Exciting Few Days.

That is putting it mildly. No internet available the last few days, so no new posts. I should have that situation corrected in a few days. Then I can resume "normal operation". More info to come.

Appliance redo times 3?

Seems like things usually happen in threes. So now that I replaced our washing machine late last month and this week we are getting a new dishwasher, I wonder what will be the next thing go. Fortunately the dishwasher bill will go to the landlord.

The wheels of change move slowly in our property manager's world, so I have become reacquainted with the business end of dish cloths and dish towels. It must be over 25 years back to a time where we didn't have a dishwasher. Before I was married and  while I still lived with my parents I don't recall doing many dishes. I think my Mom thought it was easier to do them herself than to get us kids to. My Father's contribution to this activity was to encourage my Mother to "just stack'em Harriet" and do them later, which she almost never did. As it was a near obsession with her to keep the kitchen spick and span.

Christmas gathering.

We had our family get together yesterday at my daughter's house. Most of the family was there, about 12 adults and 8 kids. We had a nice meal and a small gift exchange. It's sad to say but true. I have lost my zest for gatherings of any size. Even my own family. I wish it weren't so but it is. I start looking for a reason to leave after a couple of hours. I am much more comfortable one on one or two.

I'm not sure when I began to feel this way about gatherings, weddings, funerals, parties, reunions. I think it has been in the last 20 years or so. I will have to ask my wife. Maybe she can remember. Is this a mental disorder? My wife had a brother-in law who had similar feelings. His was linked to disease, Huntington's I think. Mine is not as far as I know, linked to any particular thing. Maybe it's old age.

Legal Residence

Just thinking out loud. I have heard that Canadians need to return to their county for at least 6 months and 1 day every year to maintain their status in the government health care system for Canadians. I wonder if the US has any restrictions like that? Do states have any such requirements to keep your legal address in that state. I have heard of people who travel all year and spend little time in the place where they legally reside.

So when considering spending winters in a warmer clime legal residency might have to be considered. I am going to research this and I will do another post in this regard. How much of one's financial life is tied to that legal residence? I can think of several items. Tax on your income, car insurance rates, entry tickets to Disney World, you get the picture.

Illness

I don't know what I have but the symptoms are not fun. Itchy eyes, runny nose, sinus pain, sneezing, you get the picture. Call it what you will, it has the potential to mess up plans for the next couple of days. I am reluctant to take any medication, as that usually for me just prolongs recovery and doesn't help the problems all that much.

I talked to daughters yesterday and their families have some illness too. I guess it is that time of the year where these things happen. Knowing that really doesn't make me feel any better.

We managed to get out a little today, Post Office, grocery store. My wife was buying the ingredients to make a holiday favorite snack. While I was paying, she scooped up the full bag of groceries and headed for the car. Not seeing a shopping cart in her way she stumbled on it, just avoiding a headfirst sprawl on the floor. Thankfully the only damage appears to be a large bruise/lump on her instep and a larger blow to my peace of mind. That could have been a very unpleasant holiday in the hospital. Whew.

Last Friday night.

My wife and I shared a meal with my brother Jim and sister Sarita and her husband Ken last Friday. We chose , as we often do, Monical's Pizza in north Champaign. They all live nearby. Joan and had a little longer trip but I managed to kill three birds with one trip. And besides, haven't you noticed how cheap gas has suddenly become. Almost 50% less than a while ago.

We had a nice visit at the restaurant and later at my sister's home. One of the big topics was our grand kids and how they growing so fast. Fast too are the passing years. We decided that was caused by the aging process and only happens to those folks over 50. As I recall time nearly stood still when I was a teen and couldn't wait to be grown up.

New photo at the top of this page.

I have had the Leg Lamp photo up now for a couple of weeks. So I thought it was time for a change. The most prominent thing on my mind right now is Florida. So that's what I chose.

The turtle is from downtown Venice. The Egret on my hood was in in Windy's parking lot Auburndale. The dragon from Downtown Disney, Orlando. The pier from Venice also. The beach from Clearwater. And finally the potted plants from LegoLand in Winter Haven.

Current Events

I used to pride myself about keeping up with the news, local, national, even world news. But no longer. The older I get the more the news is not really new anymore. It all seemed like it had happened before. I rarely watch TV or read a paper, so the source for news if I care to pay attention is the internet. And most of that I am able to tune out by selecting web-sites that have little or no news feeds. Some would say I am acting like a spoiled child, absorbed in my own world. Maybe so.

Is this what's wrong with the world? I don't know. Do I plan to change? Not any time soon.

Year end.

It's that time of year again, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and my favorite, Tax Time. Not really. Looking at my desk piled high with papers, I decided to get started on cleaning it up and filing anything that might prove useful with the business of being a US consumer/Tax Payer. Not to exaggerate, the stack was nearly 18 inches. Everything from old insurance policies to "This is not a bill" letters from Medicare to actual tax return copies from previous years (So far no paper cuts).

I have not yet completed going through that stack. I did manage to whittle it down some. So there will have to be another period or two where I give it a go before the year is considered complete. Maybe New Year's Day morning while the  parade is going on in California.

Photos on your contacts.

I'm sure I knew about these a long time ago but a recent lesson from the Geeks on Tour got me thinking about doing it on my phone. I currently use a BlackBerry 9810 smart phone so it took a little bit of  fiddling to adapt the Android lesson to fit my current phone. But the principle is the same.

I first decided which people I wanted photos to appear on my phone when I called them or they called me. I chose about ten people to start with. I think I mentioned previously the Google program Picasa for managing photos on your personal computer. This program has a feature of face recognition which made searching for photos of certain people very easy. I found and cropped a good photo of each person, then attached the photos to an email to myself.

On my phone I then downloaded the attached photos and saved to my gallery. Then it was an simple edit to add the correct photo to each contact on my phone. Just a nice addition to see the face of the person you are talking to or calling.

Pets

Since my my childhood days my family has owned several pets. Mostly dogs, but we did own a tom cat just after I was married, till my wife found out she was allergic to cat dander. That cat went to live in the country with my sister in-law.

The first dog I remember was called Spot. A mixed breed short hair that was white with a couple of large brown spots. I was 6 or 7 when and we lived in Cropsey, Illinois, a small town of about 150 people. Spot was an outside dog and was allowed to roam, even though he would often return home with scars from fighting with other dogs. I was heart broken when he was not allowed to move to Paxton with the family. I was told he was given to a farmer but don't know if that was true. I say that because that is the same story I told my kids when a dog had to be put to sleep.

Most recently my wife and I had three small dogs. One my wife got from a friend and we got 2 hand-me-down puppies from my oldest daughter, when my grandson was born. All three of those had to be put down, mostly from old age. so now we have no pets, which is a lot more convenient for our life style.

Winter Weather?

I know, I know, if I want this weather to continue I should just ignore it. But what fun would that be.

So here goes. What a great couple of weeks of weather in December so far. Now this trend can continue for a while as far as I am concerned. No snow, above average temps, and a few sunny days. The wooly worm forecast for this winter was like last winter, cold, snow, with icy roads and cloudy skies. Maybe the color of all those larvae doesn't really matter after all. Here is what the weather experts have to say.

School buses.

I put my grandson on a school bus and watched it drive away this morning. That brought back a whole host of memories from my own school days. Although we always lived too close to my schools to need daily busing I remember the joys of school bus travel as early as 6th grade.


A trip to my first major league baseball game from my hometown to Chicago's Comisky Park, where we watched the White Sox play someone. I don't recall the score but the trip was memorable. Over a hundred miles with a stop in Kankakee for lunch at my first McDonalds with their 15 cent hamburgers. It was the Little League annual event of 100 kids (3 buses) and chaperones.


I recall later traveling to away basketball games on the team bus in junior high school and then on the fan bus to away games in high school where there was more fun had on the bus than at the games.


As an adult chaperone on a bus with 40 noisy kids I remember the bone jarring ride of those yellow beasts built for  young bodies, not for humans. I think I would rather walk.

Grand children

The wife and I just completed a week of watching 3 of our grand kids. For the most part they were well behaved. Just the same, having that responsibility for that long with their parents a 1000 miles away was exhausting. It's so much easier to just care for oneself. I do not recall so much stress, even when we had all 5 of our own kids still at home. Of course I was able to go to work to get away from it, so that made a big difference. Women must have special genes to cope with all the sibling rivalry stuff.

A week of getting them to bed, getting them up, not missing the bus, dirty diapers, video games, eat your lunch, brush your teeth, don't hit your brother, you get the picture.

Drive In, Drive Thru, Drive Up.

I was reminded today how much convenience we have become used to. From banking to fast food to even weddings in Nevada, most any thing you want or need can be had without even leaving your car. I don't know when all this started, but I am pretty sure it became widespread in my lifetime , most likely after World War II. I guess this is something else for which we Baby Boomers can be blamed.

The doctor had called in some prescriptions to Walmart. So I planned on using their drive up service, since it is cold and I needed nothing from inside the store. Wouldn't you know the drive up was out of service, so I had to go inside to pick up my drugs. Luckily I was fully dressed (remove pajamas, put on jeans and shirt) so wasn't a big deal, just a small inconvenience. This too was Black Friday but it was not very busy, at least in the pharmacy section.

My internet provider.

I have had the same internet provider since we moved to this address over 6 years ago. Initially it was Verizon, who was the local phone company at the time. A couple of years ago they sold out to Frontier, and my service plan went over to them. I had one DSL modem die since then, so they sent me a new one with WiFi about a year ago. With all the new gadgets we now have, using the internet, I thought maybe I needed a faster service. And I did, as my speed test revealed.



After coming from a dial-up service to DSL the performance seemed terrific. But like most things with technology, if you snooze you loose. I found out my current speed is not even offered anymore and I was due a faster service and new modem for the same price I was currently paying. My new speed test is 5 times faster. Oh happy day.

People say.

People say there are two things you never talk about in public, religion and politics. But I don't listen to people and this blog is not very public. Besides I want to say a few words about a clergyman not the religion he so obviously believes and practices.

Our local church and the one I attended 11 miles away and 2 others participated last year in a process that ultimately combined all four into one building with one priest. So not only did I lose a friend (Fr, B.K.Tran) and comfortable  group of fellow parishioners, I gained an uncomfortable church and a not so likeable new pastor. That circumstance led me to seek and find another church (11 miles the other way) and a man who epitomizes what I think a clergyman should be.

My wife had knee surgery not long after I started at the new church and was having a hard time with lingering pain and side effects from that. So I mentioned this to Fr. Carl at church one Sunday and asked if someone could bring Communion to her at home. Most parishes have lay people who do that very thing. He said of course. And that was the start of weekly visits by Fr. Carl himself that lasted a couple of months. Each week he would come and spend 30-45 minutes visiting and encouraging Joan with good humor and a sympathetic ear. As Joan was able to attend church that humor and encouragement continued. They say when God closes one door he opens another. I believe it.

Passwords

How many does it take? Banking used to be the only one I had or needed, no longer. If I have one I have 50. How do you keep track. you don't. At least once or twice a week I need to receive an email with instructions how to reset a password. Especially hard are those you only use once in a while, like insurance or utility accounts. Is it case sensitive. Does it require numbers and letters, or worst of all special characters.

I suppose I could write them all down, but that doesn't seem too secure. And isn't that what passwords are all about, SECURITY. Now that I think about it, this all could be a conspiracy to weed out the more feeble-minded and keep all this good technology away from those who can't keep track of their passwords. I know there is an "App for that", but wouldn't that mean another password?

Like Yogi said (deju vu all over again).

No matter how many times we make this trip to Florida, something about it keeps me awake worrying. Not the whole week before but, parts of several nights leading to our departure. I am by nature a pessimist. I think my parents were that way too. At least they could blame the Great Depression for their anxiety. I worry about things we might forget to do, or things we might leave behind, or things that might go wrong on the road. None of which has happened (knock on wood). I like to think most sensible people feel this way. Thus putting myself in the sensible category.

Here is the way we went to Florida last year. Click on the colored markers for info about each location.

Photo at the top of this page.

For those of you who don't know what it's all about, here it is. Such a lamp played a small part in the movie 'A Christmas Story", a classic of dubious quality. Through the eyes and ears of young boy, who recalls one special Christmas years later, the now adult boy narrates his fondest memories.

Turkey Day (Take 2)

I stopped in today to see my hair stylist (for those of you over 50 my barber). He is quite the outdoors man, with the fruit of his labors decorating the walls of his shop. Almost no room for his customers. So anyway there was this addition on the wall I asked him about, and away he went talking about his passion. He pretty well eats everything he kills which is the way I used to do it. I kept no trophies except a tail feather or two. He used a bow and arrow to get the latest (whitetail deer).

For almost a month.

I have been at this for almost a month now, publishing this blog. Writing something down every day. I don't think I every kept a diary. I do like to write so this isn't to much of a chore. Keeping it interesting can and will be tough, so there may be some " bare spots" along the way. But I'll just play it by ear.

My mother has been dead now for a year and a half. I think about her and my father nearly every day. I hear something or say something she had said or do something she would have done. I am amazed how much like my parents I have become. My kids are starting to say things like "I am my mother's daughter". That seems to be the natural order of things.

No one knows.

My friend Dan tells me he was in a car accident Thursday. Luckily no one was injured. He was traveling a three lane highway at the speed limit, when a speeding car rammed him from behind. Apparently this same car had almost hit them twice before a few miles back. Dan sustained 4000 dollars damage to his car.  The other had to be towed.

I have had a few near misses over the years. My wife and oldest son were surviving passengers in a fatal crash years ago. Makes you stop and think. No one knows when his time is up.

Old photos. (Take three)

I would venture a guess that everyone has a box or album of old pictures around that you haven't looked at in ages. Mine range from school photos of my kids and grand kids to family shots taken before I was born to recent trips. All of these were taken with film and printed on paper. Not so convenient in this digital age. So I set myself to fixing that situation this week. Using my printer/scanner and computer I slowly removed the hard copy from it's storage place (album, frame, or shoe box) and copied each one to my hard drive. Not only that, but from there I backed them up on the Cloud (aka. internet) to a free storage  site. Where I can access and work with, from any computer connected to the internet. How great is that?

John & Joan

I used several pieces of software to accomplish this. Cannon MP Navigator (which came with the printer/scanner) to scan and save to my computer. Picasa (photo edit and management) free from Google to edit, resize and upload to the Cloud. And finally Photos (by Google +) to manage and share on the Cloud (internet) when and if I want to. That last "if" is important.

Google says as long as I keep each photo a small size I can have unlimited storage space free. That's good.

I must be getting old.

Of course we are all getting older. The alternative stinks. But my doctor will tell you that I am for sure. It wasn't long ago my blood pressure was near normal enough that I needed no medication to keep it in range. Then a couple of years ago "they" moved the goal posts to a new recommended lower range. So I started taking one pill a day to lower it. Now this last month one pill isn't doing the job any more. Yesterday I started a second pill. That doesn't sound like much compared to many others, but it is another "chink in the armor".

I do look older I know, less hair, a few more pounds. I still feel much like I did 10 years ago which is good. But time seems to go faster and faster, another sign of aging.