Alas, the end is nigh

The laptop is reaching the end of it’s life. It’s had the buzzing problem for a bit & the new HD failed to help. It over heats. It clicks and groans. It takes forever to load anything. every program freezes at some point.

Two days ago it started just shutting down at random, generally when the CPU is running a bit.

I’ve found a new one & hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get it. Supposedly it is in stock at a Best Buy an hour away, not the easy to get to one south of us, but the one in traffic hell to the east. It has Vista, with free upgrade to Windows 7. It also has 1Gb of virtual memory (I have 128MB now) and 500GB HD (I have 160 now, recently replacing the 80GB one the laptop came with). It has 6GB of RAM (I have 4). It has a build in webcam. I’ve never used a webcam. I have this vague worry videos of me looking at the screen unaware I’m being filmed will end up on You Tube.

I’ll have to reload EVERYTHING.  Just the list of Firefox add ons is daunting, never mind the actual programs. I’ve backed my Firefox data, my documents, my photos, my PSP files, everything else ‘my’ on the computer and all my Outlook email, folders & accounts. I’ve downloaded nearly all the software that can be (ACDSee is proving a problem) & found all the CDs I need.

Except I have Office 2000 and apparently it doesn’t work with Vista, or maybe it won’t work with Win 7.  So that is another however many hundreds of $$. I can get some free programs that do Word & Excel but I need to get Outlook. Thunderbird doesn’t work with my ISP (Though rumor has it at least one employee does use it successfully).

I’ve decided to pay Best Buy to set up the laptop for me and remove all the free trial crap. That is $70. Outlook is about $100 or so. The laptop will be around $1000, depending on what financing we choose (one gives 10% off, another issues cash back based on points, or I could just pay for it, but it’s hard to resist a discount). Gas is about $15 there & back. We’ll be there in the late afternoon so dinner will be at a restaurant like the Crab Shack or Olive Garden or something- another $75 or so. Miscellaneous expenses to keep the kids occupied while the laptop is set up could run as much as $50 if we go to Fun Town.

So about $1400 or so later I’ll be ready to start loading my stuff on my new laptop.

Let’s have a moment’s silence for my old laptop. It saw good service for 4 years & has earned it’s rest.

Let’s have a moment’s silence for my bank account too. I know I am grieving.

I swear but…

I had this conversation with Havoc the other day

Havoc: “This boy calls me Dork all the time.”

Me: “Well, that is rude of him. Name calling isn’t nice.”

Havoc dithers a bit about this. He doesn’t like being called Dork but then he says. “It’s ok I guess. It’s a game we play.”

M: “Doesn’t sound like a very nice game to me & it sounds like you don’t like it much.”

H: “No, it was his idea. He called me Dork & then said I could call him a name too.”

M: “Oh really?”

H: “yeah, he calls me Dork and I call him Pussy”

pause for a couple of seconds while I CALMLY digest that.

M: “what do you call him?”

H: “Pussy”

M: “How did you come up with that name?”

H: “This older boy said it would be a good one”

Do you know where these boys were when this game was being played? Vacation bible school. I have no idea who the older boy was, another student or a helper. I have no idea where any authority figure was either.

I swear fairly often. I am 100% responsible for any ‘hell’s, ‘damn’s or ‘shit’s the kids drop in conversation (which so far have been few and far between. They seem to get that just like there are grown up beverages, there are grown up words too). Lately he has been saying kickass and badass, which, again, my fault. I let him watch some Star Wars parodies on You Tube that had inappropriate language. Though he does only use those words when he is reciting dialogue. He has yet to thank me for the kickass dinner or announce he is too badass to play CandyLand. It is context specific swearing.

I don’t expend a lot of energy protecting their virgin ears from language. I’d rather they were not shocked by hearing someone say asshole but just shrug it off as someone behaving badly. It isn’t thing big forbidden thing people do, but just words most people would rather not hear. But I do try to limit the exposure. I was expecting this to happen. But I assumed it would be on the school bus, where he rides with 30+ other kids ages 5 –17 & only a distracted driver overseeing things. I did not expect him to come back from bible school with an ‘enriched vocabulary’.

I’m downplaying it for now as I have with other words. He hadn’t been calling anyone else pussy so I suppose it’s not too bad. I almost want to start a list of Words You Can’t Say so he’ll know ahead of time, since he has been so obviously clueless. But then he’ll have a list of inappropriate words & will no doubt share it with others.

Then I’ll be that mom who gave her kid a list of swear words.

I can only imagine the hits I will be getting due to language in this post

Weekly Winners - week 28

I’m getting caught up from last weekend

We had a pool party for July 4th

These guys joined in

This one was pushing everyone

 

Fortunately there were plenty of floaties

 

Dino paddling

 

We had fireworks,and I am just no good at shooting them or processing them

 

There were macro moments as well

 

For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom

Visiting the caverns

We live somewhat near Luray Caverns. There is a huge mountain between us and the caverns and a decent amount of flat & foothills, but it does qualify for spur of the moment trip status.

sidenote – when I lived in the suburbs, the first 25 or so years of my life, anything 30 miles or more away was a day trip. It was just too far to go without advanced planning. Now that I live rural and just buying milk is a 20 mile drive, anything under 120 miles is considered ‘nearby’

I enjoy Luray Caverns. They have an interesting history, are a nice ambient indoor temperature, involve just enough walking to feel you have earned an ice cream at the end and are a good ‘nearby’ place to take visitors when the weather goes all rainy on a holiday weekend (apparently everyone in a 100 mile radius agrees with this because the parking lot was packed, mostly with Virginia plates with nearby county stickers on them). We’ve been there 3-4 times in the 15 years we have lived in the area. I went once with my parents when I was kid, I think on the way back from Myrtle Beach. The only thing I remember about it is that they put a bumper sticker on my dad’s van while we were on the tour and he was FURIOUS about it.

We were last there when Havoc was a couple years old.  Mayhem was an infant. They were still offering guided tours then. Now they give you a headset with prerecorded information you access at different spots & let you follow the path on your own. It’s nice to go at your own pace but with everyone listening to their own headset it sort of stops conversation.

The caverns are huge and full of fascinating rock formations.

There is the fish market

reflection lake

 

Pluto’s ghost

 

The Saracen’s tent (though I think it has a different name now)

It’s cool, the rocks look like tried out stiff towels

 

This one reminds me of Jabba the Hut

Can you see the bearded man  & the dragon?

 

And a couple of fried eggs

We’re headed to Wheeling this weekend. I’m going to stuff myself with diCarlos’ pizza and hang out at Wheeling Park, just like I did every summer of my life until I was 20 years old.

Holiday weekend

We had a 4th of July party complete with fireworks. A bunch of friends came over. There were 7 kids 7 and under running around, getting in and out of the pool and splashing water all over the food.  There were 8 adults sitting around, shouting not to splash or squirt water in this direction.

note to self – move deck back a couple feet next spring

There were hot dogs, hamburgers, assorted dips, lots of chips, a fruit platter, a bowl of fruit salad and a lemon pound cake.

Then the whining for the fire works began, a full hour and a half before dark. We don’t do sparklers because most of the moms are afraid of letting the kids have them. The one mom who isn’t (me) admits to setting herself on fire with sparklers 15 years ago & so can’t argue with the danger. (but I would totally let the boys have them if it wouldn’t set off 5 other kids wailing to have them too. I was sitting down in a crowd, in a long skirt, after several beers, when my skirt caught fire. Not a situation the boys can repeat & it just smoldered anyway)

Eventually the men set off the display of roman candles, fountains & etc.

They were handled for the most part  sensibly. At one point I did ask my husband if he was *supposed* to be holding a Roman candle while it fired and there were a couple misfires – one into a tree and one up the hill toward the spectators. No fires or injuries occurred.

The one bit of carelessness was in disposal. Empty fireworks canisters were tossed into the burn pile.

Take a minute a guess where this is headed.

After the fireworks were over, we lit the bonfire.

BOOM! BOOM BOOM!

Dud fireworks shot out of the bonfire in a brief colorful display. No one had actually said “Here, dude, hold my beer & watch this” but it was definitely that sort of moment.

No harm done though, just a memory that will be recalled every July 4th from now forward.

It was a huge bonfire

That is my husband in the lower left corner spraying it, in the photo above & below, just to give some scale

It rained Sunday and that put the smoldering remains out. It also made it impossible to clean up the yard until yesterday. Sunday we went to Luray Caverns.  Photos from that tomorrow.

Weekly Winners – week 27

Some of my 365 photos.  The fireworks were very late last night, so they will be in next week’s batch.

Mayhem did a lot of work on his puter

Havoc practiced swimming underwater

The knights took the pirate ship

This is Smoke

And her brother Thor

  In macro news the army men have reached my keyboard

For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom

Blog Hop Intro

I signed up for the MckLinky monthly blog hop and then being my usual forgetful self, failed to put up a post about it.

The theme this month is introductions. My failure to post about it probably says more than I can in words.

My name is Stacey. I am a nearly 42 year old, married, SAHM of 2 boys, Havoc age 6 and Mayhem age 5. I used to be a data analyst and am still a data geek.  I do various work from home gigs now. I read a great deal, mostly historic mysteries. I like to crochet and digi scrap. I take tons of photos for my 365 project.

Dinosaurs & Star Wars fill my days. 

I look forward to meeting some new people & visiting your great blogs.  If you add your link here, it will appear on all participating blogs at the same time.