Monthly Archives: March 2005

This is a fairly significant entertainment purchase for me dollarwise, but as my promotion gift to myself, I purchased the complete Star Trek Classic Series, which arrived today!

One thing that convinced me to purchase was the cool plastic vacuformed packaging, totally in the 60s style of the show, cleverly with season 3 being red, since it was the “redshirt” season when it was killed off…but I have to say I have never had any single purchase come with so much shrink wrap! Each season has a cardboard sleeve surrounding 8 jewel boxes, so of course that is shrinkwrapped inside the cool plastic case, which is also shrinkwrapped, then all three cases are in a low cardboard shelf case so the entire package is shrinkwrapped AGAIN! Is that really necessary?

Now, since I have all these episodes memorized anyway, will I ever watch them? claims he’s been negligent in his Classic Trek education, so it seems Starship School might soon be in session for him… 😉

(FYI, the Amazon.com price is excellent, but Costco.com has free S&H this week only, so you’ll only pay $239.99 + tax, which is about $7 less than Amazon for me. I had been looking since Christmas at my local Costcos but have never seen them in stock again, so I took advantage of the free S&H off this week…but if you have other Costco DVD items you’d like, this is the week to avoid the store crowds…)

How weird that my company and Apple are so close to the same price today! Granted this is post-split for Apple…

EQIX $42.92
AAPL $42.80

Boy I’d much rather be outside right now…so nice & sunny today…

I often think that my work on my parties and the website work documenting them are a frivolous indulgence, of entertainment value to me and maybe some others, but not much use in the grand scheme of things. I mean, of course they’re not rocket science or brain surgery! If I’m feeling down about my life in general as I have been lately, I wonder if I should try to apply myself to more “valuable” pursuits to help make the world a better place, but then again, someone could be having a rough enough time in their own lives that the small spot of joy and distraction I can bring might really help them, so then I think that bringing enjoyment to people’s lives is not always as frivolous as it might seem.

Why am I saying this now? Well, this was brought home again to me last night in an email I received from another complete stranger. This woman from Tennessee told me “I wanted to thank you so much for your very helpful and fun website. There has been lots of death and illness in my family in the past couple of years so for Halloween I volunteered to host the marching band’s party in an effort to cheer my daughter up. If not for your site I would’ve been completely lost.”

After sharing some of her decorations inspired by my website, she went on to say “It just really turned out great and I have you to thank. Of all the websites yours was definitely the most helpful…Needless to say I’ll be checking back in for the 2004 pics and recipes this time! Anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

That I could be some inspiration to help cheer her daughter up after their family has had such a hard time lately really does make me feel like this is something worthwhile. Since I’ve heard such copious thanks from Brazil and Tennessee just in the past month, and from South Africa, Australia and the UK before, too, maybe I have more of a positive and far-reaching effect on others than I thought.

Yes, I realize my last post was about my weight, and I do try not to have my world hinge on my appearance, but hey, if it makes me feel better, I’m celebrating anything & everything these days, so there! 😛

My mom & I went shopping at Sam’s Club today, where I saw some cute short skirts so I grabbed one in tan for variety. I held up a size 10 (which I’m already very pleased I finally fit back into again routinely after about 8 years of not being able to!) but it amazingly looked a little big, so I tried it on OVER my jeans and it WAS too big! This means a size EIGHT fits me, which is absolutely unheard of, even when I was 25 lbs lighter back in highschool! 😀

Anyway, it’s a nice feeling, so I wanted to share…I even wore my new skirt out to dinner tonight even though it was a little chilly…

Hope your weekends are going well. Today I have installed iWork on both my laptop and my mom’s, upgraded her iPhoto to the most recent, and installed Office 2004 for her, plus set her up so she’ll be able to dialup with my grandmother’s account using her own laptop when she’s up in Seattle in a few weeks…she still won’t give up her old original-style iMac so I can have it for a kitchen computer though…ah familial tech support…always at least one computer-related task when I visit… 😉

Hooray! As of this morning, I am back down to my lowest weight since 1997…this is the weight I finally hit just before Halloween, gaining a couple pounds back then, getting back down just before Thanksgiving, up 7 lbs again with Christmas indulgence, down again to the low after New Years, up again with Mardi Gras, and down again after the February vacation, creeping up again because of my cheesy comfort food at night after Lean Cuisine for lunches…

Now if I could just lose 15-20 more lbs…heh! Ah well…this is still better than it has been for the past few years…losing & keeping off 25 lbs in one year is an accomplishment to be proud of, I think…

Of course I’m celebrating by eating a company-provided cake donut for breakfast since I’m out of cheerios…heh! 😛