Christmas is over for another year

The leftovers have all been eaten and the fridge has been restocked with my sort of food, all the extra sheets and towels have been washed and we are almost back to normal although Parsifal is missing D1 a little bit and has become super cuddly as a result.

Today I spent some time with a very old friend whom I first met at St Anne's College in North Adelaide where we were both residents and both studying physiotherapy.  After graduation we shared a flat for a year before I left for Sydney where I married a Western Australian and she married a man from Victoria.  She has a son living in Mandurah and is over here staying with him and his family over Christmas.  She is going home the day after tomorrow.

We are having it super-hot at the moment but the air conditioning is very efficient and tomorrow I will get back to spinning the last skein of my Rincewind/Melange yarn.  I have started knitting the front of the vest (already finished the back) from the Ankh-Morpork/Cardamom spinning but I have yet to decide what I will knit when I finish it.  D1 gave me a book of 'top down' knitting patterns for Christmas and my Noro book of patterns arrived a couple of weeks ago ... so many patterns  -  so little time!

I am still struggling with a few things on Windows 10  -  mainly my inability to get back to the Tiles when I close a site; it always takes me back to Desktop.  At least I have finally persuaded it to remember to open in Tiles when I turn it on.  Probably it will eventually do as I want it to  -  I suspect that I have a Beta version (probably everyone who has downloaded it for free has the Beta version) and Microsoft is still tinkering around the edges.  I now have my "Tips and Tricks" book which is bigger and more comprehensive than the 'Teach Yourself Visually' book.  I am looking at it all as a way of exercising my brain rather than as a frustrating struggle to understand the new format.  Hopefully I will manage to keep one step ahead of my clients.

An update on google Friend Connect - Please read ... !

An update on Google Friend Connect

Posted: December 21, 2015

In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we’ve seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we’ll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.

As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we’ll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we’ll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.

We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they’ll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.

We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

Posted by Michael Goddard, Software Engineer

Happy Christmas to all my readers

I'd like to wish a very happy Christmas to all my readers  and to thank you all for sharing in my life for the last year.

Christmas this year is going to be interesting because our usual split family celebrations have sort of fallen through.  Until now I have held the Christmas Day family gathering and my ex-husband and his wife have done boxing Day and the following year it is the reverse.  However, this year all our children, grandchildren and whatever have spat the dummy and D3 is holding Christmas day feasting and I will still be doing Boxing Day with my Ex, wife and family doing their own thing  -  the kids there have also spat the dummy so it is Christmas all over the place.

It has meant that my Christmas has been spread over three days which I was finding a little daunting but D1 is over from Sydney and is being a huge help so I am just sort of wandering through the preparations.  At the moment I am melting the chocolate for a triple chocolate mousse for tomorrow, we will do the potatoes for the potato salad tonight to let them cool and the family insists on a sausage sizzle  -  which is easy and everyone enjoys it.  Roast Turkey and Christmas pudding is a bit much in summertime in Perth and to have to endure it for two days running is a bit much to expect.

D1 and I did the food shopping in double-quick time with her wielding the trolley and me gathering the necessaries.  I made the mayonnaise last night, the chocolate mousse will be done this morning and the rest can be done this evening and tomorrow morning.

Bless the person who invented dishwashers ... :)

Happy Christmas and I hope that the next year will be even better than this year has been.

It is only six days to Christmas

D1 is arriving this afternoon to stay for an indefinite time; indefinite because she has not told me how long she is staying.

This year D3 is holding Christmas lunch at Chez D3 and as it is my turn to do Boxing day I am going to have to do most of my preparations on Christmas eve which could be a bit of a problem since Multiplex/Hawaiian has seen fit to furnish me with a rather minimalistic refrigerator and it is supposed to be mid-summer here.  All of my kids and grandbabies seem to have things which they can not eat  -  gluten, dairy etc which makes then a bit hard to cater for and I have had to abandon the traditional trifle for Chocolate mousse and gluten-free sausages since they usually opt for a sausage sizzle fortunately as my fridge would never fit a turkey and a ham.  D3 is going to drop in today with gluten-free sausages which she buys at a Saturday Morning Growers' Market and they will go into my even smaller freezer.  I have to make a triple batch of chocolate mousse  -  nine raw eggs  -  yuk!

Yesterday the pony-tail palm which I ordered from the local nursery (Bunnings do not stock anything so exotic) arrived so I rode the train for one stop to Swanbourne and collected it.  It was bigger than I had envisaged and, poor thing, was totally and completely pot-bound.  I had checked that it was non-toxic to cats but Parsifal greeted it as though he had not seen any food for a month and began on it straight away.  Having re-checked its non-toxicity to cats I let him rip .  Since it is to be a permanent feature of my balcony I decided that I couldn't cage it for the rest of our natural lives.  He ate his fill and then threw up in a most spectacular fashion all over (fortunately) my horrible tiles where it was  easy to clean up.  I have planted it out in a tallish pot  where the babies can not eat out the heart but only the peripheral fronds.

My three aspidistra plants seem to be rooting so that is two out of the three non-toxic shade-loving plants now in residence and I have decided to pass on the spider plants as they really need a hanging basket and I am not sure if the Body Corporate would be happy with me putting hooks on the roof of my balcony.

Sort of Sorted

Since I use this blog as a diary I just want to record that I now have this computer, and Windows 10, up and running to my satisfaction.  No doubt there will be issues to be sorted in the future but I now seem to be able to do everything I was able to do in Windows 7  -  except create shortcuts on Desktop.

There is still the minor issue of my email and whether I should use MS Outlook or Office Outlook.  There is no doubt that MS Outlook is simpler and that Office Outlook is unnecessarily complicated for the general home user but MS Outlook is, after all, just a souped up version of Hotmail.  However, it synced my contacts list and I have had to manually enter addresses into Office Outlook as well as that it shows email headers in very small font in the inbox.  The other gripe I have with Office Outlook is that, on my version at least, there is no Deleted Items folder so that when I delete an email it is gone forever.  There is a way of searching for lost emails, I know, and I haven't explored it.  Instead I have created a Deleted Items Folder and move the items I no longer want to this folder where I can delete them or restore them as I see fit.  MS Outlook has a Deleted Items folder.

Since all my emails come into both programs it is really a matter of what I am in the mood for but it has been good to finally try to come to terms with Office Outlook even if I never use it in the future.

D1 is arriving tomorrow from Sydney and will be spending Christmas here.  She has yet to tell me when she is going home again but I suspect that it will be 27th December to rescue her cat from Boarding School.

Progress, upgrade or have I just been a bit slow to catch on?

For the last week I have been really bugged by Windows 10 asking, whenever I tried to close a page, if I wanted to close all tabs or cancel.  There was no option such as 'close current page' or anything else helpful  -  and mostly the back button was inactive.

Yesterday I got tired of the default colour for everything being green (not my colour) so I changed it to a watermelon pink and suddenly my back arrow works and I have found tabs which I can close without going right back to desktop and having to start all over again.

Furthermore I have finally discovered how to work Favourites.  To put something in is simple and straightforward and like the old operating systems but I have been unable to find out how to access them again.  I eventually looked it up in the book  -  the last option in most cases - and found that one has to click on the 'hub' which is a set of little lines to the right of the Favourites star, after which a tab will drop down with another Favourites star and if you click on that you will find the lost favoured sites. 

I have never used Favourites very much before because I could set a shortcut onto my desktop but that, so far, is not an option.  I still have the shortcuts from the Windows 7 version on this computer but some no longer work and I am going to have to go through them and delete the dead ones ... but not yet; things keep on changing here and I can only assume that those of us who chose to download Windows 10 at the beginning are being used as guinea pigs and that we are using a Beta version.  At the moment I never know what I am going to wake up to but some changes could be on account of my fiddling and tweaking.  The latest to come down the wire is that Control Panel is to be phased out and the Settings will be taking its place.

I have been asked to possibly give a workshop on computers for the Retired Physiotherapists Group and so far haven't worked out how I could manage it with no internet connection. I had decided that if everyone who had a laptop or tablet  brought them to the workshop and was prepared to have those who had none looking over their shoulders I could go through Control Panel which would cover a lot of the skills and knowhow needed to use a computer but can only hope that it will still be there in mid-2016  or things are going to get difficult if some of my audience still has Windows 7 and some have Windows 8.1 or 10.

Getting back to normal?

I have reached a stage with my computer where I can use it fairly normally.  Certainly there are things which I still need to work out and things which I still have to search out  -  so I have finally found a use for OneNote although I am still using the blank parts at the beginning of my Windows 10 'how to' book to jot down helpful notes to myself.

So my life is getting back on stream as far as it can with Christmas in two weeks.  This morning I girded up my loins and clipped the cats' claws which were sorely in need of attention.  Parsifal is easy; he knows that he will get some special treats afterwards but Poppy is a different matter.  She hates having what would be her right-handed ring finger clipped and squeals and bites when I try to clip it.  It is, of course, the claw which grows the fastest and sharpest and it was starting to catch in fabric which probably increases the discomfort.  She has to be muzzled to prevent her from bitting me, poor baby,  so I did both back and front claws  -  all four paws  -  so that I could delay having to muzzle her again quite so soon.  I have left a request with the Vet to examine that claw in depth next time she needs her teeth cleaned and she is anaesthetised.

The COTA Christmas get together was held two days ago  -  a buffet held at the Visability headquarters.  It is the only time when we all get together so I took the opportunity to tell the Tuesday receptionist who does the computer class bookings that I was getting familiar with Win 8.1 and Win 10.  Then Himself drove me back to Chez Self where I collected three rooted aspidistra leaves and three Rosemary cuttings.  Parsifal is especially interested in the largest of the aspidistra plants because it waves around in the wind but so far he hasn't attempted to eat anything.  The aspidistras, if they take root, will do well on the balcony since is gets very little sun.  Hopefully it will grow and flourish. 

Disasters and Resurrections.

I am still spending an inordinate amount of time trying to work out the ins and outs of windows10.  My little Surface Pro 3 tablet seems to be much simpler but that it probably because there is not a lot in it.  That was the reason I used it for my first successful stab at downloading Windows 10.

Anyway, a couple of days ago I decided to put my snail  Villanelle onto my website.  I think that there is still a spare page where I took something off but left the page so that the links would still work, with the intention of putting another poem there at some stage when I actually got around to writing something.  So I searched for the poem where it should have been amongst the poems which I email to my daughters to let them know that I am OK.  D2 had asked for snail poems but they are in short supply on the internet and, since I wanted to write a villanelle I wrote one about snails.  And it was not there  -  anywhere.  I looked through my other four computers in case the poem had synced but no luck on that one. 

And then, yesterday morning there is was  -  exactly where it should have been in the folder I had put it in.  This has been happening with Windows 10  -  it suddenly found Family Tree Maker that way  -  a whole day after I had downloaded the FTM program onto this computer it suddenly synced and not only is my Family Tree there but all my other trees including one I did for Himself showing the family connections of Francesco Laparelli (look him up on google, Bing or whatever).

Having found the snail villanelle I rolled up my sleeves to work out, once again, how to upload to my web page, only to find that my 'hub' had disappeared.  It should have come through with My Documents which is where it was on my last computer but it was nowhere to be found.  Once again I looked in my other computers and then started to go through my flash drives  -  and there is was.

Techie has said that he can talk me through reconnecting the old computer with the new and I really thought that I was going to have to resort to that but so far, so good.

I am sort of sorted out on my new computer.

I spent today re-compiling a spreadsheet for my dividends.  I was a bit dismayed that I had lost it but then remembered that it was out of date with many alterations as I traded and then I remembered that I had totally messed it up and had intended to re-do it anyway.  So I felt better about it and I have entered the dividends from the last six months and it all seems to be working.  It was, in fact, good because I haven't done a spreadsheet from scratch for ages and it is something which a lot of the COTA clients want to learn.

Luckily I had already printed off last financial year's data so I organised and sent off all my tax stuff to my accountant .

Then I contacted Avanquest Software, gave them the details of my recent download of Family Tree Maker 14 and they immediately sent me a link to download it again  -  so I did that.  Then I did a search for the FTM data download which Techie put onto a flash drive yesterday but couldn't find it and so I went to Ancestry.com to see if they would sync my tree.  They refused on the grounds that they didn't recognise the computer despite the fact that I was logged in.  So I started putting in my family back to my great-grandparents and suddenly it synced itself so that is up and working.  I started doing that on the grounds that if Ancestry.com synced from my tree I should be able to sync back to my computer and that is what happened.

And I managed to do an hour's spinning  -  but it was a fast day so I didn't have to stop to eat  -  just coffee on the run.

Finally ...

I have a new computer, new keyboard, new mouse and windows 10.

They all arrived today and most of what was on my old damaged computer has been transferred across.  The only thing which I couldn't find was My Documents but most of them had synced to one of my other computers so I copied them onto a pen drive and loaded them.  Missing is my spreadsheet with my financial stuff but since I keep everything for the seven years demanded by the Tax Department, the current ones will be easily replaced and it will probably be good practise to re-do the formulae.

It is not as easy or as clear-cut as my little Surface Pro tablet but I now know how to get around most of the difficulties and being forced to use Windows 10 without the touch screen will (probably) be good for me.

Himself came over yesterday and we had lunch and went shopping for Secret Santa presents (unisex and costing no more than $10).  There is no doubt that men do not like to shop; he grabbed at the first thing which I suggested instead of inspecting and comparing prices as a woman would have done.  But it was a nice day and I enjoyed it. 

I can't really say the same for today  -  never sure what I was doing and still believing that once again the computer would reject the download without even Windows 7 to fall back on, although the old and new computers were  working in tandem to install most of the information from the old one to the new.  But it seems to be working and I have created a recovery drive in case it all goes belly-up again.

Out of the Bight and into the Sunshine

 Today is the first day of summer and I was out on the balcony getting my daily dose of Vitamin D and freezing in the almost gale force sea breeze which was already making its presence felt at 6.30am.

Yesterday Techie came by and collected my main computer since I have been unable to download Windows 10 and this morning he phoned to tell me that the reason I have been unable to download Windows 10 was a faulty hard drive so I am getting a new computer loaded with the latest non-subscription version of MS Word and it should be ready the day after tomorrow.

This is a nice little machine and is a good teaching tool.  I have been fiddling around with it on and off for the last couple of days but the more I use it the more I realise just how different it is to Windows 7 and the more hidden traps there are for the unwary; and most things are well hidden.  I have spent a lot of time searching through the various dots, bars and arrows for things which I know are there somewhere.

I have skeined off the first of the Rincewind/Melange yarn and it is ... um... interesting.  However, it is exactly the sort of yarn for a pattern which I want to knit when I have worked through all the other projects which I have lined up.  It might jump the queue, though, because it is a very fashionable colour for this season and which will hopefully carry over into next winter.

I opened my blog in Chrome yesterday and found that this blog has a 'G' rating so Google has been reading it and has deemed it safe for the babes and sucklings of this world.  Nice to know .

EDITED to say that I suspect that the 'G' might stand for Google as I was using Chrome when I wrote this entry.

I Have Given up in Despair ...

Yesterday I made two more attempts to download Windows 10, eventually sitting with pencil and paper and noting the progress of the download.  It works its way through Copying Files and Installing Features and Drivers but doesn't re-start itself to Configure Settings.

I am going to have to ask Techie to take her away and have his wicked way with her and if I lose Family Tree Maker I am just going to have to wear the loss.

Himself came around yesterday evening and took me out to dinner and I have suggested that he comes here on Thursday since we, at this stage at least, have no COTA clients, have lunch and search out a Secret Santa gift valued at under $10 for him to take to the COTA Christmas Party the week afterwards.  He always takes the easy way and donates a bottle of wine but it is hard to find a decent wine for that price so I consider it to be cheating and a day exploring JB-HiFi and newsagents will be an experience for him.

I have finished spinning the fibre for my first skein of Rincewind/Melange and tomorrow, when it has settled into its twist, I will ply it and see how it looks.

Today I have put aside my desktop computer and am using my Windows 10 tablet, Aminata, in an effort to explore as many of its features as I can before lessons start again next year.  Hopefully by then Hex, the big one, will be up and running with Win 10 because I am finding this keyboard too small.  Although I suppose I will get used to it eventually; I keep hitting the Caps Lock when I type the letter 'a'.  Fortunately I have set the computer up to beep at me whenever this happens.

I will get there eventually ...

Still in the bight

Today Techie came to help me with my problems with upgrading to Windows 10 and my desire for a dongle.  I had already gathered that dongles are very last century and the latest thing is mobile hotspots so we went to the Telstra Shop down below and purchased one on a 365 day plan which, since I should only be using it for a maximum of two hours per week should only need an annual top up the way my mobile phone does.


Techie told me that there was a big upgrade for the Windows 10 on my Surface Pro 3 so that was set in train and then he started the upgrade for my desktop computer.  The message was that after the initial backup and set up the computer would turn itself on and off several times and that, as before, I should sit back and relax.  Eventually I realised that it had a blank screen and wasn't turning on again so after waiting for about 30 minutes I turned off at the switch.  The screen showed that the download had progressed to 85% but then it froze again so, once again I turned it off for 30 seconds after which It told me that it was reverting to the previous settings which it tried to do but then said that it would have to activate the 'start repair program'.  This proved successful and so I am, once again back with Windows 7.  this is the fourth try I have made to upgrade and I am not sure where to go from here.  Try again and maybe it will reach 90% next time?

By Jove, She did it !

After two evenings sweating over adding "9 oz bread flour" to a recipe on my web page (which an observant reader noticed and pointed out to me that I had missed in my recipe for pizza) I have finally remembered how to edit my web pages and managed to insert the missing ingredient.  It is at least five years since I made any additions or alterations to the web page and it was an interesting re-learning process.  Now I need to gather strength to edit the 'most visited web pages' links on my home page to include (shudder) facebook and (smile) ravelry and remove some which I never visit any more.

I only had one client at COTA today  -  a special request from a client I had seen before because he thought that I might be able to help him with some rather basic but different aspects of Windows 8.1, such as resizing and moving tiles and how to search out and download apps from the Store and how to pin apps to the start menu and remove them again.  I also introduced him to restore points  -  something I have needed to use myself after Visability's guest internet connection prevented me from connecting my Pro 3 to my own home connection.  And, of course, 'find' and the use of the Microsoft key on the keyboard.  All really basic stuff but different to Windows 7 and earlier.  Anyway, we both enjoyed ourselves enormously and I was rewarded with a hug afterwards so he obviously felt happy about what we had achieved.

That was our last lesson for this year.  Next Thursday we have a break and the Thursday after is the COTA Christmas party which is the only time I get to see the volunteers who work the other days of the week and which is usually great fun.

I have spun my first bobbin of the Rincewind colorway and am halfway through the first bobbin of Melange which is a sort of burnt orange. I notice, from all the dress shops down below my apartment, that orange is the new black this season so I need to spin and knit rapidly to stay with the fashion for the summer.  Sadly orange is definitely NOT my colour  but nevertheless I bought the fibre so I will probably wear it.

Why do I love computers so much?

They are giving me nothing but grief at the moment.  I have now had three tries at upgrading to Windows 10 to my desktop computer with no success and I even bought an external drive to preserve its integrity in case things go wrong;  but I noticed today that Microsoft now very visibly sets a restore point at the beginning of the download.  But Techie is going to come and sort things out for me soon and then I can get on with other things.

Some of the problems may lie with my Internet Provider.  A couple of weeks ago it was bouncing back any emails which I sent to Hotmail and since I was given a recorded message when I phoned them I assume that it was happening to more than just me. 

And now I am trying to edit something on my web page.  It may be simply that it is so long since I edited anything that I have forgotten how but when I first tried to get to my FTP page I was told that it wasn't available.  I can now get into it and I can edit the page but it will not save so I will probably have to phone up and ask for help.  My internet provider has recently been bought out by one of its rivals (I can't complain about that because I made a killing on the stock market with the takeover) but there have been glitches since then and I am wondering if there are problems with integrating the two companies.

Summer has sort of arrived and we have had a couple of hot days but we are back to cold again with a howling sea breeze which is whistling through the air conditioning towers and is very noisy.  Never buy a top floor apartment if you want to lead a quiet life.

Parsifal has been indulging in quite a lot of attention seeking behaviour which was really getting my attention so I have started to ignore him when he jumps onto my bedroom table and rattles my jewelry and after a couple of tries  with "look what I am doing now" noises he has stopped doing it and become a very cuddly lap-cat which is a win/win situation for both of us.  I wish that he could go hunting and catch me some rats but that is out of the question.  I think that he is bored ...

Season of fur and mellow furfulness

The molting season is almost over and although the cats are regularly brushed morning and night the apartment has been awash with black fur which drifts into the corners and onto the skirting boards.


A man was sent around to all the apartments this week to clean the air-conditioning filters which are up in the roof space and need a 10 foot ladder to reach.  I have been living here in this apartment for over four years and this is the first time that the filters have been cleaned.  We were all given a time when we had to be home or dire penalties would be levied.  I had to email the owner of Apartment 702 because he lives in Switzerland and only comes back to Australia for a couple of weeks per year.  He has given me the contact details of the only person with a key so I organised for him to be here but a couple of people were not at home so my filters were cleaned the day before the due date as I happened to be home.


He showed me the filter to the main room.  It had grown about 2 cm of black fluff.  Maybe I should dress the cats in body suits; I am sure that Zoo, the petshop without pets, would be able to find something suitable in lycra  -  they stock doggy garments after all.


The warm weather has finally started to arrive and today I have all the doors open but since my apartment faces south I catch the sea breeze which can be unpleasantly cold and strong and I only get the sun in the early morning in summer.  I have been researching shade-loving plants which are not poisonous to cats since Parsifal is partial to the odd snack and gets bored with catgrass and catmint.  I have narrowed it down to three  -  aspidistra, spider plant and ponytail palm so am about to go shopping although Himself says that he has aspidistras from my garden in Cottesloe and also has spider plants so at this stage I will be looking for a ponytail palm.


We only have a couple more weeks of COTA for this year and if I continue next year I am going to have to get a dongle.  The COTA computers have XP, Windows 7, Windows 8.  Since most of our clients have either 8.1 or 10 this gets difficult.  I have been taking my own 8.1 and 10 tablets there but I have to connect them to a 'guest' connection with a new username and password every day.  that would be fine if they actually worked but so far I have not been able to connect using Visability's codes and this week it really stuffed up my Windows 10 tablet  -  so much so that I had to, after following many help links which didn't help at all, resort to using 'System Restore' to get a connection here at home as it only gave me a very weak connection which was no use at all.


I emailed Techie a week or so ago with a cry for help but so far I have not heard from him so he is probably away.  I'll try again after the New Year if I haven't heard from him before that time.  I need him to download Windows 10 to my main desktop computer because the second time I tried I was informed that there were still incompatible programs and I think that the problem may be Family Tree Maker which I do not want to lose even though Ancestry.com has a new format and seems to do all that FTM does  -  at a cost (of course).  Genealogy is big business these days and Ancestry.com has taken over all the good programs and seems to be the only player left.   So sad ...

Long Lost Rellies

Yesterday I was contacted by a distant cousin who had, some time ago, found me on my family tree most of which is online  -  but that is another story.


My cousin and I share a common great-great grandfather but we are descended from different wives and interestingly we are both descended through the male lines and both retained the common surname.  She is a half third cousin.


Anyway, she lives quite close and she and her husband were in the shopping centre to buy something from Zoo  (the ultimate petless pet shop) so she phoned me and we met there  -  more sensible than trying to recognise strangers in the main shopping arcade.  Like me she is interested in craftwork and  we have both worked at the same hospital. 


She is also interested in genealogy and I was able to furnish her with the descendant line from 1608 which encompasses both our families but my tree mostly has information from a different branch of her line.  Women commonly died during childbirth so many families had a common father but two or more mothers/stepmothers.  Because I had a contact from a descendant of her great grandfather's first wife and she is descended from the second I had less knowledge of her line.  Hopefully that can now be rectified because I don't have the BMD records from any state but South Australia and her family are here in Western Australia.


And here is where I do a grizzle about Family Tree Maker.  I have version 2014 on this computer and it refuses to sync with Ancestry.com.  Searching my CDs I find that I have the CD for FTM 2016 but that flatly refuses to load itself, citing 'errors'.  Looking online for some assistance I have found that this seems to be a common problem and I suspect that it is the reason I am unable to download Windows 10 since its excuse is incompatible programs installed on this computer.  I'll have one more try at downloading it now that I have backed everything up and if that fails I will contact Techie.  I want to be able to preserve FTM, the hard copy of my web page (which I can save to a flash drive) and my family history file which I have already saved to a flash drive.  The rest I can rebuild if necessary and maybe a cleanout will be a good thing.

Bighting the Bullet (look it up in the dictionary)

I have finally decided that I need to upgrade my main computer to Windows 10 as this little tablet, although a lot of fun to use, is not the computer which I turn on first thing in the morning when my coffee is brewing.

In view of the disaster when I last tried to upgrade I thought that it would be wise to do a backup onto an external drive so off I went to JB-HiFi and bought a one-TB drive which, hopefully, has now stored all my vital information in case I lose it and want it back again.  If my computer crashes the way that it did last time I attempted to upgrade I will contact Techie and ask him to fix the problem which might mean a new computer.  If that is the case then so be it  -  I have been down that road before and my recent experience at COTA has made me realise that I need to become familiar with Windows 10 ASAP.

Because Himself was still not available I had to do another triple session today except that my 12.00 o'clock client once again did not turn up. -  I think that he has missed the last three classes now.  One of my clients is now feeling brave enough to give in to her family's urgings and tackle Facebook so she has booked an extra class in a couple of weeks and hopefully I can get her up and running.  The problem with Facebook is that one only ever needs to do it once so I do not have a lot of experience but I am sure that, between the two of us, we will work it out and set it up with high security but probably no pictures until she decides how she wants to decorate it.

I have started knitting another vest, having decided that they are more useful than sweaters, but I am making this one a bit longer than the last one.  I am using my Ankh-Morpork/Cardamom yarn and it is knitting up very prettily.  Meanwhile I am on the last stretch of spinning the Noble Dragon colorway and plying it with one called Night Sky which picks up the colours very nicely.

My next spinning project will be the Rincewind colorway which I will be plying with a semi-solid called Melange, a sort of burnt orange. -  and I will be putting some glitter into it to keep with the Rincewind spirit of garish and unnecessary bling.  I should be well set up by next winter.  I already have a few too many scarves although I knitted one for my niece in America so that one doesn't count.  I will be posting it off to her in the nearer future so that it will arrive before Christmas ... or her birthday which actually comes first.

Moving on.

Herself's funeral was this morning with a huge congregation which indicates the influence which she had on many people's lives.  It was a beautiful and very moving service and all Himself's family was there to support him. 


I felt totally drained when I reached home again, both emotionally and physically (Most of the food didn't get further than the door of the room at the Sail and Anchor hotel where we congregated afterwards).  Coffee didn't revive me so I went downstairs and loaded up with a couple of blocks of Chilli Chocolate  -  and ate both of them. So much for my trying to lose that last couple of centimetres around my waist.  :(


My new e-Reader has arrived and I can now buy and load books without resorting to working through my computer but it has a very sensitive touch screen and I am constantly finding that I have turned more than one page which is very irritating as I then have to work back to the last page I read and progress from there.  But I must say that it is better than the old one  -  I especially like the sleep cover which opens up to the page I was last reading as soon as I open it  -  and, as I have mentioned earlier  -  I can drop it in the bath as long a I close the sleep cover first.


I am abut halfway through knitting a Gansay hood which is a lot of fun and I feel that I should knit more fancy stitchwork although this will really mean that I will need to concentrate on buying solid fibre colourways.  Not really a problem as I have found a supplier who has many solid colours.  But I have a great deal of fibre to  process first before I even think of buying more  -  blame the MEGASAL for that; we all overbought in case we missed out on the fun.  I have almost worked my way through my lot  -  only Rincewind left to do and finish off a couple of others but more keeps on arriving, as do the most beautiful limited edition spindles which I still haven't learnt how to use. (sigh)

No More Straw to Gold

My friend, Herself, who organised for me to join her as the practical half of the duo which demonstrated spinning wheel spinning for Grade I pupils at her local primary school died late this afternoon.  She had a stroke about four months ago and, although severely handicapped, was due to leave hospital and return home in about a week after modifications had been made to the house and a care package was in the process of being being negotiated to supplement Herself's care..


Today, for the first time since her stroke, she went home for lunch as a trial run.  Himself and their daughter and son-in-law were there to ensure that things went well. She had lunch, a rest on the bed and tested out the new bathroom arrangements and everything was great.  Then, just before she was due to return to the hospital for the evening meal she collapsed with what sounds like a pulmonary embolus . . . and died.  Despite the shock to her family she probably could not have chosen a better time  -  home with the family and their beloved dog and at the end of a lovely day.  Sudden death is always a shock for those let behind but that is what I would like for myself and I suspect that most people would agree that it is the ideal way to go.


She will be greatly missed by her family and friends but despite Himself's efforts to give her as normal a life as possible there is no getting away from the facts that her life has been severely restricted by her handicaps since her stroke and she must have felt helpless and angry at her restricted life.


I can't praise Himself enough for his efforts to get her home to enable her to live as normal a life as possible , spent a great deal of time at the hospital with her and hired a maxi-taxi to take her out to concerts and events which he knew that she would enjoy.


I feel the loss deeply for myself and I can only imagine what her family must be feeling. Conventional condolences do not seem enough but I will be ready to give comfort and assistance if needed.

The Thursday Night Mystery Solved at Last

I live in an apartment built over a large shopping complex which contains many restaurants and a nightclub and I have often marveled that, every week after Thursday's late night shopping, the very noisy partying carries on into the early hours of the morning (2.00am to 2.30ish) when it is a work day to follow.

Enlightenment has dawned due to a book which I am currently reading, written by a woman who is a lawyer and a restaurant critic but who worked her way through university as a waitress;  she describes herself as the waitress from Hell or words to that effect.  She is an Australian, albeit from the other side of the continent, so her information is local to my country.  Thursday night is drug distribution night!  That, in a nutshell, is why Thursday nights are so much noisier than any other night of the week or the weekend.  Problem solved. QED.

My E-Reader has almost worn out  -  it sometimes takes a couple of tries before the page turns  -  so I have ordered myself a new one which hasn't arrived yet.  This is not a problem since my original one still works and anyway, I am currently reading the waitress one in paperback.  I looked for Kobo Readers in my local electronics shop but they didn't have the one I wanted in stock so I have gone online for it  -  same price and free postage so no great hassle.  The new one has a touch screen, many fonts and font sizes and has wi-fi.  It is also sort of waterproof as long as I remember to close the cover before I drop it in the bath.  Also, if I happen to be in sub-Saharan Africa in a dust storm, as long as I close the cover it is dust and sand proof.

The cats had a birthday yesterday and are now four years old and far too old to wear a harness and walk in the passage, or so they are telling me but their harnesses are now very familiar so there is no hassle if I need to put them on.  I am posting a photo of them taken a couple of days ago and which I have willfully refused to edit or brighten.  Click on  the picture to enlarge it.

Biting the Bullet

For over a year I have been putting up with quite severe pain when I bite on the right side of my mouth.  I have spoken to my dentist about it but he was unable to find the source of the pain although he suspected my right upper wisdom tooth which, since it is just about the only tooth which is unfilled, he refused to remove.


A couple of days ago I was unable to stand the pain any longer; it was radiating over the whole of the right side of my face so I called and made an appointment to try to get to the bottom of the problem.  The dentist was still unable to find the source of the pain, took another X-Ray (which showed nothing) and then systematically worked through and did the 'bite' test on each tooth, finally isolating the molar which I had suspected all along was the painful tooth.  He made an appointment for me to see an endodontist (for that read Root Canal Work) next week but was not very happy as it was very close to some bridge and crown work so it would have been rather major.


Getting me to bite and grind on the carbon paper which dentists use he isolated the contact pressure point and drilled it down a bit to relieve the pressure.  Magic!!  By the time I reached home the pain had almost gone and now it feels as though that tooth has been anaesthetised  -  no pain but I am still treating it gingerly just in case.


The weather has turned warm and I have done my equivalent of spring cleaning; I have hung the bead curtains across the double sliding doors from the main room to the balcony to stop the flies.  The State Government says that it has re-funded the dung beetle programme but I am finding it hard to believe  -  the bush flies have been out in force for the last couple of days.


I have finished knitting the scarf which I made from the Meteor Shower colourway which I used for the 'spin-thickalon' and it has made a long scarf which can be wound round two or three times and is very pretty.  It will be going back to America where the fibre was sourced.  And I am about 75% through spinning the second skein of my Noble Dragon/Night Sky fibre from FatCatKnits.  What with dental appointments (2) and COTA I have not been able to get to it for a few days  -  but maybe this afternoon.


Herself has been moved to a respite bed in a nursing home while modifications are made to the Self's house in readiness for her homecoming.   I am not sure how that will work out as she has made very little gain except learning to work around her major disability but I really admire Himself's determination to take her home.  He has had the bathroom modified and there will be a government Care Package in place to assist with her activities of daily living.  fingers crossed that it all works out for them.


My little cats will be turning four years old on 12th October, bless their little black hearts.  At the moment they are curled up together on the pile of pillows on my bed. I cut their fingernails this morning.  Poppy has to be muzzled to enable me to do this, poor little girl, or she bites me.  Her right front paw has always given her grief and I have asked the Vet to check it out next time she needs to have her teeth scaled.

Windows 10 by Stealth

Kobo, where I buy my e-Books seems to be under new management and when I tried, at the beginning of the week, to buy a couple of new books I found that they arrived on my computer as .acsm files which refused to open.  I went online for help but all I could find was that my version of Adobe Digital Editions was out of date (so is my Kobo reader for that matter) so I downloaded the newest version, to no avail; the files still wouldn't open.  Deciding that was not the problem and not being all that sure about the new Digital Editions I did a system restore and got my old version back again.


I found a program on-line which guaranteed to fix the problem and open the files but I am very reluctant to download programs which promise the world although this particular one had five cows on the Tucow scale.  However, I downloaded it and it scanned my computer, found over 600 errors in my directory and it then suggested that I should download another program to fix my directory errors.  I have been there and done that and last time I went down that path  -  one program recommending another which then recommends a third until the computer is totally confused.  Last time that happened I had to call in Techie to sort it all out.  So I deleted the program and let the directory errors remain  -  they didn't seem to be doing anything malicious.


I realised that when I saved the two .acsm files in a folder they turned into .pdf files which also refused to open so I emailed them to myself on my I-Pad where I have a Kobo Reader app and  -  no problem  -  I was able to open them and read the books.  But my I-Pad is heavy and awkward to read on, especially with cats on my lap; turn it slightly and the text would flip around and I would have to persuade it back again.  Not ideal.


So I went back to my Windows 7 computer and did another 'help' search and ... it suggested installing the Kobo Reader App.  An app on Windows 7??  Hex and I have only dealt with programs; Windows 7 doesn't have apps  -  at least it didn't until now  -  apps are for I-Pad and Windows 8 and 10.  Nevertheless, I installed the Kobo Reader app and suddenly I was given a choice of which program I preferred to use to open the files and one of the options was Adobe Digital Editions.  Yeah!  Not only did it open the file but instead of me having to download the books to a folder on my computer, open digital Editions, drag the file to it and then drag it onto my Kobo which had to be plugged into the computer;  now they load directly into Digital Editions and it is a piece of cake to load it onto my Kobo Reader.


I can see that what is happening to us Luddites who are resisting doing the ultimate download is that Microsoft is converting our computers on the quiet with its never-ending new upgrades and before long, by default, we will find ourselves with a watered-down version of Windows 10 whether we want it or not.

The Naughty Corner

The cats were being particularly annoying yesterday evening.  Poppy was lying on the Big Persian (a rug, not a cat) angrily thumping her tail while Parsifal, as usual, was trying to swing the pictures, walking around and around the TV and yowling at the top of his voice.  I was trying to read.  Then Parsifal got annoyed with Poppy, responded to her invitation and pounced on her.  I gave them a burst of the water bottle which stopped things for a few minutes but soon they were at it again so I picked them both up and put them out on the balcony with both the doors shut.

I let them back after about ten minutes, fed them and then ignored them while I did my yoga.  There is nothing which cats hate more than being ignored and they have been both quiet and good ever since.  At the moment they are curled up together asleep with not a swung picture or a thumping tail in sight.

I have finally located the shelf where Coles keeps split peas (see "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud ..." ).  They are in a small section with the dried fruit and also have Moroccan and Mediterranean flavoured cous cous.  The proper cous cous is on the shelf with the pasta.  Don't ask ... their logic defeats me.  I have tried the Mediterranean flavour and don't like it all that much  -  I prefer the plain, wholemeal sort to be honest.

Being tired of buying and eating tough meat I took myself over to Lady Kitchener and bought their last meat tenderiser.  It is a most lethal implement, being metal spikes on one side and a flat wooden hammer on the other.  The only proper butcher around here is at The Boatshed in Cottesloe where they hang the meat for the requisite time and are willing to cut the skirt off a beef carcass for me.  But that involves a five-minute train ride and I am getting lazy with so many shops just down below.  Farmer Jack has better meat but, like almost everywhere nowadays, it all comes packaged, albeit vacuum sealed if it is in bulk.  Mostly I only go there to buy my coffee beans but should really explore the meat section more thoroughly one day.  They do have nice sausages, I know that and if the need arises that is where I buy them.

All about Windows 10

I have reached a stage with Windows 10 where I think that I can use it as my day-to-day computer if pressed.  I haven't even considered my genealogy research; that will have to wait until I have mastered all the basics.

I spent yesterday going into the ramifications of my Outlook email, especially in relation to folders, contacts and groups.  I had some problems with creating a Group as the instructions are far from clear but I made notes which I have saved on One Note.  Having actually created a new group for the email I send to the Ds every morning to let them know that I am still alive, well and living in Claremont I typed in the name of the group only to be told that I already had a group of that name - and sure enough this baby had synced itself with my main computer and there it was.  Not obvious because the contact list has hauled in my contacts from all my email addresses, lumped them all together and hidden them.  No doubt I will get used to that in time; Windows 10 is full of surprises ...

My main computer, Hex, which has been getting more and more desperate to download Windows 10 and which I have been determined to delay until the last possible minute to get it for free is now resorting to offering me an upgrade to Windows 10, leaving all my programs and settings in place.  This, to me, is a far better option and when I have embraced the difference I might go down that path. 

I should be at COTA today but my client - who has booked for a two-hour class - spat the dummy because he thinks that he should have been notified last month.  On one level I agree with him but the system is rather odd with the Tuesday volunteer receptionist in charge of the bookings and one of the admin staff notifying us if we have any clients or not and notifying the clients the day before their class.  Unfortunately she is on holidays at the moment so things have gone a bit confused.  Anyway, the Wednesday receptionist took it upon herself to notify the clients and received a blistering earful for something which was not her fault.  Himself has the wife for the same two hours so it will be interesting to see - if the turn up next week - if he is polite, masterful or just plain nasty.

Watch this space!

What to do when COTA sends me no clients

I am typing this post from Windows 10 on my Surface Pro 3 which has a smaller keyboard than I am used to so it is slow going as I tend to hit the wrong keys if I try to go fast.  I am slowly working my way through my 'to do' book for Win 10 but it is very much a case of trial and error because Aminata  doesn't always agree with the book.  One Note is a case in point; I have two versions - the App and the one which comes with my Office Suite.  To confuse things even further I have a different version again on my main desktop computer.  I am getting a little bit confused as to which one I am using but no doubt I will sort it all out in time and be ready for anything my clients throw at me.

While I am on the subject of Win 10 I have found that Microsoft Office is exactly the same as Microsoft Picture Manager for editing pictures so I am very happy about that and will not have to try to download Picture Manager from the internet as I did with my Laptop which has Classic Shell installed.

Anyway  -  to get back to my unexpectedly free morning, It was a lovely warm, sunny morning so I did what I had been putting off for a month - I loaded the cats into the Kitty Carriage and took them over to the Vet to have their teeth checked to see if they needed a general anaesthetic and a clean and scale.  Fortunately for all of us their teeth were in good condition but Poppy hissed and spat and generally made it clear that she disapproved of the whole procedure.

As a treat afterwards I walked them down to the park where they lazed in the Kitty Carriage in the sun.  Parsifal climbed out for a short while but a couple of dogs appeared and although they were very well behaved and were far more interested in the school kids having a sports lesson that the cats I thought it prudent to zip them in for safety.

I have also organised GB2'as pocket money for the next year as it is her 12th birthday today and wrapped her present.  One day in the distant future D3 and entourage will make their way over here and I can present the presents and D3 can sign the last of the 'end of life' documents.  It is not an important one but I would like to get the thing all finalised and forgotten until needed. 

Thumbs down to Windows 10

I was able to download Windows 10 onto my surface pro 3 and I have spent two days trying to come to terms with it.  I no longer have a desktop with pretty icons on it and it refuses to allow my internet provider's email.  It has allowed G-mail and Yahoo, neither of which I use all that much.  I tried going private/local instead of The Cloud but it wants all manner of details which I do not have so, at this stage, I will still use email in this computer and wait until I have a need to call in Techie to sort things out for me.


After two days of playing with it I am getting some idea of how it all works but there are new symbols which cover a multitude of options and I am still finding my way around them.  The only consolation, if I find myself having to teach it, is that I am probably marginally ahead of any terrified newby who fronts up for lessons.


So far I haven't come across anything which it does better than Classic Shell.  It doesn't seem to have the facility to create shortcuts but since there is no desktop as such I guess that figures.  From the book I gather that 'favourites' still works but I have never found that nearly as useful as shortcuts.  I suppose that I will have to get used to it; and I seriously doubt that it supports MS Picture Manager but I haven't even tried that yet.  I downloaded it onto one of my Windows 8.1 computers so maybe that will be possible when I am forced to use Win 10 but I intend to stick with Win 7 on my desktop computer if I can.  I actually haven't started looking at "Pictures" yet.  I can save documents into 'My Documents' so that is one thing sorted but I can't see myself loading photos onto a tablet when I have a wide screen on my main computer.


I suppose that we can get used to almost anything but the only good thing I can think of is that MS has promised to simply update rather than devise new versions  in the future.  But I am not holding my breath.


EDITED to say that MS has just done an upgrade and I now have a desktop with pretty icons, an MS button in the left-hand corner of the screen which WORKS and I have my iinet mail which I must admit took a while to connect itself but I think that I can now send emails from it  -  and it can certainly receive because I have just deleted mail going back to last May.


Much happier  :)

Where not to barf.

A couple of evenings ago Poppy ate her 'mush' which is an evening treat of something soft as the cats' diet is almost exclusively kibble, went to have a drink from their fountain and vomited up everything into the fountain.


I had to take the whole thing apart, clean the pump, replace the filter and wash the whole thing. Yuk!


After Himself and daughter expressing shock and horror at the thought of legally setting out my 'end of life' wishes, Herself has decided that she wants to have an Advanced Care Directive of her own  so I have given Himself a copy of my ACD and the paperwork explaining the options and the situations in which the options are to be enacted.  In her situation I would be wanting to do the same.


She is to be moved on to a half-way facility, Himself is going to visit the Independent Living Centre and an occupational therapist will be doing a home visit to assess what needs to be done to the Self's house if it is possible to have her at home; at this stage it is not an option but Himself says that she is still improving; she can now transfer from one chair to another with only one assistant.  Not good enough.  She has been having intensive physiotherapy for two months now and is still unable to support herself on her right leg which has me somewhat puzzled.  That is her good leg ...


I am in the process of trying to download Windows 10  onto my Surface Pro 3, the computer which has probably got less on it to damage, destroy or otherwise mess up.  I will leave this desktop computer for as long as I can and probably ask Techie to do the download for me as there is all manner of things which I would be upset to lose.  The Pro 3  is about 30% downloaded at the moment and I know of one person who successfully managed to complete the download so I am keeping my fingers crossed that I can get it onto Aminata so that I can become familiar with it as I am eventually going to have to teach it.


I must admit, though, that I am a bit fed up with COTA and all its works.  There are serious difficulties  with connecting clients' computers to the internet, the boss is leaving at the end of the year and the administrator is on holidays and we are not being notified when we have clients.  Shambles is the best way to describe it at the moment but maybe I have just switched off now that all the legal stuff I have been doing is almost finished.

But after all ...

I sent a copy of the Enduring Power of Attorney off to my stockbroker (the one I normally deal with has gone to play buses for two years  -  unfortunately) only to get a curt message on my answerphone to say that I had to send a Certified Copy and that an ordinary copy was not good enough.  Every Thursday evening my local library hosts a Justice of the Peace so I trotted over the road and had a new copy certified (I had to take the original out of its binding to copy it) but I can't see any reason, other than general interest, why they need a copy at this stage as I am not planning on fading out any time soon and when I do then D2 can show them the original.  So I am being anal about it and will keep the certified copy with the originals until my temper has settled down somewhat  -  which may not be any time soon.


The cats are no longer allowed to sleep in the dirty clothes basket because the day before yesterday I lost Parsifal.  Poppy was very agitated  -  she always tells me when Parsifal has got himself shut into a cupboard  -  but I couldn't find him anywhere until I heard a yowling from behind the washing machine.  The space was too narrow for him to jump up to the top and the gaps on either side were too narrow to squeeze through so I had to haul the washing machine out to rescue him.  It is very heavy so once is enough and I have reclaimed the wash basket and they are back in one of the many cat beds which are scattered around the apartment.


Himself cancelled his first computer lesson yesterday because he had to attend a family meeting to discuss Herself's progress.  The outcome is that she will be moved to a half-way house and the team think that it is very unlikely that she can ever go home again.  Poor Himself had to come to COTA and conduct a lesson after that news; goodness knows how he got through it.  His brother is over here from the Eastern States for a week so he has some support at home and his daughter is very involved but busy with her work.  The situation is tragic and he is not coping well.  Hopefully now that there is a definite plan, however unwelcome, he will be able to come to terms with the reality and start rebuilding his life.

Finally ... !

At last I am almost done with the legal stuff.  All but one of the documents has been signed.  One slipped through the net and D3 still has one to be signed and witnessed.  The documents for Landgate have gone back to the lawyer and my Advanced Care Plan has been copied to my general practitioner and MedicAlert.  I am getting a new MedicAlert bracelet and a black and silver dog tag to add to my bling; I wear a lot of black.  And a copy of the Enduring Power of Attorney has gone to my stockbroker/financial advisor who has promised to give D2 any help she needs whenever it is needed.


My general practitioner read through my Advanced Care Plan and said that it was what she wished for herself which is reassuring because Himself and his daughter are horrified that I would like to be allowed to die naturally rather than be kept alive just for the sake of some doctor not losing a patient.


Anyway, the document still to be signed by D3 is merely for Enduring Guardianship so unless I lose my mind between now and when I see her it won't matter and her two sisters can do the honours.


The cats have taken to sleeping in my dirty washing basket so most of my dirty clothes end up on the floor of the laundry because it is so peaceful when they are both asleep that I haven't the heart or the courage to turf them out.  I need to take them to the Vet to have their breath tested to see if they need to have their teeth scaled again but that can be done any time by a veterinary nurse.  Parsifal's breath is perfect but Poppy's teeth may need a bit of attention.  Her breath isn't rank but there is a slight tang of fish about it so next week, when I don't seem to have much on, we will go and pay a visit  -  weather permitting.


Himself came over yesterday, lured by the promise of me buying him lunch, to get some tips on Windows 8.  He is not coping very well with Herself in hospital but his brother flew in today and will be staying for a week which should cheer everybody up.  Herself thinks that she can move her left foot a bit but I am not holding my breath that it heralds any major improvement  -  yet.  However, she is now able to eat proper food and on Saturday evening  she got dressed up and she and Himself went to a concert, albeit in a maxi-taxi, and had a great time hearing the choir which she used to sing with.


GB2 and a friend took the puppy, Osku, for a walk in the park last weekend because he has now had all his immunisations and is allowed to meet and greet other dogs.  He was tugging hard on the lead so she removed it and it was only SIL's intervention which got him back safely.  She doesn't always think things through but she is not quite twelve yet so hopefully she will mature.

Oh, Frabjous Day ...

The Party Boys have moved out.  The 'incident' last Saturday night was their swan song/farewell party and as they probably knew that they had already forfeited their bond they went for broke.  The poor man across the corridor from them did a huge clean up in the passage and I understand from our wonderful cleaning person that the carpet in the corridor was sticky.  I was contacted for the Incident Number which I obtained from the police and there is to be an enquiry.


Anyway  -  they are gone and I understand that they are to be replaced by a mother and baby which will be a nice change even if the baby is teething and fractious.


Two days ago a friend and I went to visit Herself in hospital.  We got dreadfully lost trying to find the place; it is not well signposted and when we finally found the right road there was a fence across it so my poor friend had to go round and try to find another way in.  We got there eventually but it took 45 minutes.  D2 says that the hospital is marked for closure so probably no-one cares about being helpful with signage.


Herself is almost completely on the ball mentally although there were a few lapses, mainly I suspect due to helpful advice from Himself who is desperately trying to make her life as easy and comfortable as possible but perhaps not explaining things as clearly as she needs.  For example, she has hemianopia so she only sees half of the visual field.  Most people adapt by moving their head to a place where the other half of the visual field comes into focus but herself wants to be able to read and says that she has been told to read from right to left and not only is that going against a habit of a lifetime but what she is reading doesn't make sense.


Her left side has flaccid paralysis and sensory neglect but she is having fairly intense rehabilitation so maybe she will get some function back; I am not holding my breath though.  The plan is for her to be moved to a halfway house and to eventually go home but she is going to need a great deal of help if she is to be maintained there.


My Advanced Health Directory is now in place but I need to send a copy to Medic-Alert and give a copy to my general practitioner.  I also intend to get a Medic-Alert dog tag and probably replace my bracelet to have AHD engraved on it.  I will not go as far as some doctors have gone by having "Do Not Resuscitate" tattooed on my chest just where the paddles are placed.


The cats have to have their teeth scaled but it will have to wait a week or two; I seem to have suddenly got very busy which is good but my spinning output has dropped.  A good thing, perhaps; I have a lot of knitting to do to catch up.

Full of Sound and Fury

The Party Boys excelled themselves last night with a noise level which shook the double glazing. 

A couple of years ago, after a series of noisy parties, I had a word with the apartment's owner and said that, as I was not able to report the nuisance to the Corporate Body without first contacting the police that is what I would be forced to do in future.  Since then they have moved inside at about midnight and that has been fine since it is the partying on their patio which sends the sound straight up to my bedroom.  I told the owner that I would be forced to report the nuisance to the police before the Corporate Body would even listen to my pleas.

So last night I phoned the police to get an incident number so that I could report the noise (for the record  -  Incident number 477 469) and was told that if the noise had not abated in 30 minutes I was to phone again.  I went down and hammered on the door because they were not answering their doorbell and shouted into the ear of someone that I had contacted the police and was about to contact GP from the Management  who is there to field complaints.

I went down and told them this to give them a chance to quieten themselves down and when the door was opened there was loud pulsating music, strobe lights  -  the works.  Incredible  -  in an apartment building.

Thirty minutes later I phoned the police again only to be told that a car had already been sent and, barring MVAs or something else to delay them, they would be there at any time  -  which they were.

I received a phone call some time later to say that the Party Boys had been told to turn off the music and keep the noise level down, which they did  -  but the police hung around and as soon as the Party Boys thought that the coast was clear they turned the music on again so the police returned and everybody was sent home except for those deemed to need a taxi. I was asked to contact the police again if the music started up again and they would be around to confiscate the sound equipment.  The policewoman told me that when they opened the door their first impression was "So many people!".

GP phoned me this morning to say that enough was enough and he would be  reporting to the management this morning; it sounds as though there have been other complaints  -  not surprising.

Anyway, the police were incredibly nice and helpful and kept me in  the loop so that I knew what was going on and I was really impressed with them; they did a great job.

This morning I have a crashing headache and I hate to think how the party goers feel  -  and the mess down there is enough to send a person into a decline just to look at it  -  and I assume that the Management will be doing that.



Click on the picture to get a better view.  This is only a small part of the mess; I need a fisheye lens to get it all in.
 

Signng away my life

I spent most of yesterday morning signing documents to put in place Enduring Power of Attorney, Enduring Power of Guardianship, a Codicil to my Will and an Advanced Health Directory.  Now I have to get my daughters to sign various documents relating to their powers and it is a bit like herding cats; there is a list of people allowed to witness their signatures and there have to be two witnesses, both of whom have to sign and add printed name and profession along with the date which must, obviously be the same for all the signatories.  So, particularly for D2 is will take some time to get it all done


D1 lives in Sydney so all the documents will have to be couriered over to her, signed and then sent back after which some of them are to be returned to my lawyer.  Hopefully Australia Post will have got their act together and will safely deliver the documents over to Sydney and back to Perth without mislaying them or losing them altogether.


And I have a headache.  I was beginning to relate my headaches to chocolate consumption so last night I purposely ate some and  -  today I have a headache as expected.  I can cope with a small amount but no more binging; which is a good thing but a pity.


I had coffee with a friend yesterday who is also a friend of Herself and we are going to visit next week if we can arrange a suitable time.  It is good because I need someone to drive me and she needs a navigator  - and hospital visits are always easier with two people so that if Herself gets tired and drops out for a short while we can carry on a conversation while she gathers strength.  There is to be a family meeting tomorrow to decide on her care in the future so Himself will not be at COTA. 


We are having problems with internet connection at COTA and the Tuesday teacher has approached a higher authority about it.  It is sort of OK when we use the COTA computers (except that the one I use doesn't have any email facility on it) but people are, more and more, wanting to bring their own laptops in so that we can set things up the way they want them, as often their families do rather strange things.  I had one client whose son set up her computer with email and Skype BUT  NOTHING  ELSE.  Now that the banks are getting difficult about cheques it is going to be essential to teach people about internet banking and the safety rules which apply.


I only have one client tomorrow and he is bringing his own Windows 8 computer so hopefully we can connect it or he has a dongle and can do his own thing with it.