Steve got home from camping. He had fun with his buddies, but the weather wasn't exactly conducive to good grouse hunting. Who would have thought it would be 85 degrees in Northern Wisconsin in the middle of October? After the heat it rained, so I don't imagine it was much fun. He did get one grouse though.
I canceled my surgery. I just haven't felt well enough to really want to have surgery, no matter how minor it is. Yesterday was a very painful day, but I think part of that was because I had to go to the hospital again to work and carry my computer in and out - the desktop CPU, not a laptop. That dang this is freaking heavy! When I got it home for the second time this week it still wasn't working. I have to take it back on Monday. Note to Marc: I could ping everything I tried, but something in the firewall was still blocking access to the internet. Friday after I brought it home I called out IT department and spent 2 hours on the phone with them. We finally got the internet to work, but had to restart the computer - when it started up, it lost all the changes that had been made. Back to square one. So they told me to uninstall the firewall. Big Mistake. Back to the Hospital on Monday. Grrrrr.
Today there was a craft show at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs. They had a bigger show than usual. I love going over there for the shows. The craft fair they have at the Qwest Center is 6 bucks to park (well, it's free for me with my handicap sticker) and then 6 bucks to get in. That's kind of spendy - 12 bucks before you even get in the door! At MAC it's 4 bucks to get in, no fee to park, and they have coupons for a dollar off in the newspaper. What a deal. I got a couple things, but their Christmas presents, so I can't tell... I love craft shows though.
After the craft show we went to Jason's Deli. Mel, Adam, and I ate there last Sunday after we went to some estate sales. Yummy. I decided to share my new find with Steve, so we stopped there on the way home. Good food. I had a salami and ham po' boy and a fruit cup. Steve tried a turkey guac panini with pepper jack cheese. They were both - in Marc's words "tasty". We'll have to go there again. One thing that impressed me was how good the fruit was. Usually by October fruit may look good, but tastes like cardboard, this fruit was good and sweet, more like middle of the summer fruit. There were a 3 giant strawberries, cantaloupe, and grapes. Good, very good!
We came home and I grabbed a quick nape before we headed out to our October Dachshund Anonymous meeting. We met at Bone Jour doggie daycare that's located next to our humane society. They have a huge fenced in area, so we let the dogs run and spent some time socializing with other dachsies' humans. There were at least 40 people and about 50 dogs. The weather wasn't the best and it started raining after about an hour, so we cut it kind of short, but we had a good time. This time Toby and Ben went with us. Toby had great fun with a couple of the dogs, barking and running with them. We had taken his cart, of course, so he was in 7th heaven. Ben kind of likes to stick close to mom, but even he had fun sniffing and wandering around the giant play area.
Now we're back home and we'll probably stay put for the evening. It's raining again and we're supposed to have rain through tomorrow. Poo! Later...
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Humpday dumpday
My work computer started screwing up last night, so I ended up taking my PCU up to Fremont this morning and working there for about 6 hours while they "fixed" it. Then I got home and set it back up, no internet. For some reason it won't connect with the internet. I'm so frustrated. It seems like every time I have to take the computer up there they fix what's wrong and then something else is screwed up. I do NOT want to drive up there again tomorrow. One of the MIS guys says maybe they can get into my computer tomorrow remotely and fix it. Whatever. I bet I end up driving up there again. Crap. I don't mind the drive, or working up there. Actually the part I hate is carrying the darn thing from the parking lot and back. My handicap sticker is in my car, in Wisconsin... Doesn't do me a lot of good here. Since I had mom's car today I figured no one would not it was an employee's car, so I parked in the visitor lot. (heh) The IT department at the hospital is in the basement, I'll be darned if I'll carry the thing up and down stairs, I make somebody come up for it. I have no clue what the problem is now. Funny thing though, about 6 weeks ago I noticed that I couldn't get the internet until I logged into the VPN for the hospital. The tech guy today insisted that I can't get in to the VPN without being on the internet. Whatever. I could connect to the VPN tonight, but just not the internet. Of couse, I need the internet to be able to access our jobs. So I lost 4 hours of work yesterday, 2 hours tonight, and who knows how many tomorrow because of this. I hate these computers. We're supposed to upgrade our typing program this year, but the MIS guy was telling me today that out computers probably won't support the new program and he doesn't think they budgeted for new computers. Way to go. You just have to wonder, don't you?
The weather was absolutely gorgeous today! I think maybe it hit 60, maybe. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Absolutely gorgeous. Apparently the weather in Wisconsin must have improved for grouse hunting. Steve said he might be home tonight, but of course he wasn't. Why doesn't that surprise me?
Meg had another little incident with her car this week. She thought it was a dead battery, but it turned out to be a fuse. Of course she found out after she bought a new battery! Isn't that the way it always happens? lol
I got some new Crocs -- I love them! They're lined with fleece for colder weather. I must get another pair! These are red with cream colored fleece. I'll take some pictures later maybe. Well, I'm off to find something constructive to do... Yeah, right...
The weather was absolutely gorgeous today! I think maybe it hit 60, maybe. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Absolutely gorgeous. Apparently the weather in Wisconsin must have improved for grouse hunting. Steve said he might be home tonight, but of course he wasn't. Why doesn't that surprise me?
Meg had another little incident with her car this week. She thought it was a dead battery, but it turned out to be a fuse. Of course she found out after she bought a new battery! Isn't that the way it always happens? lol
I got some new Crocs -- I love them! They're lined with fleece for colder weather. I must get another pair! These are red with cream colored fleece. I'll take some pictures later maybe. Well, I'm off to find something constructive to do... Yeah, right...
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Another goodbye...
It's funny how you meet someone in cyberspace, read their blogs, comment, they respond and a friendship grows with someone you've never met. I can't even remember how I found Lisa's blog, if it was a link from someone else I read or what, but she was clever and funny and I loved reading about her perspective on life. Then this summer she was diagnosed with lymphoma. The last post I read was in July and she was ecstatic because she'd had a CT scan and every bit of the tumor was gone. She only had to have 3 more courses of chemotherapy instead of the 5 they had been planning on, then scans every 3 months for a year, but her long term prognosis was great. Her doctors were thrilled, she was thrilled... I've checked her blog, but hadn't seen a new post since late July. I imagined she was so happy with her new lease on life that maybe she and her husband had taken a trip to celebrate or something. Tonight when that same post was still up, I decided to read the comments. I almost wish I hadn't. Lisa passed away on September 25. Apparently the chemo destroyed her lungs and she spent the last month of her life on a ventilator. I'll miss her funny posts and her wonderful sunny outlook on life. I hope she's enjoying her new life with the 2 babies that she lost. Good bye, Lisa.
What a day!
Today started off kind of slow, but ended with a rush. I got up this morning and went to Michael's to get some scrapbooking stuff. Mom brought over a lot of stuff last week that had to do with Steve's family history, but it was in one of those antique "magnetic" photo albums. The stickiness has long disappeared, but that stuff isn't acid free and will eventually eat away the newspaper articles and anything else made of paper, so I want to get it all scanned and the originals put in another scrapbook. Yeah, well, I managed to drop waaaaay too much money, but it's for a worthy cause, right?
Steve called from Nowhere, Wisconsin, this morning. He's so far out in the boonies there's no cell service, which we discovered last night when he drove to the highest hill he could find and we still couldn't manage to stay connected. They drove into Hayward this morning, so he called from there. He's not having a good hunting vacation. (oh, too bad...) Sunday was really hot and humid (about 85 degrees in October in Northern Wisconsin... odd weather all around). Last night storms came through so it rained all day today. Just pretend today is still Monday, okay? I've been up since about 10:30 a.m. and it's still Monday to me! He should be back on Wednesday or Thursday.
I started work on time today, but since I'm the only one home, I still have to deal with the dogs. The first thing they did when I let them out around 4, was to tip over a garbage can and spread the contents through the entire back yard. They have never done that before, ever! It took me nearly an hour to get that mess all cleaned up. We had an inch of rain last night ourselves, so the driveway in the back yard was a muddy mess and I'm slogging through it picking up trash... I was not a happy camper!
It felt like I had just sat down and started working again when the doorbell rang. I peeked out of my blinds, but didn't see anybody, so I wasn't going to answer until it rang again. Which, of course, it did. Turns out it was the neighbor girl. She's a junior in high school - a really nice, polite girl (amazing!), so I'm glad I answered the door and got to know her a bit, but she had gotten off work a couple hours early and no one was home and she didn't have her key with her. I let her use my cell phone - and ended up giving her a ride to her aunt's house when she couldn't find anyone to come get her. That shot another hour. Too bad I don't get good Samaritan points for not getting any work done while I did that. Working on production kind of sucks in that way.
Consequently, I spent the evening feeling like I was chasing my tail and not getting much accomplished. Plus, our stupid transcription platform took a dive again this weekend. It did the same thing about 6 months ago, jobs would load into our queue, but then they wouldn't open and we'd get a message saying the file was corrupt. We contacted Arrendale, who developed the software we use, they fixed the files, rebooted our server and all was well. We had problems with about 10 jobs total. Well, not this time! I guess it started about 5:30 or so on Friday with corrupt jobs coming up right and left. Someone contacted Arrendale and they rebooted the server, but for some reason they couldn't fix the corrupt files this time. What a freaking mess! We lost over 30 jobs and some of them were from consulting physicians who only come up to Fremont a couple of times a month. All those jobs have to be redictated. Let me tell you, doctors are never happy when they have to redictate anything, and a screw up of this magnitude, oh brother... I'm sure glad I'm not the one who had to call the doctors and tell them their jobs had been lost. When they do something stupid like cut themselves off they're mad enough, but when it's our fault they have to redo something... It is ug-ly! This platform that we use from this company absolutely sucks. We have nothing but problems with it, usually not to such an extent, but it just seems like something is constantly not working right. One of our voice cards when bad about a year ago and we got the last one they have left. They told us if another one goes out we'll have to get a new system! What kind of BS is that? Pardon my French. Our MIS manager says this company is head and shoulders above Dictaphone, so he won't switch. I beg to differ. Granted I'm only on the user side, not the MIS side, but I've worked for a long time with Dictaphone set ups and with quite a few different companies, and I've never had to deal with such crap in all my life. If you call Dictaphone there's someone there 24 hours a day to help you out. This company says they have a 24 hour help desk, but after about 6 at night you have to leave a message and if you're lucky they call you back within an hour or 2. I've even had one of their help desk employees tell me he didn't know what was wrong and I'd have to wait until morning. You just don't do that in hospitals., sometimes you have to have a report within an hour or two. Idiots. And we just budgeted for an upgrade from this company in 2008. Hopefully the upgrade works better than the version we have now.
Then, to top it all off the slug who's supposed to be working 8:30-4 didn't work tonight. Personally, I could care less if she works or not. The 6 weeks she was off for surgery went great because I knew I was the only one working, so I allocated the highest priority work and went from there. She's supposed to be the one making sure all the consults and histories are done for the upcoming surgeries, which of course she can't do when she's not working... If I leave them because there's other priority work to do, thinking she's working and will catch them later (because it's her freaking job) and she doesn't show up then the surgeries can be held up while they wait for the work to be done. It all sounds very simple - I should just do everything, right? LOL! Really when there's 2 people the work can be divided and one doesn't get hammered more than the other with STAT work. I just want to know when she's going to work. Apparently, I can't go by the schedule. All this is especially frustrating because we just got an e-mail about a week ago from our supervisor telling us that people were getting too lax about working their regular hours and then this sloth works whenever she feels like it, of course that e-mail can't be referring to her... Oy... I'm not patient.
Oh, and then Bob lost his billfold Saturday and it never turned up. He canceled his credit cards, but his VA card with his SSN was in there too, so I spent about an hour trying to explain why they could call Equifax, or one of the other credit agencies to flag his account in case someone applies for a credit in his name. Mom kept telling me that he cancelled his cards and I kept trying to explain it didn't have anything to do with the cards he already had... That was enough to make me tear my hair out. I finally got online and got the phone numbers and told them to just call with Bob's information and not to worry about it. Ergh... The phone rang about 5 minutes later with mom again, telling me that Steve's cousin had had a heart attack. Well, I certainly couldn't call Steve and tell him... I have no idea where he's at. Isn't it terrible that a few years ago I would have known where he was at, but we took for granted that his cell phone would work, so now I have no way of contacting him.
My old age is showing in other ways too. Tonight Meg asked me if Bob Devaney had coached football or basketball at Nebraska. Oh my gawd!
Oh, and her car is dead in the parking lot of Iowa Western. Sigh. As chance would have it, Steve has my car and she's NOT using mom's car to go to school. I hope she finds a ride because there's no way in God's green earth I'm going to be able to drive her to school at 6:15 a.m. (Insert maniacal laughter here.) Oh yeah, she better damn well have the money to get a new battery or whatever is wrong with it. This bank is closed!
Steve called from Nowhere, Wisconsin, this morning. He's so far out in the boonies there's no cell service, which we discovered last night when he drove to the highest hill he could find and we still couldn't manage to stay connected. They drove into Hayward this morning, so he called from there. He's not having a good hunting vacation. (oh, too bad...) Sunday was really hot and humid (about 85 degrees in October in Northern Wisconsin... odd weather all around). Last night storms came through so it rained all day today. Just pretend today is still Monday, okay? I've been up since about 10:30 a.m. and it's still Monday to me! He should be back on Wednesday or Thursday.
I started work on time today, but since I'm the only one home, I still have to deal with the dogs. The first thing they did when I let them out around 4, was to tip over a garbage can and spread the contents through the entire back yard. They have never done that before, ever! It took me nearly an hour to get that mess all cleaned up. We had an inch of rain last night ourselves, so the driveway in the back yard was a muddy mess and I'm slogging through it picking up trash... I was not a happy camper!
It felt like I had just sat down and started working again when the doorbell rang. I peeked out of my blinds, but didn't see anybody, so I wasn't going to answer until it rang again. Which, of course, it did. Turns out it was the neighbor girl. She's a junior in high school - a really nice, polite girl (amazing!), so I'm glad I answered the door and got to know her a bit, but she had gotten off work a couple hours early and no one was home and she didn't have her key with her. I let her use my cell phone - and ended up giving her a ride to her aunt's house when she couldn't find anyone to come get her. That shot another hour. Too bad I don't get good Samaritan points for not getting any work done while I did that. Working on production kind of sucks in that way.
Consequently, I spent the evening feeling like I was chasing my tail and not getting much accomplished. Plus, our stupid transcription platform took a dive again this weekend. It did the same thing about 6 months ago, jobs would load into our queue, but then they wouldn't open and we'd get a message saying the file was corrupt. We contacted Arrendale, who developed the software we use, they fixed the files, rebooted our server and all was well. We had problems with about 10 jobs total. Well, not this time! I guess it started about 5:30 or so on Friday with corrupt jobs coming up right and left. Someone contacted Arrendale and they rebooted the server, but for some reason they couldn't fix the corrupt files this time. What a freaking mess! We lost over 30 jobs and some of them were from consulting physicians who only come up to Fremont a couple of times a month. All those jobs have to be redictated. Let me tell you, doctors are never happy when they have to redictate anything, and a screw up of this magnitude, oh brother... I'm sure glad I'm not the one who had to call the doctors and tell them their jobs had been lost. When they do something stupid like cut themselves off they're mad enough, but when it's our fault they have to redo something... It is ug-ly! This platform that we use from this company absolutely sucks. We have nothing but problems with it, usually not to such an extent, but it just seems like something is constantly not working right. One of our voice cards when bad about a year ago and we got the last one they have left. They told us if another one goes out we'll have to get a new system! What kind of BS is that? Pardon my French. Our MIS manager says this company is head and shoulders above Dictaphone, so he won't switch. I beg to differ. Granted I'm only on the user side, not the MIS side, but I've worked for a long time with Dictaphone set ups and with quite a few different companies, and I've never had to deal with such crap in all my life. If you call Dictaphone there's someone there 24 hours a day to help you out. This company says they have a 24 hour help desk, but after about 6 at night you have to leave a message and if you're lucky they call you back within an hour or 2. I've even had one of their help desk employees tell me he didn't know what was wrong and I'd have to wait until morning. You just don't do that in hospitals., sometimes you have to have a report within an hour or two. Idiots. And we just budgeted for an upgrade from this company in 2008. Hopefully the upgrade works better than the version we have now.
Then, to top it all off the slug who's supposed to be working 8:30-4 didn't work tonight. Personally, I could care less if she works or not. The 6 weeks she was off for surgery went great because I knew I was the only one working, so I allocated the highest priority work and went from there. She's supposed to be the one making sure all the consults and histories are done for the upcoming surgeries, which of course she can't do when she's not working... If I leave them because there's other priority work to do, thinking she's working and will catch them later (because it's her freaking job) and she doesn't show up then the surgeries can be held up while they wait for the work to be done. It all sounds very simple - I should just do everything, right? LOL! Really when there's 2 people the work can be divided and one doesn't get hammered more than the other with STAT work. I just want to know when she's going to work. Apparently, I can't go by the schedule. All this is especially frustrating because we just got an e-mail about a week ago from our supervisor telling us that people were getting too lax about working their regular hours and then this sloth works whenever she feels like it, of course that e-mail can't be referring to her... Oy... I'm not patient.
Oh, and then Bob lost his billfold Saturday and it never turned up. He canceled his credit cards, but his VA card with his SSN was in there too, so I spent about an hour trying to explain why they could call Equifax, or one of the other credit agencies to flag his account in case someone applies for a credit in his name. Mom kept telling me that he cancelled his cards and I kept trying to explain it didn't have anything to do with the cards he already had... That was enough to make me tear my hair out. I finally got online and got the phone numbers and told them to just call with Bob's information and not to worry about it. Ergh... The phone rang about 5 minutes later with mom again, telling me that Steve's cousin had had a heart attack. Well, I certainly couldn't call Steve and tell him... I have no idea where he's at. Isn't it terrible that a few years ago I would have known where he was at, but we took for granted that his cell phone would work, so now I have no way of contacting him.
My old age is showing in other ways too. Tonight Meg asked me if Bob Devaney had coached football or basketball at Nebraska. Oh my gawd!
Oh, and her car is dead in the parking lot of Iowa Western. Sigh. As chance would have it, Steve has my car and she's NOT using mom's car to go to school. I hope she finds a ride because there's no way in God's green earth I'm going to be able to drive her to school at 6:15 a.m. (Insert maniacal laughter here.) Oh yeah, she better damn well have the money to get a new battery or whatever is wrong with it. This bank is closed!
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Freedom....
First and foremost, happy birthday to my baby brother! It's been a long time since I said that, but I hope you have a great birthday. Don't try and blow out all those candles at once. LOL!
Steve left early yesterday morning for Wisconsin. He says they're going grouse hunting... Riiiiight. Well, maybe they are. Since Tom's bout with pancreatitis that's still giving him some trouble, I don't think there's much drinking going on.
I went to a craft fair with mom yesterday. It was hot and humid (88 degrees), so I wasn't much in the mood for shopping for Christmas decorations. I don't know how people get in the Christmasy mood when it's not cold, but I can't do it. I did find some Christmas gifts though for the new nephew, dad and the soon to be nephew. The latter won't be here until After Christmas, but so what? He'll have his present anyway. There was a lot of cute stuff there, and pretty reasonably priced, so we had a good time.
Meg came over later and we had Pizza Hut pizza for dinner. Steve hates it, so now is the time for me to have it! Afterwards Mel called and I talked to her for awhile. The whole time I was talking to Mel, Meg was out in the living room watching TV and just screaming with laughter. When I got off the phone I went out to see what was so funny. She'd been watching Jeff Dunham - A Moment of Insanity on comedy central. She had taped it while she watched it, so we watched it again - and we were both screaming with laughter. That guy is hysterical! He's one of the best ventriloquists I've ever seen, and his puppets are sooooo funny. If you've never seen him, you have to try and catch it. I think it's going to be on Comedy Central a few more times. One of his new characters is Achmed the Dead Terrorist. It was hysterical. Although I have to say, Walter, the crabby old man is my favorite...
I had thought about painting my bedroom this weekend, but when I woke up yesterday morning and looked around the room I decided against it. I still have to remove the wallpaper border, I have so much furniture in there, and it's such a big room. Mel was going to help, but I just couldn't work up the energy to do all the prep work. Not this weekend.
I'm trying to decide if I have a cold or allergies are still kicking my butt. I've been sneezing and last night I started with a cough that would leave me wheezing. I suppose I should get that checked out before the upcoming surgery this Friday. I'll have to call the doctor tomorrow I guess. I do have some problem with reactive airways sometimes, so I bet that's flaring up too. With my luck, I'm allergic to my nice new wool blanket that I just love. That would tick me off.
Well, better run. Mel's coming over and we're going to some estate sales. Maybe I'll fine more Christmas presents.... Everything is 1/2 price today! Woo hoo!
Steve left early yesterday morning for Wisconsin. He says they're going grouse hunting... Riiiiight. Well, maybe they are. Since Tom's bout with pancreatitis that's still giving him some trouble, I don't think there's much drinking going on.
I went to a craft fair with mom yesterday. It was hot and humid (88 degrees), so I wasn't much in the mood for shopping for Christmas decorations. I don't know how people get in the Christmasy mood when it's not cold, but I can't do it. I did find some Christmas gifts though for the new nephew, dad and the soon to be nephew. The latter won't be here until After Christmas, but so what? He'll have his present anyway. There was a lot of cute stuff there, and pretty reasonably priced, so we had a good time.
Meg came over later and we had Pizza Hut pizza for dinner. Steve hates it, so now is the time for me to have it! Afterwards Mel called and I talked to her for awhile. The whole time I was talking to Mel, Meg was out in the living room watching TV and just screaming with laughter. When I got off the phone I went out to see what was so funny. She'd been watching Jeff Dunham - A Moment of Insanity on comedy central. She had taped it while she watched it, so we watched it again - and we were both screaming with laughter. That guy is hysterical! He's one of the best ventriloquists I've ever seen, and his puppets are sooooo funny. If you've never seen him, you have to try and catch it. I think it's going to be on Comedy Central a few more times. One of his new characters is Achmed the Dead Terrorist. It was hysterical. Although I have to say, Walter, the crabby old man is my favorite...
I had thought about painting my bedroom this weekend, but when I woke up yesterday morning and looked around the room I decided against it. I still have to remove the wallpaper border, I have so much furniture in there, and it's such a big room. Mel was going to help, but I just couldn't work up the energy to do all the prep work. Not this weekend.
I'm trying to decide if I have a cold or allergies are still kicking my butt. I've been sneezing and last night I started with a cough that would leave me wheezing. I suppose I should get that checked out before the upcoming surgery this Friday. I'll have to call the doctor tomorrow I guess. I do have some problem with reactive airways sometimes, so I bet that's flaring up too. With my luck, I'm allergic to my nice new wool blanket that I just love. That would tick me off.
Well, better run. Mel's coming over and we're going to some estate sales. Maybe I'll fine more Christmas presents.... Everything is 1/2 price today! Woo hoo!
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