Saying goodbye once more...

I thought I'd said my goodbyes already.
When the Deseret News gave my husband and I the dreaded blue folders on the same day nearly 10 years ago, that was a hard goodbye.
It was unexpected on my part because I'd been at the newspaper for 17 years and I was comfortable in my position. (Marc had been there fewer years.)
In retrospect, we can see where the newspaper was trying to deal with shifting sands as the Internet took advertising and readers before the traditional news media could adjust.
We are all right but it's difficult to watch an industry die.
Then I was allowed to work until the end of the year and keep using my Deseret News email address and work as a freelancer after that.
I told myself to count my blessings. I had my health, my husband, my severance and the opportunity to write a little without commuting into Salt Lake.
I kept merrily on until last Tuesday.
For some reason, my gmail account wouldn't work with me. I got messages informing me that the account had been disabled.
I figured it was some kind of glitch that makes trouble whenever there's an update. (I have a love/hate relationship with updates!)
I contacted the systems person who had helped me in the past when something technical blocked my way.
He said the account had been shut off and headed me to the fellow responsible.
I'm apparently having to say goodbye once again.
I have a month to let everybody I've worked with over the past 40 years know my email address is now gone.
I'm no longer: haddoc@deseretnews.com.
I'm: haddocklady@gmail.com.
The good news is that I can use my whole last name: haddock with a "k."
The bad news is that it's like changing out a credit card...How do you know who needs to know? How do you head off the contacts who won't know where you have gone or why you are not answering an urgent email?
I'm strangely sad.
This brings back all the loss and frustration I felt when I was originally let go.
I feel like less of a person.
I hate change.
Welcome to my brave, new world!

A game of scam

We've been waiting since October for a game of Empire Monopoly for one of our granddaughters.
We own a game of it. We play it regularly with the kids and it has a lot of pluses.
It's fairly short. There are no hotels to buy and thus fairly little heartbreak.
The players can see what they have as they build up their properties in a stack.
When the stack reaches the top, the owner of the stack wins.
It's tangible.
We play it often and we introduced it to grandkids in Tremonton.
We wanted one for the family there, one granddaughter in particular.
The first sign of trouble was when the mom pulled it up on her phone to discover it was selling for $85. (We'd paid $15 for ours at Target.)
I was sure we could find it again for about that same amount so we started looking.
Nobody had it.
We started looking online.
No luck.
Then Marc found it. It was about $25 but by then we were ready to pay a bit more.
He ordered it and we started waiting.
It didn't come.
We complained.
The company said, "Oh, it has to clear customs. Be patient."
We waited some more.
We got the same message again and again.
The child's birthday came and went. Christmas came and went.
We swapped out a smaller, different game for the one she wanted.
We started getting ticked.
Now it's the end of January and apparently our game is still held up in customs because you know that foreign paper pretend money can be a problem.
I'm suspecting a scam, verified by the many other customer complaints Marc found on the website.
Nobody's order has cleared customs. Nobody is getting satisfaction.
Our granddaughter is losing confidence in us.
We suspect foul play. We believe we may have been hornswaggled!
I'm thinking we have all been playing a different game than we planned.
P.S. The name of the company is South Adventure, not accredited by the Better Business Bureau

Don't you dare resist!

We weren't going to cut in line.
We already knew we couldn't before anyone hollered at us.
We just wanted to see if we could get a glimpse of the new "Rise of the Resistance" ride at Disneyland.
It was about 9 p.m. and we had been at Disneyland for two days.
(Our granddaughter Emma was playing violin with the Harmony Suzuki Strings group and we had the tough duty of flying down to Anaheim to see her!) ((They were magnificent, by the way!))
The performance just happened to coincide with two big events for Anaheim, the convention for the National Association of Music Merchants and the opening of the new Star Wars ride.
That meant lots of traffic and a ton of people.
We didn't really have a lot of hope for getting to try out the new ride but we were surprised the passes were all gone within literally minutes.
The park opened at 8 a.m. and by 8:03, everything was swooped up.
The people who came at 3 in the morning to stand in line didn't get any.
The people who camped out didn't get any.
Disney tried out a new virtual queue app that kind of negated the old style of doing things which is good and bad.
The good news is no one has to do that stuff anymore.
The bad news is you literally have to be inside the park the minute it opens and have your passes and everybody in your group there!
That's not easy on a regular day and impossible when a convention like NAMM is in town. (The bus drivers and waiters all warned us that Jan. 17-19 would be a nightmare.)
So Marc and I didn't expect to get in.
We just wanted to walk by and share the vibe.
We had been to Galaxy's Edge early on Thursday and ridden on Smuggler's Run, even tried Blue Milk in the Cantina.
So now we were getting ready to pack it in but Marc wanted to be where the action was.
We got on the little funny train and rode over to the Star Wars area.
We walked along the path and tried to peek through the trees to see something alien and cool.
When we came across the lines of Star Wars fans, we started dodging strollers and such.
Apparently we stepped in front of the line because immediately there were alarms sounded.
The Disney line guards waved us back. The people who had waited hours shouted.
"Hey, OK! We don't mean to be here," we explained. "We're sorry."
I think hostile folks make up the Resistance.

Burn it down...

Nothing says Merry Christmas like a burnt carpet.

We have been so happy with our decision to buy a length of electrical cord with 10 sockets for 10 Christmas bulbs to light our Christmas village.
For years I struggled flat on my stomach to wrestle with fitting multiple cords under the tree from tiny house to tiny house.
I wanted each of my 10 houses lit up so the scene would look all cozy on the fake snow.
It was worth it to me to struggle and sweat as I snuck the cords under the big piece of sparkly white fabric, past the railroad track, up to the center of the tree stand and over to the outlet.
Over the years I had marked holes in the fabric so the houses loosely sat in places that put the houses in the "residential" district, businesses like the bakery, school and post office near the show house and the candy station on the corner so the train could easily make a stop for the tiny bears to get a treat.
Last year, we noticed a Modern Display outlet in Sandy, much closer for us than the one up on Highland Drive.
We tried to buy a length of cord to use to connect the houses on one cord.
Alas, we bought the wrong one with sockets for bigger lights than we used.
We returned this year determined to get it right, with the right lists in hand.
We were so proud or ourselves and spent only $10 dollars. All we had to do was count our bulbs and cut the right length of cord.
It's been fine.
The little village structures have cast soft lights on the snow and the villagers from under the tree and snow for weeks now.
Yesterday I decided, though, it was time to clear out Christmas.
I packed up all my little houses, including the little church, the nativity, the bridge over the fake ice pond.
That's when I noticed a melted socket and a funny brown spot on the snowy fabric.
On further inspection, I noticed two brown spots, one not as big but still odd. One light had flared. Another had gunky black stringly stuff all melted on it.
I pulled back the fabric.
Gasp! There was a much bigger, deeper, blacker hole in the carpet beneath the "snow." The light was crusted with crispy, black, burned carpet fibers.
The light was covered in a lacy, black web of burnt, crispy rug.
The cord further from the light was black and purple.
Obviously something had been too hot and too close for a dangerously long amount of time.
I'm not sure who is at fault here, probably us for putting too many lights on a cord not designed for combat duty.
I'm going to have a conversation with Modern Display.
And three things need to happen; No more using the new cord with the fried lights, put the couch over the burn hole and thank God that our house didn't burn to the ground!!!

Merry Merry

My new nativity and Marc's Christmas - just kidding, his real Christmas is the big Lego.

A very Precious Nativity

I have a growing collection of beautiful and remarkable Nativities.
I have one of snowmen, one of Charlie Brown figures, one plaster Mary, Joseph and Mary that Marc hand-carried home from Spain, one carved into a porcelain egg, two created by Jim Shore, one that's just the stable animals looking curiously at the Baby Jesus, nesting dolls, a glass set, one made of popsicle sticks, two Mexican sets and one carved into an acorn.
I love them all and enjoy unwrapping them each year and setting them up with care, remembering where I found them and what each one means.
But one stands out and not just because it was the first.
But because it was purchased over four years at a time when we had very little money for extras.
Then, Marc and I had a busy, full, house with a dozen kids headed in every direction. We had a limited income and many demands on our tiny Christmas budget.
It was rare to have a spare $10.
My husband bought the components for my Precious Moments nativity when he could save up the $50 for each year's addition in spare change.
The little set is a miniature Precious Moments Nativity with a Baby Jesus and a Mary and a Joseph and eventually, three Kings on their camels, an angel holding a star on a wall, a drummer boy, shepherds and tiny sheep. (One is a little gray one.)
It was truly a gift of love.
Marc knew I enjoyed these.
He's been dragged to more than a few Creche collections over the years.
He helps me guard my collection from little children and guide their little fingers to the more kid-friendly Nativity sets I have of plastic and fabric.
I'm thinking he's precious too.

The Round Tower

At first glance, the Round Tower in the park at Newport in Rhode Island looked like just that, a round tower of stones.
Nothing extraordinary and in fact, I wondered why the bus had stopped here in this park to let us out to look at it.
(We were just starting a tour of sites that included places where the prophet and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had lived and worked.)
I gazed at the structure and tried to make sense of it in my mind when a middle-aged, slightly greying man rushed up to us. He was out of breath and clearly excited.
"I'm so glad to see you all here. Let me tell you a few things about this place," he said. "I own the museum across the street and I have studied this tower for years. There's some incredible things to know about this."
He went on to point out the skylights and slit windows that allowed the sunlight and moonlight to come in at very specific angles during the equinox, the solstice and multiple astronomic times in the year.
Also known as the Touro Tower,  the Newport Stone Templar Tower and the Old Stone Mill, many considered it the remains of an old windmill at Truro Park.
It originally consisted of three stories of stone but was used as a munitions storage place during the American Revolution and lost the third story when it was blown up.
We were to hear about the archeoastronomy of the tower from our tour leader but this guy obviously knew tons more about it than our leader did.
His name is James Alan Eagan, he is curator of the museum and the author of several books about what he believes is one of America's oldest and most interesting secrets.
He showed us the patterns and the hidden secrets of the tower which he maintains is a horologium and camera obscura designed by John Dee in colonial America. (The website tells all about him and the tower: http://newporttowermuseum.com)
He explained how the whole thing was actually a standing camera and an astronomer's tool.
His museum was fascinating as well, a cubbyhole full of scientific tidbits that made us feel like we were kids in a candy store.
It's a lesson in never assuming anything is just what it appears to be.