My Apologies for Delays...Life Without Gas Leaves Blogger Slowly Trying to Adjust...

Cabin in Summer...

You know, when I moved into my log cabin, I had to
make many adjustments after living in a city condo...
Most I enjoyed, like creating some "spaces or as some people call them rooms" in my yard...

But being without any gas in a cabin that was created to use gas acquired through a ROW on the property, which included free gas to the residence, has become a major problem...

Not for basic living...no, but for being able to routinely live by some type of schedule...

So please forgive my lack of attention to emails requesting reviews...Before the gas shutoff, I was slowly catching up with the email while still producing approximately 20 reviews each month... But I haven't looked at my email for days.

As a reminder, I did put up a notice on my blog that I will not be accepting new requests until September 1st (and maybe longer) due to the increasing number of requests I'm getting - I have at least 300 pending emails to be answered...) Some will be getting a no, which I have not been doing in the past, but I've got to do something to catch up...

Washing dishes is worst...

Although I did get the electric burners, they are not as hot as gas...Who knew? So it's taken me all morning to heat water, do a few dishes, heat water, do a few dishes...you get the idea...at least while I'm waiting to ensure my water is hot enough, I can read...

I'm reading Corpse Reader right now...set in China in the 1200s AD...It was just translated into English, so keep watching for that review sometime next week...if you're into forensics...

Things like keeping clean, washing hair...well, let just say that I won't be inviting people to visit... and I cancelled a doctor's appointment because I couldn't take a hot shower...Washing off for home living is OK, but I couldn't accept going to doctor that way!

Washing clothes is ok because I already use Tide for cold water...But...

With no dryer, what's the use of washing them...Sooner or later what I'll do is hang them up inside. Buying rope and hanging them outside is just more money I will have spent...The electric burner cost me $50 total by the time I paid for overnight delivery...

But at least I'm not drinking my tea with foam anymore! BTW, Sheila Deeth told me her Mom gets the foam also with sweetners, so at least I know that it's not my microwave...

Only thing is that the water doesn't boil on these burners...Anybody that routinely drinks tea knows that is a must for a really good cup of tea...so, I'll still not happy, just satisfied...

Of course, I'm using the microwave for all cooking...I don't see myself cooking on the burners, except to heat soup or something like that...So a lot of fast food dinners, etc., are my choices...or going out and buying something cooked and heating it once I'm home...

It's quiet here...nobody from the lawyer's office, Columbia Gas, or anybody involved with this mess have gotten back to us...

I did get a nice response from the rep from the propane company...may have to go to that expense to convert...

But no matter what, all this is extremely time consuming to keep daily living going...

Please bear with me.
I've always tried to be efficient and effective...but this is all totally beyond my control...

Take Care,
GABby

Leaving you with the happy thought that beautiful irises are coming out daily!

3:53 AM: Is this how Urban Legends Start...

Walter Mosley at the 2007 Brooklyn Book Festival. The photographer dedicates this photograph to Debbie Ramos, sister of Jeffpw. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Really and Truly, I woke up this morning and my bedside clock read 3:53, you know, the name of the Urban
Fiction book by Nocomus Columbus that I just reviewed here! I don't know whether I specifically put in my review that all the murders in that book happened then...

No, I didn't murder anybody...thinking about it? Well, nobody can stop a thought fleeting across your brain, right? And, besides, how could I murder an entire corporation--yes, that one, who left me almost homeless...

http://notesfromhollyst.blogspot.com/2013/01/
how-to-make-homemade-cinnamon-tea.html

The saddest thing about Columbia Gas leaving me...gasless, is that I haven't had a good cut of tea since last week! And anybody who follows my blogs know that I sit down with a good cup of tea when I read, especially in the morning. So, my review schedule has totally been whacked! But I've been reading murder! LOL... In Bulgaria... (look for that one later)...Then Jennifer Chase's latest serial killer...burns...them to death... And last night Easy Rawlins has been asked to get involved with...a murder? Hopefully not...

Microwaves are wonderful, but they just don't make a good cup of tea. On the gas flame, I let the water boil...it boils in the microwave too, but when you add a sweetner, it foams! Now who wants foaming tea?

So what have I learned from this experience?

• Continue not to believe anybody running companies...
• If you use a glass bowl to try to boil water to wash dishes (and need to keep boiling for sufficient water) it breaks into pieces...
• When crap happens, people start denying..."I didn't agree to anything..."
• Thank God for the Electric Company...who during this mess, had a power shortage and then called to confirm I was back up and :"apologized for my inconvenience..." That's a real "service" agency...
• Thank God for brainstorms (yesterday), electric burner tops, Walmart overnight shipping, and hopefully getting it today, so I can make a good cup of tea!

So, now that I've updated you...oh yes, I also learned (not much) online re propane gas installation... So, I'm taking my foamy tea and going back to Walter Mosley...to see what Easy's up to in his latest!

All of the above is Just My Opinion, of Course...except for the foamy tea...that's very true!

And the 3:53 AM wakeup...

Leaving me with one burning question for all of you from this new cell phone owner--why does it start a little tune and when you pick it up, it doesn't have anything for you to see or do??? 

GABby

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No Reviews...Blogger Stews... Just My Personal Opinion, Of Course...

Natural gas production by countries (Romania in red) in cubic meters per year (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Warning against digging up the Columbia Natural Gas pipe in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When you are a retired employee, burnt out, but still of sound mind...most of the time... sometimes the world, at its worst, needs to be talked about...

Some of you know that I formerly was Associate Director of Facilities Planning and Management at West Virginia University. One of the things that my staff handled was land management. Robert Merow, an intelligent, highly competent man handled all the contracts for us for rights of way... I knew what he did, although I very rarely had to do anything unless I had to sign something as the director...

So last year, when I got a letter from Columbia Gas that they were taking their equipment from my land, of course I immediately exclaimed that that could not happen. Although I did not "own" the right of way, it was still in effect and had been for more than 30 years...

What we learned was that Columbia Gas had sold their rights... Now, I know that if WVU had entered into a right of way and that company sold their rights...you can bet that WVU would have acted to legally intercede!

So when I explained...it was up to Columbia Gas to ensure their rights of way, in effect, were properly updated., that was ignored by merely quoting the "new contract..."

They did not do that. What that means, in my opinion, is that if you have entered into any contract with Columbia Gas, you will have no legal rights via that contract if they decide to sell it.

Oh?! You say I must be wrong?

Well, all I know if that that said equipment was taken from my property during my short visit to the grocery store this past weekend... When I came back, two young men stopped to tell me what they had done.

I commend the two young men who stood there, while I broke down and ask, "Are you saying I have no gas?"

I have no gas to make a cup of tea or to cook...
I have no gas to dry my clothes...
I have no gas to heat my home during these chilly day and nights we are having..
I have no gas to take a hot shower, wash dishes, etc...

Before you ask, yes I had hired a lawyer, who told the three people who visited when we thought he was going to work for us, that they were not taking the free gas... Yes, there was free gas for the home on the property, as part of the original agreement. Income from that well is less than $100 a year (or a little more if you considered the gas cost for a log cabin)...It has not been renegotiated... The original signers are dead...

Now, for me, this was not a matter of paying for the gas, but I was told that this was not possible. Indeed, unless I paid somebody to "do whatever is necessary" I couldn't even continue to use the well... But get this, there is no company from whom I can buy natural gas!!!

I'm not going to bore you with the research, telephone calls, etc., that the original ROW representative did... Let me just say that the lawyer never returned any calls nor did the one and only written communication mention anything about Columbia Gas proceeding...

When you don't know, most people assume...I have to assume (1) Columbia Gas is lying, my lawyer is lying, or maybe even that "somebody" paid off the lawyer to get us out of this whole thing...

But, in the meantime, I wish I had a cup of tea...

And I just finished some mowing of my law and wish I could take a hot shower...

But no... If you feel a Columbia Gas had the legal right to do what they did...please tell me why? If not, if you tweet...would you retweet in support of my dilemma...

Yes, I've been screwed royally...by bureaucracy and crooked or inefficient people...who knows?


GABixlerReviews




.

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Nocomus Columbus' Street Lit Whips Up Mini-Mystery!

Immobilized by fear and rope.   Wrist bound to wrist, foot bound to foot, sweating like a pig, even though the room’s not the least bit balmy.   Cool and dry like a fall evening in southern Arizona.   Sweat rolls down the forehead forming into beads before drip, drip, dripping to the floor.   Coalescing into a coagulation of dirt and sodium and chloride and water and whatever else perspiration is made up of.   Miniscule puddles.   Tiny transitory ecosystems.   Little salty souls, lightly corrupted, slightly corrupted, both foul and sweet, waiting for their ascent into the heavens, ready at any moment to be reunited with their creator.   Normally he sweats like this when sitting in the sauna after a gun-blasting work-out.   There was no workout today though, just the darkness.  
His mouth is stuffed full of Subway sandwich wrapping paper, sealed shut by duct tape.   He can tell it’s from Subway because he’s eaten there a million times plus one.   Many years ago while fantasizing about right-wing news channel anchor-women, a commercial came on the television.   Normally he never paid much attention to the commercials during his long and arduous Vulpes news masturbation sessions, but something was different this day. With a sense of fury he quickly pulled the Tommy Lee Jones action figure out of his ass, leaned forward, and turned up the volume on his television set.   The commercial discussed how some obese nerd similar to himself in many ways, lost a bunch of weight by eating Subway sandwiches three goddamn times a day.   He decided right then and there that he was tired of masturbating.   He made an oath to himself and Subway, and his shit-stained Tommy Lee Jones action figurine that he would consume their product no less than three times a day...
Fat Boy’s captor stands motionless at the far end of the room.   A silhouette shrouded in shadow.   Fat Boy knows he’s being watched.   He can feel it.   It causes him to wet himself, just like he did at night when he was an adolescent.   His father was an angry man to say the least.   He would wake Fat Boy up in the early morning hours sometimes by using a police taser on his sleeping body.   The taser always made him wet himself.   It was a horrible feeling...
The subjugator walks over to another part of the room.     Fat Boy hears the individual clanging around.     Music starts playing.   He recognizes the guitar riff.   The track is called “Rumble”.   “Rumble” was released in 1958 by Link Wray & His Ray Men.   Purely an instrumental track. According to grandmother’s Encyclopedia Britannica, “Rumble utilized largely unexplored techniques like distortion and feedback.”   The song was banned from radio play shortly after its release.   America is such a strange fucking place.

~~~ 

3:53 a.m.

By Nocomos Columbus

With the raw language of urban fiction, 3:53 explores the intense self-analysis of teens testing their limits on drugs, sexuality, friendship, bullying, abuse, love... and murder... Using a series of short scenes, thoughts, essays, the author takes readers directly into the intimacy of four acquaintances, one of whom is a psychopath...

Corey had been called Fat Boy for so long that most people didn't even know his name, even after he had visited Subway 3 times a day, like the guy on TV and was now not overweight... Abused by his father, as each morning he used a police taser to get him out of bed, Fat boy enjoyed payback by going after anybody he viewed as weaker than he was now.

Becky had a hard life with her mother, mainly since everybody in town knew she was a doper and would do anything to get it! Fortunately, they lived in the same trailer park with Sam and his Dad and Sam was her best friend. She spent most nights with him in his trailer since his Dad was on the road most of the time. They'd watch TV, talk, and sometimes fuck...

Becky’s mom was a tweeker.   She lived in the same trailer park as Sam and his father.   Her mother’s only cared about one thing: dope.  The townies all knew about Becky’s mother, and gave Becky plenty of shit about her.   They nicknamed her Rhonda Glassburner.   If you need your dick sucked, find Rhonda, and boy was she good at it.   Rhonda loved dope.   She was a dope fiend.   Rhonda would steal to get dope, suck dick to get dope. She even tried to pimp Becky out one time in order to get her hands on some dope.   Becky didn’t know shit about her father.   She had a couple pictures, but that was it.   Her mom didn’t talk about him very much either.   She asked her mom about him once.  Rhonda said he was dead.   Killed himself  when Becky was a toddler.   Motherfucker went crazy.   Started seeing shit that wasn’t there, hearing shit that wasn’t said, believing in things that didn’t exist.  After that Becky stopped asking Rhonda about her father.
~~~


Sam had recognized his being gay, wanting another whose beauty blinded him, but not knowing how to approach him, he finds writing a screenplay between two men a release of his hidden desires.{This screenplay is set off as a story within the story} It is scary to risk being called a fag by school mates, while girls may be looking for more than he can provide...

But one day when he got home from school, he realizes he accidentally left that screenplay in homeroom! Fat Boy knew he had a gold mine when he found and read it....

And when he came upon the writer and his idol one day in the woods, he started reading the play out-loud... But before that Sam and Dylan had been groovin' with the pot and sharing more with each other...in fact, Dylan admitted he was having problems with stress, with his parents, football, and feeling like he was pretending to be somebody else other than he was...

Dylan the fucking meathead.   
Popular.  Left-tackle on the 

football team.   He was big and smelled musky, 

like someone trying to cover up vinegar  with cologne. 

Dylan always gave Sam a hard time, especially

 when Corey wasn’t there to be the target of the

 bullying.   Dylan liked to talk about his late-night

 transgressions with some of the school’s females.

   This perplexed Sam.   Everyone knew who Dylan

 had fucked the day after he fucked them. Yet girls

 continued to allow him to deflower them.   

Maybe he has a huge dick or something.   

He was tall, at least six-foot two, and had a thick build.

   Dylan wore shirts that were too tight, which showcased

 his large nipples, like he was proud of them or something. 

  His hair was short, close-cropped, and always looked wet. 

  Sam couldn’t tell if that was caused by applying

 water and lots of hair gel or just natural unwashed

 greasiness.   Either way, Sam didn’t care.   

He still thought Dylan was beautiful.

~~~

Caught in a life, living on the streets, finding wherever they could get it results in lies, secrets, stolen moments and a world of pain...

One of them couldn't take what was happening. And when the time was right, death came to one of the four...and then another...

And then there was none...

This is short but so intense that you may get lost and not know how to put the pieces together. Don't forget the Screen Play is a separate part, which is hard to deal with in Kindle, so check the contents. This is not for everybody.

But if you can deal with the street language of today, please try this urban fiction. The writing is excellent. The story mimics what you read in the newspaper, not ever knowing, though, what actually happens to the victims. Be prepared. The language is indeed raw. The results obsessive, real, and illustrative of what some of our youth live in on a daily basis...If we don't like them telling the facts as they see them... Tough! This is the street lit genre and they have just as much right to the freedom of speech as anybody else. Even if some don't like it! It should be judged based upon the definition of urban fiction...

But be sure to read the pain behind these stories as well. Because it is there, waiting for you to read... and say that you understand...

GABixlerReviews

Nocomus Columbus: I'm not an author. I'm an alcoholic, PTSD infested, social anxiety sufferer that likes to write.

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More Needs to Be Said, Pondered, Considered Re Biography of Child, Neglected But Undefeated! A Message for Social Workers, Parents, Teachers, Doctors;;;

Jonathan (Photo credit: climbnh2003)

Neglected But Undefeated:
The Life of a Boy Who 
 Never Knew A Mother's Love

By Jonathan Anthony Burkett


I'm assuming that one of the boys on the cover of this book is Jonathan, plus his loving grandparents...I wonder what would have happened to Jonathan if he had never come to America...

Would he ever have been abused? I don't think so, because he had love from his grandparents, his friends and relatives. Would he ever have become a Christian? I think so... But would he have become a writer? I'm not sure...

One of the social issues I have never been able to make a firm decision on was abortion. My inner turmoil has always been that I would rather see it legalized then to see that unwanted child abused... I still don't have an answer for myself, especially after reading Jonathan's biography.

Jonathan was a child of rape. His mother never loved him, beating him continuously, often calling him by the name of her rapist, his father.  If Jonathan's mother would have aborted, then Jonathan would not have been born and suffered all that he did!

But we also wouldn't have the man that he is today! I want to know Jonathan, was it worth all that you went through? Can you truly accept that you lived as you did and still claim to be undefeated?

If you say, yes, Jonathan, then it was ONLY because of yourself and God's support...

Because you certainly didn't get it from anybody else! I urge you to read this book! I urge it to be read by all those in jobs that require interaction with children...

Were you one of those individuals who knew what Jonathan was going through? Were you one of those teachers that saw the scars, maybe the tears, heard the nonverbal cries for help?

Then why didn't you help?

Along with the tears, I am angry! I am angry for all those who never did what should have been done!

LOCK THAT MOTHER UP! KEEP HER AWAY FROM CHILDREN! GET HER TO A PSYCHIATRIST OR PLACE HER IN A HOSPITAL...

Why was she allowed to do what she did?

I don't understand! If Jonathan had stayed in Jamaica and his grandparents had done what his mother did, perhaps I could accept it, simply because I know nothing about the country...But he was brought, unwillingly, to America...

America failed him! Teachers you knew... Church members...YOU knew... You had to have known!
Jonathan was physically abused... ER staff you knew... Jonathan was operated on...surgeons had to have known why his seizures resulted...

This went on for years!

I am angry that this boy was hurt as he was... Angry because I know that he is not the only one!

WHY DO AMERICANS SEND MONEY TO CARE FOR CHILDREN IN OTHER COUNTRIES, THAT THEY NEVER SEE...

BUT DON'T GET INVOLVED ENOUGH TO SEE WHEN A CHILD IN AMERICA IS MISTREATED? 

AMERICANS, WE DID THIS TO JONATHAN BURKETT...[and others]

MAY GOD FORGIVE US... AMERICA IS NO LONGER THE LAND OF THE FREE...


Just my Opinion, of Course...

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