It was like deja vu...

all over again.  My mail lady stopped by today and handed me the notice that was stuck in my door.  My condo complex was announcing their annual unit inspections!  I felt like I was back in college and faced with the dreaded dorm inspection - hadn't I gotten past that stage?  Panic set in immediately and I made a frantic call to my carpet cleaners: "Can you all come on Monday?"  Fortunately, the answer was yes.  Now I all have to do is get ready to have the carpet cleaned by Monday, swelter at the tortilleria on Tuesday and get the rest of this place spotless by Wednesday afternoon.  I can do this.  I can do this.  Oh, who am I kidding?  I need help!

Odds, ends and resolutions...

are the topic of the day and they have absolutely nothing to do with this photo of my Christmas Day quiche.  It was just pretty good and I took a photo of it and then didn't blog about it.  It was just a simple pie with eggs, milk, bacon and some chopped-up sliced swiss cheese which was all I happened to have in the refrigerator.  Oh, and a pre-made pie crust.  Not bad for a quickie dinner.

I am not much on resolutions because I never keep them.  For instance, one of my resolutions last year was to blog every day.  That did not happen, although I had good intentions.  That may well mean that I am on the road to hell, but I hope not.  The really odd thing that I noticed was that in 2009, when I first started blogging, I wrote 129 posts.  In 2010, I wrote 329 posts and in 2011 - 229 posts.  Since I'm a numbers sort of person, this really struck me as odd (get it - they're all odd).  Also, 229 is a prime number; the other two are not.  I struggled with forcing myself to catch up on all the half-written posts for 2011 during the month of December - but I decided to let that goal of 365 blog posts for the year go.  Which, in light of my OCD tendencies, is a really good thing.

So anyway, the resolutions.  And I think these might be easier than I think: a) no more take-out food.  It's much cheaper to cook and eat at home - and there's no tip required.  Yes, I'm cheap and I've decided to extend my frugality to my weekly grocery bill once again.  I was doing great at that and I've fallen off the sale items & coupons only wagon.  Resolution 2: I'm planning to avoid WalMart this year.  I think I can find the things I buy there (generic Tylenol, wipes, soda) just as cheap at the grocery or Target.  Every time I go to WalMart, I have a too-many-people freak-out and I spend the two following days with flu-like symptoms from all the germ-ridden people there.  It could just be in my head, but I don't think so.  And finally, D: I'm going to try and like wine.  I'm not planning on becoming a wino by any means.  It's just that I've read that wine is actually good for the digestive system and has other beneficial properties.  It makes me sleepy, so that's a plus - I'll just have to remember to drink it at night.  I've tried for years to be sophisticated enough to have a glass of wine with dinner to no avail.  I'd usually dump out the rest of the glass and make the next pot roast or chicken with the rest of the bottle.  Since I'm not cooking meat any more and only cooking for me, it looks like I'll be forced to actually drink the wine.  And with the money I'll be saving on the grocery bill, I can buy wine.  I'll let you all know how that goes.

As usual, Aggie and Peter have no resolutions.

They may be on to something there.

Imagination in overdrive...

is not a good thing - especially when it comes to things that creep, crawl or bite.  I went up to the management office to renew my lease today for another two years.  The new office staff is very nice; the old property manager was a sort of sissy guy who jumped back like a little girl when approached by a small terrier.  Can you imagine?  Anyhow, everything is computerized now and while Andy was entering my information in the computer, my nosy self saw a page entitled Bed Bugs.  Bed bugs!  The seed for a major freak-out had been planted.  Now my rational self knows that we have no bed bugs, fleas or pests of any sort in our apartment, but still...  I signed all the papers and as I was leaving, Andy said, "Oh, this is yours," and handed me a legal-size sheet of paper with the heading: BED BUGS - A Guide for Rental Housing Residents.  Yikes!  Maybe it's an epidemic I don't know about - I laughed and told him it would make a good blog post.  If anyone can make the topic of bed bugs amusing, it's me.  Then I got home and read the thing.  Apparently, bed bugs don't discriminate and can largely be attributed to a surge in international travel.  Fancy hotels have them!  They don't transmit disease, but they're nasty little biters.  The guide went on to provide information on identifying and locating the filthy beasts as well as how to prevent an alien encounter when traveling.  Just like when a vampire knocks at your door, don't invite a bed bug in.  Don't pick up furniture left at the curb - who does that anyway?  It's also not advisable to wait for these flesh-eating zombies to leave on their own - call a professional.  I see a movie here: Bed Bug Busters, starring Dan Ackroyd and David Spade.  Rated PG-13 for extreme violence and over-the-top innuendo from the short, smarmy guy.  Of course, none of this stopped me from thoroughly vacuuming the armchair I got from a pristine, spotlessly clean upscale home in Parrish a couple of months ago, even though there was no evidence of wear, let alone an insect infestation of any kind.  I checked the sofa and chair, the bed and the dog and cat.  No bugs, no fleas - nothing.  I threw the biohazard notice away and set about my business.

And then, while getting ready to go to a Christmas dinner party, I noticed a welt on my arm.  I had apparently been bitten or stung by something - assailant unknown.  It itched like crazy, so I cleaned it with an aloe wipe ("Wipe! Wipe!"), put some cortisone cream on the area, slapped a band-aid on top and off to dinner I went.  Not a good thing - not a good thing at all.  Band-aids and my ghost-like sensitive skin do not mix - and by the time I got home, the raised irritation from the supposedly latex-free bandage was worse than the bite.  Fortunately, the itching had subsided, but the sting site was plenty ugly.  Time to break out the benadryl, more cortisone cream - and something to take my mind off imagining that a lone bed bug had somehow sneaked in here to bite me on the arm in broad daylight.

I'll let you know how that goes...

While patience is a virtue...

it is not my strong suit.  Yesterday morning, I had the bright idea to clean out the refrigerator and get rid out outdated salad dressing, yogurt, tomatoes, spaghetti - you get the picture.  Well, somehow, somewhere amid all the yuck I put down the garbage disposal, something clogged up the sink drain.  I tried everything I knew - except for a plunger because I don't have one.  I couldn't leave the house because I had clients coming to see me, so I called the condo office and asked for maintenance to come and help me.  That was at one o'clock.  Today at one, I was still waiting.  Meanwhile, I couldn't even look at the sink without gagging - I hate that.  I'm an adult; I should be able to handle a nasty sink.  But I can't.  There you have it.  Of course, this messy, dirty, foul-smelling cesspool of a sink became the only thing I was able to think about for the past twenty-four hours.  Yes, I have a tendency to let my imagination run wild when it comes to things like this.  I should have just gone and bought a plunger at WalMart, but several things stopped me: A) I don't really know how to effectively use one, 2. the ground-up spaghetti and zucchini residue in the sink was really, really nasty and d. it was the principle of the thing.  I had asked for maintenance and they ought to come and unclog my sink.  After a fitful night's sleep, further consternation this morning and another call to the condo office, I am happy to report that I am no longer obsessed because at 1:38 pm today, a very nice man came and took care of the problem.  I have since put three pots of boiling water down each drain and sanitized the sink within an inch of its life, thrown away the contaminated scrubbing pad and started the dishwasher.  I feel much better now.

I'm sure the sink does, too.

Cravings are weird...

aren't they?  I was lazy all weekend and didn't go to the store, so I had no hot dog buns for our annual Fourth of July hot dog fest.  Well, that and I haven't eaten anything but my own cooking since Wednesday and my stomach has been a bit upset.  I ate white rice yesterday for dinner hoping to settle whatever bad cooking I had unwittingly inflicted upon myself.  Anyhow, I've been reading all day yesterday and today and when I looked up at the clock and saw that it was after six, I decided I'd better eat something.  And what popped into my head?  Scrambled eggs.  Now I haven't eaten eggs as a meal for several years - ever since I freaked out on seeing a blood spot inside a perfectly good egg.  No more eggs for me.  I mean, I bake with them and I make boiled eggs for egg salad from time to time - but no eggs, scrambled, fried, poached or otherwise for a long time now.  Yuck, I thought to myself, scrambled eggs. Why am I craving scrambled eggs all of a sudden?  But somewhere between the sofa and the kitchen (about ten feet!) I changed my mind and whipped some up.  They weren't too bad and Aggie seemed happy enough with dinner.  I hadn't advertised the hot dogs too much anyway - so she won't notice that it's actually the fifth of July when we have them for dinner tomorrow.  I think I may just be over my egg thing.  Finally.

Hackers...

somehow got into my PayPal account using a mobile app - my cell phone is too basic to even have apps - and made four payments of $500 each to someone I do not know from my bank account - thank goodness my debit card knew I didn't have enough money!  Imagine my shock when I saw the email telling me I had made these payments to someone called Vicki Leuthold.  I immediately filed a fraud claim and then called PayPal for assistance - and they politely told me that even though I hadn't authorized these payments, it was still a dispute and they would have to contact the other party to determine if the payments were for a legitimate product or service.  Can you imagine?  Well, I managed not to scream at the poor guy over the phone who was just doing his job, I didn't get much sleep that night and the next morning I called my bank as soon as it opened.  Fortunately, the person I spoke with was both knowledgeable and helpful - she closed my account immediately and transferred my meager balance (good luck getting $2000 out of me, hackers!) to a new account and assured me that my two outstanding checks would be paid from the new account.  All I had to do was come in and sign the papers for the new account.  I am still pretty fizzed about this and I've been changing all of my passwords to something even I have trouble remembering.  And I'm still waiting to hear from PayPal - I wonder if the hackers have responded to their questions about this so-called dispute.  I think not.  Arrrgh!