Rooted in Mississippi

This weekend was my 25th high school reunion. I was amazed at how much some people changed, while others seemed to have hardly aged a day or were clearly recognizable.  I am very glad that I went, and hopefully I will be much more relaxed the next time we all meet.

My friend Paige and I actually went for a drink before the party to calm my nerves. I swear my hands were shaking at the event on Friday night. Thank goodness she drove us both, or I might have chickened out along the way.  I was a mess and a huge bundle of nerves, I can only imagine what nonsense spewed from my mouth.

The next day, after visiting with my mom, I spent some quality time with my favorite high school teacher and convinced him to come along with me to the big reunion on campus. I was much more at ease on Saturday. My only real regret is that I missed seeing several friends who did not attend. Maybe in another five years!

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Most of these are from today, when we introduced two new dog toys into the mix.  My favorite photos are the first two; where Princess is looking on while Rudy slays the dragon, followed by a photo of Roscoe with his lamb, looking back longingly at the action. Princess plays with the toys too, but not to make them squeak.  She picks them up, then does her best imitation of a bucking bronco, followed by a vicious head shake.  One day I will catch her in action when I have the camera easily accessible.

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Don’t you hate it when you wake up in the wee hours of the morning after having a bad dream and your head is filled with specific concrete images and/or dialogue? I must be feeling more stress than I realized about my upcoming high school reunion!  It will be the first time in twenty-five years that I have seen most of my classmates.

On the positive side, I am almost finished with this issue of CQMagOnline and I found a home for the panties from the previous post!  Woot, woot!

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There is a chain of salvage stores in Mississippi called Hudson’s. Well, depending on which Hudson owns the store, it might be called Hudson’s Salvage, Hudson’s Treasure Hunt, or Dirt Cheap. They buy their stock mostly from insurance companies or other third parties, often after bankruptcy or corporate reorganization.  When I first moved to Mississippi, I really missed the shopping in Atlanta.  One day, I was traveling on the coast and saw a sign, “Macy’s stock now 70% off.” I wheeled in and had my first Hudson’s experience.

Hudson’s is very hit or miss.  If you do not like to search for your size or look over every garment for imperfections, this is not the store for you.  If you like bargains, it can be nirvana. I have gotten dance shoes, cocktail dresses, furniture, and even high end cookware there.  Right now, they have stock from Target, Tuesday Morning, and the Home Shopping Network among others. The problem is, you really have to look over what you buy.  They try to cut out tags, or at least mark through them with a laundry marker, so that no one will buy something there and try to return it to another store.

Anyway, I found some wrap tops that were perfect for belly dance at the store in Pearl.  Then, as I was walking out, I spotted some cute underpants.  The packaging had been torn and the brand Xhilaration marked out, but the tags and hangar said medium and they were in perfect condition, so I bought them.  As with virtually anything I buy at Hudson’s, I tossed them into the washer immediately.  When they came out of the dryer, I realized my critical mistake…they were a Children’s size M!  Only me, right?

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I am a firm believer in backing up your data regularly.  OK, so I was a professional geek for many years and we used elaborate, redundant tape back-up systems for all of our servers, but I have grown more concerned about my personal data.  You should too, because we all have amassed data, especially photos, we would hate to lose.

I have an older external hard drive that I use with my ancient Tablet PC.  It works, but when we were out shopping yesterday I found a very cool little portable drive at an amazing price.  It is physically much smaller than my old external drive, even though it holds a lot more data!  The really cool part is that moves data faster, even with encryption. All for considerably less than $100 on sale.

Today, we were at Office Depot and my husband picked up one that holds a terabyte of data for not much more than we paid for mine.  Which leads me to the moral of this story.  Now that the cost of external hard drives has come down, and they are so easy to install (literally you just plug them in), you really should consider taking out a little insurance policy against losing your data!

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Well, I did it. Today I finalized my registration for Seminar. Ironically, I changed both of the classes for which I pre-registered.  I am really looking forward to my classes.  When I changed my selections, I focused on techniques instead of projects, which I know will help me grow as an artist.

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