Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

It is definitely an interesting Christmas! Home for the holidays! Yes, it's wonderful to not be in a hotel for Christmas...  it's wonderful to be in a house!

We checked out of the hotel on Friday, picked up the kids at college, and slept in the house Friday night. We had to buy beds, so they were delivered on Thursday, but anything we had accumulated while renting in Gardiner was packed up, to be moved in on Saturday. Kids brought their blankets and pillows from school, I had our blankets and bought a couple more pillows for Bob and I (you can never have too many pillows!), so that we could stay here Friday. I did a Sams Club on-line order, and a Hannaford To-Go order to save time in the stores, picked those up Friday night and Saturday morning...  The movers came Saturday morning, and it was so nice to finally have places to sit down!  By Sunday we had unpacked plates, silverware, and glasses, and could actually make a meal.

Bob and I had gotten a tree earlier - it was in the garage, in a tote, in water - now frozen! So Saturday night we pulled it into the house, put it in the bathroom, and got the ice to start melting. Sunday afternoon Bob hammered the ice off the trunk, and we set it up.  I bought lights earlier this week, and was given a tree stand. I also got a vinyl tablecloth to put under, mostly to protect the new floor from water! I ordered the angel on-line, she came in time, and looks right on the top of the tree - similar to what we had before. We decorated with ornaments we've picked up, some that were given to us, some that a friend made for us, the one I made, and the ones the kids surprised us with, they got together at school and painted them!  My mother gave me some ornaments that my grandmother had made, so we even have a bit of history on the tree!  I love our tree. I do miss my Christmas bins - one of house decorations (plates, towels, knick-knacks, wall hangings, etc), one of kids stuff (stuffed Rudolph characters, kids books), bins of lights and ornaments, the Christmas mugs, the advent wreath...  Sigh. Starting fresh. (I do that a lot these days. Pick myself up, and go on...) My mother made me a quilted Santa wall hanging like the one she'd made me before.  That is now beautiful on my wall!

We got each other some gifts - but not a lot...  as I told a friend,  just enough to be Christmas, since we're all tired of shopping and tired of new stuff that's replacing what we lost... It was fun but challenging to think of things that we didn't have before but wanted to get for each other!!!  I love the birdfeeder that Santa put on our deck railing.

It's starting to feel like our home, not just a house we're staying in.  If my van is parked in the yard, feel free to stop in and say "Hi!" - it's having friends visit that's helping to make it feel like OUR house!  (Just be careful not to trip over the stuff, we're still figuring out where things belong!)

  

Sugar Cookies!

Teresa has been wanting to find Aunt Joyce's sugar cookie recipe.  It's her father's favorite, and she likes to make them every Christmas. 

I had searched what I had on my computer, but didn't have it there.  I was surprised that the relatives we asked did not have it...  Finally, today, I searched my old emails -- and FOUND IT!   (Oddly enough, I found the email where I had thanked her for the recipe, luckily with the original included in the reply, because I did NOT find the original email! Good thing I'd thanked her!)  And in that weird quirky way that things happen -- Aunt Joyce had emailed it to me, EXACTLY 11 years ago today!

That's one down...  a bunch more to go!  When we were in Houlton for Thanksgiving, I snapped a photo of a couple of the recipes I need - Caramel Popcorn, for one!!!  My mother has shared her computer file of recipes, so that helps, too. 

My favorite cookbook is the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, the one with the red checked cover and looseleaf pages.  I got that cookbook as a high school graduation present, and I'm happy to say that a friend of similar age has given me hers - the earlier or later versions have slightly different recipes, so I really wanted the same edition! 

It's one of those things that I'm looking forward to doing once we're in the new house.  That's a phrase that's a little scary - since there are a LOT of things on that list!!!   I am looking forward to making a recipe book.  It's a project that I've been thinking of for several years, but it's never been a very high priority.  I want to include recipes and stories, and it will be a meaningful book for my kids, as well as a cookbook!

I hesitate to ask for ANYTHING, since whenever I mention something, I get such an abundance of responses ... but this, I can ask for - if you have a recipe that you think I would like, please send it along.  I'd love to have the story of the recipe, as well.  Who usually makes it?  Is it one that we've made together?  Is it something that's a special tradition in your family?  Is it just delicious?  And if I'm overwhelmed with recipes, I'll just print them and put them into a binder. 

I'm looking forward to cooking in my new kitchen!

Christmas shopping dilemma

I know we've all struggled with "what can you get someone who has everything?"  - it's one of the reasons that gift cards are so ubiquitous.  However, here's a new one:  What can you get someone who NEEDS everything?

I want to go get Christmas presents for my son, daughter, and husband.  There are a lot of things that they need, that I expect to go buy and have Insurance help replace.  Can I buy those things as Christmas Presents?  If I do, can I still submit the receipts, or does that cheapen the gift?  Can they wait until Christmas to receive those items - or will they be going out to get them now, because they simply need them?

And how exciting is it to open a beloved book, as a Christmas gift, and then collapse in tears because you'd forgotten about that particular one, and now you've been reminded all over again about all that you've lost?  It's hard to explain what is "fine", and what pushes you over the edge.

Do I purchase all new and different things?  How do I even think of what to get?  And it seems so surreal to buy games and friviolous items, when so much of my shopping energy needs to go to essential shopping.  I'm thankful that I have friends that go shopping with me, and understand when I've hit my limit. Sometimes it is just too overwhelming.

I've mostly determined that this year will be minimal gift giving.  Not because of budget, or any grand conservative goals, but simply because we're so aware of how wonderful it is to be together.  I hope that we will be in our new house to celebrate, but even if we're in the hotel, it will be joyful.

We've got a tree up in the hotel room, and a little Nativity.  That makes it Christmas.  I like to have the Nativity out from the beginning - it is "the reason for the season", after all!  I have one ornament on the tree, the one I got at the Craft Fair in Houlton over Thanksgiving weekend - it is a red door on a white house, so we had it engraved "Easterbrooks 2019".  (I saw ornaments for "first year in our new house" - but those did not seem right.)  I have a box with a few of the ornaments my grandmother made, ready to put on when the girl comes home for the weekend.  I've already had a couple friends tell me they have an ornament for me.  It's going to be fun to put up a real tree in the new house and decorate it - whenever it happens!

It does seem quiet, though...  I had a 100-disc CD player, completely full of the Christmas CDs we'd collected through the years.  All of the Very Special Christmas CDs, Twisted Christmas, some instrumental, some country, some pop...  I'd get at least one or two every year!  We (read: Bob) had copied them to our computers so we could play them ...  but even those were lost.  I'd love to recapture some of those, if anyone wants to lend them to us for a few days to make a copy.  (I'm very sensitive to copyright rules - but I honestly have no guilt in replacing lost items with a copy.) 

This has always been one of my favorite quotes.  I think this year it's particularly appropriate!

Tech Tip Tuesday!

Today is Tech Tip Tuesday!  I'm starting to get back to some "normal" activity - and it feels good! 

I hadn't really PLANNED to do a "Tech Tip Tuesday" post on my Facebook page, but I got a "HELP ME!" message, and worked through the problem.  My plan is to create a separate blog for this type of thing, but for now, I'm going to share the story here!  I can make it 'professional' and post it later - but for you, my general group of friends and blog-readers, here's how I spent part of my snowy Tuesday:

The whole thing began with my friend needing to update a Garmin GPS system.  They needed to go to Garmin.com to download an update.  They had some errors, and SOMETHING popped up on the screen, which led my friend to click on something taking them to "garmincomexpress.support", which is NOT a garmin.com site! 

I have a suspicion that they may have typed GARMIN in the address/search bar, and then the browser SEARCHED and came up with a mostly-garmin site...  but I don't know that for sure, but it's one way that people find themselves in trouble.  I do that myself, let the browser do the work - but then you have to make sure it took you to the site you expected.

At that site, they were prompted for a live chat, and then for a phone call.  Ultimately, the "tech" got them to allow a remote connection - and then claimed that the reason they had trouble doing the download is because there was a virus.  Next, they offered virus protection for $200 for four years, $350 for six years, and $699 for lifetime...   this is the point where my friend realized it was NOT Garmin support, disconnected, and contacted me!

My first plan of attack is often Malwarebytes - it's been very effective.  It was already on this computer, but when we tried to run it, the error said "Cannot connect to service".  We opened the Services, and could see that the malwarebytes service was set to "disabled".  We changed it to automatic, started it, and -- still couldn't run it.  Supporting services were also disabled.

Comparing the list to a working computer's list of services, my friend reset ALL of the disabled services that should have been enabled.  A reboot, and things worked normally.  We still scanned the computer, but I'm pretty sure that the scam does NOT install a virus, but simply made the computer unusable by disabling services, probably with a script, and that upon payment they could simply reverse the action.

Did I mention that we did this remotely, just using video chat? 
No snow days for Technology Coaching! 

I've also been doing some research on iTunes and adding new music, on resetting a forgotten computer login password, and prepping for my Phone Photography adult ed class.  I'm also working on how to build my tech coaching business, including the use of video - thus, the experimental Tech Tip Tuesday video!