Sometimes, silence is indeed golden.  When it comes to the fyr and this blog, golden is not even remotely apt. In this case, the fyr being silent is a very bad thing.

Or so some of you may think.

The fact is, the fyr has been silent for a number of different reasons. The main one being her new job that she landed that keeps her surfing the web all day long, being paid for much of the surfing that she does.  I have been busy. The job brings many new horizons closer for me, yet introduces a curve to my routine that I am still trying to work out. It’s interfered with my yoga classes, my home routines, my food and cooking routines … it’s put a spoke in everything simple because I haven’t yet found the best groove in which to slide it in and have it work in concert with everything else.

Throw into the loop the fact of my very minor surgery last Thursday and I have a mess of tasks that just don’t have their place in my daily routine. A literal mess. I need a way to organize, focus and channel.

What’s that? What minor surgery? Not to worry, I am fine. I was in and out before you might have noticed (had I been blogging regularly, of course) and I am recovering nicely – albeit slower than I had expected. There is much pain and a lot of the tasks I took for granted before are next to impossible – things such as bending, sitting for long periods of time, standing for long periods of time – and by a long period of time I mean in excess of a few minutes.

The surgery itself was supposed to be exploratory with the option to correct – and they did indeed have to correct. It is surgery some of you who have been reading about my perils and travels for years might remember from 4 years ago. Although I can find no posts that explicitly mention the procedure, I did find the one that lamented the loss of my new navel piercing. The difference between that one and this one is that back then all they did was go in an look around – this time, the actually did some work in there – so I guess that I am taking more time to recuperate is not unusual. It’s just difficult for me to be this …. helpless.

I’ve had multiple offers for “help” while I recuperate and each time I’ve said ”I’m ok” because … really, how helpless can I possibly be after out-patient surgery – right? Well … apparently, it’s a great deal. I have to plan each and every foray from the bed, or recliner that I take. Because multiple forays from said spots become increasingly difficult and painful.

If there was doubt about how poorly I felt, you would be able to determine once and for all when you hear that I haven’t even been able to play WoW for longer than an hour or 2 at a time – and for the most part, I spend all day not playing just so I can play at raid time for an hour or 2 at night. Ya. That poorly.

In other news, it’s tax time again. And now that all the relevant paperwork is now available, I now have to get cracking on filing tax returns. The Kentucky return is going to be particularly annoying and I have to say that this is probably a good part of why a lot of army wives hesitate to find work after a PCS – it’s just too hard to deal with the tax return filings when multiple state returns are involved. I have to tell you this, though, I am eternally grateful for the training that JH afforded me last year in the preparation of tax returns. Without that, I think it would be panic time now while we figure out how to get it all sorted out.

With all that said, that’s pretty much what has been keeping me busy lately. I’m going to have to post about the new apps I’ve been playing with lately too – not the least of which is the app I use keep track of my time while I work and generate invoices based on those times. A really nice application that I know I wouldn’t be able to function efficiently without.  Ladies and Gentlemen, please .. say hello to Macfreelance.

And on that note, I make another planned foray from this recliner.

YUSH

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I haven’t blogged all week and I feel like I am missing something.

Since last week, however, I have managed to find an e-book copy of each of the Twilight Saga books and put them on the kindle and I started reading again. Like I was telling a friend, I STILL love the books. I am still thrilled to bits to be despising how much of a twit Bella is and how much of a completely unrealistic character Edward is. I Yesterday, I recapped their first “date” when Edward took Bella to his “special place”, a clearing in the forest. How completely weird the whole incident was. I mean, sparkly? Don’t get me wrong, I admire Meyer’s originality in explaining the centuries long aspect of the vampire myth that has them hiding out during daylight hours, but sparkly just feels …. fantastical to me. Unreal.

In any case, lack of realism aside, stupidity aside, I STILL love the damn story. And I think I am the sort of person who will enjoy anything that can evoke a strong emotion from me. ANYTHING that will make me FEEL, is a damn good story for me. And I don’t mean feel like punching out the creator of the story, I mean feel like punching out the main characters in the story. I feel like I’d step into the book, arrive in Forks, seek out Bella, give her a GOOD talking to about how women are supposed to conduct themselves with pride and dignity, spank her little childish bottom, give that disgusting Charlie a lesson in child-rearing and then walk out – head held high.

Well, lets set Twilight and its subsequent sequels aside and talk about the rest of the week.

It has been warm ALL week. In the 50s most days. Its been real nice. I was off last week Sunday, and I did absolutely nothing all day. I think I might have spent most of the morning on the computer getting apps for my iPhone. And then the afternoon playing with hubby .. until he had to go to work. Then I was supposed to play with Jen, but something happened, and I ended up on my death knight until they called me for a raid.

Monday was work again. I got up early (7am) and got ready and even got to work “early” only to realize that the schedule “change” I thought I was looking at was the wrong one and I didn’t need to be at work until 1pm. I headed back home, of course. Even thought I could probably have used an extra few hours of pay, I doubt that those hours would have been approved as overtime pay … not in the slow season like this. At least hubby and I got to spend a little time together before I went back to work. When I DID get to work, oh boy did I get in trouble. Last Friday, I felt SO ill that when my colleague suggested we close up shop early, especially since one of the other offices (and in fact the “spearhead” office) was closed early too I didn’t even think about it, and just came home and slept. On Monday, the boss called me on it. Wanted to know why, and when I explained, told me it was fine but that I should call him next time it happened. Well, the thing is … I was sick enough that I didn’t even THINK straight about what I should be doing. And frankly, I was only there until that time because I didn’t want to leave the other girl there alone late at night. Otherwise I think I would’ve left HOURS before the 8:10 I did leave. Oh well, lets hope next time I think more clearly – right?

The rest of the week was uneventful. I had my interview on Thursday and two things became clear to me from that interview: I DEFINITELY do not want another Digicel job and that job was going to like Digicel, if not worse… secondly, I better not commit to that kind of job at ALL yet – we might be moving house here in a few months and no one is going to like it if I up and leave 6 months after being hired. I am going to have to rethink this job thing a little.

Yesterday was weird. It dawned a little overcast. Then the sun came out for about an hour at 10ish. Then it got overcast a little and started raining about noon or 1ish. By 2:30 it had turned to a snow and rain mix and by 3 it was snowing hard. HUGE snowflakes. I mean, snow accumulating on the cars, kind of snow. Of course, it wasn’t accumulating on the road surface … oh no, that would have still been too warm!!!

By the time 5pm rolled around and knocking off time, there was a significant amount of snow on the ground

Ridiculous. It was freaking 50 degrees earlier that day!!! From 50 degrees to below 32 within the space of an afternoon??? Good grief!

This morning, was the best one ever. I woke up and got on my computer and started to blog and BLAM! out goes my keyboard. So, another trip to apple in the works, I wake hubby and we head on up there. Over the phone, they had wanted me to make an appointment which I didn’t want to do in case I couldn’t make it in time, or hubby said we would get it at the PX .. or you know – anything. Luckily, he was just as thrilled to make the almost-hour-long-drive into Louisville to visit the apple store again and so off we went. I went prepared to spend the $50 for the new keyboard … I mean, I was out of warranty on my iMac and there just didn’t seem anyway possible for me to get it any other way. Ha!

Dude takes the 2 keyboards from me, takes out the new one, puts my old one in the box and sends me home with a “have a nice day” smile. WOW! I love apple. I did NOT expect that at ALL – I walked up to him and pulled out my card to swipe and he was like “Oh no – I’m replacing it for you. Put your card back up.”

I secretly believe that had I looked like I expected to get it free they might have charged me for it. Maybe. /shrug Who knows. I am just LOVING the support though. And I have a brand spanking new keyboard. =) Want a picture?

Isn’t shiny looking?

/sigh

So today, the snow was still around, and coming back from the Apple store, we took a different route home, just so hubby could show me this route. And OH it reminded me SO much of Mount Rosser (well except for the snow part) that I had to take some picts (pardon the windscreen wiper marks – this is a highway, stopping on the side of it was just not possible. People are travelling in excess of 50mph on this road):

I miss home! =(

Ok, this post is long enough … I better stop here.

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So, army W2s came out yesterday. As is expected, there was a run on the office. I think it probably wasn’t half as bad as the other 2 offices, but it was bad, because at 9pm. I was still sittin’ there doin’ tax returns when I should’ve been home 3 hours before. I was exhausted and irritable and I just wanted to crawl into bed, but I had to eat and let the food settle first. Man, I just wanted to scowl all night long. Thankfully, hubby WAS mad at me cos I didn’t call to say I’d be late, but he was too relieved that I was ok to be mad for long. He forgave me, made dinner, babied me a little … but then left the kitchen for me to clear up before climbing into bed. I was just so irritable, I said nothing, did what I had to do, and climbed into bed…. where he murmured comfort words to me for a while until we both passed out.

It’s going to be another hectic day today, I think … but this time I am going to leave at 6 as I am scheduled to cos these long days are just not going to work for me.

I can tell you THIS much, this weekend? Yea … not doing a damn thing. Sleep and read.

One small nagging thought, and that is that I am making TONS of mistakes that will just … be my undoing. I can’t shake it. I don’t know what it is. I just hope it’s that guy that lives in the back of my head who is the fatalist, the one who puts me down (sometimes overly so) in order to keep me humble … I hope it’s just him .. and not premonition.

Oh well … I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

/sigh

I am just so TIRED tho … like I am running on fumes even though I am eating and sleeping … I mean, I get 3 meals most days (yesterday was the exception with the wrap that had a hair in it), and I get 7-8 hours sleep at night (except for that hour or so during which hubby snoozes the alarm for like a half hour).

Bear is mad at me, I figure it’s because I am absent more now. I cuddle with them less. Like this morning, I have on a black shirt – I can’t go to work covered in cat hair. The one or two is fine, but if I go cuddling, I’ll be literally covered.

Oh well, time to go worry myself and the car over to the gas station … hope I have enough to get there. That’s what you get for putting it off “until after work” when after work is a whole 3 and a half hours after you expected. /sigh

Laterz.

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So, today was day 3. I got in early, and it was just 3 of us. I buckled down immediately to some practice scenarios, but soon was bored. So we got to talking – the 3 of us. It was a SLOW day, what can I tell ya? So anyway, they are all like – it’s time for you to do your first return on your own. I’m like – no way Jose. But they tell me that the next customer in was mine and they’d help me.

Well, the next new customer wasn’t until almost 4pm. And as luck would have it, she only wanted to “see whether it made sense to file” … my first customer was a voided return, cos she didn’t need to file, we found it wouldn’t be advantageous of her to file … so she left.

/sigh

So I am still a virgin preparer. Ha!

I came home and hubby said “we are walking tonite” .. so he bundled me up into like 3 layers of warm sweater stuff. I mean literally, I was a bundle of material. And we walked. It was a good walk. There are 2 grades between our house and our destination… and although they aren’t big huge hills, they are a nice little challenge to the walker who is power-walking and out of shape like me. So I came back winded with a nice burn in my thighs, calves and tummy. I tell him we need to do that at least 3 times a week. He agreed. I think it’s not so much that he thinks I need to lose weight, but more that he realizes how hopeless I am about my own discipline to get exercise and how unhappy I am about it… so he’s going to help me.

What a wonderful man! =)

So, I am about ready to hit the hay here … SOOOOO Tired, it isn’t even funny. And not even midnight – which is my target time for bed since I have to be at work at 10am.

All that being said, I am gonna sign off here … y’all take care now, hear?

YUSH

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Last week, I was getting down and dirty with the tax preparation courses and practice sessions. I would print out the assessment scenarios and then manually prepare the requisite forms (in pencil, of course, cos I could erase the figures and use the same form for the next scenario). But anyway, I am mindful of paper waste and so I ALWAYS print duplexed. All of a sudden, on Thursday night, the printer stopped duplexing. The print queue on my iMac would say “Opening printer connection …” and then it would say a couple of seconds later “Printer Connection Failed: Unable to open the printer connection. Please check your printer connections and check for printer errors.” The printer itself would have no errors, it would just be sitting there, looking all innocent and stuff … like it hadn’t even HEARD that it was supposed to be printing something… the print queue would have this huge glaring error …. Even more innocent looking when we send single pages to it and it prints, but looking away whistling when we tell it to duplex.

So, as usual, I dig into the logs. I fire up the Macs native log browser and see some errors that make me cringe “[Job 93] can’t open `/private/var/spool/cups/tmp/496ffa9500870′.” … and other similar messages. Ooooh boy.  Of course, I am tired by this time cos I’ve been doing this literally ALL DAY. And I haven’t stopped once. So I sit back and sigh. Hubby is beside himself because he knows this is not something he can cheer me up about. I sit back and a light bulb goes off “Fix perms!” it says. And I obey. I don’t even run a check perms in disk utility first, I just run a fix perms because that last error indicated to me there was a permissions problem .. maybe.

Well, it wasn’t. When I attempted the print again after the “Repair Permissions” in Disk Utility, I got the same set of errors. So I go LOOKING for these culprit files that the OS is claiming it cannot open … and lo and behold, it’s not that the file is there and has permissions that would preclude it from being opened … oh no. The file named in the error message isn’t there AT ALL.

Of course, you know, at this point, I just throw my hands in the air and go to bed – right? That I did – but not before submitting a support request to HP for the problem – explaining ALL the things we did to “fix” this error.

So anyway, they responded maybe yesterday of Friday with a question about how the printer is connected – whether via USB or network (Ethernet) and I didn’t even bother to respond because I was so tired and just needed to sleep. I  responded this morning though and while I am sitting there pondering the weird situation again, what do I do? I try to duplex print … and guess what? The damn printer duplex printed!

So I am sitting here and the most logical conclusion I can come to about this stupid printer is that … IT was tired why it refused to print. Well, either that, or we need to get it to a psychologist … cos it’s developed schizophrenic tendencies.

/sigh

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