Musings of a modern day grandma
My daughter is a big sister to a boy at an elementary school near her college.
One day while she visited his class, one of his friends said his sister’s birthday was soon. Liz said her birthday was also soon. He said his sister was older thn she was – Liz asked how old. He said 12. Liz said she’s 22.
The little boy said….
You’re as old as my grandmother!
…and not because we all got sick Sunday morning. The 14 hour trip home via Harrisonburg VA (to drop a daughter at college) turned into 18 hours, thanks to delays on the PA turnpike and two major accidents on I-81 in VA. We had the map and GPS going and we able to get off the interstate and scoot down US11 much faster than the interstate traffic was moving. Our biggest delay in the rerouting was the driver (a younger daughter, since Phil and I were both not feeling well) got lost in Roanoke and we took the scenic route 11 through town, not the faster 11 Alternate. We still got home faster than we would have by waiting on the interstate.
We were both too sick to take the other college daughter back to NC this morning in time for her 9 am class, so she graciously offered to drop her younger sister off at school and take the old car to college, skipping her first class. How nice. 🙂
I placed an order with Best Buy while we were visiting in Toledo, using my daughter’s internet connection. The order shipped today. From Maumee. I can’t help but wonder if that location is a distribution center or if they use the IP address to route web orders to the nearest location with stock.
Don’t use a display name that insinuates you are a technology expert if you aren’t. It just makes you look dumb.
I find it hard to believe that Pennsylvania Department of Transportation cares one bit about public safety. We finally got off the turnpike after 6 hours of stop and go traffic, including sitting in the travel lane of the turnpike while waiting to slowly move forward to pay for the privilege at the tollbooths at the Bedford interchange. This was two exits earlier than we planned because we got fed up the traffic – this was the first exit we came to. I’ll admit our mistake was in not getting off the turnpike in Pittsburgh and taking the longer but free Interstate through WV. We’d get home a lot faster and have a safer trip – but I’m more than willing to pay to take the shorter route, when it’s really shorter. It’s a mistake I’ll never make again – ever – regardless of the traffic conditions or time of day – because greed, not public safety, rules in Pennsylvania.
It’s the last $7.00 the turnpike authority ever gets from us.
Born and raised in Pennsylvania but treated better by the toll policies in many other states…
[[Posted from I-68, where traffic is flowing smoothly and at Interstate speeds.]]
I don’t like shopping, so I avoided the malls on the day after Thanksgiving. My kids went, but I did my shopping online. The sites were slow, but shipping was free. The girls wanted to go to the Nike outlet north of Ann Arbor, but it was two hours away and I talked them out of it. We’ll go to the outlet in Pigeon Forge TN when they get of of school for the holidays.
After a hard day of shopping, I took the kids out for supper – to Spaghetti Warehouse. The Toledo location is downtown, near the Mud Hens ballpark. Food was good, the decor neat.
There is nothing like bad weather to make you appreciate what you can do with modern technology. We hit snow in the Dayton area and wondered how long it would last so I looked up the radar image at weather.com and compared it to the map on my computer. Thanks to GPS, I knew about when we’d get into clear weather. Cool.
It’s 3 am and we finally hit the road… we’re spending Thanksgiving with the kid’s in-laws in Toledo. It’s about 50 degrees out – and will be dropping quickly as we move north. Brrr….
The GPS is on, not that we need it, but it’s fun to see where we are and know how far we have left to go. I know I won’t have cellular modem the entire trip – I’ll lose it when we go through the mountains in southeastern Kentucky. I’ll have to remember to check the weather (again) before we get into the no service areas.
Because it’s so late (early), we’re not going our usual route – 58 through Jonesville VA and 25 to Corbin KY. We’re sticking to the interstates this time – and so far, traffic is light. A few cars are on the road, no trucks.
The finally fell asleep… I should but someone needs to keep the driver awake and check weather reports.
Posted from southbound mile marker 20 on I-81 in TN….
As much fun as last night was, reality set in this morning and I’m ready to send one kid back to college. Why oh why can’t she sleep in until noon like every other college student home for break? I almost forgot that following our trip to the All-Star game in Detroit last summer, I vowed never to take her with us ever again because everything has to be her way.
I decided it would be helpful in my business if I had a Mac to test Outlook problems on. Fortunately, minimacs are affordable enough to justify the purchase (and it’s a tax deduction!).
It’s defintely a change from the Windows machines I’m used to using – the lack of title bars on each window and the presense of a shared title bar at the top of the screen took some getting used to, as did the close / minimize button position and order. They are totally oposite of the position and order in Windows.
Was it a good investment? You bet, even though i’ll probably only use it for email and word processing.