Operation Aneurysm and Pumpkins!

Finally! We have hope of a hospital date so my partner can get his operation. It depends of course on whether or not there is a bed available this coming week. So, if you're reading this from a hospital bed and anxious to go home, insist upon it please!!!! While the wait seemed longer to him than to me I'm pleased that when Health Care in Canada works, it really works GREAT!

To be fair, it works pretty good most of the time. I don't know what I would have done without it in my life because I've had to use it a few times. Luckily I didn't have to use it to excess. Some people do. I remember when we got our system I did think that it would make more hypocondriacts. It might also encourage those that already were overly concerned with their health and because they were, become self fulfilling prophets.

Being sick is no fun as anyone who is knows. Unfortunately there are people who derive a lot of attention from being sick, so they're sick all the time. The kick-back is attention. It seems a shame they feel the only time anyone will be attentive to them is when they're sick, but if this is so, maybe they should examine that aspect of their personality.

As for me, I'm just glad we finally have a date for this operation and hope that nothing goes amiss to postpone it any longer. It's been extremely stressful on us both. I'll let you know how it goes after the fact.

The cost of a bit of fun:
I was on Facebook last night and noticed a post from a fellow in Australia and since it's month end I have to mention this. A pumpkin in Australia costs $7.99 a POUND! Anyone who is familiar with pumpkins knows there's not a lot to them, but they can be heavy because of their construction. As a result even a small one would have cost my friend about $60. Yeah!! Imagine, $60. for something you're going to ream out and cut a face in and stick a candle in it.

Hallowe'en is apparently not that "big thing" in Australia that it is in North America. I can see why now. I doubt very many people would be dressing their driveways with pumpkins and making pumpkin people out of them if they were THAT expensive here.

The best I could offer was to send some seeds down under so the kids could grow their own for next year. Then again, it would likely cause an international incident or something. I don't know if sending seeds would be legal from a customs point of view. It likely wouldn't be for some reason.

I know countries have to be careful about what comes into their geography, especially in regard to plants and all that entails. I am also wondering why pumpkins aren't grown there like they are here. It might be because Australia is considered a really warm continent, but they're quite close to Antartica so they might get a frost here and there. I don't know.

Well I guess that's it for now folks. In the meantime stay well and don't hang around anything too creepy tomorrow night! HAPPY HALLOWE'EN!

Friends Around The Planet

It is so very nice to have friends who live in other countries. Years ago when mIRC was the quintessential chat program I chatted daily with about two dozen people and they were scattered all over the planet. We broke the barriers of time zones simply by becoming sleep deprived. But, we were all aware of our condition. Sometimes, many times we'd pull all nighters and sit up chatting about anything that came to mind.

We'd gossip about who wasn't online and who was. We'd talk about the weather, the politics of the day, the cultural barriers we might be respecting or breaking or who was having an online romance and who wasn't. Not only that, but we all had great fun. I learned more about computers, networks and people over that time period then I ever could have in a course of any description.

Like all things enjoyable, change and life intervenes. Some of the changes include but are not restricted to: many of the people I enjoyed grew up, got married, and had children or didn't. The Internet also changed and the social networking of chat lines grew into the more sophisticated Facebooks and Twitters of today.

I'm sure I changed as well. I look back now with warmth and gratitude on those years because they happened at a time in my life when it was absolutely necessary for me to get a grip on my own life or wither away from the adversities that took place behind me. With my face in the computer, the rest of the world did not exist unless I turned around. I had to do that a lot as it happens because I was not only responsible for a 40 hr a week job, but also for another 30 hours of publishing a newspaper with my computer.

My chat line was my reward. My relax time. I experimented of course with every aspect of it and made more friends online than I ever had in person. Some of them continue to this day and some of course have moved on to heaven only knows what, but I'm sure they sometimes think of those days too. Do we wish them back? No, I don't think so. They were great at the time but they served their purpose for us all in one way or another. I'm sure some of us would like to meet of course but the costs of doing that would be highly prohibitive for most of us.

For all we know, some of them may have died. People tend to do that too, usually unknown to us. I'm sure if that sad event happened, their relatives are not concerned with who they might of known online that might appreciate knowing. But that was then, and times have changed to the point that today, relatives would have that concern and find a way to inform online friends.

I shall be forever grateful to my mIRC chat friends. They all helped me be me. They freed me in so many ways and taught me so very much about life, love, and the world of the internet. I will speak on this topic again because I want to look up some of the nicknames from those days.

In the meantime, stay well and thank you for visiting my blog. :)

Who Else Feels This Way?

There's not too many days go by when I don't wish I could defrag my biological hard drive. But, alas it's not apparently possible. Google has some pretty good help files for bloggers but when it comes to the HTML adjustments or refinements, they lose me entirely.

It's not like I don't have about fifty pounds of HTML books, printouts and magazines on how to manage or learn to write this code. I've even read a great deal of it, but for some reason unless you know someone who can actually sit at your shoulder and say, "Do this!" or, "add that.", it shall remain a mystery to my poor besotted brain.

You might wonder why I even want to learn this stuff. Well, look at the bottom of this blog. Go on, the very very bottom and see the big blank space around that Amazon Search gadget. It's not like someone can slap post-it notes in that white space, they can't! So, it remains like a large pimple on the end of a teenager's nose!

Nothing I can do about it unless I can figure out how to shrink that gadget space around the search thingie. You would think a person of my mature experience and various skills could work it out. But to date, I haven't so, on to other things.

I've been making sites and pages on Videojug and even that will sometimes leave me blank faced and staring at my screen wondering if it is as it should be. What I think staring at it will accomplish is again, beyond me.

Then there's Amazon. I buy a lot of stuff from them and have done for years. It's convenient and I usually find what I want. My computer often wants to do my thinking for me and will from time to time send me to Amazon.ca when I WANT Amazon.com. So, I have to smack it down every now and then to make it do what I want, and not what it thinks I want.

But with the monetization of blogs and sites, you have to join, get this: three Amazon affiliate sites. Now why in heavens name Amazon can't just have one, I'll never know. But yep... three of them! That means you have three ID's and have to recall three more passwords. At this rate I'll need notebooks up the ying yang to remember it all and keep it all in order.

And this is just a small part of today! I'm supposed to be retired and having the easy life where people call you, "Mam" and young muscled men carry your groceries to your car for you. That's not happened to me yet. Oddly I wonder if it ever will.

In any event, here it is Sunday and it's one of those damp-ish fall days where the trees are shedding the last of their leaves before the winter winds arrive and blow them off. Another week looms before me and I wonder when my Paul will hear from his surgeon so he can get his operation done and over with before he has a kiniption fit. I know once the phone rings with that date, he'll feel some relief but his anxiety level will also go through the roof at the same time. Having had several serious operations myself, I find it hard to settle his mind about the experience. It's something you really need to do on your own. this being his first operation in his entire life, it's not easy for me to set his mind to rest. Only he can do that.

Well I guess I'll pop over to Writing.com and see how my writer friends are getting along today. We have some good conversations over there about writing stories, concepts, and so on. Some of them have some incredible ideas for novels and are very capable writers.

Read a great line the other day by Enrique Jardiel Poncela. He said:
"When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing." 

It's still a pity I can't defrag my brain! It would help so much. Until next time.. stay well.

I've Been Busy!

I'm not completely sure what goes into a BLOG so I guess I can use it for a place to put my thoughts since I'm not sure where else to put them! In any event, I've had some busy days of late.

My partner as explained in the last entry is awaiting an operation. So until we hear from the hospital and get a date for his repair, we wait. Luckily he can entertain himself and stay busy doing things that don't involve heavy lifting. So, he's settled for now until he has "the date".

I've been working on my VideoJug pages and have actually made a site of sorts. I'm hoping to review some of the books I've read in the past year or so. It's not meant to be one of those stuffy review sites, but a review by a regular person, which I like to think I am.

You can have a look at it by using this link:  http://pages.videojug.com/users/TheTicker

I've been making the graphics myself and that's been a lot of fun in itself. But since it's all new to me I'll see how it goes and try to make it work.

I've made an avatar too. It resembles what I think I almost look like, although I'm not that chubby. That was fun to put together. You really need a sense of humor to make an avatar of yourself.

I hope I don't look that cross, but maybe I do to some people.

Some of my time has been spent on Writing.com too. I get to meet other writers there and I do quite a few reviews of work done by many many different kinds of writers. The site really does have something for everyone. I also enjoy the chat room there. It can be a lot of fun.

I suppose I could mention the weather here too. It's fall of course, so the leaves are falling off the trees and the birds are looking for things to eat. Once you start feeding them, you really should continue doing it because they'll look for it regularly.
Some people think that if you feed them, they won't eat bugs anymore, but I think they'll eat both. It can be very amusing to watch them on a daily basis and it's amazing how many different varieties will show up in your own garden.

We got some bird books to help us identify them and mark the pages with sticky notes. As a result of course both books are floppy with sticky notes, but it shows how many you can identify. And, yes the squirrels do get at the seeds and chomp away and hide things. But, they have to eat too so I don't subscribe to keeping the squirrels out and away from the bird seeds. From what I've seen they all ignore one another.

Well I guess I better get some supper underway or we'll start losing weight around here. Stay well until next entry.

Worry Worry Worry... What a Pain!

Most of us have something that makes us worry. It might be health, or money or family crisis. It might even be all three and many more. The odd thing is, "worry" doesn't help anything. It doesn't even relieve the stress worry causes! But we all do it.
None of us escape it either. So, it must be part of our humanity. We can hopefully divert ourselves from it now and then. I'm sat here drinking a hot coffee (I take coffee and tea black) and thinking about the things I'm worried over. At least I worry BIG!.
My partner is due for an operation to fix an aortic aneurysm. He's worried and so am I. He's never been in a hospital except once this summer when he took a stroke. But prior to that no one in his family had been in a hospital. I find that amazing because I spent a goodly part of my own life in close association with hospitals.
So, later today we should know more about when he gets his operation. Until then, we all worry!

This is a TEST entry in my blog.

I'm still in the learning curve of this blogging business, so be patient, I'm going as fast as only I can go!Even while I'm trying to learn to blog I'm trying to learn other things. This logo is the result of some of that learning.
I made it with a trial version of a program and I think at the end of October I'll buy the program. It's really easy to use. I'm still exploring it. I could probably make logos for people and charge them for the service. It might be worth thinking about.
It's been a very busy time for me lately. Some things I'm getting done and still others are getting left undone. I imagine everyone is in that boat from time to time. I guess we just get too many things on our list of things To Do, and fall behind.
I'm also reading when I can. I just finished a book called, The Sunday Pigeon Murders. I enjoyed it. It reads like an old movie and anyone who enjoys murder mysteries will like this one. I must admit I didn't catch on to who the murderer was until the very last. Sometimes, I do solve the mystery!
On Sunday I spent most of the day trying to figure out how to put a banner on my blog and when I finally figured it out, I could of kicked myself it was that blessed easy. In any case I think I hear a car in the drive. I must have visitors so I better get the kettle boiled. Catch ya later!