I just realized I had a setting here wrong
My apologies to those of you who left comments or tried to reach me through the “Contact” form here at “Take Time for Living” — I had some settings messed up and never got your email/comment.
I’ve been using WordPress software and setting up blogs like this for YEARS — and somehow, I let the registration, contact form, and comment settings get messed up and just discovered it. I checked an email address I rarely use anymore and found 18 emails sent there from this blog. Yikes!
But now I have the settings correct. If you wish to send a “Contact” message, it will get to me. And if you are kind enough to share a comment on one of the posts with me and our other readers, it WILL get to me for moderation.
Sorry about that!
Things are little ‘batty’ around our house today …
Yes, that headline was a lame effort at a pun: We have bats living in our roof, BUT … hopefully not for too much longer.
We moved into our old house in 1980, and some contractors who were roughing in upstairs rooms just before we moved in said, “Oh, by the way. We were working up there last evening and a little bat came popping in from somewhere and was flying all around. I left the window open so he could get out. I wouldn’t worry about it though. Those critters really don’t like to be around people. Once he’s gone, he’ll probably never be back.”
Yeah, right. Our kids grew up in that house with nightly visits of bats swooping through their bedrooms. Despite all our efforts to seal ‘em away from the living areas of the house, anything from three to a couple of dozen of the little devils would get in — fortunately, in one-at-a-time fashion — during the course of every summer.
We found a guy in 2005 who does “bat exclusions,” blocking up all the exits and entrances to keep the bats out. He did his thing, guaranteed for two years. Last spring, the bats came back. They found some roof vent openings with bad screens, and squirmed their way in. Our kids are grown and gone now, which means we lost a stanch ally in the bat battle (my son). Shirley and I are getting too old for this kind of grief, so we called the Bat Guy back again.
He’s due to come by this afternoon, climb up on the roof with his little Helper Bat Guy, and exclude the bats once again. Hopefully for the last time.
So, you see what I mean when I say it’s a little batty around our house today??
Some days the self-checkout line seems out to get you
My wife and I spent a happy half hour or so at one of our local Big Box retail stores. (Hint: The company’s name rhymes with “Hall Mart.”) I’m one of those odd people who actually enjoys doing weekly shopping, and I permit my wife to come along.
Today’s trip was fairly brief and we had only a few items, so we used the self-checkout lane, the kind with a push-button screen and built-in barcode scanner you swipe each item across and plop it into a shopping bag. Generally, the scanners give me fits. I can’t seem to twist the product just right or hold my mouth just right or something, and it takes multiple swipes before I hear the little “beep” and the item gets scannned.
Today we discovered a new, very annoying problem with this particular self-checkout station: The touch screen feature seemed to be on its last leg. It took repeated pressing, almost PUNCHING on the screen symbol to make the ignorant thing respond. As a result, my wife and I both finally reached the stage where we were giggling over the darned thing. When we pushed on the “Finished – Checkout” button (a very large button), the screen wouldn’t cycle to the next section. And just as it finally DID cycle, every time, it did so on a hard whack of the thumb, which caused it to also accept the next screen’s selection and shoot us into a series of clicks for non-existent coupons. So then we had to figure out how to maneuver backward and get back to where we had to repeatedly thump on the checkout icon.
Guess you had to be there and see it to fully understand. Bottom line — it took us about 5 minutes after we finished scanning all our items (about 10 things, as I recall) to get past the, uh, bottom line, and get checked out.
Watch out for those self-checkout lines. Some days they may be out to get you!
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