What's happening
Golf Stuff
- I did not get "most improved" in our golf league. That honor went to a woman in the foursome I played with on Thursday. She's been golfing for three years and usually out-drives all of the other women on our league. I suspect I may get it next year.
- My foursome won the scramble with a score of 38 on nine holes. Bogeyed a couple, parred a couple, birdied a couple. My partner won closest to the pin on one hole, and one of the ladies in our group came about six inches from winning longest drive. The winner of that prize was a woman who usually doesn't hit the ball that far, so that was pretty impressive.
- It rained the entire time we were playing, ranging from a drizzle to a downpour. No lightning, so they didn't cancel. I learned that I have a bizarre skill: I rock at golfing in the rain. I think it's because I know that there's no point in trying to golf well when your grips are wet, the ground is soaked and everyone is miserable, so I don't try. Hence, I play better. It sucks that the harder I try to play well, the worse I play. But then again, I guess that's what the beer cart girl is there for.
Other Stuff
- I donated platelets on Saturday afternoon. Rather than taking a unit of reds and a unit of platelets, this time they just took a double unit of platelets. That makes me happy. It's always important to donate red blood cells, but platelets have a shorter shelf life. Besides- only 37% of the population can use my reds, but 100% can use my platelets. It seemed like it took less time this time, and was a lot easier, too. I was better prepared. I had a liter of water, a jacket for my free arm and knew to ask for more Tums when my lips got buzzy. (I also knew what that meant.) Watched "Hush" and most of "Doomed" while I donated.
- After the Red Cross, I went to the airport for the new North terminal open house. The terminal is nice, but the open house wasn't so good. They appeared to have a very good plan. They just seemed overwhelmed by the turnout. I waited in line for about an hour and ten minutes to get on a bus. Got some new tan lines. Deepened my farmer tan. (Dammit!) Remember the liter of water I drank at the Red Cross? It came back to haunt me in line. I realized that there were porta-johns in the parking lot near the line just when there wouldn't have been time to use them. By the time I got to the new terminal I felt like my eyes were turning yellow. So, at the open house, I got a hot dog, a bag of chips, a bottle of water, some cookies, and an American Airlines in-flight magazine. Other people were walking around with posters, cariciatures, and United airlines books. There wasn't much swag left. I was supposed to be there from 3-5 and got to the terminal at 4:30. Nice, huh? Turns out that people who arrived a mere ten minutes after me were re-routed to an alternate lot and only waited 5 minutes. As I said, very poorly planned. But I got some nice pictures, got to see the new terminal and saw two vintage planes take off, courtesy of the Yankee Air Museum.
- I've been having all kinds of problems with my internet at home ever since I switched to Uverse. Turns out it was an easily solvable hardware issue. The USB wireless adapter that they gave me to connect my desktop computer is a ginormous piece of crap. I bought an inexpensive Belkin unit and was up and running in minutes. Not short minutes, unfortunately, because the unit predated Vista. However, I was able to plug it into my old laptop, download the updated driver to my portable hard drive, copy it to my PC and get everything set up. It's amazing what a difference it's made. I went from "40% signal strength" and constantly dropped connections to "Signal strength: excellent" and a solid connection. Half the time, my PC didn't even recognize the old unit. It was crazy. I think I may be sending my laptop down to Florida with my parents to indulge in the free internet in the villa. Since it's not wireless and I don't have a regular modem, and I'm not using my old wireless router, I think I will send that, too. That way I should be able to get away with just bringing the USB adapter. I think.
- I have a boatload of work to do right now. Last week we discovered that FrameMaker's filters for JPG graphics make our documents totally blow up in memory size and make it nearly impossible to make a PDF. So now we have to re-save every graphic as a GIF and re-import it. It stinks. But what are you going to do? Anyway, because of this, I couldn't take the day off to be at home for our annual fire alarm testing. Which means that my elderly, retired neighbor (the only person in the neighborhood who knows where I keep my spare key) has to let the guys in to test the alarm, setting off this horribly loud bell, over and over again. I expect Dinah to be thoroughly freaked out when I get home. And possibly exploring the basement (a Dinah forbidden zone) because those guys always leave the basement door open.
So that's what's going on with me. Any news in the LJ-verse?
- I did not get "most improved" in our golf league. That honor went to a woman in the foursome I played with on Thursday. She's been golfing for three years and usually out-drives all of the other women on our league. I suspect I may get it next year.
- My foursome won the scramble with a score of 38 on nine holes. Bogeyed a couple, parred a couple, birdied a couple. My partner won closest to the pin on one hole, and one of the ladies in our group came about six inches from winning longest drive. The winner of that prize was a woman who usually doesn't hit the ball that far, so that was pretty impressive.
- It rained the entire time we were playing, ranging from a drizzle to a downpour. No lightning, so they didn't cancel. I learned that I have a bizarre skill: I rock at golfing in the rain. I think it's because I know that there's no point in trying to golf well when your grips are wet, the ground is soaked and everyone is miserable, so I don't try. Hence, I play better. It sucks that the harder I try to play well, the worse I play. But then again, I guess that's what the beer cart girl is there for.
Other Stuff
- I donated platelets on Saturday afternoon. Rather than taking a unit of reds and a unit of platelets, this time they just took a double unit of platelets. That makes me happy. It's always important to donate red blood cells, but platelets have a shorter shelf life. Besides- only 37% of the population can use my reds, but 100% can use my platelets. It seemed like it took less time this time, and was a lot easier, too. I was better prepared. I had a liter of water, a jacket for my free arm and knew to ask for more Tums when my lips got buzzy. (I also knew what that meant.) Watched "Hush" and most of "Doomed" while I donated.
- After the Red Cross, I went to the airport for the new North terminal open house. The terminal is nice, but the open house wasn't so good. They appeared to have a very good plan. They just seemed overwhelmed by the turnout. I waited in line for about an hour and ten minutes to get on a bus. Got some new tan lines. Deepened my farmer tan. (Dammit!) Remember the liter of water I drank at the Red Cross? It came back to haunt me in line. I realized that there were porta-johns in the parking lot near the line just when there wouldn't have been time to use them. By the time I got to the new terminal I felt like my eyes were turning yellow. So, at the open house, I got a hot dog, a bag of chips, a bottle of water, some cookies, and an American Airlines in-flight magazine. Other people were walking around with posters, cariciatures, and United airlines books. There wasn't much swag left. I was supposed to be there from 3-5 and got to the terminal at 4:30. Nice, huh? Turns out that people who arrived a mere ten minutes after me were re-routed to an alternate lot and only waited 5 minutes. As I said, very poorly planned. But I got some nice pictures, got to see the new terminal and saw two vintage planes take off, courtesy of the Yankee Air Museum.
- I've been having all kinds of problems with my internet at home ever since I switched to Uverse. Turns out it was an easily solvable hardware issue. The USB wireless adapter that they gave me to connect my desktop computer is a ginormous piece of crap. I bought an inexpensive Belkin unit and was up and running in minutes. Not short minutes, unfortunately, because the unit predated Vista. However, I was able to plug it into my old laptop, download the updated driver to my portable hard drive, copy it to my PC and get everything set up. It's amazing what a difference it's made. I went from "40% signal strength" and constantly dropped connections to "Signal strength: excellent" and a solid connection. Half the time, my PC didn't even recognize the old unit. It was crazy. I think I may be sending my laptop down to Florida with my parents to indulge in the free internet in the villa. Since it's not wireless and I don't have a regular modem, and I'm not using my old wireless router, I think I will send that, too. That way I should be able to get away with just bringing the USB adapter. I think.
- I have a boatload of work to do right now. Last week we discovered that FrameMaker's filters for JPG graphics make our documents totally blow up in memory size and make it nearly impossible to make a PDF. So now we have to re-save every graphic as a GIF and re-import it. It stinks. But what are you going to do? Anyway, because of this, I couldn't take the day off to be at home for our annual fire alarm testing. Which means that my elderly, retired neighbor (the only person in the neighborhood who knows where I keep my spare key) has to let the guys in to test the alarm, setting off this horribly loud bell, over and over again. I expect Dinah to be thoroughly freaked out when I get home. And possibly exploring the basement (a Dinah forbidden zone) because those guys always leave the basement door open.
So that's what's going on with me. Any news in the LJ-verse?