DECEMBER 2022

Welcome to December!  

No snow here, so far.  I like two days worth of snow around Christmas, then let spring arrive!

We are putting up new Christmas lights tomorrow.  I hope.  It's so windy here this evening,  hopefully it won't be tomorrow when we need to stand on ladders.

We got Shadow, our dog,  a new doggy mattress for Christmas.  So far, this is who is using it:



The Feather bed.

Morning Ark and all the rest. I did see that you wee on line but maybe gone by now.

I'm at John's till he has a couple of days off to take me home. I'm getting anxious to get back home and relieve Helen of her long duties of looking after the dog and cat. My recovery is going really well and I see an improvement every day.

I agree with the remarks about FB. I check in every day and all I see are ads of this, that, and something else. The old FB format is gone where your friends were on daily and telling you about what was going on with them.

Priscilla is hading to Saint John today till Saturday, John is working till two this afternoon. My nephew is coming for a visit tonight, he lives just up the road.

Think that is all the news. All have a great day.

The "camel" is a very cute idea. Very tolerant church to let the "camel" walk down the aisle.

I hope Shadow gets to use his "Feather" bed sometime. LOL

Donna, if you progress like I did, at around 6 months you won't know there was anything wrong. I'm really glad to hear that you are doing well.

It's cold again here. We had a few days of reprieve, but that didn't last long. No snow at the moment.
Amazon delivered several of my gifts all in one box. I like that. So far, the shipping from several different sources is going very well, even arriving a day or two early.
I just have to finish decorating the tree and then get started on some baking to freeze for later. Pecan bits, iced and decorated cookies.... I've tried the decorated cookies before without a lot of success, so wish me luck.

Gads, it's December already.  Where does the time go?

Fortunately horses and dogs have no concept of date and have no clue another year has almost passed.

Making cookies but eating them..............have to discipline my self.......LOL

Have a great evening everyone.........

Addendum: Donna glad you're getting home soon........breakfast tea with your friends is medicine.
Ark, you now need a bed that nice for your dog. LOL

Indy, did you get your new phone?

My phone finally showed up around 4:00 on Wednesday after tracking it from Indianapolis to South Bend to out on the truck for delivery at 1:30. It's a shame they don't give you an ETA as to when the delivery truck will be at your door. Of course I wasn't home when it came as I had a personal appointment to go to, but at least Bill was home and could sign for it. And more importantly he heard the doorbell! LOL. Activating it was a nightmare. In all fairness it was probably because a bazillion other people were trying to activate new phones too that made it such a nightmare. I did all the steps and my account said it was active, but I could not make or receive calls or texts. And of course my old phone was no longer active so I was kind of stuck. I got on the chat line and after about an hour wait got connected. We were in the middle of troubleshooting the problem when our chat got disconnected. Had to start all over. I think I ended up waiting to connect to the chat for an hour and half this time. Chatted with one agent then got passed off to another. And after doing this and that and restarting the phone who knows how many times the agent gave up and had to escalate the work order to a higher level. They would contact me by e-mail at some future time to try and resolve the issue. At this point it was 1:30 a.m. I called it quits and went to bed. What ever the problem was was resolved around 5:30 in the morning because all the test texts and calls I had sent Bill while trying to resolve the problem with the agent started coming in. All 3 agents I chatted with were great though. The phone so far does everything I want it to do which is more than I can say for my old phone.

I know it would have been inconvenient, but a trip to a Verizon office would have probably been worth it. Two years ago, I bought an unlocked phone from Amazon. I drove to the local Verizon office, about 9 miles, and had the phone up and going within about 30 minutes, including the transfer of all the saved data. They even put in a 5G SIM card. Around here, 5G is a bit rare, but going a few miles east and it shows up. Now, the question is do I really need 5G? Probably not.
I'm sorry you had so much trouble getting yours activated. Hopefully, it will work as intended from now on.

I spoke too soon about no shipping issues with my packages. My address is odd and many shippers don't think it's a real address. I got two messages yesterday saying that the address on the packages was incorrect or incomplete. Fortunately, I have the phone number for the regional UPS office and was able to get it all straightened out within a couple of minutes. Now? We'll see if those two packages arrive today.

Unfortunately going to a Verizon store was not an option. One of the quirks of this plan is while it uses the Verizon network, it is not actually Verizon. It is called Visible and it is a division of Verizon, but everything about the service is virtual. However, the plan costs are lower for an individual who doesn't need 4 lines. If the set up is the only issue I have it will be worth it. All I can do is wait and see.

ELLEN, do you have one of those weird 250 N 652 E Timbuktoo addresses?

INDYAPP
Congrats on getting your new phone working! If something happened to Donnie, I would eventually disappear from phones and cyberspace as the devices failed. He gets our electronics working. I am not a good geek.


GRAYMARE:
Our silly dog has rules in his head that he came with. He has never gotten on any furniture and now thinks the new doggy bed couldn't possibly be for him to lay on. It took months to get him onto his bare bed, the mattress is off limits in his mind. Feather doesn't mind that, she has claimed it. I do worry about his joints since he is 10 1/2 years old now, but he prefers laying on the hard floor. Hopefully we will get him to change his mind.


ELLEN:
We put up outside lights yesterday on the south side of the house. Kind of cute! They do several modes of flashing and fading. I kind of like them just staying lit. We still haven't done the porch....or inside.

Indy, our address is even more weird. Because we are on lake roads, none of them go in straight lines. The addresses are based on what lake and emergency medical services. IF you know the lakes, you have a small chance of being able to find an address. If you aren't familiar with the area, good luck. Even Garmin doesn't know where I am and doesn't accept the correct address.
Over time, L has become Ln and now I have to include both L and Ln. They all seem to think that L stands for Lane. It doesn't. It's just L.
The numbers like you mentioned actually make sense to me and I can find where I need to go with those. These lake roads are a whole other problem.

I thought of DONNY this morning as there is a ham radio festival in Mesa................I don't know where they
radio to but is DONNY in solved at all?

GRAYMARE:
He said that he wasn't on the radio during that particular event, but did do some contacts last spring when there was an event commemorating the Navajo code talkers from WWII that was held in AZ. Recently he has been busier working on house and farm stuff and hasn't been on the radio. He has very active times and very slow times with his ham radio activities. He's in a slow time right now. Winter is coming. He will get back on the radio during those cold days. Thanks for thinking of him! Donnie has been a ham radio operator since he was 17. A good life long hobby that led to his career as an engineer.

Rainy Saturday morning here. Mud.

I've always thought having a ham radio would be really interesting. An uncle had one for years. He kept a record of all the different places he was able to contact.
I noticed that Tim Allen had one on Last Man Standing.

Raining most of the day here.

ARK, I saw the code talkers too last year.............real heros.

ELLEN:
It's never too late! I got my license about 25 years ago so that I could have radio contact while riding out in the boonies, before cellphones made that easier. When Donnie moved here for his job while I was still at our old house, we would talk on the radio every night instead of paying long distance phone charges.
Donnie has always kept track of his contacts. He has 331 countries and all continents. Only a few countries are missing: North Korea and Macau being two. There's always a new contest or activity to keep hams like Donnie interested.

GRAYMARE:
Donnie said the last Code talker died this past summer. What a brilliant idea to have them doing communications during WWII. They were great.


I got in a little ride this afternoon. The new neighbors' pony kept calling, so of course, our horses were too interested in it. The neighbors were also playing loud music and putting up their Christmas lights onto their house. My ride was way too interesting. I ended up having Donnie take Daisy to the end of the arena nearer to them to act as the Ivan anti-spook babysitter while I rode. Anyway, we now have ride number 93 finished.

Morning All,

I'm up, dogs were barking to go out so that roused the troops! I'm usually up around six/six-thirty but went back to bed today. All was quiet so snoozed for another hour. You would think I had a schedule to keep.

Heading home tomorrow, John took a couple of days off so they are taking me to Yarmouth and getting things done around the house for me. Looking forward to being in my own bed, not that the one I have isn't comfortable, but everyone likes their own.

I'll write when I'm settled home and on my own. It has been a very long time since the 24th of Oct., poor Fergie must be so confused. She knew something was wrong with me when I fell, she was all over me, head, face licking and whining. Then people arrived and out the front door I went on a stretcher, never to be seen again! I can't wait to see her!

All have a great day.

Donna

YAY DONNA................Looking forward to hearing all about it.

Medical science has come soooo far in our lifetimes. Remember when an older person in the community fell and broke a hip? Most people thought that was the beginning of the end. They had to stay in bed forever and often got pneumonia and then wilted and died. Now, surgery, a few months recovery, and good as new.

Hurray DONNA !!! I am so glad to hear you are feeling better and going home! Fergie will be so excited.

Today was gossip time about Yellowstone............boy, it's just like our world of reality. I'm glad I'm not that
dysfunctional.

It was cloudy most for the day, horses in, dogs out for fun.

Getting ready for Christmas..............still eating too many cookies............

Rain, rain, rain.  Mud, mud, mud.  All week.


GRAYMARE:
 We watched the prequel to Yellowstone, 1886,...I think that was the date.  Anyway,  it was an incredible story.  We haven't watched Yellowstone.  I wish they didn't feel they had to pepper every sentence with the F-bomb.  I really get tired of that.


We got a new horse.  

Ark, that is a really cool new horse! Love it!

Love the new horse. What do the old horses think of it? I would like one of those inflatable costumes (but not enough to actually buy one) and wear it out to feed. My guys would have a heart attack!

I too watched part of 1886, until the free trial of whatever station the program is on expired. Again I'm too cheap to subscribe to the provider. LOL. There is a 12 days of Christmas video making the rounds on FaceBook. Three Gold Rings is changed to 3 good looking sons, and I think there is 7 cows a mooing and at some point Tate is eating. I think Tate is the grandson? and I guess he eats alot on the program. Maybe because he is a growing boy? Like the original 12 days of Christmas song it goes on for far too long....

INDYAPP:
The new horse is on the opposite side of the house from the barn, so the horses can't see it. I am pretty sure they would think it was here to eat them. After the ground is dry...someday....I may try putting it up in the arena and see if I can desensitize them to it. The biggest problem would be the noise it makes and if it moves in the wind at all.
Havoc would commence.

More rain today. The mud is getting pretty mucky.