Well, well, well apparently this worked so I’m writing from home now. I’m not sure I like this new format that the “boys” have cooked up for me here. I know that things on the web change, but good grief, I get sort of used to one thing and they upgrade me to something else and I’m confused.

Well now on to things that matter.

First off it has been a very long time since I posted on here. Not because I did not want to, but I think work has been kicking my buns real hard. I have had no energy from working at Einstein’s 5 days a week, so I gave up a day to Justin the new guy that will at some point be taking my place there.  The real issue here has been our phone situation at the shop.

For some reason, we got switched over to some weird company. They called my mom at the shop and told her that Qwest had given them our shops account. My mother being the “innocent’ she is said “ok” and that was all she wrote. So we got changed over before we knew it. She did tell them we had a web site, which we do, and that we had our own server which hosted our website, which we do but they choose not to listen to her. So we ended up being down hard for about a month. Just about the time I figure out how to use the new blog stuff we are down and I forget everything. So my B&C eventually gets it fixed, with many phone calls to tech support at this new place and we get our web site back up and running. The strange problems then began to plague us. Our internet connections were awful at best, and even on good days we could never count on being able to stay online. My dad’s machine had no end of problems staying online.  We were being dropped all the time. Then all of a sudden, his machine would not stay on at all, and if he was networked into the mail server no one could get online. I called their tech support and he wanted me to get into the system and re-configure some numbers. Now I am not some computer expert and I hated the thought of having to do something like that so I called the hubster and wanted him to do it. (not a happy camper for that one)

Then there were the phone issues. The phone has answering machine capabilities, well we could not access any messages left on the phone. So once again after several days with support people they decided to fax us a paper telling us how to actually retrieve our messages. Well, that was fine, but they had our fax number wrong. Lucky us. So they fixed that for us and faxes started coming in again. We could also get our new messages, but funny thing, any that were on the phone prior to them taking over our account were still in the Qwest mail box. No way to access that anymore. Then there was the whole thing about the phone itself. We could sit there all day that the darn thing would never ring. (for us that’s very weird)  Customers would call us and get a message to please call us at 719-265-6567, which was the number they had dialed. Eventually several of them would get so annoyed that they would actually drive down to the shop to see what was going on. My dad did this several times and I can tell you none of these people were real happy with us. We had no idea that this was going on.

Then one day this really nice lady (Gwen) came into the shop looking for a few good fibers. She was listening to me grump at Jo about the phone issue thing and she said we should change back. She gave us several reasons that we wanted to be with Qwest again, in case they had actually sold our account to someone else. Gwen had gone to school to be a lawyer, but decided not to take the bar here in Colorado so she was doing research for various attorneys here in town instead. Her input was very helpful and we called Qwest that day and changed back over. They had never sold our account and were happy to have us back, we also told them about the internet problems and such. The change back to them was very smooth, instead of being down on the web site for several weeks; we were down about an hour. Andy had us reconfigured and surfing the web in no time. Since the change back we have had no problems at all. Just goes to show that you need to be careful of what you agree to over the phone and if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

As for other shop stuff we have had some new stuff in, but most of it leaves as soon as we get it in.

There are going to be some new classes in August after my mom gets her eyes fixed again and I get a new Meg design completed.

I really AM going to figure out how to post photos on here so that you can see what the classes look like. Especially as the one I am designing is canvas work. I will sell the design to customers that would like to do it online.  I’m assuming that someone really does read this besides me. Guess I’ll find out soon.

Now for dog information for those of you that know about our sheepdogs. Bailey will be 10 in December; he has been shaved down and seems to be moving better now that he can see where he is going. Shaddo will be 7 in July and he is still intact. I want to breed him to Skye so I can get Shaddo babies. He is also shaved down since he is retired from the show ring. Aspen will be 6 in October; it’s hard to believe we have had her that long. She will not be having any more puppies so she is retired from the show ring and the puppy making business. Aspen has also been shaved down, but needs to have it done again so she can be comfortable. Rocky, from her first litter is doing well, he is in a dog show next month and when I am done here I will go brush him out. I just wish he would grow some head hair. His brother, Montana lives in Virginia and is doing rally. I guess he is doing very well from what I hear. The puppies from the second litter are also doing well. Copperfield, as we named him lives in Texas and is growing in from having all his puppy fur shaved off. He also has a new name, but will always be Copperfield to us. I just saw some pictures of him and he is a cutie. Skye, the girl from that litter is growing in as well; we shaved her down in December. She is a diva no doubt about it. Dickens the baby of that litter is huge! He’s as big as Shaddo and is absolutely beautiful. He is entered in the dog show as well and I hope he does well. Since I have both the boys that are entered any points I get is a good thing. The last litter Aspen had there was only one puppy, Misiu (mee sue), he already has some points and is only 8 months old. He lives in Florida and is so cute I could eat him up so to speak.

So what am I stitching on you ask? Uhmmmmm the same stuff that I was working on before I went missing on here, I’m closer to being done with Alpine Garden and plan on getting that done before winter. Then I will complete Mystery 9 since that is the other Martina that I am close to the end on. After that, it will be a toss up as to completing PIG or starting Mystery 10 or White Nights. I also have several Meg designs I need to get completed. If only I could get photos taken of the ones that are ready top be published I might actually get something out this year.

More next week as I get thing organized to order.