We lived in the Baltimore area for ten years and during that time they were running a contest to name the team. Edgar Allen Poe being from that area, I thought The Ravens was a great choice. The Steelers are my team and since they are not playing I guess I'll root for The Ravens.

Here is the crow story.... My oldest brother found a baby crow and hand fed it. Dad built a large cage next to the dog kennel and Beaky became part of our family. What was such a riot about the crow is that it learned to bark rather than caw. I was always afraid of it because he liked only certain people, and I was not one of them. He loved my mom though. He lived with us for 20 years and when the kids moved out mom took care of him. She used to pick out the charms in Lucky Charms cereal and hand feed him. He was pretty spoiled. One other person Beaky did not like was a cousin of ours. We hosted the family picnic every year (mom was from a family of 11 kids) and we had about 50 cousins at the picnic plus all of the Aunts and Uncles. Every year Beaky would escape from his cage and attack our cousin Karl. No one else, just Karl. Each and every year. For years my mom would have a birthday wish published in the paper for cousin Karl with a picture of a crow next to it:) sasha, my oldest brother and my mom (but not cousin Karl!) would love that picture!

A friend has a Vizio TV and it's great. Has better sound than my Dynex. I've noticed Vizio's price going up lately compared to other brands so they must be getting popular. I've used Tracfone for years and see little reason to consider changing. Costs me about $5-$7 a month. I have the double minutes for life on it and it came with a promo for a bonus 30 min each time you add a card. Tack on a promo code for usually 30-60 more minutes and a small card gives a lot of minutes. Mine is on Verizon and I have better coverage than most contract phones of Tmo, AT&T or Sprint. A friend is paying about $130/mo for his phone that they promised "if this won't get service, nothing will" but he can't get service at his farm. I pulled out my Tracfone (that he laughed at), dialed his phone, put it on speaker so they could hear it ring and answer and I left a message. After he changed his underwear he didn't criticize my phone again. If I didn't use DSL, I'd seriously consider dropping the landline and use this all the time. BTW, for reference, you can get another 10 min if you activate your phone online. Not a big thing, but 10 min is 10 min. Another little tip is sometimes you can get deals on the small cards. For a while they had a deal where you could buy a phone and two 60 min cards for $20. I'd activate the phones and give them to people to try out. They'd have 20 min time and for short talkers, it gave them a chance to see if they'd like it. Or I'd keep them and use them for disposable numbers when I needed to give someone a contact number and didn't trust them. Some would just call and have the minutes transferred to their main phone but I didn't bother with that. Then I'd use the cards myself and they'd add 210 min per card with the bonuses. So for the $20 (plus tax but no shipping) I'd get a net total of 430 minutes of talk time which would last a long time for me. Occasionally a promo was for additional days too and that's usually more valuable to me. I usually spend the $50 and buy an extra year of time since I don't use many minutes.

Back a few months ago, Raven recommended me an affordable 10.1" tablet. Initially, I purchased one to read books. Now, I love that thing. I found out more ways to use it for. My Dragon Touch tablet only has 16GB of storage but I had purchased a couple 256GB USB flash drives. Now, I have plenty of storage. Yes, I can also use memory cards on my tablet but currently, flash drives are faster and come with higher storage capacity. Not to mention, they're easier to transfer files from one pc to another. I've converted many of my DVDs (movies & documentaries) to MP4 so I could play them on my tablet. It's great when I can hook it up to a TV screen (via HDMI) and watch these videos at my mom's place. Everyone get to watch them and I don't need to carry so many DVDs. May I please add about the tablet's camera feature? It can also be used for live view conversation through Skype as well. As far as games, oh my, so many free ones to play with. I had to limit myself. Otherwise, nothing else would be done. Btw Raven, remember how I told you that the volume is low? Well, I found a case with speakers on eBay. It works great now. In case anyone is interested, below is the link to the hard case. It comes in a few different colors. Here is a link that might be useful: PU Leather Case With Speakers