Hello… sorry its been a while, have been busy on other projects, no real time to just relax and write for *me*.
I have done a new selection of photos for the Gallery, and thought to share some here, as well as a pretty shot Alyn took of my daughter on the docks.
My apologies for sideways pics… I have not yet found a way to rotate them from this device.
PERBLOG
June 28, 2011
Well, I can consider today a good day or a bad day. My good outcome from today won’t happen for another week or so anyway. With about $700 in car repairs recently, needless to say money is a bit tight. My Internet service with Comcast went over 30 days past due (with me being only 3 days away from being able to pay it), so the bastards cut me off. I called Customer Service and the first lady I spoke with told me they’d be able to release the block to give me that 3 days to pay current, seeing as I have reliably paid my bill with them the past 2 1/2 years, despite their lack of customer support on regular outages. When she transferred me to Billing however, another woman told me I had to pay $75 now to get my service turned back on within 72 hours. Much heated discussion ensued, which ended in my hanging up on her and calling AT&T.
AT&T earned a new customer tonight. Setting up the account was easy, I won’t need to pay anything upfront, and I’m getting the first year of DSL Ultra for $25/month ($48/month after 12 months) for 6 meg download speeds. That’s 3x faster than I was achieving with Comcast at $75/month, and with constant Comcast service drops and shoddy tech support at best!
My new modem won’t arrive til Friday the 8th, but in the meantime I can still access a neighbor’s wireless from my laptop, thanks to its signal booster and from other places around town. Wi-fi is fairly plentiful if I’m willing to go a couple blocks. None of my other wireless devices can hit the neighborhood one thpu, so I’ve been ending up going out to the movie theater to use theirs. Still, to save $50 a month for a year – that’s a very good thing. If nothing else, it will definitely cover my summer air conditioning bill and then some!
And now… I will have the ultimate pleasure of being able to call Comcast and do what I’ve wanted to do for the past 2 years – tell them to CANCEL MY SERVICE!!!
Ah well on to scrapbooking to kill my time for a while 
At least until Internet is back in the house!
As if the black widow in my flower pot the other weekend wasn’t bad enough… (hairspray and a lighter fixed that one…)
Alright so… Sunday, Alyn and I are out swimming in the Intracoastal. It’s coming up on dusk, lots of schools of fish are out feeding (and being fed upon)… i’m about waist-deep in the water but sunk down to my shoulders just relaxing… along comes a SWARM (not a school, a swarm!) of fish (the surface of the water was rolling) and they start nipping at me so I jump up only to feel something having a hissyfit in my bathing suit top! Yanked my top down (lucky Alyn) – a frikken fish propels itself out and takes off to go find his buddies. I said, “Ok! That’s enough nature for me!” and [quickly] made my way to shore squashing I don’t know how many crabs and sea slugs and God only knows what else under my feet on my way in because at that point I just didn’t care about looking where I was going.
Then!
Today after a very busy day at work and a NASTY virus hit that caused me to have to stay a couple hours late, by the time I got home all I wanted to do was put my feet up and RE-LAX. The sunset was getting pretty after a storm began to dissipate, so I took my book of crosswords outside and went to settle into my favourite porch chair. No sooner did I sit than I was swarmed by freakin’ wasps. I – BOLTED down my driveway, goosebumps head to toe, and waited for them to disburse. They didn’t. I managed to get a look at what they were concentrating on and there was a damned wasp nest attached to the underside back of my chair!!!
So I’m out in my driveway, completely befuddled and freaked out, BAREFOOT, my phone inside, very angry wasps swarming my front porch (and of course the front door was the only one unlocked) – and my only weapon was a crossword puzzle book. Yeh – time to die.
I tried for about 20 minutes to time a mad dash for the front door but they just kept circling and getting angrier. Finally, I walked over to Tracy’s apartment and after hiding my head in shame asked if they might have any wasp spray. NOPE. Todd thought it would be a good idea to go spray them down with the hose, so he did. The result? A hive of WET, pissed off wasps. After while, a flyswatter was acquired and Tracy covered me, managing to maim a couple of them while I dashed inside for my keys and whatnot. I ran back out spraying a cloud of Raid and ducked into my car and went straight to the store for a can of wasp killer. I’m inside now… 2 hours later… and luckily none got inside! Oh, and she was nice and gave me dinner again
Summary: I DON’T LIKE NATURE ANY MORE!!!!!
This is a collection of photographs I took at the Savannas Wildlife Preserve in St. Lucie County, FL All were shot on a Canon EOS Rebel G using Fuji 35mm film. Yep, that’s right: I’m old-school.
A little history of this photo set… These were taken in 2005, shortly after my husband had filed for divorce and put me and my then 3-year old daughter on the street. This is where I ended up living for some time, in my little tent while still holding a full time job. This collection is truly a statement to finding the positive and the beauty in any situation we are given to handle. I hope they inspire you as well to look around you, no matter what you’re going through, and try to find something beautiful to hold onto. Even the smallest thing can be enough to keep you going when you’ve lost everything else.
Namaste,
Heather.
Have you ever spent months, or even years, uploading photos and other information to a website only to have it all disappear without warning? Say your account gets hacked, or the website itself crashes or goes out of business. I thought years of my daughter’s baby pictures would be safer backed up to two separate places on the web than on a computer that kept crashing – until both sites went down and all data was scrubbed.
Facebook has a great little feature that most users won’t know about unless they seek it out or ask. Users can download a backup of their information, including posts, photos, videos, messages, contacts… all your information in one convenient little package.
To do this, from your Facebook Profile, click on Account, then Account Settings. Click the Learn More link next to “Download Your Information,” then click the Download button.
You will be given a message that Facebook will send you an e-mail when your download is ready. This can take several hours, depending on how much information you have stored on the site. From there, just follow the instructions in the e-mail and save your file. All your information will be sorted by content type, making it easy to locate anything you’ve posted or uploaded.
With as much information as avid users post on Facebook, this is a very useful function indeed.
Really… my life has been work crash eat crash work crash eat crash… completely boring :/ Seems work is all there is most of the time, 10+ hour days just to get by… there’s got to be more to life. I rarely have the energy to go out, and have even turned Dan away a couple times as of late just because I was so drained I knew I would be shite company. I did offer up a photo shoot to him this weekend though, so we’ll see if we can get together for that. Would love to shoot some old abandoned houses at night, or my other thought was Downtown Jensen around sunset. Hopefully he’s free.
This weekend, the only plan so far is just Spring Cleaning. Need to get rid of some grown-out-of kid clothes and do the big washes… comforters, curtains… need to break down some firewood too for the fire bowl out back.
Been having to have some intense sit-down’s with Kari on her schoolwork as well… I don’t know what’s gotten into that girl, but it’s like she’s just shut down inside when it comes to school. She’s acting like she doesn’t understand things that she previously did very well in, and she’s completely slacking on turning in her homework. I’m determined to get to the bottom of it. She has a tutor twice a week, but she is still not up to par on her FCAT’s and is looking at failing 3rd grade. This is totally unacceptable – I KNOW she is better than this.
I won’t stop until I find out what the real problem is because this is just so unlike her. She went from an A student to failing overnight. I don’t understand this sudden change in her attitude, but I’ve a feeling from what she *has* shared with me that it has a lot to do with the situation at her dad’s house. She is painfully unhappy when she has to be there. Over the past couple months, the things she’s confided in me with show me she’s hit an emotional brick wall from several angles and helping her through those has been difficult. I’m just thankful she trusts me and knows she can talk to me and that I can be her rock and help her. It’s just a matter of getting to the real depths of everything going on in her heart and mind that will help me piece together the puzzle and find the solution. It comes little by little, and it’s frustrating for both of us, but so long as she remains open with me, we will make progress.
Well despite the fact that my commissions were crap last week and I barely had bill money, nevermind any going-out money, I still had a pretty good weekend. Friday night, Dan wanted to come over so we went out for a little bit, got a few drinks, came back to watch a movie. He fell asleep during it – I mean totally crashed – so I let him doze while I talked to a buddy online. But… I was feeling frisky. I didn’t *mean* to wake him up when I got into bed but… Hehe it was by far his best performance yet. …til 6a.m. He finally pulled me close and we fell asleep together, woke up in his arms later on and just lay there studying every curve and rise and line of his sweet face in the morning light. He stirred, looked at me for a moment, held onto me tighter and went back to sleep, as did I, smiling. It was so nice.
later Saturday, a friend had posted some pictures on facebook of a man’s phone number scribbled on a piece of paper and tossed on the ground. From there began a conversation thread about “The sad tale of Matt,” in which numerous people wrote creating a fateful story surrounding the dropped digits. I added my part, but I was curious, so I sent a text to the number, advising what was happening. After about an hour conversation with the guy, we figured out what had happened (which was completely innocent) and we had my friend remove the posts. The guy was PISSED – not at me, but at the fact his number was in facebook so out of context from what had actually conspired. (His girlfriend was none too happy either at the speculations it generated!) the funny part is, out of the whole thing, I ended up making 3 new friends
Saturday night, I ended up going Downtown but there was nothing really going on, so I headed home after an hour or so of doing photos. Ended up enjoying a surprise when D got in touch with me and had another amazing night – another all-nighter, goddess help me. The man is pure passion. His words, they would melt even the coldest if hearts. We seem to be getting quite close and are great friends, though a relationship with him is not possible at this time. He has too much else going on. But… I’m still enjoying it. Ever since Andy left, it seems my popularity and social life have returned full force, and I am back into life. It’s wonderful.
Last night D earned a dozen golden cupcakes the way he played along and perfectly executed a plan to save me from certain hellfire. I’d gone to the river front just to chill and write for a bit and was watching some kids fishing when their dad came to sit beside me and struck up a conversation. He jokingly handed me a million dollar bill and told me to read it when I got home. …ok? We talked about local fishing, local history, things I could discuss forever. He offered me some gum – no thanks. He offered me an IQ test. …What? Things were getting weird now. He asked me if I believe in God. Oh no… I tried to steer the conversation, but he wouldn’t budge. Where do I think we go when we die? Knowing he wouldn’t understand or accept ANY of my views on this matter, I BS’d my way through the conversation until he turned away to tend to a fish and quickly texted D. “Bible thumper! Save me!” D called me just in time, I answered on speaker phone. He said, “Heeyyyy wanna hang out?” “Sure! Where ya at?” “I’m at home, can you come pick me up?” “Sure! Be there in 10!” And such was my escape… Bible guy says, “Well, looks like you have things to do. Guess we’ll pack it in.” “Yep!” You never saw me fly out of the Marina so fast. I was saved!!! By my tall dark and handsome! Oh it was perfectly done. I love u forever Daisuke!!!!! Man I owe him for that one. We laughed about it all night. The back of the million dollar bill told me I was going to hell. But as D put it, “Well, at least you’re not the only one!”
*CACKLES*
It was rough getting back into work-mode after being off for winter break, being on my own schedule, actually taking real time for myself and my needs for the first time in a year, but I managed to catch up on time. Come tomorrow, I have another big project to start on and I can’t make it in early to do it since my daughter’s school changed their drop-off time to 8:10. I barely make it to work by 9 now, and I need to start at 8. Sighs…
Friday night was great, at least. After work, we went straight to the mall, had dinner and milled around for a couple hours, then went up to the downtown area for the festival. Had a great time there as well, lots of great music and energy, actually had ME dancing lol… little bit was dancing circles around me of course, the girl is nothing but energy. But she had a blast and that’s what matters most. Never mind how tired I was when we finally got home lol…
Saturday and Sunday, aside from Alyn visiting and my making awesome cupcakes that were a big hit, was all cleaning though. Deep cleaning. I am wiped out. But – at least it’s done. Seems the weekend went too fast. The coming week will be heavy concentration on work and lots of hours, and hopefully I’ll get to hang out with Dan a couple times. He is definitely a happy point in my life. Just can’t be stressed out around him, it’s impossible, he’s awesome.
I need to find a sketch book with nice, heavy paper that can hold watercolours without warping – I’ve got some ideas I’d like to work on soon. Hopefully between brain and brush, I can make them happen. That’s always been my problem – the translation. What comes out on paper is usually never what I’d pictured. Same with my writing. It’s like it just happens without me, does what it wants. How do I fix that?
… from Heather & Sikari!
(And my BFF Alyn as Santa too!)
