A Full Moon!

Yesterday was the full moon (Wolf Moon) and people were certainly acting like it--besides the usual crazy drivers (we watched one guy, third in line to turn left out of a parking lot, drive around the two cars in front of him and race out into a left turn causing all of the cross traffic to slam on their brakes to avoid an accident) then when we were at self-checkout at Sam's Club, the lady in front of us did the slowest job ever--after scanning an item she would tell the lady in the next lane about her colonoscopy, scan another item, continue her conversation, rinse, repeat.  I can totally understand why people have meltdowns in public over other people's behavior!   

On a side note, if you live in/near LA, I hope you are OK.  I've been watching videos of the wildfires in that area and it looks totally terrifying!

It's Been a (Tech) Week

It's been a busy tech week around here...

• CES just wrapped up in Las Vegas.  This is a big consumer electronics show which used to be easy to attend (just print up a business card and walk right in) but these days they have increased the requirements to attend (thank goodness so many people post videos of the event on YouTube!).
• We got a new range recently and hubby asked why it keeps trying to connect with his cell phone.  I guess there is an app for everything these days and while many people like all of this consumer tech, I would go back to the wood-burning cookstove if it was possible!
• New Samsung phones are being released soon.  I signed up to pre-order so I can get a discount if I decide to upgrade my phone (this is free to do but you aren't required to buy a phone if you change your mind).
• My ancient printer/scanner was having issues connecting to my laptop because I changed the router/network.  I thought I would just buy a new printer/scanner since one was on sale for $35 but when I read the reviews, it said the scanner (which does not use ink) would not work if you didn't have ink in the printer.  What a scam!  I haven't had ink in my printer/scanner for years.  I make so few copies that I just pay 10 cents a copy at the local library on those rare occasions when I need to print something.  So I redoubled my efforts and got my old printer/scanner to connect.  I also backed up the device software since it is no longer supported by the company and I am also going to order a printer USB cord for around $5 so that if it can't connect to wifi I can still connect it to my laptop.
• Then I sent a coupon to an old Yahoo email account that I rarely check because I only use it for junk email and found I have lost access to it! When it said it would send a code to the backup email address, it went to another Yahoo email account that I rarely use and when I went to check that old account, it said it sent a code to that email's backup account which happens to be the first account I couldn't log in to.  Ugh
• Finally, here is how tech can be used to increase your car insurance and here are some generally annoying tech trends. 

10 Consumer-ish Things

Instead of ranting about the news and politics (since this doesn't do any good and only serves to jack up my blood pressure!), I will talk about consumer-related things today...

1. Eggs are back in the stores (see photo above).  Our local stores were out of eggs for the past week or so, I guess due to bird flu, but now they are back--for $4.49 a dozen on sale.  eeekkk
2. And for my Filipino friends, bagoong and a couple other cooking items were suddenly banned a couple months ago which sent Filipino cooks into a tizzy (including hubby, but we got creative and learned how to make products similar to these banned items so that was interesting).  Anyway, today we found bagoong in our local Asian grocery store.  It is now being made by a US company but the price shot up from $5.99 a jar to $12.99 a jar so hubby said he would just continue to make his own!
3. There will be two free entrance days to the National Parks this month.
4. Hubby is having a harder time stepping over the edge of the bathtub to take showers now so we got two estimates to remove his bathtub and make it a step-in shower.  Both came in around $11,000.  I told the guy I thought this project would cost around $7,000 but he said the price hadn't been that low since before covid!  We will decide if we will go this route or just buy a single-story house that already has step-in showers.
5. We got our car insurance bill this week and it steadily increases with each renewal.  Apparently this is a thing nationwide although drivers in my city are particularly awful.  Fortunately our car insurance is only a fraction of this guy's.
6. Right on time, I got an email from H & R Block last week to sign in and start my taxes (I file online with them every year) so we will pay less than $40 to file our taxes this year.  Now I just need to wait for all of the tax-related documents to get sent to us (and hope I don't end up paying this year!).
7. According to this reddit post, gas prices in my city may start to drop.  That would be a welcome change!
8. Today hubby and I went to the Goodwill and got six pairs of pants and six shirts for a grand total of $12!  Every Monday is dollar day at our local Goodwill so all grey-tagged items today were only a dollar (and you need to get there early because it looks like the swap meet people fill huge baskets full of any item with a sale-colored tag and sort them out later).
9. We have been really good with not eating out since January 1st, I hope we can keep this up!
10. We have also been doing a cash-only, low-spend month and so far, so good.  I am hoping my credit card bill will be precisely $0 at the end of the month!

The First Week of 2025

I was somewhat hoping we would roll into 2025 in a calm and peaceful manner but of course, I wake up on New Year's Day to mass shootings in New York, Illinois, and Texas as well as the driver that drove into the crowds in New Orleans which killed 15 people followed by the exploding cybertruck here in Las Vegas.  Sheesh...looks like it will be another year of people losing their damn minds.  Lovely.

In other news, we haven't seen any of the cats in about five days.  Where do they go?  Why do they just disappear like that?  We miss them but looking back through my pictures of all of the feral cats we have fed in the past, there have been more than a dozen that hang around for a while then just disappear!

Our sunsets are still amazing (see above) and hubby and I spent the day cleaning out the kitchen.  Can you believe two people have this many pans?  We cut this pile down by almost half and will donate the pans--and other kitchen items we don't need--to the Goodwill (which is where nearly all of these items were purchased in the first place!).

Quick End of the Year Update

2024 has been a pretty crazy year; hopefully things calm down in 2025 (but I'm not holding my breath!).  These last couple of days of 2024 will be spent cleaning and organizing like I always do at the end of the year.  In cat news, the mom cat and remaining kittens all seem healthy and active which is good.  We decided not to go to a cousin's Christmas party which we usually attend (color me lazy this year; my social events calendar has gone from busy all the time to you have to drag me out of my house kicking and screaming...I guess menopause does that sometimes) which turned out to be a good thing as I heard everyone who attended the party got sick.  They don't think it was food poisoning but norovirus is spreading around the area like wildfire.  Bullet dodged I guess.  My new year's resolution will be to not make any new year's resolutions this year.  And the store displays went from Christmas to Valentine's Day practically overnight!  I wish you all a very Happy New Year!

  

Merry Christmas!

Just a quick post to wish you all a Merry Christmas!  I hope you and yours had a wonderful day!

Merry Christmas Eve!

I hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas Eve!  Hubby and I are enjoying a quiet day at home, watching movies, and I will probably bake cookies later this afternoon.  In sad new, the little kitten that was looking ill yesterday died this morning (hubby was traumatized by this turn of events).  This wasn't the kitten that all the others shunned, this was a happy, healthy kitten just a couple of days ago.

So I made an online report because H1N1 is going around and seems to have made the leap to mammals, but got no response, probably due to the holiday.  Poor, cute kitten.  I hope he wasn't poisoned or anything awful like that, but his swift demise was kind of shocking.

In happier news, I have been tracking Santa throughout the day, and it's been a bright and sunny day (not really Christmas-like but infinitely better than having to endure the storms hitting both the Pacific Northwest and New England this week!).

A couple of interesting links: a vocal range test and some very cool historic photos.

Merry Christmas Eve!