So where were we?

Megan’s Room: Here is the URL for Yahoo pictures if someone who doesn’t have it wants to see the pictures http://photos.yahoo.com/gretchengerth. I found the bed at Meijer’s in Bay City on my trip home from the big city, (See investigating reports) they wouldn’t let me pay for it and have someone pick it up later so I put it on Lawaway and Bob and Gordon went to pick it up the following Wednesday. The box was too heavy to carry into the house so we had to bring it in piece by piece. We got the room cleared and now had everything from Megan’s room, her old double bed, and her new bed all in the living room. She had cleaned and purged her room prior to us starting the redo but she still had way too much stuff. Gordon started painting the ceiling Wednesday night only to discover the Oops paint that I thought was bright pink was actually bright red. Mixed with some white primer however it worked out perfect. For the dresser we ended up mixing the red with some white satin that we had leftover from the office ceiling and it came out really nice. The dresser by the way is one that we bought used for Matt’s first Christmas (for those of you still struggling with counting that was 21 years ago.) Thursday began painting in earnest. Since I had two gallons of Oops light purple we did not think we would need primer for the walls, good thing since we ended up using what primer we had to mix with the red. However, magic marker just doesn’t cover very well. I remember at one point Melody wanted to write on her walls with that aerosol hair color stuff, and I was at a place where I was choosing my battles very wisely and chose not to push that one. Megan picked up where Mel left off, with permanent magic marker. We ended up needed to buy some primer, after Gordon tried four very liberal coats of purple over the writing. Gordon can still see where Megan had drawn, but the rest of us don’t notice it at all. The window curtain is from purple fuzzy material that I gave in and bought since Megan really, really, wanted it and since I found the bed for the price I wanted. I made a pillow for her out of the leftover material and picked up a remnant piece of the same material in a red that I made a pillow out of. The material feels like the new soft stuff used on stuffed animals. It would be way to hot for me to sleep on, and I had thought of them more as decorative pillows, but she uses them to sleep and loves them. The curtain on the closet is $1 a yard clearance from Wal-Mart I hemmed them but didn’t like the way they slid (or more precisely didn’t slide) on the curtain rod, so I put holes and stitched around the holes and then used shower curtain hooks to put them on the rod. We used a border on the paneled wall of plastic shower curtain and lace, and still have to frame a couple of poster Megan picked out (can we all say Hillary Duff) with the plastic shower curtain to cover the cords running up her walls. The plan was to put the bed together on Friday before Gordon had to go to work however he was called in early and I really wanted my house back, so with a lot of struggling I managed to put it together alone with only one piece left over. She absolutely loves her room. Thank you so much Aunt Mary.

Computer: I’m not sure what happened with my computer but I think I am learning that I really need to back up. I am now using Megan’s computer (an old one of Erika and Lyle) and I like it because it has a better version of Office than what I have. However it does not have a CDR so I am going to need to add one for back up purposes if nothing else. I lost all of my pictures and videos, but I have the CD’s and most of the newer pictures are on Yahoo so I can go back and get them. I lost all of the music that was loaded most of it was CD’s that I own so I can reload them, but I had a lot of songs that I couldn’t find on CD such as Olivia Newton-John that I should have burned onto CD before it crashed since I don’t have Melody here to figure out downloading music, Pepsi is running a get music promotion so maybe I’ll win a few songs from Itunes. Megan is fine with my computer since she doesn’t use it for more than listening to music (while singing along with her Karoke – loud), playing games, and checking email. Heather’s boyfriend had been using the computer frequently but since the crash I told him that I would rather he not use it and if he needed something I would look it up for him. But by viewing history I found out that he is using it when no one is home, so now there will be password protection on both computers to open. Hopefully I won’t have to get to the point of locking my doors.

Why was nobody home you ask: I got a call on Wednesday for a week to two week temp job downstate. It’s data entry work that sucks but it’s something for now. I have an interview in Standish (close to home) next week. They wanted Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday, but I explained that I was working a temp job, and said they really wanted to meet with me so she scheduled me for Friday late afternoon so I can work a ½ day on Friday and then drive up.

I think that’s all for now.

I'm Down

Just a note to let everyone know that while in the midst of composing a very long blog and doing a few other things yesterday I stepped out of the office to go check something in Megan's room and came back to a loop on the screen that said "We apologize but we are not able to reboot the system at this time, what would you like to do?" I tried each and everyone of their options, tried a few of my own, made a start disk on Megan's computer and tried it on mine, nothing worked. So the computer is completely wiped off. Gone, everything gone. I was able to reload it with factory settings so it would boot. But I am having problems getting it to recognize anything in the USB ports, printer, mouse, the modem was totally fried I couldn't get it to work in Megan's computer either. Sooo for now I bought a new modem and loaded it in my computer and am putting that one in Megan's room since she does not need a printer hook up, and already has loaded on her computer the programs I need to redo my resumes and such. The original blog was on redoing Megan's room and the pictures are up on Yahoo, but the post will have to wait right now I have a resume to recreate.

Investigating Reports

While I was in the big city this week I had the opportunity to watch big city news with their investigating reports. You are not going to believe what I was able to find out. They were investigating the lottery system, particularly the scratch off instant tickets. Now these tickets advertise prizes ranging up to millions of dollars. But did you know that this may be misleading. Oh, sure they do have to have at least one ticket printed with the maximum advertised prize as a winner, but they may have already sold that ticket. Oh and sure they have to tell you if the ticket is already sold, and they maintain a website listing all of the available games and what denominations of winners have not been claimed. But they only update this on a weekly basis, and the winning ticket may have been sold just minutes before some poor unsuspecting sucker purchases what he believes could be a million dollar winner. Which in reality is not. At least it wasn’t my tax dollars that were spent doing months of investigation when they could have just called me and I could have told them: No that’s not a million dollar ticket.

Hopefully when they get around to investigating the big scandal - Pepsi - they will just call me because I think I have figured it out. Pepsi came in 8 packs of 20 ounce bottles or 12 packs of 12 oz cans. Because I prefer bottles and because Math and I are well acquainted I usually purchased the bottles. 160 ounces versus 144. About a year ago, for my convenience, Pepsi introduced 6 packs with 24 ounce bottles. Both options were available so Math and I got together and decided to stick with the 160 ounce option. Slowly this option disappeared and we were left with just the 6 packs. A few months ago, for my convenience, Pepsi re-introduced the 8 pack now with more convenient 16.9 ounce bottles. I wasn’t happy with the 6 pack 144 ounce solution, but Math was even less happy with the 8 pack 135 ounce solution. Slowly the 6 pack is disappearing from the shelves and we will be left with just the smaller bottles in an 8 pack. I foresee a 6 pack of 20 ounce bottles in my Pepsi future, for my convenience of course. Now, had Pepsi just gone from 8 20 ounce bottles to 6 the general public would have felt raped, but they didn’t, they gently massaged their way in, making the general public feel cared about – loved. End result the same, we just got screwed.

Another Day is Just Another Day

Okay so it’s been three weeks and there is nothing new to relate to anyone. I have no cute baby (well Josh will be here in a couple of hours but I see him so rarely he hardly counts), I’m not running for office, and I have no boyfriend problems. That pretty much sums up my life. I never heard back on the job interviews I went on a few weeks ago, even after being told that they would call one way or another, and leaving follow up voice mails. Oh well.

Watching American Idol I am amazed at all the orphans that are trying out. These poor people who have lived in a total vacuum never coming in contact with another human being that could have said, “your singing is offensive” they had to go on national TV to find out. I’m still not sure how the auditions work, they say that 15,000 people tried out in Cleveland they all could not have gone before the panel of judges since even at a minute each that would have taken over 10 solid days and they were only there for two. So these people had to have been screened by someone before going on to Simon, Randy, and Paula. Had I been turned away prior to getting to the main judges and then seen some of the people that got through I would have been pissed, and I know that my singing is offensive.

I don’t really like anyone left in Race, I don’t dislike Kris and John so I guess that’s who I’ll root for next week. Adam and Rebecca are fun to watch; at least they don’t claim to be in love. Hayden and Kendra are both so snotty and derogatory about the places they’ve been too. I loved it that the locals were all laughing at the contestants this week.

I could watch the commercial for the van (although it has not had the effect on me that I remember which van it is for) where they are doing the crash test and the little boys are in the booth saying, “Do another one” all day. It so reminds me of Bryan rewinding a 3rd Watch tape to watch the car crash over and over.

Other than TV shows changing nothing much else is going on here. Megan is plugging away at school, Gordon is working, and I am, well I am.