What the Junk?!

I actually know it's Thursday this week!  I got the hard drive returned today with my data.  They said they would put it on a drive the size of my data recovered.  I figured they would send a 1 GB drive as the stuff on it was a little less than that.  They send me a 4 GB drive with my files!  That was more than generous and I was extremely happy!  I finally cloned the drive my friend lent me and erased it to return it to him tomorrow.

As for tomorrow, we are doing a thrifting trip.  He sometimes gets off at noon on Friday and we are hoping he will tomorrow so we can do a few different places.  I'd love to make it to the Salvation Army since they were closed yesterday.  I'm also hoping to find some DS games and other goodies!  I wrote tonight and it was an emotional scene, so I only wrote a little over 1000 words. I'll probably edit it tomorrow and then write more. It was pretty good! 

I remembered that today I had an offer from Starbucks that if you did order ahead, you would get a free drink loaded onto your card for a future purchase. It was for a Grande or Venti.  Guess what my dumb ass bought? Tall. ~_~; I realized my mistake when I got home.  Oh well.  I tried another new drink.  This was the Oatmilk honey latte.  I don't think I like it.  It wasn't horrible by any means, it just isn't something I would enjoy.  It's weird though, the more I drank it, the better it got? It was weird.  I don't know. I am desperately trying to find something to fill the void left by my cascara syrup being discontinued!

I hope to do a post tomorrow night about thrifting, but I might be too tired if we go to a bunch of places. I'll try to check in any way even if I have to do a write up of all the goodies I get on Saturday.  I am planning on staying home the entire weekend, so I can get writing, chores, and other things done!

I realized once I got in bed last night that I didn't post to my blog.  I swear I need more sleep!  It's been lacking lately and it's catching up to me!  I did all my regular Sunday chores yesterday and wrote, too.  Today, I went to the grocery store. I've needed to go for a while and just haven't been. I'm glad I did because we just had that ice over the weekend and the forecast is for more this week!  Any threat of weather and the store is a madhouse. I was lucky and hit an in-between time today.  I didn't get a ton of groceries, but I got a few essentials, Soda, coffee, cheese. LOL!

I am glad to have that done. Now I don't have to go out again anytime soon if I don't want to.  If I weren't almost out of soda, I wouldn't have gone today.  I'm set for a while now. It was drizzling and yucky again today.  I wish the rain would stop.  It's driving me nuts.  Drip, drip, drip inside. Boo! I have been looking to back up my Evernote in OneNote just as a precaution.  I looked to find out how.  Well, there is an importer on the Microsoft site.  I tried to download it on my MBP running Big Sur and it said NOPE!  So, I open the old Macbook, it was running a version that was too old to use, so I turned on the 13" MBP that has Catalina on it. It worked!  I just wanted to have an extra copy of my files. It's taking forever, but hopefully, everything will be there and backed up! I got through a long process and it was doing the things it needed to do and then it crashed. D'oh!  I'm re-running it now, hopefully, that will work! WIsh me luck! :)

Yes, I was about to leave the computer and not post today.  Well, what happened? So, as I said I wrote up a big post two days ago and then didn't post it or save it to draft. D'oh!  It was about a comedy of errors when I was getting my old iPhoto files from the old Macbook to the MacBook Pro.  It took FOUR tries.  I networked the Macs to move the file over. The first attempt, my dumb ass restarted the Macbook.  On the second attempt the internet went out.  The third attempt, it was almost done (as it was the first time) and I noticed the MacBook wasn't charging.  What did I do? I pulled the cord out to re-seat it.  Guess what? No percentage on the battery.  I had to start over for the fourth time.  Sigh. I finally got the file moved over and got it all set up.  I had everything back to the way I wanted it. I was happy. I was still working with the 'dead' drive to try and get it to connect  Well, I foolishly restarted and tried to reset the PRAM.  Guess what?  I got the same exact error from the weekend.  I put the drive that I had the Catalina backup. I got hooked up.  I was able to access the files on the corrupt drive but couldn't get it to boot. I moved the files to the external drive (the one my friend lent me) and then I erased the internal disk and did a clone of the drive.  I then unhooked the external and booted it.  It worked. Phew. Now I just needed to get Big Sur back. That took WAY longer than it should have but I finally got it back.  So I spent a lot of time yesterday getting things back up to speed.  I finally finished up today and got everything as it should be.  If I could get that first external drive to work, that would be great. I STILL haven't heard from support! :(  I went to clone the drive with Big Sur on it to the drive I bought for the 13" MacBook Pro (I haven't used it yet because I still need a hard drive cable.) I figured I'd clone the drive on that and see if it was okay. I put it on the 13" MBP and nothing  I get that circle with a slash.  I am not going to worry about that for now. I have this one working and now I know exactly what caused both 'crashes'  I will NEVER try to reset the PRAM. AHHH!

So, as of now, I have a working computer with all my stuff.  I just need to download a few programs that I just remembered I don't have on here.  I had to do that iPhoto transfer again today. This time it only took ONE try! Whee! lol So, here is your update.  I hope you enjoyed it. I'm going to take a nice break from my computer.  My pretty snap-on case came for it today.  I'll try to remember to take a picture tomorrow.  I ordered it from China on the 3rd and it got here today. Not bad at all!  I

My laptop bag came today and although it's lovely and sturdy, it's not wide enough.  If I have my laptop in it alone, it's fine, but if I add my charger and Anything else, it's bulky and looks bad. I decided that I would look around town for something else. I found a few options on clearance on the Office Max website. I was debating on two.  I decided to go over and see what I could find.  The one I had looked at that I thought I was going to get was way too small. It was marked as a lot bigger on the website.  It took forever for me to find it, too since I was looking for a bigger bag.  I saw another bag that I REALLY liked while looking for that one.  It was a bit more than the one I had been there to look at, and a few dollars more than the other one I had looked at, but it was perfect. It's grey and aqua and aqua is my color!  It has several zipper pockets.  The other bag had one on the outside and the inside had the laptop pocket on one side and two little pockets on the other.  Not great for organization. 

The new bag has a big section with the padded laptop 'sleeve' area.  There is a zipper pocket in front of that with some organizer parts and the front has a slip pocket and a small zipper pocket. It also has two pockets on either side for a water bottle or coffee tumbler. :p It's very sturdy and I love it.  It has a top handle which is a feature I love on backpacks and it's a sturdy handle, too.  I really like this bag.  I can load up everything I need to go to Starbucks! :p Or the beach, or wherever.  I did think to take a picture of it in my car when I came out of Office Max. I knew I would probably be later getting home and wanted a picture in natural light.  Here is that picture:

I love it!  Now, after I got that, I went to grab some lunch since it was way past my lunchtime.  I got a burger and ate in my car.  I headed home and as SOON as I pulled down my street to pull into my driveway, I got a text message from Munzee.  Their system has been down ALL day.  There was a special Munzee that I had wanted to try and cap but Munzee was completely 'broken' all day. Of course, the minute I get home, it is up! I figured that the special Munzee would be gone, but I checked the app.  It was going to be there for another hour.  I backed up and went right back out and got it! lol. I got one more that I hadn't gotten on that side of town and headed home.  That completed my Zeeops mission for today, too!  I was quite happy that the special was still there. I just knew it was going to be gone by the time it came back up.  I just checked and I got a badge for catching it.  The "Over The Rainbow" badge.  I LOVE the Wizard of Oz, so that made me doubly happy. :)

Yes, I think my poor hard drive finally kicked the bucket. I cannot get it to mount to get any more files off of it :(  I am sad, but I did get my information from my old Macbook on here today.  The only thing that I might be missing is the pictures I have put on the MBP since I got it.  Since those are all on SD cards from my current and former phones, I think I have 98% of my stuff back.  I even was able to get the pictures off my camera because I don't delete them when I get them off. (Just for that reason!)  

I ordered a new hard drive to put in the MBP and it is coming on Friday. I hope to be able to install that, clone the external to it and be able to run my computer from the internal.  Then I'll start a weekly backup in Time machine on the external!  I am not going through all of this again. It took most of the day to get all my stuff transferred.  I got my iPod touch and my iPad mini backed up too.  I had backups on the old drive.  I was able to rip all the songs from my old classic iPod so I have all my music, too.  I'm happy to have everything almost back to normal. I even got 2000 words for NaNo!

I am going to give the internal drive another go after I take it out.  I'm not getting rid of it in any case!  I might be able to attach it as a 'flash drive' and get my files.  That would be awesome!  I'm happy with what I was able to accomplish so far.  I feel everything is back to normal!  One thing though, I was trying to send photos to the MBP via Bluetooth and it wasn't working. I could send files FROM the MBP to the Pixel phone but not the other way! I was able to use my wireless keyboard, my Bluetooth speaker, etc.  I found out that I hadn't given permission in the settings. D'oh!  They are given and I was back in business! Yay!

So I was trying to decide where I was going to use my little table/drawer thingy I got yesterday.  I moved some things around and found the perfect place for it.  It's going to sit beside my desk. I'm using the little drawers to hold pen pal supplies.  Stationery, envelopes, etc.  It's pretty handy and I have the entire top to do something with.  I may put a little basket it on it to hold letters when I get them and then I can put the ones ready to mail in it after I'm done! That would be pretty nifty.  It's a nice little piece of furniture.  This is also going to help in other ways.  I had a footstool beside my desk with a file container on it and some other stuff. I put the file box under my desk where it's out of the way but it's easy to get to when needed.  The footstool will now be free for me to use as needed. Before I had to move the little file box and all the things stacked on it. They are now files away elsewhere. I just have to decide where to store the stool.

I started on a new puzzle today.  It was one of the 12 I got from Dollar Tree.  It's pretty so far and hasn't been too difficult.  A nice change from that crazy berry one! LOL!  It has a lot of sky and I usually do sky first on puzzles, but I decided to be different and do the buildings first.  I got a good deal done on it.  Here it is:

I'll finish it tomorrow. I'm hoping my new debit card will show up tomorrow if so, I might go and pick up a few more groceries and things I need.  I am currently drying my bed linen and my hair! The lines are in the clothes dryer and my hair is under the hair bonnet dryer!  My MacBook Pro is down to 14% battery so I need to charge it pretty soon. I also want to share a picture of the desk area with the new shelf thingy.  I'll do that once my hair is dry and I get my MBP on the charger!  OH! I started the send book in the series last night and it's good!  I didn't read as much as I wanted because I wasn't feeling great last night and wanted to try to go to bed early. I did and I feel quite a bit better today.

OH! I forgot to put the little jack o lantern container in last night's post of the things I got.  I also forgot to mention I found a vintage "Barrel Of Monkeys" at one of the thrift stores.  This was a totally new one for us.  They were marked .99¢ but I got them for .40¢. Yay! They are from 1966. Pretty cool!

So, I didn't walk today either.  I woke up with a horrible headache.  The idea of going out in the cold and wet was not very appealing.  I decided to lay back down after eating breakfast and taking some Advil.  I actually napped on and off for several hours.  Luckily, when I got up, my headache was gone.  So glad for that!  I only ran out once this afternoon to hit a Pokestop so I wouldn't lose my streak.  I did that and came right back home. 

I spend the day not doing much. I watched some true crime shows on Prime and I watched Sunday's episode of The Simpsons.  I didn't even think about it yesterday!  I decided that updating my Mac would be a great idea tonight and started it and then I was stuck.  I had nothing to review for writing on NaNo tonight.  I just opened the old MacBook and opened Bean and wrote.  I got some of my writing done and then the update was done on the MacBook Pro.  I connected them over the network and transferred over what I had written.  I put it in Scrivener and finished my writing for the day.  After I type this out, I'm going to relax and read before bed.  I plan to walk tomorrow.  It's supposed to be overcast, but I don't think it's supposed to rain.  It's also double star day at Starbucks, so I might just go over there and do NaNo tomorrow night and write some pen pals letters.  We'll see how that goes!

Sorry about that short post yesterday.  I wasn't near the Mac and I posted with my phone.  I really didn't want to post a lot that way but I wanted to get my post in.  So, today I went for my usual walk and came back and cooled off.  I then went back out to walk to the post office!  I had a stack of pen pal letters.  My friend picked me up at the post office and I rode with him on an errand and then he dropped me home.  When I got home, my packages were here.  No, not the MBP. :(  I did get the pretty Fossil wallet, my 12 Fitbit bands, and my washi.  Everything is so pretty!  The Fossil wallet is perfect for my needs.  It holds everything I need and it takes up less space!

The bands are all so pretty.  I have tried on the lime green, the blue, and now I'm wear the hot pink one. LOL  I was able to store them in some roll up pencil cases I got on Amazon some time ago.  They are all nice quality.  The washi is gorgeous!  It's even prettier in person than it was on the site.  A bonus item?  Yes! One of the regular rolls had a slim roll with it. Yay!  I love this particular brand of washi. It's great quality and it's always pretty!  It was a good mail day.  Tomorrow, my MBP should be here.  I am so ready for it!  I'll do a whole post about it tomorrow, I'm sure!

I went on Amazon and looked at different bands for the Fitbit Charge 2.  I wanted some different colors, especially a blue color.  Well, I found a cool set of them that has 12 bands.  It has black, purple, pink, blue, lime, and more.  There are several different blue colors, two pinks, a red, a grey, a white.  They look pretty cool. They were less than $20 for the entire set.  I wanted to do the $25 order with free shipping, so I went to my wish list and tossed in some washi that was on my wish list.  It's the Molshine brand and they make great washi.  I will get all this for $15, because I have a ten dollar gift card. Yay!

My MBP is now in Kentucky.  It still says estimated delivery on Tuesday.  I hope it gets here before, but at this point, I'm just happy to know it's really on the way!  I also ordered a Fossil wallet on ebay last week.  It's used, but it still looks nice and it was really cheap.  I got it for less than 12 shipped!  The outside is rosy pink and the inside is colorful.  It's pretty.  I'll probably post it when I get it. :p  

I walked today and it was so much cooler than it has been and it was amazing.  It was overcast for part of my walk, but sunny for the rest.  It was so nice to walk when I wasn't dying. lol  I didn't even sweat too much.  I wish it could be like this everyday I walk.  Oh well, I'm sure it will get back to normal soon!  I came home and relaxed a bit before doing my workouts.  I did those and my French and then rested a while before having lunch.  I was hoping to get to the post office today.  My friend had said he'd come and try to fix my brakes today, but he didn't.  My other friend 'was busy' so she couldn't carry me to the post office.

Speaking of the post office, I'm SO behind on writing letters. I'm going to have to sit down tomorrow and write letters until my hand falls off. LOL  I'm so behind.   I wanted to go to the post office and get every letter there and then get all my letters caugh up at the same time.  Maybe I'll get there tomorrow.

Here is the picture of the bands:

So, I'm still frustrated about the Fitbit situation.  Then, tonight, I went to do something on the Macbook and Chrome said it wouldn't be updating anymore unless I updated the Mac to a later version of OS X.  Well, when I had that issued the other year, I didn't fully upgrade to where I was before.  I just finished upgrading and then I had to re-download and re-install Chrome just so I could post this!  :P

I am talking to Fitbit support about the Fitbit issues.  I'm working on the Macbook more after posting this.  I want to see if there is anything else that needs updating while I'm at it.  It took almost two hours just to do the first update. Sheesh!

So, I pulled the zero key off my Macbook today and cleaned under it.  It still doesn't work.  If I had some compressed air, I'd try that, but I don't have any at the moment.  I will just continue to use my Mac without the zero key.  If I need it, I have the onscreen keyboard I can pull up or I can use my bluetooth keyboard.

I got my workouts in today and then ran to the recycle center.  My car did okay.  It actually started right up too!  I got my recycling done and headed home.  I fixed lunch and then did a few things I needed to do.  I mowed my front lawn.  Now my entire yard is done.  It was really hot out there.  I was glad to get  it finished.  I wrote pen pal letters and drove my car yet again.  It did okay this time too.  I shouldn't have driven it twice today, but I wanted to get my letters mailed and I really wanted to check my box!  I had four new letters, a postcard from a pen pal, a envelope with two post cards from another pal, and some junk mail. It was great to have letters.  I will get those written in a few days.  

I finally got my printer re-connected to my Macbook.  I had some issues with it for a while and it wouldn't work at all.  I had to transfer everything to my Windows laptop to print. I got that fixed today after some work.  I'm glad I got that done.  It's much better to be able to print off of all my computer.  Now if I could just get my Linux laptop to print!

By the way, getting the key back on the Mac was interesting!  The key itself was easy, but there is a little scissor like contraption under it.  That was the hard part.  I got it back together and if I get some compressed air, I won't have to pull up that part. At least I hope not. lol  It was getting ridiculous and then I just pulled up another key and looked to see how the little scissor thing was under that one. That did the trick.  Sometimes it's fun being a geek and sometimes it's just frustrating! :)

In case you wanted to see it, here is a picture of all the mail in my post office box:

I made it to Starbucks tonight.  My messenger bag got out again. :) I got there a bit before 5 and stayed until about 7.  I would have stayed longer, but I was done with my letters and it was a bit cold in there.  I wrote four letters.  Three 'old' pals and one brand new one.  I got the delicious Cascara latte.  Yum!  I also checked in on my Pokemon Go app while there.  The Starbucks is now a Pokestop! :)

After Starbucks, I headed to Home Depot.  I needed to get a quart of paint.  Last night around 11:45, I got it in my head to move my room around.  The way I fixed things, I needed to touch up my nightstand and I also needed to paint the back of it.  The back shows in my new room arrangement so I wanted to paint it to match the rest.  Plus there were places on it that needed touch ups. I had run out of the paint some time ago, but I remembered the name and the brand.  I got Glidden Violet Shimmer paint.  I painted the back of the nightstand and did the touch-ups.  It looks great! I'm happy to have another can of it as I have a trunk in my room, two little 'tables' and a rocking chair on my front porch with this color.  All need touch-ups.  I'll do that tomorrow.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to get a parking spot at the post office so I can mail my letters and see if I have any new ones.  Wish me luck!  

I got in my walk today although I was really not feeling it.  I wanted to turn around and come back home and go back to bed!  Luckily, I kept walking and got through my walk.  It wasn't so bad.  I just was being lazy at first.  I didn't go by the post office as I knew there would be no mail for me today.  Also, I had nothing to mail.  

I didn't stop anywhere else either.  I just finished my walk and came home.  Luckily, it was a bit warmer today and it wasn't windy.  That was a nice change from yesterday!  I did my workouts.  It was leg day on the calendar.  After doing those, I ate my lunch and I've been sitting in front of the computer ever since.  I really need to get up and get some things done, but I'm in total lazy mode!  I don't want to do anything.  I wouldn't mind going out for a ride, but I'm afraid my car will act up.  I don't want to get stuck somewhere or have the car blow up! :p

I need to do a few things in the yard, but like I said, I don't want to move.  I need an ejector seat on my computer chair! Okay, let me go and try to get a few things done.  That way, the time will pass quicker and it will be time for dinner. YAY!

So, guess who missed her walk completely today? Yes, that would be me!  I called my friend and we ended up going to Aunt Millies for pizza. ^^;  Afterwards, we dropped her mom and son off and the two of us headed to Greensboro, N.C.  My MacBook's trackpad was stuck on left click and I couldn't even use the wireless mouse attached to the laptop!  The battery was bulging out the back too!  Yikes!  I had no appointment at the Genius bar at Apple, but we went over there on the chance that they could fit me in or help me.

Luckily, they had an appointment.  It was an almost two hour wait, but my computer works again!  The new battery fixed the trackpad issue.  I was so relieved.  I love my little MacBook.  It's six years old in July.  I'm actually typing this post up on it now!  After the computer was fixed, it was time for dinner, so my friend and I went to P.F. Changs.  YUMMY!  I had chicken lo mein and she had a tofu dish.  Both were delicious!  We headed back to town.  I went in her house for just a few moments and then headed here.  I did my workouts (Stretches today) and now I'm typing this.  After I finish, I plan to go take a quick bath and wash my hair.  It needs it badly!  I was going to do that first and then post, but I was afraid I'd forget to post!  So, that was my day.  It was long, I didn't get to walk, but my computer is fixed. ^___^

I have been having a rather crappy day. I got in my walk as usual.  Afterwards, I felt horrible.  I usually don't feel that bad when I get home.  I decided instead of doing some of my workouts right away, I'd relax a bit.  I did that and then did my workouts.  There were six on today's calendar!  It was tough to get through them since I already felt bleh, but I did them. I felt better for doing them.

I took a hot bath because I still ache from bringing home groceries the other day.  After that, I decided to turn on the 'new' laptop and post to Wordpress and do a few other things.  It was acting up last night, so I worked around it and got it going. Today, it didn't want to cooperate with me. It keeps telling me my battery is critically low even when I take the battery out and only try to boot if via the power cord.  I finally got it to boot.  It says the battery is a whole 10%.  I decided while I had it booted, I would install any updates.  I am hoping there is some glitch that the updates will fix.  If not, I'm going to be upset.  I haven't had this guy very long and I really enjoy using him.  As of now, the updates are still installing and the battery still says 10%.  Keep in mind when it was acting up last night I only had 8%.  Maybe it's charging without saying it is.  I have no clue.  This is why I switched to Mac all those years ago! lol  I'm actually posting this on my Macbook while I'm running updates on the Lenovo.

Okay, I've talked fitness and geek.  It's time to take a break and relax.  I have a killer headache from the stress of the computer issues and feeling cruddy on today's walk.  I think the reason I felt so bad on my walk, is that I was still sore and it was a lot warmer today than it has been being.  It actually was in the 80's today! I'm so glad that tomorrow is the 'rest day' on Cassey's calendars. :)  I will enjoy that.  I will just have to tell myself when I get up that I WILL take my walk and I won't skip it. I'm going to try to make it through November without missing any walks.