One of the many things I hate about renting is that we’re pretty much stuck with the light fixtures that are already here. I’m not sure if the people who put them there have bad taste, or that they are just very outdated, fashion-wise. I’m guessing that it’s a little of both.

Farreys.com offers a wide range of stylish, attractive lighting fixtures. I don’t really care for elaborate, ornate designs…I like the modern, clean-lined look. For example, when it comes to kitchen light fixtures, I’d like to have track lighting; I really like the look of that.

No doubt that whatever house we do buy will not be perfect. We’ll expect to have to change things to make them more to our liking. And we would not let a relatively minor thing like home lighting keep us from buying an otherwise perfect house. That would be silly. That’s something we can easily fix ourselves.

We just don’t want to spend the money now, for a place we don’t own!

I see commercials on TV for this place all the time. Katharine Gibbs School has been around forever. It was founded in Rhode Island, and soon expanded to Boston and New York. They now have more than one campus in New York…there’s now one on Long Island, and their website is at http://www.gibbsmelville.edu/.

The school was originally founded by Katharine Gibbs, and it was designed to be a school to help women prepare for careers. Considering that it came about back in 1911, that was quite a leap for women.

Nowadays, the school is still running strong, with many campuses in various locations. And they take male students, now. But it’s still pretty much the same concept that it always had…career education. They are offering a much wider selection of courses these days, so if you’re looking to get into a new line of work, check them out!

We’ve been talking about getting some new stuph for this place. Last night, I brought up the topic of buying a new refrigerator. Our old one is 15 years old, and could kick the bucket at any time now.

We were all set to buy one several years ago…we’d even gone to Sears and picked one out. I had decided I wanted one with a freezer drawer on the bottom, as opposed to having it on the top, or having a side-by-side thing.

But then all of the crap with Evil Bossman started, and we barely had money for food and rent, never mind buying any new appliances. So, buying a new fridge had to be put on hold.

But now, we’re talking about it again. We have plenty of credit on the Sears charge to get one, and they are always having sales, free delivery, and all. Maybe now that there aren’t any mroe ball games for us to go to on weekends, we’ll go and get one soon.
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After that, I want to start thinking about bedroom furniture shopping. The bedroom set we have is old and worn…it belonged to my ex-in-laws a hundred years ago. I just kept it because I could not afford anything else. We replaced the mattress, that’s it. We really couldn’t afford that, as it was, but it had to be done…the old mattress was giving us both backaches and other assorted pains.

There are a lot of nice furniture stores around here that aren’t too expensive…we’ll start hitting those places and checking out what they have. I just want something nicer than what we’ve got now!

I remember all too well what happened to me a week ago today. I’d been sick, but was feeling better in time to go to a ball game on Saturday, and to the Tim Holtz classes on Sunday. I came home from Tim’s classes last Sunday, feeling very tired.

The next morning, I woke up…sick again. And I was pretty much out of it for much of last week. I was wondering if we’d have to cancel the trip to Manchester.

But, as you know, we did go to Manchester, and I tried to take things as easy as possible. But still, I felt tired, similar to the tired feeling I’d felt at the end of Tim’s classes. I was terrified that I’d wake up sick again today, in a repeat of last week.

Fortunately, this was not the case. My first call of the day was NOT to Ralph on the big white phone. I’m still not at 100%…right now I’d say I’m at 80%. So I’m still trying to take things easy. I have a lot to do today, but if I pace myself and get Mike to help, things should be fine!

…for the weekend. Then we come back, for a day, and we’re gone again for the rest of the week!

See ya on the flip side!

Kat got me hooked on this iGoogle thing. Once you activate it, you can choose from several themes for your page. The one I picked was “Tea House”. It has this little Chinese fox (I assume he’s a fox, that’s what he looks like to me), who lives in a little house near a pond.

click for larger version in new window

The cool thing is that the little fox and other characters do different things at different times of the day and night. Right now he’s having his dinner. But at other times, I can see him paddling in a boat to the other side of the pond, doing his laundry in the pond and hanging it on a clothesline, feeding ducks, etc. It’s just too cute!

Yeah, I’m still alive. My DSL is a LITTLE faster than it was yesterday, but still slower than usual. And I’m now even sicker than I was the other day. Maybe I sat up for too long doing stuph yesterday. In any case, no ball game for me tomorrow, and Sunday is iffy now, too.

I HATE THIS!

I need to go back and lay down now.

…although I still feel a little tired. I should just take it easy and not push myself too hard., so things don’t get worse, and cause our vacation to be ruined.

Mike brought me a 12-pack of ramen noodles last night, and I ate one pack. I didn’t gack it up, so that’s a good sign.
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I had a little bit of a scare today. The phone rang, and the display on the caller ID said, “Melrose-Wakefield Hospital” (aka The Hospital From Hell). As you may know, I’ve seen that damned display on the caller ID more times that I’d have liked…mostly doctors harassing me to harass Mike to get unneeded surgery that our crappy insurance probably would refuse to pay for anyway.

Between that, and Mike’s nutcase mother calling me to whine all of the time, I’d had enough of the harassment. And, YES, my MIL’s calls WERE getting to the point of harassment. Normal people don’t call someone several times a day, every day, and then leave long, whiny messages when no one answers the phone. We actually broke down and got caller ID because of her.

I wanted to get the landline number changed, and Mike agreed. But I made it clear to him that this would be a waste of money if he gave out the new number to anyone who’s been harassing me. The doctors and hospital can have his work number, and that’s it. If they want to reach him, call him where he is. He is usually NEVER home during the day on weekdays. There is NO reason for them to bother me. And if he talks to his mother at work, that’s his business, too. I just don’t want to hear about it. The nutcase sent us a card, probably for our anniversary, and I didn’t even open it. Whether Mike did or not, I don’t know. But I sure as hell didn’t want to see the long and whiny letter that surely was in it. As long as I don’t have to hear from or about her, I’m happy.

Anyhoo, back to this phone call today. Of course, I thought that they were calling to look for Mike, and that’s why I picked up. If they asked for Mike, I’d ream them a new one, asking how they got this number and all. Then I’d probably have to ream Mike a new one, since he’d be the one who gave it out. It’s unlisted, non-published, and very few people have it. And that’s the way I plan to keep it.

But they asked for someone named “Jean”. I told them that they had the wrong number, and that was the end of it. Whew!

I wonder, if this Jean was a patient there, and perhaps had this number before we did…was SHE being harassed by them, too, and had to have her number changed? Why else would she not give them her new number?

…that all is well with the world regarding Mike’s paycheck! Remember how I said that they deposited it TWICE, and I was afraid that when they fixed it, they’d take back BOTH deposits…this AFTER we paid the rent?

Well, they just took back the one excess payout, and the regular paycheck is still there, safe and sound. Whew! I was afraid that we’d have to take out a cash advance or something, just to get by until this was all straightened out!

Luckily, this was not the case…ADP did fix the problem ASAP, and did it correctly. Thank goodness for that!

…well, not really!

Today was payday for Mike. Yesterday, he’d gotten an e-mail about how the payroll people screwed up, and some of the direct deposits were deposited as double, and others (to smaller banks and credit unions) not at all. But they said they were working on it, and everything should be right by Friday.

Anyway, Mike stopped by the bank to check our balance, to see if he got paid or not. We use a small bank, so we thought that his pay might be delayed by the day to the snafu. But no, he was one of the ones that was paid double.

It was kind of cool to see that nice big balance there, but we know we can’t keep it. Not even if God tells us to. I assume that they can just take the extra back electronically…but as long as they don’t screw up and take back BOTH deposits. Now, that would suck, since we just gave the rent check to the landladies. I’d actually feel more comfortable if they just left the money there, and had us cut a check for the excess. I really don’t want them messing with things when they’ve just had a big snafu. I don’t want to be hit with overdraft charges from the rent check, should they screw up again and take back BOTH direct deposits.

We probably COULD haver waited an extra day to pay the rent…the landladies are cool about that. But I don’t like to do that. Hopefully, all will be okay in the end.

Maybe I’m still gun-shy due to all of the Evil Bossman crap…I always freak out when Mike’s pay doesn’t come as it should.

On the other hand, I got paid a day early today from PayU2Blog. No complaints about that here!