The Case of The Mystery Hats

Thursday began just like any other day in Library Land: patrons were in and out, staff was taking care of business.  Not too long into the morning one of our more regular patrons came in, and he asked if we were selling hats now.

Now, this gentleman I would place on the "normal to a bit of an odd duck" scale of patron behavior -- he's normally pretty laid back, he's got his eccentricities, but he is far, far away from our strangest patrons in terms of attitude and behavior.  

We had no idea what he was talking about, and we explained that we did not sell hats.  Why would we sell hats?  I cannot imagine a great number of people wanting to rock library merchandise on their heads.  Maybe if we were the Library of Congress, or the National Archives and someone had visited on vacation.  We sell reusable canvas book bags for $1.

Apparently someone had left 3 baseball hats on top of the garbage can outside the entrance to the library at some point after we had opened for the day.  No one on staff had realized this, but it explained why he was asking about hats.  I went outside to check the book return, and there they were: three baseball hats sitting in a neat line on top of the garbage can.  I left them right there.  I am not handling hats of unknown provenance.  Also, there was every possibility that someone in the building had left them there and was going to take them back after leaving the library.  People do weird shit at public libraries.  Seriously. 

He kept going on and on about the hats.  Did you get a free hat when you paid your fines?  Ha ha ha.  How big a fine did it have to be to get a free hat?  Ha ha ha.  He seemed to think repeating endless jokes about the hats was somehow going to make us find it hysterical.  

A couple of hours later I went to check the outdoor book return again, and discovered that there were only two hats left on the garbage can now.  

Holy crap!  Had the patron actually taken one of the mystery hats?  Why the hell would you want a mystery hat?  What if they belonged to another patron?  

By the end of the day the two mystery hats still sat there on the garbage can.  I took a picture, wondering how long it was going to take before they all magically disappeared.  I know how some of our patrons can act.  They slowly stole a bike, piece by piece.  When an office upstairs was doing renovations and had a garbage dumpster in the parking people shopped in that thing like it was a great new store.  There was no way those hats were going to be there for very long.

Hats from the garbage can!  While supplies last!

I work the late shift on Fridays, and I was worried I might miss all the fun of the mystery hats.  What if someone just threw them away?  (Slim to no chance, but it could happen.)  What if they were gone by the time I came in and I never knew how fast they disappeared?  It does not take much to amuse me, folks.

When I arrived at work I saw that the hats were still there, but someone had very neatly moved them from the top of the garbage can and they were now sitting on top of the book return.  Wait -- did someone actually empty the garbage can and keep the hats?  Nope.  Pretty sure that was our patron who scrounges for recyclable cans every morning.

I went on my dinner break a few hours later, and another hat had gone missing.  One lonely hat remained and, as if to add to his sad state, he had once again been moved back to sit atop the garbage can.

And then there was one...

Apparently we do not have a lot of golf afficionados as patrons, or else they are not cool with wearing other people's discarded mementos.  This hat was from a championship at a local golf course.  Poor, lonely hat!  How long will you have to sit there?

Not long, as it turned out.  By the time I came back from break the last hat was gone.  It only took about a day for three mystery hats of unknown origin to find new homes.  Unbelievable!

We have a lot of awesome patrons: they are kind, they like to share with others, and they donate a lot of things.  We get tons of donations for the library and its book sale.  We constantly have patrons trying to give us their old magazines.  We have had patrons bring us art work to see if we could sell it at the book sale.  Our knitting groups make hats, afghans, and lap blankets for the local veterans' hospital, homeless shelters, and other organizations, and patrons bring in items they have made at home to donate to the cause.  Our patrons rock!  

That being said....

REASONS NEVER TO TAKE ITEMS LEFT ON TOP OF A GARBAGE CAN AT THE LIBRARY

1. Common sense, people: you DO NOT know where these items came from.  They could have lice or bedbugs for starters.  Why would you want to risk it?  

2. They might belong to someone inside the library.  Most of our patrons are great, but we also have a fairly large number of patrons with various issues that might lead them to believe it is perfectly logical to leave their multiple hats on a garbage can outside.  Trust me when I say you do not want to piss these patrons off.

3. They may have actually been in the garbage can, along with god only knows what else, and someone removed them.  It happens more than you would think.  

4. They could be stolen property.  Seriously.  People have brought stolen bikes to the library, a purse they stole from someone at the mall, stolen phones, etc.  Do you really want to end up involved in a situation like that?

I think that should suffice on reasons why it is a bad idea to take mystery items left on a garbage can.

*To the kind folks who think they are being "helpful" by leaving such articles for others:  please don't do it here.  You know the library is not the proper place for that.  Take them to the Good Will or the Salvation Army.  Donate them to a homeless shelter of half-way house.  Leave them in front of your own home with a "free" sign -- you will be amazed at how quickly things disappear!*

Things I Learned While Hanging Out With My Niece and Nephew This Evening

My parents had "time off" from entertaining my niece and nephew this evening, so the kidlets got quality time with me.  My niece is 11 and my nephew is 6.  I do not have kids of my own, so I'm all about fun time.  As long as I return them safe and sound -- no broken bones and everyone is alive and breathing -- I feel I have done my job.

I learned a few things while hanging with the kidlets this evening:

1) My niece has some kind of secret voodoo powers when it comes to the Claw game.  You know the ones: outside movie theaters or in arcades, you drop in the money and you have a certain amount of time to maneuver the claw up and over to see if it can grab a toy and hang onto it long enough to drop it down the chute.  $1 later and she is now the proud owner of a  pinkish-purple and leopard print cow-bear-dog thing.  That takes skill, my friend.

2) My nephew is smart enough to realize that when there are large amounts of geese around there is also a large amount of goose poop in the area, and you should not roll down the hill in the park.  This will not, however, keep him from diving to try and stop his sister while running a race.  After landing with his hand in goose poop he will then run over to you, the adult-type person,  freaking out about it.  What makes him awesome is that after you squirt his hand down liberally with hand sanitizer and tell him to dry it off on the grass, he is good to go until he can get home to wash it.

3) My nephew will ask an endless amount of questions about mummies.  Are they real?  How do you make them? Why did the Egyptians do that?  He will be equal parts fascinated and disgusted when told about the brain being pulled out through the nose.  "Well, it's a good thing we didn't live back then, guys!  That's just gross!  Does anybody still do that?"

4) My niece can drink an entire medium-sized Oreo Cookie Vanilla Bean Coolata from Dunkin' Donuts in the 10 minutes it takes to drive from said establishment to my parents' house.  She can do this without getting brain freeze.  Upon arrival at the house she will then announce that her stomach is killing her, change into her pajamas, and proceed to fall asleep on the couch for an hour.

5) My nephew has decided it is his job to remove all bugs from the house-- a fly, a moth that somehow got in.  My mother has embraced this and got him his own fly swatter.  He will hunt down a moth, and then open the front door and declare, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way.  Which is it going to be?"  He will also randomly pop into the room with questions like, "Aunt Tammy, do Daddy Longlegs eat flies?  Because there is one on the porch, and I just scooched a fly over to him."

6) My nephew has apparently memorized the channel options at my parents' house, and will give advice on what you should watch.  "Wander Over Yonder is on, Aunt Tammy!  Or, we can watch Starz On Demand.  We already saw Frozen, but they have other good movies like Planes, Hotel Transylvania, Monsters University, and that one about the family with the mom who has super-stretchy powers."  I don't know what it says about my maturity level that I knew he meant The Incredibles without having to check the guide.

7) After sleeping for an hour, my niece will wake up and ask if she can have an Italian ice for dessert.  She will claim to have no memory of the entire conversation about how her stomach was killing her and the threat of puking.  I made her wait half an hour and then gave her one.  I figured if she hadn't hurled by then we were probably safe.  Go on and enjoy that sugar high, kid!  It's mostly water anyway, right?

8) My nephew loves the movie Hotel Transylvania.  A lot.  "This is the good part, Aunt Tammy!  Are you watching?"

9) Neither of them will go to bed without having the air conditioner on, even though it is only 66 degrees outside. Do not even try negotiating this point.

10) Neither of them wants you to read them a bedtime story.  They each have a tablet or Kindle, and they want to watch Netflix until they fall asleep.  Really?  My, times have changed!

Hershey Park aka Vacation Clusterf#*k

I'll begin with a quote from my 11 year old niece, from 11:30 last night as we were driving back home: 

 "They say it is the sweetest place on Earth, Aunt Tammy, not the happiest.  That's Disney World.  We should just go there from now on."

We were supposed to be in Hershey from Monday until today.  The first day was fine, really.  We arrived early, check-in at The Hershey Lodge was a breeze.  Our room smelled a bit stale and lemony, but it was clean.  My major pet peeve was with Hershey Park itself.  Now, maybe it is because I am from New York and expect people to do their job in a timely and efficient manner, even when I am on vacation, or I may just have a very low tolerance for bullshit in general, but Disney this was not.  We were only at the second ride for the kids to go on (My nephew is Hershey Bar height for the rides), and I was already getting irked.  The kids, and all of the other little ones waiting for the ride, sat there waiting in their cars for the ride to start for several minutes while 4 park employees -- presumably at least one of which should have been manning the ride -- stood around chatting before anyone even started to check to make sure the kids were buckled in safely.  The ride was full.  They weren't waiting to fill up seats.  On a few rides the kids were left to unlock themselves and get out.  WTF.  Not cool, Hershey.  A six year old should not have to figure out how to undo the ride mechanism to get out.

Hershey's Chocolate World, on the other hand, was incredibly busy but much more well organized.  They had someone there to meet you coming through the door.  He gave us a map, told us where the free ride was, explained all the things you could do there.  

Day two things started going much better. The gentleman doing the valet parking in front of Hershey Lodge told us, for the first time anywhere, that we could get a free bottle of water from him to take to Hershey Park with us, and he told us that the permanent concession stands in Hershey Park itself would had to give you free glasses of ice water if you asked.  No one had mentioned that the day before, either at the lodge or in the park.

We went to Hershey Gardens, and checked out the Children's Garden, the Butterfly House, and walked the other gardens for the morning.  The staff could not have been nicer, including the tram diver.  We got more information from her and the valet gentleman that morning than from anyone else during the trip!  The kids had a great time, did a scavenger hunt in the Children's Garden, and as a prize for finishing they each got to choose a full-size garden tool to bring home!  My nephew chose a red shovel "so he can dig up worms to go fishing", and my niece chose a purple hoe -- I think mostly because it was purple.

We had planned to go to the water park for the afternoon, but changed plans when we started seeing severe thunderstorm warnings.  My nephew does not like thunderstorms on a good day, so taking him to the far end of the park was not a good plan.  Instead we went back to the park and went on more rides.  My nephew cajoled my mother into going on the Coal Cracker log flume ride.  She didn't like it and said it was, "a roller coaster with water," and my nephew thought it was hysterical that he had gotten Grandma to go on the ride. 

It had been a long, hot day of walking so we headed back to the lodge to eat dinner.  We were almost done with dinner at The Bear's Den when the trouble started.  Thank goodness we were eating there, or we would have had no clue what was going down!  It's set up like a sports bar, so they had the main television showing the recap of Germany crushing Brazil in the World Cup.  All of a sudden it gets the alert on the big screen that there is a tornado warning for the area.  I know my mother and my niece saw it, but we told my nephew it was just a warning about a thunderstorm.

Shortly before 8pm, as we were trying to pay the bill for dinner, the power went out.  We got that sorted and headed back to the main lobby of the lodge.  Power seemed to be out to all parts of the lodge, and it was absolutely pouring outside.  Our phones were dead and charging in the room, so we couldn't check those.  Since our room had an entrance from outside we decided to wait in the lobby until it stopped raining quite so hard.  My nephew was getting nervous, but he was sitting down and being so good, and his sister was right there with him to take care of him.  

Did I mention there was some kind of giant dance competition taking place in the convention center of the lodge?  Oh yeah.  My niece said it looked like the tv show Dance Moms come to life.  We were sitting patiently, watching the lodge staff bugging out, running all over trying to deal with the power outage and guest questions, when a freaked out dance girl came running up to the group of people sitting next to us to ask very loudly, "Oh my God, is it a tornado?  My phone says we are in a tornado!" and started crying. Fucking perfect.  My poor little nephew didn't say anything, just got really tense and kept sitting on the floor.

A few minutes later a hotel staff member yells to everyone that there is a tornado, and we need to evacuate to the ballrooms on the convention side of the building.  My mother grabbed my nephew's hand, I took my niece.  That was pretty much the last direction anyone actually gave in what would quickly become a giant clusterfuck.

We head over the the convention area -- aka Dance Competition Central -- as we had no other alternative.  We followed the crowd through a room and down some stairs.  There is no hotel staff to be seen anywhere, telling anyone what to do.  We still weren't below ground anywhere, and there were windows all along one side of the building.  What the hell kind of evacuation plan was this shit?  A woman near us, also not with the dance competition, was commenting on what a bad idea it was.  Eventually we made it into one of the ballrooms labeled as a dressing room for some of the dance groups.  Another family of people from Massachusetts was right behind us, also trying to figure out what we were supposed to be doing.  We entered a room with different groups of freaked out, crying girls in dance outfits with a few adults trying to keep them calm.  We moved the kids away from the doors, toward the other wall, and out from beneath any chandeliers.  One staff member in a brown shirt, I don't know if he was convention staff or maintenance as I had never seen a staff member in this color shirt anywhere before, had a radio and told everyone to get into the ballroom.  My mother and the woman from Massachusetts closed all of the doors in case the windows in the hallway broke.

That would be when my little nephew lost it and started crying.  All of the kids were freaked out and crying.  I was trying to keep my niece -- who was being so brave and strong, and did not cry once  -- from getting freaked out.  I didn't find out until later that my nephew had asked my mother if we were all going to die.

After spending several minutes in this chaos, with no sign of a hotel employee of any kind, my mother opened  a door on the other side of the ballroom to try to find out what the hell was going on.  She found a man in a bright green t-shirt, I think it said he was from Alley Cats dance studio, who said they were just told to move further into the lodge to a more interior ballroom.  I grabbed the kids and we followed them.  We got to an interior, windowless ballroom.  There was a waiter there from one of the restaurants.  He had no information about what was going on, or how long we were supposed to be there-- he had been told to report to that area.

A short while later another lodge employee, in a brown shirt once again, came in and told us we could back to the lodge.  My mother asked what that meant -- was it safe, was the storm over, etc.  He said we had been at "F5" level, but it had gone down to "F4" now and it was okay to go back to the lobby.  My mother asked if that meant there had been a tornado.  The employee said yes, a tornado had been spotted and touched down, that was why they had evacuated.  The lady from Massachusetts, whose family had joined us in the evacuation fun time, asked if maybe they should wait until it was down to a safer level before telling everyone it was okay. The guy in the brown shirt explained, "I don't know ma'am.  I'm just telling you what I am hearing over my radio.  They are saying it is okay for people to return to the lobby."

Gentlemen in brown shirts -- I don't know what part of the staff you make up at Hershey Lodge, but you are rock stars!  You were the only ones around for most of the chaos trying to help people, and you were the only ones with any kind of information.  Job well done!  You were professional and calm in the face of a lot of freaked out people and kids.  Kudos to you!

It was only when we had walked halfway back up and over to the lobby, in a stream of hundreds of other people, that my nephew asked to stop and fix his shoes.  He had taken them off when we were sitting in the lobby before being told to evacuate, and he had been hurrying so much and so scared he had put his Crocs on the wrong feet.  He had kept them on that way the entire time, never saying a word about it because he had been so freaked out.

We went back to the lobby to wait, since the power was still out.  A teenage guy from Montauk came over and sat with us for a bit.  He asked if we knew what was going on, had there been a tornado, etc.  We told him what we knew.  His friend's sister was in the dance competitions, so he had come with his friend to go to the park for the weekend and they didn't know what was going on.  

Lodge staff was running around like crazy.  Guests finally took it upon themselves to open the doors to the patio area since it was getting really hot in the lobby and the air conditioning obviously wasn't working without power.

My niece told me that they have better tornado drills in school in Texas, and that people didn't seem to know what they were doing.

Once we saw that it had stopped raining, we headed back to our hotel room.  We didn't know if we would be able to get in, since the power was still out, but it would be cooler just to sit outside if we couldn't open the door.  The door opened!  I was able to get my phone, and we tried to figure out what to do.

My nephew was feeling much calmer, hugging his friends (stuffed animals) an sitting in the hotel room.  He told us, "Miss Carmen (his day care provider back in Corpus Christi) does tornado drills and fire drills. We practice what to do. Miss Carmen says that you should get in the bath tub if there is a tornado. "  Excellent job, Miss Carmen!  I think he would have been even more upset if he didn't have those practice skills to think about!

We checked out the lobby again, and determined that power was apparently going to be out for quite a while.  The hotel staff was starting to hand out flashlights to guests -- apparently this was their back-up plan.  We decided to check out and head back home to New York.  I don't think my nephew would have slept at all if we had decided to stay.

A lot of other people decided to leave as well.  Judging from the license plates leaving and at the check-out parking area, a large number of people from New York and New Jersey all decided they had had enough and were leaving.  We packed up, and I kept the kids occupied while my mother wrangled with the front desk staff.  She said they were very nice.  They did not charge her for last night, since we were leaving, and they refunded the zoo tickets we were supposed to have used today.  

Half the street lights were out when we left the lodge property, and half of the businesses as well.  We found a gas station that was opened, fueled up and hit the road.  My nephew fell asleep almost immediately, as soon as we told him we were out of Hershey and headed home to New York.  My niece stayed up for a couple of hours before drifting off for a bit.

The drive wasn't too bad.  Not nearly as much construction work as on the way down, and we didn't hit any of the rain or storms that were all over the North East last night.  My nephew sort of half-woke up around 1am and wanted to know if we were still going to see the zoo before he fell asleep again.  We got home around 1:30 this morning.  The Mid-Hudson Bridge has never been a more welcome sight!  

I don't know what our plans are for today. I do know that I had promised the kids we would get big fancy ice creams after we went swimming last night, so they are most definitely getting them at some point today!  They were so brave and so good during all of the chaos!  They handled it better than a lot of the grown-ups who were yelling and freaking out, and the teenagers who were screaming and crying.  

**EDIT: Found this on the internet this morning:  

http://www.abc27.com/story/25972845/34000-still-without-power-in-central-pa

http://www.wgal.com/news/severe-weather-snaps-limbs-downs-lines/26853052#!bbCOTQ

Chocolate Avenue in Hershey, from WGLA gallery linked above

In Which Technology Hates Me

I have had a bad week where technology is concerned -- up to including right now. I'm writing this on my iPhone, which I really am not enjoying as I would rather use a real keyboard. We will get to how I wound up at this point. 

It all started on Monday. Monday I had to get a root canal and a temporary crown. Once the novacaine wore off and I could feel the left side of my face again it was sore as hell, and my cheek was all swollen. Suffice it to say I had trouble sleeping and was in no fit mood to be out in public. I figured the internet would keep me amused. 

I'm sure it would have done a terrific job of keeping me distracted, but my laptop had other ideas -- ideas like doing its best impression of a rectangular paperweight. 

I tried turning it on. Multiple times I tried turning it on and off. I left it charging for hours in case that was the problem, or maybe an update needed time to finish. I was willing to hope for any signs of life. 

Nothing had worked. It powers on and I can hear the fan run, but the monitor stays dark and nothing else runs or even attempts to load. I even followed the advice of a random YouTube video on how to clear static charge. No dice. Laptop seems to be done. 

Tuesday morning I discovered that my home phone had randomly decided to stop working. I found this out when I tried to call in to work because my cheek was swollen and sore as anything. Fantastic. 

I'm still not sure what the problem was. The television and wireless were fine. I tried going to the Verizon website since I have Fios, maybe they would have an answer. I ran the phone line test, and was told it was fine, they couldn't do anything else for me, try back later. WTF. Nice customer service skills. I restarted the router on the advice of a friend. Don't really know if that was the magic trick, but eventually the phone came back a few hours later. 

Wednesday brought two problems: the air conditioning in my car appears to only work when it feels like it, and my television went even more insane than usual.   I don't have time to get too upset about the car. I'll get that fixed eventually, but the television is becoming a pain in the ass. 

The television already has its own ideas of what I should watch. For reasons known only to itself, my television randomly decides that I cannot watch shows due to their parental guidance rating. I have no parental controls set. I have gone rounds with Verizon about this -- hours of my life I will never get back. They claim it must be a control that is set on my television. No way. I have an old standard tv -- old enough that parental controls aren't even an option on the menu. 

For example, the other evening it would not let me watch a rerun of The Big Bang Theory because it was rated PG-14. Annoying. I think the television has its own agenda, as not five minutes later it was totally cool with me watching South Park (rated MA). How does that make any sense?

But the current problem was totally new insanity from the television. I went to On Demand to watch an episode of a show I had missed. I queue up the show, hit play, and everything is suddenly in black and white. Not like the show was purposefully in black and white, but even the On Demand intro had suddenly changed. I really thought that might have been a sign that the end was nigh for my poor old television, but when I stopped using On Demand everything was back to glorious color. What is this fresh new hell?

Three times I had to reset the box before I could get On Demand to function in color properly. F$*%ing Fios. I never had so many problems when I had Time-Warner. 

Thursday my iPhone decided to get in on the action, as apparently it was feeling left out.  I had made absolutely no changes to the phone, and suddenly all of my contacts had disappeared.  I fixed it eventually, but it was just one more thing I did not need to deal with. 

Yesterday it was the coffee pot. I know I'm not the most functional person in the morning without my coffee, but I swear the coffee pot became possessed this time. I got it all set up, turned it on -- everything was normal so far. Coffee pot chugged away happily, the enticing aroma of fresh coffee filling the air. I decided to hop in the shower while it finished brewing the pot. 

Mistake!

Freshly showered and in need of coffee, I returned to the kitchen to find a mess. I don't know how or why, but somehow the coffee maker and managed to only make about a third of a pot, then had popped open the basket containing the coffee grounds and filter, and had created a tepid coffee waterfall that had cascaded down the counter and all across the kitchen floor. I've got nothing for this one. No clue how it could have happened. 

All this brings us to today, and why I am currently trying to write all of this on my iPhone.  My laptop is still in paperweight mode, so I obviously can't use that. I tried to write this using my Kindle Fire -- at least the keyboard would be a bit bigger on there. Nope. I got as far as the title for this exciting entry. My Kindle totally refused to give me a keyboard to write the actual body of the post. 

It's taken me a lot longer than usual to get to this point. I've never posted from my phone before, so I'm really not sure how well this is going to work. I usually proofread, edit and preview multiple times before posting a new entry. I currently see none of those options -- just a box labeled "done", and it scares me. 

If you are reading this then it worked successfully!  (If this whole thing disappears I may just cry, sitting in the corner and mumbling about why technology has it in for me.)

Shoe Crisis -- I Need Your Opinions!

So I'm going to a wedding tomorrow, and I cannot for the life of me decide which shoes to wear with my dress.  I need your help.

A bunch of pictures are going to follow, and I need your opinion on which shoes to rock at this wedding.

This is the dress and 3 shoe choices outside

Shoe #1 with dress in sunlight

Shoe #2 with dress in sunlight

Shoe #3 with dress in sunlight

These are the shoes

This is the dress inside

Dress and shoes inside

Help!  I think they would all look okay, but I don't know.  I'm leaning toward the black because I have a black wrap/scarf also, but is that too wintery?

Wedding is in the afternoon, if that matters.

Give me your opinions please!

Mother's Day Flowers -- An Explanation

A note to my fabulous Sister-in-Law to explain why she may or may not ever get the flowers I sent to her...or why they may arrive multiple times. No, I am NOT going to include her name here.

Dear XXXXX,

I tried to send you flowers for Mother's Day -- I really did.  I ordered them early, for delivery on Friday to be sure they got there on time.  I even picked an arrangement it said was available for "same day delivery".

I ordered flowers for my mother at the same time.  My Mom's  arrangement arrived early Friday and were gorgeous, so I took that as a good sign.  I told my brother to expect your flowers at your house, and he was going to be home most of the day and it was all going so well!

Then came the phone call, around 5pm my time.  My first clue that things had gone awry should have been when they could not pronounce your first name right, or even close to it.  Then came the bad news: they were not going to be able to deliver them that day.  They were all apologies and wanted to reimburse me and give me a credit, etc. How is this possible?  How could New York get flowers delivered within the first 4 hours of the selected day, but after 7 hours I am being told it is not possible in Texas?

I asked if I could substitute a different arrangement,  maybe that was the problem.  Not possible. 

Could I just have them delivered the next day then?  The man on the phone was stymied for a moment, then told me it was not possible and he would have to check with the the postal service or UPS but it probably wouldn't be ready until late next week.  WTF.

I will admit that at this point a became a bit cross short-tempered bitchy with the man on the phone.  I was on my dinner break from work, running errands and trying to have time left to actually eat something  This nonsense was the last thing I needed to deal with.  To steal a phrase from a friend, I kind of "Went New York" on him.

I asked what the schedule for the postal service or UPS had to do with anything since the website said it was guaranteed for same-day delivery by a local florist.  He sputtered a bit, then said it was a mistake on the website and they would have to remove it.   I asked if I should re-order for a different day, would they actually get delivered then?  He guaranteed it.

We went back and forth a bit more, but in the end  I was given a refund and a credit for future purchases. 

So I immediately went back to the website and placed yet another order for your flowers.  Supposedly they would be delivered yesterday or today.

When I checked my email this morning I saw that the refund had indeed gone through.  Fearing that some galactic screw-up was in the works, I went to the website to check on the second order I had placed for you.  It told me I had no orders.  

You have got to be kidding me.

Fine.  I will place a third f$&*ing order  for these flowers.  Now this is what I see when I go to the website:

Are you serious?  No florists are delivering on Mother's Day?  One of the biggest days of the year to make money on flowers, but apparently not in Texas.

So more flowers have been ordered.  Hopefully, eventually, you get them.  In theory this should occur tomorrow, but I'll shocked if that actually happens.  Who knows?  Maybe the order that magically vanished will arrive as well and you will get multiple deliveries.

I swear if I win the lottery I am going to move to Texas and become a florist -- a florist that actually has flowers and freaking delivers them like they say they will.

The tl;dr version:  Happy Mother's Day to my fantastic Sister-In-Law!  One day, hopefully, flowers will arrive at your house!

The People From the Attic

I bought my house about four years ago. It's an older, bungalow-style house built in 1935.  The guy I bought it from was really nice.  He left all the paperwork about the repair work he had done while he owned it, he knew it was my first house so he left me a ton of furniture which was awesome since I had none.  The place was sparkly clean inside and in the garage.  I literally could not have asked for a better person to buy from.

The attic was also spotless, except for a broken drawer from a piece of furniture that wasn't here, and in the drawer were three old black and white photos.  He was so thorough about everything else that I can only assume these are not his relatives.  He had to have known they were there, as I spotted them immediately.  I can only assume that they were there when he bought the house a decade earlier, so he left them where he found them.

After I had lived here a bit, I discovered a name written in the cement in the basement -- presumably when the floor was poured or patched.  It happened to be the same last name as a gentleman my parents are friends with.  Turns out his family lived here many years ago, when he was growing up.  He didn't recognize or know the people in the photos from the attic though.

I have no idea how to track down whom the photos might belong to, but I decided they shouldn't stay up in the attic.  Judging from the background, and knowing this area was very different back in the 1930s, I think it might be the original owners or their family.  The background looks similar.  I dusted them off, framed them, and I have them out in my house amongst many other pictures.

I realize it would be an Internet Miracle if anyone actually recognized these people, but why not try?  Below are the photos I found in the attic.  If you happen to recognize them, please let me know!  Otherwise they will stay here in my house, out where they belong instead of in a dusty attic.

Little Girl

Little Girl and her Mother, I assume.  Maybe in front of a new car?

It appears to be the same car