🙂 I leave in about 45 minutes to go to the Children’s Film festival. The Lions are showing two movies in real theaters for children this morning. This is our biggest fund raiser of the year.
I hope we have a big turnout.
This post is going to start out like rant but it really is a rave so read all the way to the end.
I had a closing fall through so the logical thing to do is take yourself out to lunch, right?
I went to Andree’s Wine and Cheese in Fairhope and ordered a chef’s salad. I waited and finally the waitress brought out a Caeser salad. I told her I had ordered a Chef’s salad, we discussed it and back to the kitchen she went. I asked for it to go. She brought the to go salad up to the register and I got ready to pay. The lady at the register asked what had happened, when I told her she tore up my ticket and said she wasn’t charging me for lunch. I thanked her and came home.
When I got home and opened my salad it was a Greek salad! I called
Andree’s and told another woman what had happened. She apologized and asked for my name and address to send me a gift certificate for a free lunch. I explained that wasn’t necessary–I already got a free lunch. She insisted. THEN a few minutes later the original lady who checked me out called to apologize again.
What could have been a really irritating experience turned out to be pleasant. It is the Christmas Holiday season and everyone is a little stressed but the ladies at Andree’s told me they have worked their so long they feel like they own the place. They were able to take a bad experience, turn it around, and make me a Happy Customer who will return! THAT is customer service.
🙂 Everyone was gone by 10:30 so we got to go to bed before midnight
😦 Ugh, dishes to do today
😦 And putting furniture back where it belongs – we move a small couch from the family room to the living room so we can turn the dining table and seat 14.
😦 Still so very, very cold here – very unseasonable. This is January deep-freeze weather we’re having.
🙂 Should warm up to just below freezing tomorrow – it will feel positively balmy!
🙂 Christmas shopping done – hope Amazon gets stuff here next week
:! Hubby still has to paint a set of blank cards as a gift for my parents. (Never know what to get them as they have more than they need) At least with blank cards, they can use them up.
😦 Have to call the insurance company. Rates will go up since it was my fault.
🙂 D3 got home safely. She had driven that same stretch of road a few hours earlier. It was just wet and slushy when she came through, not icy and slushy.
😦 Now I have to shovel 5 or more inches of heavy, wet snow.
🙂 It looks very pretty outside, though. I love when the snow falls without wind so that everything gets a white coating.
Husband took the boys to make the men’s prayer breakfast for today. I mean he took the boys. All of them. What a quiet peaceful home! So this is how it is to just have four children….! I remember. But it will be nice to have them back with their energy in a few hours. In a few hours it will be nice. Yes, in a few hours. Guess I will go enjoy the quiet.
😦 It looks like we might very well be snowed in for the weekend.
🙂 We’re well stocked on food and everything else we need.
🙂 I’m glad I’m not a mailman–at least they have four-wheel drives, but they have to drive in this and go up to doors with packages at every third or four house–in fact, as I was writing this she just came to our door with packages. . . .
😦 My poor husband . . .
🙂 The mailman came to the door with three packages and several other pieces of mail, and every single item was addressed to me! Three packages I ordered, a check for a proofreading job, and some junk mail in my maiden name.
🙂 In the last two days I have received packages from Canada (yesterday), London, and Australia.
🙂 The Australian company goes “above and beyond” in business practices. The exchange rate is slightly favorable toward American customers, and $12 for shipping from Australia hardly seemed excessive . . . but once they calculated the actual postage, they refunded about $3.50. Well, the package was wrapped so securely it was really hard to open (three well-taped layers, with cardboard to keep things from bending), and they included two or three small free gifts, including one with a koala design. 🙂 They’re from Australia, after all.
🙂 It’s wonderful to have the whole family home for the next three-and-a-half weeks.
🙂 A restful and (semi-) productive week off. But I never get as much done as I envision I will. 😦 Still, good just to be away from the daily grind for a while, although I’m ready (sort of) to go back on Tuesday. Still time to get a few things done that I really should get done. The Christmas cards are still sitting here. 😦 Can’t drum up the enthusiasm to get to that this year yet. But the approaching deadline eventually will motivate me.
🙂 Time spent this week with friends — several lunches out, tooling around, hanging out, doing nothing in particular alone & with friends, a weekday morning women’s Bible study I never get to attend, an outdoor Christmas concert (maybe two if I go to another one today, but this one’s inside, at a friend’s church).
🙂 Thankful for an efficient heater despite the downside 😦 of what will be high gas bills for a while. At the dog park, the surfer guys have added parkas and knit caps to their everyday California ensembles of short pants and flip flops or hiking boots. One of the guys who gets the coldest, though, as the sun goes down at the park around 5 p.m., moved here from Buffalo, NY a number of years ago. He’s always wearing heavy gloves and jackets, saying “burr,” how cold it is. 😉 So there you go.
🙂 Daughter got home easily yesterday from college.
😦 Realized this is the final college kid coming home for Chrismtas visit (borrowing maudlin thoughts, obviously).
🙂 Which means 15 straight years of writing checks to University of _______ are coming to an end! (We’ve had two kids in college every year since 2001. 2014 is the freedom year! Good bye and good riddance, you tuition gougers!)
🙂 May have spoken too soon, our daughter isn’t done with school yet, just graduating from college and thinking for a year.
🙂 Christmas concert tomorrow
😦 Husband and I both have colds.
🙂 His bass will only go lower.
😦 My soprano . . . is in trouble. We could use an extra tenor, I suppose.
😦 Have to go to a store today to get new second-hand phone to work.
🙂 Christmas tree!
🙂 Marketing four books OVER. DONE. I can be a civilian writer now for the first time in a long time. I’m tired of hawking books!
🙂 If you want a copy of our Pioneer Christmas cookbook, however, let me know. I’ll send you one. Free. Easy, Simple. Silly.
I told the boys to just make certain seven year old did not torment twelve year old and twelve year old did not torment seven or sixteen. If they were typical children, I would say “go for it” but they are not and it can quickly turn into something violent. With sharp stuff. So they have to learn to play together without tormenting.
The house is so March girls this morning. Three of them are setting up a small fake tree. About four feet tall so it is on a table. We hope to get a real one if husband is feeling better.
😦 Super busy and missing everyone on this blog. I still haven’t learned how to manage my time very well as a new homeschool mom. Then, my sister (in Africa) sent me a long list of things she wanted for Christmas and I’ve been hurriedly getting them together to send on Monday with her daughter.
🙂 Homeschooling is going much better! Becca and I seem to have settled in and I’m feeling much more confident about the decision I made six weeks ago…
🙂 My niece (and goddaughter) is arriving today. She flies out for Africa on Monday.
We had over 1000 at the Children’s Film Festival today. It was a lot of work and a bit of fun. It’s win-win-win for everyone. Children (& some adults) get to see two movies free. (We showed “Kung Fu Panda” and some other silly movie. The kids seemed to like it.)
The theaters provided seven screens. They make out by selling popcorn and other stuff at ridiculous prices. (Small popcorn box is $5.25 and it goes up.) Long lines at the refreshment stand. Workers get about four hours extra work. The organizer of the project gets a share and Lions make several thousand dollars to help the community. Most of the tickets are donated by businesses who get a tax writeoff and the ticket is “Provided by Barry’s Barber Shop”, or some such.
You’d be surprised at how difficult it is to get through to some, even adults. Two movies shown. What they do is show the second movie on the same screen as the first. So, we post Lions at the front at the end of the first movie. “To see the second movie, remain in your seat.”
Then you go outside to tell the numerous people who want to see the next movie where to go. They can’t understand “Return to your seat.” “Go back to where you came from.” Etc. Problem was, a lot went to the restroom and forgot where they were. I can understand that. All the entrances look alike and they weren’t paying attention.
And it seems that every child in the theater has to go out to the bathroom sometime during the movie.
I left soon after the second movie started. They’re on their own from there.
TSWITW assigns motives for almost everything. Usually incorrectly:
She said, “I suppose the children couldn’t get the parents to take them out in the rain”.
I said, “We had over a thousand there.”
A phone call, and some other things later.
She said, “Maybe they wanted to get the children out of the house.” 😆
The Kid has a Basketball game in an hour or so and is hungry. 🙂 I am never sure what is an appropriate amount of food to give him before a sporting event. He needs energy but you don’t want him throwing up or so full it slows him down.
Husband just took the older ones off to town for Christmas shopping unexpectedly. They will be gone through square dancing. I am back to only four children but it includes two boys so it will not be quite as peaceful, though maybe more peaceful than when I had four children and three were boys.
Husband bought my dogs beds once. They lasted a good five minutes. They have hay now. And wool from the sheep. And deer hides and sheep skins. They are comfie. Though Jake always likes to drag hers outside to sleep on it.
🙂 oh the joy of reading the rants and the raves! What fun. Helps me let go of some of my packing and cleaning stress. Have to be careful to not go over 23 kilos on the suitcase and I keep finding books that the grandchildren would enjoy.
😦 Ants!!!! They are everywhere! coming out of my computer or my kindle, on the kitchen counter, even on my glasses as I’m wearing them. I am so tired of ANTS!
🙂 the rash is looking almost gone. Finally found the right medicine.
😦 so instead, while sitting here last night, I got some bites of some sort and now have welts!
Don’t forget, when you are in the States, to get yourself some liquid terro ant bait. They carry it home to the nest and kill everybody. Pretty effective. Only takes a drop. I think it is boric acid and sugar of some sort.
I second the recommendation for Terro. We had ants for several weeks two summers ago, even some big ants (which I’d never before seen inside a house). Ant traps weren’t working, and we asked the salesman at a hardware store his recommendation, and that was it. Took a couple weeks to get totally rid of them, and we had to refill the “plate” several times initially, but within a couple of days they were really chowing down, and a few days after that their numbers were decreasing as everyone was being killed off. We’ve recommended it several times since.
🙂 Big rave of the week — God is doing a tremendous work in our marriage, especially evident this week. Hubby and I have made much progress after a very difficult weekend last week — near miraculous what the Lord has done! Praise God!
🙂 Friends who pray. What a blessing. 🙂
🙂 Can’t remember much else; I guess everything else pales in comparison. 😉
will the blog actually let me post.??? I will thank Donna for the song for the third time, but not sure if it will show up. almost packed, but now have to finish doing the transfers for the offering.
my rant is not being able to post. We will see
Also, I didn’t have enough time to join in the discussion the other day about submission in marriage, but I read your posts on the subject and appreciated what you had to say. Your words really spoke to me, though you weren’t addressing me directly.
I don’t see why some people are anonymous.
When you click to reply, you get three lines showing up. The first is your e-mail, the second is your tag. You can correct them before hitting “post comment”.
My Ipad, now upgraded to IOS7, won’t remember my WP ID and I have to type it in over and over again, which is too much trouble since it forgets it the next time. So, I remain anonymous when I’m working with an Apple product.
Wandering Views 
🙂 I leave in about 45 minutes to go to the Children’s Film festival. The Lions are showing two movies in real theaters for children this morning. This is our biggest fund raiser of the year.
I hope we have a big turnout.
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This post is going to start out like rant but it really is a rave so read all the way to the end.
I had a closing fall through so the logical thing to do is take yourself out to lunch, right?
I went to Andree’s Wine and Cheese in Fairhope and ordered a chef’s salad. I waited and finally the waitress brought out a Caeser salad. I told her I had ordered a Chef’s salad, we discussed it and back to the kitchen she went. I asked for it to go. She brought the to go salad up to the register and I got ready to pay. The lady at the register asked what had happened, when I told her she tore up my ticket and said she wasn’t charging me for lunch. I thanked her and came home.
When I got home and opened my salad it was a Greek salad! I called
Andree’s and told another woman what had happened. She apologized and asked for my name and address to send me a gift certificate for a free lunch. I explained that wasn’t necessary–I already got a free lunch. She insisted. THEN a few minutes later the original lady who checked me out called to apologize again.
What could have been a really irritating experience turned out to be pleasant. It is the Christmas Holiday season and everyone is a little stressed but the ladies at Andree’s told me they have worked their so long they feel like they own the place. They were able to take a bad experience, turn it around, and make me a Happy Customer who will return! THAT is customer service.
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🙂 Wonderful small group potluck last night
🙂 Great food, good fellowship
🙂 Everyone was gone by 10:30 so we got to go to bed before midnight
😦 Ugh, dishes to do today
😦 And putting furniture back where it belongs – we move a small couch from the family room to the living room so we can turn the dining table and seat 14.
😦 Still so very, very cold here – very unseasonable. This is January deep-freeze weather we’re having.
🙂 Should warm up to just below freezing tomorrow – it will feel positively balmy!
🙂 Christmas shopping done – hope Amazon gets stuff here next week
:! Hubby still has to paint a set of blank cards as a gift for my parents. (Never know what to get them as they have more than they need) At least with blank cards, they can use them up.
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😦 Accident on black ice.
🙂 No one hurt!
😦 Have to call the insurance company. Rates will go up since it was my fault.
🙂 D3 got home safely. She had driven that same stretch of road a few hours earlier. It was just wet and slushy when she came through, not icy and slushy.
😦 Now I have to shovel 5 or more inches of heavy, wet snow.
🙂 It looks very pretty outside, though. I love when the snow falls without wind so that everything gets a white coating.
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🙂 Bama gets to keep Saban for a little while longer.
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Husband took the boys to make the men’s prayer breakfast for today. I mean he took the boys. All of them. What a quiet peaceful home! So this is how it is to just have four children….! I remember. But it will be nice to have them back with their energy in a few hours. In a few hours it will be nice. Yes, in a few hours. Guess I will go enjoy the quiet.
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😦 It looks like we might very well be snowed in for the weekend.
🙂 We’re well stocked on food and everything else we need.
🙂 I’m glad I’m not a mailman–at least they have four-wheel drives, but they have to drive in this and go up to doors with packages at every third or four house–in fact, as I was writing this she just came to our door with packages. . . .
😦 My poor husband . . .
🙂 The mailman came to the door with three packages and several other pieces of mail, and every single item was addressed to me! Three packages I ordered, a check for a proofreading job, and some junk mail in my maiden name.
🙂 In the last two days I have received packages from Canada (yesterday), London, and Australia.
🙂 The Australian company goes “above and beyond” in business practices. The exchange rate is slightly favorable toward American customers, and $12 for shipping from Australia hardly seemed excessive . . . but once they calculated the actual postage, they refunded about $3.50. Well, the package was wrapped so securely it was really hard to open (three well-taped layers, with cardboard to keep things from bending), and they included two or three small free gifts, including one with a koala design. 🙂 They’re from Australia, after all.
🙂 It’s wonderful to have the whole family home for the next three-and-a-half weeks.
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🙂 Grandchildren at Christmas time. ‘Nuf said. 🙂
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🙂 Half the dishes done.
😦 Still half to go – missing my dishwasher today.
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Mumsee, I have discovered that one boy equals two girls for noise and such. Plus two boys are not twice as much trouble, They are trouble squared. 🙂
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🙂 A restful and (semi-) productive week off. But I never get as much done as I envision I will. 😦 Still, good just to be away from the daily grind for a while, although I’m ready (sort of) to go back on Tuesday. Still time to get a few things done that I really should get done. The Christmas cards are still sitting here. 😦 Can’t drum up the enthusiasm to get to that this year yet. But the approaching deadline eventually will motivate me.
🙂 Time spent this week with friends — several lunches out, tooling around, hanging out, doing nothing in particular alone & with friends, a weekday morning women’s Bible study I never get to attend, an outdoor Christmas concert (maybe two if I go to another one today, but this one’s inside, at a friend’s church).
🙂 Thankful for an efficient heater despite the downside 😦 of what will be high gas bills for a while. At the dog park, the surfer guys have added parkas and knit caps to their everyday California ensembles of short pants and flip flops or hiking boots. One of the guys who gets the coldest, though, as the sun goes down at the park around 5 p.m., moved here from Buffalo, NY a number of years ago. He’s always wearing heavy gloves and jackets, saying “burr,” how cold it is. 😉 So there you go.
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🙂 Daughter got home easily yesterday from college.
😦 Realized this is the final college kid coming home for Chrismtas visit (borrowing maudlin thoughts, obviously).
🙂 Which means 15 straight years of writing checks to University of _______ are coming to an end! (We’ve had two kids in college every year since 2001. 2014 is the freedom year! Good bye and good riddance, you tuition gougers!)
🙂 May have spoken too soon, our daughter isn’t done with school yet, just graduating from college and thinking for a year.
🙂 Christmas concert tomorrow
😦 Husband and I both have colds.
🙂 His bass will only go lower.
😦 My soprano . . . is in trouble. We could use an extra tenor, I suppose.
😦 Have to go to a store today to get new second-hand phone to work.
🙂 Christmas tree!
🙂 Marketing four books OVER. DONE. I can be a civilian writer now for the first time in a long time. I’m tired of hawking books!
🙂 If you want a copy of our Pioneer Christmas cookbook, however, let me know. I’ll send you one. Free. Easy, Simple. Silly.
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I told the boys to just make certain seven year old did not torment twelve year old and twelve year old did not torment seven or sixteen. If they were typical children, I would say “go for it” but they are not and it can quickly turn into something violent. With sharp stuff. So they have to learn to play together without tormenting.
LikeLike
The house is so March girls this morning. Three of them are setting up a small fake tree. About four feet tall so it is on a table. We hope to get a real one if husband is feeling better.
LikeLike
😦 Super busy and missing everyone on this blog. I still haven’t learned how to manage my time very well as a new homeschool mom. Then, my sister (in Africa) sent me a long list of things she wanted for Christmas and I’ve been hurriedly getting them together to send on Monday with her daughter.
🙂 Homeschooling is going much better! Becca and I seem to have settled in and I’m feeling much more confident about the decision I made six weeks ago…
🙂 My niece (and goddaughter) is arriving today. She flies out for Africa on Monday.
🙂 Feeling cared about!
LikeLike
We had over 1000 at the Children’s Film Festival today. It was a lot of work and a bit of fun. It’s win-win-win for everyone. Children (& some adults) get to see two movies free. (We showed “Kung Fu Panda” and some other silly movie. The kids seemed to like it.)
The theaters provided seven screens. They make out by selling popcorn and other stuff at ridiculous prices. (Small popcorn box is $5.25 and it goes up.) Long lines at the refreshment stand. Workers get about four hours extra work. The organizer of the project gets a share and Lions make several thousand dollars to help the community. Most of the tickets are donated by businesses who get a tax writeoff and the ticket is “Provided by Barry’s Barber Shop”, or some such.
You’d be surprised at how difficult it is to get through to some, even adults. Two movies shown. What they do is show the second movie on the same screen as the first. So, we post Lions at the front at the end of the first movie. “To see the second movie, remain in your seat.”
Then you go outside to tell the numerous people who want to see the next movie where to go. They can’t understand “Return to your seat.” “Go back to where you came from.” Etc. Problem was, a lot went to the restroom and forgot where they were. I can understand that. All the entrances look alike and they weren’t paying attention.
And it seems that every child in the theater has to go out to the bathroom sometime during the movie.
I left soon after the second movie started. They’re on their own from there.
TSWITW assigns motives for almost everything. Usually incorrectly:
She said, “I suppose the children couldn’t get the parents to take them out in the rain”.
I said, “We had over a thousand there.”
A phone call, and some other things later.
She said, “Maybe they wanted to get the children out of the house.” 😆
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The Kid has a Basketball game in an hour or so and is hungry. 🙂 I am never sure what is an appropriate amount of food to give him before a sporting event. He needs energy but you don’t want him throwing up or so full it slows him down.
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Husband just took the older ones off to town for Christmas shopping unexpectedly. They will be gone through square dancing. I am back to only four children but it includes two boys so it will not be quite as peaceful, though maybe more peaceful than when I had four children and three were boys.
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Mending a dog bed. One of those things I didn’t get to in the past week. 😦
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Husband bought my dogs beds once. They lasted a good five minutes. They have hay now. And wool from the sheep. And deer hides and sheep skins. They are comfie. Though Jake always likes to drag hers outside to sleep on it.
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Hmmm, a haystack in my living room. Interesting look, but it could work.
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I think the lizards and such would be happier.
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🙂 oh the joy of reading the rants and the raves! What fun. Helps me let go of some of my packing and cleaning stress. Have to be careful to not go over 23 kilos on the suitcase and I keep finding books that the grandchildren would enjoy.
LikeLike
😦 Ants!!!! They are everywhere! coming out of my computer or my kindle, on the kitchen counter, even on my glasses as I’m wearing them. I am so tired of ANTS!
🙂 the rash is looking almost gone. Finally found the right medicine.
😦 so instead, while sitting here last night, I got some bites of some sort and now have welts!
🙂 Beautiful sunshine
LikeLike
Don’t forget, when you are in the States, to get yourself some liquid terro ant bait. They carry it home to the nest and kill everybody. Pretty effective. Only takes a drop. I think it is boric acid and sugar of some sort.
LikeLike
I second the recommendation for Terro. We had ants for several weeks two summers ago, even some big ants (which I’d never before seen inside a house). Ant traps weren’t working, and we asked the salesman at a hardware store his recommendation, and that was it. Took a couple weeks to get totally rid of them, and we had to refill the “plate” several times initially, but within a couple of days they were really chowing down, and a few days after that their numbers were decreasing as everyone was being killed off. We’ve recommended it several times since.
LikeLike
🙂 Big rave of the week — God is doing a tremendous work in our marriage, especially evident this week. Hubby and I have made much progress after a very difficult weekend last week — near miraculous what the Lord has done! Praise God!
🙂 Friends who pray. What a blessing. 🙂
🙂 Can’t remember much else; I guess everything else pales in comparison. 😉
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6 arrows 😀
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will the blog actually let me post.??? I will thank Donna for the song for the third time, but not sure if it will show up. almost packed, but now have to finish doing the transfers for the offering.
my rant is not being able to post. We will see
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🙂 6 Arrows. I’ve prayed for you, and will try to remember to do so again.
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Thank you, Cheryl. I appreciate that so much.
Also, I didn’t have enough time to join in the discussion the other day about submission in marriage, but I read your posts on the subject and appreciated what you had to say. Your words really spoke to me, though you weren’t addressing me directly.
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🙂 Wonderful children’s Christmas program this morning. Lots of carols, cute kids and a great message!
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😦 Ever since hubby signed us up for World, I’m anonymous.
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🙂 Yay, I’m back !
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I don’t see why some people are anonymous.
When you click to reply, you get three lines showing up. The first is your e-mail, the second is your tag. You can correct them before hitting “post comment”.
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In three hours and 15 minutes, it’s Monday. Get ready for it.
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Said the retired guy.
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Thanks, Chas, I just figured that out. I never had to do that before as we didn’t have any other WordPress logins, so I was always saved as me.
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Kare, that is how I was saved, just as I am. While I was dead in my trespasses and sins…
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Well, I suppose that should say, just as I was. Now I am seated with him in the heavenlies.
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Mumsee 🙂 Yup!
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Though I am a bit concerned about this need of yours to be saved over and over…..
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🙂
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My Ipad, now upgraded to IOS7, won’t remember my WP ID and I have to type it in over and over again, which is too much trouble since it forgets it the next time. So, I remain anonymous when I’m working with an Apple product.
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