All Is Quiet On The Eastern Front.

Ah yes, winter arrives. And leaves. And arrives again and then leaves. Again. I finally bought a winter coat with a hood, my red coat is too big and the wool overcoat needs to be relined and of course some stranger is enjoying my leather coat so I went and bought a new one. It's ok. I heard from Jackson - he probably won't be home for awhile, he still hasn't finished his studies and hasn't recieved any orders so we are no longer looking to see him on the 10th. I'm calling him this weekend as that leave a problem as to where to send his christmas and birthday gifts. On the other side Adam is thinking he may be able to come home after all but has no definates yet - it doesn't matter to me as I'm on call randomly so I can't go anywhere anyhow. I'm doing Christmas cards this weekend, I can't believe it will be here in less that three weeks, can you? I have to root through all of our decorations to what we have, I think we have enough not to look like Jehovah Witnesses and the rest I'll pick up on clearance after the holidays. Why pay full price when I can get 75% off in a month and store it for next year? David is finishing up a job in the Hideout which I think he's glad as it was a basement and that is a bit nippy this time of year. He and Pearl attempted to hunt and all I have to say is it's no West Virginia around here! David went to the state land and said it looked like it had been napalmed - they actually LOGGED the game land!

As you can see all is quiet on the eastern front, winter is indeed settling in and the snow is flying this morning. I'm not on call this weekend but my car is back in the shop AGAIN that stupid tire is still leaking, it gets tiresome as we have to pick it up by noon and that pretty much shoots the whole day. Bah. Humbug.

Quick! Get The Ark!

Yesterday, we got that delightful weather where it rains, then freezes turning your entire enviroment into a Winter Wonderland. That is until you take one step and go winging into the underbrush. David and I had started heading out but decided to head back and shop a little closer to home. We got the Sunday paper but it had no funnies, no employement section (yes I am fully aware I am employed, but the day they post my dream job - "Wanted, middle aged woman needed to lay around and knit while watching horror movies, starting salary $50,000, full benefits and 6 weeks paid vacation to the Bahamas" - I don't want to miss it., and stupidly enough full of Black Friday coupons that were super good and super expired - I wonder who the braniac is that though to do that.

It went back to raining so we got a few groceries and headed home. The trucks were out most of the night thank goodness as I had to leave a little after 7 am. My patients were the usual Monday batch, nothing new, nothing new. During that time it started sprinkling and now we're back to full out rain for the night I suppose. I keep seeing Christmas decorations in the store (although I've been seeing Christmas decorations in the store since August) but I don't know how much decorating I'm doing this year. It's most likely just me and David and Pearl the Destroyer and I'm not sure how many ornaments is safe for her to ingest. I continue to work on my sweater, it's all one color this time around which is a fun thing.

I'm oncall tomorrow night, I was oncall tonight but traded with one of the other nurses as her son has a basketball game - but that's alright as I got home early due to the fact I started early this morning and my last patient was near my house. I doubt that will ever happen again.

Pinnochio's Revenge

I spent yesterday just doing stuff I wanted to do, I sorted out my entire stash to see what I had - amusingly everything has a project attached to it, I just have to get to it. I did a bit of cleaning to make myself feel useful and then I parked it on the couch to watch my favorite channel. There were no clowns involved but it was sort of puppet day - they're right behind clowns on my list of things that creep me out big time(a clown puppet would probably put me right over the edge). First Tales From The Crypt was on with a ventriloquist theme followed by Pinnochio's Revenge which had a hilariously cheesy plot (puppet buried with a murder victim is somehow given to a little girl) - it was such an incredibly ugly puppet I can't imagine giving it to ANYONE let alone a small child. Oh well - mayhem ensued of course, the puppet would just sort of scary appear out of nowhere and I especially enjoyed when it was whapping the nanny with a poker - you have no idea. The best was when it got ahold of a rather large knife - I can't imagine the terror of being chased by a knife-wielding psycho puppet with big cartoon hands - I so love that stuff! I got a lot done on my sweater too. David brought my car down and the light do-hicky is nothing serious they said - we are still starting to look for something though. I think we'll wait until after the holidays as January is the best time to shop for a car I think, there's a Honda dealership about 20 miles from here so I'll scout that out first. I just want to make it past the holidays with no more excitement, I've had enough for the year.

Black Friday Is Over, The Countdown Begins

I guess we start the countdown, after all that's what Thanksgiving if for, isn't it? I went to stop at AC Moores yesterday before going to my last visit and then remembered(as I was sitting in traffic) that it was Black Friday. Sometimes I think we share more with Pavlov's dogs than we care to admit. We will most likely do gift certificates and cash for the boys again this year, as we get older it gets harder and harder to buy actual gifts and the distance makes returns much more difficult. We might do a bit of shopping today, I do need a new coat, something a little

more practical than my wool trench coat. I'm looking for something with a hood I think since I don't wear a hat. Ray was going to come out this weekend but due to the lousy weather forecast (rain, snow, sleet) he opted to stay in NJ. My car is making a short visit to the repair shop, they're going to put it on the computer to see why that little yellow light keeps coming on, I'm hoping it's nothing or at least something small and easily fixed. Given the way my life is running these days that's long shot, sigh sigh sigh. We have given up looking for a car on the internet, there's so much scamming and it's so much money it's a scary thing indeed - all the things they warn about (person claims they can ship the car for free, they want a money gram, etc...) has been demanded by both people David emailed. And when asked for more information they disappear into the mist.

Well, Happy Thanksgiving everyone, it will be a quiet one this year. We've never been ones for tradition however, so it's pretty par for the course. I spoke with the boys, they're both spending it with friends and pizzas - I think I would like that too!

The weather is very cold here, there's snow on the ground - but the wind has died and the sun is out so it's not bad at all. Vincent remains a spectator, if you drive by my house you'll see him sitting in the front window doing the house cat thing for now. He makes a much better house cat than he did a stray - he wasn't good at the stray thing at all and will freely admit it. I am alternately knitting and working, I start on call next week - they do it a bit differently here as you do days oncall as opposed to a straight week. I was a bit disconcerted at first, but I'll give it a go before I have an opinion. I think it might be more managable and certainly less stressful! David got his hunting license a couple of weeks ago but has yet to go, he's a little unsure of where and how - if Ray doesn't come out this weekend I think he'll go look and see what's what. His friend Tommy called from WV this morning, he's been his taking his Vizsla hunting where David used to go all the time. I'm sure the game lands here are just as good. We have started slowly looking for a car, mine is still running, but it's getting close to the 200,000 mile mark. David found some deals on EBay - but I think we'll poke around here first - there's such a potential for disaster and the couple he's looked into seem a bit too good to be true. I just get nervous, I need to see it first and even though you can undo it if the car isn't what you want, let's face it, it's not like shipping a sweater back. And we did get our phone fixed so we are accepting phone calls. When I called Tuesday around 1:45 David reported the service guy had JUST gotten there - I said I thought they'd promised to be at our house between 9 am and noon. David started laughing - he said it took them three days to get here, would you like me to run outside and piss him off now?? - hmm, that would be a No.

We Are Waiting For Santa And Verizon - Whoever Shows Up First

Yes, it did snow last night - not a lot, but enough to partially put out the Direct TV and for Pearl to dart around in this morning. Vincent went out, we have no idea why - all he does is runs around to the front of the house so he can huddle on the porch where all the neighbors can see him so we look like bad owners. It's still snowing so I'll probably leave a bit early this morning, the snow plows have been running all night and I'm hoping the roads won't be too bad. David has to stay home for half the day as Verizon is supposed to make a Special Guest Star Appearance. We had tried to get them here yesterday, David called before he left for work and they told him they couldn't. Then they call my cell phone to tell me they have a cancellation so I asked what time so I could call David and let him know. Well, there was no time - just "sometime today". I asked the Customer Rep if that meant David needed to run home at 10 am and then proceed to sit there ALL day until someone showed up - what time was the appointment that was cancelled? The Rep stated that information was not shared with them - I just told them to leave the appointment where it was. The only funny thing was when I got home I saw 3 missed calls - all from Verizon on the phone that doesn't work and that they KNOW it doesn't work since they're supposed to come repair it. I'm not even sure breathing is a requirement to work there.......

Verizon Customer Service??

We had a pretty good weekend, Grace and Kim arrived Friday afternoon and we just did some shopping and stuff. It was sort of a last minute sort of thing and I didn't have time to make plans, so we went out to dinner and the local indoor fleamarket. We did a quick tour of Honesdale and I got a 1947 copy of Goodhouse Keeping Crafts which includes instructions on how to make your own hammock, weaving a rug and other assorted handiworks since you know how women enjoy those sorts of things. I told Kim and Grace if they come out when it's warmer we can go to the Poconos - the temps have remained in the teens and it's a bit frosty to be taking the garden tour of the mountains. Pearl of course enjoyed herself immensely since they love dogs and she loves them and Vincent even got in on the action. David and I are just hanging out, watching the Chiller Channel ( The People Under The Stairs was on!) and doing laundry. We're also having problems with Verizon and thier customer service has not improved since the last go around we had with them, which would have been about 7 weeks ago in which it took us about a month to get phone service. Now the phone rings and I can hear you, but you can't hear me. David called last night and finally asked to speak to supervisor - he was put on hold. He gave me the cell phone and I sat on hold while he got ready to go out. Then he held the phone while I got ready to go out and I sat on hold while we drove to the restaurant. My phone finally conked out right before the waitress came - so when I called back this morning I asked the customer rep why we'd been put on hold for over half an hour and she said the supervisors aren't really around on the weekend and since they're in another location the reps don't know how long I would be hold for. I was going to ask why that hadn't been mentioned BEFORE I was on hold but I figured since the only requirement to working as a Verizon "customer service rep" is the ability to breath and say more than three words at a time I would be wasting my time and what ever little brain function was on the other end of the line. Now we aren't going to see a repairman until Tuesday (despite the fact they're located two miles down the road) and David has to stay home for half a day waiting. I love Verizon, don't you??