Thursday the 25th

I started the day off by falling out of bed this morning. It's ironic... when we were sorting through the things that came from Grandma's house, there were some bed rails and it was jokingly suggested that I needed them. A-hem. For the record, falling out of bed is not a great idea for someone with a jacked-up spine. Ultimately, though, I survived. It's been one of those joint aching weeks anyways. Sometimes these little incidents that increase the pain level make me feel like there's at least a REASON for the pain. Justification of sorts.

I got up earlier today than I did yesterday - when I was in bed until noon - I know, it's insane! All I can say in my defense is that pain is exhausting and there are periods of time that I just really don't sleep well. When I come across a day where I'm really able to sleep, I try to take advantage of it.

This morning, though,  I had important things to do such as figure out why the internet crashed at around midnight last night. Our internet provider has one of those phone recordings where you enter in your account number and then get put in line for the next available customer service goddess. We didn't have the account number here at the mountain house. After a few tries to connect via the "if you don't have your account number" route, I decided to pretend that I didn't have an account yet and when I got the live eager beaver who wanted to sell me stuff, I confessed that I had a technical problem and didn't have the account number. Fortunately, she was helpful and was able to give me the account number and connect me with the technical support people. In the meantime, I randomly checked the internet connection for the gajillionth time and it worked.

Last night before the internet crashed I stumbled across a really great video about Alfie Boe. He's this amazing tenor who performed the role of Jean Valjean in the 25th anniversary concert of Les Miserables. You know how you listen to a performance, especially with a soprano or tenor part and as they head for the high notes you hold your breath a little stressing over whether they can hit their mark? I particularly enjoy singers who hit notes so effortlessly that you don't stress. This guy - no stress. And he's handsome and spiritual and charming. He also has a few youtubes out their with his buddy Matt Lucas- he was one of the British roommates in Bridesmaids. Matt Lucas was Thenardier in the 25th anniversary. The two of them together were really funny. And that's how I spent my Wednesday night.

I also somehow managed to change the language on my Bubble Safari game to Chinese which makes it difficult when you want to change back to English. I eventually figured it out by clicking on a little globe symbol on the page. Yes. It's been an eventful day here at Cedar Hollow.

I'm still diligently working on finishing up my family tree on ancestry.com. Today I've been merging duplicates which is tricky when you get back over a millenium and people are given names like Ednywain Ap Neiniad. I've also knocked off another 100 family tree hints which help you determine the ancestors of your ancestors by listing the father and mother of each person in your tree. This also requires a bit of time and research. I try to validate the suggestions if at all possible by googling to try to find confirmation. It's time consuming. And for every person I add to the family tree, it adds several more hints with additional information so although I'm working on it for several hours a day, there are more hints now than ever. It's interesting at times but also tedious at times.

I don't have any pictures from today. The view hasn't changed. I think I'm boring my mom to death, she's already ready to go back to Riverdale after only one week here. We had planned a trip to Lowe's but that never got organized. It's hard to find a time where we both feel like doing anything productive and then, for us to go, we either have to take Oscar or be certain that Austin is able to dogsit. My granddoggy Sammy is coming to spend the weekend with us while his mommy and daddy go camping. That should be fun. Sammy is a high energy doggie and I think he'll enjoy exploring the house. I just hope this doesn't turn out to be Pee-Fest 2013. The little dogs tend to mark their territory, even though Oscar is fixed.

Yesterday was Purple Michael's birthday which made me a little sad. I just feel like I'm never going to see him again. I don't have the ability to be flexible and meet him where he is and he is just so busy/highly in demand that it's not possible for him to come to me. A lot of the people that I spent time with over the past two decades were because we were in the same location - church, the ballfield, dance, the theatre - I've never really been the "dinner party" type and that's tricky once you lose the ability to roam.

And I guess that's about it for today. I skipped supper and I'm thinking about heading upstairs for a snack. Happy Thursday, y'all.