Oh, Such are the Dreams of the Everyday Housewife

The heading to this post is actually the title of a song from 'way back when' which has been running through my head for a couple of days as I cogitate on an episode of Star Trek which I watched  recently.


The  story line:-
The crew beamed down to a planet only to find that the whole population had been ensanguined and were dead.  They had all been killed by a cloud which engulfed them and removed the iron from their haemoglobin and of course the cloud managed to get on board the Enterprise where everyone was vulnerable except Spok who was a Vulcan and whose blood contains copper, not iron.


Spok’s skin colour should therefore have been greenish, just as we are pinkish but although he is interestingly pale he has pink lips.  The script writers would probably justify it because Spok’s mother was human.  Artistic license is alive and well.


I have been trying to de-clutter and am discovering all manner of interesting things.  I should explain that when I moved from my house to this apartment I employed packers to transfer everything and unpackers to put everything away.  It was all done with maximum efficiency and I have mostly left things where the unpackers put them but I really had no idea about what odds and sods sneaked over here; now I am starting to find out.  To quote Spok, “Fascinating”.

The Limerick:-

There was a young lady named Smith
Whose virtue was mostly a myth.
She said, "Try as I can
I cannot find a man
Who it's fun to be virtuous with."

American Teeth

American teeth is a phrase which I first heard on a British TV series called Shetland.  In it the female lead was wearing braces on her teeth and stated that she was wearing them because she wanted 'American teeth'.

Since spending a great deal of my time watching American politics I have been noticing teeth.  They go from beautiful (RR) to obviously false (RG) to advertisements on Facebook of whole sets of lower teeth suspended above bare gums and with hovering screws which is all a bit scary and one wonders if this also happens to the upper teeth.  People in the spotlight have, for eons, had their teeth capped and I wonder if this vision of floating lower teeth is simply an extension of capped teeth taken to the extreme of total extraction rather than crowns where is shows.

The thing which has brought this whole debate is my temporary addiction to watching Star Trek. As I am watching the series on my computer I can get up close and personal and what didn't show when I watched it in the 1960s on a small-screen TV is the state of Mr Spok's teeth.  He certainly had the appearance of "smokers' face" with the deep grooves down each side of his nose and mouth and which helped towards his rather strange Vulcan appearance but his bottom teeth are dreadful.  They are black at the edges and are seriously in need of a good scale and polish.  I suspect that Leonard Nimoy was a heavy smoker with an upper set of American Teeth.

Somebody over in 'A' block wants to use an apartment for Short Stay Tenancy and we are having a meeting to either ratify or vote down the idea.  One of my neighbours across the corridor told me that in his apartment (he actually is Italian and lives in Switzerland) there are two short-stay apartments each with sleeping for six.  Average turnover is four days and he said that there is no longer any security at all.  He is very much against the idea and so am I.  I have been sort of acting as an intermediary as his English is heavily accented so I have found out that we need a 'no' vote of over 25% to vote the measure down.  Hopefully that will not be too hard to achieve.  Fingers crossed but if it is allowed for the one apartment it may happen over in 'B' block as well.

The Limerick:-

There was an old maid of Pitlochry
Whose morals were truly a mockery
For under the bed
Was a lover instead
Of the usual porcelain crockery.

More Money - Less Service

My hospital benefits fund has decided, in its wisdom, to up its charges and we now have to claim our benefits by photographing our ancillary receipts, transferring them to computer, I-Pad or mobile phone, go to their on-line site and drag the photos onto their online claim form.  This is not a good idea for people not familiar with computers, digital cameras etc and I suspect that some people will simply not claim their benefits, thereby increasing the profits of the fund.

I could not sleep last night so I was up at 3.00am scanning five receipts and sending them off to the fund.  I hope that the powers that be can read them.  My scanner was playing up and I had to go into Control Panel and open up the printer from there and click on 'scan' to get it to work.  Alternatively I could have used my I-Pad or digital camera but it was dark, not optimum for photos of fine print.

I have reached the end of Season One of Star Trek so I am about one third of the way through my videos.  The plots are rather stretching credulity but it must be hard to think up over 90 different plots to keep the viewers happy.  Admittedly there was only one per week in the olden days and I am taking in one every evening.

And I am almost through my bucket list, finally.  I still have to have three of my LED lights replaced and have delayed doing so while waiting for the other shoe to drop as the light over my computer flickered a bit back a few months ago. It will, of course, die as soon as I get the rest replaced.  And speaking of electricity  -  I still seem to be getting mine for free although I daily expect a power bill as it has been a couple of months since my meter stopped registering.

And I need to get a picture hanger in to replace the fishing line holding up those of my pictures which have not yet fallen (only two so far) before Parsifal swings them into oblivion.  I have made sure that they are all out of his reach except the large portraits of my last two cats, oil paintings with no glass so not critical if they fall.  The picture hanger who advertises most on the internet calls himself The Hangman which is a bit off-putting.

And the Limerick:-

There once was a girl of Siam
Who said to her love, young Kiam,
"If you take me, of course,
You must do it by force,
But God knows you are stronger than I am."

Fire's Burning

I am doing a double post today because of an untoward happening last night.  At about 12.30 last night, just as I was turning out the light to settle down to sleep the fire alarm went off in the apartment.  When the alarms are tested, something which happens on a regular basis, the alarm runs for a short time and then stops but last night it just kept on keeping on, was very loud and was beamed into ever room so I figured that this was not a test.

That meant that I had to evacuate fast so I threw on a dressing gown and, hauling out the kitty carriage started to search for the cats as there is no way that I would leave them to their fate and getting a kitty carriage with big bicycle wheels means that I can take it down the fire escape stairs if needs be although I quail at the thought of having to do that.

Anyway, Parsifal came out as soon as he saw the kitty carriage and I found Poppy hiding under a table in my utilities room and dragged her out by the scruff.  I didn't bother to harness them but just tossed them both into their transport, grabbed my keys and handbag which I keep by the door, noticed that the fire doors were shut in the corridor and took a punt that it would be safe to use the lift although it is actually not allowed if there is a fire.

The thing which surprised me is that so few people were downstairs.  There are families with babies and small children and I know that it is difficult with small children and babies but rather stupid if there really was a fire.  It was a false alarm according to the fire brigade and we have no information as to what triggered the alarm but it got me thinking.

Mrs 705 never leaves her apartment although she is capable of doing so.  I have a key to her apartment but it is not readily accessible in an emergence and her apartment is through the fire doors.  I need to put it by my door so that I can grab it if I need to get into her place in an emergency and I need to keep the phone number of Senor 702 accessible to phone his Apartment caretaker as he has a key to Apt 702.  

On  lighter note, our owners' Committee representative remarked that we now know what we all wear to bed.

An extra limerick to go with the extra post:-

A lady removing her scanties
Heard them crackle electrical chanties;
Said her husband, "My dear,
I very much fear
You suffer from amps in your panties."

To Boldly Split Infinitives

Last night I felt that I was a bit overloaded with the doings of Captain Kirk and company and decided to have a break from Star Trek for one night at least.  However the series has made me cogitate on the legality of using split infinitives, once a total grammatical no-no.  There was quite a lively debate when Star Trek was firsts released because of the introduction to each episode:

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

Since no-one could do anything to alter that shocking use of that split infinitive the consensus was that it was perfectly acceptable in the circumstances as it gave emphasis; ‘to go boldly’ was all a bit ho-hum after all.  I don’t think that later generations even know what a split infinitive is and certainly they feel at liberty to boldly use them.

I pulled out my copy of ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves’ by Lynne Truss but like me she is a member of the comma police and doesn’t do grammar so I went to Google where I found this:-

Split infinitive. ... A well-known example occurs in the opening sequence of the Star Trek television series: "to boldly go where no man has gone before"; the adverb boldly is said to split the infinitive to go.

As I mentioned above, there was quite a controversy when Star Trek was first released and that phrase will be remembered by posterity.

The Limerick:-

A dentist named Archibald Moss

Fell in love with the dainty Miss Ross,

But he held in abhorrence

Her given name, Florence,

So he renamed her his Dental Floss.

The formatting has gone a bit awry due to the copy/paste and I can't fix it without typing in the whole thing again.  Sorry about that . . .

Star Trek 2

I have been immersing myself in Star Trek for the last few days having finally found a medium which works for me.  Firstly I tried running it through my TV but had problems hearing the dialogue with no subtitles to help so I switched to my computer using an app which MS10 thought that I should use; it wasn't very good.

So I enlisted the help of google, asking what was the best way of watching DVDs on MS10 and there was one program which appeared far and away the best so I downloaded it and Google was quite right, it works well.

I have discovered that there are four episodes per DVD and there are 21 discs so at the rate of one per day it will take me about three months to watch every episode  -  and then there are the films.  The whole crew has not yet assembled-  Dr McCoy has not yet appeared and Scotty has, so far, made only a brief appearance but there are 80 episodes yet to be watched so I am quite happy to wait.

I have finally got around to making an appointment to see a podiatrist because I need some new orthotics.  I have a referral dated 29-6-2015 from a surgical podiatrist who was no help to me at all but pinned to it is a radiologists report on my sore toe. I am not holding my breath that this one will be able to cure the toe  -  I suspect that it is going to take an orthopaedic surgeon to fix it.

D3 came over here this morning and we went out to lunch and then to the yoga shop for her to buy a couple of blocks.  I acquired a new mat since the one which I have been using for the last few years is starting to crack in places.  The new one is purple to co-ordinate with my bolster, blocks and strap.  D3 has had a seriously bad back for years and she is finding a careful yoga program is helping enormously.  The stretch which she showed me and which she called Downward Facing Dog is actually a sort of flattened forward Childs Pose and is the stretch which is being touted on Facebook under the heading "doctors are amazed . . ." and maybe they are since it obviously works.

The Limerick:-

Despite her impressive physique
Fatima was really quite meek;
If a mouse showed its head
She would jump into bed
With a terrible blood-curdling sheik.

Farewell Apollo

In the olden days when I cycled regularly I  owned two bicycles.  One was a hybrid mountain bike which I rode to work on and the other was an Apollo Randonneur which I used for social riding and that included two 14-day cycle tours with the Bicycle Touring Association.  This bike fitted me by every method and measurement devised to calculate bike to rider fitness, including the length of seat-post/head circumference of rider ratio.  This was the bike which I brought with me when I moved into my apartment but sadly I found that with my balance problems it was scary, if not downright dangerous, for me to ride a bicycle even on the bike path along the railway line.

I toyed with the idea of trading her in for a recumbent trike but the problem of wheel span on bike paths was a difficulty as, at the time, narrow wheel based trikes were not easy to come by.  And then I realised that with nine different bus routes and a train station all within a two-minute walk the idea of commuting by bike became less attractive and the only real need would have been to transport the cats to the Cottesloe Veterinary Hospital  -  so I changed to the Claremont Veterinary Clinic which is about five minutes walk away.

An emailed newsletter asking for old bikes to be refurbished and donated to people in need finally stirred me to pass my bike on to the Nedlands Lions Club and it was collected yesterday after sitting in my storeroom for over seven years. I was sad to see it go  -  I loved that bike  -  but at least it will be useful even if it is simply cannibalised for its gortex cables and gel seat.

Christmas is over for another year and even before Twelfth Night there were Hot Crossed Buns in Coles Supermarket.  It is a bit rude and pushy but it is the only time that I ever see fruit buns on the shelves (not that I have ever looked for them) so I will probably stock up on some anyway, even though they are somewhat out of season.  At least the Claremont Town decorations were removed in a timely manner.

Poppy is back on inti-inflammatory medication and is a happy little cat.  She is currently sleeping on a pile of pillows on my bed, something which she has not done for a while and it is lovely to see her pain-free and confident again.  She is no longer attacking Parsifal so we are all happier.  Long may it last.

The Limerick:-
Political correctness alarm.

A gay man who lived in Kartoum
Took a lesbian up to his room,
Where they argued a lot
About who would do what
And how and with which and to whom.