I'm back!

Okay, okay - I know its been an unusually long time between postings, and that my adoring audience (both of you) have been waiting with baited breath. Here's what happened:

The weekend before last Joe & I worked a 1/2 day on Fri and then went to the beach. We didn't have a lot planned, mostly the usual visits to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, the most fabulous Dollar Tree on the east coast - our routine rounds. K-Mart was running a winter clearance sale and I picked up not one but two 100% cotton button-up shirts marked $2. And if that wasn't terrific enough, when I went to pay for them, the cashier took an addition 30% off of the $2., making the shirts $1.40 each! I'm not going to describe what they look like so that readers who see me won't be able to say "Oh, I see you're wearing your $1.40 shirt today..." It will be my little secret when I wear them.

Joe & I went to see "Capote" at the Midway Theatre. We thought it was pretty good. Unlike what I thought, it was not a biography of Truman Capote. It really focused on a few years in the late 1950s-early 1960s when he wrote the book 'In Cold Blood'. The actor who played Capote, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, did a good job emulating Capote's voice and body language. Guess that's why he won the Golden Globe for best actor in a drama.

We also rented three films while we were up at the beach. "The grizzly Man" was sort of a documentary about Timothy Treadwell, the man who went to Alaska to live in the wild and be with the grizzly bears for 13 summers in a row... until he and his girlfriend were eaten by one of the bears. Treadwell had illusions of grandeur, saying he had to "protect" the grizzly bears, who were living in a protected state sanctuary. He admitted in the film that he had difficulty making it in human society and really preferred living in the wild with the bears. Yeah, a few screws loose. Don't bother renting this film if you get A&E on your cable, because its been on A&E a few times.

We rented "Waiting...", which I found to be rather funny. Its about this group of waiters and waitresses that work for a fictitious restaurant called Shennanigans, a knock-off of Bennigans, TGIFridays, Ruby Tuesdays, and Applebees. There are all kinds of antics involving men's genitalia (who wouldn't love that?) as well as server retaliation to difficult patrons. Definitely not appropriate for children or adults who didn't appreciate the TV show 'Jackass'.

Finally, we rented "Must Love Dogs", which I also liked. Its pretty much a 'chick flick' but I thought it had some good moments. John Cusak plays a rather 'intense' character, and the ever-so-handsome Dermot Mulrooney also plays one of Diane Lane's love interests. It was cute.

Although it was a 3-day weekend for us, we headed home Sun evening so we would have Mon to get some things done around the house. We cleaned, put things away, did laundry, and I pulled up the carpet, padding, tack strips and staples from the floor of the vestibule, in front of the bathroom door, TV room door, linen closet door, and guest bedroom door. It felt good to get stuff done.

Then... is when it happened. I was online, checking out some blogs, reading email, and surfing the net when I started getting messages about "critical error" and "your PC has been infected with spyware" and "your personal information such as credit card numbers are extremely vulnerable". Yep, I'd been infected with spyware. It brought my PC, which is on a highspeed cable connection, to a snail's pace. I began by running my McAfee anti-virus program, which removed some stuff, but none of the spyware. I also found some spyware that masquerades as online security features loaded on my PC. For the next several days I ran several free scans, but none of them could remove the spyware. Finally, a week later, I purchased and ran spyware Doctor, which successfully removed all of the spyware from my machine. Fortunately I didn't loose any information, and I also decided to take the time to uninstall some programs I don't use that were taking up space on my machine. So that's why the long time between posts. I believe I am now virus and spyware free.

This passed weekend we got together with the Newlyweds for dinner and to go bowling! I can't tell you the last time I went bowling, but I think it might have been in 1999, as a team building activity with my (then) work mates. Jamie had a coupon and had called ahead to see if there were any leagues. We were told to come anytime after 9. On the way to the bowling alley we called for more specific directions and found that the location printed on the coupon was closed! He'd been talking to someone from another alley in a totally different town. So we scrapped the coupon idea and headed over to the bowling alley we knew. Once inside we were amazed that every single bowler was Asian. It was like someone had declared it 'National Asian Bowling Day' or something. We asked the young woman at the counter about getting a lane and she told us there were none open, and she didn't think there'd be any coming open until 11:30 at the earliest. So we decided to try bowling another time. Somewhat dejected, we thought a consolation dessert was in order, so we went to the Silver Diner. We had our desserts and decafs and discussed careers, success, and how we feel about ourselves. I couldn't believe how quickly the night passed. By the time we got home it was after 1am.

I was inspired by the carpet removal in the vestibule, and decided to take on the last of the wall-to-wall carpet removal: the foyer and hallway. Its not hard or strenuous work, its just uncomfortable. You're sitting on the floor, prying up tack strips and staples, trying not to scratch the floors. Its an uncomfortable position and really made my lower back and legs ache. But alas! There is no more wall-to-wall carpet in our house. After sweeping and vacuuming up the dust and debris for Joe, I talked him into mopping the newly exposed floors. Its really changed the look of the area. The carpet was an dingy off white, which although dingy, gave a light look to the foyer and hallway. Now that the natural colored wood is exposed, its not quite as bright as before. But the wood is real, and gives the house a more authentic look and feel, in my opinion. Our house was built in 1954, so we're fortunate: the entire house has tongue and groove hardwood floors.

Joe & I got together with my aunt for dinner, then went back to her place and looked through a box of old family photos. It was great! Although most of the photos were from the 50s and later, there were some photos taken in the 1800s, of my great, great grandparents. We had a really good time looking through the photos and learning about my long-gone relatives. When we were finished with the box, my aunt said we'd only seen the tip of the iceberg. She said she had at least 5 more boxes, all larger than the one we'd looked through. We decided to save those for another time.