I don't care what about you

I was sent this today, I agree with her. It was written by a Canadian woman, but it also applies to the
U.S. , U.K. and Australia

THIS ONE PACKS A FIRM PUNCH

Here is a woman who should run for Prime Minister!

Written by a housewife in New Brunswick , to her local newspaper. This
is one ticked off lady.

'Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not
started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001
and have continually threatened to do so since?

Were people from all over the world, not brutally murdered that day,
in downtown Manhattan , across the Potomac from the nation's capitol and in
a field in Pennsylvania ?Did nearly three thousand men, women and  children die a horrible,
burning or crushing death that day,   or didn't they?

And I'm supposed to care that a few Taliban   were claiming to be
tortured by a justice system of the nation they come from and are fighting
against in a brutal insurgency.
I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents
for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11.
I'll care about the Koran when the fanatics in the Middle East start
caring about the Holy Bible, the mere belief of which is a crime punishable
by beheading in Afghanistan .
I'll care when these thugs tell the world they are sorry for hacking
off Nick Berg's head while Berg screamed through his gurgling slashed
throat.
I'll care when the cowardly so-called 'insurgents' in Afghanistan come
out and fight like men instead of disrespecting their own religion by
hiding in mosques.
I'll care when the mindless zealots who blows themselves up in search
of nirvana care about the innocent children within range of their suicide
bombs.
I'll care when the Canadian media stops pretending that their freedom
of speech on stories is more important than the lives of the soldiers on
the ground or their families waiting at home to hear about them when
something happens.
In the meantime, when I hear a story about a CANADIAN soldier roughing
up an Insurgent terrorist to obtain information, know this:
I don't care.
When I see a wounded terrorist get shot in the head when he is told not
to move because he might be booby-trapped, you can take it to the bank:
I don't care.
When I hear that a prisoner, who was issued a  Koran and a prayer mat,
and 'fed special' food that is paid for by my tax dollars, is complaining
that his holy book is being 'mishandled,' you can absolutely believe in
your heart of hearts:
I don't care.
And oh, by the way, I've noticed that sometimes it's spelled 'Koran'
and other times 'Quran.' Well, Jimmy Crack Corn you guessed it,
I don't care!!
If you agree with this viewpoint, pass this on to all your E-mail
friends  Sooner or later, it'll get to the people responsible for this
ridiculous behaviour!
If you don't agree, then by all means hit the delete button. Should
you choose the latter, then please don't complain when more atrocities
committed by radical Muslims happen here in our great Country!
And may I add:
'Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a
difference in the world. But, the Soldiers don't have that problem.'
I have another quote that I would like to add, AND.......I hope you
forward all this.
One last thought for the day:
Only five defining forces have ever offered to die for you:
1. Jesus Christ
2. The Canadian Soldier.
3. The British Soldier.
4. The US Soldier, and
5. The Australian Soldier
One died for your soul, the other 4 for your   freedom.
YOU MIGHT WANT TO PASS THIS ON, AS MANY SEEM TO FORGET ALL OF THEM.

So if this makes sense to you why not post it on your blog or cut and paste it as an email and send to people who would appreciate it.

Gone for a couple of days

We are leaving early tomorrow for Prince George because hubby has to have his hearing aids checked and I want to look for a couple of things for the grandsons for Christmas. I am looking for a Transformer for the eldest and bath toys for the youngest. I must admit I hate Christmas shopping as I never know what to buy. So I sent a plea for aid to my eldest son with request of exact orders of what to buy. He sent me pictures of the desired gifts so armed with a printed copy I will be checking out Zellers and Walmart and I dearly hope they will come through and I can find it easily.

I like to shop, don't get me wrong, but gift buying is not an enjoyable pass time for me I get so stressed about it. I would much rather give them a lump of money and let them get what they want or need. I don't quite know when I developed gift buying phobia but it is quite real to me.

We plan to stay overnight and eat out in a favourite restaurant called 'The Great Wall of China'. It has the biggest and best smorgasbord I have ever seen and not just Chinese food.

We will make our way home on Tuesday after stopping off at BCAA to check out getting proper insurance for going on our trip to Mexico. I don't expect to get back until late in the afternoon.

Of course now that hubby has been bitten by the computer bug I am taking the laptop with me so he can do his Bible study and play Spider Solotaire in the motel. He has been busy surfing this afternoon on fishing sites and what not. He is now referring to the laptop as his computer!

Yikes I have created a monster I can hardly get my hands on it now, luckily I have the desktop as well.

Pain in the neck

I have been teaching my husband how to use the computer and also a couple in the village who just hooked up to the internet. I have developed a crick in my neck from the angle I have been sitting while coaching them.

Also I have to admit I am not as long suffering as I used to be when I taught computers in a classroom. I know it is unfair of me but I have to explain myself over and over with simple things like signing in to Google. Maybe it really is harder for older folk to learn computers. I started on them in 1975 and have been using one just about every day since. Although I must admit I am rapidly falling behind in my knowledge as I have no one here that is particularly interested in them except to do the occasional search or email. It frustrates me when people can't appreciate what a fantastic tool a computer is.

I think my husband is catching on though and he has enjoyed Google Earth and is looking up all sorts of places in BC that we might consider moving to in the next couple of years since it looks even more certain now that the mine will be opening here by 2011, although I find it hard to believe with the economic downturn that they would push on with it at this time.

We have been using Google Chrome but it kept freezing up so I don't know if that is the browser or the laptop or Vista. So I moved him over to Firefox in the hopes it would improve. I started him off on Google Chrome because the interface is very minimalistic and I thought he would find it easier.

I have several browsers on my computer but I keep coming back to Firefox as my favorite but I find that on my desktop which has XP I do not get the new iGoogle page in Firefox 3 but I get it on IE7, Flock, and Opera . Doesn't make sense to me. On the laptop the new iGoogle page loads in Firefox but it has Vista but that should not make a difference. I have cleared my cache but still it is the older version of iGoogle. Not that I mind that much but I like to keep things the same if possible.

Anyway I seems to be doing more tutoring, fixing or getting people out of computer jams in the last few days than anything else, and I got another call this evening would I come down and help someone else in the village as their computer is saving things they don't want saved. How does that happen?

It is all a pain in the neck but I can't refuse people help there is no one else that I know of that can help them here. Oh well!

Meteor seen last night over Saskatchewan

A leading researcher says one of the largest meteors to streak over Canada in the last decade broke up into pieces that may have landed in central Saskatchewan.

Edmonton Sun Article - Pieces of large meteor may have landed in central Saskatchewan

I remember seeing a meteor shower in 1995 over Vancouver Island and that was quite a show. Bits must have broken off and there was a light show for quite a long time as the pieces came into the atmosphere. Apparently the pieces can be quite tiny but they radiate so much heat that they can be seen from earth.

When meteoroids strike the Earth's atmosphere at high relative speeds they leave visible trails created when the intense heat caused by friction vaporizes them. These are called meteors ("shooting stars").

Somehow those old songs about shooting stars would lose something if we took those words out and put meteor in their place wouldn't they? Mind you I don't think I realized when I listened to these songs that they were really about drugs. Did you?

The Mamas and the Papas - Shooting Star
You were a shooting star, weren’t you,
moon dust came along and burned you?
You ought to do what you do, you ought to do.
You ought to do what you do, you ought to do.
Across the milky way, waving---
You know your heart is worth saving.
You ought to do what you do, you ought to do.
You ought to do what you do, you ought to do.
Your name in northern lights, glowing;
You know your mind is worth blowing.
You ought to do what you do, you ought to do.

Heads or Tails - Autumn or Fall Memories

Skittles started a meme some time ago called Heads or Tails and I try to take part most weeks. This week the theme is Autumn Memories which I have been racking my brains over but if I changed it to Fall Memories I came up with something so I hope she doesn't mind.

When my eldest son was about ten he had a bad accident on his bike. He and his two younger brothers were playing on the bikes in the deserted road where we lived near Powell River BC. They decided to take a run down a slightly steep hill and were having a lot of fun for a while until the two younger brothers came rushing in. Steve had taken a fall. By the time I got there some people had taken him in and called the ambulance. Steve was unconscious as we were driven in the ambulance to Powell River hospital.

The doctor felt there was a blood clot on the brain and Steve was vomiting and convulsing and the doctor was concerned he would not survive the night. Steve was air lifted out of Powell River and was flown to Vancouver Children's hospital. There was not room in the helicopter for me or my husband so I waited at home with the two little ones and my husband took the ferry to Vancouver.

We had been told to expect the worst and I felt I needed to prepare his two brothers for what may happen. I was in a cocoon of calm, I don't know if it was shock but I remember when I was in the ambulance praying a verse from the book of Job "Even though he slay me I will trust Him" only I personalized it to meet our need. It was as if it was happening to someone else's child not mine and even now I am surprised how I was able to go on and meet the needs of my two younger sons while not knowing what was going on in Vancouver.

When my husband arrived in Vancouver which took about five hours by two ferries with a road trip in between he went straight to the emergency ward and asked to see his son. They directed him to the intensive care ward but Steve wasn't there and my husband thought the worst, that he was too late. He rushed back to the nursing station and was told that Steve had just been moved to the general ward, as miraculously he had recovered, and my husband could take him home that same day. Even the doctor and nurses were stunned by his recovery. One little Philippina nurse came and sat on Steve's bed with my husband and told him that she felt it was a miracle as children did not usually survive such an accident.

Steve was a little dozy from the medications they had given  him and the doctor felt he would probably have repeated convulsions and would have to be on medications for the rest of his life, but I thought if God had intervened He probably did not plan for Steve to be on medication for long, if at all. When he got home I gave him the medication diligently at first but I saw that he was like a zombie and could not function normally and could not even do his school work which I was giving him at home. So I started giving him a tiny bit less medication over a period of time until  finally I had weaned him from the medication and he has never had a convulsion since. 

So that is one fall memory that sticks with me.

Catching up

I had my little jewelry sale at the local Christmas Bazaar and made back half of what I had spent on beads and such. I found that the earrings were the most popular. I will put what I have left in the Craft Centre that opens here in the summer for the tourists and I will use up what beads I have left and make more earrings. I may have to dismantle some necklaces to make earrings because I am loathe to keep putting money into this unless I can be sure to at least cover my costs. A hobby is fine but I don't have the lifestyle to wear a lot of jewelry and nowhere to store it so I feel I must sell it unless I can give it away. Some have suggested selling it online but I don't think I am up to that and I think it would be complicated, at least the payment part.

Friday we had nearly 10 inches of snow and today another 10. We went out to church this morning because it has been a while since we have been able to go but had to leave early as the snow was coming down so fast we were concerned about getting home and I had to get some shopping first, I had very little in the 'fridge. We made it home okay,  but we did have one scary slide on the way.

I have a heap of people to get back to so I will be spending time emailing this evening. I downloaded Google Video and Chat last night to see how that works. I have tried MSN and Skype but they are not the best, it is probably the satellite connection. but I have to keep trying. The whole point of getting a web cam was to see the grandchildren once in a while but the picture keeps freezing up so it has been a waste of time so far.

I have been spending a fair bit of my usual computer time coaching hubby on the laptop. He knows nothing about computers so I have to step him through everything. He has been emailing relatives, checking out sites etc. but he needs constant help and he sometimes just clicks things, and keeps on clicking, because he thinks it is not loading, and then I have to get him out of the stew he has made. I am glad though that he is finally taking an interest in computers. I showed him how to play Spider Solitaire and now I can hardly get him off it. I had originally downloaded a cribbage game but he did not win as often as he thought he should and said the game must be fixed as his cards were always terrible. I tried to explain that they would be randomly selected but he wouldn't hear of it.

If I have not visited recently those are the reasons why. So hopefully I will pop over to your place sometime soon.

Getting ready for the Christmas Bazaar

I have been busy the last few days getting my beading offerings ready for the Christmas Bazaar on Saturday. Hubby made me some styrofoam plates and we wrapped them in black crepe and I have attached the jewellry to them. These are not great photos but give you the idea. I still have to put prices on them that is why there are spaces at the top of some.

 
 

Unfortunately since I started there seems to be a few others that have decided to make jewelry and they will be at the bazaar also so we will see whose is most popular. I hope I at least cover my costs otherwise I will have a lot of jewelery and no where to wear it.

Heads or Tails - Where or Wear

Skittles started a meme some time ago called Heads or Tails and I try to take part most weeks. This week the theme is either Where or Wear however I can cover both in this post.

My boarding school was in Ascot, Berkshire, England. It was an Anglo-Catholic convent which means that it was very high church Anglican, we had mass in Latin and the nuns wore the long habits and old fashioned head attire called wimples. The church did not acknowledge the Pope as the head of the church but the reigning English monarch. This went back to the split from the Roman Catholic church during the reign of Henry VIII when he decided to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry his mistress Ann Boleyn.

Every Sunday we would attend two services in the church you see here. My place was on the left side in the front pew which you can just see on the bottom of the picture. We had a special uniform for Sunday's which made us look like little nuns. The dress was a lovely shade of blue, high necked, long sleeved and came to below our knees but made from a fabric which must have been created for penitents. It was the most itchy material you could imagine. Also it was required on Sundays that we wore veils to church. A white piece of cloth tied over our hair and hanging down to the middle of our backs. A school of mini nuns. My hair is quite fine and I remember having to fix the veil firmly with bobby pins to prevent the veil falling off in church, almost a sin in the eyes of the sisters.

Here is a picture of the Junior House, the children are wearing their Sunday dresses but since they were outside they were permitted to remove the veils.

When I was a senior I shared a small dormitory with three other girls in what was known as the South Transept. You can see the square turret in the centre of this picture, we slept there above the entrance to the church and we considered ourselves fortunate as we had a bathroom to ourselves, although it was very cold, even in winter we had no heat. It was also thought that a ghost of a nun could be often seen in the South Transept but I never saw her. We did share part of the dormitory with one of the kitchen staff who had a curtained off area to call her own. She snored quite loudly so as long as she kept snoring we could have small midnight feasts with goodies we had bought from the village store on one of our few trips out of the convent, or listen to Radio Luxembourg, a pirate radio station, or better still giggle over excerpts from Lady Chatterley's Lover,  by D.H. Lawrence. That book was my entire sexual education as those sort of things were never discussed.

The convent and school are closed now but the buildings are used as a residential home for seniors. There were quite a few seniors living there when I was a child, I never thought then that I would one day qualify as a senior myself.

What some people won't do for attention

I posted this over a year ago but I was browsing old posts and thought this might be worth a second look at the weird things people do.

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10. leopard man

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9. etienne dumont

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8. rick genest

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7. the illustrated lady

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6. elaine davidson

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5. kala kaiwi

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4. pauly unstoppable (bme page)

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3. the lizardman (website)

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2. lucky diamond rich (website)

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1. stalking cat (website)

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Heads or Tails - Guard

Image via Wikipedia

Skittles started a meme called Heads or Tails this week the topic is Guard.

When my father was working in Kirkuk Iraq, we flew back as a family one year, just after my father had remarried, and I was out of school for the summer. We flew from London Airport in England to Baghdad, Iraq and then caught a small plane from there to Kirkuk which is located in northern Iraq not far from Mosul which is the location of biblical Ninevah.

When we had disembarked and collected our luggage we had to go through a check out procedure. It was long before the war on terror and it was just a formality as we had already had our luggage searched in Baghdad. We knew that mostly the guards did it as a form of intimidation or just plain curiosity and they preferred to look through women's suitcases more than the men's. They seemed to leave the men alone and were very interested in any woman or young girl and since we were unveiled and had knee length skirts and short sleeves we were an oddity and I suppose extremely sexual to them although by European standards we were modestly dressed.

So after going through my new step-mothers suitcase at length and then mine, although I was only nine years old, the guard gave my father a form to sign for his chattels, which meant all his baggage. In those guards eyes any woman or girl and their baggage were only part of my father's baggage and we had no rights or personalities of our own any more than our suitcases had. 

My father would love to trot out that story every so often although it infuriated my stepmother.

 

History of a suitcase

Jonah and Rosa

Priceless

Firefox 3 and the new iGoogle page

On my desktop computer which is XP I have had problems with Firefox lately and the the new iGoogle Page won't load plus now in the old iGoogle is acting up. When I want to highlight an area to type over it it won't let me and stalls. So I have returned to Flock 2 and since it is Mozilla based it accepts all the same extensions that I like from Firefox.

I did some research and it seems that lots of people are having trouble with the new iGoogle page. It works fine on my lap top which is Vista.

So I have been setting up Flock the last little while with my favourite extensions. I like the following extensions. Better GReader, Better GMail, Gdocs Sidebar, Google Notebook extension, Scribefire, Customize Google, GMarks, Googlepedia, Hyperwords, and Surf Canyon. The last three are for better searching and the previous ones are useful tools.