Marie’s Mindless Drabble

We have been having quite a warm spell lately. This past Monday we finally had some rain but it was more like a springtime storm than a late fall rain. Today has been extremely windy and a cold front has moved through and tomorrow’s weather is going to be more like fall with the high only being in the high 50’s. It will be short lived because we are back to the 70’s next week. I guess I shouldn’t complain. When January is here and it is cold and wet, I will be yearning for these mild spring like days again.

My mother usually makes my lunch each night for the next day at work. With her being out of town visiting my new great-niece (her new great grand-daughter), I have had to make my own lunch. I was wondering if I would be able to make the chicken/apple/almond salad sandwich as good as she makes it, but I have found it is easier to make than I thought. I always have the same lunch everyday; chicken salad sandwich, grapes, Special K snack bar, chips (the only thing that changes when I finish a bag), Diet Dr. Pepper, and water. I guess you could say I am a creature of habit. 

The final plans are coming together on our new Bonanza ezine. We are running a contest now to name the ezine that will be out in early 2009. I am looking forward to seeing what names people come up with. I have received some great names already! 

The Dan Blocker celebration is coming together as well. Some great badges for the associated features affiliated with the celebration are quite clever and fun. It is really great to work with a group of ladies that are very talented and innovative.

When I purchased my new 2008 SAAB, it came equipped with XM radio as part of my radio line-up. I have several XM stations saved in my preset channels and I often listen to X155 which has a variety of talk radio shows. Today, I got into my car to come home from work and I changed from my local talk radio station and clicked on X155 and there was some radio announcements about other XM/Sirius channels. I didn’t think much of it because with it being at the top of the hour, the show that I listen to is also on free air channels that have news and weather at the top of the hour so when this happens, XM just plays other neat things on X155. I stopped to get gas (which I paid $1.78!) and when I got back into the car, there was still XM/Sirius commercials on. I found this strange as it was 7 minutes after the hour, that is when I noticed that the marquee on my radio said, “channel off air”. I changed to X7 which is all 70’s music and listened awhile and then changed to X8 which is all 80’s. I noticed the old MTV VJ’s are now the hosts on X8. They used to host on Sirius radio, so I figured that the two satilite radio companies were now one.

When I got home, I was checking my email and saw that I had a email from XM with a new channel line-up. XM and Sirius had indeed now merged. I was checking the new line up and I didn’t see X155 on my new line-up! I was so sad! I did find some of my other favorite talk shows on XM now so I was happy about that but I wanted my X155 back! I called XM and they said X155 was still on the line-up and she was looking at it online. I told her that I was looking online and I didn’t see it, so she told me where she was looking. I went there and found it! She said that it had been renamed and she didn’t know why it was saying channel off air. I found out that I could actually listen to it online now which was great. Sometimes I like to listen to the show once I get home but I couldn’t before today because it was not one of the channels that you could listen online.

I got in my car while I had the girl on the phone and tried to access the channel again but was still getting the same “channel off air” message on my radio. She didn’t really have any reason why but told me to check back in a few hours. I decided to manually try the channel by dialing it with my tuner knob and wha-la, I was able to re-dial X155! I re-saved it and it now works. I guess when they changed the name of the channel from “Take Five X155″ to “Sirius XM Stars”, I had to re-save the channel. Sattelite radio. Got to love it, but it has its issues to.

I watch Y&R each day for 30 minutes while I have my lunch at work. I also watch it on Soap Net at night when I get home. I haven’t been able to catch up this week, but today, I found out that Catherine Chancellor, a long time character on Y&R has died in a car wreck. I am just shocked! I was wondering if maybe she had finally decided to retire. I saw that her death is going to bring many of the old characters back to Y&R, I guess for Catherine’s funeral. It is very sad. I loved Catherine’s character. I especially loved her and Jill’s sparring. I feel bad for Nikki, Cat’s best friend too. She has been through so much this year and has had her share of loss and guilt. The coming weeks should be interesting!

I have learned over time who I can count on and who I can’t. I don’t have a lot of people in my life that I really can call “friend”. People that say they have a load of friends are either kidding themselves, or pretty much spread themselves so thin, they are not a true friend to all of their “friends”. 

When I call someone my friend, they are someone extremly special to me. Someone that I can call in the middle of the night and cry on their shoulder and I know they will listen. A friend is also someone that I know I can share my most wonderful news with and they will celebrate with me as well.

I have found that most “internet friends” are really just acquaintances that you enjoy talking to but probably in real life, wouldn’t have to much to do with. While they are fun to chat with online and talk to via email, how many do you really have a close relationship with? I am lucky to have found one very special friend just like that and I thank God each day for this wonderful person. Sometimes meeting someone in person will change your attitude toward them for the good or worst. Sometimes it is not anything you say or do during your time together, sometimes it can be something physical about you that turns them off about you as well. This has happened to me before and it hurts. 

I have found that discussion boards are pretty much the same amount of shallowness. No matter what discussion board I belong to, I have found this to be true on all of them. There are those in the “in” crowd that if you post something, you will get a lot of responses, but then you see some that will post something and while a lot of people might view it, not one person will post anything to it. Why is that? Is it because that person is not part of the “in” crowd and just like in high school if you were one of the popular pretty people and you showed any interest to someone that was considered a “freak” or maybe one of the less pretty people, your friends looked down on you and pressured you stop being a friend to them? People post things on discussion boards because they find them interesting and want to share them with their fellow members. It makes them happy or smile and think it might make their fellow members smile as well. I have had many members tell me that they get frustrated at this act and I tell them, don’t worry about it. Do it for yourself and while they might not post, it doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy it, but I do in a way understand their frustration. Usually a lot of time and thought goes into a feature or thread that is started but because they are not so popular, it goes looked upon blind eyes. 

On the flip side, sometimes I think that people kiss butt because they are intimidated by someone that is very charismatic and they are afraid of rocking the boat. People lose themselves when they allow themselves to get to that point. We live in a free country and we should be able to agree to disagree without having fear of being ridiculed, banned, or shunned by the masses. I think that if people were mavericks and learn about people based on their own views and not the views of others, they might find the person that they have judged are not the person that they were led to believe by others.

I have tried really hard to let go of biases that I have had against some people over time. Some have spoken pretty ill about me to others but if those that were made to hear the forked tongue about me and judged me based on that information, then so be it. I can’t force someone to see the real me. I am not going to pretend to be someone I am not. I am not going to smile to your face and then speak ill of you. Life is too short and besides, I am a horrible liar. Like one member of Bonanza Brand told me one time when we talked about this very issue, if you can’t say something nice, its better to not say anything at all.

I have been away for awhile because life was busy and I couldn’t figure out how to get in to my own blog! LOL I had the emails from Word Press, yet, when I would use the info they sent me, it wouldn’t work! Thank goodness that Jo keeps this information and she sent me the user name and password so here I am!

I got back from vacation recently and had a wonderful time. My mother went with me this year and we had a nice time on our visit to MA, NYC, and a cruise of New England and Canada. The weather was a bit chilly for this southern girl, but it was sunny most days. We returned back to Boston on my birthday and stayed at the Westin Copely Place and had dinner at Top of the Hub that evening. After dinner, we stopped off at the 50th floor and had a spectacular view of Boston at night. It was breathtaking. If I can figure out how to post pictures, I will.

Upon returning from vacation, I got sick. Since I was gone for two weeks, we drove down to Austin where we left my two girls with my sister. We flew out of Austin to Boston and then back to Austin. Upon our return, I had told my mother that we would pretty much need to scoop up the girls and head home since it was a 3.5 hour drive and I had to be at work at 6:30 the next morning. Well, best laid plans. LOL The weather was so lovely, we sat out on my sister’s deck for about 3 hours eating lunch and talking about the trip among other things. By the time we were about an hour from home, I started to get a scratchy throat. I didn’t think much of it, I figured I was just tired, after all, I had been awake since 2:00 in the morning Texas time. I went to bed about 9:00 that evening and still had the scratchy throat. By the time I left work at 2:30 Monday afternoon, I was feeling really bad. At 9:00pm, I sent a text message to my boss saying I was really getting sick and wouldn’t be in the next day. I woke up with a terrible sore throat, eyes watering and nose itching. Allergies were in full swing. I took my Zirtec and started the Zycam, but nothing was working. I drug myself into work on Wednesday and Thursday, but when I woke up at 2am on Friday morning and feeling really bad, I sent another text to my boss saying there was just no way I could make it and made an appointment with the doctor on Friday afternoon. Sure enough, it was just a bad case of allergies. He gave me a big steroid shot and gave me some Singulaire and sent me on my way. I felt remarkably better by Sunday and even though I was still coughing, I went to work on Monday. The coughing was getting so bad by Monday, however, my throat started hurting again. So, I found my codeine from my gall bladder surgery back in the spring and took it when I got home from work and again when I went to bed. Between the two, it would quiet my cough throughout the night and pretty much most of the day. I had to do this for about a week and now I am feeling so much better. I am still having issues with headaches, but no more blowing nose and no more coughing. 

With the cold and flu season upon us, I hope that everyone stays healthy.

I would like to start by thanking Jo for giving me this little place on her site to house my blog. I left Bravenet because I was constantly getting spammed on my Bravenet blog, so I decided to make one here when Jo allowed me to come here.

This coming weekend is Pernell Roberts 80th birthday! Bonanza Brand is going to have a lot of great surprises in store so I hope that you will all come by and celebrate with us. A special badge will be available to all that join in on the chat Friday night! If you haven’t already put your haiku in the Virginia City Literary Society, be sure you do to get a bonsai tree badge! This badge as well as the special one for the Friday night chat are going to be history after Friday and Sunday, so if you want one of these limited edition badges, be sure that you participate! That is the only way to get the badges!

For those that don’t know, I am working the 3rd shift now at work. I love it too! We don’t have a lot of customers, but we have been more busy lately than normal with customers late at night. I guess they think  because they come late at night, they can get big jobs done while they wait. WRONG! What they don’t realize is that we have other customers that have brought their jobs or sent their jobs to us earlier, and they take priority. I usually can get the jobs done for them by the morning, but just because you come at 3am and have 1,000 color copies, 100 tabs, and 10 binds that need to be done ASAP doesn’t mean that you can bump other jobs and sit there at my counter looking down my throat while I work on your job. The same rules apply at 3am that apply at 3pm.  We are not open 24 hours sitting waiting for you to come in and bring in your job. We are there to run big jobs at night that can’t be done when we have a store full of customers! But I forget….The customer’s procrastination is MY problem! NOT!!!!!! LOL