I'm Back Online, and Better Than Ever!

 At least, my wireless internet is better than ever; can't make any promises about the blog contents, LOL.

After several weeks of worsening Wi-Fi service, which turned into zero Wi-Fi service, several service calls by the internet company to this little place here to replace Wi-Fi related parts, several calls to the internet company to have them reboot us on their end and three (yes, three!) employees of our then internet service provider pretty much telling us to switch home internet providers (what?!?  Yes, true story, they did) DH finally looked around for other options.  Up until the day before we switched, he had been adamant that we paid them for our internet service, we'd been reliable customers for 16 years, and they must fix whatever the problem was with our internet to make it work.

I don't know why it sometimes takes him so long to admit/realize that sometimes you can't just persist in insisting something works (or will be fixed) when obviously that's not happening.  But, long story short, he finally listened to these statements made by the three different employees of the internet service company:

1. While they were one of the first wireless companies in our area and were awesome for about 13 of the 16 years we've been a customer, wireless is becoming archaic (compared to fiberoptic and satellite).
2. Their company is phasing out wireless and investing in fiberoptic infrastructure.  Unfortunately fiberoptic is not available at our address yet.  Maybe next year.  Maybe.
3. They are maintaining existing wireless equipment but not replacing any worn out parts with newly manufactured parts, only used parts they have in stock from removing them from service in different areas that have switched from wireless to fiberoptic.
4. They really really recommend checking with one of the cell phone providers in our area and getting a home internet package from one of those companies because it will be better service and a whole lot faster service than what their company will be able to provide until fiberoptic comes through our rural neighborhood.

And he finally decided we should look into the home internet via cell phone company.  And when we did look into that we found that 

1. The cell phone company we have used for 25+ years does offer wireless home internet to this little place here.  Not the whole bells and whistles kind that you can get in the city, but a scaled down version that works out here in BFE (ha ha, Gen X joke, IYKYK) the boonies and is still tons faster than what the 'old' internet company offers.
2. If we have home internet and cell phones through our cell phone company we get a monthly discount on each phone line and on the internet service.
3. If we sign up for autopay (which I've always shied away from, I'm a trust no-one into my bank account kind of person) we also get another monthly discount on each phone line and on the internet service.

Which, when we totaled up what we for years have paid for two cell phones through the cell phone company, plus what we had paid for years to the internet company, and compared it to what the combined bill would be if we switched our internet to the phone company and signed up for autopay, we had been paying $30 more per month than necessary.  And that was the trigger which caused DH to stop badgering the internet company and instead pay a visit to the nearest storefront of the cell phone company and get us signed up for cell phone company home internet (and autopay)!

We are now happily back online, getting caught up on all the things we couldn't do during our week(s) of crappy to nonexistent Wi-Fi at home.  The 'new' wireless internet is so amazingly faster it's kind of sad how long we suffered through with the old service (it's been getting slower and less reliable for a few years now, but wasn't until Nov 9th that it became pretty much not even there most of the time).  I mean, it's such a night and day difference in speed.  Kind a like going from dial up to wireless back in 2009.  Things now load in less than the time it takes me to blink.

Oh, and another bonus to switching: DH took advantage of an early Black Friday offer from the cell phone company and upgraded our cell phone plan to unlimited data with a 3-year price lock guarantee AND a free new phone for each line.  All still in that $30 per month savings which was the catalyst for him to agree to change internet providers.  So I get to pick out a free new phone for myself in a few months when my existing phone is finally 'paid off'--back when I got it there was a promo that I would get charged monthly to 'purchase' that phone but each month that purchase price was credited back so as long as I don't replace it before the requisite number of months to 'pay it off' my current phone was free to purchase.

Bonus #2 (or is it 3?): when DH called the long time internet provider and cancelled our service, he requested a refund prorated from when the Wi-Fi first died on Nov. 9th.  Due to all the notes on our account between Nov. 9th and Nov. 22nd and the multiple service calls, the company gave us a full refund for the entire month of November not just the 9th forward.

Make My Horse Life Easier Tip #5

 This one I actually have been using since the spring, but I'm sharing it now because, with winter weather approaching and temps going below freezing at night, this time of year we're entering (winter)  is the real reason I bought it.  It's smaller and way easier to deal with attaching and detaching to/from the water faucet/hydrant and carrying in and out of the tack room where it will live at night to keep from freezing.

I present to you, the Green Anaconda!  Also known as a flexible garden hose.  Mine just happens to be a bright lime green and so I dubbed it the Green Anaconda after the snake. It does move around as it expands and contracts, which really gives off snake vibes.

(picture from September, before faucet area got it's waterproof green coating)

A farm I had worked at most recently before 'retiring' to open my own horse boarding business had a flexible hose like this (theirs was black) that was used to attach to the hundreds of feet of hose on the reel in order to stretch and reach some of the pasture tanks they had.  It was lightweight, and, when not in use, crinkled up wadded up got small enough to easily toss into a milk crate with the scrub brush used for cleaning the water troughs.  After dealing with cold hoses on portable hose reels last winter, and remembering what a pain hoses and hose reels are during a Michigan winter, I thought maybe a flexible hose was just the ticket for my farm at this little place here for future winters.

The one I bought expands to 50', which, being as my barn is 48' long, is perfect for reaching from the water faucets to the water buckets in all six stalls. When the water is off, the Green Anaconda quickly shrinks back down to less than 10' (I've never tried measuring it 'empty', so that's a guesstimate) and I can coil it up into an 8 qt pail for carrying into the tack room on cold nights.

Finished Socks!

(Hey, guess what, my internet is currently working!  Hopefully I can get this post published before it craps out goes off again.)

 I finished my 2025 socks!  That's what I'm calling them since they are the only pair of socks I have knit this year.  A fact that, to be honest, bothers me, as I love knitting socks and used to knit 3-4 pair in a year easily.  Why just one pair this year?  That is something I need to research (aka think back to what used up my knitting time) and find out so that I can fix it for 2026.  Used to be socks on my knitting needles all the time, one pair after another, even if I was also knitting a different project on larger needles from time to time.

Finished socks

Socks, in my mind, photograph better on feet than laid out on their own, so here's a photo with much more 'lifelike' representation.

And one with my pantlegs pulled up, so you can see the socks in their entirety.  Why one of my legs looks orangey, I can only blame on the camera and lighting.  They are both the same color, the color of the left leg.

It's On, Now It's Not, Now It Is??

 Last Wednesday I posted here and mentioned that our internet had been out Sunday through Wednesday morning.  Wednesday it was back on.  Until it wasn't.  We discovered around 8 p.m. that it was again not working.

Thursday, not working.  DH went and worked on-site in-office that day.  I tried not to fuss about lack of internet at home, really there were many non-tech things I needed to get done and it was easier to be productive without the internet.  Although it meant not doing some of the computer-related things on my to-do list for that day, like print out our proof of insurance certificates for all our vehicles.  Our policy renews every six months, and mid-November is one of the renewal times.

Friday, DH called the internet company, they 'rebooted our antenna from their end' (we'd all ready tried rebooting it from our end Thursday and again Friday morning with no success) and about five minutes later we had internet.  That lasted I think about seven hours.

Saturday, the internet was intermittent, mostly non-working.  Sunday same story.  Another phone call, another reboot from the company.  Internet back working again briefly (like a couple of hours).

Today (Monday), it just wasn't working at all.  I tried rebooting on my end this morning, but put off calling the company since I really needed to get outdoor chores done as well as run a couple of errands.  At lunchtime, I tried again.  Nada.  Back outside to do more stuff in the decent weather, and when I came in around 3:00 to get ready to go hunting, viola!  We have internet!  Not sure what the story is, but I didn't need to call, it just magically started working again all by itself.

I hurriedly made a couple online payments that were due, and printed off those Proof of Insurances (the old ones expire tonight at 11:59 p.m.!!)

After I get caught up on time sensitive internet related things, hopefully the internet will still be working at this little place here and I can get more blog posts put together with more interesting topics than whether or not my internet is connecting.

First Snow

 On Sunday, we woke up to the first snow of the year,  As first snows go around this little place here, this was a 'heavy' one: it coated the ground.  A lot of first snows are flurries that you can see in the air but they melt on contact.

These pictures I took on my way out to the barn to turnout horses before going to church that morning.  It turned out to be a cold and cloudy day that didn't get much brighter but also didn't really give us any additional snow.

It also didn't give us any internet.  Before church, we discovered our wifi wasn't working.  After church, it still wasn't working and DH went through all the steps to investigate why: reboot the router, and when that didn't work, reboot the antenna.  He used to also plug the laptop directly into an ethernet cable as a test, but apparently neither our current laptop (2? years old) and his work laptop have ports for that anymore??

Neither reboot made the internet accessible.  On Monday morning, he did the same thing as we were still without internet.  Still no internet after this round of rebooting. 

The weather was a little warmer and the clouds thinner and the snow melting.  Which made us pretty sure our antenna wasn't iced up.  

(It's located way up on the roof on the backside--the basically three story high side of our 2-story with walkout basement house--and he wasn't about to haul out the extension ladder and climb up in the cold/slightly snowy weather to check, but he was 99.9% sure it was clear of ice/snow since it faces south.)

So he called the service provider.  Who said they didn't see any problems with our service from their end and could send a technician on Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday morning was warmer and everything left from Sunday was melting.  There was constant dripping of water off the barn and shop eaves even before dawn.  Still no internet, but the technician did call right at 9 a.m. to say he could come immediately as 'their other client in our area was unavailable this morning and we were next on their list'.  Hooray!

He checked everything: our router, our antenna and whatever else there is that a technician can check that a homeowner can't (I'm guessing an ethernet cable and a device to plug into it, ha ha).  He came to the conclusion that we really weren't getting a signal from the tower that serves us (6+ miles away in the village).  Then he says that there are 'several other customers in our area having the same issue' and that a different technician has been sent to the tower to do diagnostics on that.  He leaves, to go assist the other technician, saying that he will be back later that day to further do diagnostics here once the tower is looked at.

Flash forward six hours. . . the technician doesn't return, but does call DH to say the tower has iced over and 'they' are working on thawing it, that is believed to be the issue, and we'll hear more from him once that is resolved.  Spoiler alert: we don't hear back.  And our internet doesn't come back on, no matter how many times we check all the way until we head to bed that night.

This morning, first thing I do is check the internet; it's habit to check the weather/radar every morning before I go out to feed the horses.  If the weather is going to be icky at turnout time, I want to know before I feed them as it affects whether or not they will be going out on time or  late and therefore will need more water that normal in their buckets with breakfast.

Can you guess what I found?  Yep, no internet.  GRRR.  So, like the last three days, I used mobile data to check the weather (we have a very low mobile data plan as that just lots of mobile data consumption isn't how we use our phones typically.  If I go over on mobile data this billing period I'm not going to be happy. . .)

BUT, half hour after I got back in the house from feeding, when DH checked to see if we had internet, it was back on!  YAY!  

Did we ever hear back from the technician or the company that provides us with internet service?  That's a big N-O.  It is nice to be back online (and catching up on the things I needed to do earlier this week online), but we will definitely be watching our next bill to see if we are credited 3 days (doesn't sound like much, but that's 10% of the billing period) of not having service.

And wondering what our next real snow will bring.

(For those wondering why we don't look into other internet service providers, we have.  For years.  And more and more often in the last five years.  But out where we live, there's a small number of options for internet.  Cable/fiber optic does not exist.  And cell phone service isn't consistently great so we're absolutely not going with internet via a cell phone company.  Which pretty much gives us the company we have, or trying our luck with a satellite internet service provider --lots more $$$, different equipment that has to be put on/in our home and from what we've heard from some in our area who have gone that route, not consistently spectacularly better service for the cost).

Wheelbarrow Repair

Back in 2014, DH and I had a wheelbarrow that was about 20 years old, had been in rough shape when we'd gotten it, and it was definitely on it's last legs. I wanted to replace the wheelbarrow with a two-wheeled kind; I had just recently been introduced to 2-wheeled wheelbarrows at the horse farm I began working at late in the year that Fall and loved how easy they were to balance and steer.  

As fate would have it, Mother-in-Law gave us a 'regular' (one-wheeled) wheelbarrow for that Christmas.  In all fairness, it was and still is a decent large heavy duty wheelbarrow.  But it wasn't a two-wheeled one like I'd wanted to replace our old one with, and I knew it would be years and years before I could justify buying a different one.

(Why didn't we just return the one she'd bought us and exchange it--plus some cash--for the one I'd wanted?  Because, like a lot of gifts she gives, she had written Merry Christmas DH and Kris!! on it in magic marker.  Definitely not returnable merchandise.)

So, now-- in October 2025--when my wheelbarrow failed to do it's duty of hauling manure from the horse barn to the manure pile, I briefly hoped that this was going to be the year I could justify buying a two-wheeled wheelbarrow!  (Ironically the magic marker words had worn off/faded away years ago.)

dead wheelbarrow

But finances--and DH (well, and my own logic)--overruled this month.

Because, when my wheelbarrow suddenly became inoperable, it was only a worn out and split tire that was wrong with it.  A new tire was infinitely cheaper than a whole new wheelbarrow.  It's really hard to justify spending close to $300 for the wheelbarrow of my dreams--even if I can operate it one-handed and even the little grandkids could push it around without it getting unbalanced and dumping sideways--instead of just $20 for a tire. So I (grudgingly) agreed that we would replace the tire rather than go shopping for my dream wheelbarrow.  

resurrected wheelbarrow

*sigh*  Someday. . .

October Wrap-up

 With processing DH's latest buck, plus all the normal day to day things on my docket, I'm getting this post written up almost a week later than I'd hoped.  C'est la vie. This is a busy season.

The garden is done, as in everything harvested, for the year.  I still need to pull tomato cages, stakes, and my bean pole and get them stored in the shed for the winter.  Also need to disconnect hoses and sprinklers and likewise store those.  Hoping the weather holds long enough that DH can get the garden turned under before the Fall rains make the ground too wet for tilling.

Not the best potato year, but I'll take what I can get.  Definitely a better yield than 2024.

Also not that great for squash and pumpkins, but that was more to do with deer, raccoons, wood chucks and skunks gnawing on them as they ripened rather than low production from the plants themselves.  I'm going to have to get more aggressive with critter control in 2026.

My adherence to the walking challenge I wanted to participate in wasn't a whole lot better the second half of October than it was the first half.   Some of my walks ended up being in the dark, in the woods, walking slowly bent over with a flashlight in hand searching for blood trail.  Heart pounding, yes, but not in the calorie burning way of a steady tempo upright walk. 

Here are a few pictures from daytime walks:

We've had some hard frosts, which have taken out all my flowers with the exception of the very hardy chrysanthemums.  I managed to save the last of the dahlia blossoms and bring it into the house to enjoy for a few days before it, too, faded away.  Now I need to get the tubers dug up and in storage.

I used my biggest pumpkin from this year's garden as my jack o lantern pumpkin for Halloween.  It was still quite green when I harvested it a few weeks prior, and was not quite orange when I carved it on the 30th.  

Didn't really matter once the sun went down on Halloween and I had a candle lit inside of it.  Looked 'regular' then.  LOL.

When I carved it, I saved the pieces cut from the eyes, nose and mouth.  Those I peeled, diced, steamed until tender, then pureed.  It came to exactly one cup of pumpkin puree, and I used that to make a batch of a dozen pumpkin muffins for breakfast (DH cooked venison tenderloin in sauteed onions to go with our muffins that day).  Six were 'plain' for DH, and six I added mini chocolate chips to for myself.  Of course I forgot to take a picture of them until after breakfast, which is why there's only seven muffins shown.

Here is my recipe, adapted long ago from a Betty Crocker zucchini muffin recipe and then reduced to yield only a dozen muffins rather than 24 since DH and I definitely do not need to eat two dozen muffins between us!  (I used to make 24 muffins when the kids were little and all still living at home.)

Pumpkin Muffins
1 cup pumpkin puree
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup veggie oil
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 12 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

(You can also add 1/2 cup chopped nuts and/or 1/2 cup chocolate chips/mini chocolate chips if you have them on hand and your family likes them.)

Heat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease 12 muffin cups. 

Mix pumpkin, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs in a large bowl.  Stir in the remaining ingredients until just moistened, you don't want to over stir or your muffins won't have those nice domed tops. 

Fill each muffin cup about 3/4 full.  Bake 20-25 minutes or until tops are light brown and spring back when touched lightly.

Cool 10 minutes in pan on wire rack, then remove muffins from pan and serve.