Bit of some updates...

I have changed the look of my blog. There are still some kinks to work out, but it is not the weird colours it was before. I hope this will make it more readable for people.

I changed my credit union for a bank. I am not sure this is a good thing, but so far it is good in that I don't have to pay fees on my transactions. There are probably other fees that I will have to pay, but only occasionally, because I make only transactions, and not much else at the moment. I have had to go around and tell those who need to know that my accounts have to be changed.

I also opened an account to save a little money in, and the bank has assured me it will not be taking money out of it under any circumstances if I am only depositing money into it. Which is all I wanted from the Credit Union. Sometimes long loyalty with a company counts for nothing these days; that is not a good thing for anybody.

I noticed some people on Facebook are back to going on about the end of the world in 2012. Good grief. So my reply is to ask them for their stuff and offer to water their plants and care for their pets. Maybe this should be on my religious blog. haha. I am also offering people if they are planning on having an apocalypse to supply their equine needs. Can't have a decent apocalypse without horsemen, and horsemen have to be mounted on horses. Oh well, so far, no takers on either of them.

Purity of Heart

When I was a child we lived by a code of sorts, and of all things, purity of heart was the most important.

Much of the code consisted of things like, giving to the poor (luckily we didn't know any poor people, or I would have wondered what to give them).

Help little old ladies across the road (even though my mother still had to hold my hand to cross the road).

Always let your horse go home on a loose rein (even if he could outrun the Melbourne Cup champions at dinner time)

Follow the ten commandments, which in turn consisted of love God before all other gods (there were others?), do not steal, do not kill, do not bear false witness (and if I was ever to be a witness in court, I would not bear falsely) and do not covet your neighbour's wife, donkey or worldly goods (since I was a girl, I wasn't likely to covet his wife, he didn't have a donkey, so I couldn't covet it, but I knew I would have if he had had one, and our worldly goods were actually more coveteous than his). The worst things you could be were a yella belly or an Indian giver.

These were sort of formed when I was about seven years old and more or less do me these days as well, albeit somewhat modified. Of course, I now know there are actually 10 ten commandments and I try to live by them. There are other codes that help us live, but these are a good place to start.

I have talked to others from around my generation and a bit before, and they had very similar codes they lived by.

Long time no see ...

Sorry it has been a while since I have blogged. No major excuses, just got tied up doing other things. Things that have sort of been pending for an age and have finally got around to finishing. The good thing about my medication for the depression is that it has chirped me up no end, and I can finish things and focus more. My Doctor warned me about feeling euphoric, which I guess I need to be careful of, but I must say I am feeling much happier these days.

Having said that, I am also aware that the chemicals could make me say things differently to what I would if I wasn't on them, so if I suddenly sound a bit nutty, please point it out to me.

I have a million (well about 100) cross stitches that are just in a pile waiting for a home or display of some sort, so I made a stick book and put in 8 of them into it. I still have to finish the cover, and I will post it on Bilum in a while. I will probably make another one for another pile, and maybe a new star book for some smaller ones. This might eliminate about 30 from the collection. lol.

About three weeks ago the sister and I left Sunnyboy with the daughter and the grandsons. We got a bus and two trains to Rosehill Racecourse. We spent about 4 hours after that wandering around the annual Stitches and Craft show. It was a super day and we saw loads of things we "wanted" to buy, but luckily were able to limit ourselves to our budgets. Actually I had about $30 left, which was unusual for me, but I just have enough scissors for just now and buttons. I did buy another iron, a little one about 10cm long, so it is about 5 times bigger than my dear little clover iron, which I love. It is specifically for ironing cotton and afixing iron on - whatever needs ironing on and has iron on glue, such as interfacing, hemming web etc. So it doesn't need heat settings. It cost a little more than I really want to pay, but I have it now.

I also bought some fabric strips, about forty of them. They are selvedge to selvedge and 7cm wide. I have sewn some of them together to make a bag for my laptop, but as it is a quasi crazy quilt thing, it is going to take a bit of a while to make. I got some fat quarters as well, some Japanese inspired fabrics. I also got stamps, I mean, can you see me going anywhere like this and not buying stamps? They were paisley pattern, and not very expenive at all. But I am going to have to mess around with colours for them.

It takes two hours from home to Racecourse and then two back. So it was a long, full day. And the Daughter said Sunnyboy was good as gold.

Work has been much the same as ever. I was off almost 7 weeks with being sick and my heart scare ...

I didn't tell you about that. Ha, well, I did a stress test on a walking machine for about five minutes at speed (walking) till my heart rate went up. It did not go up as high as they were expecting, either. (I am not totally unfit). I had a heart ultra sound as well, lasted for about 20 minutes. Lady was very nice, very professional.

And the outcome? Next time I have chest pains, see a gastro-intestinal specialist first. I paid a crapload of money to find that out! Still, can't complain, better than there was actually something wrong; better than a blockage. FFS.

So until next time I get my butt moving to blog ...

Nicotine patches ...

Okay, so I have been smoking since my 13th birthday. I have quit on several occassions over the past 20 years. Obviously, since I am writing about this, not very successfully. I will not bore you with the whys and wherefores of all of this, but I will cut straight to the chase. The last two times I gave up, I gave up with the assistance of nicotine patches. The first time for about 18 months and the second time for about a year. The last time was about 18 months ago. Oh, yeah, the patches work, but smoking seems to be a default status with me. lol.

The patches work by putting a continuous but teeeny amount of nicotine directly into your bloodstream so that you do not have to actually put a cigarette into your mouth. You go three weeks without the habit of smoking and cut down the level of nicotine to almost nil and then voila, you are a quitter. The theory sounds good.

One of the side effects of nicotine patches are "vivid dreams", psychobabble for nightmares worse than the most deplorable acts of terrorism. Those tiny nicotine driven nanobots travel into your brain, take a look around, have a good chuckle and take your absolutely worst fears and make them into a dreamscape reality. Waaaaah! Yeah, in otherwords you dream of your own death at the hand of some psychochotic serial killer and die. Yeah, you do. But then, you wake up in some way and watch the CSI:Miami team doing the forensics on your death and you get in and help them. G0 figure.

Now before you go, ew, I don't want to do that, let the words of experience stroke you gently.
You don't wear the blasted things to bed. Take them off about an hour beforehand and have a large drink of water. Make sure you go to the loo just before you go to bed. It doesn't get the nicotine out of your system, but reduces it to a more manageable level. You just don't dream about the post mortem. Okay, you don't get the "vivid dreams" either or they aren't so bad. Yeah, I know they aren't nanobots either.

They really do stop the cravings. The patches have nothing to do with why I have failed before. This time around I have done some stress management stuff and have alternative things to do with my hands. I also have some stronger painkillers - although the pain that I had previously was because of my gallbladder which has since been removed. I still lack strong coping skills, but as I am aware of this, I am able to deal more with it. As long as the old person doesn't annoy me more than usual. It is still against the law to kill people.

Ha. bye ...

Not alone ...

Reading my RSS feed this morning I find I am not alone in my concerns about the Gay Lobby and children. If hetero's were to do some things gay people do around children, we would be dragged off to jail and branded as pedophiles, yet because "dad and dad" are gay, it is okay to do those things around children. Yetch.

Look I don't approve of other cultures that do honor killings of women/girls either, does that make me a racist?

Why can't people just let children be children. Time enough to find out about all that sex stuff when they are old enough to understand it. When they actually have "hormones". Imposing it on them before then is just sick. Call me whatever horrible label you like but that is how I feel and I know many people feel the same. Some even feel "worse", like killing and bashing. I don't think those things really solve problems, nor does writing a bog entry about it, but at least it is here in the Public Domain.

Now that the communists are in power in Canberra, it will only get worse. It is the kids I feel sorry for, because they have to carry the consequences into their adult years and support us oldies in our old age.

I had two issues when my children were growing up. One was blatant racism, because my children where not "white". The other issue was that the feminazis decided that girls were not getting a fair deal in the education system, and the way to solve this problem was to blatantly discriminate against boys. Having two sons and two daughters stuck me between a rock and a hard place. I spent many a long hour going up to the various schools my kids attended and point out to the most senior person and the school counsellor the blantant discriminations and asking what the fnck they were going to do about it. Which usually ended up - not much.

On top of that, one of the teachers decided that violence was a good way to solve some problems. He broke one kid's arm (not mine) and pushed one of my sons into a brick wall. When he was supposed to be reprimanded, the Teacher's Union stepped in and prevented this from happening.

Fortune smiled on me, in the end. I was on a high school council a few years later, and this teacher had come up for appointment as a Deputy Head Teacher. The two students on the council had expressed concern about this - one knew first hand of the incidents above and knew of others as well. My mother was also on the council, and so the four of us spoke to the other parental representatives who also had heard and expressed concern. When the vote came, the teachers were pretty pyst about it, but had to live with our vote to not let him be Deputy Head. The chairman of the council was also the Teacher's Union rep for the city, and also my teacher at TAFE. Later I asked her if it would affect my results at TAFE and she said it wouldn't. To her credit it did not. She knew I was the instigator of this event, and once we had had the opportunity to fully explain, she understood, as she also had a child at that school. There was much taking to task with other teachers, but the majority, once they understood the reasoning were okay with the vote.

Unionism has overstepped its mark in some respects. They should just be worker advocates, not politicians. (ooops. lol). (Insert Capitalist diatribe of choice in this spot).

I told you that story to emphasise the point that the Teachers Union carries much weight in what kids actually get taught. Whether it is in the classroom or not. Somewhere along the way a line has to be drawn in the sand and we say, just teach the kids the academic stuff they need to know and leave the rest of life stuff to parents. You may not think we are doing a good job, but lets not get into a points arguement on who does a better job with our kids, shall we? Hmmm?

Yeah, there are some bratty kids out there, but maybe if you busibodies had let us keep our ability to smack our kids some of them would be less bratty than they are. One quick reprimand will save a lifetime of grief for a kid any day. Argue all you like, with me it falls on deaf ears.

Till again we meet, dear reader ...

Funny words ....

Grandson1 was a naughty boy last week, allegedly, and was suspended for two days earlier this week. As the daughter has to attend TAFE, I told her I would look after him rather than taking him with her. He enjoys going to her classes, so I saw it as rewarding him, whereas being bored at home with Granma was not so much. But he just sat and read and watched TV and pottered as though it was a weekend without his brother. He never asked for anything (his brother does that for him) and ate what I fed him at lunchtime without protest.

Overall, he is a nice boy. A real "ladies' man". (You do not call your Granma "Babe"). He is bright enough, probably could apply himself further at school, but he is not lagging behind. He does have a bit of a temper but very rarely. But it is the occassional temper that gets him into most trouble. Instead of stepping back he just lashes out. It has taken me a bit of a while to realise he does this (and yes I do know why) and now I know what to do about it.

Then yesterday he went on the class excursion to Canberra. He told me the entire trip was totally "sick". (Okay, you are going "say what?"). "Sick" is the modern day word for something that is so fantastic, it is beyond description. I am used to him saying this, so I knew he had a good time. He had left at 7.00am yesterday morning and returned at 7.00pm last night. He was talking so fast I could barely understand him, and his eyes were shining so I know he really did have a very "sick" time.

In times not so long ago, when we found something that was good we said it was "wicked". It goes along with words like "cool" as modern remeaning of our language.

Older people know a menu is a list of meals in a restaurant, whereas our kids think a menu is something that drops down on their computer screen. A mouse is a tiny animal cats eat, but now it is also a computer device for using on a graphics screen. Normal words take on new meanings with common acceptance and usage. And although our dictionaries lag behind, eventually they do catch up.

But I think "sick" is the funniest of them all.

I am easily amused ...

Digging up ...

... something to say is not always easy. I try and think of things but often I feel my brain has frozen up. That is just life I suppose. I will give it a go ...

It has been a quiet Easter so far, with the sister coming over and the trading of chocolate egg type goodies. I won 5th prize in the office Easter Egg raffle which consisted of a large Darrel Lea egg covered in gold paper with a yellow ribbon. So the sister and I ate that. It didn't taste any different to the el cheapo eggs, but we wont tell anybody. We yakked. I encourage her to bring larger pieces of laundry with her so she can wash and dry them while she is here. We have much in common and can talk about most things fairly well because of it. Neither of us know any other people who are interested in the things we are in quite the same way as we are. Mostly we only know city sheople.

I have been arting a little, but nothing has been finished as I was hoping.

My laptop, bless its little Intel heart, has not been happy, because in cloudy weather the RF gain is deflected by the clouds and it is literally slower than a wet weekend. Guess what, Easter is wettish and very cloudy. How is that for timing. Like, for the past few weeks we have had very hot sunny weather, I finally get time off work for a few days, and it is wet weekend. Still this time I am not sick. Last year for the APEC long weekend, I had hayfever, and was sick as a dog. The day I had to return to work, I was as healthy as a mallee bull.

The old person has been complaining because they have raised the cost of entry to the races. I think that it is absurd, but I guess they figure it will deter pensioners, so they can focus more on a younger audience. But I overheard a conversation last weekend at the races, where a group of young people were saying they never bet at the races and they didn't know anyone who did. I rather got the impression they didn't even watch the races. Buggered if I know what they were there for, then. But if what they said was true, or even that they knew, it does not bode well for the next generation. Our warnings off for smoking, drugs, drinking, AIDS and problem gambling has worked, but to the point where it backfiring on the suppliers. lol. If no one smokes, there will not be the taxes from tobacco, if no one does drugs, much law enforcement will not be employed, if drinking cuts out or down, we will loose some large industries and export $$$, AIDS funding is still lucrative for researchers and lack of gambling will mean - no Pokies, no horse racing, a breakdown of much of the horse industry, and vet supply and well, that is a path I think someone else should go down. (mode = whisper)they might even start caring about what sort of Thoroughbreds they are breeding (/whisper). (But that was never uttered through my lips, okay?)

We are watching the 20,000th showing of "The last of the Mohicans" at our place. The historical facts have been lost by Hollywood, but as they say, never let the truth get in the way of a good story (although here, even the definition of "good" is being extremely stretched). I will say this, the Irish sounding music is nice. A bit Man from Snowy Riverish.

Now I am rambling, gotta go. Till later, dudes ...

Insanity rules ...

So the further adventures of getting to work Day 2:
I was running late this morning. Only half an hour, but oh, what a difference it made. No trains. Get the bus. The lift does not work, so I clamber down the stairs, ask the Cityrail person who points to another person. Luckily the bus pulls in just at that moment. All aboard. It is a little cramped, but sitting down. Bus turns around and drives off. Talk about the long way round. It took 45 minutes to get to East Hills station. Then I have to wait for the next train.
Waiting and then it leaves. Station by station. I was glad I wasn't going to the city.

Finally reach Padstow station. Walk down to Georges' to buy some salad for lunch. It is a mile from the station to work. Luckily it is downhill. Lucky too that it was not stinking hot. Got in at nine fifteen. Aaarrrgh! Lucky it was a Millenium train going home.

The Boss wants us to think up a name to have a Newsletter and put some pictures on it. Since I am doing computer studies, I get to look at clip art. Joy, oh, joy. I know full well that someone else will be doing the exact same thing and it will be their work that is selected. There is just no way known they will go with what I have selected - it just does not happen. But dilly me is still obliged to sit there goggling (and googling) at clip art. Not as there is all that much else to do, so I can't complain. I guess that is just the way it is in my life.

I am starting to look forward to the end of the year, let me tell you. No more employment, no more old person (I don't want to move to Queensland, what's in Queensland?), her ladyship will be off getting a foal, just peace and quiet. The daughter says she and the grandsons will look for a little cheapie farm, so later her ladyship can live with them. If I can find a nice little caravan on the coast somewhere, I shall be so happy. Well that is the theory anyhow, and what is going to keep me motivated for a few weeks at least anyhow. Till real life kicks in again.

I have asked the Sister and her Sunnyboy to visit on Saturday. We have some hot dogs for lunch and rice crackers with gerkin dip. Usually we don't have anything interesting. I will load her up with some tomatoes. Red, red, yummy sweet organically grown (thanks to Cody pooh) tomatoes. Even the wasps like them. lol.

Look at that lot. There were 17 of them there before we knocked them down. Right under the kitchen window. Real puce coloured they were. If ever you want to see what puce looks like, enlarge the photo and have a gander.

Insanity rules ....

OOOoooh ... I want one ...

Every now and then I wander the fringes of the internet and I came across this guy. His latest load of video rants he is running a competition to "outnerd" him. He was showing around his garage/shed (it's an Aussie bloke thing). He has boxes of Judge Dredd comix! All I have is the Judge Dredd video with Silvester Stallone. But I could never "outnerd" Angry. I will be very surprised if anyone can. I try to pretend I am more sophisticated than that, but really, deep down, I am a crazy nerd. Afterall I am a Babyboomer, and so many of us are like that.

I have a laptop computer, a mobile phone, okay I don't have an MP3 player nor a portable DVD, I have to draw a line somewhere. I do have loads of Star Trek stuff, and the daughter is a crazy Dr Who fanantic. I have started collecting the Star Gate TV series, and have the movie that they made before the TV series. Somewhere is the Matrix movies - the daughter was a crazy Keanu Reeves fan since she was about 10. Actually, I think she is nuttier than me! And she is a generation Y, not X. The grandsons are about on a par with her as well.

The scarey thing is, my sister is also like this too. At least she and I have different Fantasy taste, although we are both Pratchett fans, where the daughter is not.

Oh, and I am the only one with a job.