Two Keith's and a Ruby

 

Yesterday, Keith, from Mobile Auto Physician came to our home, put a new battery in Bob's truck, replaced the struts that hold up the back door and the hood to my Kia SUV, and did it in about 20 minutes. He is the owner and only employee and he was here for 2 hours because first he and I had conversations and then he came in to meet 

Bob and had a long conversation, exchanging stories. He is the age of my son Dan, and has been Mobile Mechanic for 16 years but 30 years as a mechanic. Drag Racer, Circle Racer, Mechanic, built his own race cars, lover to fish and do radio control cars. All things that Bob had done his entire life. 

For once I could not get a word in edgewise. Bob's Truck is a 2004, we bought it new for me to drive my long commute, and in 22 years no one has touched the truck but Bob except to put new tires on. He fretted over someone other than himself touching it. When I came inside and said, Bob, I went out to see how it was going and Kieth has washed your truck. He said he could not leave it with a year of grime on it because its to pretty to leave it dirty. He is also a GM man and fell in love with the truck. I found him when I called Auto Zone to find out if they had struts for my Kia and asked if they could put them on if I brought the truck to them. The answer was, we don't do that any longer, but we have a number for a Mobile Mechanic.

He is an early bird as are we, and was in the driveway at 8:10 AM and done by 8:20, his prices are more than reasonable, and he picks up the parts and comes to us.

Isn't it hard to believe this truck is 22 years old?

He was the first Keith. 3 days ago while walking Beau, a woman walking alone, walked up to us and said , Do you remember Me? I said I remember your face but not where I know you from. She said, Dog trainer and I said you are the one that trained a puppy for Southeast Guide Dogs, and I saw you every day for a year, with the puppy. She said, that it was 4 years ago. I don't train anymore, I no longer have the patience it requires. We talked, I blabbed about Bob.

The next day, I heard a car come up behind me and stepped in the gas and when the car stopped, I turned and it was the same lady. She said, I talked to my husband, and we want to help you and your husband.. She handed me her card and said, I have been driving up and down the streets looking for you, and can't believe you are out here in this cold. It was to cold for me to walk. We want you to call when you have a need and if he can do it we will come and help. 

She said, if you ever can't walk Beau, call me and I will come walk him for you.

When I read the card, I found her name is Ruby, and her husband is Keith.

Now we have Two Keith's and a Ruby to help when we need it.

Thank you to all of you who prayed with me to find help.

Thank you, Lord for sending help.

Header Crisis?

 

I took yesterday off from blogging because my brother lost all the important papers he keeps for me in his safe and one in his computer. He had the safe, but wanted the files resent.

I sent the two he needed and he said are you sure this is the update?

NOPE! Could not find the udate I did during the HURRICANE season last year.

I searched 4 flash drives and 3 external hard drives and NO!

while looking for something in a dish by the computer I FOUND the 5th flash drive which had the only

copy of the update and found It had changed since then. 

Done, sent to brother, on 2 flash drives and hopefully today on 3 externals

This is the current new header, for the past month I have created and posted them and now wonder if anyone even sees the header?

Do you see headers when you read posts?

Does the header matter?

Art is in the eye of the beholder

 

Standing in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water, I glanced down at the air drying dish drainer and realized I love the reflections of the clean glass and pots.

Just Sayin, to me this is art.

Michelle and Dan

 My son Dan and his wife Michelle, are coming Sunday for a visit. It's rare even though we are only an hour drive away. The both work 6 days a week and have a house full of pets. I don't drive on interstates and my car is a 2007. 

I will not post on Sunday or read blogs and Monday I have 8 am appt to get results from last weeks test. I will post after the visit to the doctor.

I have been playing with brushes in Procreate, not really art, just playtime, but here are he few I did no delete.

Above is a brush of a tree, its like using a stamp on paper. I created the below, using this stamp, and a bird stamp, and painted the clouds and sky and snow.

the purpose was practice making a flat stamp, as above looked more like a tree. its really hard, but fun.

these are all practices. Digital art is a mix of all medias, as in below merge a photo and draw a heart.

Jackson Sandra Pollock-ish???

I love smearing paint with the brushes.

See you Monday sometime

The Met Apartments-Village of the Arts

 

Some of you might remember bright colored houses in prior post of the Village of the Arts. It has been 3 years since we did a drive by shooting of the houses and wow has it changed!

They have repainted most of the houses, and added others and also added apartments.

Clicking on photos will show you the details of the mural. It was hard to get these photos without getting out of the car, I took them through the driver side window.

These are Income restricted apartments, 200 rental apartments, a project of our City and Federal Govt.

The name is The Met Apartments and it is stunning inside and out. Tap the link and there are photos.

They are expensive to me, and very small and they are intended for people who can't afford to pay the rental fees. The restricted income means to rent, you have to fill out a form and qualify, if you make above the median pay rate for our county, you will not qualify. 

The good news is, they are pet friendly, it has a dog park and the weight limit on dogs is 100 lbs.

I can't image a 100 lb dog in 586 square feet or 687 sq feet which are studio apartments.

OF COURSE I TOOK a zillion photos.

All photos above taken by MadSnapper and her trusty iPhone 7 plus. The one below I snipped from Google maps to show you how they painted the walls on the balconies to make them fit with the looks of the houses. 

to be continued

Seagate External Drive

 

In 2006 I purchased this 268 Gig hard drive because I had hundreds of CD's jammed with photographs taken between 2002 - 2006. 

All taken with Easy Share Kodak cameras. Small point and shoot.

I put everything from the CD on this drive and in 2011 it crashed.

 I bought two externals, 500 gig each and started loading all photo from 2006 until current date on each of them, same thing on both for just in case.

I stood staring at the drawer that contains the CD's. 

I am never going to use them, the cd photos are on the above Seagate.

The best of them are on these 3 other drives.

THOUGH just popped in my head.

The Seagate at the top is only 1/4 of the storage of one of the black Seagate boxes and the tiny pink flash drive is 2 T of space. Oy Vey! what next for me to fill with nonsense

I asked myself WHY I can't toss them in the trash?

The best are on my three blogs.

CD's are deadly slow.

10 minutes to move the Pelican folder to my desktop and then delete because bad photos.

Desktop/laptop has no CD drawer, the external player is even slower than the CD

SOOOO WHY can't I toss the CD's?

Bob, Mr. sensible, stated "you don't want them, don't need them, no one else will ever look at, or want them, so throw them out.

What would you do?

To be continued ...................

My Window to The World

 

It is Friday, July 28, Day Five sitting in front of My Window To the World of Roofing. As I type this, it is 8:30 and a Red Dog Truck with a stranger in it has been sitting in the driveway for 20 minutes, with motor running.

My Swivel chair, may have to be replaced because for 4 day I have either sat in the chair, turning this way and that, or crouched or stooped or on tiptoes at one end of the window, watching the men on the roof.

Each window in the house, all 8 of them, I can see part of the roof and have been up and down and moving from window to window, WATCHING the world through Windows.

I have stepped in and out of all three doors, dozens of times each day. sometimes to check what the roofers are doing, sometimes to talk to whom ever appears in the yard, I have now met Seven Different Red Dog Employees.

Day four, they completed all the trim and repairs and shingled half of the roof, and said the city inspector would be buy Friday morning and AFTER he shows up they will complete the shingles on the other half.

CAN YOU SAY FRET????

Will he come early or late, will it rain, will the roofers show up quickly, will we have to go through the week end waiting? will the dumpster spend the week end blocking the garage? WILL IT EVER END?

and the last and larges of FRETS

How Much More will they add to the staggering quote at the beginning?

Will there be enough to cover it? Will I survive the Writing of the Third Check?

It is now 8:38 and the man in the driveway just pulled out into the road and Backed the truck in, he was facing my window when he came at 8:15. He is still sitting in the truck! Faithful Beau is sitting here helping me watch the truck.

He is aware the noise cometh when the trucks cometh!

While we wait, have you wondered if the men knew I was watching?

OF COURSE they did,

their clues were, if sitting in the truck I went our with cups of watermelon.

As they started the truck to go to lunch, I leaned out the window and pointed to the top of the truck where they had left something on the roof.

 two roofer guys that have done all the work, have pulled in at 8:47.

There are now Two Trucks in the drive and NO inspector.

This has been my life for four days! 

My Window on the World.

Yesterday the Handsome Project Manager told me if the permit was not on the door knob and the ladder not ready, the inspector would leave and fail the inspection.

When they left yesterday, I started to fret about if anyone would be here 

At bed time, Beau went poop, and I walked to the poop bag that hangs on Bob's Roof Ladder and the ladder was Gone. I raced through the house and there it was, leaning on the roof in the driveway, with the bag on the door knob.

We were ready for inspection, and I could sleep but barely because Bob was upset they used his ladder with out asking. REALLY?

They had to take their ladders with them because they were heading out to install a skylight at another house.

The Skylight was huge and I had watched from my chair, the Senior Project guy that I had complained to, dump it in our driveway and left. Yes, I went out to see what it was they might add to our bill. Yes, I texted him and said we don't need a skylight.

His text said

That is for the guys to go to another house, No Worries!

9:33 no inspector and a trip outside to talk to the waiting truck guy.

He said he asked for early inspection and out of control. He comes when he comes!

 9:57 a bearded bulldog pulls up, climbs the ladder, back down, reads permit on my front porch and 9:59 was driving off. I popped out the door and said Did we pass?

YES! Red Dog say's the guys will stay until its finished.

UNLESS the weather intervenes and if so, will come back Saturday MORNING.

I am now looking up how to do an Un-Rain Dance!

The sound of Bam Bam Bam is now ringing in my ears.

It's 1:30 pm, Simon is here and says maybe another 2 hours and they will be done.

at 3:39pm Friday, The funny, hard working Worker Bee yelled down to me when I went out to peer one more time,

waving his arms, he yelled WE ARE DONE!

I yelled YAY and clapped and clapped.

They did a super clean up including magnat pickup of nails and rolled out the driveway at 3:50 pm.

I now await the man to pick up the final check.

Good News Bad News

 

Bad news: cable remote Quit working

Good News: Bob hated it because he could not see it or use fat fingers on it.

Bad News: I had to drive 10 miles of traffic on the road to the beaches to exchange it at Spectrum and the train caught me.

Good News: there were only 4 people in line, and it was a simple exchange, and when I asked if they had a big button remote, he handed me This

Bad news: Downtown traffic on the way home was backed up

Good News Is Bob loves the remote and I made it home safely

I also got a huge laugh out of this post because when I searched Remote on this blog, I found 3 other times I posted about getting a new remote.

I found this photo from 2012. It seems that way back then, we had two remotes, one mine, one his and Bob's died because he pokes the buttons so hard, I went to change it and they did not have the big button and gave me the one on the left. Now they ae both dead and gone and we have His New Master.

Just in case you are thinking 10 years is good for it to last that long, we had 2 since then, and now I want to know just why it is always me exchanging them. My question is why do they put the places that people go the most on the busiest street  in the city?

OH YES SHE DID!

 

Oh Yes I did, take more photos of the Moss Rose Saturday morning. 

Also on Saturday morning, I smashed my big Toe. All Bob's fault. When I bring groceries in, I place the  refrigerated stuff by the fridge and the rest goes in the cabinet stuff under said cabinet.

Each week he sits the cans by the fridge and the meat and cheese on the opposite side of the kitchen. Saturday morning I picked up the sack of canned goods to move to the proper place and the can fell out of the bottom and of course my big toe took a DIRECT HIT of the EDGE of the can, swelling quickly and turning blue because of the words coming out of my mouth.

Bob says, that can fell out in the car when I picked it up, I put it back and if you left it where I sat it, it would not have fallen out on our toe. NEED I SAY MORE?

Comment questions from yesterday post

Two questions above. The hard drive was not broken, I removed it to destroy it because even when wiped clean the info is still there for anyone who knows how to find it. Bob will drill holes in it to destroy the data.

We will take the computer I destroyed to the recycle place, minus the hard drive.. 

some of you may remember from a Prior Post,  the Mad Man I am Married to, just this past January,  took a hatchet to the hard drive from the old desk top...

Again! NEED I SAY MORE?

Learning New Stuff

 

Yesterday I told you I de-constructed my laptop to remove the hard drive. It required 3 screw drivers and the internet on my phone to 

A. get it open  ( NINE screws open, and the big screw driver to pry it open)

B. figure out what the hard drive looked like. (a sensible person would have looked that up before she struggled with 6 screws and removed the big white square thing in top left, which when it was in my hand, turned out to be the DVD drawer, a few words later, I found a photo of the hard drive and removed 9 screws to get it out, the REAL hard drive is in the photo with the screw drivers)

It was a learning experience!

I learned to look through a drawer full of drivers to FIND THE TINY one, then another one because not all the screws were the same Philips head. It was trial by error, just try each one until it works.

See the yellow one above? See the 4 tiny magnets on it? 

I knew not that the silly thing was magnetized and the first 2 teeny screws rode on the tip and disappeared into thin air.

 No, really, they did.

disappeared into thin air, gone, never found

I learned to carefully pull each one off and put in a cup.

This is the best of all thing I learned.

I said to Bob, pointing to the 4 magnets, is that what makes this magnetized?

No, he said, pull them off and try picking up a screw!

It worked.

I got so excited he said, try the big screw driver on a screw. Nope will not pick up a screw!

Bob said, take one of the magnet and run it down the metal 3 time, the same way each time, not back and forth.

NOW the big screw driver was magnetized and would pick up metal.

He said now rub the magnet the opposite way 3 times and it demagnetized it.

He explained he stores those magnets on that little one, for easy access to magnetize all his screw drivers when/if needed.

WOW! I said, you do know I got C's and D's in Science. Why didn't they teach like this?

Please do not bust my bubble by all of you saying you knew this!

Itty Bitty Chromebook

 

I missed you guys yesterday. I took the day off because of this.

My laptop and Samsung Tablet chose to bite the dust at the same time, I bought them at the same time, 6 years ago. As they staggered along I looked at Chromebooks, that were a combo of laptop and tablet, either or.... I had the above Acer Spin 311 in my Amazon Wish list for a month.

The morning of June 21, email came with FLASH SALE, only for 48 hours.

Hi Sandra LOOK AT THIS... you can see the DEAL it was

and NOW

It lives with me and I love it! I sat it in front of the Asus to show how small it is

11.6 inches wide 294.64 mm tiny and powerful and FAST... 

Above is as laptop, below shows the icons like on a tablet. 

Best of both worlds.

I was off yesterday, reading the 32 page manual and learning my way around it. It was 5 minute set up, but I always want to KNOW what it does.

I spent 1 hour removing the hard drive from my Asus Laptop.

see below and use your imagination... I had to look up a hard drive image to figure out what to remove.

this is the mess I made.

I removed 23 screws, TINY screws needing a Tiny screw driver and

PATIENCE.. HA

I was shocked, I say I WAS SHOCKED to see all this STUFF inside

Day off 3

 

One thing on the to do list was to put addresses in a new address book, the two I have are a mess. 

NOTE to self... use a pencil that can be erased this time.. 

Avoid Strikethrough

I removed things from the closet and thought to show you how creative I get with storage. This zipper bag had sheets in it. Now it protects my iron while on the shelf. the iron has been used maybe 5 times since 2006... But I have to keep it.

 I use a bag like this that had a comforter in it, to store lap throws and dog blankets. Keeps the dust off. and keeps them from falling off shelves. Up-Cycle if at all possible.

above is the E-cycle to be taken to the place that accepts electronics to be recycled. not shown is the tower and hard drive. when the computer died, the next day, the wireless keyboard/mouse died also. Just in time to be trash. 

 I found a place to take them by Google searching this sentence.... Electronic Recycle near me. 3 came up.  Note, thank you to Hootin Annie who found it is not illegal in Florida to trash these things, just strongly suggested to recycle.  thanks to further research I found a list on our city site that gives a long list of what can NOT be put in our recycle bin and I had to dig in it to remove the old glass coffee pot I tossed in it.. also found that any paper or cardboard that has had food in it is not recyclable. as in Pizza Boxes.

PS for all of you who are dying to ask what the red pillow is....

Bob had open heart By Pass surgery on Aug 23, 2007. The ICU heart unit gave hims this. It was signed by his nurses and the heart surgeon with the date of surgery.
It lives with the signatures turned down because the sun faded the ink to almost nothing.