Catching you all up with my news....

Not that anything exciting has really been happening.  My brother in Britain drives for a company called Stobbarts it is a well known trucking company in Britain.  Each one of the trucks has a girls name on it.  My brother has just got a new truck and was allowed to name it.  He named it after my mother and our daughter, Christina Corinne, both were super pleased.  I said to my brother that was charming, what about me, he said he would name his next one Gillian if he could............So if you're in Britain and see a Stobbarts truck named Christina Corinne wave at him as it's my brother.


On Saturday we went to see the lady who makes fascinators as dd wants one instead of a veil, and I wanted one instead of a hat.  Blair makes the most gorgeous of fascinators and is a very talented young lady.  Dd is taking parts of various feather fascinators and putting them together.  I chose one from the Fall/Winter 2011/12 collection that she hasn't got online yet.  Here is her website though and you can see some of her work.  I suggested a name for the fascinator I wanted as it didn't have a name, so it will be interesting to see if she does actually name it that.  The name: Duchess Britt, not sure if it will be one or two "T's."

Dh was off on Monday, so we ran some errands, and one of the places we went to was Babies R Us  Dd and I are going to a baby shower in a week or two's time.  I haven't set foot in either Toy's R Us or Babies R Us in years, so it was really interesting to see what there is out there for babies now.  I got a safety gate and a nursing pillow thing, both were on the gift registry.

It's gone awful hot and humid around here which is weird, as last week a couple of the days it was chilly.  The good thing about living in a stone built house it takes around three days for the place to heat up, so we are hoping to not have the a/c on any time soon. 

The grass of course is growing at a rate of knots.  I did manage to get Kamikaze Hill cut again and the front lawn.  I bought some roses and am going to attempt growing them.  I am not an expert when it comes to roses so it will be interesting to see if they will grow.

Some Things that May Disappear in our Lifetime.....

I saw the following online and although it is a bit of a read I thought it was interesting..........

The Post Office:

Get ready to imagine a world

without the post office. Financial problems make it

improbable that the traditional post office functions

can be sustained. Most of the mail being handled is

bills and junk mail. Email, Fed EX, and UPS have

just about wiped out the minimum revenues needed

to keep the post office alive.

Cheques:

Britain is already laying the

groundwork to do away with cheques by 2018. It

costs the financial system billions of dollars a year

to process cheques. Plastic cards and online

transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the

cheque. This plays right into the death of the post

office. If you never paid your bills by mail and

never received them by mail the post office would

absolutely go out of business.

The Newspaper:

 The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper.

 They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman, the bread

man, and the laundry man. As for reading the paper

online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile

internet devices and e-readers has caused all the

newspaper and magazine publishers to form an

alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon and

the major cell phone companies to develop a model

for paid subscription services.

The Book:

You say you will never give up the

physical book that you hold in your hand and turn

the literal pages. I said the same thing about

downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard

copy CD but I quickly changed my mind when I

discovered that I could get albums for half the price

without leaving home to get the latest music. The

same thing will happen with books. You can browse

a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter

before you buy. And think of the convenience!

Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen

instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the

story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you

forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a

book.

The Land Line Telephone:

 Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it any more. Most people keep it because

they've always had it, but you are paying double charges for that extra service.

Music:

This is one of the saddest parts of the

change story. The music industry is dying a slow

death, not just because of illegal downloading. It's

the lack of innovative new music being given a

chance to get to the people who would like to hear

it. Greed and corruption are the problem. The

record labels and the radio conglomerates are

simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music

purchased today is classed as a "catalogue item",

meaning traditional music that the public is familiar

with - older established artists. This is also true on

the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating

and disturbing topic further check out the book,

"Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper,

and the video documentary, "Before the Music

Dies".

Television:

Revenues to the networks are down

dramatically. People are watching TV and movies

streamed to their computers, and they are playing

games and doing lots of other things that take up the

time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time

shows have degenerated down to lower than the

lowest common denominator. Cable rates are

skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4

minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to

most of it. It is time for the cable companies to be

put out of our misery ... let people choose what they

want to watch online and through Netflix.

The "Things" That You Own:

Many of the possessions that we used to own are still in our

lives, but we may not actually own them in the

future. They may simply reside in "the cloud".

Today your computer has a hard drive and you store

your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your

software is on a CD or DVD and you can always reinstall

it if need be but all of that is changing.

Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up

their "cloud services". That means when you turn

on a computer the internet will be built into the

operating system. So Windows, Google, and the

Mac OS will be directly connected to the web. If

you click an icon, it will open something in the

internet cloud. If you save something it will be

saved to the cloud and you may pay a monthly

subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this

virtual world you can access your music, your books

or whatever else from any laptop or handheld

device. That's the good news ... but will you

actually "own" this stuff or will it be able to

disappear at any moment in a big "poof"? Will

most of the things in our lives be disposable and

whimsical?

Privacy:

If there ever was a concept that we can

look back on nostalgically, it would be "privacy".

That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway.

There are cameras on the street, in most of the

buildings, and even built into your computer and

cell phone. You can be sure that 24/7 "They" know

who you are and where you are, right down to the

GPS coordinates and the Google Street View. If

you buy something your habit is put into a zillion

profiles and the ads you receive will reflect those

habits.

All we have that can't be changed are memories.

A short blogging vacation...........

I'll post again on Monday morning.  Got a busy weekend ahead of me, will tell you all about it on Monday.

Have a super weekend and for those of you in Britain enjoy the bank holiday.

Oh and 22 years ago tomorrow we arrived in Canada..............those years have flown by so fast.......

Another trip to the dentist..........

So on Thursday after work I went to get my root canal redone.  I wasn't looking forward to it and rightly so as it flipping well hurt.  However I did live to tell the tale as they say and I go back again on June 14th to get the temporary filling removed and the permanent one put in.

Now a bit of a funny story.  I am a gagger when it comes to having x-rays done at the dentist.  The girls know to use the children's crocodile clip when inserting the x-ray film into my mouth to help me not to gag.  For some reason though when the dentist was done he wanted an x-ray and decided to do it himself.  Before I could say anything he shoved this big thing with the x-ray film in my mouth.  I of course major gagged and could even feel the bile coming up my throat before he yanked it out.

He then decided to get his assistant to do it while he left the room to see another patient.  She of course used the correct children's instrument and I didn't gag.  We were actually laughing about it, as she knew right away what I would do, and as I said I knew also it wasn't going to end pleasantly if he did that!!!  I bet he never tries to take an x-ray from me again!!!

I also now have the have the "raincoat" over my teeth when they do any work as that way I keep my tongue out of the way and I can breath and swallow properly.  I so hope this works this time, but I don't feel overly confident about it all...............

Busy, busy, busy...........with photos....

I spent the day in the garden on Wednesday on my "day off."  I got a couple of jobs crossed off my list, but the jobs on my list is still a mile long.  I did however get the annuals planted in pots.  I even bought a couple of window boxes full of plants this year.

We bought a new to us "toy" on the weekend a wood chipper.  We got it through Kijiji and paid $400; it sells in Canadian Tire for around $1,000, so we were pleased with the price.  Dh is enjoying using it and has been making lots of wood chips/mulch for the garden. 

So I spent part of the morning putting mulch around some trees and bushes.  As you can see by the photo below we have a lot of branches still to shred.  You will also be pleased to know that I can't start it, and dh doesn't want me doing it.........which means one less job for me...YEAH!!!

In the afternoon I spend a while hauling more branches up from the bottom of Kamikaze Hill to the top.  Also picking up some logs from the trees dh has been trimming.  That was hard sweaty work, even with using the tractor and trailer.  I also finally got the field cut again, this will be the third time it has been cut in the past five days.  I did a double cut the first time, as it was so long and I have just finished doing it again.  I have more or less got caught up with cutting the grass, which is just as well as we are forecast for rain AGAIN!!

I saw the following story about solar highways in an email I received and thought you may be interested:

http://www.wimp.com/solarhighways

As I write this on Wednesday night I am just so tired so haven't had an opportunity to visit anyone's blog.  My apologies for that; but I just don't have the energy.   I hope to catch up with you all over the next few days.......

If you use Bloggger please read........

For those of you who use blogger and have the word verification turned on please read on.  When I go to comment on your blog and a box pops up to ask what account I want to use, in my case Google as I use Blogger, it will send me to another screen and ask me to pop in my email address and password, which is fine as it is the Google screen.  It then sends me back to your comment page and I have to put in the word in the word verification box, which I do.  Instead of publishing the comment, it then scoots me back to the Google page again, wanting me to put in my email address and password.  Which I do and again sends me back to the comment page and it wanting me to put in the word again.  And on and on it goes.

So of course I give up and basically I don't comment on your blog, even though I have read it.  Landcuckoo you are one of them, so are you Angela, I tried leaving comment on your blogs this morning and couldn't because of this.

I don't have word verification switched on, on my blog, but I DO MODERATE all comments.  Blogger is pretty good now at sorting out the spam from the good comments and even puts them in a separate box for you.  If you want to moderate comments got to the comments section of the dashboard, and there is a box which you can tick there.  There is also a box there to turn off the word verification also.

Now it may just be me that is having a problem with this, I don't know?  However I just want to let you know I am reading your blog, but I just don't leave a comment, though I may have to start doing it through the anonymous account?

Book Review

"Amish Prayers," by Beverly Lewis

"The Amish and other Anabaptist groups have treasured the same book of prayers for centuries, turning to it for inspiration during times of peace as well as persecution. Now a selection of prayers from Die Ernsthafte Christenpflicht is readily available in English. This exclusive, authentic translation from the original German--with an introduction by bestselling author Beverly Lewis--pairs each prayer with a Scripture passage and offers insights into the rich spiritual foundations of the Plain people. Whether used for personal devotions or in a group setting, this beautifully illustrated collection will draw you closer to God."

This is a wonderful little book of prayers.  So easy to sit down and have a quiet few moments of contemplation and read a couple of prayers and the accompanying scripture passage.  The illustrations in the book are truly lovely and for anyone who loves the Amish and Mennonite culture this is a beautiful book to own.  This would not only make a wonderful addition to your own library, to be a wonderful and thoughtful gift to others as well.

Stars out of 5: 5 a lovely little book to pick up whenever you have a need.........

"Book has been provided courtesy of Baker Publishing Group and Graf-Martin Communications, Inc.  Available at your favourite bookseller from Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group".