Waiting for the Meteor Shower

It's been over a month since I last posted an entry to my blog. I don't have any good excuses. I just got out of the habit of writing. Tonight Larry and I are waiting until midnight to go outside to watch the meteor shower, so I figured I'd summarize what I have been doing. My purpose in writing this blog is to let family and friends know what Larry and I have been doing and what challenges we face. I'm thinking that there is an outside chance that my grandchildren and future descendents may want to know something about my life even if no one else does now. I hear of books written about pioneer journals. Why not my blog in the twenty-second century? Maybe some of my mundane observations will eventually interest a future scholar or novelist.

I enjoy thinking up titles for my days. In trying to catch up, I'll start with titles for my paragraphs.

Gordon was right! My cousin Gordon is father of two. When he saw me holding baby Clifford, he remarked that parents never stop worrying about there children even when they are grown up. How true that is! Cliff had been fretting about finding a new job, both because he had been tired of his current job and also because it was going to end in March. He finally found another job which sounds great. The worry is that he told us he needed a car. We had already had preliminary discussions with him and had decided to give him one of our Priuses. However, the problem has been how to get the Prius in Wallingford down to him in SF. It was obvious that he did not want to fly up and drive it down. He also got pretty sick with tonsillitis and needed to rest. We finally decided to find an auto transport company to move it for us. The only problem with that is deciding on a reputable one. We soon found that there are hundreds of companies and that the decision was not so easy. We finally decided to go with a broker in Tucson so that I could have face-to-face contact if things didn't go smoothly. Penny is helping with the loading in Seattle. Things are still in process, but we aren't worried yet. Phil has been struggling to finish college. It looks like he can make it, but needed to take a couple of incompletes in his final classes. He is busy moving out of his apartment in Bellingham and into our townhouse in Wallingford, as planned.

A dozen TV's! Larry and I started out with a simple plan to replace our older technology televisions with hi-def ones as a little luxury to celebrate retirement. We had a general shopping strategy to first check out Costco, which always has a great return policy. We found TV's number 1-3 in our first round. We got a 46" Samsung for the great room plus two 32" Westinghouses for the bedrooms. We didn't like the Westinghouse ones, so brought them back. We discovered a special on a 46" Visio, so returned the Samsung to save a considerable amount of money. We ended up hating the Visio and started looking for another 46" TV. We were impressed by the 3D Samsung at Best Buy, but thought it was too pricey until we found the same TV on Amazon for a great price. We ordered it in a bundle. That TV appeared too dark, which made us think that something was wrong with it. Amazon graciously agreed to send another one. In the mean time, the 3D kit came. We discovered that we got headaches from using the 3D glasses and decided we couldn't keep the bundle or the TV and returned them all. We kept looking for a great picture and decided the Sharp was worth a try. We bought one for a good price in an open box at Ultimate Electronics. When we got the TV home, we discovered that it didn't have a remote control or power cord and a few other things. We took it back and was given a brand new one. In case you've lost count--that is TV number six for the great room. Fortunately, Number Six is the charm. It seems to be working well and has a nice picture. Now the bedroom TV story--Costco took back the 2 Westinghouses. We ordered Hannspree's from Costco.com instead because of their stellar ratings and inexpensive prices. However, I had a problem ordering with my new credit card. I got frustrated after multiple attempts and finally had Larry order the 2 TV's. It turns out that both my order for 2 TV's and Larry's order for 2 TV's went through. 4 televisions arrived for us on the same truck. We took 2 back to the warehouse, of course. The total count for the bedroom TV's is 6. Out of the 12 that we purchased, we did keep 3, so only sent back 9. We really were not trying to be difficult customers. We just had a hard time evaluating the TV's in the stores. The pictures really do look different at home with various sources for pictures and stores seem to compete with each other to have favorable return policies to make it easy to try out the sets at home.

Heat Wave in December! Larry has reminded me several times not to gloat about our weather here. Today hit 84 degrees. It feels great. I heard about the snow storms in different parts of the country and am thankful for our beautiful weather. I just love walking around without a jacket.

Lists! I've been in the making lists and finishing up projects mode for the past few days. It always makes me feel like I've accomplished something when I go down a list and check things off. Today I finished incomplete sewing projects, wrote Christmas cards, and worked on our calendar.

I'm getting sleepy now as the hour approaches for star gazing. I think I will sign off. Tomorrow I'll report on what we see.