Oh, well, they did fix it for free, finally. But the guy who worked there just did it to get me to leave the store, I think, he said software is not covered under warranty and they could do it for $30 or I could do it (he did tell me how to do it - but when I tried what he told me it didn't work). I just had to stand there and badger them for two hours until it got done (well, I was very polite. But I wasn't leaving!). The guy explained to me that I should uninstall the driver for the CD drive, then download the software for it from Gateway again, that should fix it. "It's like uninstalling and reinstalling a program. The drivers for your whole computer are right on the Gateway website." Best Buy has wifi all over there store, and the line had died behind me, so I said "Oh, well since you have wireless in here, do you mind if I just stand here and do it right now?" And they didn't kick me out... so I went online to Gateway to find the driver, and I couldn't find it anywhere. The guy who had helped me was checking on me when he walked by, and asked if I got it, and then he kept helping me every time he walked by.

I was trying to be very polite yet persistent, and I said once or twice "I really appreciate your help", tried to smile, etc. But by the time he fixed it and I left and I said "thank you SO much!" he totally wouldn't even smile at me. It's not his fault, I guess, he was following company policy and wasn't supposed to help me, but then he did anyway. I will definitely mention that when I review my laptop on the best buy website!

Hello all.

Doctor visit went fine with DSS yesterday, nothing wrong with him more than a minor cold if anything. He is back at school hale and hearty. I asked about the reflux - he took prevacid every day when he as a smaller child for reflux. The doctor said if it was reflux it would be more universal, not as selective as it seems to be. I didn't get any exercise in yesterday, and likely won't today either. MIL's birthday today so we are taking her out to dinner tonight after work. I didn't sleep well either, they started working on the house next door at 5:40 this morning. Ick.

Megan - glad they finally fixed it. I'm not surprised that they weren't going to, though. I've been given those same 'get the updated driver' directions from different places.

Pat - that shipping this is annoying. Tea is very light, they could definitely mail it for cheaper than that.

Jessica - be careful if you drive in bad weather tomorrow!

Dagmar - enjoy your concert tonight!

Michele - wow, I hope that they don't eliminate the librarian positions. That just doesn't seem like a good idea. Good job staying away from the food, though.

Jessica - congrats being down in weight for the physical!

Good day everyone.

Keep me away from the stress related snacking today... I need to sweep through my drawer with a big trash bag and just throw out everything that is a trigger food for when I'm tense.

Michele~I hope it all works out with your job. The crisis here in CA is bad! There are 140 teachers in one district here (out of 3 districts) that are facing layoffs. I remember years ago, when DD was in grade school, that we were having another crisis and they talked about cutting firefighters and closing all the parks. One of my friends suggested closing all the libraries instead?!?!?!?!? I was like, WHAT? But she thought it was more important to have parks rather than libraries. Well, as far as I'm concerned, we need them BOTH. In any case, we weathered that crisis with very few job eliminations. No parks or libraries were closed. I can't remember if there were cuts in firefighting, but I can't imagine there were.

So I'm sick to my stomach right now and it's not due to a bug or any food/texture related issues. Remember us taking that job in Washington state? Well, we're ready to file our first sales tax return and OMG! We certainly didn't anticipate this! It looks like we'll pay and ADDITIONAL $25,000 in taxes to that state than we had thought. They figure their taxes completely differently than here. Right now we have a meeting set up with our CPA to see if he can figure out an alternative, but I don't think there is much we can do legally. And it would look really bad if we went to our customer and said "oops, we goofed, we need to change the contract to add this in."

Meanwhile, our solar panels are installed and working (although we're still waiting for some final thing from So Cal Edison). The installers come by each day and record our meter readings and say that, even with a cloudy day, the usage is going backward. Basically, what we use during the dark hours gets reversed during the daylight hours. So at this point we're in negative electric use. As long as that continues in the summer when we use the AC so much, we'll be in good shape! Now we need to figure a way to get free gas and water! All the utilities here are starting to send out letters showing our usage, the neighbor's usage and the usage from some uber-conservative. For gas usage, the uber-saver is at 40, neighbors are at 99 and we're at 100. Not too much higher than the neighbors, but how on earth could we do 40? All our appliances are gas as well as water heaters. It's a good thing we didn't try heating our pool this year! That would have made us look really bad! As for water usage, we're again a couple points above the neighbors, but my MIL comes and does her laundry every weekend so she doesn't have to go to a laundromat. We don't waste any, but the stats make us look like we don't conserve at all.

Michele, you are so right about how some people don’t get. I’d bet odds the lady you talked to will regain her weight immediately. If her dr. isn’t helping her plan for off the shakes, it won’t work. And that she chose to “go off” while at the conference – eeks. It’s amazing how many co-workers ask me to “help” them but then they don’t listen that it’s a way of life, not a temp change.

Shannon, just out of curiosity, could DSS have a physical problem (narrow throat, cyst in throat, that makes swallowing difficult or painful)? BTW, I’m grasping here…

Jessica, why does your dr. have an evil scale that tells healthy weight people they are obese??? I’d think that would chase all their patients away. BTW we have a fluid trainer for our bikes and it is awesome. We got it on ebay for about $200.

Michele, do you have licensure for any other areas so you could bump into a different position? I know every budget year, our media specialist are on the chopping block. Certainly librarians and the library are expendable because reading isn’t important in our current education. Can you tell it is a pet peeve in my district. BTW, our district in Oregon is one of the few with media specialists – the rest have hired parapros to sit at the checkout desk and do nothing more. I’m sorry you’re going through this. As well as your letters, get parents involved to speak at school board meetings – our board seems to listen to the parents screaming whereas they ignore the employees.

Dagmar, welcome back to the wagon!!!!

Megan, your laptop is 30 days old and it doesn’t work and best buy won’t fix it??? Return it for you money back! That’s just wrong. You shouldn’t have to fix it yourself.

Pat, I’m surprised the tea company has never heard of USPS flat rate shipping boxes – they work in all 50 states. Customer service alive and kicking… There are days that I really miss the long ago “customer is always right” slogan instead of the current “how can we screw our customers to make every last cent”.

Alliston, wow on the tax problem. I hope your CPA can do magic!!!!

OK, clearly from my post I am in a sarcastic mood today. Sorry about that – tomorrow I shall be cheerful.

Marie - I'm feeling somewhat sarcastic today myself, so your post entertained me.

Allison - hope your CPA works out something on taxes. That is seriously aggravating.

No, they did fix it eventually - see my post above. But the guy at the store first gave me the run-around, saying they wouldn't. I wouldn't leave... finally he helped me, at no charge.

I had first talked to the customer service online and b/c I live so far from a store, they did say they would send me a brand new replacement. I'd already put a bunch of stuff on the computer so I wanted to try and fix it, rather than lose all the work I'd put into transferring files.

Megan, glad you got it fixed. I hate when the drivers I need aren't on the company websites!

Allison, that sucks about the taxes. I hope your accountant can work something out.

Pat, that is dumb about the shipping. Maybe in order to get it to Alaska it has to pass through Canada and through Canadian customs?

I did my final NRLW workout today!

DH went to the doctor for his physical today. He's been whining because he somehow managed to give himself plantar fasciitis (or however you spell it) doing ONE set of squats. And as usual, he's like, "See, I told you exercise just injures me, I will never get better!" In any case the doctor told him to do a stretch she showed him twice a day and take some anti-inflammatories, and he'll be fine. Hopefully he'll be back to working out and running soon. The exercise is really essential to his mood.

Nope, most things here come by air, including the US Mail! Heavy things, and stuff like non-perishable groceries, cars, furniture, etc. come by truck or barge (usually in the truck trailer). I think they're just quoting me the UPS minimum price.

Love you DH, Jessica! Jut like a man - go straight to the worst case scenario. "I'll will never get better"

Marie - I use flat-rate boxes all the time! They are wonderful. I go to a conference, put all the paper stuff in a box and send it home, don't have to lug it around, esp as I often go somewhere afterwards - someone already paid for the ticket out of Alaska, I just have to pick up the cost to wherever else I'm going.

Marie and others-- thanks for your cyber support. It means a lot. My back is all seized up with stress right now and the scale cooperated by jumping up 2 pounds this morning. I'm waiting to hear from my principal to see what she knows at this point. Our parent fund already funds much of my salary so the district would save very little $$ by eliminating my position. I am hoping there is enough money to cover what the district pays, but I'm not sure if that is an option because it has to be approved by the union as some schools have less parental support and it wouldn't be fair for my school to have a library/librarian and other schools to not. I have my dh checking job openings in his company. There aren't any because, of course, there are no job openings just about anywhere. But, he works for a large company so he'll keep looking. They had a couple of openings actually, but nothing that I would be qualified for. I am actually finishing my masters degree in library science soon but that will just make me more qualified for an obsolete position. Gotta go-- 5th graders are here!

Michele -- it's so crazy to me that they're doing away with librarian positions. It's such an important part of education! My goodness! I understand that they have to make cuts somewhere, but that just seems like an insane decision. They're making cuts in our county too, so it's a good thing I decided not to try to go back to teaching this year. I do want to go back at some point (when my son goes to preschool, I suppose), but I'm worried that I won't be able to find a job. I teach high school English. My husband teaches algebra and for right now his job is ok but you never know about down the road! He coaches cross country and track too, so that makes him a bit more useful to them, but still...it's scary, especially with me not working. And especially with crazy bills like this $1500 plumbing bill we just got yesterday! Ugh!

Because of all this money stuff, I really have to watch my stress eating. Also, being a SAHM is making it tough. When I taught, I couldn't eat all day because I was busy teaching! I find that I snack a LOT more when I'm home all day, but I'm trying to be more aware of it now. I don't want my son to see me eating all day and think that that's normal! Obviously I give him healthy snacks so I don't want him to think I hold myself to a different standard.

Megan - the race is at the end of March, so I most likely won't be ready to run the whole thing, but I'm ok with walking some of it. Unfortunately, we're getting so much snow these days that I'm not doing ANY running at all!!

Somehow the scale is going down even though I've been eating too much and not working out. I'm starting to believe my scale is just broken!

I'm doing lots of research on how to go vegan but I haven't made a full commitment to it yet. Right now I just haven't had any meat since January 7, but I've had plenty of dairy and now I'm trying to figure out how to give that up. Any vegan maintainers out there?

Here's another driver story.

Just before Christmas I sent the kids to Best Buy to get me a new wireless adapter for my desktop. The one I have was made by Microsoft about 8 years ago and I had been getting error messages, so I figured I should just get a new one since Microsoft didn't offer software upgrades as they don't make the product anymore. So, DD calls and says that we'd be better off getting a whole new system as the technology has improved...(too much technical stuff that I don't remember)...and I say go ahead.

So we get a new wireless hub thingy and get it hooked up on everyone's computer. Everything is fine and we're getting better results. So it's all good, right? I mean this is the LATEST technology--right?

Wrong.

For Christmas, the kids got enough $$ to buy new desktop computers--all spiffed out for their gaming that they like to do. The new computers come with Microsoft Windows 7 operating system. And then new modem hub thingy--made by Cisco--won't work. DD goes to the Cisco website to download new drivers and they've REMOVED the drivers that make the hub compatible with Windows 7. No word on why. No word on when they'll put them back up again. So DD had to get an ethernet cord to go from the hub to her room (DS is hardwired to the hub). So I'm the only one using the wireless...Screwy.

Ha! I emailed these folks yesterday and lo and behold, they responded and were receptive to the one rate box idea! My tea will be on the way soon.

So I'll put out a cautious recommendation for the The Tea Spot They have all kinds of tea, white, green, black and herbal, plus teapots and such. Best part is that you can get sample packs for $3 each. I'll let you know how it is.

TGIF!

Jessica, congrats on making in through NRLW! What's your assessment of the program? Did you make many gains?

We're getting ready for a snowstorm here. It's supposed to start around noon and give us 6 - 12 inches by tomorrow evening. So my plan is to go to the gym early and then the grocery store, hopefully beating the rush of everyone stocking up on milk and toilet paper. I have lots of projects to do at home this weekend, so it would be OK to be snowed in.

I'm going to try a new recipe today of red cabbage and apples cooked with balsamic vinegar. A few days ago, I made fish tacos that turned out really well. The dressing was Fage 0% yogurt, LF mayo, lime juice and spices, and it worked out to only 14 calories per tablespoon. It's good enough to use on a lot of different foods.

I'm guessing Allison and Megan will be getting lots of sunshine this weekend, but who else is going to get snow?

No snow here, but rain, rain and more rain. With a high of 40. Lovely. My son has a fever this morning, so I really can't go anywhere anyway. I have to watch the eating very closely today.