Thank You, Apple Store!

I have an iPhone. I am seriously in love with my iPhone. It is my lifeline to my business, my family, my friends.... you get the picture.

So imagine my horror last night when I picked up said iPhone, and it slipped out of my hand. It went to the floor in that slow-motion movement that happens when you slam the door of the car and you realize that you've left the key in the ignition. I couldn't catch it. It hit the floor with a sickening thud.

I retrieved it from the floor and tried to call Judy. Her voicemail acted as if it couldn't hear me. How rude. Then I realized it actually couldn't hear me. And the little "home" button on the phone didn't work anymore. And I couldn't sync it to my computer anymore.

In short, I had a nice, iPhone-shaped brick.

I dug up my old Razr, hoping I could convince AT&T to turn it back on, called my voice mail from the landline and changed the message telling people to call Bob if they had a problem, and made plans to head to the Apple store first thing in the morning.

Two very nice young (and I mean young) men met me at the door. I held out the iPhone and simply said "Make it go." They laughed and took pity on the old grey headed woman as I explained this was my business line and I was in a heap of trouble. They made an appointment for me for noon, took the SIM card out of the iPhone and put it in the Razr so I was back in business (yay!), and I went out to kill two hours in the mall.

Did I mention that the new Vera Bradley patterns are out? And that the Night Owl is really cute? And that I now have some of it, since I was there, and it was there, and I had the time.... (I was going to link to the Vera Bradley site to show it to you, but it's not listed yet! You'll need to Google it because there's a ton of people selling it on Ebay.)

Anyway, at noon I went back to the Apple store. The girl looked at my phone, and I told her what happened, and that I expected to pay for the repairs since stupidity isn't covered under warranty. She looked at it again and said that the damage didn't look that bad, and why didn't she just give me a new one.

Wha?

Wowsa!!! She went and got a shiny, new, working iPhone, and set it all up for me. I told her I'd kiss her, but people would talk. I was absolutely thrilled, because I thought at a minimum they'd send it off, and in the worst case I'd have to wait till July 11 when the new ones were released and buy one of those.

I brought it home and synched it, and I'm back in business. Thank you Apple Store!!!!

Another reminder... I'm still collecting for the Race for Research. If you'd like to donate, please click here to go to our fundraising page. Thanks for your consideration!

Retail Therapy

Note that we were supposed to be in West Virginia right now. There was some scheduling confusion, so the trip got postponed. Unfortunately, that included my stopover in Pigeon Forge, so and that torpedoed my day of outlet shopping there.

When I called Mom to tell her that the trip had been postponed, she called back a little later with the suggestion that all of us go over to Dawsonville, GA, where there's a perfectly adequate outlet mall, and spend the night and engage in a little retail therapy. So, this past Friday evening, Richard, Oscar and I headed to Rome, spent the night with my Mom, and on Saturday morning we went to Dawsonville for a day of shopping.

Oscar is a professional shopper. He rides around in his stroller (or his "Royal Carriage" as DF Jill terms it), and basks in the attention he attracts. This time, he determined that stroller time was quality nap time, so he curled up and went to sleep while we were shopping. I'm always amused by the double takes we get from people who see the stroller, assume it's a baby, then realize it's a dog. :)

Mom has a hard time finding clothes to fit, considering a size 2 is too large (!). (Yes, I obviously took after my father's side of the family, where we're all built like fireplugs.) Problem is, the clothing companies figure if you wear a size that is small, you obviously want to have a skirt cut so short that it barely covers your rear. My mother is nearly 80, and that's just not her style. Heck, I'm only 50, and it's not mine either. So when we can find clothes (and she prefers suits to wear to church), chances are the skirts are too short for her.

She did score a few things at one of the outlets, but it was a bit of a frustrating shopping trip for her, clothes-wise. She did much better buying tops and t-shirts to wear with her existing outfits. Plus, she scored kitchen gadgets at Williams Sonoma (where they had a really kewl ice crusher, but Richard has declared a kitchen-gadget moratorium in this house so I couldn't get it).

I managed to find a couple of Vera Bradley Pink Elephant pieces on sale to help round out my collection. Woo Hoo! Talked to another girl who was pawing through the boxes at the Mori outlet with me. Richard rather snarkily asked if I had converted her to my "cult" of Vera Bradley, and I told him that she was already firmly in before we even spoke. Hmmmph.

But the big thing was that we spent the weekend together and had a good time. On Sunday we dropped Oscar off at our house (since we pretty much passed it on the way back to Rome) and took Mom to one of the malls here. She had a little better luck with some clothes there (or at least I hope she did -- she took them home to try on, and I'll bring back what doesn't fit when I go up there this week).

Took Mom back home and then returned to Kennesaw. Geez, I was tired! I don't think I've done that much walking in awhile. I think the exercise was good for me...even if it wasn't for my wallet. :)

Just a reminder... We're still taking donations for the Race for Research. You can link to our donations page here, and we appreciate your help!

A little shameless begging

Those of you who've known me for awhile know I lost my dad nearly 7 years ago now to a brain tumor. And those of you who went through that with me know how incredibly dark and horrible those days were, and God bless you for standing by me. For those of you who haven't known me as long, know that my dad's illness has had a profound effect on my life, both while he was sick and after he passed.

On July 12, Richard and I are participating in the Race for Research sponsored by the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation. Lest you be concerned, I'm not running anywhere... there's a 2K walk associated with it that we'll be participating in. We're raising funds for research -- as it turns out, there's been less progress made with brain cancers than with cancers in any other part of the body.

By clicking here, you'll be taken to my fundraising page where you can make a secure donation to help us toward our goal of $1000. No amount is too small, and every donation is sincerely appreciated. Money raised is earmarked for research into brain tumor treatments.

I thank you for your consideration, and I promise we'll return to your regularly scheduled fun blog posts soon. It's just that this is incredibly important to me, so I'm pulling out all the stops to try to make our goal.

It's just my way of trying to make sure that no other family will ever have to go through what we did ever again. Maybe it's a pipe dream, but I gotta try. My dad would expect no less of me.

FINALLY!

Just sayin'.

A couple of finishes

So for most of this week I've been down with whatever flu-like bug has been going around. Nasty stuff. I've quarantined my house to keep most humans away from it, because I don't wish this joy on anybody. Felt well enough today to update the blog with a couple of finished objects:

My first amigurumi:
Disgustingly cute, isn't it? I've gotta say, attaching all those legs to the octopus was a bit of a pain. Fortunately I didn't permanently attach them until 1) I made sure they were even and 2) I made sure I had room enough for all of them. A lot of rearranging had to go on.

You've read about the Warm Woolies socks, so here's the first three pairs:
I'm gonna try to get these puppies in the mail either today or tomorrow. I have a nice stash of Cascade 220 now thanks to the generosity of the folks giving me prizes from the DWTS Pool on Ravelry, so I should be able to whip up quite a few more pairs before fall.

Which NASCAR Driver Are You?

Take the quiz!!!

As it turns out for me....Squee!

I amuse so very easily. :)

No actual children were harmed

Where have I been? Believe it or not, I've been assisting at Vacation Bible School (VBS) at my church. How did I get roped into this, since most of you know I avoid children like the proverbial plague? I think it was mostly desperation on the part of the organizers. See, there were 19 children registered. Toward the end of last week, they heard rumblings that the number of attendees was going to increase, and they sent out a plea for help at church last Sunday. I qualified because I had a pulse and was willing to show up. On Monday morning, 70 kids showed up. 70. And we turned some away because we require that they complete 3 year old preschool before they can come, and folks were bringing babies that had just turned 3.

I have discovered that people use VBS as free babysitting during the summer and take their kids from one VBS program to another to get them out of the house. I guess there are worse things they could do with them. I just kinda wish they'd have told us they were coming.

So, I became the Snack Lady. My duty was to make sure that the snack du jour was ready to go when the class was ready for snack time. The theme of VBS was "Beach Party -- Surfing the Scriptures", so each day had an allegedly beach themed snack. Allegedly. I'm still not seeing how some of these tied in, but then, I didn't actually attend any of the programs. I'm still reeling from 4 year olds shouting "Cowabunga, dude!" all morning today.

Monday's snack was a container of blue Kool Aid jello with red swedish fish on top (get it? The fish were "swimming" in the ocean) . The kids loved it. I can't begin to describe how disgusting it was. Seriously, I think the stuff was toxic to anyone over the age of 12. Nasty.

Tuesday's snack was trail mix made of pretzels, graham cracker cereal, cheddar Goldfish crackers, raisins, mini chocolate chips, and marshmallows. Note: mini chocolate chips melt in 90 degree weather. Note 2: most kids don't like raisins; I hope the wildlife around the church does, because I think a lot of them ended up on the ground. Note 3: the lack of a marshmallow in a cup of trail mix causes a Life Crisis for at least one small child. Ok. We had one bag of marshmallows and were applying the "loaves and fishes" philosophy as best we could. The lack of a marshmallow is one small disappointment in life she's gonna have to cope with.

Wednesday's snack was supposed to be a graham cracker covered in frosting and Alpha Bits cereal... the kids were to use the letters in the cereal to spell out a message. The curriculum didn't take into account that Post no longer markets Alpha Bits. So they got (carefully divided into small cupcake cups so that *everyone got the same number of everything*-- I wasn't having a repeat of the Ugly Marshmallow Incident ) M&Ms, marshmallows, and Hershey's Hugs.

Thursday's snack should have been deceptively simple: popsicles. But noooooooo. Whoever donated the popsicles (and if you're reading this, I apologize, but seriously, they were cheap for a reason) brought root beer flavored popsicles. Root Beer. For small children. They looked like poo on a stick. Poosicles. Even the little boys wouldn't eat 'em, and they'll normally eat anything when presented in disgusting terms. So I hopped in the car and headed to Publix and got normal, popsicle flavored popsicles -- red, orange, purple, and green. Things went much more smoothly after that. The preacher was happy; evidently he *likes* root beer popsicles.

One little girl turned down the popsicle, explaining that she'd had enough when she'd been in the emergency room. When pressed for details, she allowed that the neighbor's dog had bitten her and she had two stitches (pointing to the band aid covering her chin). I said "I'm sure the puppy didn't mean to do that." She replied "Yes he did." That was the end of that conversation. I'm still wondering what she did to the dog (since in situations like this, I tend to come down on the dog's side 99.5% of the time).

For our last day today, the kids got sand dollar pancakes, or the little mini pancakes. We set up an assembly line nuking pancakes, keeping 'em warm in the oven, and then putting them on plates. Trick here is to get an actual answer to the question "Do you want syrup?", since we weren't letting them loose with a syrup bottle themselves. The preacher came in and asked what we were having for snacks, and I told him *he* was having root beer popsicles.

So my first experience with helping with VBS is over. No children were harmed (at least not by me anyway). The kids seemed to have a good time; the people running it seemed to be glad it's over. It was fun for the most part, but I'll be glad to not juggle it with my client work next week. Seriously cut into my stitching and knitting time. :)