#003 Winkles Update: Nathan... Nathan... Nathan...
Spending time in Washington has been great. It is good to finally visit family here. It has been so long since I’ve last been here. People have moved into new houses, kids have grown up... all of this without me! Man, I need to do a better job of visiting.
Pancakes Anyone?
I love Livonia’s Mom, and the feeling is mutual. She took such good care of us while we were there. Livonia complained that she never cooked when Livonia visited with the kids back in July, but that wasn’t the case this time. She cooked us breakfast almost every morning, and each one was very good. I made the mistake of telling Mom what I liked in my breakfast. I say “mistake” because she then did everything she could to make it happen. I told her Livonia once made me the best oatmeal I ever had, with brown sugar and frozen blueberries. Mom went into her freezer and found some frozen blueberries. Unfortunately, these berries didn’t meet her strict guidelines for taste, so she asked me if it was okay if they were replaced by blackberries. Having always been a strong proponent of the philosophy “beggers can’t be choosers,” I told her that would be fine.
Livonia was looking at all this with quite a shocked look on her face. She sat in amazement, wondering how it was that I managed to garner such preferential treatment with her mom; treatment that not even she receives. Livonia told me later that it’s partly because her Mom hand-picked me from the two men who were “suiting” her after her divorce from Eric. Jay, if you’re out there, I’m sorry you lost. You should have fought harder. I can attest that it was definitely worth the fight.
In the end, Livonia told Mom that she’ll never visit again without me. Based on the success of this trip, I can agree to that.
All I Want is My Pictures Printed!
I finally decide to get a few of the many thousands of photos I’ve taken actually printed. I narrowed the list of pictures from Thailand down to about 150. I put them on my jump drive, hop in the van, and drive down to the nearby Wal-Mart to get them printed. I hand the lady my jump drive and she very quickly tells me that they have no method of transferring files off a jump drive and onto their computer.
Now, if memory serves me correctly, all computers support the USB port after Windows 95. So what she’s telling me is that her computers are older than 1998? I am finding this hard to believe, but rather than fight it, I return home, transfer all my files onto my flash card, and return to the store.
When I return, there is a lady already using the machine for transferring the digital pictures, so I wait... and wait... and wait.
Did I mention that I waited?
This lady was taking forever! She was opening every picture, selecting what size print she wanted, correcting red-eye, cropping the image, adjusting color balance, etc. It is very nice that Wal-Mart offers such a great service, but there needs to be some balance here. All I wanted to do was get my pictures developed. All the “post-processing” was already done. But, I patiently wait. I decide to walk around the store to kill time. It is obvious this lady will be taking awhile.
I come back about 30 minutes later to find this lady still working on her photos. Ugh! There must be a better way! I go to the counter and ask the lady at the counter if she can transfer my pictures with anything behind the counter. “Of course we can” is her response.
Sometimes I wonder about my stupidity. It would have been far easier to ask a simple question than to sit and stand there for nearly an hour, but I didn’t ask. Sometimes, I hate my male tendencies. Never ask a question, never ask directions.
I drop off my pictures and the lady tells me they will be ready in about an hour. I head back to Mom-D’s house to wait. About an hour and a half later, we head back to retrieve the pictures.
Esaiah and Nathan decided to join me.
We get there, and to my amazement I see the same lady still working on her pictures. Unbelievable! I see a line of people developing behind her, all of them with the same look of disbelief. I think they should put a timer on this machine. This lady has been at this for over 2 hours!
I walk up to the counter to get my pictures. Another lady (not the one who worked with me) appears and looks for my order. The look of confusion is never a good sign, but I remain hopeful. She finds my order, but it’s empty. It hasn’t completed yet. She looks through her computer and located my images. They haven’t printed yet. She starts the print and tells me they will ready in about 15-20 minutes.
Nathan... Nathan... Nathan...
We entertain ourselves by looking at the new releases for video games, checking out magazines, yadda yadda yadda. Esaiah shows me a game he’s interested in and so I’m looking at it and talking to him. I finish my conversation, look at some other things, and then do an inventory of my kids. There’s Esaiah, still looking at his game, and Nathan is right over... right over... Hey, wait a second...
Where’s Nathan?
I ask Esaiah if he knows, and he give me the same look I have. I head back to the video games, thinking he’s playing one of them.
Nope.
I go to the toy section to see if he’s decided to entertain himself by checking out a toy he hopes I’ll buy.
Nada.
Okay, I ‘m starting to get a little panicked. Nathan has a habit of wondering off. This increased quite a bit while we were in Thailand. Do you recall when he wandered off while we were at the Expo Center? As much as I enjoy his new found confidence, it also scares the hell out of me.
While we were visiting my brother’s church in Oregon, he also wandered off. We got inside the church, and he decided to go his own way. We got inside, were getting seated, and then did a kid inventory only to find Nathan missing. Livonia went out looking for him, only to find him trying to get outside the church. Apparently, he thought we left him, and he was going to go find us. When Livonia finally did get to him, he started crying, visibly angry at being left behind. We tried to tell him that he should never be out of our sight, but how much can a five year old boy really comprehend?
Apparently, not much, considering that he has wandered off again. Thinking back to the church incident, I decide to head for the doors. Luckily, this Wal-Mart only has one set of doors, so I go to this set. Before going outside, I quickly check to see if Nathan might be walking up any aisles. Sure enough, there he is, about 30 yards away. He looks relieved to see me, nearly in tears again. I get to him, get down to his level and give him a big hug. I then tell him as calmly as I can that he needs to stick with us. I tell him how much it scares me when he takes off on his own, and he shouldn’t do that anymore. I look up and find a older lady staring at me in disgust. I always love it when people are judgemental. Especially when they don’t know the situation. I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t understand what’s going on, but I will take the 30 seconds of the situation I see before me to make the assessment that this man is no father to his kids. I smile at her anyway. It was not returned in kind.
We get back to the photo area, and the lady I originally worked with was there. She goes to retrieve my photos, and they haven’t even started yet! She asks me “did you save them as jpegs?” Hmm... let me think about that one for a second... Of course! Why would I not? She finds my pictures again, and starts the print. She tells me it will be another 15-20 minutes. She also tells me she’ll make them half price for my time. Remembering back to the lady that looked so scornfully at me, I recognized that there are bigger things in life than the printing of my pictures. I told the lady I understand that problems can happen, and not to worry about trying to give me anything special. We’ll be back in about 20 minutes to collect our pictures. When you have a kid that runs off on you, you tend to learn a lot about patience.
Thirty minutes later, we return to find our pictures, at a discounted price. Oh well, at least we got them. We head home at around 5pm. When you consider that we started this picture printing project at around noon, the “one-hour” photo process is a bit off the mark. However, the pictures turned out very nice. At 23 cents per shot, it makes me wonder why I spend so much money on paper, ink, printers, time, etc. I think I’ll just get them developed elsewhere now.
Until next time...
Pancakes Anyone?
I love Livonia’s Mom, and the feeling is mutual. She took such good care of us while we were there. Livonia complained that she never cooked when Livonia visited with the kids back in July, but that wasn’t the case this time. She cooked us breakfast almost every morning, and each one was very good. I made the mistake of telling Mom what I liked in my breakfast. I say “mistake” because she then did everything she could to make it happen. I told her Livonia once made me the best oatmeal I ever had, with brown sugar and frozen blueberries. Mom went into her freezer and found some frozen blueberries. Unfortunately, these berries didn’t meet her strict guidelines for taste, so she asked me if it was okay if they were replaced by blackberries. Having always been a strong proponent of the philosophy “beggers can’t be choosers,” I told her that would be fine.
Livonia was looking at all this with quite a shocked look on her face. She sat in amazement, wondering how it was that I managed to garner such preferential treatment with her mom; treatment that not even she receives. Livonia told me later that it’s partly because her Mom hand-picked me from the two men who were “suiting” her after her divorce from Eric. Jay, if you’re out there, I’m sorry you lost. You should have fought harder. I can attest that it was definitely worth the fight.
In the end, Livonia told Mom that she’ll never visit again without me. Based on the success of this trip, I can agree to that.
All I Want is My Pictures Printed!
I finally decide to get a few of the many thousands of photos I’ve taken actually printed. I narrowed the list of pictures from Thailand down to about 150. I put them on my jump drive, hop in the van, and drive down to the nearby Wal-Mart to get them printed. I hand the lady my jump drive and she very quickly tells me that they have no method of transferring files off a jump drive and onto their computer.
Now, if memory serves me correctly, all computers support the USB port after Windows 95. So what she’s telling me is that her computers are older than 1998? I am finding this hard to believe, but rather than fight it, I return home, transfer all my files onto my flash card, and return to the store.
When I return, there is a lady already using the machine for transferring the digital pictures, so I wait... and wait... and wait.
Did I mention that I waited?
This lady was taking forever! She was opening every picture, selecting what size print she wanted, correcting red-eye, cropping the image, adjusting color balance, etc. It is very nice that Wal-Mart offers such a great service, but there needs to be some balance here. All I wanted to do was get my pictures developed. All the “post-processing” was already done. But, I patiently wait. I decide to walk around the store to kill time. It is obvious this lady will be taking awhile.
I come back about 30 minutes later to find this lady still working on her photos. Ugh! There must be a better way! I go to the counter and ask the lady at the counter if she can transfer my pictures with anything behind the counter. “Of course we can” is her response.
Sometimes I wonder about my stupidity. It would have been far easier to ask a simple question than to sit and stand there for nearly an hour, but I didn’t ask. Sometimes, I hate my male tendencies. Never ask a question, never ask directions.
I drop off my pictures and the lady tells me they will be ready in about an hour. I head back to Mom-D’s house to wait. About an hour and a half later, we head back to retrieve the pictures.
Esaiah and Nathan decided to join me.
We get there, and to my amazement I see the same lady still working on her pictures. Unbelievable! I see a line of people developing behind her, all of them with the same look of disbelief. I think they should put a timer on this machine. This lady has been at this for over 2 hours!
I walk up to the counter to get my pictures. Another lady (not the one who worked with me) appears and looks for my order. The look of confusion is never a good sign, but I remain hopeful. She finds my order, but it’s empty. It hasn’t completed yet. She looks through her computer and located my images. They haven’t printed yet. She starts the print and tells me they will ready in about 15-20 minutes.
Nathan... Nathan... Nathan...
We entertain ourselves by looking at the new releases for video games, checking out magazines, yadda yadda yadda. Esaiah shows me a game he’s interested in and so I’m looking at it and talking to him. I finish my conversation, look at some other things, and then do an inventory of my kids. There’s Esaiah, still looking at his game, and Nathan is right over... right over... Hey, wait a second...
Where’s Nathan?
I ask Esaiah if he knows, and he give me the same look I have. I head back to the video games, thinking he’s playing one of them.
Nope.
I go to the toy section to see if he’s decided to entertain himself by checking out a toy he hopes I’ll buy.
Nada.
Okay, I ‘m starting to get a little panicked. Nathan has a habit of wondering off. This increased quite a bit while we were in Thailand. Do you recall when he wandered off while we were at the Expo Center? As much as I enjoy his new found confidence, it also scares the hell out of me.
While we were visiting my brother’s church in Oregon, he also wandered off. We got inside the church, and he decided to go his own way. We got inside, were getting seated, and then did a kid inventory only to find Nathan missing. Livonia went out looking for him, only to find him trying to get outside the church. Apparently, he thought we left him, and he was going to go find us. When Livonia finally did get to him, he started crying, visibly angry at being left behind. We tried to tell him that he should never be out of our sight, but how much can a five year old boy really comprehend?
Apparently, not much, considering that he has wandered off again. Thinking back to the church incident, I decide to head for the doors. Luckily, this Wal-Mart only has one set of doors, so I go to this set. Before going outside, I quickly check to see if Nathan might be walking up any aisles. Sure enough, there he is, about 30 yards away. He looks relieved to see me, nearly in tears again. I get to him, get down to his level and give him a big hug. I then tell him as calmly as I can that he needs to stick with us. I tell him how much it scares me when he takes off on his own, and he shouldn’t do that anymore. I look up and find a older lady staring at me in disgust. I always love it when people are judgemental. Especially when they don’t know the situation. I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t understand what’s going on, but I will take the 30 seconds of the situation I see before me to make the assessment that this man is no father to his kids. I smile at her anyway. It was not returned in kind.
We get back to the photo area, and the lady I originally worked with was there. She goes to retrieve my photos, and they haven’t even started yet! She asks me “did you save them as jpegs?” Hmm... let me think about that one for a second... Of course! Why would I not? She finds my pictures again, and starts the print. She tells me it will be another 15-20 minutes. She also tells me she’ll make them half price for my time. Remembering back to the lady that looked so scornfully at me, I recognized that there are bigger things in life than the printing of my pictures. I told the lady I understand that problems can happen, and not to worry about trying to give me anything special. We’ll be back in about 20 minutes to collect our pictures. When you have a kid that runs off on you, you tend to learn a lot about patience.
Thirty minutes later, we return to find our pictures, at a discounted price. Oh well, at least we got them. We head home at around 5pm. When you consider that we started this picture printing project at around noon, the “one-hour” photo process is a bit off the mark. However, the pictures turned out very nice. At 23 cents per shot, it makes me wonder why I spend so much money on paper, ink, printers, time, etc. I think I’ll just get them developed elsewhere now.
Until next time...
posted by Roger Winkles | 10:02 AM
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