Category: miscellaneous

Frieda’s Wandering Thoughts

As with many humans, I’m a fan of the look back. That’s the manuever engaged as you walk away from a chair or table: you look back to ensure you haven’t forgotten or dropped something.

I watch people conduct their look back and happen to see three women leave their table without doing the look back. As I thought that through, I saw a purse hanging over the back of a chair. As I rose to cross to get it and chase them down, the woman hustled back in with an alarmed expression. Hope she’s learned and plans to look back in the future.

BTW, would the look back be a good dance move? I could see it. You might be doing it on the dance floor.

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Thursda’s Wandering Thoughts

It’s a potpourri of offerings and updates. Nothing important. Just sharing.

Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah), my black and white wonder floof, had some issues this morning. I heard him in the litter box at a quarter to daylight this morning. The familar tones of him puking followed. I rose to check it out and soon learned that he was constipated. After comforting him, I warmed water and gave him a few CCs of that via syringe. Next, warmed water and made a slurry out of his kibble, which he eagerly took in. Finally, warmed water, mixed it with a Churro bisque and fed him a few CCs of that. Meanwhile, in his wanderings, three small, hard stools were released. After these treatments, he retired to his litter box and had a large bowel movement. Then he acted normal. But this is a warning shot; I need to shift his diet and ensure he’s eating more wet food. I’d noticed that since his teeth have been removed, that’s been a problem for him. I’m also picking up some cat laxative to keep on hand, just in case.

My healing continues, and my edema issues are improving. I’ve been experiencing bi-lateral edema. Started a few years ago, in conjunction with an obstructed bladder caused by an enlarged prostat. Ankle surgery last fall made it worse on my right leg and foot. I focus on reducing the swelling by day’s end every day. Here in general is what I’ve done.

  1. Increased hydration. I’m drinking a ton of water a day. Peeing a lot, too.
  2. Reduced alcohol and coffee.
  3. Reduced my sodium intake. Banished any lunch meat from my lips. Bacon and sausage, which I never consumed much in the first place. Breads were cut back. Swore off most sauces and all salad dressings. Almost completely cut out butter. Eating more raw fruits and veggies. I consult labels for sodium content before buying or consuming.
  4. Massage a CBD lotion into my legs, ankles, and feet each morning and evening. I follow the contours of my muscles, ligaments, tendons, and bones. This seems to help my blood and lymph flow.
  5. Wear compression socks during the day. I typically have them on for about ten hours.
  6. Elevate my feet. Each night I lie on my back with my feet up on the wall for 30 to 40 minutes. I exercise my legs, feet, and toes during this time. I then also elevate my right ankle further during the night.
  7. Exercise several times a day to raise my heartbeat. Significant emphasis is given to moving my legs and feet. Besides brisk walking, I stretch and flex, plank for a minute, wallsit three times a day for a minute at a time, run in place, and do some light free weights.
  8. Bought and wear orthopedic footwear.

This all seems to be paying off. My left limb and foot doesn’t swell much during the day at all. The swelling on my right foot, ankle, and leg is completely gone by each morning. Although it slowly swells during the day, the swelling isn’t as heavy. My mobility, strength, and flexibility have all improved, IMO, based on the exercises and my observations. I commence my lymph-edema massage therapy next week.

My wife and I both like to do word games like Connections, Spelling Bee, Wordle, and Hurdle. Each day, we talk about how easy or hard the games were for us. We also laugh about how we sometimes screw up. For example, with Wordle and Hurdle, you’re guessing a five letter word. You have six guesses. Correct letters show up in green. Letters which are in the word but in the wrong location are in gold or yellow. It’s humorous but irritating to realize after making some guesses that we’ve overlooked or have forgotten to use a letter in yellow in our guesses. It’s like, “OMG, I had a N in yellow that I forgot! What is wrong with me?”

It’s all fun and games.

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WTF, America

It’s another WTF, America, January morning in 2025. Google brings us this one. Bending their knee to power, as greedy corporations do, they have decided to rename things in accordance with the wishes of the First Peckerhead. In case you’re unaware, I’m referring to the first felon elected as POTUS in the history of the United States, aka #47.

Tell you what. I’m not caterng to this damn whim. It’s still the Gulf of Mexica and Denali to me. I’m not going to help the right-wing machine rewrite history, culture, or facts.

End of.

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Munda’s Wandering Thoughts

It’s funny, sometimes.

My wife picked up a skillet the other day. Washed and dried, she was putting it away. When she turned, the skillet nailed her glass of water on the counter. Put the glass airborne and shattered it into sixteen zillion pieces of glass. Water, Everywhere.

We have hardwood floors in that part of the house — kitchen, foyer, dining room, halls. The glass was cleaned up as best as we could. But. It’s glass.

A few days after the incident, a piece of glass found my heel. Bleeding and pain followed. As the situation unfolded, after almost fifty years of marriage and three more years of being together, my wife asked me, “Why aren’t you wearing shoes?”

I replied, “I don’t wear shoes in the house.”

Yep, it’s funny, sometimes.

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Sunda’s Wandering Thoughts

My wife has a new laptop ‘puter. “How should I keep it clean?” she asked me. “What should I use? I want to keep it clean. I was terrible about that with my last one and I don’t want to be like that this time.”

“I don’t know how to keep it clean,” I replied, although I had some ideas like, don’t eat while you’re using it.

“But I thought you were a tech guy and knows all this stuff.”

“You’ve mistaken me for someone else. Why don’t you research how to keep it clean? You know, search the net.”

“I am researching. I’m asking you.”

I laughed. “Okay, I’ll do a quick search.”

“See?” my wife exclaimed with a grin. “It worked.”

We both laughed.

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More DIY Braggin’

Yes, I have two more DIY successes to brag about. Hope you’ll indulge me in this. I celebrate the little victories because there just ain’t that many big ones. Don’t wanna dwell any more on that.

First one was actually a DIY for friends. They have a Roku television. Bought it about eight years ago for their bedroom. Asked me to set it up for them. Which I did.

Said TV started malfunctioning a few weeks ago, showing them a ‘No Signal!’ error message on startup. Naturally, they called Spectrum because Spectrum is their Internet/Phone/Cable provider. Spectrum sent out a tech. That tech replaced all the Spectrum pieces. That didn’t resolve the issue.

Another Spectrum tech was sent in and basically did the same. Didn’t fix the problem.

Third Spectrum tech was deployed. This one told them it was their television. “You bought a cheap one,” he claimed. “And it’s failing.” He couldn’t fix the problem but suggested that they could hire him on the side and he could probably fix it then. He also complained that techs had to keep coming out to fix their television when they had other issues to address.

What wonderful customer service!

So, I received word through my wife, would I mind coming out and taking a look?

Well, I was dubious. If the pros couldn’t fix it, what could I do? But I went. I studied the cables. The Spectrum setup didn’t make sense to me. So, being me, I just changed them to what I thought would work.

And it did.

I suspect that Spectrum actually had a failing piece, which they replaced, but then screwed up the connections. That’s my theory and I’m stickin’ to it.

Second DIY success came yesterday. I’m a little embarassed about it even as I’m bragging. See, we didn’t have a blower in our gas fireplace. I’d looked at it before but…well, it was a different area for me. I didn’t have experience with gas fireplaces and blowers. I let myself be intimidated.

Beginning of January, I basically declared, screw this, I’m not acceptin’ that no more. I researched and studied and measured and ordered. The Infinity blower kit arrived yesterday. Including opening the box, reading the instructions, familiarizing myself with the pieces, and disassembling some of the Heatilator gas fireplace for access, the installation job to put in the blower and put the furnace back together took less than fifteen minutes. Full credit for that goes to the involved manufacturers. Everything was set up for a blower to be installed, and the blower manufacturer made it super easy as well, providing absolutely everything needed. So while I’m crowing about my victory, I’m eating crow that it took me so long to do such a simple thing.

Hopefully, my ‘tale of success’ will encourage others.

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Wezda’s Wandering Thoughts

My new shoes have steeply curved soles. They honestly remind me of a bentwood rocker’s curved bands. Grinning, I asked my wife, “Know what I call my new shoes?”

“Your rock ‘n rollers?”

“No, they’re just my rockers.”

She’s such a smart ass sometimes.

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The Factory Dream

I was a young man, possibly in my early twenties. Some other fellows were with me at a factory. I’m not sure how many were present. There were at least three, but maybe five, not including our overseer. I never took a head count.

We were in a factory doing a special job. No details of that job are available. It was cold but sunny weather. The factor was a plain, spare building with a whitewashed apparance that presented an air that it was on the verge of being abandoned or falling apart. Corrugated metal construction. Gaps in the walls. Bare, cracked cement floor. Signs that it’d be used for something else before and was now on a fifth or sixth life.

Under an uneven combination of weak overhead lights and sporadic, fading sunlight eking in through large, filthy windows, we worked around a long, dirty conveyor belt putting things together. As part of this, each of us were given some small black devices which seemed to be some sort of governor and also a CPU that told the system what to do. To install mine, I had to climb up a tall metal shaft and slip it into a slot just so. Some jiggling followd and then the conveyor belt sprang into noisy activity.

I don’t know what we were making but we shut everything back down and gathered again. The overseer, an oversized white guy in his mid-forties or early fifties, receding brown hairline and white short sleeve shirt with a tie, told us that we had one more run and then we could go home. But the other run was at another factory, about a mile away.

I had a car, a dark brown 1970s era Chevy Malibu. Sort of a ratty vehicle. I asked another for a ride to the other factory. Once we got there, I realized that I would need to return to the previous factory. We’d been sleeping in some little locker room there on cots. I’d left my clothes and gear there, not to mention my car, and would need a ride back.

This seemed to irritate the other guy, a big, good-looking guy with short, curly hair. He turned surly, and then shunned me during the rest of the session and wouldn’t speak to me. I was taken back by the change and wanted to talk to him about it.

The regular factory workers arrived. They all seemed to be foreigners to go by their dress, appearance, and language. They watched me as I climbed up to install my governor, laughing and joking about it. I gathered they had some other way of doing that and my method seemed strange to them. I tried explaining, “This is what I learned,” and asked for information about the other way. They wouldn’t address my questions.

That’s where the dream ended.

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Twosda’s Theme Music

Mood: coffeetoxicated

It’s raining abundant sunshine down on us on this, Twosda, January 21, 2022. Temperature is up to 30 F after landing at 26 F overnight. ‘They’ inform me that today’s high will exceed 50 F. It’s all possible, from the general appearance, and we did do it yesterday.

All this is better than my sister’s world back in Pennsylvania. She texted me that it was either snowing heavily or the wind was blowing the existing snow around. Either way, there was a lot of white stuff obscuring vision. She was at work on her midday when she reported this to me. She reported that the temperature was 5 degrees F. That’s barking cold, brothers and sisters.

Today’s music came from a mental exercise. I was on a news blackout yesterday. So I was unleashed in my net surfing. I soon hooked a clickline about the 50 greatest one-hit wonders. I decided to brainstorm and see how many I came up with. About half was the reckoning. Guess I needed more coffee. One song that I missed was “Criminal” by Fiona Apple. Weird thinking of her as a one-hit wonder, because I know a few other songs she released which were hits, but here we are. Naturally, after seeing it on the list, The Neurons carried it into the morning mental music stream, where they’ve released it on a loop. So I share with you to free myself.

Coffee has offered to pour into my mouth and invade my system and kick my energy into a higher gear. I gladly accepted. Here’s the music. Let’s light the fuse on the day. Cheers

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Loading Problem Fixed

So, some things were not loading in any browser (Edge, Chrome, Firefox). Not everything; it was an odd mix. Updates had been conducted, diagnosis run, etc. Wasn’t deeply affecting my ability to surf the net so I mostly just ignored it. I figured some update would be installed at some point which would fix it.

That didn’t happen.

Then it grew worse. Suddenly my ‘puter began telling me that I was in Airplane mode all the friggin’ time. Again, not a serious issue but annoying to me and also a concern that there may be deeper issues at work.

So, on a whim today, I ran updates on my drivers. Turned out my WiFi driver wouldn’t update. Ran some stuff to fix that, and all the network stuff just disappeared. Adapter wouldn’t turn on; didn’t even show up. Wireless switch didn’t work. For all intents and purposes (or intensive purposes…chuckle), my laptop’s wireless didn’t exist.

With a deep-throated GRRRRRRR building in my head, I pulled out an ethernet cable and went wired with my laptop to connect to the net. Next I did some brief searches about the problem. Really inane and simplistic solutions were offered. Like, “Check the wireless password and ensure that is right.” That was just red meat to the GRRRRRRR within me. But finally, with patience, I found a site that knew what was up. It directed me to my Services where it was revealed that Windows had turned off my WLAN AutoConfig. WTF, right? Right-clicked that puppy and joy was achieved. I was wireless again and everything loaded.

We have joy in mudville once again.

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