I had intended to watch tv tonight. This is now not going to happen. We had a very minor storm, and we do have surge protectors on our stuff. Now I am looking at a blank screen cheerfully announcing it has no signal.

The amazing persona, our cable company, has struck again. Apparently, they do not have surge protectors on their wok towers. I mean, why bother with something as fundamental as that? This was a minor storm. As in about five flashes of lightning and a bit of hail. Let's just see how many customers we can totally piss off tonight.

At least my internet is still working. Wonders why, since this company delivers both services. Or does not, as the mood strikes them. No, I am not a happy camper. My internet has gone down over sixty times since the beginning of the year. I have even got a rebate on an entire month for lack of service. I am seriously under impressed.

So I had a serious talk to my dh about nasty rugs. One level of our house is good, with hardwood floors and tiles. The other none basement levels are not. They have fifteen year old nasty rugs. We need to do something.

It doesn't affect me that much as I am asthmatic and have my meds already, but I am noticing with him, a distinct sleep pattern deficit. I don't sleep worth shit so I get to hear him at night. He is getting an allergy reaction. He is not getting a decent night's sleep and this is so not good. Men are wired up different from women. Any woman that has given birth will back me up on this.

Women are geared to hearing the slightest sound of a child after birth. They wake up, fully alert, to go do the necessary and then they can go back to sleep. Guys don't wake up at these times unless they hear their wife stirring. Guys really do need a decent eight hours sleep. I am not picking holes in guys, this is just the way nature wired them up. They will wake in a nano second if there is a threat to the family and home. They are not geared up to babies and little noises like women.

We have agreed that when probate comes through we will get rid of the nasty rugs and do the hardwood floor throughout. This time around we will do it ourselves. There will be no more nasty rugs. We will also get ourselves a new bed. Much needed and that should also help the allergy problem.

I love my guy and I don't want to see him suffering like this. We will make it so.

It is a sure thing summer has arrived when the dickey dee music can be heard coming closer. I do miss the kids being little and clamoring for ice creams. The shrieks used to bust the legal decibel range whenever they heard the tacky tunes.

Today we went shopping for groceries and I was collecting more stuff to fill my newly bought jam jars. Ok, I don't have a sweet tooth, but one thing I love is apricot jam. I have already filled one jar and was now on the hunt for more fruit, as I have noted the season for this is very short, as in two weeks. Walmart didn't have any so we went to Safeways, where I packed a nice bagfull. Gets to the checkout and the guy says do we know this will be $20.00 for the bag. Dies. There were charging $13.72 for a killogram. We left the apricots.

I did get some apples and blackberries and also some peaches and raspberries. I am going to make those combinations. Not sure if I will bottle or jam right now. It depends on if I get a recipe for either. I was also on the lookout for one of those tiny little bottles of liqueurs. I wanted creme de minth as I have a recipe for limes, mint leaves and creme de minth jelly. Shit out of luck, there. I am not buying a honking great bottle of the stuff just to satisfy an urge to make a jelly.

My god. Who is this person talking, here? I don't like cooking. Has someone swapped me out for some cooking monster when my back was turned? Evil thoughts are circulating on making cakes using the preserves for when the girls come round in winter. I also picked up the starter spice for making salsa. My flimsy excuse is that I want to eat more healthy and eliminate all the food colorings and preservatives in what we eat.

Does someone have the phone number of a good shrink? E is obviously out to lunch and then some.

Ok, so last night I was ambling about on a bathroom break. I didn't want to turn on the lights because I didn't want to wake up that much. Bad move. I had a major altercation involving a door and my foot.

This morning I find I have a purple and wayward angled toe. Wonderful. When my dh arrives home and notices I am hobbling, he asks what the problem is. When I point out the irritation, he asks if I want to go to the ER. Um no. Does he know what they do with broken toes? No, he doesn't.

A steel splint is inserted under the toenail, dear.

He goes slightly pale and says he imagines I might want to let this heal naturally, then.

Oh boy. He got that in one.

I don't and I never have liked cooking. I have gone quite mad. I have just made a jar of apricot jam and am in the process of bottling plums. I think I must have caught May's cooking cooties. I am trying to decide if I am grateful.

What I intended to do, in my blissful ignorance, was put all the stuff in the canner together. Now I find the rhubarb I intend to bottle must sit for four hours covered with sugar. The plums I was going to bottle must sit for fifteen minutes after going to the boil in the syrup, and meanwhile, the apricot jam I made must go in the canner right now. Mutters naughty words.

So then my wayward eyes light on a recipe for mint lime jelly. I has mint and I has limes. Mmmm... Oh, I can't do that. I haven't got creme de minth. I have various other potent potibles on hand, but not that one. Darn. I am not staying in the kitchen for another three hours. I will stick my head around the door at regular intervals. Yes, that should do. R won't laugh at me for burning stuff. I have the window wide open and the fan on. He is busy outside. He will never know if I err.

My dh has an elevated metabolism, which means he doesn't feel the cold. This means that all other members of the household adapt to the chiller temperatures when he is home. Frank, the snowshoe and Ollie, the hoe have come to their own arrangements on this situation.

In winter, as we have forced air heating, the pair have isolated all the spots where the heating vents run under the floor and lounge accordingly. Summer produces its own problems. There is no heat. Oh quel horruer! Ollie, the hoe snuggles up in a blankie, but Frank, the snowshoe is far more sophisticated and upmarket. He has discovered that my laptop has a vent on the side for heat dissipation. Oh luv, luv.

I don't mind the snuggling, but I do draw a line at drooling on my keyboard.

I got a surprise phone call today from a former boss, just shooting the breeze. She quit around two years back and has made a good life for herself and her kids on an acreage north of 55. She has also recently got engaged to an old beau and that is so nice to hear.

We were a dream team. Each of us knew what the other was thinking. Working with her was a blast and we got so much done that was exceptional. What we accomplished together is a living monument of our joint effort. No one can ever take this away.

She was sad when she heard that stupid things have been done; as sad as I was to see that happen, but time moves on. Other people now try to fill our shoes. We did things with a purpose in mind and maybe, eventually, it will come to the new people why we did what we did. Changing things just to put a mark of individuality on a site isn't always a smart move. Change with experience and foresight is a different scenario. They will learn. The world moves on.

One thing that can never be changed is the areas in town she had me design. She doused all the sites and oversaw the planting. She picked the final design from a series I drew. These are our mark on the landscape and they are outstanding. This is reflected in the win for the town of the National Community in Blooms Championship. Yes, we have both let go. We are not able to reflect on the accomplishments we achieved.

I have never before, or expect to again, worked with someone that can finish a sentence I start and visa versa.

Air Canada and Westjet have decided to allow cats and dogs to travel in the cabin with their owners. While this is great for the owners of small pets, it does not take into account the lives of passengers compromised by medical conditions.

There are many degrees of physical disability and some of them are invisible. A person in a wheelchair is easy to spot. Not so a person with serious and life threatening allergies. For those with an allergy to pet dander, it can be a matter of life or death when trapped in a small space with an animal.Yes, there are emergency meds to relieve the situation, presupposing the victim can remove themselves from the dangerous environment. If this does not happen, cannot happen, then the meds will fail. The aircraft will then be faced with an extreme medical emergency that will mean landing at the nearest airport to the extreme inconveinence of the other passengers, who might have connecting flights. This is not even considering the victim, who may or may not survive.

This decision by carriers does not, therefore, just impact on the disabled, it impacts on every other traveler on that flight. This is not about being mean to pet owners. Pets previously traveled in a pressurized and heated section of the baggage compartment that was accessible to the crew. The pets were as happy as any pet could be under traveling circumstances and the passengers were not at risk. Why must this now change? Why must the human rights of the disabled be compromised? Below is a link for those that wish to express their concerns about this cruel and unjust restriction for the disabled traveler.

http://www.lung.ca/involved-impliquez/issues-questions/action-agissez/pets-animaux_e.php

Well that was an eye opener. Kay, I had some shitty results from recent blood work and strict instructions from my GP, which I have more or less followed. One of these was to start taking vitamin D pills as I was grossly deficient.

I don't like taking stuff. This is not where I rock. It stems from being asthmatic and hypothyroid and therefore defendant on stuff, which I hate. Absolutely anything else is viewed with an extremely jaundiced perspective. However, for the past several days I have been taking vitamin D and, to my astonishment, have felt better than I have in a long while. I will now duck from all the 'I told you sos'.

I have other issues I am trying to get my mind around, but I find I am a tad more willing to at least consider these. My basic issue is, and always will be, independence. I know it is a personality flaw. I know I am the world's worst patient, and I know I have an outstanding and amazing doctor. Her patience and her sense of humor are incredible, even when I tried to snake out of a procedure, claiming I was too busy as it was my cat's second half birthday.Yes, I really did use that one. She recently threatened to boot my rear.

Yes, I will do as I have been instructed this time. I don't want to, but I will because this wonderful doctor will phone me at home, after hours, with the results of my tests. She is amazing in the way she follows through and she has guilted me out. She is a very tiny oriental lady and she doesn't bully, or bombast. She is very polite and firm. I have just had both legs very effectively kicked out from under me.

On another front, Frank the snowshoe has had his first taste of flying tasties and wants more, big time. He lurks under our deck, just waiting for them to land on the bird feeder, or, if he is stuck inside, chatters to them of his evil intentions from behind the bug net, which is about two feet from the feeder. He still doesn't like chicken or turkey flavored cat food, so why does he crave raw birdie? This is beyond me.

Sometimes I do buy books and they are not always in the genre I write. I also like true life stories. So I saw one that tweaked my interest and bought it.

I can put my hand on my heart here and say that the book did cover the story. Was it entertaining? Mildly. Was it what I expected? Sort of. Would I have bought it from a bookstore and not online? No. If I had read the first few pages I would have put it back.

So what is my beef? It was written by a third rate journalist. I should explain that I have worked in the industry for quite a few years. Until recently, I worked as the reporting editor for a local paper until it went belly up due to cutbacks. However, during my tenure, I noted with sadness the decline in the ability to write that seems to afflict local reporters.

They go through tech school and come out the other end all brand spanking new with their quals held high and get taken on. They then proceed to write in the most deplorable apology of a mangling of the English language I have seen anywhere. There are fragments and typos and grammar issues. Proof reading seems to be a thing of the past, and this goes for online national newspapers, too. I once read, re-read, and read a third time a para that still eluded me. It was so convoluted that I seriously think only the writer understood the actual intent, because as sure as heck, no one else did. One of the things that irritates me the most is when reported speech contains parenthesis to include a word the original speaker has left out, just so you know the very bright reporter dude has recognized there is a word missing and inserted it so the general public can see how sharp he/she is. Frex, "Billy Bob went down to the well and (he) got a bucket of water."

This, to me, screams third rate reporter. Unfortunately I expect to see this mess in newsprint. I do not expect to see it in a book. Neither do I expect to see something from another unrelated circumstance to the original storyline suddenly inserted. I also do not expect the author to blithely go forward and contradict themselves with great aplomb.

No, I will not name this author, or this book. I will never publicly run down another writer. This post is about writing standards, or the lack thereof. Suffice to say it is not someone I know, or that I might meet, have met, or read on this site.

Here we all are, busting a collective gut to hone our manuscripts into perfection and some third rate journalist, and I do not consider such as writers, gets a sale just with a sensationalist story.

Yes, I am guilty of reading sensationalist trash. I did, however, expect it to be well-written sensationalist trash.

I bombed my thyroid tests. A lot. So my meds are increased. I am also an unhealthy mushroom, who lacks vitamin D, a lot. In addition to which, I am being tested for celiac disease. This means I have to start eating bread and stuff again so I will show a true result when I go for the tests in two weeks as I had cut out a lot of things to see if it made a difference. She reckoned that I had this the last time I saw her, but I had too much on my plate to do the tests then. Now I don't have an excuse, including my eldest cat's second half birthday. I used that up already. I will also need to go for more blood work in six weeks to find if the topped meds are working or if I have to have more stuff. I will rattle.

The doctor reckons I will not have such a problem with insomnia when I am back on track, although she kept coming back to my husband's snoring, which has nothing to do with anything. I knew he snored loudly before I married him. He has always snored. I am going deaf in one ear as a result of his enormous decibel output. But I can't sleep when he goes away on a business trip. I have to bring the cat up with me as the cat snores and I can't handle the silence. I am used to the sound.

I also have to alter my regime to take the meds at a different time of day. I loathe having my routine altered, but I spose. It is not so bad. I can alter my diet. I am not really wrapped up in food and I never did like sweet things a lot, as in cake, cookies, pastry, etc, so that is no big deal. I guess I will have to go over the labels of everything in my pantry to see what contains hidden gluten. However, I am free to splurge for the next two weeks.

I am still grateful to be me and not someone else, as there are a lot worse things out there. So I will rattle. It is not a big price to pay for getting back on track.

On the bright side, I suppose it is good that I am not a vegetarian, no detriment intended to those who are. I have an idea grain figures a lot in that lifestyle choice. I think that would cause much hardship, so it is better for a nasty carnivore like me to be afflicted. All things considered, it works out much fairer.

The man who would be Peter Pan died today of a massive heart attack at the very young age of 50. In a bizarre twist of fate he will indeed remain young forever. Hearts now must go out to his fatherless three children.

Today, at almost the same time, the world also lost Farrah Fawcett, after a brave fight with cancer, documented to help others with this horrible disease.

Somehow the sun shines a little less bright with the passing of two icons.

The concert last night was wicked. I did miss Christy MacPhee, but Stevie Nicks gave a good rendition of those songs. I could see the group was tired at the end but they are troupers and gave a great encore. There were only two glitches in an otherwise perfect evening.

First was I had a guy next to me who thought it ok to do dancing IN his seat while waving two full cups of beer. He was in a group of three and thankfully switched with the guy on the other side of the group as there were empty seats there. Could this have been the waves of intense icy disapproval I was emanating? Grins. I am not a party pooper, but I don't like someone in my space, pushing onto my seat and waving his beer in front of my face so I can't see the show. The move happened quiet soon, thank goodness.

Second, and this was all evening, there was some sort of emaciated elf in the rows behind us. It keep bawling out, in a reedy, strange and high pitched voice various love messages at the group at the most inappropriate moments. The voice was very piercing and the comments bizarre. Frex, 'I have a kidney for you, Stevie', bawled out in the middle of Rhiannon. I never did get to see who this person was as we booked swiftly at the end to catch a cab before the masses started.

Another thing that was truly amazing was the noise of so many people in a facility. Rexall Place is huge and the quiet murmur of thousands of people just talking before a show is about the same as standing on a beach listening to the waves crash when the wind is strong. We were both slightly deaf after the concert. Grins. I think everyone had a great time.

We haz just seed Fleetwood Mac lyv. Oh yeah! They were awesome. It was well worth the wait. Now we are chilling at a downtown hotel we booked for the night. No way are we driving back tonight. Oh, and they goofed and had to upgrade us to a suite for free. I am crying an ocean. Not. And it is a smoking suite. Oh yeah.

I have my replacement. My dh choose it for me today and it is all singing, all dancing, with all the bells whistles and stops. It is a 64 bit quad core processor. Oh yeah! It is currently uploading at the speed of light.

So I am zinging in the rain, just zinging in the rain .... Grins.

My new tower has to go back. It was never up to speed and has now started to freeze when I am on the internet. Well, it is no great loss. I need to purge it of my own stuff as that is all that was on there. I was leery of the thing from the get go and have been using my laptop for downloads and web stuff. I still have my slow older tower and the laptop so it is not a huge dealy. Just darned annoying. We are still within the thirty days warranty for a total replacement so all is good.

I do like the wide screen monitor, though. It means I can have two full pages on screen at any time I want. That it s keeper.The problem wasn't there, nor in my new modem. A new system should be fast, given the uncluttered and very large memory and it wasn't, ever. Oh well, not keeping a lemon. I don't know that I will even chose the same type of tower again. Maybe I will do a test run of under thirty days on another system. Whatever I pick, I will not be ramping it up fully until I am convinced I am keeping it.

In other news, I was somewhat horrified to learn Air Canada will now permit small pets to travel in the cabin with their owners. Everyone knows I love animals and have my own, but I do have allergies. My cats get bathed on a regular basis for this reason. I am asthmatic and yes, this is a problem. I was further annoyed at the comments in the Edmonton Journal from various very insensitive people targeting people with allergies complaining about this. They seem to think we are making an unnecessary fuss and should live with it.

Or should we die with it? This is a very real possibility for those with compromised immune systems. If Fido, or Fluffy is parked under the seat near me in an unwashed state I will have a reaction. It is not the fur flying about, it is the protein on the saliva of the animal that causes the problem and is far more airborne than fur ever is. Thus the reason for pet baths. Would these people be willing to upend a person from a wheelchair, or stick out a foot to trip up someone with a walking stick? That is a social no no. Yet when the disability is not obvious, it is alright to do the self same thing?

The same people also went off into long dissertations about how annoying kids were on aircrafts. They compared kids to pets. Shakes head. Pets are not members of the human race and at the last check, kids are. Nearly all parents traveling with kids are totally frazzeled at the end of a trip by the sheer effort they have put in to keep their small human beings happy, comfortable and amused. Kids are also either equipped with disposal control, or are in diapers. They do not require to defecate or urinate in their cages from pure terror and thus stink out the aircraft. Kids do not howl and yap 24/7. There is no comparison. Nor should there be.

I once had cause, due cause, to take a cat on a long haul trip.I was treated to first class attention. The pet and my baggage were personally escorted to the plane. The pet was put in a special baggage compartment that was heated and pressurized and checked on trip by the staff. The animal came out the other end in a perfectly reasonable and happy condition, no thanks to me. I was extremely stressed at that point, traveling also with three children under five. I had mistakenly given the poor cat a worm pill instead of a tranquilizer prior to take off. Something I did not realize until after the fact, but he had not messed in his airport approved carrier, bless him. However, he was fairly urgent in his need when we eventually arrived at our final destination.My point is the pet traveled safely in baggage and was happy and well adjusted when he arrived. He had not compromised anyone's health. He had not offended anyone with noise or eliminations. So why do we now need to risk the life of an innocent traveler by having pets in the cabin?

I have also recently read of a person travailing with a small dog on a US airline. She had enough of the barking after fifteen minutes and let it out of its cage. It then proceeded to run all over the aircraft, pissing and shitting everywhere.

Will I be flying Air Canada again? Well that is a no brainer. I will vault astride a broom in preference. I dearly love my own groomed fluffies, who are boarded at a very nice kennels when I go away. There is no way I would be selfish enough to put my pet at my side before someone else's health, or even life. Shame on Air Canada. End of rant.

Eight years is a long time to be wrapped up in something, but it came to me in the past few days that I am finally free. It started with a phone call from my local bff. Sharon was my second in command and it seems the new committee deliberately excluded her from election to the coordinator post. Actually, both of us were relieved as so much wrong has been done and both of us are relieved not to be associated with it.

I had a plan of action all laid out for the town with a comprehensive planting plan for all the product I had ordered in. Everything has been planted in the wrong place and was planted out far too early for Alberta. The hanging baskets that we never brought in until the second week in June were hung at the end of May. I will bet the grower was laughing his head off. A savage frost saw the immediate evacuation of the aforesaid baskets and a covering of all the other premature plantings over two acres. Given that parks staff had to accomplish this, and not the guilty new committee, it cost the town around three thousand dollars in manpower hours and materials.This is a conservative estimate. Eggy face time.

What struck me was how little I cared. Sharon was the same. We have let go and trunked the junk. The Johny come latelys will be trying to ride our coat tails while putting on their own, disastrous mark, but it doesn't matter.This is their baby now, to sink or swim with. We are free. I have no regrets and neither does Sharon. We left on the very highest note possible. We had taken our town from pathetic to a national champion. It doesn't get any better than that.

I don't even feel hurt that my plan wasn't used. The park staff thought it was awesome, but the new committee wanted their own mark. Go for it, dudes. Put everything in the wrong place and don't ask me why I had it there. It will no doubt come to you in time.

This is the first summer in eight years where I have no commitments and am not chained to the bedrock. It means I can actually go on vacation with my wonderful dh, who cannot go any other time of the year because of his work commitments. I am very much looking forward to spending time with my honey.

Do I regret those eight years? No. I had a blast and I made a big difference. What is there to regret in that? Any time I drive down the main drag I can see areas I designed, growing, and becoming more beautiful with each passing year.I have made my green footprint. I have caused the planting of more trees than most people could accomplish in three lifetimes. I am at peace with this. It is a good place to be. I am grateful for the opportunity. Now it is time to move on with joy, hope and a sense of profound accomplishment.

I am finally on the mend. I don't have to have a surgical dressing on my hand. The infection has gone and the wounds have sealed. What I am left with is two raised hard lumps that for all the world look like the aftermath of a vampire bite. How ironic.

Not being able to write for the past while has led to a lot of interesting reflection on the direction I am heading. I now have a far better game plan and am going to start implementing it tomorrow. I also decided on an art project I would like to accomplish over the summer. Whether it will be any good or not, I don't know. It is not labor intensive so I can pick at it as and when without interfering with my writing.

On the garden front I am annoyed. Now I can finally do something we have major T-storms. Not unexpected for June, which is why I wanted to get my stuff planted in May. Ok, so I suppose I shall have to pick at that piece meal, as well.

Super annoying is my roof shingles have stated to curl. Ok, so I get a guy out to look at the roof and he tells me I have a buttery patch. Wonderful. It sagged under him while he was up there. I know my shingles are coming up for renewal. We new built in 93 so it is about that time. I also know the roof was shoddy from the get go so the shaky patch is no surprise. Fine. We will do this. Do you hear the teeth gnashing?

What I had planned for this year was to have my kitchen finished. I want new cupboards and new counter tops. I also need new rug in the areas I haven't already had hard wooded or tiled. I seriously need a new bed. Ours has spitefully decided to sag in the middle. Neither of us are sleeping well as a consequence.

Now would someone like to direct me to where I can buy a money tree? I have a spot already picked out and I will look after it real good.

Frank, the snowshoe, has spent many months chattering and hating the flying tasties visiting our bird feeder. His previous record of catching edibles includes butterflies and crickets. He ran away from a mouse and we don't have rats in Alberta.

Yesterday, my ten year old, hardly athletic, as in can't scale a six foot fence, even though he has all his claws intact, bounded up a straight four feet vertically to make a swipe at a flying tastie trying to eat from our bird feeder. He missed, but not by much.

This leads us to the sad conclusion that the flying tastie that he was seen devouring in our backyard a couple of days previously was indeed his own catch and not something purloined off Ollie, the hoe, as we had previously thought. This is the cat who turns up his nose at all chicken or turkey based premium cat food. He will also shudder at any prime turkey pieces put in his dish at festive occasions. He does not like the taste of birdie, so why does he crunch and munch at a fully feathered and raw specimen? It has got to be hate.

This is their nature. I remember the first cat we had. I was digging in my veggie patch to prepare for planting. Obviously, I was unearthing worms and the birds were zooming in on them. One bird scored a big one and was in the process of taking off when this black shape sailed by me, totally committed and airborne. Instinctively, I reached out to grab the caudal appendage as the animal flew by. There was a nasty splat in the dirt. The bird and worm flew off. The furious cat bit my rubber boot with great ferocity. It spent around three days sulking about the incident. Yep. They hate birds.

I an now off the IV and on to oral meds. I seem to have about a two week supply of horse pills, or at least things the size of which might be more fitted for that species. My right arm is a mess of bruising as the original IV failed and another had to be installed ... eventually. Five goes at it actually, but that was particially my fault as I refused to have the thing in the back of my good hand.

I can't use my left hand, I have no grip and I can't even use it to type, in addition, it is swallen out of all get go and you want to stick an IV in my good hand? That isn't going to happen. How am I supposed to properly sanitize my only working hand to cook if it has an IV sticking out the back? Duh. She wasn't that happy with me and I felt it when the IV failed to go in my wrist after about five minutes digging. R was wincing with me. Fortunately, she gave up and got the guy, who eventually found a vein, but he wasn't a brute.

I do now have more movement in my fingers, so things are looking up. However, my typing is still haphazzard. Going from touch typing to one finger is causing so many typos. Cringe.