Buyer beware

 Sometimes I just feel screwed

    Astoria Jewelry did it to me.  I have been in contact with them frequently, but I get the same response......return sent too late.  I had tried to send it but their form would not load the required picture.

    In hindsight, I should have e mailed the information without the form.  But I did not think of that.

    Our Comcast bill has gone up $100 over the past year.  I tried to ask someone, but all I got was an AI chat bot.  That was no help.

    I Googled Comcast phone number.  I got an 800 number and dialed it and got a pitch for free medical stuff, I just hung up.  The lady talked so fast, I could not say anything so I just hung up. Suffice it to say, it was not Comcast.

    Went back to the AI chatbot and learned I had to take my bill to a Comcast store to see about changing my plan.

    I ordered some lightbulbs for our Dickens Village.  4 packs at $9 a pack.  Not a single bulb worked.  I will contact the seller and see if they will do anything.

    We ordered slippers for Emily for Christmas, but they are the wrong size.  I have to send them back UPS, but hey don't fit in the drop boxes in town!  I don't know of a place here to take UPS packages.

    Finally, I bought some jeans from LL Bean.  I've had them a couple of months and there are holes in the pant by the back pockets.

    I e-mailed them and within 10 minutes got a reply,  which included a shipping label and directions to send them back and they will send me a new pair.

    In other words, actual customer service!!

    And to top it off, my hearing aid is squealing like a pig!  

    Now all I have to do is find a time to go to DeKalb to fix my cable bill,  take care of the UPS parcel, get my hearing aid adjusted, return some things to Kohl's.......and who knows what else.

    I just have to find the time to do it all.

    And free time is scarce this week.

    Such is life.

Peace and Love

weird, eh?

 I took Beth for a walk today

    We went half way down the street and turned around.  She met a little dog and the 2 of them stood in the middle of the street, tails wagging and noses sniffing..

    Why is that unusual?

    It's Jan. 5!!  It is supposed to be cold, snowy, icy, and stay in the house weather.  Instead, it's put on a light jacket and walk the dog weather.

    Tomorrow I plan to take down the outside lights.  Last year I let them sit in the basement for a few days to dry out.  I don't  know if that is a help or not.  I will do the same this year and test them all to be sure they work before I put them away.

    At some point I need to test the Dickens Village lights.  There has to be a reason so many did not work this year.  That should only take me a few days.

    Seriously!  I will get bored after about 10 minutes and move on to something else.  At some point I will return to the testing, only to think it's useless and I will find another odd job to do.

    Eventually I will get back to them after Jackie reminds me that things need to be put away.

    After another futile encounter, I will grab them all, say a few cuss words, then throw them into a box or bag and promise to do it next year.

    Maybe that's what I should do in the first place and avoid all the unnecessary hoopla.

    On a highly personal note, I was at 201.5 New Year's Day.  

    Damn cookies and egg nog.

Peace and Love

Noggin it

 I just opened our last bottle of egg nog 

    It is not straight!  And it has quite a kick!

    I think Julia bought it for us, but I just put it in the fridge and never opened it.

    I planned to on Christmas.  And New Year's Eve.  But never did.  Until tonight.

    A couple of nights ago I watched an episode of The Twilight Zone.  I loved that show when I was young and I was happy to find it is on one of the channels that runs old shows.

    In the episode I watched, a man died and went to heaven.  He had his own personal angel, lived in an all white apartment, had women whenever he wanted, all the food he wanted, everything.

    But he got tired of it.  He wanted to do some things from his old life, like rob a bank.  The angel told him there was a bank down the street, a get a way car was arranged, the tellers were told to hand over all their cash.

    The guy became enraged!  He said there was no thrill, no surprises, no excitement in life.  He told the angel he wanted to go to the other place.  The angel asked what other place?

    The man said he was tired of heaven.  It was boring repetitive, and there was no challenge.

    The angel said, "Heaven?  What makes you think you are in heaven?"

    I always loved the little twists at the end.

    But I woke up this morning with a bizarre thought.

    What if our lives were the afterlife?  What if our memories were planted in our brains when we died?  What if all the people we know and love don't exist but in our own little minds?

    And now I think I am going to have another glass of egg nog and possibly go to bed.

    Happy New Year!

Peace and Love

oops!

 We all visited Julia today

    Jackie, Beth,  and I took a road trip to Julia's.

    My niece's daughter,  son and his girl friend came to visit their grand mother, our sister in law, who is still recovering in Rockford.

    After their visit with her, they came down for a mini reunion.  Julia ordered pizza from Giardarno's in Rockford.  We had some deep dish pizza and it was delish!

    Beth generally spent the time going from person to person to get pets.

    Unfortunately, when the group went downstairs to see the wine room, Beth dropped a load on the concrete floor.

    This is the second time she has done that at Julia's!  Both times in the basement, luckily.

    She has done it once at our house in the basement.  Maybe it is the concrete smell that appeals to her.

    Funny thing is, she had gone out shortly before then.  

    These folks  are in the college attending age bracket.  On New Year's Eve we met 2 young women who are in helicopter training school and will soon be flying Apache helicopters.

    I've run into a lot of young people lately and I don't have any fears about what that generation is going to do.  They are eager, tech savvy, smart, and will build a better tomorrow.

    I just hope there will be a tomorrow for them to build.

    Today is Jan. 3, Epiphany is Jan. 6.  That officially ends the Christmas season for us. 

    But I plan on cheating a little this year.  The outside lights may come down tomorrow or Monday at the latest.

    Then the Dickens village.  Then the rest of the decorations.  

    And finally, the tree.

    The house will seem empty, the Christmas gaiety  will be put away .

    A  cold.  hum drum January and a slushy February will follow and then spring, if we are lucky.

    Life seems to be going by too quickly.

Peace and Love

Pop goes the memories

 I am drinking a 7-Up and thinking of the Kennedys

    No, not the president, senator, or the faux Kennedy running a government office into the ground.

    I am thinking of the Kennedys I knew.

    Up until about sixth grade, we lived in a 1 bedroom apartment on the third floor of my grandmother's building.

I shared a bedroom with my brothers Carl and Dennis.  My parents had a Murphy bed in the front room.

    If you don't know what a Murphy bed is.....It lifted up and went into the wall.  Then you closed some doors and it looked like a cabinet.  I think they are pretty darn cool and a real plus for small apartments.

    Across the street from us was a family with Kennedy as  a last name.

    My parents were friends with them

    When Mr Kennedy died, the kids, all adults, decided to sell the house.  My parents bought it for $17,000.

    We all had our own bedrooms!

    Mr. Kennedy's funeral was in their house.  I remember (and it may be a false memory) looking down from our apartment into their living room and seeing him in a coffin along the wall my parents would later put a couch.

    Fast forward a few years.

    I had a newspaper route.  It was actually in a factory and I sold the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago American.

    But I also delivered a paper to Marion Kennedy, who moved from 1472 W. Belle Plaine to a house on Berteau, 2 blocks north.  

    Marion worked for the city of Chicago water department.  Her sister, Timothea, was an actual sister in a convent in Iowa.  Her brother Jack was a priest and her other brother Phil was a Monsignor.  I don't know exactly what that is, but my parents felt it was a pretty important position in the Catholic Church.

    Father Jack would often visit Marion.  If I delivered the paper while he was there, he would always insist on talking to me.  We talked about what I wanted to be in the future, how school was, what my day was like....stuff like that.  In fact, he even made me a bet on grades.  If I got an A, he would give me $1.  A B was worth 50 cents and a C got me nothing.  If I got a D I owed him 50 cents and an F would cost me a dollar. 

    I was always glad to show him my report card.

    So how does 7-Up fit in all this?

    Marion would always give me a bottle of cold, cold 7-Up to drink during those visits.  I remember how refreshing and great it tasted.  My parents didn't buy much pop, so it was a treat.

    They are all gone now.  

    I often wondered why Marion was the only child not to enter some type of service to her church.  I remember she was a faithful believer, unbelievably kind, soft spoken, and drank 7-Up.

    I have commission papers and photos of Captain Kennedy  from 1896.  They are another one of those items I don't know why I have, or what I should do with them.

    I have a FB friend from those days, and she lived next to the Marion on Berteau.  I wonder if she enjoyed 7-Up too.

    The house?  My mom sold it in 1978 or so for $57,000.  A few years ago it was listed for somewhere in the $800,000 territory.  But it did not look like  my boyhood home.

    Funny when memories pop up.  

Peace and Love

Sometimes Beth just wants to see what is going on from a different angle.

Good bye 25!

 And good riddance

    Hopefully 2025 will be a much better year for all of us.

    Less hate, more love.  Less war, more peace. Less division, more unity. Less blaming, more cooperating.

    Ah, what a wonderful world that would be.

    The dog treat mystery was solved.  Emily left them Christmas Day!  That means for a whole week I never noticed them until last night.  

    And while they are made in Delaware, you can buy them in our area.

    In years past I would get up early, watch the parade, watch some football.  But I seem to have lost interest in the parades.  And I am not much up to date on college football.

    I didn't even watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade this year.  

    I may catch a glimpse or two, but I really don't care if I watch or not.  Same with college football.

    Hope you all have a healthy, happy, safe 2026.

    And although you will hear this a lot, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

    (Pretend you hear cheap toy horns blowing)

Peace and Love 

what the......

Pardon my typing mistakes tonight 

    I have an injury.

    Somehow I got a wood sliver under the nail on my left hand ring finger.

    It hurts like crazy.

    Jackie tried to dig it out using a needle, I tried a tweezers, and neither worked.  Nor did sucking on my finger or soaking it in hot water and then squeezing it.

    So the s w and x keys are hard to hit because I put a bandage and Neosporin on the spot.  

    Many of you know how unobservant I am.  

    Tonight when I went to take my 3698 pills, I noticed a bag of dog treats in front of my pill suitcase.

    I swear, it was not there this morning.

    There are 2 delicious looking treats in the bag.  Nicely decorated, soft like Beth likes, and how they got there I don't know.

    Lisa, our morning helper, said she did not bring treats for Beth today.  I would think she would have said something if she had left a bag.

    The kicker is:  the treats come from a place in Delaware!

    How they got there puzzles me.

    Delaware is like, well, far away!

    Our nice was here yesterday and she is from Delaware OHIO!  I know she did not leave them because I would have seen them before tonight.

    And for my latest trick, during supper prep I knocked a bowl of puppy chow onto the floor.  Not puppy chow for puppies, but the puppy chow for humans.  I swept and vacuumed up the floor and Beth spent a lot of time sniffing and looking for parts I missed....but I don't think I missed any.

    That's my life.

    Unobservant, sore, and clumsy.  Sounds like a comedy group in a retired actors home.

Peace and Love