Sunday, October 24, 2010

What I've been doing instead of blogging

Wow, it's been a month since my last post? Are you serious?

I knew it had been too long (my smirking, goody-two-shoes, inner faultfinder has been calling it to my attention regularly), but I didn't realize a whole month had passed.  I've been busy doing other, non-fascinating things:

Medical stuff.  Making an appointment,  going to the lab for blood work, and going to the doctor.  Because if I didn't, I couldn't refill my prescriptions again.    Standing in line at Walmart to get prescriptions filled, not checking the prescriptions until I got home, even though I realized they cost more than usual.  Discovering after I got home that one of the prescriptions was for twice the usual dosage -- which made it five times more expensive.  Calling Walmart and finding out that once I left the store with the wrong prescription, they wouldn't take it back.  And because the error wasn't the pharmacist's, there was no adjusting the price, either.  Learning lessons the hard way.

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Counting carbs.  Cutting sugars and starches out of my diet. Boiling eggs, scrambling eggs, frying eggs.  Realizing, once again, that I don't much like leafy, green vegetables. Scouring the Internet for low-carb recipes. Learning to love rotisserie chicken.
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Refinancing the house. Mortgage rates are so much lower now than they were when we bought the place 13 years ago that it seemed foolish not to try to refinance.  But, ohmigosh, the paperwork!
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Taking Kadi and Butch to the vet.  One at a time.  That's two trips into Baton Rouge.  Two hours of total driving time.  They needed their annual checkups and shots. Both of them are doing pretty well, "considering how old" they are.  Each of them is dealing with age-related issues, with which I completely identify.  Spoon-feeding them, still.  Who knew they'd take to this idea so eagerly?  They deign to take an occasional bite from their dog dish on the floor, but they get jump-up-and-down excited when it gets close to suppertime. Loving them, 24/7.

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Cutting my own hair.  It's getting harder and harder to get the back even, and the pile of clippings gets grayer with every cut.










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Genealogy.  I never get tired of snooping the trail to track down one more long-gone ancestor.
















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Reading other people's blogs.  And checking out news sites, reality TV gossip sites, puzzle and game sites.
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Keeping up with family and friends on Facebook.  You think I'm bad about blogging? I almost never post anything on FB.  But I do enjoy reading what my daughters, grandkids, sister and nieces are doing.











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Reading new books and rereading old ones.  I spent a glorious few days living a horrible existence Under the Dome in a Maine town full of characters born of Stephen King's imagination.  Then I moved south to Mississippi (and back in time to the 1960s) to get acquainted with the patient ladies who were The Help.  Still time traveling, I lived in the Tennessee plantation-home-turned-Union-Army hospital with The Widow of the South. 
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Keeping up with my favorite TV shows. These days I check the television schedule days in advance and set up the DVR to record the shows I enjoy. Fast-forwarding through all those commercials saves me lots of time.







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Playing Sudoku and Mahjongg on the computer for way too many hours.

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Visiting all the houses I've lived in on Google Maps Street View.  I hope the people who live in this home now enjoy it as much as we did in the late '60s.


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Taking photos while Kim melted glass for the beadmaking tutorials she's been writing.  This has been a fun photography project.  

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Editing photos in Photoshop Elements.  I can easily pass a whole day playing with my pictures.  Or even just enlarging them and looking at them, really.  It isn't the photos that I love so much; it's the subjects of them.



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Making music.  If you can call it that.  I've never had a lesson, but I've learned to pick out a few songs on this old keyboard that was a gift in the mid-1980s.  I've also learned to ignore the many false notes I hit; they do not count.  The keyboard lives near my back door these days, and when the dogs go outside, I indulge my inner Liberace while I wait for them to come back in.

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Listening to music.  All those activities above that are done on the computer? They aren't done in silence.  I was given several iTunes gift cards last year, and I've put them to good use.  Music has always been an important memory trigger for me, so it's been fun to create playlists of songs I've loved through the years. As for new music, I find most of it on TV and movie soundtracks.  When I hear a song I like, I jot down a long string of lyrics, Google the lyrics to learn the song title, search for the song title on YouTube until I find out who sings the version I like, then order the song on iTunes.  That'll work until the gift cards run out.

Sometimes I like to pull up a list of all my iTunes songs, scroll up and down the list several times with my eyes closed, then stop scrolling and click the mouse to give myself a musical surprise.  Whoooeeee, there's a lot of spice in my life!



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So that's it.  That's where I've been.  Not very much to blog about, is it?

13 comments:

  1. And....don't you honestly wonder how in the world you had time to work before you retired!! Sometimes I find there just aren't enough hours in the day or days in the week. They fly by so fast. Glad you're doing just what you want to though...sounds like you're enjoying every minute of it (well, except for the wrong prescriptions....which is a real rip-off). I have just finished the 1st book of The Hunger Games trilogy. Meant for the teen reader, they are edge of your seat attention holding. If you have time, you might enjoy them....even Stephen King gave them an excellent recommendation. In the meantime, Keep on keepin' on, dear friend.

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  2. wow-you have been busy!! I can't scold you for not posting, though I've been checking daily and had just about decided to email you and give you a nudge.

    I'm intrigued by that screen shot-how do you get so many windows on the screen at one time?

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  3. Val-I started Hunger Games, but I wasn't in the mood for yet another depressing look at the future where people are starving and have descended to savagery. I'd just read another post-apocalyptic book and thought I needed something cheerful instead.

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  4. Val, it's amazing how quickly the days pass, especially when I think about the vast time span between Christmases when I was a kid. The trilogy I'm looking forward to is Ken Follett's Century trilogy. The first book, Fall of Giants, came out last month but I haven't read it yet. It was your enthusiastic review of his Pillars of the Earth that made me dig it out of my to-be-read stack (where it had languished for months). I LOVED it and read the sequel immediately.

    Janet, that's a screenshot of ONE window that displays little images of recently visited sites. It's one of the options Mac offers to view your history. The turned-down corners on some of the little pictures mean those sites have published something new since I last clicked on them. Neat, huh?

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  5. Velvet, Wow, You've been busy. I got a gift card for Legalsounds.com - .09 per song!!!! I love it. I filled my 16 gig ipod!

    That mac screen sure is nice.

    And are there any FREE genealogy sites? I'm interested... I just can't afford one more thing!

    BTW, I love Kim's tuts! Great job, both of you!

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  6. Holly, I've never heard of Legalsounds.com. Will have to check it out. Nine cents per song is much more in my price range.

    The first website I ever used for genealogy research was a free one sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

    http://www.familysearch.org/eng/default.asp

    Another good free one: http://genforum.com/

    I've also found a lot of info on individuals' sites by Googling an ancestor's name with a couple of other search words (spouse's name, for example, or a place name or a date).

    Thanks for your kind words about Kim's tuts. She took as many photos as she could by herself, but as you well know, sometimes working with hot glass requires two hands.

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  7. No wonder people who have Macs love it! That's a cool feature.

    Butch and Kadi look good, and well worth the long drive to the vet! I think Kadi has you trained to spoon-feed her. ;-)

    I recently discovered Beneful prepared meals, and I mix about a third of a container in Spot's kibble, and he's been gobbling it all up. Thought I'd let you know, in case you want to try them.

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  8. Velvet, Thanks for the links!! I so appreciate it!

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  9. Janet, if you look at Kadi's rear end in the photo, you can tell how much weight she's lost -- mostly in muscle tissue, unfortunately.

    And you're right, Kadi does have me trained. I wouldn't have started the spoon-feeding if they weren't so old, but I figure they've earned the pampering. The vet trips in Baton Rouge traffic seemed more annoying than usual because a new animal hospital has opened up less than a mile from my house, and I really, really considered making a switch. Especially since Butch hates riding in the car. In the end, I decided it was worth taking them to the doctor who's familiar with their medical histories. But next time Butch gets an ear infection, we're trying the closer one.

    My dogs have already discovered how tasty Beneful is, and I mix it with kibble, too. It's too expensive to feed just the Beneful to big dogs.

    Holly, you're welcome. Happy hunting!

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  10. Wow, are you ever busy! Retirement does not really apply to you, except for perhaps that getting paid for all that you are doing.

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  11. I am so proud of you. You are doing so much.

    Remember working in your early 60s--well, that is what I am doing. Working, sleeping, working, sleeping.
    Endless circle, but I must keep the circle moving!

    You inspire me to do more. I have read the help. Sure liked it.

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  12. This is a new free site through the lds. It is a pretty good one!
    Someone might try it. It has all of ARk. marriage records up to the 1940s. Lots of other stuff too!
    http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start

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  13. Duly Inspired, oh, yes, "retirement" does really apply. Most of those things I listed as "busy" might be listed as "wasting time" by somebody else. They don't benefit anyone but me. And if someone would have paid me to do this kind of stuff, I'd probably have retired anyway. The extra sleep is just too good to pass up.

    Sister-Three, I hate to "uninspire" you, but see my response to Duly Inspired above. I'm busy, but I'm mostly busy playing. I do remember working in my early (and mid) 60s. How much longer do you plan to work? Thanks for the new LDS link; I'll check it out.

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