Metoposcopy Monday

metoposcopy ~ fortune-telling or judgement of character by the lines of the forehead

The weather was so beautiful last week that for the family dinner on Sunday I decided we should barbeque our pork chops, which meant salads to go with them. And of course after spending my morning making a potato salad, pasta salad, and broccoli salad, the weather turned cold and overcast. *sigh*

We still barbequed of course - it would take more than a little cold to prevent that - but it would have been nice to see a little sun. And it was cold enough Sunday night that the heat came on a few times. Guess Mother Nature isn't as done messing with us as I thought.

The hubby asked me to install the program that came with my printer on his laptop last week because he wanted to play around with the CD labelling feature (my printer prints directly onto CDs). Of course this being me and my life, finding the disk with the program on it is a story in itself - I actually found it by accident when I was cleaning out a desk drawer yesterday. So I installed the program without a hitch, and of course being printing software it sent a test page to the printer.

Now if you recall, when the cable company callously made me replace my router with their modem/router combination, I had to re-setup the wireless printer. And because I didn't do it myself the first time and my printer could sense an amateur at work, it gave me all kinds of trouble, culminating in it printing everything I sent it twice.

I have a theory about this. I don't know if it's because of the TiVo or the phone, but we're actually running two networks - a 2.4G and a 5G (whatever the heck they mean). The installer said to run off the 5G whenever possible but my laptop can only find the 2.4G.

I'm pretty sure the printer is connected to the 5G network and so is the hubby's laptop. So it should come as no surprise that the test page sent by his laptop only printed once. And pretty quickly too. Granted his is a brand new laptop and mine is at least five years old, but still ... I'm thinking it might be time to get an external hard drive to backup my laptop onto and then have it checked out thoroughly by the computer doctor.

The desktop in my office is six years old as well, and it's pretty much a crap shoot whether it's going to work properly or slowly on any given day. Ah, technology.

*shakes head sadly*

Much to my surprise I'm still on track with my posts for the A to Z Challenge. Still way behind on the blog visits though, I'm a little over halfway through the links list. But at least I caught up on visiting the blogs of the wonderful people who've left comments on my posts. :-)

This is the last week and I'm kinda glad. I took up the blogging challenge to give my writing a boost, and in that I've succeeded. However, between coming up with a daily post and all the blog visiting, I don't really have any time for anything else.

I have ideas for posting at least twice a week on both my blogs, I'm actually looking forward to getting some editing done, and I have some ideas I'd like to develop on a new book series. Not to mention I want to get going on the next book in the Moonstone Chronicles.

So ... lots of plans, now I just have to find the time. LOL

Muriated Monday

muriated pickled; preserved

Well ... I guess Mother Nature got over her snit, because by the end of last week there was no ice on the pool when I got up in the morning and the weekend was absolutely gorgeous. AND I have two little green shoots coming up in the front garden.

Speaking of gardens ... I don't know if you're aware of the crisis regarding the falling numbers of the bee population, but there's a big push on for everyone to plant wild flowers. I was looking at our patio area and started thinking, and then I remembered the long planters my mother-in-law had at the cottage (we used to call them her horse troughs) and then I asked the hubby what he thought of the idea of building a planter along one end of the patio for wild flowers.

To my surprise, he liked the idea. In fact, he even suggested we border both open sides of the deck with planters. And to save time, because it's still bowling season so he wouldn't have time to build me planters for several weeks, he gave me the green light to buy ones. So, guess what I'll be doing next weekend?

You know, unless it snows or something. ;-)

I had a friend come over for coffee on Sunday, so naturally I had to go on a baking binge. Saturday I baked oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, molasses cookies (they're kind of like gingerbread), and chocolate drop cookies. Then Sunday I had a brain fart or something and baked a cranberry oatmeal bread, an apple oatmeal bread, and some cranberry/apple mini muffins. I don't know how much I expected my friend to eat, but she had plenty of choices. ;-)

Surprisingly, at least to me, I'm still on track with the A to Z Challenge. Well, at least as far as the posting goes. I'm still way behind on my blog visits, but you can read about it on My Writing Journal.

The hubby got his lap top connected to our wireless network - and without my help. Colour me impressed! I'm still having problems with the printer, but it's no big deal to print from my office.

Funny story. I got the desktop computer in my office connected with a wireless adaptor, which of course plugs into a USB port. Despite the fact I have like 7 USB ports on this computer, I also have a Tardis USB hub (because the Tardis is cool!). So I plugged the adaptor into the hub because it was on top of the computer.

What I'd forgotten is that the Tardis came with sound. Specifically, the same sound Doctor Who's Tardis makes. And my Tardis made that sound every time the light on the adaptor blinked. Which was pretty much all the time. And did I mention the blue light on top of the Tardis blinked at the same time?

So yeah. I had to move the plug to the back of the computer. :-D

I had one little change to make to our channel lineup at the beginning of the week and now everything seems to be fine. *knock on wood* And now ... I'm being forced to learn how to use the TiVo because I'm babysitting tonight and I don't want to miss Supergirl and Scorpion. Yes, I could probably watch them at the daughter's house, but with the way my luck runs I'll have to leave right in the middle of the good part.

Wish me luck!

Monocarpic Monday

monocarpic ~ producing fruit only once

I think the above picture pretty much sums up why Mother Nature and I are no longer on speaking terms. I don't think the duck is all that happy with her either.

While we didn't get the massive snowstorm the weatherman was warning us to expect yesterday it was still pretty darn cold and we did get some snow last night. And he may be promising warmer temperatures and sunshine towards the end of the week, but I'll believe it when I see it. Just like those storms in the winter we never got. In fact, I'm pretty sure we've had more snow this spring than we did all winter.

Surprisingly, I'm keeping up with my blogging for the Blogging From A to Z Challenge, but boy am I glad we have Sundays off - I needed the break. I am behind on my blog reading for the challenge though. By my calculations, I should have visited almost 700 blogs by now and at last count I was just over 400. What surprises me is the number of blogs I've gone to where the blogger appears to have forgotten they signed up for the challenge.

I'm still having problems with the commenting - usually the WordPress blogs. Some days I'm able to comment, but most days it lets me go through the process and my comment just doesn't appear. And yes, I admit I don't comment on every blog I visit. Sometimes the post just doesn't appeal to me, and quite honestly commenting is really time-consuming, which makes it all the more frustrating when I make the effort and my comment doesn't show up.

In any case, I've found a lot of great blogs and the best ones I've bookmarked so I can return to them later. If you'd like to follow my progress, check out my other blog, My Writing Journal.

Last Monday, in a plan designed to save us some money, the hubby and I had our phone switched over to our cable service, where we already had our internet and television. And while we were at it, we got a TiVo receiver and changed our channel package. It was a good move ... in theory.

First, the installation process. Our living room is at one end of the house, my office is at the other. I need internet access in my office, so that's where the modem was, along with a router so my lap top and printer could connect wirelessly. I knew the phone would need a modem of its own, but since that was the end of the house where the cable came in, I figured it would be no big deal.

What no one told me was that that TiVo needed internet access too. And the installer couldn't figure out how we got our internet cable from one end of the house to the other in our mostly finished basement. So ... he installed the combination router and modem in the living room. Not only do I have to buy a wireless adapter for my desktop computer, I could no longer use my own router, which meant I lost the connection to my wireless printer. *sigh*

And let's talk television. Before he left, the installer showed me how to access the TiVo with the remote, and then referred me to some on-line videos that would show me how it worked. And then I tried to watch TV, specifically, the Space Channel. We were supposed to have basic cable and then 40 channels of our choosing. What we had was basic cable. One phone call and two hours later, I had the channel situation straightened out. Or so I thought.

The next night we discovered another channel was missing from our lineup. This only took about 45 minutes to fix. Then last night we discovered yet another channel missing, so I spent the next hour selecting every channel above basic cable, one by one, to see which ones we were getting and which ones we were not. We were getting 8 channels we didn't ask for and were missing two we did ask for. Unfortunately, by the time I had the chance to call to bitch at complain, it was too late. I'll have to do that later today.

Meanwhile, I was able to get the wireless connection to the printer going again, but for some reason it's printing everything twice. And it takes the signal forever to get to it. Now the printer is physically plugged into the desktop computer, so maybe once I get the wireless adapter for it the printer will behave. Or maybe I have to get a signal booster.

All I know is, this all better be worth it in the end.

Marmarosis Monday

marmarosis ~ conversion of limestone into marble

Everyone have a good weekend?

I don't know about where you are, but here in Southern Ontario Mother Nature played a really mean April Fools prank on us. After giving us a couple of almost summer like days, temperature wise, to lull us into a false sense of security, she dropped the other shoe yesterday. We woke up to a bright white blanket of snow. Granted the snow was pretty much gone again by lunch time, but that beautiful seeming day out there? It was cold, cold, cold, and really windy too, just in case you got any bright ideas about bundling up to enjoy the sunshine.

Hopefully the snow didn't last long enough to do any damage. While my plants are being cautious, I noticed the daughter has tulips and crocuses coming up in her garden. This on again, off again spring isn't doing the plants any good, that's for sure. It isn't doing us humans any good either. I've been fighting a cold the last couple of weeks and I notice a lot of other people are too thanks to the yo-yoing temperatures.

Fish or cut bait, Mother Nature!

I may or may not have whined, complained, mentioned that I've sort of hit a dry spell, writing-wise, this year. So in order to give my creativity a boost I signed up for the Blogging From A to Z Challenge. The idea is to write a blog post a day for 26 days in the month of April (we get Sundays off), and each day's post should start with a different letter of the alphabet, in consecutive order of course.

I did it a couple of years in the past when it first got going and it was ... uh ... fun. Yeah, that's right, fun. I mean, why wouldn't 26 blog posts in 30 days, each starting with a different letter of the alphabet, be fun? Just because I've only been posting once a week here, and the blog I'm using for the challenge, My Writing Journal I've only managed to post to four times so far this year - I'm not biting off more than I can chew, right?

Right.

I guess only time will tell. Meanwhile, if you'd like to follow my progress there are a couple of ways to do this. First, you can click on the link in the above paragraph which will take you to My Writing Journal where you can either bookmark the page to go to whenever you like or, in the column on the right-hand side there's a place where you can put your email address in and receive an email whenever I put up a new post. You might have to scroll down a bit.

The other way of doing it is just clicking on the tab at the top of this page. For the duration of the month I'm changing it from My Writing Journal to A to Z 2016. The reason for this is because I've noticed a couple of people from the challenge have ended up here instead of the blog I'm doing the actual challenge on. Not that I mind, it's great when new people come here. But I don't want them to think I've flaked out on the challenge.

One of the fun parts of the challenge is trying to visit as many of the participating blogs as possible. There are close to 2,000 participants this year and I figured out that I need to visit about 75 blogs a day to see them all. And yes, I'm a little behind. :-D

While I have been going down the list of participants (you can find the list HERE), faithfully clicking on each link and visiting each blog, I confess I haven't been leaving a lot of comments. First of all, it's incredibly time consuming. I'm sorry, but I do have a life and I just don't have the time to comment on 75 blogs a day. Sometimes I just have nothing to say, and sometimes I do make a comment and for whatever reason it just doesn't show up - usually on the Wordpress blogs or ones that aren't using Blogger. But I do try to comment when I find the post interesting and I've even bookmarked a few blogs to make sure I revisit them (when I can).

So if anyone wants me for the rest of the month, you'll know where I am. Either writing blog posts or blog-surfing.

Good lord, what was I thinking??