Greatest global online bookclub in town

I’ve used Quicken for years for recording all my banking activities but not connected online. It took me a while but I don’t keep handwritten checkbook balances any longer because it is so accurate. I’ll see what I need to do to get on the bandwagon. Thanks, Jo.

Candace

I have no clue whatever as to why all that stuff is italicized! It wasn’t supposed to be.

AAAAaaaarrrrrrgh!

What’s in it for them? Far less paperwork than usual. Transferring your money from you to ?????, for instance, sees far less paper than writing a check, getting a receipt, etc etc.

I first started paying bills by phone, using the keypad for directions, date etc. That was so easy and quick that I used the method until I went to New Mexico. Bank of America had a wonderful program, can’t remember the name of the program now, but it was online and the first really computerized (!) online banking I ever tried. LOVE it especially!

When I moved to TX, son Gene worked for a major bank and so all my stuff was transferred from what it was to that bank. He also got me started in the online banking and Quicken, which was my checkbook register. I used Quicken, the bank AND my regular checkbook register for a while and then decided that Quicken did it well so I quit the checkbook duplication.

A word here: when you are doing things like money online, you’ll see the website is written sorta like so: https://www.yourbank.com. The ‘s’ in the ‘https’ means secure and it is. As was mentioned, hackers hack into the bank. It’s safe. Even my paranoid son uses online banking and Quicken.

I would also HIGHLY recommend Quicken. As you know, I do my own taxes using TurboTax. Since both products are Intuit programs, they are linked and TurboTax can download from Quicken all the info it needs. If you decide to do these two, I’ll be more than happy to help you when/if you have questions.

They both sure make MY life easier, and banking online sets the stage.

Jo

I never heard of using Sudafed for dizziness, Jo. I’ll keep it in mind for the next time. It has cleared up for no more logical reason than why it started, as usual.

I have to go to my bank this week and I’ll ask them about getting on line. They tried to take me through the process back when when I moved my accounts to this bank but I didn’t have enough basic information to follow what they were telling me. I had too many reservations to listen well. I know they have a promotion encouraging people to go online–of course, that makes me suspicious–what’s in it for hem?

Candace

Georgianna, you’re not the only one having a time-management problem. I keep downloading books to Kindle that I want to read but seldom feel like I can take time to just sit and read. My interest runs to history and science now. One I got and have barely started has the intriguing title The Invention of Air. It is about a man named Joseph Priestley and his scientific discoveries in the 1700′s. I am almost through with Last Witness by Jilliane Hoffman. It is a sequel to her first book, picking up the characters a few years after the initial story. She weaves a very good story with twists that redirect your thinking about where it’s going. I like that.

Candace

Hope you are all well and reading good books. I still get them but reading is a bit of a challenge. I need guidance on use of my time. Never been a problem but I guess my husband’s health has an impact on my time. I Have a book called Mental Aerobics by Barbara Bruce and I really like that. Also I have a children’s book called “In Pursuit of Happiness” by E. Perry Good. I really appreciate all of you. I hope you are all plugging along and enjoying life. Georgianna

I am happy to read more posts here again. I was beginning to think this blog was dying but I have thought that before and it does come back

We have had a couple of days of spring and it is wonderful but probably won’t last. The snow is gone but can still come back. The tulips are up though and that is encouraging.

I am reading March, which is a historical novel by Brooks, and is about the Father in Little Women and I am finding it very interesting. It takes place during the civil war. I am at the part where the war is over. The author uses some of his letters home and refers to his daughters and wife.

I am listening to a Nevada Bar book and she is with a research team studying wolves on the Isle Royal. Apparently two wolves crossed on the ice 30 years before, from Canada, and started a pack, The ice hasn’t frozen since then so they are all from that pair.

Jacky, listening to a book on tape while walking might help Clive to enjoy walking a little more. I don’t ever walk unless I have one and I always listen while walking.

Julie IMed me and wrote this and I just copied it. I don’t bank on line either but know an awful lot of people who do without problem. Julie said:

“You could tell Candace that she can start slowly, and just look at her account on line. It will be safe. The information that hackers can get is available to them already–they will hack the bank, not her.”

You’re making me think about banking online, Jo. I just haven’t had the nerve to do that. Every time the news reports another hacker I mentally shudder. I took my information out to my accountant, not trusting any program or myself to take me through the transition from past filings to get me through what should be a pretty simple filing. On the other hand I really hate being an old fogey who doesn’t get with the program!

Candace

Before I get into that, I ‘published’ the post by Miselle which had been ‘saved’ instead. I guess she reads our GGOBIT posts but seldom posts – so Miselle, your life is probably very similar to ours. So post already!!!!!!!

I got all interested in Robert Ludlum’s Covert One series and so ordered the whole bunch from booksfree. Lt. Col. Jon Smith is the big hero and oh my, he is wonderful!!!!!! I do like Ludlum’s tales, however. Even tho’ none of the Covert One stories were actually written by him (he passed away in 2001), the folks who wrote them took the ideas from Ludlum’s files and did a good job. I don’t advise reading them one right after another, however. They are fairly technical in some places, the same as Tom Clancy’s books, but the story around all that technical stuff is good. Read a couple and then read something else.

I spaced mine out with light mystery tales by Kate Kingsbury – her Manor House series. Lady Elizabeth something hyphenated is the Lady of the Manse with the needs and problems of that title. It is WW II time and she has had some American pilots billeted in her house. She and Major Earl Monroe are quite taken with each other, but are being properly chaste about their attraction. Folks get killed and since the local policemen are retired police and not as young as they could be, she ends up solving the mysteries and sometimes needing rescuing by the Major. There is no great problem, a la Christie and PD James, but the stories themselves are OK, especially after something like Ludlum!!!!!!!!

I’ve also been rereading Fern Michaels’ Sisterhood series, and I can heartily recommend them. Myra Rutledge is enormously wealthy and her significant other (SO) is an ex-MI6 operative whose cover was blown. He ended up coming to the US and becoming head of security at Myra’s candy company. Myra’s daughter Barbara and her adopted daughter, Nicole (Nikki) meet with Myra to celebrate Myra’s 60th b’day. Barbara runs back to the girls’ car to get the camera and when she heads back to the restaurant, she is hit by a car and killed. How she comes out of that and forms the Sisterhood, and what the women do to avenge the wrongs that were done to them makes for good reading. I have no idea how Michaels comes up with some of the plots – there were seven women involved – but the books are good reading. Again, they aren’t Christie or PD James, but still good tales, characters you care about, and a good read when the snow is blowing a gale and roads are icy.

booksfree.com didn’t have Dewey the last time I checked – it’s about time to check again.

Jo

Happy New Year ,dear friends.
Hugs,
Miselle (IMH2@mac.com)

Good grief – you’d think I could STAY caught up, wouldn’t you. I have no good reason for being so remiss and I am pleased to see that you all are more “with it” than I am lately. Since I haven’t done any more sorting or tossing, I can’t even use that.

At any rate, here I am again.

I’m in full accord with you comment (way back in February 16, Georgianna) about it being easier to move than to sort. What happens is that you do one when you do the other. I don’t see how I can have so much STUFF as often as I’ve moved since I retired. NM, TX, PA, MA and soon be include CO. Good grief anyhow.

I think I will keep my car and just see how it goes when I get there – the kids tell me I could see it better here than there, but I don’t see how. Lebanon is very much a blue-collar town and, while I have no complaints about blue-collar workers, the economy hasn’t been good here and I just don’t see anyone being able to afford a decent price for it. BTW, my g’daughter paid off her car on Friday – I had cosigned with her (never EVER again) and there had been some times when her making the payments required a serious talking-to from Gramma. But all that is over and done with now and may I say that I am GREATLY relieved.

We have had some seriously screwed-up weather this year, and pardon my perhaps not so polite wording. One day it was 16° with 5″ of snow on the ground; the next day it was 45° and the snow is melting. Not that I have any objection to snow melting, understand, but this is MARCH. Temps supposed to be in the high 30s/low 40s, NOT in the 60s.

The Source – isn’t that the one about Africa and the beginning of the human race, Jerry? Michener, I think. Or am I confusing it with something else.

re hubby walking, Jacky: do you go with him? I find I like to walk with someone else; it seems to be much more fun than doing it by yourself.

Thanks for the head’s up on Delderfield, Jerry. I saw the films when they were originally broadcast and thought them absolutely wonderful. I read “God Is An Englishman” and the other books in that series, plus all the rest that I could find. I think I bought those as I do so enjoy his books. I haven’t read one of his in ages – I’ll see if booksfree.com has any of them. Are they closed captioned perchance? I have a LOT of trouble with British actors, they don’t enunciate as clearly as most Americans. I remember Emma Thompson saying how her face hurt when she was in that presidential film w/John Travolta. She said something like we throw our words out while the Brits kind of keep them in their mouths. And that’s just about right too.

I do my taxes online using TurboTax, which I think is God’s gift to people like me who are too darn cheap to pay someone to do their taxes! The TurboTax program asks all the questions that a human tax man would ask, and you can find everything you need for any circumstance that would arise. I also have Quicken financial program which lets me pay bills online and let my bank write and mail the checks, or do the transaction via computer transfers. It is so easy I can’t imagine doing all that with paper and pen now. I had mine done by mid-February and was delighted that while I didn’t get anything back, I also didn’t have to pay either. LOVE that!

Candace, re those dizzy spells, I used to have them and when I went to the doctor about it, he suggested Meclizine and Suda-Fed. And that works beautifully, especially when you first feel the spell coming on. Check with you dr to see if the two would work for you. He also asked me what I was stressed about and I told him nothing. My mother later told me I was bothered by my job and when I thought about it, I realized she was right. So I started looking for another program to transfer to. Found one, transferred and the dizzy spells went away.

And you’re so right – this is a very VERY strange winter all over. Global warming is not a myth.

I too have my snow shoveled – the complex maintenance people do that. The problem this time was that we had such an awful windy day that the snow blew off the yard (!) and piled up on the walkway from my patio to the sidewalk. Not only that, it was also icy underneath. I was really pleased when my g’daughter came over, shoveled the walkway and then took me to the market. The sidewalks are cleaned but there is a foot-wide strip between the sidewalk and the parking, which will always have snow piled up, and then the snow close to the curb from cleaning off the cars, so it will be a five or six foot wide barrier for me to walk over. With all the folks cleaning off cars, and the neighbor who lives over me who cleans off my car too, the snow is really packed down. Makes for slippery walking and makes me nervous. I was happy to see her. And I baked a loaf of bread for the man; he cleaned off four cars that day!

I hope you enjoy the time-share Jacky; no snow in FL — or at least not usually although I understand Georgia has snow in some areas!

Well, everyone – take care and stay warm (or cool as the case may be), dry and fed.

Jo

Nice to have good neighbors, Candace and Darlyne, we hire a farmer neighbor to clean our driveway, he’s been quite busy this year! I just clean the snow from the garage doors to where his scoop can reach.

I’m waiting to hear what you think of March, Darlyne, I ordered it, used, and hope it comes today as we are leaving tomorrow for a few weeks in FL. We got “arm twisted” into buying a time share after we sold our last RV and if you don’t use the points, you lose them. I loaned People of the Book to a friend who is waiting for an appt in Mpls about two aneurysms in her head. If you remember, the main character’s mother is a famous neurosurgeon, and gives a lecture on a new process to repair this problem. It is what has been a possibility repair for my friend. And she loves the book!!! She has to take it easy, no heavy lifting ect, so she has time and when something like this is facing you, it takes a lot to get your mind occupied otherwise.

So thankful for GGoBit for suggesting it. I hope to keep online as we travel. And the days are longer, spring is coming! Jacky

This surely has been the strangest winter for most everyone in a long time. Nice you had a helpful neighbor, Darlyne, to clear your sidewalk. I also had a kind neighbor who brought my garbage can in from the curb–he only had to cope with the sunshine to do that I guess he noticed my tentative walk the past few days–been dealing with one of my dizzy spells and resorted to a cane. I’m grateful to not have snow to cope with. We’ve gone from 80 to 30 several times, including this past couple of days and we do complain about that but definitely should not.

Candace

There is a lot of it. I did get my car out of the driveway and was able to mail my taxes. A nice neighbor shoveled my side walk early and I got what snowed after off later. Now I will vegitate.