Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Ooh, Boys! It's Hot!

Yes. That title is a tribute to my Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Don't
tell me you've forgotten my affinity for those good ol' Missouri boys.
Go find yourself a copy of this song and have a listen. It's from
their double live album: It's Alive. DUH. I told you it was live.
OK, so I'm pretty sure none of you have it on VINYL like I do
(pardon my bragging), but I'm sure you can hear a snippet on
Amazon or some illegal music site that will give you spyware.
Check it out! Don't cost nothin'.

Grab a cold beer and sing along:

I feel refreshed already. On our daily trip to town so I don't go
stir-crazy, we bought some scratch-off lottery tickets. I know,
another big surprise, huh? My lucky little #2 son won $50. I
need to encase him in something shiny and mount him on a
keychain. Except I'm pretty sure there are laws against that
kind of thing. We cashed in $35 worth of winning tickets, and
we totalled winnings of $96 today. Yeah. We had way more
than our share of winners.
I have spent the afternoon getting some things together for school.
Thank the Gummi Mary that we don't start as early as those poor
summerless children in Redneck Diva's part of the world. My kids
go back August 17. I have to return on the 14th. Don't think you're
gonna rob my Mansion. I still have two dogs left!
I've been printing the GLEs that I will need this year. That's Grade
Level Expectations in Missouri teacher-speak. I needed Math and
Communication Arts. I know they have them at school, but I need
to look at them NOW and not search two buildings for them. Yes,
I'm sure Mabel would have hers ready to loan me, but that's only
Math. I printed about 200 pages of junk (excuse me, educational
materials) and almost overheated my trusty HP LaserJet 5L that
has been my faithful companion for nigh on 10 years now. It cost
me $500 brand new. I've never had a problem with it. Until today,
when it sucked a stack of about 30 pieces of paper through at
once. Then the next page came out blank.
I called my 11-year-old techie to fix it. He wheeled in from playing
Scrabble on his computer, refusing to leave his blue office chair
that his grandma gave him for Christmas. Yeah. Another surprise
there, huh? We opened it up and took out the cartridge. Then we
couldn't get it back in. It has always been a bit tricky. After several
tries and some wiggling, it went back in. Still, it printed a blank page.
Then my little genius started going through the printer command
junk, and saw that I'd tried to delete the last print command. Every
time I tried to print that page again, it came up blank. I don't know
how he fixed it, but he did. Duh! I have done the same thing at
school. It is always with jobs waiting for the printer, and I think
I've gotten rid of them, but I'm not telling the computer the right
way. I'm much better with the chalkboard and an eraser.
I need to clean up my office so I can acutually work in it. Maybe
I'll show you before and after photos. Maybe not.

9 comments:

Rebecca said...

Hi Hillbilly Mom,
Don't forget you also have your winnings from Big Blogger to collect too.
HooRoo
Rebecca

LanternLight said...

my trusty HP LaserJet 5L that
has been my faithful companion for nigh on 10 years now.


HP printers kick ass.

I was discussing how reliable old HPs were, this very day with a work acquaintance.

It's about the only thing HP did well. Now that Princess Carly has scr*wed the company, I don't know what printers to buy.

Chickadee said...

Gosh, the middle of August seems to be early to be returning to school, but I suppose that it's not.

Your boy there sounds pretty smart...he might grow up to be a computer whiz. It's nice having a computer savvy person in the house...except when stuff goes wrong.

We have all this high tech stuff in our house, which is nice, but stuff goes wrong, nothing works in our house. It's a little more complicated than it needs to be.

http://www.danno.org/blogs

Queen Of Cheese said...

Mr.Coach reports back to duty on Monday! Think I could call his Superintendent and tell her he can't come back UNTIL he at least starts the "list" of summer chores he's been putting off?

Redneck Diva said...

Okay, so I may not have the OMDD on vinyl, but I do have Barry Mannilow, The Carpenters, Tennessee Ernie Ford and John Denver, so I can compete.

My poor summerless children... One week from tonight we will visit the school for Open House and then send them to bed before the sun goes down....poor, poor children.

Hillbilly Mom said...

Bec,
I didn't forget. I sent you an email last night.

Lantern,
You are OH SO RIGHT about those HP printers. I've got a little HP psc 1210v all-in-one thingy that I got for $79 at Wal*Mart, too. I'm not so crazy about this one as I am about the LaserJet 5L, but it gets the job done. I got it mainly to print and copy in color. HH broke it the first month I had it by jamming it and pulling out the paper. He broke a spring or some such thing, and unless I baby it and hand-feed the paper one sheet at a time, it tends to jam up. I mainly use it for single copies, so it's not too much of a problem. For the price, I might as well get another one and take the broken one to school.

Mrs.,
I don't think that plan will work. At least I have one more week off.

Diva,
Those poor, poor children. I hate beginnings. After a week we'll be in the swing of things.

Did you know that John Denver was the downfall of country music? I saw an old clip from some Country Music Awards show, and Charlie Rich, the Silver Fox himself, was reading the winner of Best New Artist or some such thing. The winner was John Denver, and ol' Charlie took out his lighter and burned the card with JD's name on it. Such drama! They felt JD was singing pop, not country, and was taking their awards and fans away from them. That now concludes our Country Music Minute.

Hillbilly Mom said...

Chick,
Oops! I missed you for a minute. My boy is a miracle worker with electronic gadgets. He fixed the satellite receiver so we could videotape, which HH had not been able to do after 2 years of trying. He is always coming up with something new. My mom and her old lady friends call him all the time for computer help. I need to put him to work on my little HP printer.

Redneck Diva said...

Wow, I did not know that! The JD records I have sure don't sound like pop. In fact, tonight I had one going in the kitchen and Mr. Diva said, "Turn that warbling hillbilly off!" So if he thinks he sounds country-ish, then country he must be!

At least you know important, obscure country music facts - that makes up for your lack of typing skillz.

Hillbilly Mom said...

Diva,
I like that Grandma's Feather Bed song. I think what those country singers didn't like was how the newer singers fancied things up. The OLD country didn't even use drums. Then my Dolly left Porter Wagoner and got herself a pop record producer for her Here You Come Again album that made her waaaaay famous, and folks were bitter back in Nashville. They thought the singers who 'crossed over' to the pop charts would lose their country fans, and country music would suffer.