Trying to Catch Up and a Small ARGH!

I apologize for last week - I know I've gotten comments and emails from several of you, my friends and readers. Last week was a bit of a cluster-f**k, and time disappeared. I can't necessarily promise that this week will be any better, but I'll try - LOL. Just know that I DO read your comments and very much appreciate each and every one. Now I have to catch up with all of your lives - something I love and something I haven't had the time to do. Bad me! 

There just aren't enough hours in the day, and last 
week was killer. I'm WAY behind on the lives of you, 
my readers and my friends. I apologize, and I'll try 
my best to catch up with you this week. 

Yesterday was a rather easy day - BBQ ribs for dinner again, so once again I was curling ribs into the crock pot, tossing on the BBQ sauce, and letting them cook for six hours. It's hard to beat a recipe that works - LOL. I spent much of the day at the computers - my laptop set up on a TV table behind me, my desktop also up. I was trying to finalize my "Clearance Inventory Check-in Sheets" that has been my project for the past two-three weeks. It's finalized now, and it works well. But getting the final printouts was a bit of a nightmare. 

Over the past two-three weeks I've been developing 
a check-sheet inventory system for our clearance boxes 
and bins. We have various of these on the countertops, 
but had no real handle on the inventory for them - what 
was sold wasn't the problem, but what was "taken" was. 
So, I've developed these sheets. I've been testing them 
over the past two weeks and they work well. I fine tuned 
them yesterday, finally got them printed out on my GOOD 
printer (which was VERY difficult), and have them ready 
to go. One task done, millions of more still pending. LOL

I'd format the final versions on the laptop, save them, bring them up on the desktop, and send them to the printer. The good printer - the one I have at home and call my "workhorse" is an Epson WorkForce and it's fabulous. It's an older printer, however, and it refuses to talk to my laptop. So, I can do all of the formatting and changes on my laptop, but then I have to save the documents in the appropriate folder, then bring them out onto my desktop and send them to the printer that way. It's one of many work-arounds I've had to figure out in my long life of dealing with different versions of computers for the same tasks. 

I tried to fine a photo of the screen layout that I 
now have, but couldn't locate one. There are aspects 
of it that I really like, but a lot that I don't. I suppose 
I can allow my brain a bit more exercise and get used 
to it, though. 

I also am growling at my phone. I got pinged on Friday by my operating system asking if I wanted to switch to the "Easy Home Screen" version of my Android software, and I - at the end of a rather frustrating day attempting to control my drone - said "yes". In some aspects, it's rather nice. Things are less cluttered and it's faster. In other aspects it's a total PITA. That PITA part really comes to play when I'm running through my apps as I do every morning. When I awaken, I settle in for my morning meditation which comprises 10-20 minutes of meditation with "Insight Timer". I then follow that up with several solitaire games that get my brain in gear for the day - Pyramid, Solitaire Scapes, Block Soduku, Majong, Jigsaw Puzzle Epic, and finally I go into Happy Color which I'll go back and forth from throughout the day. 

So this is NOT my phone or my screen, but I do 
play Solitaire Scapes as my second mind 
game every morning. I have a routine I do to 
get awake and alert for the day ahead, as well as 
relax into the day with my meditation - which is 
ALWAYS the first thing. It helps keep my 
life in balance - silly little things here and 
there, but they're all important to my mental and 
physical stability. 

Notice all of the various names of the apps? I used to have them arranged in a row. It was easy - I knew them by sight, not name, and I just moved down the row every morning. With the new home screen, the apps are all alphabetical in the "App Drawer" and I suddenly had to remember what each program was named. Of course, they're not clustered together any more either. I'm finding it annoying to have to search out each one every morning, and I actually have to check a sheet to remember what they are called. GRRRRRR. I know it's a Google thing and won't affect most of you, but I'm NOT very happy with the new set-up, even though it IS cleaner and seems to be responding faster to commands. 

Happy Monday to all. I'll get a handle on my phone 
within the week, and really, if that's all that's annoying 
me right now, it's all good. Enjoy your day! 

So, it's Monday morning, and time to dive into work. I hope all of you have a wonderful Monday and I have every intention of being back here again tomorrow before I head off to the swimming pool. Enjoy the day, Slava Ukraini and חיים למען ישראל.

Choices - We All Face Them Every Day! Post Number 4999

Yesterday was an intensive day. It actually turned out to be lucky that Aearwen had other things going on yesterday and couldn't call for our weekly chat. I was neck deep in inventory sheets, and as it was, ended up working on those until 8:58 pm, leaving me putting everything away and running quickly off to sleep. What a day! It was crazy busy, but I did get a lot accomplished. 

Yesterday was a bit of a crazy-busy day, but a successful 
one by the end of it all. My only breaks were cooking 
in the morning and grabbing another cup of tea in the 
afternoon (which I didn't even have time to drink). Of 
course I also did my three loads of laundry, but I pulled 
the final load out of the dryer at 7:45 pm. 

I've been working on a series of check-sheets for the shop. We have boxes of beads on special discount on our counter top - almost all in the area of the store that I am in. We do have "walking" inventory from those boxes, and Chickie catches a great deal of them, but I wanted an easier way to do a quick and accurate inventory of the boxes, so I developed a series of "Check Sheets", one group for each type of bead. I was trying to make final copies of the sheets for our use, but there was (and still is) a lot of double-checking and formatting that needed to happen. 

I wanted to plug in a photo of the inventory 
sheet I developed for the shop, but I don't 
really have the time to make it happen and 
still get to the gym on time. So, you'll have 
to take my word for it - it's working well, 
but combining the data files with the form is 
a bit tricky. It's working, though. and I 
should be able to say "This is it!" by the end 
of the week. 

After working on these sheets for hours yesterday, I finally have most of them finalized and printed. There are still one or two that need a bit more work, but it's totally getting to something that will be very helpful for all of us. Of course, my laptop doesn't talk to the printer that I have here at home, so it's convoluted - rather like most things in life. I store the documents in a Dropbox folder, open them on my desktop computer for printing, but any changes that I make, are done on the laptop because I need these available and up-to-date when I'm at the shop. 

Once upon a time, computers were supposed to make our 
lives easier. In some ways they do - without computers, I 
wouldn't have met all of you and my life would be poorer. 
But, when computers won't talk to each other, it's a total 
PITA. That's what I'm dealing with now, and it's very 
frustrating. 

Isn't that what life is all about, though? We stutter our way through it. We see a way through a current problem and rush through that portal before it closes, only to find ourselves in a room of closed doorways and no way to tell which door is the correct one to continue on our way. Do we open the correct door? I'm sure that some of us do, only to find ourselves in a similar setup, just a new room - a new problem, a new confrontation, a new stumble in our road. There's nothing else to do but pick ourselves up, choose another door, pass through the entryway (which is always one-way only, with no clue what will be waiting on the other side), and then, we deal. We deal with that unknown, only to be faced with the next one. 

Each of us faces many choices every day - something as 
simple as what to eat for breakfast, or as complicated as 
whether you should quit your current job and get a 
different one. Some choices can be life-changing, others 
are mere ripples on our pond of life. Which choices will 
you face today? If you face them with kindness, love 
and compassion, you'll make the right choices. 

So, on this day of choices, I hope you make the right ones. When you pet asks for affection (or a treat), give in, especially for the affection part. When your companion complains about something, open your ears and listen. You might not be able to change anything else, but a listening and compassionate ear might be just what's needed. When everything around you is going to hell in a handbasket, remember that tomorrow is another day of hope. Let's not lose sight of that beacon light - the beacons have been lighted, now it's up to others to provide the response. Have an excellent Thursday, I'm off to the pool, and then my inventory sheets and my laptop are heading to the shop for an almost-final test of the new inventory Check Sheets. I'll be back tomorrow for my 5000th post, but number 4999 was a lot to get off my brain as it was. Slava Ukraini and חיים למען ישראל.