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My sister said I should post a before and after and see what you think. Well? Do you think she looks pregnant?
You may think that all Greta does is lounge around the house and sleep all day. This is not usually the case for her. She is the type of dog who is running around, full of energy and full of mischief.
The last week or so, she has begun to really slow down. Her mornings are spent under our bed sleeping, or reclined in the sun. She may get up in the late morning and come and snuggle with me or Hubby. After lunch she takes another nap and then after she eats her dinner, she lies down again.
I’d be concerned if I had not gone through two pregnancies of my own, which left me feeling nauseous, exhausted and yes, cuddly, or as cuddly as a woman with a 45 inch waist could possibly be.
Although I am sure Greta’s waist won’t get to be 45 inches, I can already see what I believe to be he telltale signs of her having puppy “biscuits in the oven”!
As I stroked her head this morning I leaned down and whispered in her ear “Oh, my dear little friend, you and I are going to have so much fun”.
I’m not sure I can wait until November 10th to know for certain that she is pregnant!
1. Germany. Specifically Berlin and Munich. I just love visiting those two places. They are my second home.
2. England. I loved the Cotswalds the best.
3. Hungary. Budapest. A really fun city to visit.
4. Alaska. Our trip last year made such an impression that I will always love Alaska.
5. Nova Scotia. It’s really beautiful there.
6. Greece. Athens. What a marvelous place to spend time.
7. The Caribbean. I love warm sandy beaches.
8. Switzerland. Zurich. There is a part of Zurich where the hills rise above the city and there are still grazing cow pastures.
9. The Florida Keys. Wonderful seafood and a relaxed atmosphere.
10. Alberta Canada. I love it up there in the wilderness, where the Elk and the deer roam.
11. Italy. I’ve only been to northern Italy, but I liked it a lot. I have wonderful memories of a trip Hubby and I took there with Shubi.
12. Austria. Vienna. The best Schnitzel I ever had was in Vienna.
13. Scotland. Land of my Hubby’s ancestors and the only place they can pronounce our last name correctly.
Last night I had written a post about my computer woes. Ah, the words flowed from my fingers onto the keyboard, as I composed sheer poetry! Never have I explained a situation with mere words in such an expressive manner.
I knew I would surely win the Pulitzer Prize for Blogging, so I asked my dear, sweet Hubby, who is an English Language/Grammer enthusiast , to go over this masterpiece and correct it for me, before I posted it, and likewise to send a copy to Columbia University for Pulitzer consideration.
I went into the kitchen to start dinner and he sat down with a glass of wine to begin the task at hand.
Then I heard it! Those fateful words. “The post has disappeared!” I ran to the computer, took it from his hands, and I looked. Gone! Gone! All my hopes of International fame and fortune! Gone!
Hubby apologized over and over, but I knew in my heart that life would never be the same.
When I die now, my obituary will read…”and she would have won a Pulitzer Prize for Blogging, but her husband accidentally deleted the post”.
I love you, Chip!
The saga of the router continued this morning after a difficult night’s sleep. I just knew there was something very wrong, but I wasn’t sure what it was. During the night when I woke, I thought that perhaps there was something wrong with the modem, but I am not enough of a computer Geek (just a Geek Wanna-be), to understand the intricate workings of my computer, modem and router.
When I got up this morning I decided to call my ISP. Certainly they would know if there was a possibility that the modem was failing after the thunder storm, causing my new router not to work correctly. I simply could not accept that two routers were defective.
I spoke to a nice technician, and I explained everything to her. We tossed a few theories back and forth, tried a few things and by the end of the 45 minute call, which left her totally perplexed, I was put on a list for an in house service call.
I left for my hair appointment with the question still ringing in my head. Was the modem defective or was I just the unluckiest computer user who ended up with two defective routers?
I sat in the hair dresser’s chair, while my hair processed, looking a bit like the old Phyllis Diller.
I tossed the idea around in my mind some more, and the more I tossed it around, the more I was sure that the modem was the problem.
As I finished up at the salon, I decided to speak to someone I absolutely trust regarding computers. My computer guru, Chip. I called Hubby on my cell phone and told him I was going to swing by Chip’s to speak to him about the problem.
When I got to Chip’s I stood there explaining things as best as I could. I finished my explanation of events and then asked him, “Could this have anything to do with the modem?”
His answer was a quick and firm, YES! Apparently it has something to do with the fact that the older routers work on lower frequencies and if a modem is having a problem, then the older ones don’t need as much kick to work. The newer routers, work at a higher rate and throw a broader signal. They require a modem to be working efficiently. He had actually had this exact thing happen to his own system a year or so ago.
At that exact moment my cell phone rang. The ISP serviceman was at our home. I left Chip, raced home and told the serviceman what I had learned. He didn’t exactly believe me. He tried a few, slick tricks that all repairmen know, and nothing worked.
Finally the nice serviceman switched out the modem with a new one. Bingo! Problem solved. The nice serviceman had never heard of anything like this happening before. He wrote down the model number of my old router and then wrote down exactly what had occurred. I think he was truly in awe of the situation.
After he left I sat down and smiled. I KNEW there was something wrong, and I knew it had to be something with the modem. Maybe there is hope for my geekiness after all.
Thanks, and I love you, Chip!
I was looking forward to today. Hubby was going to get me a new router, I would install it and life would be good. However, when I was going through the set up process, the new router didn’t work! I tried everything, and nothing would get it to work.
I called their help line. I waited a short time, and got a gentleman on the phone. He was in India. And he spoke English with such a heavy accent that he had to repeat himself 3 or 4 times for me to understand anything that he was saying. Frustration built and I began to have a melt down.
Emily was here and she fed the dogs, and before I knew it, it was time for dinner. Not for me to start dinner, but to actually sit down to eat, but nothing had been started.
Hubby had wanted to bid on something on Ebay and since I was in the middle of a router change everything was down and not working.
Finally, I reached the point of no return and I hung up the darn phone and left the office in disgust. I made dinner, ate it, went back in to the office, unhooked the new router and hooked up the old router, and said the heck with it!
I have questions to ask my ISP, but I’ll do that tomorrow. For tonight I plan to get my pajamas on, and curl up and watch “How I Met Your Mother” and “Two And A Half Men”.
Sometimes a girl just has to chill.
My new cell phone battery arrived in the mail on Saturday. I put it in the phone, charged it up and yahoo, my phone now works the way it once did. Meaning that I can talk on my cell phone for more than 15 minutes without it going dead.
Even better than the way this new battery works, is the fact that I got it for $9.99, including shipping and it arrived in less than 10 days! My cell phone company (who I do love), wanted $39.99 for this little battery!
I managed to clean out our front hall closet in one day. This closet contained:
1. Our old record collection. Three large heavy boxes of LP’s!
2. Two fish bait buckets.
3. A tackle box.
4. Three wooden ice fishing line sets.
5. Various fishing poles.
6. A box of Reel to Reel tapes.
7. My collection of cassette tapes.
8. An amplifier from the 1960’s.
9. Half a dozen small throw pillows.
I’m not sure how all that stuff got into that closet. It just sort of happened over time. I decided that I was taking back my closet and so I removed this stuff, and put it down into the basement. I will deal with the basement in another life, but at least my front hall closet is clean and I can actually put coats, and boots into it.
I tried a new recipe for Bratkartoffeln. Bratkartoffeln is sautéed potatoes with onions and bacon. It came out really well and we enjoyed it with the pork chops I cooked for dinner tonight. The recipe is below for the potato dish.
Today I pruned my tomato plants back. They are still in the green house and believe it or not, still have tomatoes on them!
I also helped Hubby to rake leaves, and played a little ball with Greta and Fritz.
Greta has been eating and sleeping more each day. I’m hoping this is a sign that she is, in fact, pregnant.
When I was in the kitchen cooking I heard a noise and looked down and there she was with her dog dish in her mouth waiting for me to notice her and fill the dish!
Difficulty: Very easy
Chef’s Note
I used to cook the potatoes before, now I do not. I peel them rinse them well in cold water and then slice them in half and then slice from one end to the other, about an eighth of an inch. I let the potatoes soak in cold water.
Ingredients
4-6 potatoes
4 slices smoked bacon, cooked until crisp and broken up (set aside)
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of oil
Salt and pepper
Parsley (optional)
Preparation
1. peel, slice and set aside potatoes;
2. in large skillet sauté bacon drain bacon on paper towel and set aside, reserve the bacon fat in the pan;
3. Add the oil bring up the temperature again;
4. sauté the potatoes until tender and turning brown;
5. Stir the potatoes frequently;
6. when potatoes are nearly done, add onion and toss to coat;
7. sauté until onions are cooked, crumble up the bacon and then add to potatoes and onions:
Serve immediately.
Friday scared the dickens out of me. Yes, it did, and it wasn’t even Friday the 13th. However, the weather, and the events, proved to me that perhaps any October that has a Friday the 13th in it is a month that should be avoided.
The day started dark and wet. I’d expected rain because the night before our fearless weatherman had forecast this and he is only wrong 75% of the time. So, I figured this was his day to be right.
By the middle of the afternoon the winds had picked up a little, as expected, and I was feeling as if life were going along normally.
Then shortly after 4 PM the rain started coming down in buckets. Even Fritz and Greta didn’t want to go out in that mess. We all hunkered down, dry and warm inside, that is, all but Hubby, who decided he should go out and clear the ditch on the side of our driveway.
I was killing time on the laptop computer when I heard a low, distant rumbling. It was thunder! I quickly went to the office and shut down the computers in there, came back to the family room and shut down the satellite dish. I was just turning to take care of a few more things when….. BOOM!!!!!
I jumped out of my skin! The lightning bolt had apparently hit quite close. I raced down the stairs to the garage so I could drive the car up the hill to get Hubby, but when I opened the door to the garage he was standing there sopping wet! Again I was startled!
We came back upstairs and watched and listened to the storm as it passed over us. What a brutal, violent storm it was. We could hear the wind roaring, and see the lake disappear from view due to the heavy rain.
Eventually the storm passed by. we ate dinner and then settled down to work on our computers. However, neither one of us could get online. I called tech support for our ISP and spoke with them. They could see that the cable modem was working correctly, but they couldn’t see the router! My brand new router!!! Fried! Gone in the prime of it’s young life! I had quickly shut down the computers and forgotten to turn off the router! I still had my old router so I connected that and got the system back up and running.
Hubby called our neighbor and found out that the lightening had hit their house! They’d had balls of fire running across the ceiling and a broken widow from the event! I knew it was close their house is only 100 feet away!
By 8 PM, the wind was really blowing hard. We have an anemometer, so we can read the wind speed here on our end of the lake. The wind was blowing so hard it sounded like a freight train was going through the family room. The peak gust recorded at 63 miles an hour!
It was just about this time that I started to work on Princess, and Hubby went into the office to work on his computer, when the lights went out!
Of course the laptop stayed on and gave me enough light to find a match and light a candle. Hubby got out his camping lamp and when we decided that the lights weren’t coming back on any time soon, we got the generator out and Hubby got it running. This gave us heat, water, and lights in our family room and bedroom. So while all of our area sat in darkness, we were able to watch TV.
In the light of day today, we picked up the apples off the grass where they had been blown off the trees. There are the remains of a wooden dock now resting at the town beach below us, and there are more brightly colored leaves on my patio than there are left on the trees. We also heard that another house in town was hit by lightning, and that three people were injured as a result of this strike.
This morning we removed all the window air conditioners, which means that summer is really over for us here. Tonight Mr. Weatherman announced we will get some snow on Monday!
So much for global warming!