Its cold outside, and inside:) Some of that cold air whipped down yesterday from Canada, (blame Canada-again). Is it my imagination, or do large changes of temperature take place these days in comparison with the past?

Yesterday: Momma went off to some singing gig with her church choir to Toccoa Falls in mountain GA. Toccoa Falls is situated way up in the hills: yet for some reason has a massive college there for teaching religious kids how to be a minister in churches. A mate of mine from NY, his kid went there. I took him and Martha his mum up there one time and its a loooong way from Atlanta.

http://www.tfc.edu/

It meant she would be away for one night: and just before she went, she came out with one of her bitter little comments that litter life with her. She told Susan that I had said: “Its nicer here without her”.

Now, a problem throughout my life is misinterpretation of what I actually say: but in truth there is no logical way I could or would have said such a thing. Its not in my character or nature to say something so villainous and impolite, I’m just not built that way.

The more I become aware of human relationships and communication, however, I note that people are determined at various points to have that fight and that must hang it on something. Most things are down to attitude, and if someone is determined to have a crack, have that crack they will.

Like dealing with noisy children: you just have to ignore it till they stop wailing.

Which doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It does.

Time to vote in Atlanta

Some days its just hard to be optimistic, eh? Last night I took an anti histamine called Zyrtec. Its supposed to be a non drowsy thing, but anti histamines just knock me off my socks completely. I’ve been like a zombie all day, part of the reasoning for this blog is to remind me not to make the same mistakes again. This is one of those posts………………

DON’T TAKE ZYRTEC……..YOU IDIOT!

Surprising how often thoughts for the blog come while doing other things when a keyboard is as far from the scene as is possible. Today’s was while doing the mowing of the back lawn, an activity I loathe. If I lived my life again, I would never waste any time mowing grass: an absolutely stupid activity unless it is directly related to playing cricket. I would never do it again if I didn’t have to, and if I had my life over again, I would not. I would not get into relationships which insisted that I do, and I would make it quite plain on the first date that I don’t mow lawns.

I get absolutely zero joy out of a scalped and organized garden, it just doesn’t satisfy any of the desire for beauty. I much more appreciate efficiency. I can’t see why we wouldn’t be planting potatoes and tomatoes in the front yard, rather than the useless greensward. Its useful for feeding ruminants and some insects, I suppose but mostly lawn lovers pour a disgusting mix of toxic substances on it to “green it up”.

Anyway, here’s a few pics of the yard………zzzzzzzzz

Shameless theft department: I nicked this off of Nick Scipio’s page on the web www.nickscipio.com

All police officers should be equipped with this particular item:

Thursday, October 26, 20067:15 PM

I Detest Fix Up!

Momma decided that today she was going to have the outside yard work done by her working stiffs. She doesn’t understand that we have our own schedules, and plans but expects us to down tools and go “do” for her. This leads to tensions: because she becomes extremely crabby when she gets refused or more likely delayed. Susan and me both decided that Saturday was going to be our day yard working and that did not suit Momma, and she let me know.

There are these false shutters on the windows, they don’t operate and of course, as the house is twenty years old, the combined battering of Atlanta’s fierce weather and poor quality construction has caused the shutters to be merely hanging off. So they regularly rattle around.

When they were built, they were merely nailed into the soft mortar between the brickwork. The mortar is now as soft as butter and crumbling away, so the nails are falling out. Its just astonishing crapsville building, the nails are masonry nails just banged in with a nail gun and half of them are bent off where the idiot builder tried to bang them into the brick instead of the mortar so they just don’t affix to anything. Fixing it is dangerous because it means getting up on a bleeding ladder and its a long way up there. I don’t fancy it one bit, but then I don’t fancy “fix a fence” of any nature.

I’d generally get a professional in, they have insurance, tools and experience. Its cheaper in the long run.

Anyway, I’ve tickled the bloody thing back into shape with the simple means of screwing a bloody long and fat screw into the one that had fallen round and no doubt now that will be my accursed job for ever. Its like fixing your girlfriends car: don’t do it!

Thursday, October 26, 20067:15 PM

The trials of using cellphones across borders, agonizing and expensive. One day this too will pass into technological history and be forgotten, and as likely we will forget how the cellphone companies gave us a right royal wallet burning, in the meantime we’re all addicted to the damn things and being in contact.

When I quit the limo’s, I decided there and then to be finally done with the accursed things. In the limo trade, you’re always desperate for work, and contact is the only way you are going to get it: so people in the limo biz never sleep. When I retired from the cops, I was so pleased to be away from the blasted “pip” of the radio. It never brought you anything you wanted to hear, just some awful mares nest. I was very glad to be rid of that thing believe me.

Come the limo, the Motorola phones they use are phones, but they also have that radio facility which weirdly enough works better than the phone. So that I’ve actually had conversations with the boss when she was in the middle of Times Square NY over the radio, but I can’t get through to my downtown office via the phone. I hate sitting in restaurants where men have the damn things pipping through meals……grrrrr. I hate the things full time.

I purchased a Nokia 6320i in the UK and they told me it would work, on roaming (at great expense) in the USA as well as in the UK. Well, it didn’t. It could receive a bit, but it was expensive and worthless.

So: I fooled around on Ebay and found a pay as you go SIM card that offered to work, and believe it or not, it did. Straight out of the box. T-mobile do a service whereby if you buy $100 worth of calls, the thing will last a full year. So: $100 bux later and I have 1000 minutes to last a year, and a local phone number. So: actually not too bad. All I have to do now is NOT lose the SIM cards. Hah, we shall see about that!

Two nights good sleep now on the 3 megaton Lantana (okay Lunesta 3 mg) and its astonishing how much more energy I have first thing in the morning, raring to go. Hasn’t been that way for a long, long time. It doesn’t seem to have too much effect on bones, lungs or just about anything else I can hear or see. My mood seems to be light, body seems to have plenty of energy and not too many aches and pains……….long may it continue.

I finally broke free of the terrible hosting troubles of the last outfit, I won’t name them: in the probably incorrect thought that some outfits are just not suited for certain types of people and I surely was not suited for them, and vice versa. Almost every question was given the old biff into the long grass with one of those charming Microsoft “Help” classic answers that resemble the old conveyancing fraud answers. “The deeds are silent, but inspection may reveal”. It got so I dreaded, absolutely DREADED problems, because any question would end up with a multitude of even more complex mares nests to resolve.

They hung on to the registration until they noted that I was determined to leave and finally at about 3pm this afternoon, my site pointed to the correct servers and the things I planted from the Cpanel, just “worked”…….just worked: without a lot of swearing and cursing and fighting with tech support from another country who just thought I was a complete idiot.

Better days, oh, better days. Lets keep things simple and working!

A Guitar to sell on Ebay: an American Made Fender Stratocaster: does the picture look nice?

Two nights good sleep now on the 3 megaton Lantana (okay Lunesta 3 mg) and its astonishing how much more energy I have first thing in the morning, raring to go. Hasn’t been that way for a long, long time. It doesn’t seem to have too much effect on bones, lungs or just about anything else I can hear or see. My mood seems to be light, body seems to have plenty of energy and not too many aches and pains……….long may it continue.

I finally broke free of the terrible hosting troubles of the last outfit, I won’t name them: in the probably incorrect thought that some outfits are just not suited for certain types of people and I surely was not suited for them, and vice versa. Almost every question was given the old biff into the long grass with one of those charming Microsoft “Help” classic answers that resemble the old conveyancing fraud answers. “The deeds are silent, but inspection may reveal”. It got so I dreaded, absolutely DREADED problems, because any question would end up with a multitude of even more complex mares nests to resolve.

They hung on to the registration until they noted that I was determined to leave and finally at about 3pm this afternoon, my site pointed to the correct servers and the things I planted from the Cpanel, just “worked”…….just worked: without a lot of swearing and cursing and fighting with tech support from another country who just thought I was a complete idiot.

Better days, oh, better days. Lets keep things simple and working!

Drugs and sleep.

I hesitated before writing this as a blog entry. It qualifies as a diary entry, but I wonder if it has any interest at all to others. Then I figured: this thing is about me, not what’s interesting for others: its for them to make that decision, so off we go.

Always a nervy child, after teenagerism and the time when I learned that I had to pay for things myself, the rest of life has been a fairly constant effort to keep the taxman satisfied and the rent paid. Hence a fair bit of worry wort ism, to a fairly worry wort type of character.

Add the police force as a job: whose insane shift system turns sane recruits into zombies in about three years is still in practice and we get to the point that sleep is something I have been a stranger to most of my life. The problem with that is that if you don’t sleep well enough, and I can get by with about five hours or so: any less and you are not effective at what you do. Always falling asleep at the wheel. That in itself is a dreadful hamsters wheel, because you sleep/nap in the day, and the wheel starts again……….

One particular drug that was particularly successful at giving one nights sleep and no comebacks, was one of the early barbiturates that you can’t get now, (unless you have a sleepless pet:))…….

Then since the eighties, they were prescribing the pams, (Temazepam) all of which didn’t send you off to sleep, but kept you half awake all the following day. Horribly worthless.

Since coming to America, there is something that works wonderfully well, called Alprazolam/Zanax, which one isn’t supposed to take because its addictive, but a few days on it definitely leaves one calm and relaxed. It makes my arthritis worse and works on the asthma too, so best avoided, but quite good.

Lastly: after a particularly rotten period of late: when I’m forever waking up at 0230hours and unable to get back to sleep: I yelled for help from the doctor and in a knee jerk reaction: she prescribed Lunesta. Not the 1 mg of the past, but a full 3 megaton version which bopped me upside the head and worked a treat.

So far: I did wake at 0220 hours, (there must be something happening at that time, which is getting me awake) but it allowed me to roll over and go back to sleep…hooray!