A Little Housekeeping

Posted on January 26, 2014January 26, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Good Morning World!

I am home. I arrived in Providence last night at 11:09 PM. By the time I retrieved a bag, yes I checked one going home, got picked up by the parking shuttle and retrieved my car, I finally walked into the house at 12:30 am. 3 little furry faces met me at the door.

Coming home is such fun.

Today, in addition to work I plan to get caught up with my cross country adventures right here. The only problem is…I can’t tell you much about San Diego. I’ll explain shortly when I update this space on my adventures and misadventures.

I got behind on my photos of the day because I couldn’t post them from my camera since I only had the company laptop. I have remedied that. The missing pictures are on www.dustyroadsphotos.com. Be sure to share your favorite and leave comments so it will get counted. I think I’ll delay the scoring tally to give everyone time to make their selection.

That’s all for now but the stories will be coming soon. 🙂

The Insurance Jungle

Posted on January 25, 2014January 25, 2014 by Dusty Roads

About a week ago we had the 2013 wrap up meeting in Somerville at the main Boston Office. What that means is I get to drive 51 miles each way to hear how we did and hope for some insights on what’s to come in 2014. Being a work from home employee, my attendance is optional but I am a nosy employee. I want to hear from the horses mouth what’s projected for the coming year. I don’t want to hear all the speculation and innuendo when the meeting results gets rehashed over the email water cooler.

So as a dutiful, nosey employee I made my way (1.5 hours) to the Somerville office via the central artery, the expressway, the “distressway” , Route 93, or any and all of the above, They are all names for the same stretch of highway H_ _ L.

Following the meeting and a nice lunch (I really go for the free food)

I headed back to repeat the process. It was about 2:15-2:30 when I left. That’s slightly ahead of rush hour. (in theory) . Traffic wasn’t too bad as I entered the tunnel to the southern side of the artery but it was filling in fast. I’d almost made it to what they call the Braintree Split when it happened.

I have no idea what actually triggered the accident.

There was a large truck to my right with a brown SUV behind it. I was in the next lane, a travel lane with cars in front and in back and the next lane to my left was also filled with cars.

Traffic was moving probably 30-40 miles per hour. A good clip for the volume. A lot of jockeying goes on here as the right hand lanes try to get to the left side for RT 3 and those on the left try to cross to the right for Rt. 128.

Suddenly I heard things flying and then something shook my car. I didn’t know if I had damage or not but plastic stuff was still flying around so I pulled over. The Brown SUV had hit the left rear of the box truck and the force of that hit bounced him into my car. His SUV was a mess. The truck had only slight damage. My car has a superficial scrape and the passenger mirror was knocked off. It will still cost a bundle to be repainted.

I called 911 and the state police responded right away.

My car was drivable so after an exchange of insurance cards I was on my way, “collateral damage” to the main even between the SUV and the truck. Thus entering the INSURANCE JUNGLE.

My first call was to my insurance carrier to put them on notice. My intention was to go through the SUV’s carrier. First I got a call from the “adjuster” from my company. Then I got a call from the “Liability Adjuster” from my insurance carrier. He took a statement and told me they would pay the whole claim and to go ahead and get the ball rolling with the body shop.

The body shop said “Whoa, not so fast. They won’t pay the deductible.” I said yes, the adjuster said they would because it wasn’t my fault. Then I got another call from someone else …again from my company…who confirmed that they would pay the deductible and “subrogate” from the other carrier.

Today I took my car for an estimate. The body shop will send the estimate in to the company and then we’ll wait for approval to go forward. I still haven’t heard from the other insurance company. In the meantime, duct tape fixes anything. 🙂

Moderation

Posted on January 24, 2014January 24, 2014 by Dusty Roads

One of my blogging friends recently wrote a post about her annual goals. She goes Birthday to Birthday instead of New Year to New Year. That’s a good idea too that I never even considered. But anyway… this year she chose a word to be her inspiration and guide for the year. She chose a great word…Balance. I’m sure she will enjoy success with a great word like balance. http://learnmoreeveryday.wordpress.com/2014/01/12/another-year-older-a-balancing-act/

If you can find a balance in life or a balance in all things or however you want to think about it, then surely you will have a roadmap for a nice year.

Not wanting to be a total copycat I wondered what would be a word for me if I were to use the same idea. My birthday is right around the corner and although Balance is something I could certainly use I felt another word might be even more appropriate for me. That word is MODERATION.

I go overboard on almost everything I do. Oh my choices and decisions start out good enough. I plot and I plan and then I implement and that’s when everything gets out of hand. I once described my life as feeling like I was on a run away train going 90 miles an hour and all I could do was HANG ON!

I always have more on my plate than I know what to do with.

A perfect example..my blog. I don’t have just one. I have this one which is my main baby, then I have www.dustyroadsphotos.com a companion photoblog, then I have my professional photo web page dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com, and my photo card shop, dustyroadsphotos.etsy.com and mustn’t forget flickr.com. Updating all of them takes a lot of time.

Then there’s the posting frequency. I see the traffic drop off dramatically when I miss a day so I set a goal for myself to write a post every day and to post a photo every day. So now I have to try to be creative both in writing and in photography and do it over and over and over again all while working full time and trying to get housework done. Cat hair piles up quickly.

Obviously there’s no moderation in that! 🙂

The other big area that needs moderation is food. Remember the line, I think from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come”. Well, in my case it’s “if I cook it I will eat it” and I never mastered the trick of cooking for one. It’s just easier to cook in “bulk”. Of course then it can’t go to waste so it goes to my waist instead.

MODERATION…yup that’s what I need in my life. I guess that will be my word for the year. 🙂

Housework , if you do it right, will kill you

Posted on January 13, 2014January 13, 2014 by Dusty Roads

Housework , if you do it right, will kill you. This is a quote from Erma Bombeck. Do you remember her? She was a very funny writer. February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996. She would take a look around her and see the humor in everyday lives. In the course of her career she wrote over 4000 newspaper columns about the life of a midwestern suburban housewife. Her columns appeared twice weekly and were read by 30 MILLION readers in 900 newspapers! She was also the author of 15 bestselling books, most collections of short stories about life in the suburbs.

What made me think about Mrs. Bombeck? Quite frankly, envy. I loved her writings. They always made me laugh. I remember one titled “The Grass is always greener over the Septic Tank”. You know, that’s true. We had a regular jungle of healthy green plants growing over ours behind our house. If only the lawn had looked half as lush.

Her stories were short, humorous and contained a kernel of truth. I never would have given that green grass a thought if she hadn’t pointed it out.

And what about those big holiday meals? For years I’ve been saying I cook all day and the meal is over in 30 minutes! Well Erma beat me to it. Her quote was :Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

So here I am staring at the blank computer screen with a major case of writers block. I haven’t been anywhere lately, the weather has been horrible, (it’s raining cats and dogs and pitch black as I write this) and I just couldn’t think of a thing to say. In desperation I thought I could gain inspiration like another blogger friend did from the alphabet.

She wrote a blog post for each letter of the alphabet. Author Sue Grafton is wring a whole series of fictional crime novels known as the Alphabet Series (A is for Alibi, etc. ) so it seemed like a good idea but the only thing that I could think of that started with “A” was Arthritis. Unless you’re a doctor I would think that would be a very painful subject.

That’s when I thought of Erma Bombeck. How did she do it? How could she look around and see something not only worth writing about her everyday surroundings but write it with such humor. She could take everyday events and routines and have wonderful observations. Another example: My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?

My hat’s off to you Erma Bombeck. If I can be only half as original and funny as you in my feeble writing attempts I will consider myself a success!

Spamalot

Posted on January 12, 2014January 12, 2014 by Dusty Roads

The Spam issue revisited. I can’t help it. I just want to know how my little blog that is of no major significance, could become the target of so much spam. I think I have it pretty much under control now (watch it blow up on me for saying that) but I just wonder why or maybe how, I became such a target.

I have another blog, www.dustroadsphotos.com and it gets minimal spam. I don’t know about my 2 other online locations. Spam just doesn’t seem to be an issue at either www.dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com or www.dustyroadsphotos.etsy.com. I am truly stumped.

I’ve really tightened up the spam filters here so much so that I’m sure I am catching legitimate postings too so for that I apologize but I was getting hit with over 100 spam comments a day!. According to WordPress, Akismet has protected this site from 300,369 spam comments already! I wish I had half that much legitimate traffic!

A friend who recently started a new Blog was complaining about the volume of spam his site was generating.

Everyone knows what email spam is but I really didn’t see how most of these blog spammers were getting anything out of it. Posting a bunch of gibberish as a comment doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me but then I researched it a bit and good old Akismet, my guardian at the gate for blog spam, posted a short but interesting explanation. You can read it here if you’re interested: http://akismet.com/how/ It’s called 5 things every blogger should know about spam. In simple easy language it explains that these spammers want to get their hooks into your blog so they can advertise or lead your readers to their own sites where they are selling things.

If you inadvertently approve a spam comment you can open the flood gates! I am sure I have approved such comments. I now make it a policy to mark as spam any comments I get on “old posts”. I’ve found on my blog most legitimate comments are made within a week of the post. If I start getting comments on a post from a year ago red flags go up.