A Strange Event

Last night at 1:45 am I was awakened to the very loud voice of a woman coming from my living room. I ran in there to find out it was a newscaster from the BBC booming from one of our speakers. Nothing was turned on! Thinking it was coming from our Sonos System which has broadcast options from all over the world, I grabbed my phone looking for the Sonos App to turn it off. It told me to reinstall. So I went to my laptop and tried the Sonos App there, it wanted to update, which I did. After that I looked through and nothing was turned on. I removed a radio station. She still kept shouting! I disconnected the Sonos speaker, no help. I realized it was coming from the other large speaker next to the DVD player. I tried to find a wire to turn off that speaker. Suddenly it shut itself off! Sudden quiet at 2:15 a.m. Husband slept through it all! I still cannot understand what happened nor can he!!

If I Should Ever Miss The Snow

Snow is gently falling on my blog, but there is no snow falling here in Phoenix Arizona!  I remember growing up in Northern New Jersey and all the snowfalls and ice storms that would close the schools.  We loved those days and would be outside sledding and making snowmen and just enjoying the day off from school.  But that changed once I was older and had to drive to work on snowy, icy roads.  If the snow would begin falling in the morning, I would watch it through the windows and worry all day about getting home later and how long it would take with all the traffic.

The final straw was the time I drove home from an event during the early afternoon in a snow storm.  The highway was very slippery and I went into a skid, then a spin, and then crossed the road several times hitting the guard rails on each side of the road.  When I finally came to a stop, I was amazed that I didn’t hit another car!  I continued driving with my knees shaking, heading uphill to my home.  As I turned onto the street right before mine, my wheels were spinning and would not make it up the incline. I had to back down and try several times hitting the accelerator and then making a swing left onto my street finally and into my driveway.  I was shaking all over, in disbelief that I was safely home.  My car was pretty dented from hitting those guardrails but I was not dented at all.  I truly believe my angels protected me that day!

I resolved that day to move to a warmer climate and be done with driving in snow forever.  The following summer I was able to take a trip to Arizona to visit my brother.  I spent a week here and fell in love with it, even in the heat!  The mountains totally surround the Phoenix valley and I had a feeling of protection. I made the decision that I must move here and went back home knowing that I would live here somehow.  

The following year after being divorced for several years, I happened to meet a gentleman at a dance who had gone to Arizona State University and now lived in New Jersey, but always had the desire to go back to the Phoenix area to live. As fate would have it, two years later we were married.  We bought a motor home and moved cross country together.  Our combined five kids visit us and we visit them and our grandchildren in New Jersey and Pennsylvania every year.  One of them drove our car west and moved to San Diego for a few years. He then moved to beautiful Sedona where he has lived happily now for over 20 years. He was happy to leave the cold weather behind too!

We have now lived in Arizona 31 years and the only time we see snow anymore is on television or on Christmas cards and here on my Blog page!  I had my fill of it and can go north to Flagstaff anytime if I should want to see it.

Merry Christmas!                  

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays!

My Mercury Retrograde Experience

We recently had the ultimate retrograde experience!

My husband and I really needed to upgrade my Galaxy S3 and his Iphone S4 phones which were three years old and giving us trouble. So when my husband stopped at the phone store to get help with his ailing phone and learned about the special promotion to upgrade cell phones until Christmas and pay just an additional $10 a month, he called me and was going to order one for himself . We would return in the morning to get mine! However when he went to sign paperwork, there was nothing in writing about the special pricing and he decided to go home and check with the carrier about that. I knew that Mercury was to go retrograde and we would be in the shadow (slowdown) period, but thought maybe it could work out, still being 3 days away. It does affect signing contracts as well as communication equipment. But, this deal would be over if we waited until after January 8th!

He called and they told him this was definitely the current promotion, so we went to the store the next morning but could not seem to get waited on. They were very busy and so we left after an hour. We went home and went on their website to order the phones, but the screen kept locking up or timing out. We got a salesperson through the website and she tried guiding us through the process unsuccessfully. She gave us a number to call to place our order. After being on hold over an hour we got a rep and placed our order for new phones.. We then had to go to our email to find a link to accept the contract. The contract was the standard one at full price and we questioned having to sign a contract not stating the price we were to be getting.. We could not complete the transaction because the screen again kept locking up or timing out. That person told us to close and try again, which we did, once again unsuccessfully. Next we were transferred to a Tech and at this point it was about 1:00 in the morning! If there had not been such a huge savings, we would have quit right there.

This guy was actually from Global Tech and assured us we would get this special price. He said he had just ordered 3 new phones for himself and his family and would check his personal email to see if his confirmation stated the sale price, and we went on hold. Naturally he could not access his emails. We were told they were doing maintenance on the website due to the heavy traffic. He said he did not see that our order had been placed, although we had been assured by the first Sales Rep that it was placed and just would not be shipped until we accepted the contract on line. He put the order in for us and promised it would not be duplicated. We accepted the terms on line and he said they would ship free by Fed Ex in 2 days. At 2:15 am we were finally off the phone! I must add that all the reps were more than helpful. The big sale coupled with all the retrograde issues made for a heavy load for them.

Our phones did arrive in 2 days and we set about to transfer the old phone information over to the new phones. Of course mine would not transfer. We called Customer Service and she asked for all the numbers on the box. The rep got the transfer process to start by giving the phone a bump from the office. She stayed on the phone with us for 30 minutes until she had to go home. It was still not finished. She promised to call us the next day to see if all was well, which she did! Even though I had charged the phone fully after opening it, the phone ran out of battery life. Sigh! I plugged it in and went to bed. In the morning when I unplugged, it appeared that everything had transferred over, except my pictures. But I found them later in the cloud. My husband also had some trouble getting his phone transferred and had to restart it several times before being successful. Note that in our email confirmation, we did get credit for the promotional savings!

Now after a week, things seem to be working and we are really enjoying our new phones. We did pay a price in time and frustration due to the timing with pesky Mercury. I thought the details were interesting enough to share with y’all!

ONE SCAREY NIGHT

It’s time to tell a true story about what happened to me on an unexpected one-day trip to Four Peaks, a mountain range in northeastern Arizona.  A friend was taking us to an amethyst crystal mine which he had found on a previous trip. He said there were amethyst crystals all over the ground. We drove up there on an unpaved road and he said it was in worse condition than he had ever seen it. Not wanting to turn around, we slowly proceeded forward in our station wagon with our friend running ahead and pushing the boulders aside. When the road ended, we parked the car and continued on foot.  We opted for the longer but less steep route.  He lost his sense of direction since he had never personally taken that route before.  He had always taken the shorter, more difficult path. We climbed through brush and vegetation and after three hours we gave up and returned to the car without any crystals.  We were very disappointed but we had no idea of what was yet to come!

While driving the car slowly back down the rough road, our brakes overheated and failed. A passerby in a 4 Wheel-Drive vehicle offered assistance.  The couple seemed very nice and offered to drive me and the two children back to my home where I could return with our other car.  My husband and our friend thought they would let the brakes cool down and then attempt to get down the mountain to the paved main road and wait there for my return.  This was in the days before cell phones! How did we ever get along without them?   Back at home, I grabbed water, an apple and crackers and also made a phone call to alert a family member that I was heading back up there.  I had to fill the car with gas and it was starting to get dark.  I left the children safely at home.  When I got back, I did not see my husband and our station wagon anywhere so I headed up the hill.  I did feel a bit of terror about having to go on those winding, narrow roads  alone in the dark.  I remembered what the woman in the assisting vehicle had told me;  “you are a woman, you are strong, and you can do anything!”  That phrase stayed with me and gave me the courage I needed to get through the night. I went forward to save my husband!!                                        After driving several hours in the dark, I hit the rough part of the road and at that point I knew I had somehow passed the spot where I had left him with the car and he was not there!!  I was so tired, scared and full of tension and thought perhaps I had misunderstood our plan.  I feared that he had gone over the edge of the mountain!  There was no way to turn the car around in the dark  and I couldn’t possibly make the return trip down those narrow roads in the dark and in my exhausted and confused state!   I had started up the mountain at about 7 PM and now it was 11 PM

While apparently driving around  in circles, I had an unusual experience:  Out of the corner of my eye, I sensed an American Indian sitting in the passenger seat.  This was the same Indian we used to sense standing at the foot of our bed so often at home.  It was hard to believe, but it made me laugh and also made me feel protected . Of course, I had been praying for help.  I made my way forward to the parking area, locked my car; ate my supper of apple and crackers; crawled into the back seat and tried to sleep.  I tried sending ESP messages to my husband just in case he made it home safely.  Of course I could not sleep!  At the break of dawn, I headed down the mountain.  It took two hours driving carefully down the winding narrow dirt roads to get home.

Upon arriving, I found a hysterical husband and other family members outside looking up through binoculars for a search helicopter. Apparently they had slowly driven to the foot of the hill after the brakes cooled down. After waiting what seemed like a very long time,  they made signs and put them on trees at the foot of the hill with my name saying they had headed home. They watched for me on the road but never saw me pass them.  I never saw those signs in the darkness.  Upon arriving home and finding the children, and then learning that I had gone up there to get them, they turned around, this time to rescue me. After attempting the trip in our friend’s sports car, unsuccessfully, they turned back, called the sheriff and reported me lost up there.  A search party was sent out to look for me, but they assumed it unnecessary to go beyond that rough stretch of road, as no car could navigate safely through that area. They thought it most likely that I had gone over the cliff since I was nowhere to be seen. Meanwhile, I was the only car in that parking lot a little further up the hill.  They called my husband and told him a search plane would be sent up to look for me as soon as it was light.  It was a very long night for both of us, each thinking we had lost the other.

After much hugging and tears, I learned that my husband had prayed for my safety and also asked that Indian, who always seemed to be looking after us, to go and protect me!  I learned this after I told him the story of the night and how the Indian had suddenly appeared in the passenger seat of the car.   We were both in total amazement!

Four peaks Mountain is beautiful to look at, but you won’t find us anywhere near there, even for free amethyst crystals.   It’s a good thing I didn’t know about all the mountain lions and bears up there!