I've succumbed

I made the decision a while ago that I wouldn't become an e-reader user. I love to read and I also love the experience of reading. I love turning real pages of real books; I love dog-earring the page to mark my place; I love the smell of the pages; I love browsing the shelves of the library or, if I'm feeling really indulgent, a bookstore (I say indulgent because if I'm in a bookstore I find it almost impossible to leave without buying a book and with a library literally a ten-minute walk away it is indeed indulgent to spend money on books); I love reading in bed, laying down, not propped up on pillows.

But I have an iPad now and with an iPad comes the ability to download thousands of great apps (and lots of not-so-great ones). Kindle and Kobo are two of the free apps that are available. So, given what I said above, what did I do?

I put those suckers on my iPad quicker than you can say Luddite.

My first reason was curiosity. I wanted to see what all the hubbub was about even though I felt I'd made up my own mind about them. My second reason was that I'm going through a short list of Victorian classics that I've somehow never read (Jane Eyre is the bomb!) and I'm having serious trouble getting them at my local library and I know that they're free through Kobo.

I may also have purchased The Postmistress and The Hunger Games.

And so I cuddled up with my iPad two nights ago in bed and started reading The Postmistress. After two nights reading in bed with my iPad I have short list of pros and cons. Mainly short on the cons.

Pros

1. No heavy books to prop up while I'm laying down
2. The light the iPad gives off eliminates the need for a reading light (which I haven't had for a while thus annoying John as I turn on my table lamp every night while he is trying to sleep beside me)
3. I can switch to a different book very easily if the mood strikes

Cons

1. Laying down reading with an iPad isn't very comfortable.

I can find my way around the Con here. I can start sitting up to read or I can save my iPad reading for the living room, deck etc (if my kids will stop playing the cookie baking game on it long enough for me to get my hands on it). I can see why people who travel a lot love their e-reader. I'm going to be loving it at the cottage this summer and on our trip to New Brunswick in a few weeks.

My assessment so far is that it's pretty cool and it will definitely have its place in my reading life but it won't completely replace the traditional book for me especially since, while I'm an avid reader, I'm also a frugal one and prefer to get my books for free at the library.

Do you have an e-reader? Do you like it? Love it? Wish you'd never bought it?

Going back to the dark ages

I have something to confess; something I've been thinking for a while but was a bit hesitant to admit to. Yesterday I embraced my feelings, my minority opinion and I'm putting it out there:

I don't like Twitter.

Yup, it's true.

I kind of feel leashed by it. As a blogger, I feel almost obligated to be involved, as though if I'm not tweeting through the evening or spending my time retweeting or responding to tweets or just reading tweets, then somehow I'm not really plugged into the whole blogging and social networking scene.

I've decided that I don't care.

For me the value of Twitter is finding out about interesting things going on in my city, keeping me up-to-date on current (very current) events (I found it invaluable on the night of the municipal election), knowing what close friends are up to (but really, I can just email or use Facebook for this, which I much prefer).

For the most part, Twitter makes me feel like the kid who shows up to a party and doesn't know anyone, or who no one really talks to; I spend my evening standing in the corner wondering how everyone knows one another, or what the heck they're talking about.

I spent enough time living that for real (as most people have) and don't enjoy reliving it as an adult when I'm confident enough in myself to say "smell ya later" and move on.

So, I'll continue to use it if I need to promote something or follow a current event or feel the need to have a laugh (I highly recommend Denis Leary's and Stephen Colbert's tweets). But beyond that, I'm pulling out. All done!

If you want to know what I'm up to, you can become my Facebook friend... or just email me... currently known as "the old-fashioned way."

Now that is something to make your head spin.

She's a gonner

My computer gave up the ghost yesterday.  We, and by we I mean John, had coaxed her back last week by formatting the hard drive (remember my lost files?).  It bought us a few days before I noticed things still weren't right.  And yesterday she wouldn't do anything else for us.  

We're getting a new hard drive this weekend.

And so, I'll only have consistent access in the evenings when John is home.  And usually that time is spent watching some tv or, this week, doing some sewing.  I'm going to make the girls a few sundresses each this year.  I have a good stash of fabric and a pattern for each of them.  Should be fun to get back into making clothes for them, something I haven't done since Emily was a baby.

I'll attempt to post my recipe for today but it may not happen until tomorrow night.  

Not out of the woods yet, computer-wise

I turned my computer on this morning and that little whirly thing that Macs do on start-up wouldn't stop whirling.  That's not a good sign.

It could be that I'm without a computer for a while after John heads to work.  Crap.  

On the upside, I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon so maybe I'll make some head-way in getting further tests books or finding some answers.

A fire without the smoke

The references to my computer being sick have ended in a terrible way.  We had to format the hard drive however, being that we have Leopard and therefore Time Machine for our Mac, it didn't seem like a big deal.

Until we realized that Time Machine, for some reason, had only backed up things from John's profile on the Mac and not mine.  Of course, we realized this after the hard drive was erased. I have no photos from the last two years, no emails, no documents, no bookmarks.  Nada.

So, if you tend to email me, please send  me one so I can start to rebuild an address book without trolling the internet.  

And, even more importantly, if you have any photos of my kids or John and I during the last two years, please please please burn them onto a CD for me.  Please!

Elbow-deep in shit water

As I noted earlier, things have been hum-drum normal around here with little to report that wouldn't bore you to the point where your eyes bleed. I made the mistake of reporting that below and then the gods who oversee Murphy's Laws and the like decided to hit me with some excitement. But not the kind I like. More like the kind I hate.

The cloth diaper pail was full this afternoon so I put them in the washing machine and set it to cold/cold rinse. I always do a cold rinse before I do a hot wash. My old-timer washing machine doesn't have a "soak" cycle so I have to go old school. Anywho, I left them to do their thing and went upstairs to relax and do some knitting while the kiddies slept. I found it odd that almost right away I didn't hear the distinct sounds of our washing machine grinding away. After a while I went downstairs to check on things, hoping to add the soap and send it on to the wash cycle. What I found instead was a washing machine filled with diapers, shit water and making a click, click, click sound as the agitator kept trying and failing to move, spin and drain the water. I sent it back to the start and noticed that it would add more water (I quickly put an end to that) but still would only click instead of drain.

A quick check on the friendly internet told me.... well, that I had problems. Could be a number of things: jammed hose, sock down inside the agitator mechanism, jammed basin, blah, blah, blah, basically I'm screwed.

I left the problem for a while. Okay, okay.... I left it for several hours during which time the Government decided to inform me that I still owe over $300 on my taxes because they're charging me interest for not prepaying my taxes. That is a rant, and boy, will it be a rant, for another day. In fact, my hands are starting to shake typing this I'm that rant-ready.

Back to the story at hand. I donned rubber gloves, got an old Brita jug that will clearly not be used for drinking water again, pulled out all the sopping wet still slightly poopy diapers and put them back in the diaper pail, then started to bail until I could at least see the bottom. I felt around the bottom of the agitator. Nothing obvious. I pulled on it. I pushed it. I may have kicked the machine. Nothing will move. There is no clear way to remove the agitator.

I think we're seriously scah-rood washing machine and laundry-wise and smelly very wet cloth diaper-wise.

Of course this had to happen: (a) when I was washing diapers; not when I was washing regular clothes with no poop adhered to them and (b) during a time when I am trying not to spend any money. Yes, I do note that I haven't mentioned that little project since I first announced it and that could be because I'm not being as strict with myself as I should be see Exhibit A bag full of new yarn upstairs, $10 baby doll bought for Hope today, little shopping at Ikea last week.

John is currently asking for the manual. This could get worse before it gets better.

Five minutes of your life you'll never get back

About a month ago we decided to change our internet service provider/phone company because Primus, a competing company, was offering an amazing deal: local phone, long distance and high speed DSL for 59.95 a month, which was almost $50 less per month than we were paying at the time. So, I called Rogers, our then ISP and phone company, to switch. They told me I would lose my phone number because we had a digital phone line and to switch to Primus (or any other phone company) I would have to change back to an analogue line. So, that was hurdle and annoyance number one. The savings were big enough to allow me to see beyond that and make the inconvenience of a new phone number worth it.

Our new modem arrived in the mail with the installation disk. I popped it in to find out it was not Mac compatible. I called the tech help line and was on hold for 35 minutes. Luckily it was a 1-800 number because I'm pretty sure I was talking to someone in India. I was told to call back several days later when my account would be "activated."

I called back several days later. A woman walked me through the set up. I won't give you the play-by-play of the set-up but it did involve me furiously burrowing into a box in our storage area looking for a phone cord that would allow me to stretch the modem across the basement to our computer (we've been wireless for too long, obviously). Again, good thing I wasn't paying for that call to India because she was on the phone with me for a while, not just because of the phone cord buried amongst skates and squash racquets but also because I'm a complete tool when it comes to any technological hardware.

Anywho.

So, the set-up didn't work I soon found out. Yesterday, I finally called back after reaching my limit with paying two ISPs. I got a really good tech-support woman on the phone. Within 3 minutes (no joke) she informed me that the set-up would never work because I was 4.9 kilometres away from their thingamajiggy. I pointed out that when I initially phoned Primus their customer service person told me I was within the range of the thingamajiggy and it would all be fine.

I was transferred back to customer service where a man waived (oh, how thoughtful) the cancellation fee of $100 to get out of my contract. When I told him I also wanted out of my phone contract since I had signed up as a bundle to save money, he informed me that it would be $40 to cancel that.

That's when Karen went a wee bit postal. I managed to keep things under control at this point (John would confirm that in this situation it is nothing short of a miracle that I didn't tear Mr. Guy at Indian Call Centre a new one) and asked to speak to someone who could waive that fee being that I only moved over to Primus to save money and now they aren't honouring their contract so

W.

T.

F.

I got the fee waived. Yay me.

So, that was how I spent the two hours I get to myself while the girls are sleeping on the rare day now that Emily chooses to sleep. Not so yay me.

Aren't you glad you spent the time to read this whole post? Did it change your life? Maybe not, but I'm betting you're not going to be signing up for Primus anytime soon.

And with that, my work is done.

Banner trouble

I noticed just now that my banner is gone. I guess while I was on vacation it decided to take the opportunity and make a run for it.

So, it will be plain Jane up there until I find the time to design something.

Duh, maybe I'll just reinvent the wheel while I'm at it

So, after fooling around in the HTML coding in the templates this morning again, I finally just decided to screw the colour scheme, and choose a new template that was marked "stretch." Lo and behold, blessed Blogger has these stretch templates that are made to fill up monitors, no matter what the size. You'd think that I would have noticed this before and also figured out that screwing with the code in a system like this, designed for those who have no idea what they're doing with HTML, maybe isn't wise for a novice like me.

Anyway, this is better and Beth is going to help me with the whole masthead thing so soon there will be some nice colour on here too. For the time being, look! See the beautiful white! and grey!

Oops

Okay, so Beth tells me that the new look isn't working on her little laptop screen - way too wide, and a giant font. Hmmm. It looks so good on my giant iMac monitor! I'll fix it today. Well, it was nice while it lasted!

....Okay, we're back to how it was. I might still fiddle a bit to stretch it a little bit, but generally I guess I'll stick with it as is until everyone out there sees the light and gets an iMac. Heh. It was a good learning experience though. I learned a lot in a little time about how the coding works and how to fiddle with it.

In the meantime, I still want a funky masthead so I'm still interested in hearing how to do that.

Getting savvy

You'll no doubt have noticed a different look for the site. I've been playing with the HTML coding and figured out a few things; things I wanted to change that have bugged me since I went to a nice, large monitor. So, I fixed those things but now I want to do some more design work and I don't know how to do it. So, for those of you who do, I'm looking for your help to get started. I want to start with the header, you know, the part where the title sits. I want to put some cool, colourful graphics in there - either something I design myself or something I steal from somewhere else. So, how to I get it up there? Can I do it through the new blogger or do I have to do it through the HTML code? And if in HTML code, how do I do it? Help please!

more technology woes

My camera is again not functioning. This time I think it is the memory card. But, I have to ask myself whether it is worth replacing the memory card when I bought the camera used for $150 and it is only 2.0 megapixels. So, maybe it is time to just go for a new one. The prices are pretty low. I don't want anything crazy. Let me rephrase, I can't afford anything crazy. I just want something that will take some decent pictures and I'm looking for suggestions. Anyone have one?

Take 1

Well, here is a snippet from the movie I recently put together. This was taken in September when my sister, Beth, was visiting right after Hope was born. Also the time when Emily was desperately trying to learn to jump, as you will see.

My masterpiece

My first movie, put together on iMovie, is finally done! I'm really proud of it as a first try, especially. It is too long to share here (I made it for my grandparents in Alberta) but I'll see if I can figure out how to post just a snippet to YouTube and then put it here so you can get a taste. How exciting!

DeChristmasification

Maybe it isn't a real word, but I use it every year at this time. I think I enjoy deChristmasification as much as I enjoy decorating for Christmas. By the first week of January, the decorations have been up for almost a month, the tree for about 2 and a half weeks and I'm ready to see them all go.

So, today I took everything down and un-decorated the Christmas tree. Everything is away, a scraggly tree is standing in the living room waiting for John to pitch it on the front lawn, and the house is in total shambles as Emily ran rampant around the main floor and basement while I was focussed (maybe too focussed) on my project of un-yuling the house.

I'm well into the movie I'm making on the Mac. It is too much fun. Too much fun to the point where I go to bed at midnight and after four days of this I'm seriously feeling the pain. Especially since Hope had a brutal night last night - up every 45 minutes if I left her in her crib but slept well beside me. Of course, if she's beside me, I don't sleep well.

Emily often slept in the bed with us and I got used to it. I tried it again the first three nights after Hope was born but it just wasn't her thing. She was too boob-obsessed and was constantly rooting around for something (me) to suck on. So, she has always slept beside us on the floor on a little mattress and now has graduated to the playpen with a bassinet insert (okay, too much detail - I'm totally falling into the trap of mommy-blogging. Sorry. Will stop. Now). Anyway, all of a sudden, as of last night, she's happier beside me. Don't know why. Hope it stops. I like my space now. My only theory is that she hasn't pooped in five days. Five. F-I-V-E. She seems pretty happy considering but last night, every time she woke up, she kicked and grunted like she was trying to will the poop right out of the shoot. Of course I'm concerned for her comfort, but really, I'm more concerned for me when that eagle finally lands. I really hope I'm out of target range and she has several layers of clothes on.

Okay, for Mac users out there, I'm frustrated and need your advice: in iPhoto I can't, for the life of me, figure out how to resize photos to be, say, 600X800. How the heck do I do that? I've looked all through the help and the tutorials and I'm frustrated! Please help me before I hurt my new love by throwing something at it.

Santa remembered me....

This will be a very quick post (much more Christmasy details to come later, complete with eggplant pictures etc) to show you what Santa (ie. John) left for me under the tree:


Wooooohooooooo!

No accidents!

Emily went all day today, in big girl underwear, with no accidents! We're rewarding that, against all my good judgement, with Smarties. I didn't mean to do that but I told her that if she went accident free for a day she'd get a treat. By "treat" I meant the cheapo Barney doll hidden in my closet but to Emily, at least since Hallowe'en, "treat" means candy. Oops. So, while she was pretty taken with the Barney (hey, the guy's wearing a swimsuit - fullpiece!), she was pretty insistent on candy. I saw an opening for some major strides forward re the toilet and went for it. It seems to have paid off. Every time she takes her underwear off and uses the toilet, she gets 3 Smarties. You do what works if it means that you're not cleaning shit off a two-year old bum. Really, it may as well be adult poop at this point. Nasty.

Speaking of poop, Emily has had none of it for going on 4 days tomorrow. I'm concerned and am now lacing her drinks with Colace, a stool softener. This coincides with Hope going down to one big poop a day. Odd.

Hope has also entered an odd phase regarding going down for naps. She'll have none of it easily all of a sudden. Until yesterday, I popped in the soother, laid her down, gave her a kiss, walked out and came back an hour or two later. Now, she cries, grunts and kicks her legs like a ninja master. I worked on it for about 40 minutes this afternoon and did succeed in having her fall asleep on her own, without rocking her (I'm really trying to avoid that) but I couldn't do that tonight. She was so worked up (our fault - we dragged her to the mall when she should have been sleeping late this afternoon) due to lack of sleep that the only thing I could get to stop the crying was t.v. She isn't a crier by nature at all so this was unusual. Poor kid.

We went to the mall to do two things: buy a new dishwasher (finally!) and have Emily check out the big guy himself - Santa that is. Last I checked God was not resident at St. Laurent Shopping Centre. Anyway, Emily had a whale of a time - she was mesmerized by the decorations, all the activity, getting to use the mall toilet, and seeing (other) kids sit on Santa's knee. I didn't offer the chance to her and she didn't ask. Saved me $8.99.

I'm truly pumped about the new dishwasher. Ours has been limping along for over a year now. I think it is original to the house being built in 1988. No kidding. The top rack does not get clean now. The bottom seems to be on its way out too. So, while it might seem extraneous to some, we bought another one. I just don't have enough time in the day to want to use it doing that many dishes.

My first six months home with Emily I never used the dishwasher. I was totally against it unless we had guests. I took the moral high ground regarding the environment and did the dishes everyday. It took me about 30 minutes. Emily napped for 40. That sucked. Then one day, after we had some people over for dinner and we used the dishwasher I decided to screw the environment and embrace the beautiful technology that was sitting in my kitchen. I never looked back.

Well, enough rambling. No photos today but I'll try and get some good ones tomorrow. Hope is humongous. Cute but humongous. I'll try and capture that and show you what I mean.

New technology

Before I left work, everyone there pitched in and gave me $175 to put towards a digital video camera. I bought it today. Yes, it was certainly more than $175. I made up the rest and hope that other gifts from parents etc will result in covering a good part of the remaining amount. I know John doesn't think it should have been at the top of the priority list but it is really the only thing I wanted that was kid related. I just feel that years from now I will really want to see Emily in action during her cutest, funniest, most playful moments and that will definitely be worth whatever amount we have to make up to cover the cost.

The camera is currently charging and tomorrow I'll be able to film. Should be much fun for me and torture for everyone around me.