Parking ticket

I'm SO angry.
I a couple of very large contractor bags full of yard clippings, mostly chopped up bamboo limbs, from last week. Since today was garbage pick up day, I thought I'd make it convenient on the garbage men and leave the bags along with my trash can in front of the gate and move the car out to the street for a couple of hours to give them easy access.
No good deed goes unpunished.
They came right on schedule and right away I went to move the car back into the driveway.
But what did I see on the windshield? AN EFFING PARKING TICKET. WTF??



I Googled "Sag Harbor Parking violations" and discovered, MUCH to my dismay, that you cannot park on the West side of my street from 8am to 4pm daily. WHO KNEW THIS?? I've lived in this crazy town for 20 years and I never knew of this rule. Obviously it's because the high school is at the end of the block and the school buses drive down my street, but really, how was I supposed to know this? No wonder I got a previous ticket when I was having the house painted earlier this summer. I'm now $150 dollars in the hole for these two tickets. UGH. I really can't afford this. When I think of all the things I could buy with that money it really makes me burn. I'll get over it but I'm gonna stew on this for a while. DAMMIT!

Home office double take

I got an interesting pic on my Instagram feed today...from House Beautiful, a lovely home office with green built-in shelving that looks amazingly like my home office re-do from a couple of years ago



The angled shelves that go to the ceiling, the desk off to the side of the room, the double windows...a Doppleganger of mine for sure!

Hacked!

I was watching HULU on my laptop two nights ago when I got an email from Yahoo saying there was a successful login to my email account from NIGERIA(!) and that if that wasn't me logging in then I should change my password. A chill went up my spine.
I changed it immediately, as well as the passwords for my Chase banking accounts and my UBS account. It made me very nervous but I put it out of my mind.
Then this morning I went into town for groceries. When I went to checkout my Chase debit card was denied. I paid with a credit card and then walked down the block to the ATM. Again, my card was denied.
I got home and called Chase. It was very frustrating because I was on the phone with FOUR separate customer service reps and when each would put me on hold I'd lose the connection and they didn't call me back. UGH. I wanted to scream. I finally appealed to another rep and he finally got me to someone who could help, BUT they said that I would need to go in person to a branch office to iron this all out. WTF? How inconvenient is that?? I found out later it was because there was no way to verify that it was actually me talking to them on the phone. I could be the hacker from Nigeria.
So I drove to the nearest branch in East Hampton (of course the new Chase branch in Sag Harbor doesn't open for another two weeks. Double ugh!) The Chase banker was very helpful and I ended up being there almost an hour and a half. Their system detected some fraudulent activity (someone was trying to use QuikPay to take out $200). I had to close all my accounts and open new ones, plus get new login credentials for the online banking. Very time consuming.
Later, when I was relating the story to Jan, she mentioned something that made me figure out how I screwed up royally: I got an email from "SquareSpace" saying my site was about to expire and they needed to confirm my email address for correct billing. Yes I GAVE THEM MY EMAIL LOGIN INFO. DUMB. DUMB. DUMB. How stupid can you be?
So now I'm freaking out that they find other vital info on my old email history.
As I write this I realize I need to cancel my VISA card.
The banker suggested I take my laptop to a computer expert and get it scrubbed of the virus/malware.
There's a place in the village called Geek Hampton, I'm taking it there tomorrow. Stay tuned for the ending of this story...I'm still freaking out...

UPDATE: I went to GeekHampton this afternoon and it was a great experience. One of the kids at the "Genius Bar", Tristin, was super friendly and smart. He ran a malware app on my computer twice and installed it for future use. Best of all, what I thought was going to cost me a hundred dollars only cost $25. Whew. He also assured me that there was no "Trojan Horse" on my laptop. There was a small amount of malware, probably that annoying little pop-up virus ad that kept showing up every 20 minutes, and he got rid of it. I've learned my lesson: NEVER open any attachments from ANY suspicious emails, much less give them your email info!

Good morning Sag Harbor

With a hot mug of coffee, this is the best place to be on a lovely Sunday morning :)

Swing and a miss?

I was walking down Main Street this week and I saw a help wanted sign in the window of Harbor Books, the quaint bookstore/tea shop in town.



I paused and thought about the prospect of working there for two seconds and then decided it would be the perfect job for me right now.



I went home and wrote an impassioned letter to the person in charge of fielding applicants, detailing my work history, why I think I'd be a good fit for their store, and my resumé. That was Wednesday. I haven't heard boo since. Nothing. Nada. Bupkis.
This is extremely disappointing as I think I'd be great for that place...I even have book store experience having worked all through college in a Waldenbooks in Austin, Texas. (I mentioned this in my letter).
I suppose there's always a chance I'll still hear back but something tells me that common workplace courtesy is not at play here. Sad :(
It's always good to at least get back to people and let them know what's happening and the reason they fell short as an applicant, especially if they put forth all the effort of contacting you.
Oh well, and so it goes...

Dachshund!

My friend Doris texted me this week: "Make me this cutting board for Christmas🐶🌲"
Here was the picture she attached:



She knows I love to make cutting boards with my trusty jigsaw. I've made all shapes for myself and as gifts for friends...rabbits, cats, whales, leaves, chickens, states of the union, raccoons, and on and on and on.
I texted her back "U got it!"
So here is my take on the above design.


I purposely made it a little thicker in the body for more chopping room. I envision it used as a cheese or salami board. A nut cheese log would be perfect for it. I did the detailing with my wood burning kit I bought online for only $20.
I hope she likes it. I love having one Christmas gift already out of the way!

Faucet & easel

Yesterday was a good day.
I came to a couple of good solutions for some nagging problems.
First, the kitchen sink faucet was finally replaces after months of dripping and leaking.
This has been the longest and most frustrating odyssey ever. The leak started a while back. I thought it only needed new white plumbers tape. WRONG. I made the leak worse.
Then I had a series of handymen and plumbers look at to try and solve the problem...two handymen were stumped, and a father and son team were too. Even my contractor who painted the house was stumped. I finally had a local plumber I'd used before come and take a look. We decided it might just be the interior cartridge to the faucet, but when we found out it would be another month before it arrived by back order--and even then that would be no guarantee it would solve the issue--I decided to bit the bullet and buy a completely new faucet online from Home Depot.
It took a week to arrive but it was pretty nice, only $225.00 when some were upwards of 3 or 4 or $500!! My architect suggested one that was $1000! Is she NUTS??
Anyway, the plumber came yesterday and after a couple of hours of work it was installed AND THERE WERE BLESSEDLY NO MORE LEAKS. Hooray!!



Next, I had one of my creative brainstorms.
I've been enjoying drawing on my iPad but I don't like it lying flat when I work with it. It really needs to be angled up for better drawing. My idea? An little easel. I thought "I can make that", and so I did.
It's not the most elegant of designs and I'll probably never get a job in the product design department at Apple Computers, but I love it just the same. And best of all it works like a charm. I couldn't be happier with it. :)

Doodling: sunflowers & deck shoes

I've fallen in love with my iPad all over again. It was given to me as a gift years ago and I would use it from time to time, usually to play Scrabble. But often times it would just sit in a drawer unused for month on end because I really prefer the keyboard of my lightweight laptop.
So it was fun to rediscover a drawing app that I had downloaded way back when, Paper53. What renewed my interest was buying a stylus. It makes drawing on the iPad so much easier and gets way better results than just using your finger. You can achieve much greater detail.
The drawings remind me of when I used to be a young art director in advertising, drawing layouts and storyboards using huge boxes of markers. If only I had this technology back then it would have made life so much easier!

The great mouse experiment

I haven't caught a mouse in quite a few weeks, but I did hear one about a month ago one night while watching TV. There was no mistaking the sound. So when I went to check behind the "mouse door" in the guest bedroom upstairs I saw an empty trap amongst the other ones that still had their peanut butter and were still 'unsnapped'. Somehow a little bugger had gotten the food but managed to escape.  I went online to search for more ideas on how to stop this problem.
One YouTube video said to throw a bunch of 'mouse blocks' around the attic. They're poison that attracts the varmints and kills them by de-hydration. After I had done this I read on other chat rooms that this is a bad idea; the mice die from the poison but don't leave the attic and they subsequently smell bad for about 10 days. Great.
So far I've not seen a new one in the set traps, nor have I detected any odors. Fingers crossed that the other tactic I tried might be working, please oh please.
I read that the best way to prevent mice is to block how they're entering the house in the first place.  Supposedly they enter at ground level and the idea is to fill any cracks or holes around the perimeter of the house with expanding foam and/or steel wool. I tried the steel wool last year and it didn't seem to have much affect so this time i tried the expanding foam. I got on my hands and knees, and sometime on my back, like under the bay window, with a can of the very sticky stuff and applied it in as many places as I could find around the front and sides of the house. It's not a very attractive look. The stuff hangs down in blobs and it's an ugly creamy yellow color. A future project of mine is to camouflage it with some gray/brown paint.
The last idea I'm going to try is buying a black light flashlight. I read that if you shine it around the house at night you can see the urine trails the mice leave behind, they're an indicator of where they're getting in. If this works, I will fill in those places with more expanding foam.
With Fall coming I went to get a jump on these critters and outsmart them once and for all. Stay tuned for a progress report.
Here are several pics of the foam in all it's unattractive glory:

Labor Day

I had one of those really fun days yesterday, filled with all sorts of things I love to do.

After a leisurely morning of coffee and internet surfing, I had my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs on a sesame bagel.

I then set up a mini photo studio in my bedroom to take some new selfie pictures for my work website. Since I've lost a pretty good amount of weight, I thought the photo of my on my home page needed some updating. Plus, the old photo was me with hair! I needed to reflect my new "penitentiary chic" buzzed hair look, LOL.

I ironed one of my white flat sheets and draped it over the canopy of my bed. The natural light coming thru the French doors if a perfect lighting set-up. I was happy with the results. You can visit my site here.

I then took a shower and headed to the beach. It was another glorious day. Only slightly cool. Too cold for a swim but with my hoodie the breeze and sun felt good. And it was surprisingly not that crowded for Labor Day.

I came back and had a nice dinner of the last of a big pot of soup I made a couple of days prior, a rich vegetable and cheese soup with black olives. 

I had a couple of big bowls as I watched one of my favorite TV shows on Hulu, "I Love Lucy". It was the episode where the Ricardos were to dedicate a Minute Man statue for the local community but Lucy crashes into it with her car.

Then I met up with a new friend, Tim, who was staying at Baron's Cove hotel in the village. I'd never seen the rooms since the place had been refurbished. 

Tim is a very friendly guy, he was visiting with his sister and parents. They're all from New Zealand.

After we had some cake by the ocean I drove home.

I ended the evening by watching a couple of episodes of another favorite show, "Looking", that I have on DVD. Then I went to bed, exhausted, but happy with the full (and fun) day.

Rock of ages

I stole this idea years ago from Martha Stewart Living magazine. Take a large nicely shaped rock, stencil your street address on it, and then place it somewhere in front of your house, preferable the curb, so people know what your address is if they can't see your house number front the street. Since I have high privet in front of my house this was a smart thing for me to do. Well, after many years the number faded. I've been needed to re-paint the number on the rock for a while, it was one of many things on my personal "honey-do" list. I finally got around to it last week. Fortunately I still had the origianal stencil tucked away in a drawer in the basement, so...voila! Revamped house rock! I did it in the new blue I used for the house trim so they would coordinate :)