Lots of changes in my life

After the trip to Kristi’s in Clear Lake south of Houston, where I gave Mary some books and picked up a new antenna tripod, I got down to work. The tripod helped a little – then I extended the pole to 20’ and that helped a little more. But, alas, it was not quite enough. So I ordered an 8 bay Channel Master Antenna from Fry’s.
SUCCESS! Now I get a great picture on 34 Houston channels free (for about $137 in parts). I am happy with the results and now I think I am ready for the Lake Texana park host job again, since I will be able to get TV there as well.

Another of my ongoing projects is my LOCKet. It is a USB memory stick with a secure program on board where I have now stored all of my passwords, credit card information, addresses, medical information, and other sensitive information. The information all stays in the LOCKet which now is my secure vault. I have backed it up to another memory stick, so as not to worry about losing the information. My computer doesn’t contain any sensitive data, so I don’t need to worry about identity theft via e-space. I have also found it real convenient to have all of this information so handy. If you are interested in the LOCKet you can go to http://www.technorv.com/ – that’s the place that I got it at the Escapade in May.

I have also made a dramatic change in my bookkeeping procedures. I have perfected my use of Quicken 2009 and it has totally freed up the time I spent in reconciling all of my financial files. I still have to do a little manual entry, but very little! For only $9.95 I even have an offsite backup that I can access, if (when?) I have a computer failure. With the Locket and the new Quicken backup I am free of fear of a crash of my computer now.

Another new thing in my life is a program to develop better visual skills and improve my reading speed (which has always been slow). The program is called eyeQ. I have only done one day of the eye exercises and reading practices, so I can’t tell how good it is yet. I’ll let you know in my next blog if it seems to be working – and how good.

My time at the CARE Center has been greatly appreciated. There are only 3 volunteer teams left and there are lots of needed chores. Most of them center on getting meals prepared and served to the residents, staff, volunteers, and guests. Sometimes that comes to as many as 70 people. Here is a picture of our great kitchen and dining room serving area.
We also drive residents to appointments, shopping and some eat out events. The other day 12 residents and volunteers had a great dinner in Coldspring TX. Our other chore is being on call for the needs of the residents overnight and on weekends. Sunday I will be going to Kristi’s to take care of the greatgrandkids while Kristi takes Victor in for his hip replacement. I am cramming that in between “on call” and kitchen duties.

I have not had much time to go geocaching, but there are quite a few new ones in the area – maybe in the next few weeks……..