Hippo Birdies

Yep, today's my birthday. It was a fairly uneventful day. I didn't get my birthday lunch today... because I got it YESTERDAY, courtesy of my boss, who, knowing that he had a meeting today and might not get back to town in time to take me for lunch, decided that we should do it yesterday. I'm good with that. In the end, he never did get to the jobsite today, so I'm glad we did it yesterday! I had about a hundred posts on my wall and private messages, emails, texts and phone calls, which always makes a girl feel loved! Tonight I had dinner with my clan at Razzoo's. It's not my favorite place, but they've got half price appetizers and we can all eat fairly reasonably. There were 4 of us celebrating birthdays, so there was plenty of dessert to go around, since we all take a bite and pass the plate along, even when there's not a birthday! 
I came home and turned on my computer to discover that Steve Jobs had died. Wow! I firmly believe that without the success of his Apple OS and the platform of windows that it used, making it much more user friendly than DOS, I would not be as computer literate as I am.  I don't use an apple product, other than my ipod, because everything I need a computer to do can be sufficiently and well accomplished in a Windows environment. If I needed more graphic or music kinds of stuff, I would absolutely invest the $ in a macbook or something, but my PC works for me.  

Mr. Jobs, your vision and dedication forever changed the way that the world computes, listens to music, and communicates. You will be missed.

The End of a Season

Last week I posted about the end of faire, and you know, well, the funk didn't REALLY set in until today. This weekend was Texas Scottish Festival in Arlington. For many of the rennies in the area, myself included, it marks the true end of our Spring Faire season. Often, TSF, which is held beginning the first Friday of June, is the weekend immediately after Scarby closes on Memorial Day. The last couple of years, we've had a weekend to rest in between, which is especially good for the traveling entertainers and vendors who participate in Scarby and TSF both, because they have a weekend in between, instead of getting home (in many cases close to midnight) on Memorial Day Monday, then having to turn around on Friday and come right back again. It occurred to me last night, that there are several people that I've seen a great deal of over the past, ohhh, 3 months, and I (and my cats, to be completely honest) have become accustomed to seeing them every week, or every other week. If I'm able to find work and get things arranged, AND they participate in Dickens on the Strand in December, I will see them again in 6 months. Yeah, that's a REALLY long dry spell. Especially considering that last year, I only had to wait 4 months, then 2 months, then 3 months. Yeah, I'm pretty spoiled to seeing them regularly and I'm going to miss them terribly over the next few months. It's possible that I might see one of them when I go to Sterling next month, but that's kind of a 'cross our fingers and hope we can work it out' sort of situation. I'm pretty sure that there is a meltdown coming in the next several days, so we'll see what happens, right? My weekend began Friday night with my youngest nephew's high school graduation. If I wasn't so puffed up with pride over their accomplishments, I'd be jealous of his and his older brother's brains! Stevie graduated 7th in his class with multiple honors. Yeah, I was really happy to be in the 3rd quarter of my class, I could NEVER have made 7th, and certainly not Valedictorian like his brother did. I was running late, which made the Queen of Early that's inside me absolutely NUTS like nobody's business, but I was NOT the last to arrive! After graduation we went to dinner, and then back to the house, where I gave Stevie my old laptop. I suppose it speaks volumes as to my addiction to my laptop that once I spilled the water on the old one and I couldn't get it to work within a day, I went and replaced it. Now, in my defense, I HAD already been considering upgrading to increase the size of my hard drive, because in a year and a half I'd filled up like 70% of the old one, so it wasn't a totally spur of the moment purchase. Stevie really felt like between all the geeks that live in their house, he could get it up and running again. Yeah, he was in business practically before I got home that night! He's replacing the keyboard module or somesuch thing that I've no clue about, but hey, the computer was revived, he's got a great tool for when he starts college in the fall, and I'm quite happy that despite my unemployment (which DID come AFTER the 'demise' of the laptop) I was able to give him something awesome for graduation. At any rate, it's been a busy weekend, I've either got a low grade fever or a mild sunburn (sunblock nazi FAIL), and I've gotten through today on about 5 hours of sleep, so I think it's off to bed for me. Tomorrow is a trip to Weatherford so my NY sister can meet the awesomeness that is Our Molly (my & tom's sweet little short-legged deaf kitty who lives at Erin's), Thumbelina (Erin's short-legged hairless kitty-a bambino), Blondie (Erin's other Sphynx) and the other kitties that live there.

Yeah, it's been awhile since I managed to get a decent post up. A lot has happened of late. Thursday night, some dork (gee, I wonder who that might be?) bumped into the tv tray table that had my laptop AND a half a glass of water on it. *sigh* even though I had plans for a new laptop in the next several months or so, I was NOT planning on it right now, especially since this week I have to pay my deductible to get my freshly repaired Escape out of hock at the body shop. In the end, I have a shiny new laptop for less money than what I spent on the other one, and with more memory and a faster processor. I was terribly distraught at the idea that I could lose thousands of photos, and have to totally reload all of my Itunes music (somewhere around 2500 songs). My Ipod decided over the weekend that 3 of the tunes that are on my "totally zone me out and calm me down" playlist (it's actually just 1 cd) were no longer worth having at normal speed, and therefore they were put on SPEED. Now I need to resync my Ipod too. GREAT! When I got home from faire on Sunday evening, I tried turning on the original laptop, to discover that it powers itself right back off again. Ok, sure, I'll let it dry out some more. Last night, I discovered that it would power up, but only stays on as long as it's plugged in, and the battery doesn't charge up at all. In my search for my Ipod cord, I did come across an EZ Transfer cable. SCORE! I powered up both units, connected them via the cable, and transferred everything from one laptop to the other. At least I hope I transferred everything. Of course it all transferred into random places, so it will probably take me weeks to figure out where everything is, and I'll spend hours populating my Itunes Library and getting my playlists set back up, but at least hopefully I didn't lose anything... Last night I picked up my car, YAY! I may have mentioned that I HATE that Prius. Sure, I'm all for being environmentally conscious and reducing my carbon footprint, however I HATE driving cars that are low to the ground. I've been driving trucks/vans/small SUVs for about 10 years now, and I literally felt like I was getting road rash on my ass! I don't drive a gas hog, I average about 20 mpg in my Escape, and since I'm not about to go back into a compact car, that's about the best I can expect in whatever I'm going to drive. I have to give kudos to Craig's Collision for getting my car done and back to me in 13 working days, rather than the 21 that my insurance adjuster estimated. I was a bit concerned about that because it meant I would need to turn in my rental early or over a weekend or two so that I wouldn't run over my allowed days (30 calendar days). The car looks great, everything matches, and the front is all shiny with it's fresh coat of paint.