Thursday 24 May 2007

[Updated Monday] Today we went shopping! i've been here almost a week and haven't been to Staple's, Office Max or Depot yet! We get to Staple's and i find the calligraphy felt-tip markers that i've been looking for at Walgreens and Wal-Mart so i can write in Dad's new bible...which he bought with several years worth of gift certificates from me! They understandably find that amusing. I also found some xmas super-sticky post-its for 50¢ and some spring holders for pop-up post-its also 50¢. Come to think of it, the last pop-up post-it dispensers i bought were here in port st. lucie too, last year!

We had lunch in a Checker's, a cheap hamburger restaurant chain called Rally's back in Ohio, then go to Wal-Mart again, where i pick up a cheap tiny VGA camera for $30, a suprema keychain digital camera, intended for pre-teens, because, even tho an hour before leaving Hillsboro i went to the store to get AA batteries for my 3.3 megapixel camera, when i got on the bus i realised i had the batteries in my backpack but had forgotten the camera! At the family graduation dinner last sunday, my brother had confessed the exactly opposite thing: he had put his camera battery in the charger and then left home with the camera but without the battery.

I took the car while m&d went to bible study at their church, and went to the store where i bought those pop-up post-it dispensers last year, a K-mart that has Sears' name on it, called a Sears Essentials. I looked around at the shops but didn't buy anything (to quote the moody blues). actually i sat down on a bench and figured out how to use the tiny camera. i took a few pictures of the Sears Essentials with palm trees in front just to see how it would do. Then i went farther down the street to Goodwill and Walgreens but didn't buy anything there either. I get back to the church in plenty of time to meet Mom & Dad but while i'm waiting i get a good look for a long time at one of the ospreys that they know nests in the woods behind the church.

Back at home, I'm having a problem. even tho it was cheap, even tho it was intended for pre-teens, i can't get the software for the tiny camera to install on my laptop! it requires the software to access the pics. i try for a couple of hours, installing, uninstalling, reinstalling, rebooting...nada. i have to face the fact i'm not as smart as a kid when it comes to computers and i give up.

In the evening, I watched the current CSI (repeat) with Dad. I had called my mother from the bus to have her record season finales of Medium and CSI, and she just recorded them on her everyday video tape that she records her soaps (the And Soaps: Y&R and B&B). Unfortunately i think she recorded Medium on Wensday, then rewound the tape, recorded her soaps on Thursday and set it to record CSI...and taped over Medium, probably my favorite show on for the last 3 seasons. So i watched the season finale of CSI on tape late-night, then i went to my bedroom and worked on my computer for a while. All of a sudden i recalled that whole episodes of some tv shows were available over the internet, and a trip to nbc.com showed i could watch the finale online! this streaming video probably works great with a cable connection, but with m&d's dsl connection i found it could not download fast enough to keep up. to be precise, i could watch 20 seconds of tv show, then the picture would freeze for about 15 seconds to download the next batch. an hour-long tv show without commercials would be what, about 49 minutes? it took an hour and 20 minutes to watch! but i got to see the finale, which was good enough until i get the entire season on dvd. so i'm watching a tv show on my computer in my bedroom, and at 4a dad knocks on the door and tells me it woke him up! Busted!