Stupid trees...

Blocks a decent view of the forest! I have been busy, but it's one of those, hmm, is this interesting enough to put in the blog, (chicken house cleaning... NO... but it always seems to wind up in there...), then I get busy and forget to write when something good DOES occur. So, I decided to sit and write, before I wandered off on some goofball tangent again...

Thought I was going to have to picket R Shack. My little MP3 player (aka Werewolf) died. Now this is a bad thing, in my book. It's half (in some cases MORE than half), of my motivation to walk. It's also a way to listen to my music with out turning the boom box up to "ear splitting" when I am not in the room, or outside. I can listen to my music, and husband doesn't have to. There really isn't much of a down side that I have found so far. So I was royally, excruciatingly, completely, overwhelmingly furious about this happening. I said words Mom would not appreciate, even... Possibly some gnashing of teeth, perhaps a few tears, but mostly swearing. Roundly and soundly. This tends to get husband's attention, if for no other reason than to figure out why I am swearing, then to make it stop as soon as is humanly possible!

After regaling Husband on the demerits I was going to give R Shack, the general quality of products made today, how was I going to listen to my stuff without being chained to a room, and so on, he stared at Werewolf, then hmmed. (Hmm-ing is good.) Then he picked it up and went into the back room. Tried it. Dead Werewolf. (No little irony, I found that the last song it played was "Year of the Cat". OUCH.) After some more hmm-ing, and some examining of Werewolf's guts, (there is a surprising amount of electronic poo inside one of those things, ya know?), he set it aside, and went out to the storage area we have for the Brother-In-Law.

Being ever helpful, I grumbled about having to do several of my usual tasks with no musical accompaniment. (Husband was polite enough to not remind me I had done most of these tasks for YEARS with out same, but I was on a roll.) He came back in with one of BIL's players that he'd traded Husband something for. It is a very different one, for one thing it's about the size of a pack of cigarettes or a tad larger, and I guess it has a drive in it. (I am not sure about that, I think that's what Husband said.) But the thing, this monster has 40 gigs if I understand correctly! (Werewolf has... 1.) So, then the problem was, how to get things on it. I left Husband in the back room, musing on the intricacies of electronic storage, so I didn't threaten to blow up things... again. (An aside, does this show my age, I had a Commadore 64. 64 bytes, folks. We's talking a LOT more 'go' now!)

I went back to knitting, having finished a set and blanket, I have one more blanket to go, so I can send off everything to NMCRS, I really take much too long to make these things. I am surprised they even keep me on the mailing list sometimes... But I digress. Snarling and stitching, I heard Husband wander tentatively up, and tap me on the shoulder.

He had Werewolf. "Try this and see if it works."
I did. I started it. The radioactive blue glow lit, then... MUSIC! Blessed, happy, wonderful, upbeat music! After a quick happy dance, and a kiss for Husband, I asked what he did.

Not my brightest moment. I obviously looked totally blank at his explanation. He gave me that small smile that says, Oh, I need to translate into 'wife'.

He said, (I SWEAR), "I just gave your Werewolf a lobotomy, and started over. Just needed a brain transplant."

Ya know, THAT made sense. So, I have Werewolf back, Husband is setting up the big player up, (that I have dubbed Monster, much to his ignoring my naming fetish), and so the swearing has pretty much stopped. Just hope he can remember how to perform emergency brain surgery if the need arises... That might be why he's working on Monster. But, he might want it for himself. Who knows...

I have been having problems with downloading songs. This, amazingly enough, is not because of me, as much as the aforementioned disaster might point to it. I have found out that because of 1)being on dial up, 2)having a particular Internet security system, and not wanting to turn off my fire wall, most of my downloads have "skips". It is beyond annoying to have waited 15 minutes to get ONE song, and then have the song sound like I took it off badly scratched vinyl. In one case, it made a four minute song run two minutes. It doth sucketh, mightily, even.

So, I thought it over, I know that when I 'rip' songs from CD's, they work. So, I am going to try getting songs I want from CD's. This is a bit tinkery, but at least the songs will be listen-able. Until I can figure out how to download without the sound being a PITA, this route will work. Werewolf, however, is full, almost, as I just bought 3 CD's and put the whole wad on. I think there is at least 3 or 4 more album's worth... Just looked, there is a total of 226 songs with 41mb of space left. So, I have been busy. Husband was wondering what I would do when Werewolf was full. I told him that I would probably just dump album for album occasionally, so it would be new each time. Or at least new to listen to.

Worked at the Substation again, I now have an official looking Volunteer shirt. This is so interesting, I basically have the task of getting someone else, when a person comes to the front, or give them a form, if they know what they need. However, having an official looking shirt, seems to open mouths.

I smile, say, Hi, how can I help you?

Blahblahblahblahblah person I am getting a legal whatsit on, blahblahblahblah.

Whoa. Uh. Lemme get a deputy...

Most of them stop and look at me like I am confused. I am standing there, aren't I the person to talk to?

(in a word, NO!)

That's another thing, almost all the folks come through the door and say 'I need to talk to a/the sheriff'. Lord, that guy would be busy if they all really wanted to talk to him specifically! So I say, I will get you a deputy, and they are fine.

Otherwise, I spend a lot of time manning a desk, writing on my story, (well, at this point, character outline and some story outline), reading, and knitting on my socks. Pretty cool, from my standpoint. I hope helpful, even if I still have to run and look in the volunteer handbook most of the time.

And I had a haircut, I look more like me, less like a sheepdog.

Heard an article on Twittering, with the end statement, that I so agree with, if you twitter, isn't one twitter a TWIT? (Yes, I know it's a tweet, but I still think twit fits... Either that or those who twitter are twits.)

Okay, back to laundry, housecleaning, and all that ilk, with the melodious song of Werewolf...

"Little old Lady got mutilated late last night..." Ahhh OOOOOOOOOOO!