✭ eBay moron & a terrorist ✭

Good afternoon & happy Monday! Saturday I made French Toast for everyone & then got to work cleaning the house, checked facebook, & thanks to Ann-Marie & the wonderful illuminated magnifying desk lamp she bought us, I was able to start a crochet doily! It's been a while since I've worked on one because I simply couldn't see anything that small & who wants to sit there & squint the whole time? That'll create wrinkles almost as fast as stress. The base of the magnifying lamp is large & flat & fits perfectly under my leg. The neck is bendable & I was able to adjust it perfectly to where I needed it & once I turned on the light, I was crocheting a beautiful doily with no problems at all ... while watching Dante's Peak. When it was time for lunch, instead of going into McKinney like I wanted to, we also needed to pick up Josh from Princeton so we just went to Golden Chick instead to save fuel & time. When we got back I machine knitted while watching one of my FAVORITE movies, Bye Bye Love (I ALWAYS cry during part of the treehouse scene), checked the Win8 store, got my clothes for Sunday ready, had a quick dinner with Pete, watched TV, played Words w/ Friends, 5 Card Slingo, & went to sleep. Yesterday we were going to go out to breakfast, but again instead of going where I wanted to go, since it was time to pick Josh up from work, we rerouted to go somewhere that was on the way ... again saving time & fuel. We picked Josh up from work & then went to work on the house for the day. With the temperature being as nice as it was, I got a lot more done that usual. I did all my laundry, changed the bedding, fed the pets, dusted the dining room lights, cleaned the kitchen sink, did the dishes & wiped down the counters, dusted the audio systems, couldn't hose off the back porch because there's something wrong with the faucet outside, it suddenly stopped working ... but Pete did a great job working on clearing the back porch & getting it cleaned up, Kyle helped me out & swept the dining room, I took the trash to the road & then got distracted & cleaned the front porch / yard / walkway / driveway. When I finally finished with all that I went through the Sunday paper, got my coupons for the week, & enjoyed the front page article of the Arts & Life section about the TV show Dallas (2 hour season premier TONIGHT!). I checked facebook but that ended up taking much longer than expected. Since I only go through it all once a day now, it takes about an hour to scroll through 24 hours of all the posts from my friends, family, & pages I like. Well last night, besides the browser crashing & making me lose my spot & have to start all over again (TWICE), I also had to keep taking breaks to deal with 2 idiots. Idiot #1 is an eBay customer who I swear is the stupidest person I've ever come across. This is how it started. I listed a pattern. The title of the auction said "'insert name of sweater here' KNIT PATTERN" In the description, I have TWO lines. Line #1 is the same as the auction title, centered & in header 1 bold font (header 1 is the largest font you can have). It's like a damn billboard: "'insert name of sweater here' KNIT PATTERN" Line #2 is in header 2 font, also HUGE & just a few points smaller than header 1 ... centered in bold: "This is the *PATTERN ONLY*. Original pattern, folded to fit into a regular envelope." Now I ask you ... WHAT ARE YOU BUYING?! This person buys the item for $2.57. I leave her positive feedback for prompt payment & send her her pattern. What do I get a few days later? An e-mail that says "what was that paper you sent me for". I reply & explain nicely that she has received her item. A pattern for a sweater. I get this in response: "So it is not a top?" ... No, it's a pattern as clearly stated in the auction title & description. Her response: "I will send it to you for my refund". Uhm ... no you won't. I don't guarantee against complete stupidity & failure to read even the auction TITLE. Her response "This is ok becus i will Never Buy anything from you agin". Good, please don't. I don't like customers who can't / don't / won't read. Her response: "Haha yor stufg le anuway". Do what?! OK ... can't read OR spell / type. Her response: "What What try ever I really don't care anymore so for get you YOU and who ever else had something to say don't reply". Well, YOU keep sending ME messages. When eBay notifies me that a buyer has a question about an item, as an eBay seller I must reply. It's business. Her reply: "Are you a dummy i just said dont reply you old bat go have a heart attack". Well then stop sending ME business e-mails that I must respond to you moron! This just keeps going on & on. All of this over a piece of paper & $2.57. I think this may be the beginning of a very long relationship. Should I start picking out rings? While all this was going on ... while I was trying to go through 24 hours of facebook messages simultaneously, I get a friend request from someone I have never heard of. I check their profile & there's hardly any information there. It says they're in Miami, FL. Out of curiosity I accept their friend request & immediately get an IM from them that says: "Mam how ar you?your daughter eve chrirtian is my best frnd.i dont chat with her for long time.do you call her?You ar like my mother.Pls mom tell your daughter." Huh? Oh please ... not another illiterate! As the conversation goes on, he starts begging for money. I finally got my daughter on the phone & it turns out this guy is a mix of a scammer AND a stalker. While we were IMing with this guy, we asked him a lot of questions & we were unable to verify ANY of his information. He simply does not exist using the name, city, & birth date he gave. We inform him that we're going to report him. He starts going off. We inform him that we may even report him as a terrorist. His reply: "No dont need do for that.beause i m a terorist." ... Uhm ... so you ARE a terrorist?? This is one of those times where poor English is a REALLY bad thing. Again he sends: "I dont need for that because i m a terorist?soon i hyjack your daughter". OK, maybe we should call the FBI, this is getting insane & this guy just doesn't stop. Poor English? Now I'm starting to wonder. Remember, during all of this there were 2 browser crashes & we were also dealing with Ms. unhappy eBay customer. After FOUR HOURS of all this back & forth between 3 windows, I finally finished what I came her to do & headed out into the kitchen to cook lunch / dinner. I made a HUGE serving of ground beef & macaroni & cheese. Enough to keep Josh eating all week. Hopefully he'll take it to work for lunch all week & stop spending money eating out every day. He still owes me gas money from LAST week & now I'm carting him around this week. I can't afford to float his fuel like this when he doesn't pay. He's about to have to start walking home if he doesn't pay me ... like ... TODAY. I cleared out my e-mail from the week, checked Woot!, & then it was into the regular nighttime routine (TV, Words w/ Friends, 5 Card Slingo, & bed). Today I updated my iPhone apps, downloaded & installed a really cool cross stitching app that will convert any pic to a pattern (WOO!), added a ToDo in AnyTime, & here I am. Beautiful temperatures today! LCFD get-together tomorrow at Sean's.

All-time favorite cookies in the U.S. top 10:

1. Chocolate chip cookies
2. Snickerdoodles
3. Peanut butter cookies
4. Oatmeal cookies
5. Thumbprints
6. Shortbread
7. Macaroons
8. No-Bake cookies
9. Sugar cookies
10. Butter cookies (spritz cookies)

"Catcher in the Rye" author J.D. Salinger dies (2010):

On this day in 2010, J.D. Salinger, author of “The Catcher in the Rye,” the classic American novel about a disillusioned teenager, dies of natural causes at age 91 at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire. Prior to his death, the best-selling writer spent some 50 years shunning the spotlight and living reclusively on a 90-acre hillside compound.
Jerome David Salinger was born on January 1, 1919, in New York City, the second of two children. As a teen, he flunked out of a Manhattan private school and was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. The school would later serve as a model for Pencey Prep, which Salinger’s famous character Holden Caulfield is expelled from in “The Catcher in the Rye.” After graduation from Valley Forge in 1936, Salinger did brief stints at several colleges, and traveled to Europe with his father, a successful food importer, before opting out of the family business.
In 1939, Salinger enrolled in a writing course at Columbia University, and soon began publishing his short stories in magazines. In 1941, after previous rejections, he sold his first story to The New Yorker, a leading literary publication of the time. The story, “Slight Rebellion off Madison” marked the first appearance of Holden Caulfield; however, the magazine put off publishing the story until 1946. After being drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942 during World War II, Salinger saw bloody combat duty in Europe. Back in New York after the war, he continued writing, and by the late 1940s was a regular contributor to The New Yorker.
In 1951, “The Catcher in the Rye” was published and became a best-seller. As The New York Times described the book in Salinger’s obituary: “With its cynical, slangy vernacular voice (Holden’s two favorite expressions are “phony” and “goddam”), its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve in cold war America and quickly attained cult status, especially among the young. Reading ‘Catcher’ used to be an essential rite of passage, almost as important as getting your learner’s permit.” Over the years, “The Catcher in the Rye” has sold millions of copies; annual paperback sales continue to top over 250,000 copies.
Having achieved literary success and fame, Salinger soon soured on it. He ordered his publisher to remove his photograph from his book’s back jacket, and in 1953, he moved from Manhattan to New Hampshire, where he built a tall fence around his property and rarely gave interviews to the media.
“The Catcher in the Rye” was the only novel ever published by Salinger, who married three times and had two children. His other works include the 1953 collection “Nine Stories,” along with 1961’s “Franny and Zooey” and 1963’s “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.” The latter two were compilations of previously published stories about the fictional Glass family. Salinger’s last work to appear in print was a story for The New Yorker titled “Hapworth 16, 1924,” which filled most of the magazine’s June 19, 1965, issue.

Every second, the sun produces 400 trillion trillion watts of energy - more energy than human civilizations have ever produced in history. By the way, that's the equivalent of 1 trillion 1-megaton atom bombs.

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Make a list: Planning your meals for the week means you're less likely to buy extra food - or run short & call for takeout. It may also help check your impulse buys: About 20% of grocery purchases are unplanned, according to research.

Not all paradigm shifts are in positive or negative directions. Whether they are instantaneous or developmental, paradigm shifts move us from one way of seeing the world to another. And those shifts create powerful change. Our paradigms, correct of incorrect, are the sources of our attitudes & behaviors, & ultimately our relationships with others.

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"Shuttin' Detroit Down" debuts (2009):

On this day in 2009, country singer/songwriter John Rich releases a song about the plight of autoworkers titled "Shuttin' Detroit Down." The song, which featured such lyrics as "While they're living it up on Wall Street in that New York City town, here in the real world they're shuttin' Detroit down," quickly became a hit in Michigan, where the U.S. auto industry began, as well as across America. Rich wrote the song after becoming frustrated by news reports of government bailouts for Wall Street companies whose CEOs received stratospheric paychecks while autoworkers struggled to keep their jobs amidst widespread layoffs. Rich, one-half of the country duo Big & Rich, whose hits include "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)" and "Comin' to Your City," recorded "Shuttin' Down Detroit" for his 2009 solo album "Son of a Preacher Man." In January 2009, Michigan-based mlive.com reported that Rich said "Shuttin' Detroit Down" was about: "the working men and women of America, and how Washington and New York City are slinging billions of dollars over the tops of our heads, while hard working people are going down the drain." The song became a working-class anthem and had some fans calling up radio stations in tears after they heard it played.

The economic health of Detroit has long been linked to the auto industry. Nicknamed the "Motor City," Detroit was the world's fastest-growing city between 1900 and 1930, according to an April 2009 report in the National Review Online, which noted that: "Detroit's population currently stands at around 900,000 inhabitants--half of what it was in 1950. The U.S. Census reports that in 2000, Detroit became the first American city with a population formerly more than 1 million to dip below the million mark."

In 2008, the American auto industry was hard hit by the global economic crisis and vehicle sales were slumping. Both General Motors and Chrysler were forced to ask the federal government for multi-billion-dollar bailout loans in order to remain in business. Despite these loans, Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 30, 2009, and announced it would enter into a partnership with Italian carmaker Fiat. A little over a month later, on June 1, GM also announced it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. GM, which from the early 1930s to 2008 was the world's top-selling maker of cars and trucks, planned to shutter dealerships and plants and shed its Hummer, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn brands.

You know Don King? Don King is on the show. Interesting, controversial man. Actually, Don is in town to mate his hairdo with Cher's. -Johnny Carson 1986