A List of Breakdowns

I think it started with the Bunn coffee maker. It was the first thing to die this year and was quickly replaced by an exact replica. Best coffee maker I have ever owned and has far outlasted the cheap models that I've owned in the past.

I haven't poured much money into this house lately. There are a few things I want to have done but I'm not stressed about it. Three exterior windows are still the single paned ones that are builders' models and when I stand in front of them and open the blinds I can feel the heat radiating in so I ordered new windows and found someone to install them.

The other thing we wanted to get done this year was the roof. 9000.00 gets ya a new roof. Add in another 10,000.00 and you get your a/c unit replaced that chose to die two weeks after the roof was placed. My question is, how does one afford a house these days. The last a/c unit I had placed in this house cost 1/3 of the one I'm having done now and the previous roof was also 1/3 of the cost of the one just done.

I was stunned with the cost of the roof and the a/c unit. The average life of both these items are 15 yrs. How do the young couples with a 30 yr. house payment afford to replace these items 15 yrs down the road when the prices have tripled and their paychecks haven't? Is it really worth owning a home?

I suppose I could have gotten by a bit cheaper on the a/c unit had I got a 4 ton instead of a 5 ton and also went lower on the SEER rating which determines the energy efficiency of the unit. The higher the number on the SEER the more efficient and I went with an 18 which I think is the highest you can go. That was additional 2000.00. I'm hoping it makes a difference on the a/c bill as the old a/c unit was a 10 SEER. Enough of this mind numbing information. 

A sure sign of your age is when you get estimates on replacing items like these and your first comment is "I'm not paying that price. Why..I paid 1/3 of that the last time I bought that!"  Of course the young man handing me that estimate was barely 9 yrs old when I bought the last a/c unit and I'm sure he has heard comments like this from his "more advanced in age" customers. These prices he is accustomed to. Give him another 30 yrs and we'll see that stunned look on his face too when he has to replace something in the house he doesn't own yet.

Another sure sign of your age is when your husband,trying to make things better about the sticker shock I was experiencing says to me "Well, think about it this way. This will be the last a/c unit and roof you will ever have to worry about!"

"Oh, thanks a bunch honey! Now I really feel better knowing I"ll be dead or in a rest home and won't have to worry about an a/c or a roof!" Yep, I guess it could be worse huh?

I'm off to get another cup of coffee and be grateful I was able to access the internet this morning. This is the Monday that the DNS malware thing was supposed to keep those infected computers from signing onto the internet. I'm safe and I'm ON!

Did it Die?

The husband wants to know why I didn't notice. To be honest, I had the oven on and it was 90plus degrees today. I assumed the a/c unit just wasn't keeping up with the challenges of a stove and of the outside temperatures.

Dinner was served a bit early today and the husband who had spent most of the day on the carport chagning the oil in his truck and rotating his tires finally came in the house. All was well for a few hours  but then he started questioning the inside temperature. Checking the thermostat, it was set on hold at 72 degree but the temperature reading showed it was 87 degrees.

I still didn't believe anything was wrong with the unit. A few more hours pass and even with the oven turned off and the sun setting below the horizen, the slight rain that has cooled the outside to a pleasant 75 degrees while the temperature in this house is now at 81 degrees. The husband is mumbling something about a hotel room so we maybe spending the weekend at ye ole Holiday Inn. Monday is the soonest we can get an a/c man here to check out the unit. The worst part of this is no more home cookin!

My suggestion to go buy a couple of window units to cool the living room and the bedroom was not well received. I fear we are spoiled. The wild west would never have been won had it been up to us to make that trek westward in those covered wagons. A wagon without an a/c unit? Nah, not us!

I'm ready to get some sleep. I've pitched the comforter off the bed; the sheet will be all I will need tonight.

Home for a While

We are back in Lafayette and I'm cooking. Ten days in a motel room and eating out every day has lost it's appeal. I'm ready for some meatloaf and mashed potatoes even if I have to cook it myself.

We got home about noon yesterday, unloaded the truck and started washing clothes. Even before the first load of laundry was washed we decided it was time for a nap. No home cooked meal yesterday. We again went out for our meal but today we gathered up some groceries and I fired up the oven.
Though it's hot here, I'm hungry for meatloaf and one that is cooked in my own oven.

I've lowered the thermostat on the a/c unit in anticipation of the extra heat from that oven. More laundry and more naps and that's my Saturday. The truck is getting an oil change and having it's tires rotated; tomorrow it will get a bath and we will be road ready once again. We may be heading to Houston tomorrow on a sales call.

The husband wants to go on a vacation type trip next week too. I'm not excited about this. I hate to vacation in mid summer and especially this year with all the heat. I'll be miserable.

I just checked my computer for the DNS malware that is supposed to hit on Monday. I came up clear. If my bank account is hacked after Monday, I'll know the check thing on the web wasn't truthful OR accurate on passing me as "safe'. In that case, this might be the last communication you have from me. If you don't see me around on the net after Monday, my cell phone number is 555-1212 (not a real number)

I'm gone.

It's Early, I'm Awake again at "Early"

and I'm ready to go home. I've been away for over a week and I'm ready to see my house once again. The husband is sleeping in and I'm all for him getting to sleep in. For the past 10 days he has had to get out of bed at 0400 hrs and head for the rig which is 35 miles away. It's been a long hot 10 days of being outside all day. I do sympathize especially as I'm lying across the bed in the hotel room beneath the cool air from the window a/c unit and with the remote to the TV in my hand while I nibble on bon bons..NO..wait. All that is true except for the bon bon part. I'm watching my intake of sweets and carbs so definetly no bon bons!

We are headed home today. The job finished up yesterday, all paperwork has been signed and approved by the client and a three hour drive will land us back in Lafayette. I'm tired of eating out; not that I want to cook but a home made meatloaf sounds delish.....

I did not see one fireworks last night. The 4th of July passed quietly here for us. Shreveport had a big celebration going on most of the evening and I did watch a little of that on TV but we didn't venture out into the heat to sit in a park and sweat and watch any fireworks. I didn't miss it or miss  doing that at all.

I'm off to the coffee/breakfast room to wait patiently for the time when I can go back to the room and get packed and loaded for our trip home.
Catch ya on 167~

All was going well..not great..just "well"

I was on book three of the Fifty Shades and though it felt as though I was reading a Harelquin Romance novel albeit a spicy one, I was managing to tolerate these books. I spent 30.00 on the three of them and that was based upon all the nods to buy them from everyone I encountered.


I've said before that I found them predictable and repetitive and I still stand by that appraisal. I threw down the last book in disgust last night. I'm almost three quarters of the way through it when the story veered to a kidnapping and the ransom request. One of the main characters, the female lead had it been a play, went to the bank and wrote out a check for cash for 5 million dollars. Seriously?  have you ever tried to extract more then ten thousand dollars out of your checking account at one time on a cash withdrawal basis? Can't be done! I've tried it. You can write a check to a business to pay for..shall we say a brand new car, and that is acceptable. You can write a check to BUY something in any amount you want as long as you have the money in your account but you CANNOT withdraw  more then ten thousnd dollars cash on any one day. Today you can get ten thousand but to get another ten thousand you will have to go back tomorrow.


This book would have me believe the heroine was going to withdraw 5 million CASH to pay a ransom note? That's when I had to lay this book down and walk away for a while. Two books ago I had already tired of the "fight and makeup sex" that was the theme of these novels. Of course the makeup sex was the opportune time to introduce what the writer termed "kinky" sex and the description followed.


Would I recommend these books? I hesitate to give a negative reply. I don't know what sort of literature you are accustomed to. These are not novels that will be classified as classics someday. Buy the first one and skip the remaining two. You will get the gist of them from just reading one.


Another day at the pool today. I finally got the dang float thing inflated with my husbnd's help and together we (the raft and I)  'did the pool' thing yesterday. I managed to stay aboard but at times that was dicey. The float is very narrow which leaves very little forgiveness for shifting an inch or two around on it. My uppper thighs no longer have the ivory white bands around them from riding in the roadster with the top down. My tan started 6 inches above the knee and continued to my knee. The calves of my legs and my upper thighs needed some sun exposure to correct these tan lines. I'm working on it.


We will probably be heading home on Friday unless something dire happens on this job. Everything is going smoohly  right now and unless the rig hiccouphs and breaks down, we should be back in Lafayette soon.


I'm ready to shut this down and go back to sleep. I'm only awake at 0400 to brew a little pot of coffee for the husband before he leaves for work. I'm gone for a few hours....


(and a note to Kathy) I did come back to this post from the P.C. in the lobby and correct my typos...let me know if I missed any..lol)

Still in Ruston

I'm typing this on my iPad therefore it won't have paragraphs or look anything like previous posts done on a P.C. I have no idea why it works this way but I accept it. It's either accept it or go downstairs to the business room and use that P.C. I'll give up paragraphs!

Ive been scouting out the little towns around Ruston while I have been here. I wanted to do some shopping in Arcadia and while there I took the opportunity to check out Grambling College. I cruised around the campus and took a few pictures, none of which I can post on this blog this morning as my iPad won't let me do that either. I took them with my camera and as you know there isn't a USB port on these iPads so I'll post a picture of Grambling on this post at a later date.

Yesterday I drove to Farmerville, I wanted to check out a roadside fruit and vegetable stand that my husband told me about. He passes it every day on his way to work. Through winding roads, over hills and dips and beneath the pine trees lining the highway, I enjoyed my 17 mile drive. We are in the "piney woods" as the natives here call it. The countryside, unlike the coastal area of this state is very hilly. WE are but a few miles from the state line of Arkansas which explains the terrain here.

Yesterday after my drive I bought an air mattress with all intentions of hitting the pool. Inflating the air mattress was a chore that wasn't done until the husband got back to the room and helped inflate it. I'm ready to float today. I hesitated on going to the pool expecting it to be a 'hot" tube of water and in this heat it didn't seem very appealing. I was pleasantly surprised to find the water cool and now I wish I had tried it days ago as we will probably be leaving here in a few days. The job here is drawing to an end and we will be heading south.

The husband is gone for 14 hours a day and when he gets back to the room and out of the heat he pops the top on a cold beer and gets a shower. I pop into a restaurant before he gets here and pick up our dinner so he doesn't have to go back out again. I understand his desire to have dinner in the room. He's tired and he has paperwork to do and has to get up at 0400 hrs to do it all over again.

I sip my Margarita while he nurses his beer, then dinner, a little CNN and bedtime.

That's my evening. My days are my own to entertain myself so I'm ready to hang out in the room in the evenings.

Right now it's almost time for the coffee shop to open downstairs and I'm ready to have my bowl of raisin bran and a hot cup of coffee.

Ruston, Heat and Shades of Grey

this is a test....will this be saved? Yesterday I sat here at 0330 and wrote a blog worthy of a Pulitzer and don't ya know, when I went back to it to do some corrections, it wasn't saved. Maybe it wasn't Pulitzer worthy but it was mine and I can never retype again what once I have put to paper or in this case..to the screen. (Just saved this little portion and did a "preview" and it was there. Nothing angers me more then to type a bunch of stuff and find it has disappeared into cyber space or worse, never even made it to cyber space.

I'm in Ruston Louisiana and have been here for a couple of days now. It's hot here as it is across the entire USA. Even the northern states are hotter then here in Louisiana. The husband is on a rig in Lilli and is staying in Ruston so I drove up in the roadster to hang out for a while. The pool looks inviting but I haven't made it there yet. The blast of heat when I approach the front door of this establishment is enough to send me scurrying back to my air conditioned room.

WV, my home state, just got hit by that massive storm that has left thousands without power in this dreadful weather. Trees are down, many of them across homes and power lines. 80 mph winds whipped across Ohio, WV,Pa., and Va. All of these states have thousands of people without electrical power and many won't see that service again for another week. I can sympathize. I live in hurricane country and know well the feeling of being without electricity in the hot humid south.

Again I am awake at an ungodly hour. I've been going to sleep by 2000 hrs and I think that's just too early for me. I automatically awaken after 6 hrs of sleep which rolls me out of bed much to early. The coffee at this hotel is dismally weak so I grabbed my car keys and drove to the Circle K a few blocks away to have myself a real cup of coffee. The parking lot here is full which means the hotel is bursting at the seams. When I rode the elevator down this morning, two gentlemen were getting off it just as I approached. The smell of alcohol that wafted off of them was enlightment enough without the notice of the beer cans each one of them was handling. I nodded a greeting and was thankful they were getting off the elevator instead of on it with me. It's party time for the class reunion folks that have arrived by the bus load to celebrate Lincoln High's class of "I have no clue what year" but judging by the looks of them it must have been many years ago that they sailed their mortar boards skyward.

For months now (watch out..quick change of subject now...note the switch to a new paragraph) I have heard about E.L. James best selling books.   Fifty Shades of Grey is the first book in this trilogy. I bought all three of them and have begun reading while here at the hotel.

Before buying them, women would recommend them with a sly grin but never explain what the books were about. I was curious. I have,  since purchasing them,  heard that they were discussed on some morning show on TV of which I missed seeing.

I have now finished the first of the trilogy and am now more then half way through the second one. Should you inquire of me what they are about, I shall explain in two words "soft porn".  Now that was easy wasn't it?  I scroll my memory back to the women that shyly recommended these books to me and wonder if these books were their first introduction to this kind of material and if after reading them were they disappointed or enlightened  about their sexual relations with their significant "others".  I am not a big fan of porn but as with all types of literature, I like to at least be informed so I didn't find these books as risque as I might have had I not been aware of many of the activities mentioned. I wonder at the women that read these books or are reading them, if they are years and years married to their only lover, were these books a lesson or a review?  For many, I fear they were a lesson and there lies my opinion on why you should never marry the first man you sleep with or worse yet, marry a man you have NEVER slept with.

My opinion of these books?  I find them repetitive and predictable. Of course the main characters are very rich, beautiful and brilliant. The women are all hot, young and willing. Rich man meets young innocent beauty and introduces her to BDSM. How many ways can one describe their sexual encounters?  From chapter to chapter, it's much like watching a porn flick. Repeat ad infinitum. I don't make porn a part of my daily life but in order to have an opinion on anything, I make it a point to have the experience. There is nothing worse then to listen to someone talking about something that they have never tried. (sly wink here).

I will finish this trilogy because I have to finish what I start. It's the OCD in me that compels me to complete a task. My opinion on this trilogy? It reminds me of the "Modern Romance" rags that my mother used to read when I was a young girl and those were my only avenue for literature and I use that word "literature" loosely. I've moved along in my taste of literature and as with these books, I will again move along.

Alert...change of subject once again. As I was proof reading this I noted an error but for the life of me, I can't find it to correct it so this will stand and publish "as it" until I get some more sleep which is where I am headed right now. 

I have to make a trip to the laundromat later today as this hotel doesn't have a washer and dryer which I find very inconvenient. The Holiday Inn was booked so we find ourselves at ye ole Comfort Inn on this trip. It's really not a bad place to stay. The rooms are huge, the staff is courteous and I don't want to pack up and move so here we will stay.