The big small button scandal

Have you noticed how buttons appear to be smaller on new clothes? I’ve been wondering how much is saved in button costs by downsizing them. I’ve been having problems doing up buttons recently. This is all very well for teenage fashions, but today I’m just wearing a checked, brushed cotton shirt; sensible and warm. My hands are older now and my fingers not as supple as they used to be, so every morning finds me struggling to button up the blouse or shirt I’m planning to wear.

 I’ve also noticed that the button holes don’t appear to be smaller to match, so the buttons don’t stay buttoned! I suppose the next step will be manufacturers downsizing button holes to save on thread costs.

Phoneless

Just over a week ago, my super intelligent phone died on me (not so smart after all). I was just sorting out my photos on the cloud thingy and everything went dark. I fiddled, did soft resets, tried to charge the battery up. Did you know that if the battery gets too low, it isn’t strong enough to charge up again? I’m pretty expert at getting the back off the phone now.

I’ve been using my old Samsung as an alarm in the morning and after meditation. It’s a rather harsh sound compared to the gentle music I’m used to nowadays.

Rob took the dead phone into work to show a colleague who knows about these things and he’s ordered a new battery. Now we have to wait for it to arrive. I really hope I haven’t lost everything. My photos are okay – I was looking at them on the cloud thingy; -which is where I came in.

You know

You know you're getting old when the TV actor who always reminded you of your granddad turns out to be younger than you....

It comes in threes - or is it fours?

Yesterday morning I had to use my card to buy some stamps at the post office. I reversed my pin number. I was sure that I had the right number; three times. Now waiting for new number so that I can start using my card again…

When I was waiting to catch the bus to the clinic for my leg injections, a car drove past at great speed and soaked me as it went through a big puddle. The driver in the car behind looked as shocked as I felt.

At the clinic I was told that the government is making cuts again and so my injections are to be considered as aesthetic. I won’t be refunded at all for the sessions. Last year it was my glucosamine that was considered ‘comfort’ medicine. Let’s hope that the Minister of Health doesn’t ever suffer from arthritis or restless legs.

This morning, just when I thought it was safe, I opened the bathroom cupboard and a new bottle of nail varnish hit the floor and spattered everywhere. I managed to clean it up without too much trouble. The bathroom smells of acetone now, even after I removed all traces to the bin outside and cleaned the floor afterwards. I learnt today that spilled nail varnish dries a lot faster that nail varnish applied to your fingernails.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

The big six-oh

My birthday has come round again, but this time I’m going up into a different decade. I’ve had lots of presents and fuss from my family and enjoyed the Happy Birthdays from my Facebook friends . It has been a good day so far.

I’ve been thinking what to say about this decade; We had “Life begins at forty” and I said myself “But it really gets going at 50”. “Sweet 60s”?!

I can still play air guitar with the best. So here, live and all the way from the Red Square in Moscow is Sir Paul McCartney and friends just to wish me – and anyone else in Blogland who has one today;

Happy Birthday!

How do I....?

How do I get a little button so that people can like my posts on Facebook too?  I see that some people have a row of buttons at the bottom of each post.  Where do you get them from?

I'm finding it very difficult to take a selfie with my clever phone.  As I turn the phone around, I can't see where to click.  Sometimes I get a voice telling me that they can't answer that question.  What's that called and how do I really get to it so that I can ask a real question?  My phone is a Nokia Lumia 530.

Thoroughly Modern Millie

I finally had a Kindle for Christmas and I love it already. Just before Christmas the BBC TV series Little Dorrit was televised on French TV. I really enjoyed it, so Little Dorrit is the first book I’m reading on the Kindle. Rob can’t take out the bookmark and change the page I’m reading anymore as he doesn’t know how it works. I still have real books to read; almost at the end of “The Fall of giants”

Last week I got myself a clever phone and after a shaky start I’m gaining confidence with it. I haven’t taken any proper photos with it yet (just the floor by accident). I now have to put all of my appointments onto the calendar – there are quite a few already for the first 6 months of the year. I’ve also got ChatON so I can talk to Christian in England instantly – anyplace, anytime.

I’m now on Facebook, having sworn that I would never do such a thing. Rob asked me to do something for our postcard business and I sort of got hooked. I’ve found some long lost friends, which is really nice. I’m sure that I can synchronise this blog to Facebook too….

 “So beat the drums 'cause here comes thoroughly... 

Hot off the press! 

One step in the Jazz Age! 

Whoopee, baby! 

We're so thoroughly Modern...” 

With thanks to Elmer Bernstein, who I am sure would not have liked to hear me singing…

My new toy

Our beloved HP PSC 2350 died on Wednesday.  It was with us for over eight years and only started causing problems since the New year.  

I installed a brand new HP deskjet 1510 yesterday evening, all by myself, except I couldn’t work out where the downloads were disappearing to.  Rob showed me, I must look and see how many other lost downloads are lurking there since I had this computer in 2011.

The new machine scans really quickly which is just what I need for eBay.  I’ve also written to my Mum and Olivier to check how it prints and that is fine too.  I’m so glad I haven’t had to learn how to do things differently, it’s the same and in the places where it is different, it’s easier.

Image taken from the HP site

Death of a million Hamsters

As anyone who uses iGoogle knows, it will be closing down in a few days. All over the internet there are people like me worrying about their pet hamster. Mine is purple and called Jupiter. She’s lovely and I’m going to be very upset when the plug is pulled out.

Jupiter was invented by a very nice person called Adam Bowman who has shared his work with millions of people over the years.

I've created a new home page using NetVibes.com   It’s not the same, but I will make it into my home very soon. Fortunately, Mr. Bowman has made a new hamster to live in the NetVibes home page and you don’t have to fiddle with code like I did for hours and hours and get nowhere. On your NetVibes page there is a button in the top left hand corner called “Add”, click on that and type hamster into the search box that appears. There is a choice of hamsters, click on ‘hamster widget’ and you can follow the instructions to put your hamster on the page. I haven’t found a way to change the colour so I have a pale grey Jupiter this time.

How else would my computer get the electricity to work on?

Recipe for disaster

I don’t usually make pudding/desserts. There are normally plenty of pots of yoghurt and the like in the fridge. They really are the best way to control portion size in my book.

When Dom and J-M came to visit at the beginning of April, I thought that I’d give my favourite dessert, Lemon Meringue Pie, a go...

 First off; I was too lazy to look for the Royal Worcester Evesham design flan dish which would have been perfect for the job. I used a non stick cake tin instead. Unfortunately, I had to bake the pastry blind, so a high sided cake tin was not a good idea, the pastry ‘sides’ just slid down to the bottom. Before I put the pastry into the oven I’d placed a piece of greaseproof paper sprinkled with rice (no baking beans) on the base. When I came to take off the paper with the rice on it, some quite a lot of the rice got stuck to the half cooked pastry. I managed to pick most of the rice out and burnt my fingers.

The lemon part was tricky too, my grater for grating the zest from the lemons has seen better days, so there was a lot of hard work for little result. It smelt nice though. Next came the corn flour. I should have sieved it, but I thought the thing about corn flour was that it didn’t go lumpy. I ended up with a mix that looked as if it had polystyrene bits in it. It took ages to strain through a tea strainer.

 The egg whites whipped up beautifully (I know what you were thinking).

Everyone was very brave and ate some: It tasted fine, just looked a bit odd and we had a good laugh about it. For the first time ever there was a left over piece of pie – can’t think why.

Image taken from Wikipedia

Early to rise

The alarm went off at four this morning. Rob had to go into work early to let the camera crew into the Chain tower as today was the la Rochelle Marathon. By eight this morning I’d already cleaned the oven door (no easy task), made the Christmas card list and cleaned the step in the shower. Since then I’ve been working and surfing. I’ve managed to prepare more postcards for online than I usually do. Perhaps I should set the alarm for 4 every morning. Perhaps not.

On Friday I had a chest x-ray. My lungs are fine but they did notice my spine is slightly arthritic (regular readers will know all about that problem) which I’ve already sorted.

After that I spent a few hours looking for something to wear for the wedding. Most shops are more interested in evening wear for Christmas and New Year at the moment, so it’s not easy. This is not going to be a formal wedding and I am not wearing a hat. I’ve managed to find one shop with clothes that I like and will go back again next Friday and try some things on.

I’ve also got to find out where to buy confetti from.

...and Shoulders...

So I went for my x-ray and even before I’d had time to open my book in the waiting room my name was called. I was even allowed to keep on my thin T shirt, though I had to take off my bra. The girl that operated the x-ray machine was pleasant and helpful. I talked to a doctor about what they had found then I had to wait while he wrote up the results. The whole lot took 20 minutes!

This afternoon I went with the results to my doctor. He has prescribed a bone density scan, as it looks as if my bones are losing calcium. I might have to start HRT, which I was hoping to avoid. My shoulder feels a little better; I only needed 500mg of paracetamol this morning, but I think I’ll need some this evening. The area which lost all sense of feeling seems to be diminishing too. He told me not to start any arm exercises just yet in case I pinch the nerve again.

If I do need hormone treatment I suppose I should consider myself fortunate not to have broken a bone in order to discover that there is a problem.

Heads and Shoulders, Knees and Toes

What a lot has happened since I last wrote. When Olivier packed up his things I asked him to take his bag of weights downstairs. He left the bag on the landing. I decided to move it so that Rob wouldn’t forget to take it down. I was being so careful about my knees it never occurred to me that I would finish with a trapped nerve which has left me with stabbing pains in my left shoulder blade and loss of feeling in my left armpit ( and you don’t realize how important that could be until you haven’t got it).

Dom and J-M came and we had a good weekend. Dom cooked me a birthday meal and made carrot cake which we all enjoyed very much. Rob was working on Sunday so she could make us a curry for lunch (Rob has threatened me with divorce if I ever try to feed him curry). It was sad when they left, as I had to take Olivier to his friend’s house to leave for Bordeaux. I came back to a really empty house

We drove to Bordeaux on the Tuesday morning with the remainder of Olivier’s things. It took two hours to get to Bordeaux and the same to travel the 10 or so kilometers off the ring-road and to Olivier’s apartment. We also had to check the place with the agency, drop of his things and then Olivier and Rob went to collect the rest of his furniture from his friend. Going home took just as long for as well as the evening rush hour traffic, the weather was bad and there was patchy fog. We were exhausted.

Wednesday was my birthday, but I didn’t feel too birthdayish because I was worn out and my shoulder was painful. We went out for a cup of coffee to celebrate and I mustered the energy to make scrambled eggs on toast for my birthday meal.

 Thursday I had lessons.

 We left the house on Friday at 5 am. to catch the train to Bordeaux for an auction. I slept almost all the way, it’s unusual for me to be able to sleep outside my bed. We did have a good day, the weather was good and we found a nice restaurant for lunch and ate in the sunshine. The auction is hard work. There is an hour and a half to view 400 lots and then the concentration during the auction itself. We did come away with some good postcards and kept to our budget. By this time I was dosing myself with paracetamol pretty regularly.

 I went to see the Doctor on Monday and actually thought that it was feeling a little better. The Doctor’s examination put paid to that. I was in agony last night despite pain killers. Tomorrow I’m going for an X-ray.

One good thing; I started my winter session of injections for the veins in my legs this afternoon. The pain killers helped there too.

September winds on

Olivier still hasn’t moved into his apartment. He has an appointment with the agency on Tuesday next week. We took some furniture to one of his friends whose mother is hiring a van to take it all down to Bordeaux. Olivier left on Monday and started the term on Tuesday, for the time being he’s staying with friends. He’s coming home for the weekend and then we’re going on Tuesday to take the rest of his things. I never thought that it could be so complicated.

Dom and J-M are coming for the weekend tomorrow evening. It’s my birthday soon and Dom will be making me a cake! I'm looking forward to hearing their teaching adventures.

Not much to report otherwise. Seem to spend a lot of time working – evenings too. I do have some breaks. Downton Abbey is on Sunday evening and the Tudors is on Thursdays. Catherine Howard is about to start losing her head – so to speak. For once there are two programs I don’t want to miss. I’m still amazed that I can have so many channels at my disposal and most of the time nothing to watch on TV. I remember the good old days of just BBC and ITV in the UK. Some evenings we had difficulty choosing which program we wanted to watch the most!

Stress, stress

Who’d be a parent?

You’d think with the youngest at 21 years old, all of my troubles would be over. Olivier went to Bordeaux last week hoping to find an apartment to rent with a friend. Problem was half the youth of France had the same idea. He went off for the day and came back at the end of the week. As they wanted to be presentable they had to go out and buy clean clothes. The university tried to help. You’ve heard of speed dating? In Bordeaux they have Apartment dating under the hot sun, everyone and his dog turned up for that too.

After a little recuperation over the weekend they set off again on Monday. Then they decided to go it alone. They both found somewhere this afternoon. Tomorrow it’s job dating….

The stress isn’t over yet. Since the beginning of the year, young men have been disappearing in Bordeaux. All of the bodies have been found in the River Garonne….

Monday found Dom and J-M both in front of their classes for the first time. All went well for them.

It’s called Friday 13th

The end of last week was a particularly bad one here. The Maritime Museum caught fire in town. The museum is/was in a ship which had just been renovated at an enormous cost ready for the season; an electrical fault.

 The weather on Friday itself was very wet, windy and cold. The music festival that the town was holding over five nights was delayed for that evening, and then cancelled. Olivier had a job for the five days and nights of the festival on a food stand. This involved us collecting him from town around four o’clock every morning. Fortunately Rob was on holiday for four of the days, but we still found it very tiring. We did have an early night on the evening that was cancelled – if you call 2 am early.

This year I have been growing some sunflowers and they were doing very well, especially the one that was taller than me. The wind blew it over. I put the top in water but after a couple of days it was obvious that it was dying.

Here is one in the fields

About that canned meat

Comments 

Not long ago I had to enable comment moderation because of that kind of comments. It didn’t really have any effect so I switched the word verification on. Something I didn’t want to do as I struggle to read what letters I’m supposed to put in myself.  I realized that I’d missed a blog when I had about 50 sapm comments on one post in a row (I presume it was to make up for the comments it couldn’t leave on the other blogs). Next thing that happened was the unwanted comments came back, because somehow the verification turned off!

For the last couple of days I’ve only had real comments, which has been a pleasure. Unfortunately I don’t get as many comments as I used to. I know I haven’t had much to say recently, but I imagine some readers just can’t stomach jumping through the hoop just to say a few words.

 Emails 

An email gets trashed if it addresses me as Dear one or Dear friend. I don’t read Russian and I don’t take orders from anyone. I’m not afraid of the FBI and I certainly don’t open documents. I don’t gamble, take drugs or want to enlarge something I haven’t got – so there!

Confused? You will be

On Monday my Thursday afternoon lesson came in the afternoon.

On Tuesday it was a holiday so it felt like Sunday.

On Wednesday I went shopping for groceries which I usually do on Tuesdays or Thursdays and my Tuesday afternoon lesson came for her lesson.

I’m not sure which day of the week it is today at all!

When did the change over happen?

Olivier hates it when I use words like Gr8 or U R for 'you are' when I send him texts.  He tells me that I must use correct English and no wonder standards of writing are dropping bla, bla, bla.  Over Christmas he advised me not to keep my phone in my jeans pocket.  I answered that I wasn't worried about fertility problems at my time of life.  He then went on about no one knows the long term effects bla, bla, bla.  I'm supposed to be the sensible one, When did we change over rolls?

Call it a bit of a dog's dinner...

Yesterday Rob and I went out for lunch to celebrate my birthday which was earlier in the week.  I was going to take pictures of what I had to eat.  I forgot until after I'd eaten and took photos of the empty plates instead. For some reason I can’t get the pictures onto the computer this time. You’ll have to make do with a picture of a breakfast I had a week or so back after going to the lab for blood tests.

(I couldn't even get that one right first time)