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Thursday, November 22, 2012

The Requisite Thanksgiving Post :)

We hope that our family and friends had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration today. It's hard not to be with family for holidays, but thru the miracle of technology, we've touched base in one way or another. We even got an email from our Soldier!

Our Thanksgiving celebration was here at the park. We had a potluck dinner with the other workampers and one couple who was camping with us last night and decided to stay another night when invited to join us for dinner.

Chef Cindy taking a restOne of the workampers, Cindy, was our super chef! She worked from 7am to cook the turkey and she also made two pumpkin pies. She took a well-deserved break right before we served dinner. ;)

As usual, the food was fantastic and all had a great time sharing the meal.

Carving the turkey

Quite a feast!

Enjoying dinner

Randy & I have much to be grateful for; not the least of which are those of you who richly impact our life.

Until the next time . . .

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Team Verizon

We have officially switched sides. For all of our married lives, we've been AT&T customers in one form or another; either with landlines, cell phones or both. As of today, no more.

All of our wireless service is now provided by Verizon. Yesterday we migrated our cell phone numbers over and purchased a new iPhone 4S for me and a very basic phone for Randy (his choice!!). And today I cancelled our air card with AT&T that provided our internet service. What prompted all this, you might ask? Well, I'll tell you.

While we were in KS workamping at the Corps of Engineers Visitor Center, we found that what little cell service we had usually came from “partner” towers. I knew that this could be a problem from our stay in KS a couple of years ago, so before we accepted the position, I checked AT&T's coverage map for that area. And it showed moderate coverage. Yay! No problem. Yeah, right.

As soon as we arrived and set up, we realized we would have little to no coverage at our site. Oh, well, we'll deal. But, I found that I could get online with my phone even though the air card wouldn't connect. Good. At least I could do that.

Just a few days into our stay, I began getting emails from AT&T stating that I had gone over the courtesy “off network usage” limit. I immediately called and explained the situation, including my due diligence. Bottom line, this problem continued for the entire not-quite-three months we were there. Ultimately, AT&T restricted my usage to AT&T networks only and that was fine, I understood that and was able to access the internet and make calls when we were away from our site. No problem.

Skip to earlier this month when we got yet another email from AT&T stating that our off network usage was too high and to call them immediately. I was flummoxed. We hadn't been in KS for more than two weeks! So, I called. Much to my surprise, they told me that the restriction from using off network towers would be made permanent!! WHAT THE HECK!!?!?!! That meant that if I was on the phone, going down the road and the call pinged from an AT&T tower to a partner tower, my call would be dropped. I told the manager (yes, I asked to speak to a supervisor thinking I would get better customer service) that was totally unacceptable. He was sympathetic, of course, but basically, it was “Oh, well. Too bad. That's the way it is.” I voiced my great disappointment and disgust that AT&T would allow two months of high off network usage to cause them to lose a good-paying customer of such long standing. But, yep, they would.

So, we are now Verizon customers. Of course, even though the early termination fees at AT&T were waived (wasn't that nice of them!), it still cost us to make this change. Before rebates, it was $300! After rebates, it's still $200. Because, of course, we couldn't use our same phones. But, I can trade my phone in and get almost that much for it. So, it will be close to a wash, eventually.

Folks, it's not our parents' world anymore.

Until the next time . . .

Monday, November 12, 2012

Getting to Know Folks

We've settled in nicely here in Bonifay. The work schedule is manageable and we're enjoying the beautiful weather in the panhandle.

We're also getting to know some folks at church. In addition to my being in the choir, Randy and I are visiting the various Sunday School classes offered. So far, we've visited two and still haven't found one we “click” with. But, last night we went out with several couples after evening worship and had a blast! There was one couple there from a class we visited a week ago, but the others were in a class we haven't yet visited. And we're looking forward to getting know them better.

Nothing much else to share. We are having a park-wide Thanksgiving potluck. Not sure who will be attending just yet, but we wanted to give our guests the opportunity to socialize with one another. Especially those who don't have family nearby.

That's it! Until the next time . . .

Saturday, November 03, 2012

I DID IT!!!

What, you ask? What did Terry do now??? Well, since “they” say pictures say a thousand words, I'll just show you.

TA DAAAAAAAAAA!!

New hair cut!

Yep. I finally cut off my hair. For those of you who have only known me for the last couple of years, you've never seen me with short hair. But, that is actually how I wore my hair for years. That is, until I got tired of getting lousy haircuts while traveling. So in late 2009, I let my hair grow and permed it.

This past week I decided I either had2nd pose to get another perm or cut it off. And since Alicia is a hair stylist and I knew we'd be here for several months, I told her to cut it off! And it feels SOOOOO good. :) Thankfully, Randy prefers my hair short, so that wasn't an issue.

You know it's been a slow few days when the big news is a hair cut. :)

We have settled into a routine and are enjoying life. Missing our kids and grandkids, but that's part of this life.

And a shout out to my daddy, whose birthday is tomorrow. I love you, Daddy!! Happy birthday.

Until the next time . . .