Wow, It's Been a While...

Sorry for my lack in posts. I've been very busy lately helping out friends and working on my family tree. I have been working on every single branch of my and my husband's family tree. So far I have not found any proof to the rumor that my maternal grandfather's cousin was the tin man on the "Wizard of Oz", but on my paternal side, I did find out that one of my seventh great grandfather's was Hans Herr. He was the first Mennonite bishop in the new world. His house was built by his son Christian Herr in 1719 is the oldest Pennsylvania German settlement still in existence today. Their house is open to the public as a museum, and is located at 1849 Hans Herr Drive in Willow Street, Pennsylvania. I would really like to visit there one day.

In Portsmouth Ohio (where my parents are both from) on my maternal grandma's branches there is a street named after her family, which I believe my grandma's great granddad's was one of the first settlers in Portsmouth. I have also seen (or heard of) at least 2 or 3 car dealerships in Portsmouth run by very distant family cousins with other last-names. My paternal Granddad was Portsmouth's mayor back in the 1950's.

With the help of some of my cousins and one of my uncles, I have been able to put faces to several names on my tree. More recently with help from a tweet to ancestry.com and the "Barefoot Genealogist", I was able to locate marriage records for a set of my paternal great grandparents and one of their sets of parents.

Time to get back to my research!!!

Are you Siri-ous??

     So I finally decided to jump on the bandwagon and become an iPhone user. I really needed a new phone because my Droid was having what I called "phone seizures". I am not sure if a button was getting stuck or if it was trying to do an update or what. The phone would start cycling through different screens and contacts and would not quit until the battery was removed. Also, on the droid, it wasn't staying charged as long as it used to. The final funny thing that my droid did was when my family was sitting at the dining room table for our Thanksgiving meal and I think it was my Mom or Dad who asked, "Who wants to say grace?" Right on cue I got a text or email and my phone said, "Droid."


        As an early Christmas gift this year I got the iPhone 4S. So far , my favorite feature is "Siri" the talking assistant. Just yesterday I told Siri "I love you." and it replied "I hope you don't say that to other phones!" Then I asked her if she would marry me and she said no because she didn't know who I was. Apparently I needed to identify myself in my contact list on my phone. Tonight I asked her if she could change a diaper after one of my Facebook friends said she wished that Siri could. I asked my Siri and her reply was "I don't know what you mean by 'Can you change a diaper for me.' " Just now my friend Jennifer had told her's "You are the wind beneath my wings" and Siri said "I am?" then Jennifer said yes and then Siri said "I thought so!" 


       Siri is also good with reminding me to do things, which is perfect for me and my short term memory. I can tell her what I need to remember and when she should remind me. Her reminders always arrive on time. She is my equivalent of Jem's  Synergy. Synergy was a holographic computer system that created realistic holograms of virtually anything using special star-shaped earrings, Synergy transformed Jerrica into the glamorous pop singer, Jem when she would say, "Showtime Synergy!"  Just now I tried "Showtime Siri" and all she told me were movie times for the nearest theaters..

So I guess one day we will be going from this:

To this:

       

Like I chose to have 2 major surgeries back to back.....

Well it looks like our last apartment complex didn't appreciate our cleaning before we moved out. The only reason we lived in that particular apartment in our old complex is because 2 years ago I had a heart valve replaced and then my shunt replaced. I also had the Chiari Malformation which for a while had messed up my coordination on  stairs. The nice landlord that we had at the time let us move from the upstairs apartment we lived in to one on the ground level.
       I guess our first mistake was not having to go through all the formalities of renting a new apartment. We payed a $200 deposit for the ground level apartment and got $000 back when we moved out. There was a new landlord when we moved out. She was the one that didn't know how to change a light bulb and lost 2 months or more of our rent payments. I would have written this blog entry sooner, but I was giving that complex the benefit of the doubt and thought they'd actually get a check to us.
       Again, because the move was so sudden back then we did not go through all the formalities of signing a brand new lease, nor did we have any paperwork in our possession. Jason wasn't really surprised that we never got our money back. ..... 

Why don't you just send Ronnie the bill?

Well folks, do you recall in my last entry how the phone company told me that in 2 weeks our name should be on the caller ID? GUESS WHAT? It still hasn't changed. We are still hearing from people we call that our name shows up as "Ronnie Murphy". Did he agree to pay our bill? They also advertise a "whole house" DVR. We are supposed to be able to start watching in one room and be able to start where we left off in another room. That didn't work for us either. We ended up messing with some wires that the installer put in and finally got rid of an error called "ocap" I think they left an "R" out. (o-crap).
       Next, I was at a friend's house the other night trying to connect wirelessly to their internet, and it wouldn't connect. I never had that problem with our last ISP.  Shouldn't we be exempt from paying the bill or at least get a discount? Speaking of bills, lately we've been getting mail for other past residents. At least we can recycle paper. Does your city charge you to recycle? We recently discovered ours does. We thought it'd be the other way around. Can we forward the bill to Ronnie?

Unlucky Technology...

     So we finally get settled into our new place and then we'd like to get our TV, phone, and internet hooked up. We only have a couple options here and I'm beginning to wonder why we stuck with the one that we did. First they kept "losing" our order for new service. Then instead of putting our appointment back on the original date, they kept moving it back!! (Like it was our fault and not their's that the appointment had disappeared.) I'm sure they've never had to go 3 weeks without cable, phone, or internet.
      Once we get it hooked up finally, there were several "hidden charges" in the bill and the technician had brought us the wrong modem. Again apparently it "must have been our fault" that all this happened because we had to argue with the customer service rep to get it fixed. So finally I use modern technology and social media to contact/ complain. I tweeted our final issue about the caller ID showing a different name and was told every 48 hours for the past 6 days that the name had been changed to mine and it would take 24-48 hours to correct it. The tech always initialed what he said, so tonight I knew I was talking to the same guy who changed the time that the caller ID would take to change up to 2 weeks!!! Why tell me 48 hours before? So I'm not really sure if it will now be 2 weeks from today that it will be fixed (yeah right). So if "Ronnie Murphy" calls you.... answer.... it will be me or Jason.
            So that was one technology problem that I'm having. The other is my cell phone. The apps are starting to crash before they're opened and I've restarted my phone several times. I guess I'll have to do a hard reset.... GRRRR!!!! WHY!!!!

Adventures in moving across town….

This has to be the craziest move that my husband and I have been through. We had been through one other “across city” move, but I guess we were more organized for that one. Also we were more organized when we moved across a complex. Speaking of that complex that we moved across, that is the one we left, and that was a major part of the moving headache.

We lived in that complex for 4 years even when Jason was unemployed for over a year, and we still managed to pay rent every month early or on time. The landlord that was there the majority of the time we were unfortunately got cancer and had to quit. Since then she has had at least 3 replacements. The first one we will call “the ditz”.  The ditz didn’t know what she was doing half the time and I think she even lost our rent check for a couple hours. She did not last long there at all.

The next lady I will refer to as the “Wicked Witch.” She had given me attitude about a maintenance request that I had turned in when our breezeway lights were out. We had to carry a flashlight around for several weeks just to get to and from our apartment and car. Really how long does it take to change a light bulb or call an electrician?

The third lady was a charm….. Actually the opposite.  At the end of May we turned in our rent for June and our 60 day notice, which she copied and initialed for us. The plan is to be totally out by August 1. At the end of June we turned in our FINAL rent check for this month. A few days ago after the movers had moved all our big stuff, we came back here to pick up more boxes that were still here when we were greeted by the landlord and the 2 bosses above her. She asked us if we had moved out. DUH!!! Then she asked us where July’s rent was.  I had dropped it in the “drop off” slot in the wall like we had a few times in the past since Jason works nights.  Then she wanted to see copies of the money order receipt and our 60 day notice. She was shocked when we brought it back so quickly. Later we found out that someone did cash the money order. Then the next day she calls us about JUNE’S RENT!!! We had gotten that money order through our bank, so they had record of our purchasing it and, here is the shocker, THEY CASHED IT!!! Magically after all that grief, she found them in her records… Even though we don’t want to, we still plan on cleaning our old place in hopes that we get our deposit back…. We are not holding our breath though. The rent for there 2/1 that we had there is around what we got for our nicer 3 bed 1 and ¾ bath here. We also have a garage, yard, and w/d connections (3 more things the other place didn’t have.)

So we are obviously in a better place now. The move was interesting. Our big stuff got here, but a leg fell off our armoire, and one of the guys fixed it, but took longer that expected to return it. Also our storage style headboard was to big to get upstairs.  We had a very few minor issues with the actual house, and then a 3 week wait for home phone/tv/ and internet.  The way I see it, the lack of technology was just less distractions while unpacking.

That concludes our adventures in moving across town….e-mail me if you need our new contact info.

Moving.......UGH!!!

Although we probably have over 1/2 our stuff packed and ready to go, or over at the new place, it sure doesn't feel like it. I am ready to have it all over with though. Next time we get the keys to anywhere we will be living we will make sure we schedule the setting up of Jason's life support... I mean the internet and TV service.... EARLY. Once again we really only have a couple of options and the one we went with keeps "misplacing" our order for their services. The first lady we talked to said she'd try to get us set up on the 12th or 13th.... instead of letting us know that she couldn't, we ended up calling back only to get pushed back 2 whole weeks!!!!
       I told them that with my medical issues, that I was not comfortable being without a land-line for that long. So now every day in the morning I will have to call and hope that someone will cancel their order so that we can have their spot.
        I wonder what they will do when we send them our original order sheet. Will they feel guilty? Probably not, but I can dream right?