The Art of Thank You

I don’t know when etiquette went out of style, but I’m on a mission to bring it back.

It’s just a much more pleasant world when people use words like, ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and ‘excuse me’ and there’s really nothing that makes you feel better than helping someone else.  So why are so many people so adamant about avoiding these things? We live in a fast paced world, and the excuse a lot of people use is that they’re too busy for manners.  Really?  Just how long does it take to say excuse me, instead of just barreling through? How long does it take to smile at the person walking up the street, to help the person who has dropped their packages, to lend a hand to someone who’s in trouble?  Not very long at all. So what is the problem?

For example:
Just the other day, I got a phone call from a man I’d never met, telling me that he was trying to renew his domain name, but that his registrar wouldn’t let him and that the domain registry was in my name. I asked the domain name and as soon as he told me, I knew what had happened.  The person who originally purchased that domain name, was a hosting client of mine from a long time ago and this was one of the domains she had designed and hosted with my service.  She stopped working for them a long time ago and this man had no idea who she was, didn’t recognize her name at all.  Apparently, they’d just been renewing the domain name, year after year and this year forgot all about it.  You see, I had set up a separate account for her domain names with the registrar - she didn’t really understand how it worked, so she put their credit card on file, with my contact name and email address and year after year they would just renew it.  Except that this year, they didn’t get to it in time and it expired.  So he calls me in a panic, because it’s not redirecting to his domain name and he can no longer access email for the organization and expects that I should fix it.  I agreed to help and it was all very friendly.  I told him not to worry, that I would do everything that I could, took his number and told him I’d call him back when I knew anything.

I logged into my account, which was a bit difficult, since I got rid of that email address a million years ago and it’s now directing the gazillion pieces of spam it got every day into the “:blackhole”.  I made a couple of guesses as to the password and lo and behold, I got lucky.   Since his domain was the only one connected to this account (I haven’t used that registrar in at least 7 years), I removed all of my personal information from it, changed the password and then called him back and gave him instructions for logging in and paying to renew his domain and get it functioning again.  All in all it was about an hour from start to finish.  We said goodbye and I told him if he had any problems figuring it out, not to hesitate to call me.  He was very nice, but he never said thank you.  The next day, I checked his website and there it was, up and running and functioning and I assume his email was too, but I don’t really know for sure, cause he never called back, or sent me a note, or anything like that.  I think it’s safe to assume it’s working because, rest assured, if it weren’t, he damn sure would have called then.  I’m not asking for him to fall all over himself, singing my praises, but a thank you would have been really nice.   You know what the kicker is?  The organization is a church.

I choose however, not to let this color how I treat people.  I’ll always look for the silver lining, the good side and I will continue to help where I can, if for no other reason than I like the way it feels to be helpful.

Oh and the original designer?  I asked her, finally a year ago, to find an alternative host after about 6 bounced checks that she never made good on.

Getting Back on Track

I mentioned in a previous post how the lack of sunshine really does me in.  Well, we’ve had two days of sunshine this week and I’m starting to feel better.  However, the things that I let go when I had no motivation, or will to live, are a little overwhelming.  My children have been running wild for over a week and my house is a mess.  So, with our homeschool group coming here on Friday for “Glee Club”, I have a lot to get ready.  Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not complaining.  I love having people over, I love watching the girls belt out a song, I love having these great kids and their terrific parents here. We’re like a little tribe of secular homeschoolers in a sea of religion and I love my tribe,  but I’m a little crazy about whether or not my house is clean, the dogs smell, the kids are groomed, the sheets are washed, there’s food in the fridge to feed everyone, and that it all smells lovely.  Most of the time, I can pull that off and I’ll probably be ok this week too.  Thankfully my kids are old enough to give me a hand, but the thought of getting everything done is a little daunting right now.

As of 10:30, we have vacuumed and mopped all tile surfaces, done two loads of laundry and cleaned the mirrors and showers.  Whew. I think I’ll be ok, as long as the sun stays out.  If it starts raining again, I’m toast.  I’m confident, however that our lovely friends will overlook any thing that I didn’t get done in time. Right?  Right??

“Drync Wine” Free App for the Iphone

I’ve been looking for the perfect wine cellar app.  I want it to be able to find most of my wines in its easily accessible data base, store my notes on each wine, take pictures of the label right from the app, make suggestions based on my notes, and have a nice looking interface.  I also want it to have social abilities, so that I can share my ratings and notes with other people.  Oh and I want it to be free (or very cheap).

My research is ongoing, but I thought I’d share as I go along.  I downloaded “Drync Wine” free version and put the info for a couple of bottles of wine into it to give it a test drive.  First of all the interface is beautiful.  It looks like polished hardwood.  Really pretty.  The icons are well designed; simple and pleasant.  I had a couple of issues with crashing while I tried to take a picture of my label from inside the app, but other than that it was pretty stable.  I was able to work around by taking pictures of my labels using the camera function and then importing them into Drync. The Itunes page on the pro version says that the picture crash issue has been fixed in that version. I found the search database to be fairly thorough, although a lot of the wines I was trying to add didn’t have the particular vintage that I was looking for.  It’s not hard to change the year, but I was surprised that I had that issue so often.  When you select the wine from the database you can choose whether, “I Drank”, “I Own” or “I Want”.

I wanted to check the connectivity and social aspect of the app, so I asked my father to download a copy too.  We had quite a bit of fun, comparing wines long distance and all in all this app is really well done.  My wishlist, to make this perfect would be the ability to share within the app, rather than just through Twitter or Email.  I’d also like to be able to log in online so that I could enter wines there - especially when I’m importing more than a couple of them.

The free version has ads and a ten bottle cellar limit.  Their blog alludes to a website to manage your cellar in the future.  That might be enough to make me purchase the full version.

Rain Rain Go Away

Yes, I know Florida desperately needed rain, but this is ridiculous!  It has rained, non-stop without a bit of sun for at least 5 days in a row.  To be honest it feels more like 20 or so, and while my yard looks like a sea of emeralds and the magnolia tree is finally blooming, I’m coming apart at the seams.

I think everyone enjoys a stormy day once in a while.  I know I do and the first day of rain was glorious.  The temperature dropped about 20 degrees, there was a beautiful breeze and rolling thunder that made it the perfect day for sleeping, catching up, and generally just slowing down.  Day 2 was more of the same, but with an underlying antsy feeling. Day 3 I started coming down with the physical symptoms of the emotional reaction to three days without sunshine.  My son said that he thinks I must be solar powered, and I think he’s got a point. I started to feel a sore throat coming on and by day 4 I was sporting a low-grade fever.  Coincidence?  I don’t think so, no one around me is sick and I haven’t been anywhere to contract anything.  As the days progress I’m just getting worse.  This morning I woke up with allergy induced pink eye.  You didn’t know there was such a thing, did you? Neither did I, but there is.  It’s not contagious, but it sure is ugly and uncomfortable. It’s not raining right now, but the sun isn’t out either.  The forecsast doesn’t call for sun till Monday, but I’m really hoping against hope that we see a little before then.

Soup or Stew or Stoup in the Crockpot

A couple of weeks ago we roasted a couple of chickens for the husband’s lunches.  When he had taken all the meat off the bone, we decided to make stock in our effort to be more frugal.  We used rosemary, carrots, onions, etc. and we were very proud of ourselves, we skimmed off the fat, let it cool, put it in containers and froze it. I put it in the fridge last night so that I could make soup today - for the very first time, I might add.  I had planned a vegetable/noodle soup in the chicken stock but it didn’t quite work out that way.

I chopped a bunch of celery, three onions and some baby carrots and put them into the crockpot.  I took the chicken stock out of the fridge and was a little dismayed to see so much fat in it.  I opened the lid and didn’t like the way it smelled, so unfortunately I had to toss it.  If you knew how much I hate waste, you’d know how hard that was for me.  But I don’t ever take a chance with food, if I’m a little iffy about it.

What to do?

I already had a beautiful trinity of carrots, onions and celery and I was determined to have soup on this rainy, chilly, lazy day.

I opened the pantry and saw that I only had one container of chicken broth, I poured it over the vegetables, but it barely covered them.  Hmm. With an adventurous spirit, I grabbed a bunch of stuff and decided to just play. Here’s what I did.

1 package of chicken broth 32 oz. (or homemade if you’re better at that than I am)
2 28 oz. cans of crushed tomatoes
1 bunch of celery, washed, trimmed, chopped
Carrots - I used baby carrots, about 20 of them, sliced
3 med. onions chopped
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 big pinches of dried parsley
1 box of Ditalini

Put carrots, onion, celery, chicken broth, and tomatoes in crock pot.  Set it on high and let it cook for an hour.  After an hour, add the garlic powder and parsley. Let cook for 4 hours.

From the research I did, most of what I read said to cook the pasta in a separate pot and then add to the soup, but to me that sort of seemed like it defeated the purpose of the crock pot.  This is supposed to be a one pot meal, right?  So I added the pasta - still keeping the setting on high and after about 15 minutes, the pasta was done, but you couldn’t really call it “soup” anymore.  I set the crockpot on warm, stirred it and then decided what to do next.  There were a couple of different ideas, but I decided to just plate it, add some salt and pepper, grate some parmesan cheese on top, and eat it.

It was delicious.

Perfect if you have small children or aren’t a huge fan of spicy foods.  Next time I think I’m going to chop fresh garlic into the vegetables at the beginning and maybe add some hot sauce.  And instead of parm, maybe sour cream… and a handful of fresh cilantro and a squeeze of lime.  There are so many things you could do with this.

Eating it is the best thing to with it though.

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