Holly’s Happenings

I tell you, the past 13 or so hours have been the longest 13 hours of my life…LOL! I was sitting here at my computer last night around 8 or so when the news guys broke into the regular programming warning about some very strong storms that were heading right for our area. As I sat there and watched them talk about the storms, they jumped in telling the people that live in the area that my mom does that they need to take cover ASAP that the winds with this storm had registered near 100 MPH and there was rotation forming in the clouds. I quick called her to make sure she knew what was going on, which she didn’t because she was driving and not at home, so it was a good thing that I called her.

Within minutes after calling her, we got hit with the heaviest rain I’ve seen in a very long time. From the kitchen window I could see that the rain was coming down in at least 2 different directions and it was coming down so fast and heavy that I couldn’t even see across the side yard out to the trampoline. The weathermen then came on the TV and said large hail was being reported in areas close to mine so at that point I decided that I needed to wake my husband up because he was asleep in the recliner directly in front of the sliding glass door. Good thing I woke him up when I did because within minutes the sliding glass door became a flood zone.

The door was installed not too long before we moved in here and they never completely finished the installation. I was thinking what was unfinished was more cosmetic than anything, but I discovered last night that the top of the door was never sealed when the rain started pouring in through the crack at the top of the door. Thankfully I save the 2 1/2 gallon buckets that we buy ice cream in, so I started putting those under the “streams” of water that were coming in. But there were so many that it was basically impossible to catch everything, so I ended up with an inch or so of water covering a good part of the floor out here. We were grabbing sheets, blankets and towels to try and at least stop the water from running to other parts of the room.

After the storm finally passed and we got all the water back on we discovered that although we never lost power somehow the DVR had shut itself off and reset. I figured if we just kept hitting the continue option everything would be OK, boy was I wrong…LOL! We ended up having to call the satellite company to get things figured out, but thankfully they were really nice about it and were able to fix it fairly quickly.

When I finally sat back down at my computer I went to open a website and all of a sudden my computer went whacko! Before I knew it I had over 40 tabs open in my browser and the browser wouldn’t shut down by clicking the “X” or by the task manager, so I had no choice but to restart it. When it was powered back up I ran my anti virus/anti spyware program to find out that I had a total of 3 different “worms” on my computer. Excuse me, HOW did my computer get worms on it? I don’t visit odd sites, I go to the same sites over and over again. It was apparent that while I was gone on my trip someone had went somewhere on this computer that I wouldn’t have approved of.

So, at about 10 or so last night I started going through a step by step guide that included downloading 5 other programs in order to try and remove the worms from my computer. My own antivirus/antispyware program would not remove them, no matter what I did, and this was a guide that I had used once before on the kids’ computer with success, so I decided I’d do it on my own computer, hopefully with the same success.

To make a long story short, it did work, but it ended up taking nearly 5 hours to get everything ran. Yes, I could have put it off until this morning, but I also knew that the kids had an appointment this morning and I also didn’t want to shut my computer down knowing what was wrong with it, so I was up until a little after 3 AM.

My hubby tried to wake me up before he left for work, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I told him just to set the alarm for 9 and I’d get up then, what a HUGE mistake that was! When I got up with the alarm, I walked out to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee and noticed a “puddle” in the family room. My first thought was that the puppy had an accident before hubby left for work and he didn’t realize it. It would have been nice if it were that simple. When I got out to the family room I realized it was raining really hard again and the sliding door was once again leaking! So, off I went to try and scramble up some more towels or sheets or anything I could find, this time it was running down the door, so buckets weren’t going to catch it.

NOT the way I wanted to start my day, hopefully it gets better, but I have a feeling I’m going to get a stern lecture from the kids’ doctor this morning over an argument I had over the phone with his nurse. Oh well

Hi everyone and Happy Easter to those that celebrate it! It’s not been the best of days here in my household, I almost wish I could just go back to bed to get the day over with!

It all started this morning a few minutes before 7:00. I woke up to my 12 year old waking me up to say “I’ve been up for a while and I’m bored, can I get on the computer”? EXCUSE ME?!?! You are going to wake me up after a night of heck just to ask if you can get on the (*#@&$(*@#& computer? Sage was waking up at that time as well, so I’d have been up eventually, but that just did not sit right with me at all!

I get up and take Sage outside, come back in and start coffee. Although I’m not in the best of moods I try to get the day going as best as I can. The coffee finally finished and I sat down with my first cup and took a drink and all of a sudden was hit with this HORRIBLE pain in my mouth. It was soon very obvious that I was missing a fairly large part of one tooth. I did have part of the filling fall out a couple of days ago and planned on calling the dentist Monday morning, but obviously the tooth wasn’t going to cooperate until Monday. The pain was almost unbearable!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was soon to find out that every single one of my websites were down. Apparently the company that I have them hosted through has been moving some of their servers and rather than give the people who pay their salaries notice via a simple email, they decide to be lazy bastards and only post the info on their status page. Making the people who pay for their service go through hell and back trying to find out what’s going on. I sang their praises after a major mistake they made a couple of months ago, but I’m seriously considering moving now. Their inability to openly communicate with their customers is unacceptable to me. If you know that you are going to do something that will take my site(s) out of service, even for a moment, give me the courtesy of letting me know ahead of time! That way, if I happen to have a morning like I did today, at least I know ahead of time what’s going on!

I’d love to just go back to bed, but I have a TON of stuff I need to get done today, so it’s not an option. So if I come across as rude or witchy today, I apologize ahead of time!

From the moment we woke up this day went down the tubes and it hasn’t come close to coming out of them yet.  When we woke up this morning I went to get water for coffee and there was no water coming out of the tap.  Fortunately I had some water in a jug, so I made coffee from that.  My hubby went downstairs in the crawl space to see what was going on and found that the water pump was hotter than all get outs!  So he unplugged it in hopes that if it cooled down all would be well.  I guess thinking that it would be something simple was simply too much to ask because almost 9 hours and a brand new water pump later, we still have no water.

The worst part is the fact that when the old pump was disconnected, there was no water in the lines at all, which is making my husband wonder if maybe the well has gone dry?  But with what we know about water pumps and wells, if the well had gone dry we would have had some sort of indications before the water just completely running out.  I don’ t know what’s going on, but what I do know is that not being able to use the bathroom SUCKS!  LOL

Well, we just got some news, and although it’s awesome news it also bums me out!  We knew when my husband took this job a few months ago that there was the chance that he would get a contract that would make it necessary for him to go out of town for a week or more at a time.  One of his bosses just showed up and they need him on one of their contracts starting tomorrow.  It means that he’ll have to meet at the shop at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow morning and that he won’t be home until Friday night or Saturday.

The pay is awesome, and they do pay for his hotel and food while he’s there.  But I’m still going to miss him TERRIBLY!  I have a hard time sleeping when he’s not home, we proved that a few years ago.  And Halloween is this week, that’s his favorite holiday and I won’t get to spend it with him.  Very trivial things, I know, but I can’t help it.  He’s been a part of my life for over 17 years now and I honestly am completely lost without him!

So be prepared, I’m going to be doing TONS of whining and crying this week!

I’ve been working for my current boss for more than 2 years now, although not always working in the shop. For the first nine months that I worked for him I ran a cleaning business that he was trying to get off the ground. But he and I both learned many things from that business and eventually we simply had to close it down. After we closed down the cleaning business I went to work for him in his commercial lawn equipment shop. The property that the shop is on actually has 2 large buildings and to help make the payments he rented out the other building. But the tenants shut their business down and the other building has been sitting empty since April. Although he’s advertised the building for rent, the only serious inquiry he’s had is from someone that wanted to sell body shop supplies, but they had a HUGE list of demands wanting him to remodel the other building, and he isn’t willing to do that. So unless he finds someone to rent the other building by the end of the year, come January 1, 2008, he’s closing up shop and I’ll be out of a job

If you read my post from yesterday you know that we’re going through the process of getting ready to move.  The hope is to be completely moved by next weekend, but I’m still not sure if that will happen.  There were a few other things that “happened” yesterday that left me in a completely stressed out state of mind by the end of the day.  When I shut down for the night last night I was so frazzled that I forgot to turn off the fan that sits in the window by my desk.

This morning, when I went to turn my computer on, it wouldn’t start.  The fan would turn on for a split second then nothing, it did this over and over again, before it finally started to power up.  But the first time it acted like it was going to power up, it didn’t, it just sat there with the main fan on the computer running in turbo mode.  So I held the power button down and shut it down.  I went back through the steps with the fan kicking in for a split second then nothing for quite a while, to the point that I was bawling uncontrollably.  I have so much info on this puter and I was just sure that my mother board had finally given up and I was going to lose everything.

Finally, in the midst of my bawling breakdown, the computer finally completely powered up and started.  My only thought is that because I left that fan on last night, and it was a cool damp night, somehow moisture got into the computer.  It’s running now, obviously, but the main fan for the computer never did come on, meaning the problem is more than likely the power source.  I ran to Walmart this morning and grabbed some burnable CD’s and I’m going to back up all of my files.  But let me tell you, that’s NOT the way to start the day!  So if I’m not around for a while, you know my “lovely” Gateway finally took a dump!

OK, I love my puppies, I honestly do, but what I don’t love is how they chew things up! I have all kinds of bones and toys for them to chew on when they get the urge to chew, but for some reason the just don’t understand that my husbands work shoes aren’t chew toys.

As you just read, we spent a good part of today car shopping. We didn’t think we would be gone very long so we didn’t put Willow in her cage. Willow, at 7 months old, is the youngest of our three dogs. She’s a good dog, but we know that if we’re going to be out of the house more than a hour it is in our best interest to put her in her cage. When we got home from the car dealership we found my husbands work boots lying in the middle of the living room with the insides completely torn out of them and chewed up. To say the least, he wasn’t a happy camper! Those boots were only a few months old and no where near needing to be replaced.

Thankfully MetBoots.com offers many brands of high quality workboots at really decent prices! On top of that they offer free shipping on all orders over $100. And since they offer many types of shipping, including next day, when he orders his new boots at least they will arrive quickly! Thank goodness for that because he has to go out of town and work the end of next week!

My daughter just came home from spending 4 days with her grandmother.  Being the typical kid that she is, she didn’t do what she was supposed to do, and left her suitcase downstairs.  A little while ago I heard her say OH MY GOD, to which I ran to see what was going on.  It appears as if the dogs liked the smell of her clothes and decided to rummage through them.  While rummaging through the clothes they found her prescription for her ADD meds and proceeded to not only tear the bottle open but also destroy the medication that was in it.  Thankfully it doesn’t appear as if any of the medication was actually swallowed, but it was chewed and drooled on bad enough that there is no way it can be taken.  We’re only into the 2nd week of this prescription which means we have at least 2 more weeks before the insurance will cover another prescription, and this medication is new enough that the drug suppliers aren’t giving out samples, which means I can’t get a couple of weeks worth of samples from the doctor.  And in the financial situation we’re in right now, we can’t afford to replace them.  Normally it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but she starts school on Wednesday, and there is NO way she can go to school without her meds.  So, I’m not sure what I’m going to do.  I’ll contact the doctor and the insurance company tomorrow and see if they’ll help any.  I do have the option of putting her on her old medication for a couple of weeks, which isn’t that bad of a thing I guess.  But please remind me again why I have dogs AND kids…LOL!