Month: February 2005

Ahh, what a lovely day! I don’t even care that the school bus was 15 minutes late this morning. I don’t! And why is that, you ask? Well, because the Pats won, they have nothing more to prove to anyone. Man, do these guys get no respect or what? Even as they are pulling off an unbelievable third win in four years, even as our coach breaks the record for winning the most games in the post-season, the analysts are talking about Terrell Owens, etc.

Whatever. You can try to dismiss this team all you want, but I think we proved our point.

Oh, and besides, we’re supposed to get some record-breaking warmth today, and 55 degrees in February is cause for major celebration, regardless of a Superbowl win.

Before I forget, here’s picture I took with my phone at Junior’s ski lesson. He moved up to the next level, and all the kids ended up skiing for an extra hour after their hour lesson was over. He LOVED it. And my nephew looks like an old pro. After 5 total lessons, I’d say he’s almost ready for the big mountain. Holy cow, that kid is good. It almost made me want to take lessons. Almost. I think if I was going to do it, I’d have to take the morning off from work and do it when nobody else was around. Because yes, I’m that embarrassed. But we stood there for 2 hours and my feet started to freeze and I started to think about how much time I’m going to end up at a mountain trying to keep amused while he’s skiing. I mean, he’s only 7 – I can’t just leave him there.

Man, less than two minutes left and I just have a gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. Well, I mean, it’s not as bad as watching the Sox play the Yanks last October, but still, I hate close games like this.

And I know the gnawing isn’t from hunger because I cooked a most amazing dinner this evening, if I do say so myself. This morning while we had breakfast out, I asked Mr. Dump what he wanted for his birthday dinner. “Beef Stroganoff.” “Seriously?” “Ya. And garlic bread.”

So while we sat there, I looked up a recipe on Epicurious, and then we stopped at Shaws on the way home and got all the stuff (except for the red wine, cause, well, they don’t sell it) and tonight I made beef stroganoff from scratch. And it was damned good. Which is bad because now he’s gonna think I can cook.

Okay, we just have to make it through the next minute and forty three seconds. This is the longest two minutes of 2005. Unless you count that time I really had to pee and I was stuck in traffic.

Man, I get a full day of shuttling Junior to swimming and then to skiing. He is SO excited about the skiing. I know I would have been at his age too. Except for my fear of pain and death. I was always afraid to get hurt sliding – I figure adding me standing up to that would not be good. Anyway, I am so not looking forward to dealing with the ski area, getting his rentals, getting his pass for the class, and then standing in the snow watching for an hour. This, my friends, proves that I love him, because I can think of about 1000 things I’d rather do this afternoon.

Mr. Dump’s birthday is tomorrow, and I can’t figure out what to do. He’s going to have to take my step-son home in the afternoon, and then there’s the whole Superbowl thing. Do I invite people over? I can’t even tell if he wants me to. *sigh*. It’s been a couple of years since we watched the Superbowl with friends. I miss that, actually. It’s always more fun to watch with a bunch of people.

Okay, I guess I need to go make sure Junior doesn’t have his underwear on under his bathing suit. I’m making him put his bathing suit on under his pants because he’s too little to go in the men’s locker room by himself, so it’s easier to have him “ready to go” when we get there.

p.s. Happy Birthday Nat! I hope you had a great day, even though I know it’s tough with your honey away. Just think, when he gets back he’ll have a whole bunch of stuff to make up to you! Geeks bearing gifts!

I know my step-son reads here sometimes, so happy birthday! I’m thinking we need to take him to UNO’s so we can get a desert for him to share with us. Well, Mr. Dump’s birthday is Sunday, so if we go on Saturday, that would cover both of them. I didn’t get my birthday meal at Uno’s but it’s already been a week, so I’m not going to try. I think they’d start asking to see ID if we said three of us were the birthday boys and girl.

Let’s see, what else.

Oh, this one is big. Well, not so much to you, I’m sure, but it is to me, because it’s like the beginning of a new era in DumpTruckLand. Junior sent me an email today. He wrote everything in it himself. This is a HUGE thing to me. I mean, I have a kid who can write me notes that express his thoughts and feelings!

And his thoughts and feelings were:

How are you?

I am fine.

We can watch a movie.

And have popcorn.

Oh, you betcha!

It’s like a whole piece of me is missing. I have the shakes, for goodness’ sake. How am I supposed to get through the rest of the day? I’m only human, you know.

For part of the day yesterday, I got confused and thought it was Friday. I cannot tell you how much it stunk when I realized that not only was it not Friday, it wasn’t even Thursday. Goodness, that was a moment of torture.

The morning team on XLO was telling a “horror story” this morning about this woman who lost all the photos of every major event in her life because they were all on Ofoto and she hadn’t read the fine print in the agreement that said if you don’t buy something every 12 months, they reserve the right to remove your account. This woman had pictures from her wedding, birthdays, Christmas, etc. and it’s all gone.

I’m flabbergasted. Firstly, because I never thought of Ofoto as a free storage space. I always thought of it as a place to upload pictures so you can order prints. Or maybe to share with other people who might want to order prints. But as storage? No. It’s a side benefit, but no. Then I was also flabbergasted that this person would upload her photos and then not keep copies of the files on her hard drive as a backup. Or burn them to a CD. Sheer insanity. You don’t throw your valuable memories on a website you don’t control, and then delete all your personal copies. NEVER EVER! Did we not live through the dotcom bust when websites disappeared without a whisper? And it’s not like you can download the original files back from Ofoto once they have them. What if you wanted to do something else with the file?

Lastly, she changed email addresses and didn’t update the one on file with them, so they sent 5 warning emails and she never got them. I would say that at this point, she can only blame herself. I’m not saying “too bad” but I am saying that you have to use common sense. If all your child’s baby photos are only available on a photo printing website like Snapfish or Ofoto, you’d better order up prints of all of them in case something happens. Do not trust 3rd party companies to own and care for your files. I am telling you this as a customer service, because apparently this isn’t quite so obvious to everyone.