information in Internet Explorer, so if this happens again, she can still get online just by clicking the “Big E”.  I’ve already received several jokes from her and see where she posted a comment about Butterfly’s chewing up the phone cord.

This coming weekend, Ken and I have plans to FINALLY rip out the living room carpeting and install the tile flooring I’ve wanted for months now. I know it will be hard work, but I am so looking forward to getting rid of this wall-to-wall catchall for dirt, bugs and general nastiness that the hard work is going to be nothing to do.

Came in this morning to some problems, but they are relatively minor and I’ll get them sorted out in a jiffy.

Got to run!

Love to all,

Margaret

Good morning! Happy Friday!

I’m working from home this morning as I prepare to go to Knoxville this weekend. I usually don’t work from home on Fridays simply because so many people think I goof off when I work from home, but actually, I work longer hours and tend to get more done (work-wise) without the distractions of the office. For example, I started my office work at 5:15 am this morning whereas if I had driven into work, the earliest I could have started was 7:00 am, so they are getting 1-3/4 more hours work from me.

I will admit that I get more done at home, too. During those times I would have been going for coffee and to the restroom at work, here I change out laundry loads in the washer/dryer or load the dishwasher. And, there are no meetings here at the house 🙂

I have the added perk today of no phone. Butterfly ate the phone cord yesterday (well, chewed it up), so until I can go out and purchase another line (guess I will buy two so as to have a back up), I am without phone service. I have DTS and suppose I *could* plug a phone into that jack if I really needed to talk to someone, but I don’t, so I won’t. The computer will provide enough in the way of outside communication 😛

Heard from Eddie (see his comment on yesterday’s post) that Randy didn’t get to go trick-or-treating Wednesday — poor kid — that will scar him for life! He’ll be telling his therapist “I just feel so deprived because my parents wouldn’t let me go trick-or-treat when I was 2-3/4” 😆 You had better watch out son! Those things do come back to haunt you when your kids grow up you know.

Well, I suppose I should get back to it. I’m sure the job I left running to write this is finished and now I will need to pretty up the report for distribution. Ya’ll have a nice day now, y’hear?

Love to all,

Margaret

November 1st already! This year is literally flying by for me!

November birthdays: Ma 11/22, Pam 11/28, BeBe 11/29

My calendar for November shows a beach scene…go figure! But in retrospect, it’s better than the predictable turkey.

Speaking of calendars, the one I ordered for Drew’s friends shipped yesterday. I can’t wait to see all the lovely photos that are in it. If you didn’t order one, you will miss out on a treat!

Eddie said he had to work last night. Don’t know if Randy got to trick-or-treat this year or not, but if he did, I hope mama got some pictures of him in his costume. I know whatever he was (probably a pirate), he was adorable!

Have had a drama going on about a Whippet I fostered and then placed recently. She was placed with a previous whippet owner in Atlanta who was advised that she would take some time to get used to new surroundings and should be leash walked for at least the first two weeks and supervised in the fenced area out back for another two weeks after that. Well, the dog got away from the new owner 8 days after she took possession. It seems the new owner installed a dog door in her sliding glass door, so the dog had unsupervised access to the back yard — despite the discussion of supervision for the first 2-3 weeks and the promise from the new owner that she would wait a month to install the door.

Then it seems the dog took up with someone with in a couple of miles of new owners house, but according to new owner, dog was not sighted since 9/30….this despite new owner going to this house where the dog was hanging out at least twice and subsequently calling the home owner on the day I found out about the dog being found to ascertain who had picked her up.

Long and short is that WRAP is refunding the adoption fee and the dog is now in a new home with more understanding parents, but I am seeing red. People continue to disappoint me…:cry:

Well, enough of my tragedies.

Hope your day has been a beautiful one!

Love to all,

Margaret

Happy Halloween! Although some here in the office dressed up for Halloween, I have opted for my everyday costume as I think I’m scary enough au naturelle. 😛

I just love this weather we’re having! I love the cool, crispness of the mornings and the warm, but not too warm afternoons. My dogs do not all agree with me — the Whippets (with the exception of Skinny Marie) are OK with it, but the Cresteds decry the chill. They want triple digits back, thank you very much! 🙄 As far as Skinny is concerned, I just need to order her some more pajamas and she will be happier.

The crested puppies are a week old today. They haven’t changed much in a week — grown a bit — certainly they are nowhere near as interesting as Whippet puppies are! Whippet puppies start out as baked potatoes with a little knob on the end (for a head). As they get older, they morph into the svelt, curvy animals they are as adults with long, wedge shaped heads. The Cresteds have been born pretty much the shape they will be as adults. The notable exception is ears. Cresteds can (but in the US, it’s not desired) have floppy ears or erect ears (this is the desired ear set). They are born with them down –natures way of making it easier to be born, I guess — nothing to hold them back in the birth canal :P. Whippets, on the other hand have ears that go through every possible configuration you could imagine ears on a dog could go through. The stand straight up, flop to the left, flop to the right, curl backwards, flop forwards (like Odie in the Garfield cartoon ears do), cross over the top of the head before they (hopefully) settle into the elegant rose we admire so much.

Well, I’m sure that was way more information than you EVER wanted to know about the differences between Whippet puppies and Crested puppies 😆

Guess I should actually get back to doing something productive. Enjoy the beautiful fall weather!

Love to all,

Margaret

Good morning everyone! I hope your morning has dawned as beautifully as mine has! Crisp, cool and clear skies. Our leaves are finally starting to turn beautiful colors.

I’m looking forward to this weekend and seeing Mom. It’s been too long since we hugged each other. I will see if I can get her back on line as we all miss her emails and I miss her comments on the blog.

This will be short as there just isn’t much to tell.

I think Ken talked to Chris Sunday and all is well with them. Bebe is performing in the Nutcracker this season Dec 8th I think was the date and we will try to get there to see her dance.

So now you know all I know 🙂

Love to all,

Margaret

Movin’ on down the road
We’re movin’ on down the road
It’s now time to let go; get on with the show
We’re movin’ on down the road

The movers are here! Let’s go!
Take all of your stuff in tow.
No time to make things just so.
We’re movin’ on down the road.

Our new office has a bright glow
It’s just sunshine don’t you know?
Like new sprouted seeds, we’ll grow
Where we moved to down the road.

Movin’ on down the road
We’ve moved on down the road
Twas time we let go, got the show on the road
We’ve moved on down the road

Good morning everyone!

As I predicted, our move Friday was fraught with delays and complications not forseen. Instead of the “flip a switch, move the servers, plug them in and we’re good” it was more like wait hours for the preparations to flip the switch to get done, then wait hours for the servers (and even then they didn’t bring them all!!) to get physically moved, installed into their slots, powered up, the network tested, etc, etc before we were finally “back in business”. So, instead of being up and running by 11:00 am, it was more like 3:00 pm before we were running. Although most of my day was spent helping others get their computers set up, their phones programmed and other mundane tasks, I was exhausted by the end of the day.

And then it was the weekend finally. I was glad I had nothing much on tap as it turned out.

I went to Inman to take Kathy the photo of the puppies and see how she was doing. I found her not feeling well and the kennel dogs still shut up inside the kennel although it was 11:00 am when I got there. I helped her get them out into thier runs and then cleaned the kennel room for her — I won’t go into the condition it was in. It could have been worse, but still was pretty bad. Brooke (her daughter who lives with her) was nowhere to be found. Right before I left, Kathy asked me to call her other daughter to ask her to pick up her medicine at the pharmacy. Daughter #2 said she would pick up the meds Sunday or Monday IF she could afford them. I asked her how much they were and she replied they usually ran $3-$5 each. Then I asked if I could pick them up and she said yes, I could but that she would do it once she determined if she was going to be able to afford it. Kathy is diabetic and on insulin. She also must take an anti-siezure drug as well as some other drugs for blood pressure, etc. So, I went to Walmart and got the prescriptions for her. Call me a sucker…….you won’t be the first to do so. All I could think of was this could be my mother (but thank goodness it’s not!!!!).

Well, all is not beautiful in our new paradise. Over the weekend, I got a call from my co-computer geek that the system had gone down due to the server room getting too hot. He called to ask me about some errors he saw in the log and I had to fix what was wrong. He also had to call building maintenance about keeping the airconditioning running higher for that room — guess they had set it down for the night/weekend and got it too low for our servers. I hope that’s a one-time deal and that we don’t have to contend with that issue all the time. It will make life miserable otherwise.

Anyway, here is a photo of my view that I took with my cellphone camera. It’s not all that exciting unless you’ve been looking at cardboard colored walls for the last 7 years 😆 We had lunch at the deli Friday and it was VERY good food at a VERY reasonable price! I had a sandwich, chips and drink for $6 and they also have breakfast!

That will be super!

Well, I’ve got to run and get ready for work. I just wanted to get this up this morning so you could see my view.

Love to all,

Margaret

Well, the day is here! We are IN the new building!

I moved my stuff yesterday afternoon and have my cube all set up (well, I’m waiting on one box that the movers were to bring, but it’s non-essential stuff). It’s a really posh cube with walls taller than I am, locking cabinets both above the desktop and below it, a rolling file drawer unit that has a padded top (could double as a seat for a visitor. The desktop goes all the way around the 3 sides, so is way more desktop than I could ever use. I have a really comfortable chair and a window!! Of course there isn’t much to see as it looks out over East North Street towards the Hyatt, but its a WINDOW and has natural light coming in. One drawback is parking — we’re in the garage across Church Street from the building. Church is a 4 lane VERY busy thoroughfare into the city proper. Although there is a light with a crosswalk push button thingy, in bad weather, it could be a pain to manage. We can opt to park in the building’s parking, but it will cost me $35 per month to do that. I will have to weigh all the pros and cons over those choices. Another drawback will be the limited number of eating places within easy walking distance. I just don’t like to drive anywhere to find lunch, but may find that’s the only choice. I’m sure we’ll carpool at lunch since we don’t have passes for the other garage, but rather this monopoly money and once we use our 30 pieces of silver, we have to pay $1 per entry to get in. Apparently this is the only garage in the city that doesn’t have the electronic passes ❓ ❗ ❓ Crazy!

I don’t have to be to work this morning until 8:30 — which I don’t like as that will get me right in the middle of traffic and so forth, but this will be the only morning I go in late. The computer line won’t be switched until 8:30, so we won’t have computer access to the internet or servers until that happens.

Our phone number stays the same, but I have a new extension — 3071. I will miss 222, but I guess this is progress.

Well, even though I’m not getting back to work, I do need to hop in the shower to get ready for work.

Talk to you later!

Love to all,

Margaret

Good morning! It’s foggy this morning, but not raining and the drive in was a bit harrowing as it’s a full moon and all the crazies are out. This morning I had a truck pull out in front of me that had no tail lights. I just barely saw him in time to not run into his rear end.  Last night on the way home was a car whose muffler was dragging the ground and throwing sparks everywhere. Thank goodness it had rained all day or I would have been very concerned about fire. I was still worried that the car would blow up in front of me as it was.

Came into the office this morning and my desk is gone. My computer and monitor are on this little sofa table thingy that thankfully is just the right height. It’s OK except my back is to the door and I don’t like that part, but it’s only for today. We will be in the new digs tomorrow and all this will just be a memory.

Still nothing planned for the weekend. We went in the camper Tuesday night and there was no signs of ants, so we will not have to set off bombs after all (HALLELUJAH!).

I have ring times for Knoxville — 11:00 Saturday and 8:30 Sunday which are perfect as I don’t have to leave here at midnight to be there for Saturday’s ring time, will have plenty of time after we show to go see Mom and will get up, check out of the hotel, show and be home Sunday by early afternoon. Now, if we can just pull off the wins both days, Butterfly will finish, but, I’m not counting on that happening. I am never so lucky…:cry:

Well, I guess I need to wrap this up and get back to work.

Love to all,

Margaret