Damsel in Distress

Barb was not happy when she got back to Ottawa.  She spent two days cleaning the house and she had to do a lot of groceries.

She bought a big pork loin at Costco but the butcher wouldn’t chop it for her.  Then when she went to cut the loin into pork chops she found she had forgotten her good craving knife in Florida.

She went at the pork loin in a fierce state with an old dull knife she found around the house.  I sat at the kitchen table and stayed out of her way.

Later when she calmed down, she asked me why I didn’t step in and help her.  I said I didn’t think it was safe to go near her when she was holding a large butcher’s knife.

I could have been Barb’s Knight in Shining Amour coming to the aid of a Damsel in Distress.  I will do better next time.

eReader Change

When we were leaving Florida, Barb had just finished one the books in her series and I was in the middle of the book I was reading.

I looked up my book in the library and found it as an ebook.  So I downloaded the book for me to read during our trip back.  I thought it was great to be able to continue my book even though I was on the road.

When I got back to Ottawa, I looked up the next book in the Barb’s series up in the Ottawa library.  There was only one copy.  It wasn’t available and there were a number of holds on it.  However, I found that it was available as an ebook.  So I downloaded it and installed it on my eReader.

However, when I checked it on the eReader, it said File Can Not Open.  I checked my eBook and it also said File Can Not Open.  This was a change since I was reading it on my eReader the night before.

I figured they had changed the format of the ebooks at the library and my eReader was no longer compatible because it didn’t have a clock to tell the eReader to delete the ebook when it was due back.

I searched the internet for a way to change the format.  I found a 14 step process to unencrypt the ebook using Linux.  I stayed up late trying to figure out how it worked.  I couldn’t get the process to work because I missed one little sub-step. 

The next day I went back through the process and found what I missed.  I was able to unencrypt the ebook and put in on my eReader.  Barb never read the book that I converted but I was happy I could do it.

Book Arrives

When we left Ottawa in the fall, I suspended my holds at the Ottawa library.  Barb decided to keep her place in the waiting list.  The day we got back to Ottawa, one of the books that Barb had on hold for the whole winter came in.

Traffic Jam First Thing in the Morning

We drove through Harrisburg on the first day and stayed in a nice hotel just on the other side of the city.  We had driven for 18 hours.  So the second day we only had to drive for 8 hours.

We didn’t have to get up too early on the second day.

When we got on the highway just beside the hotel, there was a bad traffic jam.  The highway was down to one lane.  Fortunately, we were close to the accident and didn’t have too long to wait in the traffic jam.

The accident looked really bad.  A large 18 wheeler was off the road in a farmer’s field, flipped over and a load of planks were scattered around the side of the road.

We were happy we decided to drive through Harrisburg before we stopped for the night because we didn’t have to wait in the traffic jam very long.

Using Coupons

Our friends in Florida told us that they stop at the first rest area when they reach in a new state during their drive home to pick up a coupon book.  In the coupon book, they find good deals for hotel rooms.

We decided to stop at a rest area late in the afternoon but when we picked up the coupon book, we found out it was for a different state than the one we wanted to stop at.

Later we stopped again, there was a coupon for a hotel called the Friendly Inn that looked really cheap.  When we found the Friendly Inn, we found out why it was so cheap.  It was a real dump.

There was another coupon for the Dutch Inn that was going to expire the next day.  We stopped there and got a room for $44 with our coupon. 

Barb wondered what the real price was.  When she asked the lady at the desk, the lady said it would normally cost $70.  It was a really nice place and Barb was happy to get such a good deal.

Washington at Rush Hour

We had a map this year to see which highways to take.  We decided to take the shortest route even though we would have to go through Washington at evening rush hour.

However, on the highway into Washington we hit a rain storm.  Everyone on the highway was driving fast and the highway was crowded.  I was in the fast lane for most the way and I could barely see the lines on the road because of the rain.  It was scary but we made good time.

We found that the evening rush hour in Washington was not too bad when we got there. 

Happy to Get Lost

We were driving through Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and missed our exit because it was an exit on the left side of the highway.  So we had to drive a ways down the highway and exit and then get back on the highway and find the exit coming the other way.

We got onto the right highway but the signs were not very easy to understand and we didn’t know when we were supposed to exit off the highway again.

Finally, we found the right exit and there was stopped traffic in the exit.  The police and the ambulances had just arrived because there was a bad accident in the exit with a number of cars off the road.

If we had been there a little bit earlier, we might have been in the accident.  We were happy that we got lost after all.