Reconstructing my address book

Among the things lost in our burglary was my desktop computer. On it resided my e-mail address book. I doubt that anyone is getting e-mail messages from our burglar--of course, if you are, let me know as the sheriff might find the source interesting--but you are not getting any e-mail from me either. And you won't, because the address list is gone.

So if you should be in my address book, please e-mail me so I can add your address.

The LinkedWithin "You might also like..." links are always a bit weird on posts like this one. I wish they could be turned off on an individual basis.

Some of the thoroughly bizarre things you have to do to prove you are you

So the bank sends me this letter (hubby didn't get one) about my having updated my address. They send it to your previous address. We did not update our address. We changed all of our accounts.

It's probably part of that, but getting such a letter after a home invasion is a bit unnerving and I am starting to crack. It has reached a piece of me that is not believing the "It's just stuff It's just stuff" mantra.

So they send you online and since I've not accessed this account online before, part of the process is sending an identity code to your phone number. The three numbers listed are way outdated. I choose none of the above. Clicking next brings me to the same page. The explanation says I can change it later but I have to choose one of these.

Hubby and I discuss at length and decide that before anything else happens they will let me change the number, so I choose an old work number and click Next.

They sent the code to that number. Naturally, I cannot proceed because they have sent this code to a number I have not had access to for a number of years.

So I call.

"In order to proceed we will  have to verify your identity using information from your public record not associated with your account." (Where did they get this public information--the same place that says I am in my twenties and have lived here with a roommate for three years?--BTW I am in my 60s and have lived with my husband for 43 years--35 of them in this house.)

Which of these three names are someone you have known? Three names are listed and I recognize none of them.

Which of these three vehicles have you owned or leased? Three vehicles I have never owned are listed and I tell the nice Indian gentleman this (no offense meant--he was A team).

So three more vehicles that I have not owned are offered and I tell him so.

"I am sorry ma'am, but I cannot verify your identity. Please go into your local bank branch to verify this."

I will go into my local bank on Monday, and they will get an earful.

a brief break while I sort out the house

We returned from a lovely workshop at the National Park to find that the house had been burgled--totally ransacked. I must admit that one might have looked before and thought it to have been ransacked already, but there is a definite difference between one's normal mess and having every drawer upended--even drawers we did not remember we had.

We've decided on a motel for the night. It will take hours just to put the bedroom to rights.

And now the good news:
I never take the laptop camping. Guess what? I took the laptop camping. I had some stuff to finish up. Heehee.
They apparently were not geek enough to recognize what an external hard drive is. It is there on my desk--ready to hook up to the laptop.
Heehee.
They did not seem to have any use for a sewing machine. All my machines are present and accounted for.

And all the things they DID take can be replaced.

And I thought the flat tire we had on Friday was annoying! A well.

I'll be back to Wales and London when I have sorted things out.

No you can't!

Well, it only took:
--several double checks that everything was connected correctly according to the quick set up guide
--four rereadings of the quick set up guide.
--a page by page examination of the complete 87 page guidebook
--trial by hubby
--test by myself
--another test by hubby
--another look at the two guides
--an hour on the phone to customer service during which hubby had to spell his name again for each of three techs as well as explain that the number he gave is a cell phone  because no we don't have a land line and here is our street address but we don't have mail delivered to it and he had to write down a new transaction number for each tech and check the connections on the back of the unit and what the plugs they were plugged into the TV said and try everything the a each of the remote controls did when you pushed each button for the first two
...
before a tech who gave his name as JR (which we are quite certain from his accent is more likely to stand for Jawaral Rajeev than John Robert) said, "No, you can't record from broadcast TV with that model."
...
which was the only VCR for sale in our whole area yesterday.

So we will miss Survivor when we go to the Community Concert tonight.

No, don't tell us. We'll try to watch it on the computer's slow connection sometime before next week.

I wonder if that is why we couldn't record from the old new recorder, either.

Update:
And there were no questions asked when he returned it becasue he was the third person this week returning one for the same reason.

So why didn't the person who sold it to us mention that, since a lot of people in this area use broadcast TV--no cable--no whatever else there is?

Further update:
Wishing to change the station, he asked me where the remote was. Since he had handled it last I told him that it was wherever he put it.

Which, it turns out, is in the box that he took back to the store, since the one for the TV and the one for the VCR that won't record look much more similar than the one for the old VCR and the TV did.

My middle name...

My mother's name was Jane.

My great grandmother's middle name was Jane.

There are other great greats on back through history whose names or middle names were Jane. Keziah Jane. Sarah Jane.

My daughter's middle name is Jane. Her daughter's middle name is Jane.

But apparently I have been Jan for forty of my years.

Social Security asked for documentation of name change so I dug up marriage certificate.

"I don't know why they asked for this, we already have you in here with your married name."

Further investigation.

Forty years ago when I changed my social security number from my maiden name to my married name, someone dropped the "e" in my middle name. Since the card just had my middle initial on it, I never knew.

Till today.

I did not abandon you Jane Christina, Lodusca Jane, Keziah Jane and all you other Janes.

I am Jane again.

So what do these things have in common?

They are all things I have not been able to find when I needed them even though I had just had my hands on them a day or two before.

Okay. Calm down Katney. Sit down, say a prayer, ask St. Anthony to pass along the good word.

And voila! While looking for the flash drive, I spotted the Social Security Card--right where I put it. (Too late to go take the census worker test--that might have been a fun job.) And then I sat down and picked up a piece of paper and there was the flash drive--right where I had put it. The book I had tracked down yesterday--also under something else. And, you guessed it--right where I had put it.

So where is my birth certificate?

I guess that's different. I haven't needed it since we applied for our passports twelve years ago. It's probably right where I put it.

I am sick and tired of the spam commenter idiots.

What part of "I will reject all  your idiot comments" do you not get? Can't you see? We don't want you to hang around.

Of course, you are just a stupid robot anyway. You could learn something from Data!

Sorry. Had to rant. Comments from real people with something to say are always welcome.

Update

Hope to be up and running to get Sunday's Psalm posted before the day is over tomorrow.

Oops update

I think I am halfway there. I have determined that I can't do anything for the laptop without losing any files I have on it. There are a few that it would be nice not to have to reconstruct and a few that would be impossible to reconstruct, so I will be enlisting the assistance of one of the family techies. Unfortunately, they all live at least three hours away, so that may be a while.

For the desktop, I bought a gadget that will allow me to access my modem through the USB port. Now all I have to do is figure out how to make it work.

And I have such lovely BBBBBBBBBBBBBs for ABC Wednesday, too. Well, maybe tomorrow.

Oops!

I'm posting from the library.

I have two computers. One has a minor hardware problem which prevents me from going online till I get it fixed. The other has been getting slower and slower and slower and finally informed me that I have a missing or corrupted file in my operating system. I have to find the system start-up disk and I don't know if I have it or if my son-in-law does.

So, basically, I will see you in a few days when I get one or the other of them fixed.

This is not today's sky

This was taken last Easter week at Mt. Rainier National Park.

~

Our Recent Skies in Poetic Form

~

Fog!

Dreary Fog!

Dismal dreary Fog!

Dismal dreary winter's Fog

which chills the toes and nose

and reaches its freeze deep into the bones.

Such a chill as strikes the psyche!

Such a chill and weary Fog!

Such a winter's Fog!

Dreary Fog!

Fog!

~

I've not been around to visit much. I have a project needing to be finished tomorrow. I am taking a class. I have chucked my chair out, as sitting in it at my computer has wreaked havoc on my joints--specifically my hip. I cannot sit, but in a straight backed firm dining chair it is becoming possible to do so for short bits. I have to move around--it caters well to my own brand of hyperactivity. It does not lend itself to skywatching. Nor does the fog.

~

To visit skywatchers who have actually seen the sky within the last week, find links here.

What's happening?

Is this happening to you?

I am apparently going to be able to post, but I am not able to visit any Blogger blog. I visited David's this morning, then when I went on to others. I got this:

I thought maybe it was something to dow ith the Following feature, so I tried other bookmarks. No luck. Since I had been able to see David's blog, I went back there by way of history. Got the same Google message.

I can visit blogs on other platforms. I can't even visit my own blogs.

My virus protection updated when I logged on this morning and I'm running an extra scan now. I deleted the cookies and temproary files.

Let me know if you can see this. If it's everyone, the Blogger has a serious problem. If it's me, then I have a problem. If I don't get any comments at all, then I will know that others are having a problem as well.

^^^^^^^^^
I had a bright moment and booted up the laptop. On the laptop I can reach my own blog. Either it is a problem with my computer or Blogger has fixed it. I would still like to have someone comment here so that I know you can see me.
~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, now I am back and functioning and still do not know what happened. In addition to deleting cookies and running the virus scan, I rebooted the computer. So, if this should happen to you, try the cookies first and try rebooting.
~
I would still like to know if this happened to anyone else today.

Oh, Dear!

I sat down after church to a blinking stand-by light on the power button which would not respond. It would not turn on or off. Cut power at the surge protector. Restored power after a bit and tried the on button (same button). No response. The fan runs.
-
I have hooked up the laptop, and will later take apart the tower and check for dust-bunnies. I last did a full CD photo back-up one year ago. I was just thinking about doing that the other day. I've also been thinking about getting an external hard drive like the one my brother has. he stores all his photos on it and it connects by USB cable. I think that now is the time.
-
My psalms and Odd Shots are set up for the next couple of weeks. I should be able to find some more pictures in that time.
-
How often do you back things up and how?

Awards

First posted on Friday and then the green and blue parts added on Saturday since I had to think before I could do them and sometimes that's hard.

You know something? If someone gives you an award, then you probably should remember who it was so you can say thank you. But then, I've been on four different excursions in the last ten days and it's hard to keep up. So you can imagine how crazy I was when, searching back for an award that I was told would come on Tuesday and then not finding it on Tuesday that I was so glad that when I went back a whole 'nuther Tuesday I found it--right there where I was looking for it. Whew! I was afraid I was going to have to go search every blog I'd ever seen from the UK as I remembered it came from a friend in that part of the world and I DID have the right friend after all.

So thank you Crazy Cath for the friendship which I value greatly, from Krazy Katney whose brain must be old today because great things come in multiples and someone else posted me an award and now I have to remember when and where that one was from. If retirement is like this summer has been then it will have to be called reTIREment.
~
Crazy Cath left no instructions for passing this along, so I will wait until I find the other one and contemplate them both together.

Okay, I have come back now after sleeping on it (well, for how many days? you may ask.) and I am ready to fling some bling. (You didn't knwo I could talk like that, did you?) I'm going to pass this on to three bloggers. I'm not flinging it back at Crazy Cath because that is obvious, but I am going to name three bloggers I think of as friends. Two in the Pacific Northwest and one in the UK.

I know Paulie is a friend because we have a lot in common and actually get together occasionally--well, twice in the last four years but we are going camping next week. We have some similarities in our faith and experiences. Paulie likes to walk and hike and is learning to knit. I like to walk and hike and if I don't learn to knit something other than hats with big fat yarn, well...everyone I know has a hat knit with big fat yarn--even Paulie. She's taking a blogging break for a bit, but I'm sure shell stop by and say "Hi, friend."

I feel like I know Inland Empire Girl, who also lives in the Pacific Northwest. I thought of her when we spent a day with the kids at the lake last week because it is closer to her neck of the woods. Speaking of woods, she's almost as fond of them as I am, but her camping trailer is bigger than mine--lol. I'd love to meet you in person sometime, IEG. Maybe we should go camping. BTW, let me know if you come to Mt. Rainier and I will meet you there.

Now I'm not likely to meet up with Liz real soon as my travel budget is questionable after retiring, but I would love to. I did travel to her neck of the woods once (which is Wales), more than 40 years ago. Oooh, I think I am sounding old. There is a fourth friend to bestow this on, too. George. If you stop by Liz's blog you will meet George. I would love to meet George and give him some wise advice.

I feel like I have made a lot of friends since blogging, but I will mention just these three for now--er, oops, four.

<>

I found it!

Thank heavens I found it. I was about to appeal to St. Anthony and I try not to bother him unless it is really important but it was. It was Starnitesky who gave me this award and it was just on Wednesday. The day before yesterday! Clearly my brain has retired. I hope it enjoys itself.

Ah, duh! She gave me this brilliante award right after I took her off the Odd Shots blogroll. Maybe if she had noticed that she would have reconsidered. But she hasn't done an Odd Shot for a couple of weeks and she can be back when she participates again and she's in my favorites and that means she's one of my--er--favorites. (Thanks, Starnitesky.)

~

This one has rules: 1.Put the logo on your blog;
2.Add a link to the person who awarded it to you;
3.Nominate at least five other blogs;
4.Add links to them on your blog;
5.Leave a message for your nominee on their blogs.

I have done the first two. I will let that brain refresh itself before I do nominees 'cause you know how well I could bungle that up while my brain is retired, Right! So I will deal with these tomorrow, okay?

Okay, it's tomorrow now. I have made a list of five. I have thought about it and contemplated and I would say that these five (and lots of others I visit) deserve this brilliante thing.

Michelle--Rocky Mountain Retreat--well, just look at that blog and you'll know why and it doesn't hurt that it has lots of mountains.

Leslie--The Pedalogue--Leslie seems to be really enjoying her retirement and I want to imitate that! Best of everything for your upcoming surgery, Les, because afterwards you will enjoy it even more. But I won't come play tennis with you--I tried that once.

Liz again at Finding Life Hard (can you do two to the same person at the same time is there some sort of blog law about that? If there is then phhhhht!)

Granny Smith at, well, Granny Smith, who should probably be in the earlier bling fling because she believes that blog friends are real not virtual. (Some might be virtuOUS, though, but I'm not sure.)

Then finally and always, Daryl at Out and about in NYC who says it like she sees it and is a fun and faithful blogger. (Hey, Daryl, we want more stories of Bridzilla.)

There, I've done my duty.

Okay so maybe...

My printer has been giving me grief--pulls the paper through only on one side and so misfeeds and can't print.

Okay, so it's one of those cheap ones that sometimes it's cheaper to get a new printer than to buy ink for it, but hey--sometimes that's where you gotta go. In fact, I just a couple of weeks ago invested my nest-egg in ink cartridges, as it's been telling me for three months that the ink supply is low. The first actual evidence that that was true was some websites that I printed out that were, to say the least, funny streaky nowhere near true colors.

But it hasn't gone completely blank yet, so the new cartridges are still in the bag with the receipt, and I should have no problem returning them.

So I am going to have to go either get another cheap printer, or actually cough up the dough for a good one that will last a while (if that's even remotely possible for one to last a while for me) and be considerably more environmentally friendly as I wouldn't have so many old cheap ones to discard.

So in today's e-mail is a coupon for my favorite office supply store for $10 on a $50 purchase (I used the last one that came on the ink cartridges!!) Excellent! I'll just print that off and have it handy when I go to town.

What is wrong with that statement?

I'll just print it off...

Arrrgh!!!

It's fixed!

I removed my Arrrgh! post, in case you saw it and wondered where it went.

Every attempt at commenting was closing down my browser. I had to open again, and many times tried rebooting. It took me most of Sunday to get it straightened out. Spyware! Curses!

Needless to say, I did only a bit of visiting and very little commenting on Sunday afternoon.

I may get back to everyone. Or I may not. Forgive me.

There goes the neighborhood.

This is what the view across our road has been like for the last fifteen years or so (weather permitting.) The mountain in the distance is Mt. Adams. A bit farther north is Mt. Rainier, but you have to get in the right spot to see it because of the tree.

Before the vineyard was put in, there was a plum orchard. You couldn't see the mountains because the trees were taller. You couldn't see the big city water tower because it wasn't built yet then.

~

One day I came home from school to see this. It was March 20.

March 22

April 4 (See what I mean about weather permitting.)

Hops are used to flavor beer. The Yakima Valley has always been the largest producer of hops. A number of years ago, breweries started using fewer hops. I don't know what that did to the flavor of beer--did you notice a chage?
~
Apparently, with the increase in designer brews and microbreweries, the demand for hops has increased.

~

April 8

Hops grow as a vine on a trellis. Commercially, the trellises are a series of poles wired together with strings for the vines to climb.

~

April 9

This is taken from down the road to show the extent to which the hop yards are going up in this area. From this road to the next road is one mile. From our road to the next one over toward the water tower is one mile. There are approximately six houses in that square mile. The rest now looks like this.

There are many more houses on our side of the road. We have one neighbor behind us. When I got home tonight I realized that the work behind our property had progressed much farther than I had realized. Farther in more ways than one. The work is farther in time, and it is right up behind our neighbor's property.

~

As I say, there goes the view. There goes the neighborhood.

~

We have many friends who have been hop growers in the past. Most of them have retired. Looks like we now have neighbors who are hop growers. Looks like we will have a window on the progress of the hops.

Oh, dear! What can I do?

I was halfway home when I realized--my camera is sitting on my desk. I won't be back at school until Thursday. Should I turn around and go back for it? That doesn't seem practical at this time of the day. The traffic will have increased in town. (It was the in town half that I had already traveled.)

I will never wear something without pockets again. Well, that is not terribly practical, either. My new camera fits into my hip pocket and that is how I generally have it always with me. My larger camera is usually not too far away. I keep it at school, taking it with me if I have plans for the weekend.
~
So how can I show you the quilt that is the valley at this time of year. The last couple of days, the cherry blossoms are out. Other orchards are in various states of new leaf, but not yet in bloom.

~

Here is what it looks like right now.

Yeah, sure! but you get the idea.

~

Later on down the highway I saw two semis with flatbed trailers carrying small cabinlike buildings. The structures were not just part of a mobile. They were a whole building--not more than the width of the trailer and slightly longer. I wish I had a picture. But here! This is what it looked like:

Sort of.

~

Once I got close to home I remembered once again that something is going on across the road. You may remember this from a while back. It is the view across the road from our front yard. The city water tower and Mt. Adams in the distance beyond the vineyard.

That's how it did look. Now the vineyard as well as the orchard north of it are being removed. It looks something like this.

Well, no it really doesn't. But the grapevine posts have been pulled and the vines are laying on the ground more or less at that angle. The view is good--now. No vines in the way. But what is going in there? I hope not hops which have gone in farther down the road. The market for hops, which has been down for several years, is up again. Hop trellises are tall. If that is going in, there goes the view!

Today

See that spot that the arrow is pointing to? That is what I discovered when I woke up this morning--about fifteen minutes after the alarm was supposed to wake me. I had opened one eye about half an hour earlier and read the time on the clock radio. The clock radio does not wake me on work mornings. It wakes my husband--or doesn't, as the case may be--he's retired. And it wakes us both up on weekends--or not, as the case may be. It is, after all, a radio, and music soothes the savage beasts.

.

The battery alarm clock wakes me up for work. Or at least it does when it has a battery in it. Where is the battery?

.

arrrrghhh!!

.

Do you suppose that should have been a sign that this was not going to be an ordinary day? Should I have rolled over and said "NO! NO! NO WAY!!!"

.
I had been asked yesterday when I was going to retire, and gave the standard answer--when my car quits taking me to work, so either in two weeks or when I am 112. That is my answer because I have no answer. I am not ready to retire and I don't know when I will be ready to retired. It is also my answer because of this:

I took this picture a couple of months ago because I liked the palindromic nature of the odometer reading. It has occurred to me since then that the odometer reads as a palindrome about every hundred miles or so, then skips a bit because the thousand changes, then goes every hundred or so again for a while. It has been a palindrome about twenty times since I took this picture. It was a palindrome again today, but I've quit taking pictures of my palindromic odometer. BTW, I did pull over to take this picture. I was not going 70 mph down the freeway when I took it.

.

But the point, you see is that one day, either in the next few weeks or when I am 112, this car is going to quit taking me to work. At over 300,000 miles, it could be sooner than later.

.

But it took me to work this morning, and it did not object at all, and I thought things were back on a normal plane.

.

Is there ever a normal for a school teacher--especially a school librarian? This week has been book fair week, so there has been nothing normal about it.

.

But even for a book fair day, there were some strange occurrences.

.

As I was bringing my library cart back down the hall from visiting a class, a glance in the art room and--Sh. helping with an art project. This volunteer no longer has kids at the school, and I hadn't seen her in months. It seems strange to see her at the school today. At least I thought it was strange. After school, with the library full of last day of book fair shopping kids and parents, things slowed down for a minute and I look across the room and there was Sa. Last year in the fall, Sh. and Sa.'s mom had been my book fair volunteers who planned the whole thing--all I had to do was show up. I thought it had been strange seeing Sh. But Sh. still lives in town. Sa.'s family moved away last spring...

.

to Pakistan!

.

Yikes!

.

I didn't say everything was bad today. Just everything was--well, pretty intense. You see, after I had seen Sh. and before I saw Sa. there was recess. A dozen little kids were back with their zip lock bags full of coins to see if they had enough for just one more--whatever--from the book fair. So I was ringing up one such sale on the cash register provided us for the fair, and got an error message, and eventually figured out that it was out of paper, and I loaded the paper. Well, first I pushed every button on the machine, turned it off and on a few times, and said one or two things but not aloud.

.

arrrrgh!!

.

I then cleared the room. There is absolutely nothing you want to do less with an audience of first through third graders than figure out a frozen cash register.

.

Three different people at the book fair company told me how to load the paper. I had done it right the first time. Then one of them gave me the number of the cash register company--where they told me how to load the paper. Thank you. When I assured them that the paper was loaded and it still didn't work, that it didn't even light up any more, they asked me if I tried another outlet.

.

arrrrgh!!

.

I guess I shouldn't expect them to understand how old the building is and where the outlets are and why I have to string a long extension cord over the door to the counter to run this thing in the first place. Can you try another outlet? Well, to do that I will have to take it somewhere. I looked behind the book fair cases and decided that the easiest way to check this for them--because after all, I knew that my outlet/extension cord/power strip arrangement was fine but they would not tell me anything else until I had checked--I took it to the art room and tested it.

.

No. It doesn't work in the art room either.

.

Sounds like it's broke.

.

arrrrghhhhh!!!

.

So they told me how to get the drawer open mechanically and I did and eventually shook all the coins out of there that had gone to all sorts of strange corners of the machine when I turned it over to find the release lever. And I went and borrowed a cash box and a couple of calculators and made copies of the tax chart and all of this was done before all the kids got out of school and they and their parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts and little brothers and little sisters and a few teachers as well arrived to do their last chance at this year's book fair shopping. And one of my sale volunteers even showed up. And it was all over but the shouting when the packing up volunteers came and we had everything ready to go back to the warehouse in less than an hour.

.

Sigh!

.

And I even got to talk to Sa.'s mom, who told me how they had organized a book fair at their school in Pakistan and it was good, and the kids didn't want to go back and she'd be really happy if they moved back here and that Z. (Sa.'s brother) says this is the only school he ever wants to go to.

.

And when all the money was counted up and the library put back into not quite itself but a good facsimile and everything was ready for the truck to pick up in the morning and I went to put the money in the locked cabinet, I had lost the key to the locked cabinet again.

.

Sigh!

.

It was the fourth time this week. And the only time I ever lock the cabinet is when there is book fair money in it. And I couldn't find the key at all.

.

Sigh!

.

So I give up and head out to the car and open it and put some things in the back and some things in the front and some things in the trash and WOW!! I get to go home! So I reach for the ignition and there are no keys. And I search my purse and empty it and I search my basket and empty it and I search my pockets, and I search the ground and I search the car and I search....

.

Arrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!

.

And I searched all these places again and I searched them one more time and I did pray to St. Anthony BTW early on in the search and later in the search and in between the searches and I knew they had to be within a few feet of me. And I gave up. And it was not the first time today that I was ready to cry.

.

I took my purse, and closed the door to go ask Mr. L if I was nuts, and

I looked there. Really I did. Three times.