Category Archives: Ramblings

>Warmth

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>The super came today and caulked around my windows. No more freezing. I love my super. LOL

Having a very good spell lately. I’ve cooked here and there, kept things tidy, decluttered a bit more, and gone out shopping with a friend. It’s gotten really, really cold now, so I think I won’t be going out again for a bit. It’s 12 degrees right now. Twelve. Degrees. Fahrenheit. Oy.

I was just watching the vid in my December 8 post. God, I love being a geek. I love all the science stuff, I love Doctor Who, whose theme is in the vid around the seven minute mark. I love my computer, where I find all this cool geeky stuff.

Here’s something geeky now:

>Not The Greatest Picture Ever

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Even though I was tired and pained and foggy when I got up, I managed to get some actual work done today. A bit at a time. I cleaned around the windows, since the super is coming tomorrow to see about caulking them so I don’t freeze to death; I cleared out under the sink, put in some nice plastic-y shelf lining, and rearranged my tools and cleaning stuff under there; took out the stove drawer to retrieve my favorite skillet that had slipped behind, vacuumed there, finding also two cat toys, put the drawer back by myself, which I couldn’t do last time, and rearranged the skillet and baking pans; moved the box of videos away from the window where it was resting while I figure out where to put them; and I guess that’s about it. Had leftover Chinese food for breakfast and dinner. I do love leftover Chinese food. So all-in-all, I would say it was a good day, and I am happy.

>Internet Friends

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Found this in an old post of a blog I’m checking out:

“If there are one or more people on your friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal. There are too many to list; you know who you are.”

And from a reply to that post:

“……….But you know, everyone can’t live right next to me. Kindred spirits are friends no matter where they live geographically. The internets are just another way to bring us together.”

Having met one of my closest (in real life) friends through the internet, and one or two really special people who are/were strictly internet friends, I can say that having the internet has made my life that much richer and more fun. It also lets me keep in touch with people I love in real life, but who don’t live close enough for day-to-day interaction. What do you think, readers? Has the internet enriched your life, or no?

>Yesterday (and Today)

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>Was a good day. Went out with a friend. It was beautiful…cold, sunny, a nice winter day. Got a new thumbdrive, since I lost my old one.

It was the second day IN A ROW that I woke up with no pain and in a great mood. So I was very happy all day. Two days in a row is unusual lately. I was very silly all day, because I like silly, and I don’t care if people think I’m crazy. Well, I am crazy, so what does it matter what they think?

My apartment failed the inspection because of a patch in the bedroom ceiling that hasn’t been painted since the air conditioner leaked there a few years ago. The inspector sees it every time he comes, so why did he fail it this time? That means I have to be cognizant and presentable for the super to come paint it, then I have to be cognizant and presentable for the inspector’s return visit. I hate HAVING to be cognizant and presentable, because if my brain isn’t working well, it’s very, very difficult to achieve both those things at the same time. Having a chronic, debilitating illness, while fun to say, is a pain in the butt sometimes.

Put in two new videos. Check them out. Does anyone remember those old John Cameron Swazey Timex ads?

I’ve been updating some things on the pc recently. I had done IE8 awhle ago. I hate IE8 and all the previous versions and only use it if whatever I want to do absolutely, positively refuses to work in Firefox, so it’s really not that important. I also just downloaded SP3 a few days ago, after waiting til they got the bugs out, she said in hopes that they did. I did notice an immediate upgrade in how fast things load, especially IE8, which was interminably slow to load before. Today I downloaded the latest Firefox version. I haven’t been happy with the recent ones, so was still using 3.0.10. I hope this version does what I want it to. I save my install files in a folder, so I can uninstall this and go back if I don’t like it. One thing I’ve been having a problem with is when I try to do ‘sort by name’ in my bookmarks, it freezes things up, so I have been doing the sorting manually. Good old drag and drop in the ‘All-in-One-Sidebar’ extension, which is one of my favorites. Oh, the reason I upgraded FF is because none of my Stylish styles are working. The Stylish icon in the status bar stays blank, but right-clicking shows that the styles are there and should be working. Haven’t downloaded them back yet, so we’ll see if it’s fixed. I’ll keep you posted, readers.

>Blog Layout

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I finally figured out where to change the width. Outer-wrapper in the ‘edit html’ window. Yay, me.

Finally up at a decent hour, 9am. It is snowing and everything is coated in white. Very pretty, but my weather update tells me it’s going to change to rain soon. It’s 33 degrees farenheit. Ice, anyone?

Feeling good today. Woke up in a good mood and not in pain. First time since a week and a half ago, when I had a really good Sunday. Was feeling kind of sad before yesterday, and I realized that the more people I actually know in real life read my blog, the more reluctant I am to get into my feelings. I think it’s because I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me, or think they need to ‘fix’ me, or do anything at all, actually, except maybe give me an encouraging word. So I am going to try to ignore that reluctance, because it kind of defeats the purpose of the blog.

So day before yesterday, after a week of feeling lousy and missing the Thanksgiving celebration, I was not in the best frame of mind anyway, and then suddenly I realized that the black hole was circling. Kind of scary, except that I can be aware of it now, and not just let it happen. Then yesterday I had a foggy but fun time when my homemaker was here. Set up an email address for her. I think she may be the last person left who didn’t have one. Talked and laughed while she worked. Helped. A lot. So today….good mood, feeling better. Life is good.

>Not My Best Day

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>It might snow tomorrow. It was 65 degrees yesterday. I love New England.

Didn’t feel that great today, and had to go back to bed and get some more sleep. Better now. Been trying to set up a router and make a home network, but every time I try I just lose my internet connection and the thing doesn’t link up anyway. Frustrating. Need to have a less brain-foggy day to do this. Or actually read up on how to do it. I followed the directions that came with the router, what more do they want? It’s only a cheapo from Walmart, so maybe expecting it to work is asking too much? LOL

I am getting some of the decluttering done, and being happier with my space. It’s actually pleasant to wake up in my bedroom, with the old I don’t know what it’s called. It’s a big bowl sort of thing I put flowers in. Not a vase, but I can’t think of the correct word. Anyway, I bought it in a junk shope (okay, so I can’t spell. SHOP) a long time ago for ten dollars, and it is really beautiful and I put fake flowers in it. It’s nice. Hey, I can take a picture? BRB

Okay, here’s my kitchen.

Here’s the flowers in the bedroom.

That’s Gertrude’s ‘cave’ showing under the table. I’m not a very good photographer, but you get the idea? I have half-curtains in the bedroom windows, because I like to see out. I close the bigger black-out drapes when it’s really cold out. Once I got up in the wee hours to go across the street to the park and watch a meteor shower. I live in a very safe town, so no problem there, except I got cold. Back in bed, looked up and saw meteors flying by from South to North, which it the way my windows all face. Now that was pretty darn cool.

Remembered the word: jardiniere. Bowl-shaped vase, sometimes with a stand.

>Why, yes, I am up.

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>Got up at 9am. Arrrgggghhhh. Inspector should be here any minute. I am up and dressed and coffee’d. Right there it’s been a good day. He is going to yell at me again (not literally) because the ceiling hasn’t been painted again after the a/c leaked that time. Hey, do I look like the maintenance man? Don’t answer that. I’m going to tell him to yell at the owner, not me.

It’s gotten colder the past couple of days, but at least it’s sunny and not dark in here. I have done some more arranging/decluttering, but not done yet. Every little bit, though. A feeling of accomplishment is a good thing to have.

>The Delivery

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It came. At 8:30 am. Woken out of a sound sleep by the buzzer. Been sitting here at computer ever since. It’s 11am. Trying to get my brain to kick in, but it’s not happening. Too fogged even to go make coffee til now. It was FedEx. UPS never comes in the morning. Mailman, either. All my plans for the day are now questionable. If I can’t get it together, I will have to go back to bed and sleep some more. Then I’ll be awake half the night or more. At least it’s not so dark out today. I actually see a bit of blue sky. Okay, folks. Whine over.

BTW, hated the green, changed it back. Obviously. Grumble, grumble, grumble. Whine really over now. I hope.

>Well, Darn

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I was so planning to get to bed early tonight so I could start fresh tomorrow with a PLAN, but here I am still up at 1am. Wanted to get something done tomorrow, after spending the last several days in a funk, still wearing my pajamas all day. My life needs structure. I can’t seem to DO structure. Structure means pressure. Pressure to be up by a certain time, to be in bed by a certain time. I am not good at that. Pressure makes me nervous. Keeps me awake. Causes anxiety, really. Life is so much easier if I just play on the computer and not think about anything. Thinking is pressure. Pressure is not good. Not at all. So I avoid it if at all possible.

I changed the videos. Not just music this time, but still good. I hope.

>The Day After

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>This is NOT my house.

Yes, today I am celebrating the day after Thanksgiving. You know, the day when I do NOT go to the malls and fight the crowds and spend too much money on things that will be broken and/or forgotten by January sixth. Is this really what the holiday is about? Originally, it was a Solstice celebration, marking the time the days begin getting longer, the slow return of warmth and growing things. That is what I choose to celebrate, and it doesn’t involve money. Just joy. I bemoan the fact that we have commercialized every possible holiday, and forget what they really represent. So I choose not to participate. Any gifts I give would be to people who already have more of everything than most people on the planet. So I would give to Heifer International in their name. Does this make me a smug, better-than-you person, a too-cheap-and-lazy-to-find-gifts person? Gee, I hope not. Because that’s not what I intend. I just think that if I do have any money to spare, it should go to those who have little or nothing, not to those that do. Of course, I still buy things for myself, like Farscape DVDs, so how does that fit into my view of myself? What do you think, readers? Am I just a poor excuse for a human being, or what?

Today is also the day I always put up the lights and other decorations, back when I still those things. I usually don’t decorate at all anymore, except maybe I will put up my tiny fiber-optic tree with the white lights. It is very cheery in the dark of winter. I like winter, I like lights. It’s all good.

>Happy Thanksgiving

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>I am home on my own today, but will be celebrating with friends in a few days. It’s another gray day, but 51 degrees, so while it looks winterish, it doesn’t feel that way. I’ve been remembering past holidays, when I would have gotten up early to start preparing the turkey and the rest of the meal. Thanksgiving is all about the food. Traditional dishes from both families combined in a meal of new traditions. His family always had Waldorf Salad and green chili salsa. Mine always had candied sweet potatoes (NO marshmallows, thank you very much) and my father’s special baked beans baked with bacon strips on top. Yum does not describe it. I made up my own stuffing recipe, with all the things I like in it. Things like celery and walnuts and apples. It was good, and the prep of the dishes was fun. Do I miss it? Sometimes. I miss the family time, the smells of turkey cooking and candles burning.

Before we moved to New England, we always had two holiday dinners every Thanksgiving, and every Christmas. First at my parents’ house for mid-day dinner, then to his parents’ house for a late dinner. His family lived in a very small house, but a lot of extended family came for dinner, so it was always very noisy and crowded and fun.

Being ill takes some of the sting out of being alone, I think. If I was healthy, I would probably be bemoaning my fate, or else I would be having my own Thanksgiving with anyone I could find to come over and share dinner with. Now I really love going to my friends’ house and spending the time with their extended family. Before there were small children to contend with, we used to play games after dinner and get pretty rowdy playing them. Pit comes to mind. Yelling, banging on the table, laughing hysterically. Or Trivial Pursuit. My kind of fun. Now we are more subdued, but still have a great time. I’m fortunate to have good friends who include me in their celebrations.

I think today I will see if there are any marathons on tv, and if not, I have my new DVDs and Babylon Five from Netflix to watch. Or I will just play on here and read fan fic. There is a LOT of fan fic. I also have leftover Chinese food to eat. I hope everyone has a lovely day.

>Recovery

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>Not getting into it, but I love this protest.

Been having lots of leg pain since going out the other day. Limping around with the ow! ow! ow! going on. Not sure what to do about the getting less mobile as time goes on. I have tried to do more walking or other exercise at different times, but it only seems to make things worse. It’s the old catch-22. If I don’t exercise, my muscles get weak and thus it is harder to move. If I exercise, my muscles stay weak and I have a lot more pain. How does one fix that? I’d like to try some totally off-the-wall, guaranteed-to-cure-what-ails-you diet, but they all require preparing food for cooking and then cooking it. I don’t have that kind of energy, most days. Is there a catch-99, cause I think I’m in it. If I was rich, I’d hire my own private chef, but since I’m not Oprah, and don’t care to be, I guess that’s not in the cards.

I did clean out my Aerogarden today, and ditched the basils, which had sort of gone by the by. I’m trying to salvage a bit of each, but don’t know if they will take root or not. I put a couple of the smallest tomato plants in three of the slots, so maybe they’ll actually grow. They are not doing at all well in the pot, but I left the rest in there anyway. The things that have done the best, probably because I didn’t trim back the others as well as I should have, are the parsley, the thyme, and the mint. I also moved the whole shebang onto the tiny counter by the far side of the stove, and put the new toaster oven in it’s place. Love my toaster oven. It actually makes real toast, not warm bread, or burnt bread. I’ve cooked some bacon in it, too, and it’s fast and does a great job. I’m going to try baking something in it, as soon as I get up the energy to bake something in it. It was 30 dollars in Walmart, and well worth it.

This is the Neilsen book week, started Thursday, and so far I’ve only watched about three hours of tv, one of them On Demand. There’s no place to write On Demand viewing, so I just put it in a regular slot but said it was OD. Will they care? Do I? You can comment in the back, so I said I prefer On Demand or Hulu because I get too annoyed with the incessant commercial breaks to watch regular tv much. I don’t think they’ll care about that, either. Nobody wants to hear my opinions on these things. I do not understand why. No, no I don’t. That’s all, folks.

>Veteran’s Day

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>It’s Veteran’s Day here in the United States. How fortunate we are to have men and women willing to go off and fight and sometimes die to keep us free. Unfortunately, a lot of us use that freedom to discriminate against gays, people of color, people of religions other than the particular one we cling to. They forget that wars are fought and people die so ALL of us can be free, not just the ones who look, act, and believe as we do. Free means we all have the same rights under the law. ALL of us.

Veterans of all wars deserve our utmost respect, and all the benefits and help we can provide when needed. I’ve known some veterans in my life. My father, who came home with a life-long injury, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law who came home a drug addict, my high-school friend who came home from Viet Nam with no legs, my husband’s best friend and best man at our wedding who came home from Nam in a body bag. For them, I choose not to discriminate, not to judge, not to live as though my way were the only way and anyone who doesn’t agree does not deserve to have the same protections of the law that I do. I choose freedom and equal rights for every human. I hope you will, too.

>A good day and some cool stuff

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Not feeling quite as good as I have been, but not too much more pain. Went out today to do a bit of shopping with a friend, and mostly sat on a bench and enjoyed the lovely fall day while she went off to find a tea-strainer at a kitchen store. It was gray, but had that quality of light that I find indescribable, but which combined with the almost leafless trees and the fall colors just makes me feel very contented. I couldn’t find a good picture, so you’ll just have to use your imagination. Here’s a picture of the Tardis instead. I should start taking my camera with me when I go out. Here are a couple of things from today’s internet:

1. Do you like Legos? I used to play with them as a kid. I don’t think I will take them up again, but I do like seeing what others do with them on this site:

http://www.brothers-brick.com/

2. Remember the Berlin Wall? More great pictures from Boston.com here:

>Jury Duty/Madmen

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>If you don’t watch Madmen, what is wrong with you? Kidding, just kidding. Last night’s season finale was the best episode yet of a show that was already unbelievably well written and acted. Jon Hamm is so good at displaying the dark side, the soft side, the ruthless side, the uncertain side (yes, I know that’s a lot of sides, folks). It is a pleasure to watch him. The rest of the cast are just as amazing. Check out this show if you haven’t seen it before. You won’t be sorry.

On the other issue, I have been called again for jury duty. Now, I would love to do my civic duty and sit on a jury. Unless of course it was a gory murder with pictures. But I think it would be fascinating to see how the justice system really works, as opposed to how we think it works from watching tv. If I were well, I would do this without a second thought. But since I am not well, I need a letter from my doctor. I had one last time I was called, and I thought it was a permanent disqualifying letter, but apparently not. New doctor now, and I’ve only seen him twice, so I hope this doesn’t become a big deal. I get tired. I get stressed. When I am tired and/or stressed, I cannot think well. I cannot remember things. It would be wrong to put me in a position of deciding on someone else’s guilt or innocence if my brain is not working well. I hope my doctor gets this. I need to call him tomorrow and get this sorted out.

I spent my whole life not being called for jury duty, and now I have been called twice since I became ill. What’s that about?

>My Day So Far

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>Got up at 10:30. Yay, me. Didn’t stay up til three playing on computer.

Lots of pain from being out yesterday. Hobbled to couch. Turned on tv. Ate three digestive biscuits while surfing and checking grid. Nothing but dreck, dreck, and more dreck on tv. Decide to take a shower.

Take shower, pain still there with addition of fatigue.

Lay down on bed to recover. Get cold. Get under covers. Fall asleep. Wake up at 4:30pm.

Pain better. Go to couch, turn on tv, watch talking heads. Feed cat. Drink milk.

Turn on computer.

My life is almost too exciting to bear. HA!

>Endgame

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>I just watched this, for two reasons: 1. Nothing else on 2. I liked Jonny Lee Miller in Eli Stone, and wanted to see if I would like him in something else. I did. I wasn’t going to watch it based on a couple of reviews I read, but I’m glad I did. It could have been dull and boring…..it was mainly about a group of men sitting around a table discussing how to end apartheid…..but instead, it was riveting. The writing, the acting, the directing made this a show that kept me on the edge of my seat. What goes on behind closed doors when good men who start out distrustful and even afraid of one another but slowly come to realize that they are the same, and working for the same goals, albeit in very different ways at the start. The evil that some men do in order to gain and keep power. In this instance, the good men won out. At the end, when Nelson Mandela made his first public appearance after 27 years of prison, they all looked like they wanted to jump up and down with excitement, and so did I. That is a good show, made more so because it was true. I recommend this, says the first-time television critic. *very big grin*

>Videos

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The first one is for my friend from http://moonlit-puutarha.blogspot.com/, who showed me how to put vids on my blog. Thank you.

The picture is my idea of Lapland, from things learned in school I guess. Apparently there is more to it than that. Check out the Moonlit blog for beautiful pictures.

>Loser

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Yes, I am one. I got up at 8am. Yay, me. I was going to get myself together enough to go downstairs and get the mail I haven’t gotten since sometime last week. Instead, I made coffee and fired up the old pc. Checked out some blogs, decided to try to add the youtube side thingies that are on the Moonlit blog, tried and tried and could not succeed. Gave up. Decided to put labels on my blog posts. Just finished. Still in pajamas, still haven’t had any food, still haven’t gotten the mail. It’s like I’m glued to the computer. LOLOL Oh, well. I have fun and meet new people and see and read so many things I would never even know about without my little desktop. Today I’m googling Finland. Life is good. But if my new friend (I hope) from the Moonlit blog reads this, maybe he can tell me how to add those sidebar widgets. *smile*