(22 years ago we moved in.)

         
The Y2K bug, and the B2B bug at the Bay to Breakers.

I had errands to run after Rich walked the dog. (Yes, yes, Rich did it while I sat here, shame on me!) I was a little surprised when Rich wanted to come along. This never happens, so there was probably an ulterior motive, but I just decided to wait and see. First off, while I hadn't won the $87 million in the lottery, I did have a $5 winner, and this happens to me so rarely I found it quite exciting enough, thank you. I went and redeemed it, then to the library to drop off a book and pick up another child's library card form, just in case. Then I went to pick up some developed film, and Rich suggested we stop at Best Buys. This is a store that has moved into the previous Best store, which makes it easy. The sad thing is they took away the moving wall entrance that made the original store, well, original. Anyway, this clarified what we were doing out together. He had finally decided it was time for his printer. (What, the 10-year-old Epson dot-matrix isn't good enough any more??)

That was totally fun. Best Buys is currently running a promotion that if you buy more than $300 on their card, you don't have to pay anything for 6 months. We're always looking for this kind of deal, so we signed up for the card. We'd looked at the printers a couple of weeks back, so Rich had a vague idea what he wanted, but he wanted my input. "Get the more expensive one, whichever printer cable you think, and the service contract" was what I told him.

To my delight, we also got the National Geographic complete set, which I've been drooling about since before I heard about it. Now I can get rid of (maybe at the church rummage sale) this 30-year-plus set.

Rich set up the printer and printed out a tiger picture, so we love it already. Now I have to write the praise letter to the Spokane restaurant for refunding our overpayment so promptly. Isn't it funny how praise letters are so much harder to write than complaints?

In the afternoon I took Sam to the library to get a library card. What with car accidents and babysitters and this and that, I didn't get all the paperwork I needed and so they said they would mail Sam the card. I would check out books on my own. We looked at books, and at the children's computer, but we were too late to sign up to use that. Oh, well, another time. It came time to check out the five books Sam had chosen. Now, a few years back the library had a fundraiser wherein you could become a Patron for some amount of money, and get a fancy bookbag and a library card with a lion on it. The librarian at this branch, in a poorer section of town, was really impressed: "Oh, it's a lion. We don't see many of those!"

One of the things on the CASA exercise when we had to step forwards and backwards was stepping forward on having a library card. Sam can now take a step forward. Well, of course, we have to USE it, but I intend to be doing a lot of that. In my fake court report, for instance, this was an activity I was doing with "Rebecca."

Argh. We're getting charged for NOT using the long distance. I'm not sure how AT&T gets away with that but there it is. If we don't use $3 worth a month, they'll charge us that. Well fine, then, I guess we'll have to call people more than we do now. (Though this week, what with wishing Vince a happy birthday, we at least have a start.) I imagine it's a way of trying to get people not to use the Internet to get in touch.

I scanned all of Bernadette's Dexen, and was sending them to her to put up on her page, and I've exploded her Yahoo mailbox! I mail-bombed my own kid!! So again I used long-distance to tell her to check her mailbox and empty it. Of course, I got the roommate who never leaves messages, so I'm not hopeful. We also need to know how much time she can get off for the wedding so as to get the tickets for San Francisco or Sacramento. Miss Communications Major is really bad about communicating.