Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Email Woes and Stinky Toes

Here is a rather boring, (picture-less!) mid-week update on our wacky week.  It's a busy, busy week:  the last week of practices before the girls' cheer competition on Sunday.  Don't get me started with that.  There's a time and place for everything, this is not the time for cheer news.  No practice tonight, so I've given my brain the night off from cheering as well.

Our nutty email stopped working recently.  Internet connection was fine, but no mail would go out or come in.  Then I started getting phone messages that emails were coming back as undeliverable, and people were hot on my heels for our "new" address.  Brad reached a heavily accented customer service agent last night, only to find out that our email account had been suspended due to an extremely high volume of emails being sent.  Huh?  I instantly got hot-cheeked and tried to think back on the last week.  Had I been sleep walking and mailing out dozens of emails??  Then as I listened to more of Brad's end of the conversation, he asked how many emails it would take to have our account suspended.  There was a pause, followed by wide eyes and the disbelieving question, "THOUSANDS??"  Pause.  "Thousands per day?"  Brad looked at me, not accusingly, but with a very concerned look.  I shook my head no before he could form any thoughts of me sitting here for hours while I sent out forward after forward of crazy You Tube videos.  He was given another number to call.  That call resulted in a one-hour hold time, only to be connected to another heavily-accented customer service agent.  This new agent told us our account had been hacked into and was being used to send out "extremely high volumes of spam".  After complaints came in about "us", they suspended our account.  Three new passwords later, we are back in action.  Imagine what great things those hackers could accomplish if they'd use their brains and time for good!  It sure wasted an evening for Brad.

And I am slowly adapting to lugging this dumb boot around.  The foot is quite sore.  My hip and back are very sore from having my legs be different lengths.  I did wear a heeled-boot on my other foot today, and it helped a lot.  My most fashion-forward friend just sent me a message saying I looked "smooth" in my boot today.  Well, I'll be.  Smooth, huh?!  Perhaps this boot is not so bad afterall.  If that's what one has to do to look smooth, I guess one best close her mouth and continue gimping around. 

The other unexpected consequence of this boot?  Me thinks me stink.  Apparently my feet sweat a bit at night in this boot under the covers.  Ick.  It takes me back to my youth, where a smell oozed under the door of my brothers' bedroom that I haven't smelled since.  I feel quite embarrassed that it's now me.  Yes, I wash my feet daily.  Now twice daily.  Yes, I change my socks.  And my sheets.  So yesterday I started spraying my boot with Lysol when I take it off to take a shower.  Shower for me, Lysol for the boot.  It was the only thing I could find that was good for soft surfaces and wasn't targeting athlete's foot.  Me thinks the stink is gone.

And I've somewhat enjoyed my "bike rides" at the gym.  It's not quite the same, but I'm thankful to get my heart pumping.  It is a little cruel that the treadmills are right behind the bikes.  I could hear the rhythmic "thump, thump, thump" of people running behind me.  That's like passing a plate of straight-from-the-oven, gooey chocolate chip cookies under my nose and saying, "Just a smell.  That's all for you!"  Stinky toes I can pass on, but warm cookies?  Who can pass on that??  So I just pedaled faster, turned up my I-pod, and worked hard to not let myself sing out loud.

And the people-watching at the gym??  Amazing!  Bless them.  One elderly man had his finest blue jeans on, a tucked-in shirt, and brown leather dress shoes.  He sat himself on a bike and pp-e-dddd-aaaaa-lllll-ed.  Then his left foot took a turn.  But he was moving.  Bless him.  All shapes, sizes, and abilities were represented in that cardio room.  There's always the gals that climb aboard a bike that you sit back in and pull out their romance novel to read while they leisurely bike at a snail's pace.  And the buff, crazy-bodied people who run like someone's chasing them, then go hop on a spin bike and work even harder.  There's a reason they look like they do.  And the jocks that strut around the weight sets, admiring themselves in the mirror as they lift crazy amounts of weight.  Great people watching.  I highly recommend it.  It ranks right up there with airports.

If you have made it to the end of this, bless your heart.  That there is some serious rambling going on. 

One more ramble?  I just pulled a cake experiment out of the oven.  If it is a success with the family tonight I will share it with you on Monday!  It's a sort of accumulation of some recent posts.

Some blogs I read have a "Wordless Wednesday" post each week.  I guess, being the rebel that I am, this is my "Wordfull Wednesday"...in any case, happy Wednesday! 

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