November 30, 2009 by kim.

We decorated the house the other day, and Chris took some interesting pictures which I will share with you now.

Our Tree:

Ornaments – my parents give me one every year!


Piano man and his back-up singers

Stockings all hung by the Victrola with care:

Christmas Village:

Nativity that has been in Chris’s family since his mom was a small child:

(We call it the Christmas pageant as it’s set up in front of the theatre.)

Ahhh … Christmas!

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November 30, 2009 by kim.

Not much craziness going on for December, what with the usual suspects stealing the spotlight (Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa) …

MONTH
Write to a Friend Month - http://www.epromos.com/calendar/write-to-a-friend-month.html

DAYS
December 5 - Repeal Day - http://www.repealday.org/

December 12 - National Poinsettia Day - http://www.ecke.com/html/h_corp/corp_pntday.html

December 17 - National Maple Syrup Day -
http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/National%20Maple%20Syrup%20Day.htm

December 21 - National Forefather’s Day -
http://www.pilgrimjohnhowlandsociety.org/article_forefathers_day.shtml

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

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November 23, 2009 by kim.

In order for us to get to work in the city, we have two options: take a bus for an hour all the way through Jersey and through the Lincoln Tunnel to Port Authority (roughly 42nd street), or take a Spanish bus/short bus/jitney across the George Washington Bridge (GWB) to the city and hop on the ‘A’ train to our destination. There is actually another option involving a ferry, but we have no idea how to catch the short bus to the ferry because Jersey doesn’t see fit to inform its residents of anything, especially something so mundane as transportation. Hmph.

The short bus is the option I normally take because it is somewhat faster. At least it seems faster to me, and if I can fool myself into thinking it is, the happier I will be.

I haven’t had much trouble on the bus, even though it isn’t actually regulated by the city. It was started by one person who saw the need for a bus across the GWB, and picked up the slack from Jersey’s lackey transit system. For the most part, it is a relatively comfortable ride, unless you get the bus with the mismatched seats that have no shock absorption and the crazy driver who drives wily-nilly all over the place.

OR - you get the guy I had.

Drivers want to fill the bus completely before going across the bridge. They want to make it worth their while and make the most money possible. Therefore, when they get to the bridge, they wait. Sometimes, they only wait a few minutes because enough people will get on. Other times, they wait longer. The other day my driver made us wait for 15 minutes. That’s fine if you’re not in a hurry, but this is rush hour and traffic is bad enough as it is. So he waits. And waits. People walk by and he tries to entice them into his bus with “NewYorkNewYorkNewYork”. Well, some people walk by saying they don’t want to wait 20 minutes for the bus to fill up. If they do get on, they keep whining about going (”Let’s GO already!” “Come on, lets GO!” “I have to get to WORK!”). Some people actually asked for their money back so they could get on a different bus that would leave sooner.

Smart.

As if that wasn’t bad enough – the guy kept moving the bus an inch and jamming on the brake. Go. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Stop. For 15 minutes. He also wouldn’t give change right away for the ride, but made people sit while he held on to their money. Yeah, that doesn’t really fly for me. One lady gave him a $20 and he made her sit down. I would have been pretty nervous that he would forget about it and pretend that she only gave him $2, since he didn’t really seem like he had his crap together. Finally, we had enough people and were all ready to go, but he wanted to try and get just one more person, until the entire bus yelled NO.

We finally did make it to the train station and to work that day.

Late.

Posted in Observation, Annoyance | No Comments »

November 18, 2009 by kim.

I’ve been a bit busy lately, turning 35 and starting a new temp job. Wow. Two things. Really? Really. How hard is that? I am such a master of excuses …

Anyway, when I get home after seven hours of staring at a computer and two hours (one each way) commuting to and from work, I have a hard time focusing on important things like searching for a full-time job and working on my blog.

Still, I want to keep up on this, so here are a few pics to hold you until I write something more interesting …

The cake I made for myself:

Cute picture of a duck in Central Park diving for food:

Chris and Matilda before the claws dig in …

… and after:

Posted in Celebrate, Fun, Nature, Animals, Happy, Food, Observation | No Comments »

November 12, 2009 by kim.

Chris and I were bumming around the city a few weeks ago when we decided to go ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Doesn’t it sound like a wonderful time?

I’m sure it would have been.

I’m a klutz. That was made clear when I broke my wrist three years ago trying to balance on a chair to hang Halloween cobwebs. If I couldn’t even handle that, should I really be balancing on ice (of all things) wearing hard plastic boots with thin slivers of metal attached to them?

Probably not.

Still, I did want to have the experience. We rented the skates, put them on (they really were hard plastic with absolutely no give to them), and hobbled out to the ice where I promptly attached myself to the wall. Chris, of course, took to the ice like a pro. I hadn’t been on the ice since eighth grade, and I was terrified of falling. With some gentle coaxing, Chris got me to transfer my death grip from the wall to his arm.

Slowly, we began to skate.

I was freaking out. People were skating by (WHOOSH), doing spins and turns which made me nervous. We continued creeping around the rink. When we got back to where we started, I said to Chris, “I’m not having fun anymore. I stopped having fun when I set foot on the ice.” So sad. He was willing to leave the ice to make me happy, but I wanted him to have a few spins around first. No reason for him to miss out on the fun because of ol’ scaredy cat Kim.

He said okay, and off he went:

Look at him! He looks like he skates every day! I just stood like a statue on the ice and forced poor little kids to skate around me who were also trying to hold on to the wall but had to let go because I was latched onto it and wouldn’t cut them any slack. When he got back, I decided that I wanted to give it a shot. I wasn’t going to let some frozen water stop me – I wanted to skate!

This is what my skating form looks like:

I’m surprised I didn’t hit anyone, staring at the ice as I did instead of skating with my head up. Still, I made it! It took twice as long, but I made it without falling! Yay me!

We managed to stay on the ice for a whopping twelve minutes before we called it quits. Funny thing is, it wasn’t my fear of falling that made us get off the ice when we did. Know what it was? The skates. The uncomfortable plastic skates were the problem. They were killing both of us by the time we were done.

I guess that’s one way to limit people’s time on the ice!

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November 9, 2009 by kim.

I know, I know. Another animal post with ANOTHER squirrel? I can’t help it – this picture is too adorable to pass up:

He sat on the bench next to me and closed his eyes at the exact moment that I took the picture. Isn’t that amazing?

Ooo – I just want to kiss his cute little fuzzy wuzzy tummy and snuggle with him all day!

That’s not gross, is it?

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November 7, 2009 by kim.

Walking down the street one day as we often do, a bird caught my eye (as it often does). We weren’t sure if we saw what we thought we saw, (happens a lot with us), but we did.

A parrot.

Parrots are supposed to be inside animals (in this country, anyway), aren’t they? What was this one doing outside? Was he lost? We thought he might be until we heard the rest of them.

Obviously, that bird was not lost. He’s part of a bird gang! Actually, what we found in a NY Times article online, is that they may have escaped from a shipping crate at nearby Kennedy International Airport in the late 1960s. They are called monk parakeets, aka Quaker parrots.

I also came across this video on the BrooklynParrots.com website:

Love it!

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November 3, 2009 by kim.

Well, this isn’t the only reason, but it’s one of them.

I called my bank in IL to close our accounts. I was told that I would need to send a signed letter and copies of our drivers licenses to complete the transaction. I could either fax it, or scan it and send it through email. I opted for the latter. How hard could it be?

Apparently, extremely hard.

I have experience scanning documents. I have experience creating .pdf files. I seem to be able to use the computer. So why did it take me two hours just to send one measly little two page file?

Let’s see. First I created a letter in Word. Then I signed it and Chris signed it, and I scanned it. So far, so good. Next came the driver’s licenses. I scanned them individually, placed them into a Word document, and saved it as a .pdf. Sounds about right. Then, I tried to combine the two single pages into one two page document. After ten years of doing office work and learning bits and pieces from Chris the technical guru, this should have been a snap. It wasn’t.

First, I spent I don’t know how long trying to open what ended up being the wrong program to combine the pages (Acrobat Distiller instead of plain old Acrobat). Then, when I opened the right program, it didn’t have the tools I needed to get the job done. We figured out that I needed the older version of Acrobat, and not the newer one, so I tried that. I was able to connect the two pages, but they were two completely different sizes. If the bank tried to print them, one would be a normal size and the other would be the size of a playing card. I then spent a large chunk of time trying to figure out what I had done wrong, and trying to re-size the document. I couldn’t do it. Chris couldn’t do it. I decided to just scan the two pages in by using the automatic feed attachment on my printer. I had to re-attach the broken tray to get it to work, but first I had to print the pages to scan, and wouldn’t you know it – I ran out of ink. I changed the cartridge, printed the documents, and proceeded to scan. When I did that, the document appeared as a legal size document instead of letter sized. What the … ? Chris offered to help, but I said (screamed) that I wanted to do it myself, so I crawled under my desk to gather my thoughts.

When I pulled myself together a few minutes later, I simply went back to my original Word letter, inserted some digital signatures, created a .pdf out of it, made a .pdf out of the letter containing the licenses, combined the two, and emailed it to the bank.

Really, was that so difficult?

Obviously.

Posted in Annoyance | No Comments »