Email Elizabethaunt Dolores funeral
When It is Cheaper to Buy a New Printer
Best Buy at Mall of America sells affordable printers under $100.
The way things are made nowadays, it’s often easier to buy new than to fix something. Although, if you ask my husband, he will say fix it and keep using it until it completely disintegrates. One of the goals I unintentionally developed during my trip to Minneapolis for my Aunt Dolores’ funeral was to get my sister a new printer. Her printer was so old that my equally old Mac laptop could not recognize it. Since she needed a new computer, I gave her my old Mac. Too many viruses on her former PC. May as well chuck it.
Although my old laptop features all of the recent updates, there was no way I could locate her printer, regardless of what I tried. Wireless connection just wasn’t gonna work. I spent about an hour trying to figure it out, inserting IP addresses and attempting a series of calculated moves to get it to work to no avail. This is when you start to say, hey, my time is worth more than it would cost to buy a new printer.
Where can I buy a new printer, I asked Siri. You know, Siri has been fairly worthless lately. I changed my Siri from an American diction to an English woman, whom my sister calls Posh Siri but I prefer to think of her as the Prime Minister. Not to go off on a tangent, but my niece Laura selected a male Australian Siri. She says he freaks her out with loud and aggressive driving instructions, when he suddenly screams, TEARN RIIIIIIIIIIght. In that Aussie accent. Prime Minster Siri keeps me much calmer, especially when I don’t know where I’m going, which is often.
I’ve just had so much real estate stuff on my mind. Coming back to Sacramento yesterday, I sat in the wrong row on the plane, in the bulkhead, instead of my preferred row 2. Just wasn’t thinking about seating, answering emails. Bulkhead lady seemed annoyed. I don’t usually sit in the bulkhead because I don’t like to stick my near-and-dear belongings in the overhead compartment. I want it easily accessible on the floor. And there is no place to put your feet. Row 2 is so much better. Who knows why I plopped myself there?
When we landed and I made my way to baggage claim I texted my husband that I had arrived. He asked if there was luggage on the conveyor belt.
Nope, no bags. Just hoardes of people, I said. I wasn’t in the bathroom, either, in case he was wondering. Definitely, I was standing in baggage claim. This is why I enjoy traveling with my husband more so than alone. Traveling with him means I can simply follow him while focusing on my work.
Which brings me back to the fact it’s cheaper to buy a new printer than figure out how to connect an older model to wireless. My sister and I drove to Mall of America. I remember when that place opened and people lost their cars in the parking deck. It was shiny and new then. Now it’s a bit rundown and stores are vacating. The days of retail are numbered.
But we found a new printer at Best Buy. Connected it for my sister. We installed a new dehumidifier for her in the basement too. She should be set for the summer now. And I’m ready to jump back into Sacramento real estate without the distractions of a personal life again. You can’t do the volume of business I do and lead a normal life. It’s not possible.
Saying Goodbye to My Aunt Dolores at Hillside Cemetery
Elizabeth Weintraub, back row w/sunglasses, with sister Margie, Aung Barb, Uncle Bill and relatives.
The family on my mother’s side are French and German. Highly efficient people, especially my aunts and uncles. These people know how to get things done in an efficient manner, and maybe that’s where I get part of my organizational abilities, now that I think about it. Like, when a client is not present for an appointment, I don’t give them a polite 15 minutes or whatever before calling them. If they are supposed to meet me at noon, and I’m there at noon, and they are not there, I will call them right away. Grass does not grow under my feet.
Which means it’s a good thing my Aunt Pat called my sister yesterday. We were sitting in my sister’s living room in Minneapolis, chatting about nothing in particular when my sister’s phone rang. “Are you coming to Hillside Cemetery?” What? Hey, we thought it was 1 PM. Well, no, it was 11 AM and somehow my sister did not know this. I think the French / German efficiency genes skipped being passed down to my sister. Ask her. She’ll tell you. I got all the good genes in the family, according to her.
We threw on clothes, dashed out the door and found them all sitting outside near the office at Hillside Cemetery. It’s amazing, I thought, how my Great Uncle Dick looks exactly like my Great Grandpa Joe, and my Uncle Bill is almost a dead ringer for my Grandpa Hank. When people get older, they change and begin to resemble other family members, and when it’s dead family members, it’s even more eerie. Further, we are a really small in stature family. I’m not used to being almost the tallest.
Aunt Barb, my mother’s sister, prepared remarks and read them. The Hillside Cemetery made a special exception to let us spread ashes there because ever since my mother died 15 years ago, there have been too many people spreading ashes at Hillside Cemetery. This means Aunt Barb will not be joining her sisters.
Turns out my Uncle Bill lives in Reno. My face brightened, hey, I live in Sacramento, I volunteered, hoping he would say we could meet up or get together sometime. But then I temporarily forgot that I was in the middle of a Christopher Guest movie. That was unlikely to happen. What did happen was Uncle Bill said, yes, he had been to Sacramento and didn’t care for it. Besides, it’s not the best way to get to Washington, taking I-80 to get to I-5 when Highway 89 was a more direct route.
It was nice to have closure and say goodbye to Aunt Dolores. She was 95. She had traveled all over the United States in her RV, which she drove. She didn’t need no stinkin’ GPS or map book for directions, either. She knew every back road and RV park.
After Aunt Barb finished her remarks, we hightailed it off to Jax Cafe in northeast Minneapolis, one of those restaurants that stood the test of time over the years, old-school, rich carpeting and polished wood walls, and pretty darn good Polish pierogi, among other delights. Aunt Dolores bought us lunch, said Aunt Barb. Of course, I had the walleye, there, yah. We listened to my cousin’s daughter share a long story about why she didn’t sign up to work at Amway. It was a really long story, so long my Aunt Barb called her a Chatty Cathy. Being a millennial, at 23, my second cousin didn’t get the joke. We will probably see them again tomorrow before I head back to Sacramento and to my normal life as a Sacramento Realtor.
