December is a busy month for everyone and way too much stress to clean, decorate, bake, shop, and wrap. Not to mention all those parties and family get togethers for many of you.

I decided not to put myself through any of that this year, the stress I mean so there is no hustle bustle here and if something isn’t done then I refuse to get worked up about it. We have all the Christmas presents for the kids, now they just need to be wrapped.

My decorations consist of my little fake tree which I didn’t even take apart last year because of emotional stress. I just threw the whole thing in a bag and stuck it downstairs so all I had to do was clear off a space to set it up, no mess no problem, decorating is done.

We will have one get together on Christmas Eve with the kids to exchange presents and since it will be somewhere else I will not be cleaning from top to bottom. Bill is going to provide the baked ham, potato salad and baked beans so not a lot of cooking.

If I’m lucky my DIL will bring Ethan for his presents, so far I’ve seen him 3 times since she brought him back here.

We will have leftovers for Christmas Day with a bottle of wine and it will just be the two of us since everyone will be having dinner with the other in-laws. If  it’s not horribly cold we may bundle up and take a trike ride through town with our Santa hats, before the wine of course.

Most times I feel like I live in a time warp in my own little world. I’m aware that I don’t keep up with everything that goes on around me especially where technology is concerned. I don’t even have a clue about cell phones, but I manage to get by without one. I recently ran across software that apparently was reviewed back in 06 I feel so out of it. Usually by the time I get around to trying something it’s already obsolete.

I read the NY Times Review of Dragon Naturally Speaking with David Pogue, he does a lot of technical reviews. From the review he did you can tell that he really liked the product. I watched some of the other product reviews he did and he tells you both the good and bad. I always like to get product reviews and recommendations before I buy anything. This product even searches the web and types e-mail by voice command now that could save a lot of time.

I am a 2 finger typist and usually till I’m done typing my first sentence I’ve forgotten where I was going with my thoughts and my next sentence. I’m thinking that would be a great suggestion for Santa Claus that would make it  easy to just talk and not forget my ideas and it would do the typing for me. I wouldn’t be stuck in front of the computer all the time. I could get up and move around and save my poor old eyes from the strain.

Of course I could always just turn the computer off, but then I wouldn’t get anything done.

I was thinking something like that would be great for authors or it would be an economical solution for a small business and you can even dictate into a hand held device when your away from your PC and it will type it up for you when you connect back up with your PC. I’m sure many people may have already used this product and if you’ve tried it I’d like to get your feedback. I found a shareware version, at e-speaking, but I’m not sure how good that might be, has anyone ever tried this software?

As always I marvel at technology and all the possibilities and the brilliant minds that think it up, I think I need to start keeping up before everything passes me by.

Most of you know that my Shadow hurt his back last December and couldn’t move for 9 months and then miraculously started walking again. The vet didn’t hold out much hope of him ever recovering and even said at the time because of his age that he wouldn’t consider operating and using anesthetics because he might not wake up and of course I couldn’t put him to sleep and I’m so grateful I didn’t.

During that time though he developed a tumor on his lip and when I took him back to the vet a few weeks ago he told me that it needed to be removed. My question then was don’t you remember what you told me last year about using anesthetics on him because of his age? He just brushed the question off like it was no big deal, well it was a big deal to me! Bill and I discussed it and decided to take the chance that he would wake up and I decided if he didn’t then it was his choice.

We scheduled an appointment for the surgery after they ran his blood work and the vet decided he could withstand being put under. I have to say that it was one of the longest days of my life, but he came through with flying colors and he is now back to his old self playing and chewing on his toys again. I have so much to be grateful and thankful for.

Thankfully our snow wasn’t deep after all was said and done and  it’s a very  light scattered layer with ice patches here and there, okay enough about snow. I’d like to tell you about an incident that occurred recently.

A few weeks back we received a phone message that there had been suspicious activity on Bill’s Sears charge card and we were suppose to return the call and have his account number ready.

Since I am aware of phone scams I decided to check online  about Sears charge card phone scams and a site came up with the same number that had called us (800-335-1517). Even though the phone ID said Citibank I still didn’t trust it, better safe than sorry.

So I called the number on the back of his card and told them about the call and they connected us to the fraud alert department. I explained about the call we received and gave them the referral number they had left and it turned out to be a legitimate phone call.

They explained that although many account numbers had been compromised no one had as yet used his account number to make any purchases so he had to go through the process of resetting passwords and everything related to his account.

He was told to destroy the card he holds now and another one would be issued. They didn’t explain how all these credit card numbers had been compromised through Citibank so it just makes me wonder about the efficiency of their security system.

Scary when you really stop to think about how much damage hackers can do and get away with. Hopefully they have learned from this security breach and will take better precautions in future. Some of the information I was reading online was dated back to 2007 so it’s been going on awhile.