The Tea Center, Books I’m Reading, and Information Technology Crisis

The Tea Center

Just a few notes from today. My long awaited STASH “tea center” arrived in it’s bamboo container, just like the one we had at work. I added all the specialty tea bags I already had to the mix. I barely got it in and it’s in sections (sort of). After a while of trying to keep I sorted by type of tea (berries, mints, chamomile, chai, green tea, black tea, white tea, etc), I finally had to stick my “Constant Comment” tea anywhere it would fit in the backs of each one, lol. Do you think we are set for a while? The STASH tea is better than any tea I’ve ever had. It’s just fresh, flavorful, and they have some really good mixes. I also can mix like Earl Grey and Orange, and things like that and make even more flavors. So happy it’s in, but now I had to move some other stuff off of the top of the chest that this is sitting on and so now I have to rearrange my house because of this one chest, lol.

Books I’m Reading

I read “The Firm” sometime back – like maybe mid to late 80’s? Much of the book was set in and around Tennessee. Well “Mitch is back”. And so I bought this for George, last Christmas I believe, “The Exchange”. I’ve been waiting til I retired to read it. And I’m loving it. I realized last night just how much I’ve missed Grisham’s books. His writing style is easy. He has a lot of characters and when I read a chapter every 2 to 3 weeks (when working, I didn’t have time), I just couldn’t remember everything and finally gave up reading anything that wasn’t “light reading”. That usually meant travel adventure books. Now I’m older and certainly can’t remember what I had for dinner yesterday – well ok I can, I had lamb – but still I decided to keep a pen and paper near by and so I’m writing down the names of the characters so I can refer back. Still, I’m LOVING it. And I’m so happy to be able to read, blog, and edit videos, and take care of Mom’s things, and organize my house, and plan! I am just so happy here in my little nest.

I also got this for Christmas below, “Life on Svalbard”. I’m loving reading Cecilia’s beautiful book. This one is a keeper. I will never ever let this book go until I die. I have sooooo loved her YouTube channel and follow her life with Christopher and Grim (the dog) on this Northernmost island near the North Pole. The book is beautiful and she takes such good pics. She also sells her photography and she and Christopher have some cooking guides also with recipes from “up that way” – like Norway, Finland – I can’t remember. But the measurements are not what I’m used to here in the USA so I didn’t do those.

I don’t know for sure that I’d want to live on Svalbard, but I wouldn’t mind a visit. It’s probably too extreme of a place for me really at my age. But I’m entranced and I can see why she loves it there. She has to carry a rifle when she goes outside because of polar bears. They live outside the city limits. And outside the city limits is where they are often found. That would be scary though, but perhaps things like the extreme weather, the northern lights, the polar bears, the reindeer, the glaciers, are what makes it so mesmerizing. You can’t have babies there and you can’t be buried there and they don’t have cats there, lol. So intriguing. Anyway I’m enjoying it. It’s reminding me of a book I read once about a family that lived on the Aleutian Islands, waaaaayyyyy out of anyone’s reach. They received supplies by plane twice a year. Homeschooled their kids. They had to be sure to order enough when they ordered supplies. Their life was hard but it was good and the neighbors all supported one another. They went everywhere by boat. It was entrancing to read. They had a cozy cabin. Katy was a baby and I had found her book while reading Country Living magazine. I looked on Amazon and I could not find the book. I wished I’d kept it.

Information Technology Woes

This was an instagram post from this afternoon. We had a rough go of it trying to get Mom’s new tablet and laptop set up. Normally I enjoy doing things like this. But when it’s someone else’s and they don’t know ANY of their passwords, it’s NEXT to impossible! She didn’t know her internet password, but we finally got it. I’m not going to go into details as it is all kinda boring but we went at this for like 4 hours. I’m also have opposite software from hers so like understanding how to even get her phone open or how to find her email or messages was so foreign to either of us (George and me). We still did not get her Microsoft Office set up because when she bought it the code was on the receipt which was at my house in her Best Buy file. I didn’t know we had to have it to set it up. It was quite the fiasco and if George had not been there I’d have given up totally, because I was overwhelmed. If there is ever a next time, Geek Squad will have to come out and do it or someone else with more patience. My patience left the building a long time ago. It’s all used up. There IS NO more where that came from. lol. I don’t know how to generate any more, lol.

Anyway, didn’t get much done in the house today since we were over there so I put all that off to Friday and Saturday. Tomorrow is my birthday and I just want to do fun stuff tomorrow. Not any house projects til Saturday or Sunday. I think there is to be an ice storm on Sunday. We will likely stay in another week from church. And I’m good with that to continue our hibernation attempt in January.

So I’m off of here to go read. We will have a late dinner – a pizza. And then we’ll hopefully sleep good tonight. I felt better today (flu wise). I didn’t have a fever yesterday and mostly was not congested today. However, about Noon when we got to Mom’s I had to take a Sudafed to clear up some. George is about a day behind me. He is still struggling with his congestion quite a bit but no fever. But I had a lot of my day where I forgot I’d been sick and so that is a good turnaround day.

We will celebrate my birthday tomorrow out and then Mom wants to take me out too next week so we’ll go again. I’m looking forward to opening my gifts tomorrow. Oh and George would not let me use my Christmas money from Mom to pay for my vacuum. (I tried to give him the cash to go on our Amazon bill). So I’m buying some storage baskets with it to help with our storage in the laundry room. I’ll be doing a video on it soon. Maybe he will take the cash for THAT? lol. If I keep buying stuff – he WILL take it. lol lol lol

Ok over and out. Despite the IT Woes, I’m back to being a happy retired person again – now that I’m home and not trying to be an IT set up person with no passwords. :-).