Monthly Archives: September 2008

Sickies

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I’ve been sick for a few days, and haven’t felt well enough to do much online. It all started days before I showed symptoms with my third child throwing up during the night, and then having cold symptoms the following few days, then my eldest child was coming down with it. This past Tuesday, the day after buying the Suburban, we all got into our “new” vehicle to go to a store or two, and more than half-way there, our second oldest, girl, said she didn’t feel good, then a few minutes later decided, well, couldn’t help it, to throw up. It was terrible, and worse than that. It was a good long way to home from that point, and not pleasant on the nose. We got it cleaned up initially as much as possible in a parking lot before continuing on home, but that didn’t eradicate the smell and all were miserable.

My plan had been to get some things to stay in the vehicle, things that would be good for cleaning up messes to keep things nice all along, and that would include “throw up bags” to contain that mess from the get-go whenever it occurred. I wasn’t prepared for that the first major time we drove somewhere in it. I had nothing and didn’t have a clue she wouldn’t be feeling well.

She’s a historic throw-upper, being quite able to do it in the vehicle when it’s the least convenient time for it. I hate throw-up, I can’t abide it at all.

So since then she showed signs very quickly of having a cold coming on. And I started to feel strange for a couple of days, then my throat got that itchy feeling and within two days was feeling horribly raw and sore. I had a terrible throat for three nights, then last night it was bad, but not AS bad as it had been. Today it’s not AS bad as it had been, nor as bad as yesterday. It still hurts, but it’s tolerable. If that makes sense. It’s all levels and what is bad one time, another time is improvement and not so bad after all.

I’m wondering if this is just a virus thing, or a combination of fall allergies and virus/cold. My eyes are burning now,and I just feel icky. Icky in a different way, more allergic than cold. I don’t know. I don’t care really. I just want it all to go away.

Anyhow, the Suburban smells OK again. Hubby took it to some car place and did something to the carpet. I’m tired, feel so dragged out like a nearly drowned cat that somehow claws it’s way to a bank of earth and survives, barely (you know, someone that doesn’t like cats drowns them, horrid. My mother told me a story about my grandfather long ago, how he went to the river with a sack of kittens to drown, and after the sack was in the water one or more got loose and came up sneezing and still drowned, but that made him promise never to do that again, he was a sensitive soul and was doing it under orders, apparently. So my illustration is built on that, to be a grown cat that someone tried to do away with, but that got free and is totally tuckered out trying to save itself. That’s me right now, totally tuckered out and just wishing it didn’t take so much to do easy things, but it takes so much energy, and you never think about it unless you are sick, how much energy little things really take.)

Baby Q (now 15-months old!) has been sick, but he’s got it easy. I’ve lost my voice. This is day 2 of full larengitis for me. Ugh. I’m still drippy nose, clogged up, Rivers of stuff down my throat now and then, and hacking or sneezing at odd times. Baby isn’t clogged up but has some drippies, that’s it. He’s still nursing, so that no doubt helps.

We bought a Suburban

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On Monday (09/22/2008) we bought a used vehicle, 2005 Chevrolet Suburban 1500. It’s not an LT, was listed as one, but isn’t. It’s missing many of the creature comfort features I wanted, but truly it’s not as much as a problem now that we have the main thing we wanted, a Suburan with low miles, in good condition and not ugly, leather seats with middle row being a bench.

Most Suburbans we’ve seen have bucket seats in the middle when they are leather. This one was available at a dealer that was willing to work with us, we had some trouble with how our mortgage reported to credit bureaus a few months ago, so didn’t have success like we wanted then and could afford with financing, found out the hard way (trying to get financed and finding the flaw that had just happened.)

We really needed a better vehicle, our 2000 Montana is falling apart. It’s been used for family use and business travel most of it’s life with us, which is from when it was new in May of 2000. Hubby will continue to drive that for business and the Suburban is mine to use, I finally can go somewhere when needed or wanted during the daytime. Of course, gas prices prohibit totally going out unless really needed, expecially since it’s now going to be in a V8.

The Suburban is a vehicle that we’ve wanted for a few years, or more, and just something I new would work for us, without actually ever having driven or have ridden in one. Having one now for a few days it’s just right for us, the seats are wonderful, so comfy and just right. The ride is smooth and it feels good to drive. I haven’t driven much since starting to have children, less once one child was born, and less when we had two and then down to mostly never since having three children. Now we have four children and I have a vehicle to drive and am being dubbed the primary driver of the Suburban so that I can have the freedom to drive safely and comfortably, get out more, not be stuck, take care of shopping needs during the day, instead of how it’s been, which is total family time, so it takes away from Saturdays, and evenings … now it can be that we have more family time, and aren’t just home all day when hubby is working here or on the road.

Pictures later.

Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock: My Career on Easy

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Before our last trip, which we took in the beginning of September, been back less than a week, thus far …, I had finally started using my Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Wii game that I had gotten for my “birthday” in July. I hadn’t ever played any Guitar Hero or that sort of game, just was very interested in it with the newer version of it, and it being available on Wii, which is our main console right now.

Basically I was inspired to start using it when we had just been to Best Buy and the Rock Band game was setup there and my daughter started doing the drumming for it, but the guitars wouldn’t work. So after she tried it some I tried the drumming too and found that it would be fun if it worked right, it wasn’t doing things right, in our estimation.

Even with that not so good experience, it made me hungry to just hook up the GH and jam. In 3 days I beat the Easy mode in career. I played a lot, but not all the time, mind you. I got pretty good with Slow Ride in practice, so then I started my band in Career and off I went.

After that win, we went on our 10-day long trip and my fingers were crying out for my “guitar” the whole time. We got back on Sunday, Sept. 14th but I didn’t do anything with Wii at all until last night. I played a bunch of songs in Quick Play, re-practicing basically. After I had beat the Easy mode before our trip I did a lot of Quick Play just for fun, and let my children do it too. The older two are begging to start there own “careers” and I said they could sometime, just haven’t opened the starting gate for that yet.

I was a tad rusty last night, but it was like 2 weeks between gigs, and no practicing except for air guitar interpretations of GH to songs on the radio in the vehicle on our way up North. :smile:

Next on the agenda then is Medium mode with my career. I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge yet, but maybe I am, just have to try it. At any rate, I have enjoyed the Easy mode and would love to do more songs in that mode, FWIW. I want the Guitar Hero Aerosmith game, but thus far hubby doesn’t seem to understand all the fuss, or why one would want another game … and add to it the fact that I was talking about getting the Rock Band game, and then nixed that when I found the information about Guitar Hero World Tour upcoming game … He’s either overwhelmed, or underwhelmed, maybe both. FWIW.

New Laptop

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I got a new laptop on Monday from Costco. It’s an HP Pavilion tx2513cl — So far I really like it. Thus far the idea of it is wonderful. It’s a tablet pc, so I can use the traditional keyboard and touchpad to navigate the screen, but I can also use my finger directly on the screen to click or move something, and moreso useful is the stylus for really doing so everything normal and so much more than that.

I like the size, it’s 12.1″ though the design has the battery sticking out the back, but the longer I work with it, it seems to provide some kind of stability, I am not sure how to put it into words.

Up to now I’ve always had a larger laptop (ever since having one, that is) but have seen the tiny sort, 10″ precisely and had a fascination with those for awhile, keeping steady with my 15.4″ HP. My hubby has been using a different laptop from work lately, not new, but a cast-off of someone else, it’s a 12″ Toshiba and that got me thinking about smaller computers again.

I wasn’t going to get something new like this, but the way things happened, it was possible. My now previous laptop was an HP Pavilion 5224. It had been acting badly, so when things went right and Costco had this nice laptop, it was do-able. Since that old HP has a “Best Buy 3-year warranty” on it, we brought it in last night, and will find out in the next few days whether or not they’ll [HP] fix it or let us get another.

This gives us options. We have me, hubby, and 4 children, three of who are getting bigger and bigger fast, and an extra computer laying around would be great. What we will be offered we don’t know, but the price on the paperwork is fairly high comparing todays market to what 2 years ago was. A Thousand bucks wasn’t much to plunk down. Before that it was a Compaq I’d had that got way too hot and was a problem, we paid close to or more than $2000 for it and ended up with being able to get from stock of the store we were in whatever we wanted (because of the entire affair with trying to get the thing fixed, it was a bad, bad time with customer support … store manager was more than pleased to help us when CS didn’t) and settled happily for a lesser priced product, a Sony that was worth $1800 those days. I’m nearly shocked looking back from this perspective of time, computers morph so quickly into different animals. Prices go down, power and functionality go up.

My little laptop I’m currently using is pricier because of it’s size and tablet-ability. The regular laptops in the 15″ range are well below $1000 now, well, well, well below it for some of them. Comparing them to the laptop we just turned in under the warranty, whoa! That old (ha, ha) thing was/is Athlon 64. We are so far past that now.

The biggest difference in this and my other computers is the OS. This is Vista. They were all XP. I am liking things about Vista, jumping through a few hoops to find what I want on occasion, but I do like the LOOK of it and how many things function. I hope it’s been long enough since it’s introduction that the bugs are –moreso than not– worked out.