What does the Samhain/Celtic New Year/All Hallows Eve mean to you? I love Samhain/Halloween. I love the freedom of it to do and be something you're not. I also enjoy the passing of one into another and the fact that is a time of change and crossroads. I always find borders to be charged and special and Samhain itself is a meeting point of summer and light and winter and darkness. It's one hell of an inbetween.
Do you do anything special to celebrate or commemorate this sabbat? Much as I'd love to, not really. Mainly, I try to engage in fun Halloween activities like dressing up, decorating for kids and things like that.
What does the coming Winter mean to you in terms of spirituality? Preparation. While Samhain is my favorite holiday, Yule is the most important to me. So, there's a sense of needful readiness and a waiting for it to come.
Gets up, goes to phone, looks at caller id: Times Publishing
{Ring!}
Answers phone: "Yeah?"
Sugary sweet voice: "Hi! This is (whomever, I wasn't paying that much attention), how are you this morning?"
Me, grumpy: "Please put us on your do not call list and don't call here again."
Pause
Not so sugary-sweet anymore: "Ok."
Me: "Thanks"
Decidely pissy now: "Whatever"
{Click}
Forgot how much I love the National Do Not Call Registry until the move and the change of phone number. *sighs* I never, ever got telemarketing phone calls - let alone get woken up at 10am by some bitch trying to sell me the newpaper.
Three months. Three months 'til they can't call me anymore again.
Luna in Shadow Wow. The eclipse looks amazing tonight. It's in totality now. If you can't see it due to clouds, you can check out one of the live webcam feeds here or perhaps here. I wish I had a camera capable of taking a photo. Apparently, someone here in the complex does because when we went out to look at it just now, he was sitting on the little playground area, with a tripod and an impressive looking set of telephoto lenses.
It lives....! It's about damned time. Couldn't log into blogger last night or today. Turns out there were some routing issues that they (clearly) have now fixed.
Yesterday was a pretty busy day. Mom came by to pick me up. I sent off two horn orders at the post office. Then I turned in the cable box from the old apartment but couldn't find the modem (despite putting it on the counter with the cable box specifically to have it one place) and a really, really old cable box and modem from like three years ago. After that, I went and voted. Florida's doing an Early Voting thing where you can go all this week and vote instead of waiting at the deluge on November 2nd.
Took an hour - 25 minutes to sign in and then another 30 or so to get to actually vote - but it was worth it. Even got a cool sticker that not only says, "I Voted" but, "I Made Freedom Count" as well. Thought that was cool. Apparently, tens of thousands of voters are already showing up for the early voting and it looks like we'll have a record year. I used one of the new touch-screen machines and it was easy enough - let's just hope it doesn't lose any data. So, John Kerry, you already have this Floridian's vote. Hopefully. Heh.
Today, the new-apartment-gremlins have managed to steal the honey from the pantry (I know it was in there!) as well as the cooking oil (dammit!) not to mention the mixer (*grumbles*). I was all set to make a cake today and lacked the tools to do it. I swear, things just continue to disappear right from plain sight in this place. I don't know where it's all going!
We're continuing to have a bunch of small problems with the new place that are minor but annoying because no one's doing anything about them. Like the fridge makes this horrible high-pitched whine sometimes when it turns on. And the dishwasher is so loud it tries to vibrate itself through the floor. Also, the plug on my bathroom tub is a weird thing that you twist down, but no matter how hard or tight you try to twist it, it leaks. So you can't keep the tub full. Then, the a/c froze up Monday night because apparently no one changed the filter like they were supposed to, prompting a 9:30pm after-hours maintenence call. Don't even get me started on the drama with the gate keys!
The community has a gate. And, they give you a little key-ring sized gate opener. Without it, you can't get in. (Short of calling to the apartment on the little box thingy but it doesn't do you any good if you're there and no one's in the apartment to push 9 and let you in!) Also, you need it to get into the fitness center. Which my Love's been wanting to get back to use really badly. We haven't had money for gym membership for him in like a year and since it's got a full gym here, he wants to take advantage of it. Well, first, both worked, but not for the gym. Then, neither worked and I got the batteries replaced. His worked for the gym, mine didn't. Now his isn't working at all and mine will open the gate but still not the gym! Bah. We've been here 12 days and haven't been able to use the gym once yet. Grr. So, supposedly, they'll have some more (new? replacement? different?) remotes next Monday and we'll try swapping his out. They were supposed to program mine for the gym on Monday and haven't. Today, they apparently all got sick and left early.
Bah. So, these people are damned slow about getting out to actually address your complaints. And, like I said, though it's all minor stuff - except the gate keys (and not being able to use my tub dammit!) - it's very annoying that they're not getting around to any of it.
Well, I need to eat dinner and I want to work on updating the horn pages on PhoenixFire Designs - I have more pairs that I didn't list on ebay that are ready to go out for example, plus a couple pairs that didn't sell on ebay - so I guess I've bitched enough for one entry. Oh wait, one more. Waaaaaaaa! I wanna go to Disney! We were originally planning on trying to get back there in October, but that's clearly not going to happen and with all the expenses of moving, as well as the increase in costs not to mention the car getting worse (did I mention how we now have no working odometer on it? *sighs*) it's not a chance in hell. We won't be able to even consider it until next year who knows when. Grump. And the weather's getting nice and everything right now. And we could really use a day to get away from it all. Why is it when you could use it the most, it's the furthest from reach?
Ew.... What's leaking out of the box...? Ah, rancid jelly. Yum.
Allow me to exaplin. I got a $10 amazon gift card a couple weeks ago from signing up for an offer thingy towards the free iPod deal. (Which, by the way, I'm just waiting to receive my order though my Love is trying to get one too so if you want to sign up, please use this link.) Anyway....I took the opprotunity to get myself something I really like and haven't had in like six years. Muscadine Jelly.
Back when my Love and I first met, we had to evacuate for a hurricane. We got in the car, started driving and ended up at Callaway Gardens. He had gone there as a kid with his family and remembered it was really nice. (Turns out it was. Peaceful, beautiful and hilly - it's in Big Pine Mountain, Georgia.) Anyway, they have something there that you can't get anywhere else. A type of grape called muscadine that they make into jelly, syrups, preserves, sauces, etc. It's really quite yummy. We brought back a few jars but ended up giving them away to everyone we knew - leaving us with none.
Flash forward six years later, and there's a way of ordering it through amazon.com and here I have a $10 gift certificate. An opprotunity too sweet to pass up.
A knock on the door today reveals a UPS driver and a package for me to sign. I couldn't remember what it would be until I saw the Callaway logo on the box. But something was wrong. The box was wet and something clearly had seeped out from within. Uh-oh. Turns out, when I opened the box, the jar of jelly was shattered inside.
ew.....it's packed in this decortative straw that clearly must have looked better before the jar broke
And, it further turns out, that a jelly made from a type of grape, when traveling in hot trucks and through Georgia and Florida (where it's still in the mid 80's outside) gets rather rancid if the jar seal is broken and the contents are left to, well, kinda blob there for a couple days.
For the record, it should have looked a little something like this:
So, I called the 800# on the box and explained that it arrived broken. The lady said she'd call me back. Several hours went by and I hadn't heard from anyone, so I went ahead and called again. Spoke with a really nice, older Southern woman who was happy to take down my information and send me another one. Poor woman though had the damndest time trying to write down my address though. Everything from "T-u-r-n-e-r" was too much to the street name, the city, etc. Heh. Oh well. It's worth ten minutes of slow, repetative spelling if I can get my muscadine jelly!
Anyway, that's my story for the day. Thankfully, trash goes out five nights a week so I can toss the stinky box out tonight. (They do a vallet pick-up here where you just put it outside your door between 7pm and 9pm and they pick it up for you. Love loves it since taking the trash to the dumpsters used to be his duty. Also, since it's five nights a week - excluding Wednesday and Saturday - the trash doesn't build up to several bags like it used to sometimes.)
Oh yeah. And one more irony of the day? I finally was ready to use my master bath tub and enjoy a good soak. All set, right? Start filling the tub and....crap. The plug doesn't properly work. It won't hold water. All that build-up, waiting.....and it doesn't plug properly. D'oh!
Today clearly isn't my day for the simple pleasures in life. Heh.
Things I've Learned Today 1. Washer and dryers are damned expensive. Even when you drive like 25 miles away to a scratch-and-dent place. Bah.
2. Mika is shedding so much that in a week's time, there's enough ambient fur around this place - and me - that we almost have a third cat. Where's it all coming from? I know she's a big cat and all but damn.
