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A tumble

I visited a friend yesterday, which turned out to be a wonderful day except for one little incident. I fell down a set of 4 or 5 concrete steps. Scared my friend when I hit my head, hard enough to bend my glasses and pop them off. No really bad damage, interestingly enough. The pain from the lump on my head was gone (unless I touched the area) in about 10 minutes, and I had no signs of a concussion. Mostly what I have is a sore knee, hip, and shoulder, plus scratches and cement burns on my hands, wrists, forearms, and left shoulder. I've hurt my head worse, and I've gotten worse (if not more) scratches going through thorns. I'm a bit stiff today, but that seems to be the only leftover effect, as long as I don't poke at any raw scratches or the last lingering soreness on my forehead.

I was taking a step down, but didn't know the step was higher than normal, so I toppled forward. That, I remember, and I remember smacking my head on the ground and losing my glasses. (In fact, my first act was to grab my glasses before my frantic friend stepped on them.) I don't recall the few seconds between, when I did the actual falling. Or rather, tumbling, because according to her, I didn't fall so much as rolled down the steps. Anyway, I got back up, only a little shaky, and I continued my visit with my friend and had a wonderful time.

Being 68 years old, I am at the edge of that age when a fall usually means a broken hip, hospitalization, surgery, nursing home, and death by pneumonia. So despite the scrapes and bruises, I'm rather pleased that I got out of that so easily.

Weather

Buckling down for a very cold week. Highs in high 20s, lows in mid-20s through Sunday, with snow, sleet, and freezing drizzle. Then it gets bad. Sunday night low, 12. Monday high 16, low 4. (No, those aren't typos.) After that, we still have snow and freezing rain, but with a high of 27 for Tuesday, and then it goes into low 30s, with lows in the low 20s again.

This is an old house with no outside insulation and lots of cold spots, so I'll be bundling up. It's chilly in the 20s, but not too bad - I'm just worried about Sunday and Monday nights. I can pile blankets on, but there's little I can do for the animals. They are, of course, all inside, with soft beds and each other to sleep on. The birds are covered with blankets. I hope that's enough.

I realize that much of this country is much worse off than I am. I'm just whining. At least Randi's still warm in the hospital.

Catching up, version April 2020

Things are still going on in my life - someday I'm going to have to post the Adventures of Kitty-kitty - but of course everything seems to be swallowed up by The Virus.

Texas is re-opening retail stores, starting tomorrow (I think). We'll be the first, and I figure we'll be a shining example of what not to do.

Most of the cases are centered around the big cities, as you'd expect. We're 50+ miles from Dallas, but we still have 38 cases and 2 deaths so far.

If you're wondering why I'm writing this at all, it's so y'all will know I'm still alive and well.

CV update

We now have 5 cases in our county.

COVID 19 coming closer

The pandemic is creeping toward us. A woman in a nearby town has come down with it, and one of Randi's wound care nurses was exposed and is waiting in quarantine for her test results.

Coronavirus

Up to yesterday, COVID 19 has been a news article to us. Scary, but remote. However, yesterday it came home to me. Luckily, not yet in the form of illness. The local Dollar General is out of toilet paper and paper towels (I still don't get that craze), and the local hospital locked all entrances except two, the ER and the front lobby. There's a station and staff at those two areas asking about flu symptoms, and they've drastically reduced what visitors can enter. I took Randi there for a Wound Care appointment, and the only reason they let me into the place to wait for her was because I was her ride and her caretaker.

A thousand!

This is going to sound trivial, but it's huge for me.

For the first time in my entire life - and I'm 67 years old - I broke $1000 in my savings account. Woohoo!

Roses and Thorns

Long ago, when writing Path of the Dragonfly, I wrote a few "stories" (side stories and back stories) which filled out some of the lives of my characters. Not Shak, who prefers being overlooked, but Sefal, Arla, Celia, and Falin. There's a lot of romance in the stories, but that isn't all they are.

The day before yesterday, someone on Facebook mentioned Lulu, a self-publishing website, and I remembered I had an account there, from long, long ago.

So I went there and, impulsively, I put those stories into a book. It's not for distribution, only for me, family, and a few friends. In two days, I formatted the stories and made a cover. I called it "Stories from the Vale: Roses and Thorns". I should get a proof copy in a week.

I'm still a bit stunned that I did it. Oh, well, Randi is thrilled, and my brother wants to read them, so... I didn't waste my time. Besides, it was fun.

Frustration for lunch

After breakfast, around 1:00, I started working on getting the new phone accounts set up and the new phones ordered for Randi and me. I had a struggle with the AT&T website (navigation sucks). Randi was told by two customer service reps that the $40 discount on the Nokia applied to the plan we wanted - it didn't. Finally made my way into the whole non-user-friendly registration process and was asked for my account number with Virgin Mobile.

It got interesting then, as well as frustrating. I needed my account number, and could not find it. I spent about half an hour trying to dig deep enough, on the website and on my current phone, without ever finding it. VM had no help service online except for a short list of (useless) FAQs. However, digging into my settings on the phone, I found a link to call customer service. Called, went through menu after menu, gave up, called again and this time punched 0 in the "main" menu. Got a person, who transferred me to another person. And guess what? They had the nerve to ask me why I wanted the account number. Since they obviously knew why, I gave them the truth from the hip - I was switched to Boost, don't want to be with Boost, was sorry to lose Virgin, but I was going to another carrier. Their attempt to change my mind was short-lived, so I made my point and got my account number. Then I repeated the phone call part of it to get Randi's number for her.

After that, it went smoothly. But...

Recently I was offered a cash-back rewards upgrade to one of my credit cards. The letter stated that, until my new card arrived, I could continue to use the old one. They lied. While searching for the stinkin' account number, I found an email saying my card had been declined for an Amazon purchase. I literally went into the living room and screamed until my throat hurt. After I calmed down, I just changed the method of payment on Amazon, but I wonder now if my stuff will actually be shipped.

After that, I tried to print a 1040 for Randi. It didn't print. Ran out of black ink. I put in a new cartridge. No matter what I did, and I did lots of things involving alignment pages, the ink didn't print. Finally figured out the cartridge was the problem. Randi happened to have an extra cartridge, and once I put that in, all was well.

But by the time I finished all this shite, it was 5:30 and I still had no lunch.

Some days it's best not to get out of bed.

New phone to come

A little background: I have only had a smart phone for a short time. I resisted it, but I need one so we can get a safe-driver discount on our car insurance. I've been with Virgin Mobile since I got my first cell phone. (I resisted that, too, but I was doing a lot of driving alone at night.) Then, a week or so ago, with absolutely no warning, Virgin informed me they weren't doing phones any more and that my account had been sent to Boost.

I'm still angry about the lack of warning.

Randi spent 8 years working with cell phones, sales and activations, at Walmart. She knows a lot more than I do, partly because of her experience, and partly because I just hate phones in general - I always have, even as a young girl - so I never worked with them. Right off, she said Boost had a bad reputation. I had already noticed that my two friends here in town could get reception where I couldn't, and that didn't change. Virgin used Sprint towers, apparently Boost does as well, and of course Sprint is having problems.

For once I did the smart thing. Randi and I loathe Verizon, so our options were limited. I decided to ask my two friends who get that good reception here. Both of them have AT&T.

So pretty soon, within the next few days, I'll probably be on AT&T. I'm going to replace my aged LG phone for a new one, probably a Nokia. No doubt you will hear lots of bitching from me as I try to wrestle it into submission, i.e., get it to work like I want it to. It's going to take some adjustments, as it'll be bigger than my LG and it'll do a lot more. And it'll have a SIM card. Scary.

It is one of the odd and funny facts about me that I was always able to program a VCR, and that I was something of a computer guru in the offices I worked in, yet I struggle to do anything on a phone, even something simple like create a contact list. Randi does it all for me. But then I load all her software and update her virus protection. :)

Greenspell arrived

My copies of the paperback version of "Greenspell" (my collection of short stories) arrived yesterday. I was silly-excited, I admit it. There's a kind of wonder when I hold one of my own books in my hands.

I'd forgotten how small a book it is. I keep calling it my "Little Book".

DNA - launched

Got my DNA kit, and sent it off already.

DNA

I've been contemplating doing one of those DNA tests for about a year now, but for a reason that might be considered frivolous. My (beloved) grandmother used to claim she had Cherokee blood in her line, and I always wondered if that was true or just a family myth.

Today I finally gave in and sent for the kit. What a way to start the year, right?

2020

Happy New Year's Day, everyone. A big wish for a more peaceful, joyful year ahead.

Friends!

Facebook has given me something good - friends here on Dreamwidth!

Impeached

I don't normally discuss politics (or religion either), but I will say this once, on this historic day - I loathe and detest that creep in the White House, and I hate and fear the way the division between the two parties has become so solidified. So I don't hope that he'll be ousted by a Republican-led Senate, but... this is a day of glee for me. Yup.

Nano 2019

I forgot to mention - I did 50,588 words and won Nano! I finished the last of them at 10:00 PM, so two hours to spare.

A horsey experiment

Magic went through the fence again. She destroyed it! I know because the pair who keep horses on Betty's property (Hannah and her apparently nameless boyfriend) came to tell us they were fixing the fence and showed us pictures. A lot of talking passed, but the upshot is that we're going to leave Magic over there permanently. She's getting along fine with the other horses, and with grass and hay all day, a change in her grain won't hurt her. She'll miss her molasses and carrots and apples, I suppose. But she'll be happier with a herd.

I'm 67 - Hey, I made it this far

I've had a lovely birthday morning. Randi came up with a cool idea - she decorated a small 3-ring binder and got the inserts, the idea being that I can easily carry it with me and use it for jotting down story ideas, especially at our brainstorming sessions. She got me a gorgeous aqua Cross pen, and a cool flash drive (it's in a tin box with a "window", and it looks like a mini perfume bottle!) to go with it. She also got me something I really, really need - warm socks that I can wear with my Crocs. And not white! (I really don't like white socks.) They're all crazy sorts of patterns.

So I'm starting out this day in a great way.

First day of Nano 2019

I'm launching into an experiment. It's a Vale story with multiple protagonists' stories woven into a civil war. There are at least 10 storylines. Am I nervous? Ha. It's Nano. The worst I can do is crash and burn. Actually, the worst I can do is not try it!