Yesterday, I was notified that I’ve reached a milestone of 500 posts on my Tumblr page.
If you’ve never visited my Tumblr page, I invite you to stop by and see what makes it onto my Tumblr. Not only will you find posts from this blog, but also all my Instagram photos and items on others’ Tumblr pages that I reblog.
And if you have a Tumblr page, leave a link in the comments and I’ll visit it.
It was one year ago today that I started using the Map My Walk app on my iPhone to track my walks and hikes. I’ve found it to be a very good app for giving me incentive to get out there and trek around the mountains of North Carolina or the streets of a neighborhood in Orlando.
Today, I received an email from Map My Walk showing my stats for the past year:
Those 155 workouts totalling 263 miles over a period of 100 hours and burning almost 60,000 calories helped me lose 28 pounds this past year. I like that, but it’s not enough. I need to discipline myself to do more.
So I’ve set a goal of completing a minimum of 300 workouts (walks, hikes, treadmill exercises, etc,) over the next year, which would double the number I accomplished this past year. I’m anticipating that increasing my number of workouts will also increase the number of pounds I lose and gets me into even better shape.
It also noted that I have 6 friends following my progress and workouts. If you’d care to become a friend as well (you have to use the app and it’s available for more devices than just the iPhone) I’d love to see you on my list. We can cheer each other on as we get ourselves into better shape.
It was 18 years ago tonight, October 31,1996, that my life changed forever.
Halloween fell on a Thursday that year. I was working as a bouncer and DJ at J.D. Penguin’s Lounge on South Semoran in Orlando. They’ve since torn down the old lounge with its attached liquor store and rebuilt a new liquor/wine store only, but back in the day J.D. Penguin’s was the place to be on a weekend night. We had lots of good times, good fights and good friends.
The bar was throwing a Halloween party with a costume contest, drink specials, and karaoke (yuck, the one exception being that I always enjoyed my daughter’s singing). Customers were singing their favorite songs with the accompaniment of the karaoke machine for about 45 minutes each hour and then I would play some dance music to give everyone a chance to get up and work the alcohol through their system, lol.
I had recently obtained my first desktop computer and had also recently made the acquaintance of a couple of members of a local computer bulletin board (yep, these were the days of 28K modems, BB’s and a new graphical browser called Netscape) group that frequented the bar. They always sat together at a table or two and never gave the bartenders or bouncers any problems, which we all appreciated.
One of their group that night was a beautiful woman that I had never seen before, though to this day she swears she was coming in with the computer group for about 10 months; I never saw her and she says she never saw me. That in itself is strange because I worked as a bouncer on weekend nights and was typically all over that bar keeping trouble to a minimum. I also filled in as a DJ and worked the liquor store counter up front during the week. As a bouncer I kept my eyes on EVERYONE in the bar, yet could not recall ever laying eyes on her until Halloween night. We’ve subsequently chalked it up to fate waiting for the right moment.
Apparently All Hallow’s Eve was the right moment. She was wearing a Medieval era wench’s dress with a top cut so low it was showing enough cleavage to make Dolly Parton envious. And me attentive. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea because as I said, she was beautiful and it was in more than those two ways.
She asked me to play a song for her and I asked her, “What’s in it for me?” She smiled and said, “I’ll dance with you” and so I did and she did. Five months later we were married.
I always loved Halloween as a child, but since Halloween 1996, I’ve loved it even more.
Happy Halloween Anniversary babe!
So if you’re a regular reader you’ve noticed that it has been a month since my last post.
I’ve missed you.
The major culprit in this situation is Verizon and their mobile hotspot that we employ to have internet access at Wolf’s Haven. They are really our only option here due to lack of signal strength from other carriers and the slow speed of the satellite service we originally had when we first moved up here. Actually it’s Charter’s fault, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.
So the signal strength is excellent and the speed is acceptable, but Verizon has started saying that we’re using much more data than is possible. We have a plan while here in the mountains that allows us to use 14GB a month, which should be more than enough to watch a movie each week online and do our usual email and web surfing. When we first got it and Cindy was here alone, she could watch 2 online TV shows or movies a week, do her genealogy research and email and surfing and still have data left over. Then last year Verizon did some kind of firmware update and after that the usage jumped astronomically, but we weren’t here for that long a period of time so we did not address it.
When we returned a couple of months ago we decided to get a new device from Verizon, thinking (especially after the salesman assured us the old device was “probably the problem.”) that a new device might be the answer.
But it wasn’t.
If anything, we seem to be getting “crammed” even more. And Verizon “Customer Service” (he wrote with tongue in cheek) assures us that we are indeed using the amount of data THEY say we are, though they offer no proof and cannot explain why the usage is SO much higher than it’s ever been.
We are careful to turn off the device when it is not in use (so no “phantom” data usage can take place), turn off the wi-fi function on our iPhones, iPads and laptops, and only turn on the hotspot and the particular device we need for a specific action. And we are on the side of a mountain with no other users nearby, but they couldn’t use our signal anyway because it is password protected. These are all arguments from Verizon that we have shut down as not being applicable to our situation, but to no avail.
For instance, the other night I needed to print out a shipping receipt and label for an item I had sold on Amazon. So I accessed the website, accessed the printer, printed the shipping receipt from the website and then copied the address to a Word document to print the shipping label and printed that. My laptop and the printer were the only 2 devices connected to the hotspot. So, how much data do you think Verizon’s hotspot said I used for that action?
100MB?
500MB?
Try 1 GB.
Yes, 1GB.
As Cindy is fond of saying when discussing Verizon’s claim of our data usage, “It’s crazy!”
If I believed in an actual devil, it would be Verizon.
So, having to watch our online usage like a hawk to keep from going over our 14GB limit has severely curtailed my presence online. I have been limited to mostly a passive surfing of the web and email using the unlimited data plan we have through AT&T on my iPhone. And here’s the funny thing; with my almost constant usage of the iPhone to keep up with email, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and web surfing, I still only used 5GB of AT&T data during the time Verizon said we used 12GB with our almost non-usage of their data through their hotspot.
This morning, I’m sitting in a McDonald’s sipping a smoothie and using their free wi-fi to post this. I will be so glad when we return to Orlando and cable internet service, drop our monthly usage plan with Verizon to 4GB, and my posting routine is able to return to a more normal schedule.
By the way, it’s not a situation unique to us and Verizon is more than aware of the issue (though they continue to deny it and offer “reasons” why their counter is correct) as you can see here, here and here.
It was 13 years ago today that our nation, as a whole, experienced one of the darkest days in our history and that most of us, as individuals, recoiled in shock and horror as the utter brutality and lack of respect for life was visited upon us by terrorists.
In some ways it seems like yesterday that I watched with unbelief the image of the North tower burning due to an airplane crash and then with horror as the second plane struck the South tower. In other ways it seems a lifetime ago. Even today, 13 years after the attack, it seems almost unbelievable. Were it not for images such as the one below, we could almost tell ourselves it was only a nightmare.
Less than an hour later, an attack on the Pentagon would follow and then, a little over 30 minutes after that, brave souls on board United Flight 93 would storm the cockpit, attacking their hijackers and causing the plane to crash in an empty field in Pennsylvania, aborting the attempt to crash into either the White House or the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Between all these events the World trade Center towers collapsed, first the South and then the North, killing more than 3,000 people.
I do not know of any way to remember those events without my eyes welling up with tears, even all these years later. The innocent victims, the brave passengers, the loved ones they left behind are all in my heart and on my mind.
This morning I had an appointment at 9am EDT, but I made sure I arrived early so that at 8:46am, the time the first plane flew into the North tower, I could observe a moment of silence while sitting in my vehicle to serve as a remembrance and memorial of those who perished.
Never forget.
“Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.”
Since I’m currently in Vicksburg, MS teaching a course, I thought it appropriate that I post this photo of me during my first visit to Vicksburg back on May 31, 2010.
A photographer in my photography circle on Google+ posted a photo she took of the first part of this Ralph Waldo Emerson quote printed on a piece of paper tacked to the wall in a closed mental health facility. It caught my attention because I have loved this quote since I first came across it many years ago and took it to heart, helping me to put behind me the guilt I felt for some mistakes I had made earlier in my life.
It is excellent counsel to keep yourself from being mired in the past and move forward in your life. Own it, acknowledge it, learn from it and move forward.
Bella and Cindy in April of 2011.
