Adventures in shopping

The last two days I've been shopping. When you reach my age, if shopping lasts very long, you inevitably must find a restroom. I had occasion to visit several during my shopping sprees. The first few were no prizes, but the last one nearly did me in. I had visions of some one calling 9-1-1 thus exposing me to the acute embarrassment of have some nice hot firemen having to extract me from the miniscule stall, rescuing me literally with my pants down. Ugh.

What on earth are these people thinking when they install ladies' toilets?

First of all, I'm still waiting to encounter a warm restroom. At my last job, my co-workers and I had a contest going for the coldest restroom. The local Pizza Hut won when we found that we could see our breath when we exhaled on encountering the ice cold seat. Brrrr. Surely it can't cost that much to heat a dinky little bathroom.

Secondly, there are those restrooms that use automatically flushing toilets. My friend and I had occassion to visit the public restrooms in a mall the last time we went shopping. Her toilet would not quit flushing. We estimated that it used enough water to provide Amarinda with one of her three minute showers--with water left over. That bugger just ran and ran and ran...

I'm not even going to discuss matters of public restroom hygiene. But there is something that bugs me. Why are the toilet tissue dispensers installed so low on the wall that you have to fold up like a pretzel in order to pick off a few meager sheets? I don't need to see my feet when I'm on the porcelain throne!

Until yesterday I thought my number one complaint was the size of the stall. Hello! Everyone isn't built like Twiggy! There are some stalls that have the walls so close to the toilet that you have to raise your arms over your head to sit down. These are usually the same stalls that have the toilet paper dispenser down low to the ground near the door. I've learned to scope out the surroundings before sitting down. I have a little routine. Get the toilet paper first. If the installer was truly fiendish, he also installed the door so that is barely clears the toilet when it swings open. In that case, you must first straddle the toilet so that you can shut the door! Hundred percent chance it was a man that installed it. There's more than one way to get back at women.

Last evening, a new humiliation was visited on me. The toilet was so low to the ground that I swear it was a kiddy toilet. I have lousy knees that don't bend worth a damn. When you are sitting, you use your knees to stand up. So there I was sitting on this toilet that was waaaaay down yonder. When I tried to stand up? Nope, the knees weren't going there. So I sat there a couple minutes trying to decide what to do.

Tried again. Nope. Still sitting there with my feet slowly going to sleep. Then the vision of the 9-1-1 guys came to me. I just couldn't face the idea of foxy firemen hauling my bare butt out of there so I tried one more time. Success! Of course, I still had to straddle the toilet to get the door open, but hey! I was out of there!





On Saturday, I decided to spring for a bigger work table for my "desk". And then on Sunday of course, everything had to be moved to the new table. It's never that simple. After some discussion the house hunk and I decided that we also needed a new area rug for that portion of the room.


When you rent an apartment, for some insane reason known only to God, the apartment people invariably install pale beige carpet throughout the apartment.


There is no easy way to keep pale beige carpet clean. None. Two days after moving in, I hit on the notion of covering all the floors with large area rugs. I like color. Lots of color. So when I went out to buy area rugs, I bought a variety in coordinating colors and slapped them down.


The rearrangment of my desk left a previously covered portion of the carpet hanging out there--bare naked beige carpet. Oh, the horror! House hunk and I immediately shot off to Walmart and picked out a new area rug to throw down and cover up the boring beige. It's sort of a toned down pomegranate red. Yum.


Rug's down, desk is rearranged and the computer is reassembled. Of course, there are all those piles of papers, notebooks, bills, receipts to file, but I'm a veteran vertical filer so that's for tomorrow... or the day after that.


Anny

Don't forget to stop by Kelly's Place at http://www.kkirch.blogspot.com/ to check out the Saga, her version of the romantic potato, and her B&E story. Then pop over to Amarinda's blog at http://www.amarindajones.blogspot.com/ to find out what she's been up to. Ask her about Cyclone Helen. Leave cryptic comments. Blessings on your day!

Shooting Trouble

For the most part I am reasonably computer literate. But occasionally something blindsides me and until I figure out what the problem is, I am frustrated and annoyed and cranky. In the last few days at some point, I inadvertently disallowed the cookies for Yahoo.



Now I have no idea why it's called a cookie, but it seems to be a small bit of code that tracks usage. You would think that a tracking cookie wouldn't be that critical to the overall scheme of things, but then you would be wrong. Perhaps if someone explained why it was called a cookie, I could then get with the program. As it is, I have difficulty taking something called a cookie seriously.



I spent three hours this morning tracking down (no pun there) the elusive cookie. Believe me, I tried everything. Finally, I removed all of my anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-everything else software and still the missing cookie was nowhere to be found. Now what?

Next I turned off my Windows firewall, etc, etc. Still no cookie. By this time, I was beginning to feel like the Cookie Monster. Close to drooling and banging my head on my desk, I was moaning, "Cookie, cookie..." My husband suggested a toast and coffee break while he walked the dog.

Refreshed and reinvigorated, I sallied forth once more in search of the Yahoo cookie. Lo and behold I noticed a new button. Click. And there was a list of blocked cookies with...you guessed it...Yahoo. With glee, I unblocked the cookies and immediately checked to see if that was the problem.

Yay! I could log on to Yahoo! Check my mail! Read my chat loops! Amazing how little it takes to excite me these days. Sigh. Of course, I still had to re-install my anti-everything software. And turn all the blocking stuff back on.

Because it was a re-install, the program insisted on running a virus scan which took the better part of the millennium. But I seem to be up and running again. Notice I said "seem to be" because I also had ominous messages blinking at me that some programs might not work properly due to the resets. I just love surprises, don't you?

So now that I'm finished with my trouble shooting for the morning, perhaps I'll get back to the main event and write a chapter or two on my current work in progress.

Have a blessed weekend and be well.

Anny

Don't forget to drop by Amarinda's blog at www.amarindajones.blogspot.com and Kelly's blog at www.kkirch.blogspot.com to find out what words of wisdom they have for a Sunday morning!