So have you missed me?

I really believe in the saying when it rains it pours - because that's always the case with me. I'll have nice little lulls with very little to do and nothing really going on and then all of the sudden I am loaded with projects and activities. That is how it has been for the last couple of weeks. So our internet has been going really slow of late and being the tech person of the house I had to figure out what the problem was. At first I thought that we just needed to reset the modem. That worked for about 10 minutes, then it got progressively slower. So after a couple of days I thought that perhaps it was the modem that was the problem. We took it down to Comcast and had it replaced. (The saleswoman said that she hasn't seen a modem like ours for a couple of years. I wondered if she wanted to put it in a museum or something. Maybe I could get good money for the antique!) I plugged the new modem in and for about 10 minutes the internet was super fast. The same problem persisted and I decided that it must be the router. This is the most expensive part of the set up, so I was really hoping it wouldn't come down to that. Alas, that was the problem. I went to Circuit City and bought the best one they had. It was like $130, but we'll write it off as a business expense. It looks a little like something out of Star Wars, with the three antennas and all. Here is a picture of it.

All I can say is that I have spent more time that I wanted fixing this problem. It has literally taken me two weeks. Two very long weeks. In the mean time I had to research new web hosts, merchant accounts and shopping carts. The super slow internet made that so much more fun. I thought that I had found a really nice shopping cart set up, only to find that it wouldn't work with Yahoo as the web host. Nothing (and believe me I have tried a lot) will work with Yahoo except Yahoo shopping cart. It was so frustrating! Furthermore the company that we just registered with to do our credit card transactions is not compatible with any low priced shopping cart. Argh! It was been so annoying to find this all out after we have registered and started learning how to use it. As usual though, nothing is easy at this house! I think I am going to go through siteground to host my site, shopping cart and merchant services. In the end it might actually be cheaper that what we are currently paying. But mistakes cost money and canceling our current merchant services is going to be a doozy. My biggest question of the day is why do I have to make these costly mistakes? I'm not really faulting myself or anyone because I thought that it was just going to go smoothly. I plan for A, B and C, but it seems that I need to plan to Q or R for all of the stuff we do. I'm a little bit frustrated, well a lot frustrated. I feel like I'm being led to the right decision only to find out that it was not the best decision. *Sigh*

On to other more enjoyable topics. I love Christmas movies. They are a wonderful genre that is not fully recognized for it's brilliance. I have even started watching obscure movies and have loved them all. The ones I have watched thus far are: Elf, Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus, Meet the Santas, A Season for Miracles, The Holiday, A Boyfriend for Christmas, The Christmas Card and Miracle on 34th Street (the old version). If you notice they all have a little romance in them, but cheesy as they may be, I still find them irresistibly wonderful. Luckily there's still about two weeks left to watch more, so I will enjoy them all until the new year. Or maybe longer.

I finished Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman. It has taken me a month to read all 700 pages. I haven't taken that long to read a book since The Lord of the Rings trilogy. At first I wasn't really impressed with it. It wasn't getting to the romance quick enough for me and it was a little confusing to remember all of the characters. It also was a little disturbing to have older men marrying very young women. Most of them were still girls. Eventually, I wrapped my mind around it. My friend Jill told me the romance between Llewelyn and Joanna was one of her top favorites. In the top five. I have to say, that thought kept me going. I really got into the story when Joanna burned Llewelyn's bed. By then I was hooked, but that was at least 250 pages into it. There is a lot of battle in the book. Not so much blood and gore, but political strategies. I wasn't sure by page 600 that I would be able to rate it as high as my friend. I just was not so hooked to J & L. The last hundred or so pages made me change my mind. I loved that last little bit. It was kind of what the whole book was building up to. I don't know if I'd put it in my top five romances, but it would definitely be in the top ten. I am glad I took the time to read it, but it definitely was a commitment. I am now glad to read some easy, quick Christmas romances.