Jesus Comes to Visit

I heard a really interesting story this weekend at a family get together. It seems one of the cousins had a cat show up at their house a couple of years ago on Christmas Eve, clawing at their door. One of the youngsters in the house thought that the cat might be an angel so they fed it and fixed it a place to sleep. The cat was gone the next morning. The at Easter the following year the the cat showed back up and spent Easter with them and even did a little Easter egg hunting with them.

Now if that wasn't weird enough, the darn thing showed back up the very next Christmas, and once again stayed for the one day. That brought us up to Easter this year when the cat once again showed up!! This time he has decided to stay around. Well since he had been showing up at all the religious holidays, they named him Jesus!

It seems that Jesus, wasn't too pleased when they tried checking out his 'package'. In fact, he even bit her. I guess that he didn't take too kindly to being checked out like that. The other possibility was that he was prison cat and might have been abused - which have been good reason for him to be a little testy.

The story doesn't stop there. Jesus has come to live with them on a more permanent basis. He has taken to sleeping on the front porch rail and intimidating the other feline residents of the house, Puss & Stumpy. It has gone so far that Jesus has actually run Puss off (she's been missing for a few days now).

Once I quit laughing I knew that this was one story that I had to share. Knowing that it is a true story only makes it that much funnier. I do hope that you got a laugh out of it as well.

THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11

IN MEMORY OF ALL WE LOST, THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11

Hurricane Aftermath

We awoke up Sunday morning to find that the second largest tree in the backyard had indeed become uprooted and was wedged between two others at the edge of the yard. The upper canopy was also entangled with about five to six others. The Hickory that was next to it also was going to have to come down as well, its roots were all entangled with the large oak. We also had another uprooted tree at the edge of the back property line that was leaning onto another tree. Not to mention the limbs that had fallen out or were hanging on the tree in the front yard.

We had a couple of tree guys stop by the house during the morning hours to give us estimates on getting the trees down. One who was local gave us a fairly good price; and we even tried to go with them asking them to put together a contract. They told us they'd be back in an hour and they NEVER showed back up or even called. (We've passed their house several time since and there they all are working on cars or motorcycles in the garage. Obviously they didn't really want the work.)

The gentleman we did finally go with was from South Carolina - Came right out, wrote up the contract, showed up when he said and did a SUPER job. The tough job for them was to get the wedged tree down.  It was really stuck between the oak and holly near the end of woodpile. It was a real thing of beauty to see him top one of the large trees and it just swung harmlessly passed the neighbors porch. Took some real talent to do that. It took them two days to get all the trees down, cut up and limbs hauled to the edge of the yard, but it was so worth waiting for him to get back to our house.

While they cutting trees Walter was busy loading the trailer with the branches and hauling them off to Rockwood Park. By the time the tree guys were done, Walter was caught up to them in limb removal. He had only two loads that he had to take off the next day to finish up the yard. Walter has been a busy guy splitting the cut wood. He has a couple of really awesome woodpiles going on out in the yard.

Meanwhile over at Mom & Dad's house - there were trees down everywhere. No just uprooted and tilting over they were all the way over, 50 trees in all. Five fell right near or on the porch. Dad has been our working feverishly to delimb the ones that had fallen in the yard, and get them all cut up and moved. It has taken a while for them to even find out what it is going to take to get the trees taken care of and for someone to come out and even give them an estimate on the damage to the house. I guess it all has to do with the amount of work that is now out there for contractors to do. No one wants to over extend themselves when they aren't sure that they can complete the work.

As power stated coming on around the Richmond area,
those who were still without were beginning to show
signs of frustration.

The power outage was the biggest thing that we had to deal with during the week after the storm. Our water heater held out fantastic. We both were able to get a shower every day for through Thursday (the water was very tepid by then.) We had been anticipating have the power restored on Tuesday, then Wednesday, and then Friday. On Thursday the whole situation got the best of me when we were out of propane as I went to fix dinner. Walt went out for the refill and just as he pulled back into the driveway the power came on! I really should have sent him out for propane a few days earlier if I'd known it was going to work that well. The power restoration only lasted a few hours. It went back out after midnight. Even though it didn't stay on - it had been on long enough to reheat the water in the water heater. Yeah! one more hot shower. It surely was tough leaving out from a dark house with all the rest of the houses in the neighborhood lit up as I was leaving out on Friday morning. Sort of depressing. We finally had full power restoration by 3:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon.

Photos From Hurricane Irene

The Hurricane Chronicles

Went into work for a few hours this morning. It was amazing how quiet the office was even with the wind whipping around outside.

As I started for home the rain was beginning to fall, but the winds were the most notable indication of what was to follow. The streets were littered with clumps of fallen leaves and a multitude of pine needles. There was the occasional limb, but nothing significant.

Safely home and snug inside the winds increased and the trees swayed. The two large trees next to the street took quite a battering. I was expecting them to give way and fall over at any time. Their canopies make the perfect sails to catch the gust of wind and propel them right over (just not this time). After much huffing and puffing a limb did break out of the one on the corner, just as Kelly was pulling up to the house. It gave her quite the scare.

The kids spent the afternoon out - at the indoor shooting range. Well at least they were dry and had something to do.

After dinner was well over our real excitement began. We lost power at 6:45 pm right at the end of Dire Hard. Darn it - missed the part where he blows up the plane full of bad guys at the end. Well maybe next time. It wasn't too long after that, that we made the rounds checking out the condition of the yard when we discovered that the 2nd largest tree on the property had begun to uproot. We knew it was only a matter of time before it went on over. Luckily it was falling towards the back of the yard and the woodpile. With any luck it will make it all the way to the ground by morning and we won't have to call in anyone to take it down. Additionally there are more branches down in the front yard with one big one still hanging from the tree (that's the one that is going to be difficult to get down). Maybe it too will come down by morning.

In the middle of everything, Walter got an urge to go out for a Coke from Sheetz, since it was before dark we thought it probably the safest time to make the run out for 'supplies'. I have never seen so many people at Sheetz. It was almost unbelievable. I don't think that I've ever seen a line like that before. Not even on a holiday weekend with other things closed.

I did talk to one woman there who said that she couldn't get home due to all the trees being down. In talking with her I discovered why our power was out, it seems that a tree had come down on Newby's Bridge Road and hit the power pole just around the corner from the house. Last time we lost power to a car hitting that same pole and knocked it out. Took about 16 hours to get it back that time. So we shall see how long it takes this time - although that was an isolated incident and not part of a larger over all event.

The drive home from Sheetz turned out to be the real adventure of the night. We took one of the side streets home only to discover a tree across the road with the power lines down as well. NOT GOOD. We reversed direction and tired another route. Not to be out done by the first road block the 2nd had a huge tree across the entire intersection. Backing up and making it to Gregory Drive we headed on over to Fordham only to find yet another tree across you the road. We weaved around through a few more streets and finally made it back out to Hull Street. Where we proceeded to come home right back on Fordham. Home at last Walter went out to check for more damage and to check on a neighbor or two.

I had the house all lit up with candles and was getting settled in while waiting for him to get back - which took forever. He had gotten together with a number of the men in the neighborhood and cut up a tree that was across the side street next to us. It didn't take them long at all and reminded me of the evening that our tree had been struck by lightening & fallen. (The men had all come out with chainsaws to get the road opened up.

Walter has definitely become part of the neighborhood.

Tomorrow we shall see what the final tally of the damage is.

All Shook Up - Earthquake in VA?!

Today has been a doozie! I started out the morning seeing what looked like a 6-inch piece of gray string on the floor. Turned out what I thought was a string was actually a dead snake in my bedroom floor. One of the lovely four legged children, must have brought it in from going out to potty during the night. The cat use to bring me presents like this, but now the dogs are getting in on the action. It was 'sweet' but I surely hope that they don't get into a habit of bringing things like this into the house.

Then there was the earthquake this afternoon, the very first one that I've actually felt. Amazing! I had been through two others before and never even knew that they had happened. Today however was a totally different story. We were all visiting in the conference room when the ceiling tiles began to shake (sort of like when a heavy duty AC unit kick on), but then there was the noise that sounded like a freight train. Since the office has a train track behind it I ducked outside to take a peek. No train derailing, but the windows on the daycare center next door were ripping. It was quite surreal to watch.

UPDATE: There have been several aftershocks. Nothing big, but aftershocks nonetheless. Heard on the radio that the earthquake was a 5.8 and that the last time there was one of that magnitude here was in 1871. There was also a rumor that the Washington Monument was leaning, which turned out to be incorrect but the monument does have cracks which has caused the National Parks Service to close the Washington Monument until repairs can be made.

Back to School

Time for college students to start getting back to school for the fall. Classes started this today for John Tyler and boy are they having some issues. Walt tried to get into his class and it came back with an error telling him to try back later. The second class is also having problems. You would think that the community colleges wouldn't be plagued by this type of technical difficulty since they do operate year round.

If Walt's frustrated I can only image how many other students are suffering from the same thing. He gave it a full hour and tried again. No luck, the system is just having major issues. After a couple of emails to his professors he found out that the system is actually down and was told to try back again tomorrow. What a great way to start the semester off. Unable to actually go to class.

Here's hoping that things will be better tomorrow.

Great Turn Around

So sitting at the front desk this morning, getting things under way and in come two sales people making cold calls on various offices. We're polite; take their information and promise to pass it along. Then it happens.

They ask a couple of questions about the office and before they know it we've got one scheduled for a hygiene appointment and the other all set to give us a call back to get hers scheduled after her move.

What a way to turn the tables! It was a great way to start the morning.

365 Project Year 2

I wasn't too sure that I was going to begin a second 365 Project, but after much encouragement here I go again.

I began year two on 7/15/2011. I decided that by posting this as a single blog entry it would be easier for others to check back here and follow the progress as opposed to trying to keep up with several Facebook links. (Facebook only allows 200 photos per album). I will be adding the link to the last 165 images when I get to that point in time.

I'm looking forward to what the next year of photos will look like.

First set of images for the year.

365 Project Year 1

After seeing a couple of people on Facebook proposing to take a photo a day for a year. I jumped in with both feet. What an interesting way to chronicle the year. It turned out to be a really interested experience - it is amazing what you see if you just look around.

The majority of the photos that were taken for this first year (7/11/2010 to 7/10/2011) were taken on the route between my home and the office where I work.

First 200 days of images
Remaining 165 days of images

Happy 2nd Birthday Alec!

Alec, Have super fun birthday. - Mamaw

Happy Birthday Alice!!

Here's to a terrific year for the second of the four twelves!

Happy Anniversary Danielle & Ben

Danielle,
May you both have many more happy years together.
- Mom

Phone Issues

The office phones have been giving us a devil of a time over the past month. At first is was an intermittent issue, but it has gotten down right ridiculous.

Our first major issue was easily explained by a cut line when a subcontractor was laying FIOS cables near the office. Then the next go round was just a week or so later and was caused by a cut in the line as well. (The cable installation had moved further down the road.) Then beginning Monday our phones began acting like cell phones, dropping calls and then ringing busy afterwards. Not a great way to run your business - appearing to hang up on customers randomly.

Finally I was able to get a good report into Verizon on the 20th and they were suppose to go ahead and test the line to find out what the issue was overnight and get back with me. Did they? NO!

So here we are today, sitting and waiting for the technician to arrive. I know that there is a Bigger issue than just our office. Oh by the way, the tech was suppose to arrive at the office at 5:00 p.m. I have yet to see him and it is after 7:00 as I write this.

Right now I'm on hold with Verizon, trying to get some information on what's going on. Betting 10 to 1 that the Tech has driven by the office and since it is closed has just moved on to something else. We shall see.

Well after staying on hold for 15 minutes when the rep picked up the phone hung up. I'm beginning to think that I can't win for losing on this one. Now I'm back on hold once again. I just hope that the line connects long enough for me to get some sort of an answer.

Vanishing Hard Drive Space

I nearly had a meltdown last night after discovering that my hard drive space was down to only 8GB. Now the last time I had this issue it turned out to be multiple restore points had been made while installing a very large program - which had to be installed a couple of times to get it right. No worry - just delete them and off you go.

Well that certainly wasn't the case this time. Of course I did all the usual things, emptied the Recycle Bin; deleted any stray files, but that didn't even begin to free up any space.

In desperation I Googled, "suddenly lost hard drive space" and there I found my answer amongst one of the first search results. A post on the Volume Shadow Copy Service by Benjamin Day supplied me with all the information that I needed to get myself back up and running. Seems that my computer had 157GB allocated to shadowstorage.

The real question is why did it suddenly change? For now though, I am very happy to to have been able to go from 7GB to 170GB using only two commands.

Annoying Emails

This past weekend started out pleasant enough, that is until I received a flurry of emails to just about everyone of my email accounts from the same individual. Not only did they send the emails to me but they cc'd my siblings, mother and a nephew too! Way over the top.

Now I am NOT that hard to find. In fact there is a contact email address on this blog site, so I'm not really sure why they thought it was necessary to send so many yet they did.

Turned out that the individual was making a request for some exclusion of information on my genealogy site. Not a problem. Tell me what needs to be excluded - and for heaven's sake where it's located. I haven't a clue where every piece of information is located on ALL those pages. Anyway, the request that I received was vague and I had removed information previously on this family way back in 2003. In responding to this particular individual I sent a link to the removed information page to remind them that it had already been removed.

This started what was to be a very stressful weekend. Another flurry of emails descended upon me with demands that additional information be removed. I removed the information and replaced it with a statement that the information had been removed by request. Yet this was not good enough for the individual in question.

A barrage of messages were sent to me through Facebook - all while I was sleeping. Apparently there are some people who can't let things go during the night. So that when I awoke there were at least six messages all about removing the information that I had already removed. Plus new demands that I change the genealogy pdf that I have been giving away for 15 years! After sending what I thought was one last message that the information had been removed and the pdf wasn't going to be changed, I was done with this individual. Or so I thought.

More emails plus a phone call plagued me Sunday. Complaints that the information that I had was incorrect - but wait - they'd already ask me to remove it from online (which had been done). I had become quite frustrated by the time the phone call came, which had immediately been preceded by yet another email. Now I will admit that I was a bit put out and not as pleasant as I normally am, but come on. When someone has asked you in writing three times to leave them alone and then they still contact you, they are pretty much getting what they deserve.

After letting this individual get to me for most of the day on Sunday, I finally broke down and called our local police department's non-emergency number for information to see what recourse if any that I had in this situation. They advised me to send one last email to the individual and inform them that I did not want "any contact" from them, and provide them with the code section that the police offer had provided me. Done!

Now did that work...No! I received yet another email. I didn't reply and even held off doing anything until Monday evening - but the content of the email disturbed me enough to actually go down and file a police report. I didn't swear out the warrant for the individual's arrest - I still wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt that they were just being hardheaded. Yet I still can do so if I receive any further contact. The police department will keep the report on file for a year so hopefully I can just let it drop, but if need be it is there.

In combating this individual I have found out some pretty useful information.

1. You can BLOCK an individual on Facebook, whether they are your friend or not.
2. It is possible to BLOCK phone number on your home phone line (if you know them) so that if the individual calls they will receive the message that you are not accepting calls at this time.
3. There is a law in Virginia Section 18.2.152.7:1 that deals with annoying or harassing email; other sections also deal with electronic devices and phone calls.
4. You can file a police report - that will remain on file for a year.

I hope that no one else has to deal with a situation like this, but if so I hope that just some of the things that I learned will be of value to you.

Happy Birthday Walter!!!

Lenora Stapleton

Busy Month So Far

First Phase of House Repairs

Walter has been the busy beaver at the house. He has jumped right in and started in on some major home repairs. He has begun replacing any and all questionable pieces of cedar siding on the house. It has made for an quite the colorful looking house - current siding, new primed boards, and a few unprimed board thrown in for good measure; not to mention the caulked areas.

There were a couple of unexpected challenges that came up as he started working on the angled portion of the front of the house.  It seems that the rain had collected behind one of the shrubs and created the perfect environment for mold and rot to occur.

Wednesday's Progress

After a consultation with several builders and a pest control company - turns out that it was just a minor issue and was easily resolved.  Walter changed the orientation of all the siding on the front of the house to horizontal and this will prevent any future problems. 

This evening he was has been out on the ladder almost since he came home from work.  It's too late for an updated photo (no light), but he has gotten the siding up two rows above the window.  Now the really hard part - cutting the angled boards for the rest of the area.  I do believe that his goal for tomorrow is to at least have the siding up on most of the area.

Email & Newsletter Gleanings:

A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves!

I'M 100% for PASSING THIS ON!!!

Lets Take a stand!!!

Obama: Gone!
Borders: Closed...
Language: English only...
Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights!!!
Drug Free: Make a drug screen mandatory for anyone on welfare and/or food stamps!
NO freebies to Non-Citizens!

We the people are coming!

Father's Day

Spent yesterday afternoon celebrating Father's Day with my Dad. We had a great lunch and I surprised him with a Dairy Queen ice cream cake.

Huguenot Springs ConfederateCemetery Memorial Day Service

I attended this Memorial Day Service sponsored by the J.E.B. Stuart Camp #1343 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Huguenot Springs Cemetery Foundation.

The day was spent honoring those that are serving, have served and those that gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country.

The Keynote Speaker spoke on "The History of Confederate Memorial Day and Recent Research on the Confederate War Dead". The presentation was quite informative and instructional.

The service ended with an Artillery Salute, followed by the playing of taps.

Truly an event to remember.



Event Photos - Black & White
Event Photos - Color