Noted in November - 2018

I almost blogged the 31 things in 31 days but I missed by 4.  To be fair, I had two days of shopping fun with my daughter and then a catastrophic event that consumed 2 days.  Then I needed one day to decompress from the stress.  The recap of these events goes as follows:

#28 - Drink:  I don't drink alcohol often so when someone says drink I think of my morning coffee and warm water with lemon.  Special occasions are different, such as when my husband and I went to Oregon earlier this year.  That deserved a pre-flight mimosa for me and bloody Mary for him.

When I went out to dinner the other night with my girls they were having a happy hour special with drinks for $1 at Applebee's so I had to try one of their spooky specials.  It was basically fruit punch with some rum and a "brain" gummy floating in it.  I'll have more to say on that experience in another post.  

#29 - Smell:  My favorite smell is vanilla.  I also think there is nothing like the smell of fresh baked donuts or cinnamon rolls, or bread or the smell of a good steak cooked on a barbecue or berry pie, and lemon, I like the smell of lemon.  Think all my smells are associated with food?  Pretty much - LOL.  I am really not fond of smells like lavender or jasmine.  They are too perfumey for me.  I like fresh and clean scents.  

#30 - 3:35 PM.  Here is where we get to the stressful incident.  On the 30th at 3:35 PM I was in a state of anguish because I had done a really stupid thing on Saturday and upgraded my Mac software to the newest version, Mojave, but I forgot to check its compatibility with my other necessary work software, Olympus DSS.  I went through this scenario once before when Mac took the Rosetta compatibility away and I didn't upgrade then until I knew it was safe for all my programs, so I should have been smart enough to double check before upgrading but it has been a while so I forgot.  

Since I hadn't done any work Saturday or Sunday because I went shopping with my daughter (which I shouldn't do because it resulted in a new cellphone for her, my husband and I and then new curtains for the kitchen!), I didn't realize that they wouldn't play together until Monday.  I couldn't open the program I needed so I went to the Olympus website and it said right on the front page - Not Compatible With Mojave, Do Not Upgrade :(   Of course I Googled all the "fixes" for the problem and spent Monday backing up my photos and other important documents onto my laptop and into the Cloud.  Fortunately I had not done the upgrade to my laptop so I was able to do my work from there but I can't do my work on that all the time.  I had to uninstall the Mojave upgrade.  

I am not afraid to try things but I am really not computer savvy when it comes to the programming aspect and when the "fixes" started talking about going to the terminal and typing in commands I was out of my league.  One "simple" fix was to reboot from my back up disk which fortunately I had.  It showed that the most recent backup was September (so there obviously was an issue with the backup drive too) but at least that was before the Mojave incident and since I had been able to move my files to my laptop I was okay with going back to September.  I tried doing the reboot thing but it kept starting back up with Mojave.  Finally I was able to talk to my son whose roommate is a computer genius and after I established with them that I had tried everything I could by myself, his roommate promised to come over when he got off work to see what he could do.  There were a few tense moments and my computer was reluctant to cooperate at first but finally Steve triumphed and there was a reboot in progress.  By the end of the night I could see that it was starting up again in the correct program, High Sierra, and that I would be able to piece things back together.  

#31 - Joy  How fitting that the last of my 31 words is joy because that is exactly what I felt when I was able to get back into my work programs and even though I had to put in some passwords again on a few of my sites, at least I know that everything will be okay.  I will not make that rookie mistake again!        

So, Noted in November begins with these last few bits of October.  Tomorrow we'll start fresh...thank goodness!

December Reflections - 2017

I have not been posting as often as I thought I would during this month but once again, time seems to be moving so quickly!  It is crazy busy at Michaels and I stand at the cash register my whole shift.  I don't mind that.  I enjoy interacting with the customers (yes, unusual statement for an introvert like me).  Just when I think I see the end of the line, I look down for a minute and the next thing I know it is winding around the store again!  Job security, at least through the holidays, right?

Some of the prompts for the December Reflections I've already posted about or are ones I don't have an answer for.  One of them was "10 years ago..."  2007 was a "boring" year as I look back on pictures to help me remember.  We only went to a few concerts, there were no graduations or anything, both hubby and I were just working at our normal jobs...nothing spectacular.  I guess we all have years like that once in a while.

Another prompt was "best decision of 2017."  I'm not exactly sure what that would be.  Nothing I've decided to do this year has been so dramatic to make me think it was the "best" one.  I did apply for Social Security to start in March when I turn 63.  Too soon to tell if that was the "best" decision. 

"Sparkle" and "I let go of..." were two others that I just couldn't quite get into for some reason.  There is a lot of sparkle around now but I just wasn't feeling it yet.  We got our tree yesterday so maybe some sparkly magic will happen now.  I didn't really "let go" of anything, except maybe our youngest daughter who turned 21 in November.  I'm forced to accept the fact that she is an adult and I no longer have any control over her, but I don't consider that "letting go."  She'll always be our baby. 

Favorite picture of me was this one:

Even though it shows me smoking (which I gave up long ago) and drinking, thin and before the surgery on my mouth, it reminds me that deep inside there is a playful, fun loving free spirit and I know she is still in this old body of mine.  I made that outfit, so I've been crafty for a while :)

"Brings me joy" is the next prompt and this is my take on that:

Crafting brings me joy and having breakfast with my girlfriend from high school brings me great joy as well.  I made this tag banner for her to show her just how much our friendship means to me.  She lives 4 hours away now so we don't have a chance to see each other as often as we would like but we have made it a point to at least email each other once a month all year to keep in touch and have had a chance to meet for breakfast a couple of times when she comes down my way on business.

I promised her that since my word for this year is Create, I was going to try to Create some time to go visit her for a change.  

And there we are.  Less than a week to Christmas, two weeks to the end of 2017.  Are you ready?  

Suddenly September - 2016

September 7 - Five things that give me joy:

1 - The look on the face of my husband or kids when they open the gift I got them for Christmas and it is just the right thing.  This particular year it was a jersey for my husband from his favorite Dallas Cowboys team.

2 - Sitting as close as I can to the front at a concert.  Second row for Foreigner is as close as we've gotten so far.

3 - Working in my craft room.  I get a lot of pleasure making my cards and mini-albums and putting together scrapbook albums

A mini album I made for some friends

4 - Reading - I have loved reading since I was little.  My first job was as a "page" in the local library and I was in heaven.  I still have some of the Nancy Drew series books I had when I was young.

5 - Going to the beach.  We live close enough to the beach that I could be there in about 20 minutes but, just like walking the Golden Gate Bridge (see my memorable birthday in the post from the other day) I don't go very often.  I'm going to put that on my list of things to do.

So there are the five things that bring me joy.  The Blog-Tember challenge is 7 days old.  It's been fun so far, don't you think?