iRamble.co.uk

photo credit: ? ? u m i è r e ?

I received a letter from the church this morning. It was quite a nice letter inviting me to attend a special service next weekend.

Nothing strange about that you may think and neither did I really until my son’s dreadful sense of humour (don’t know where he got that from) came to the fore.

‘Was it addressed to you personally’ he said, when he rang and I told him about it - ‘Yes’ I replied not really thinking much of it.

‘Where did they get your details from? Do they know something that we don’t?’

Well, it left me a little perplexed to ay the least!

Is there a ‘Heavenly Directory’ containing the names and addresses of mere mortals? Am I seen by the divine council as someone in need of help? Or as someone who they need to help them?

This, after all has not come from the church in the village where I live - it has come from a village some five miles away.

And though I have not been a regular church goer for over 30 years I am going to attend the service just to find out what they want me for - I’ll keep you posted……

photo credit: kimberlyfaye 

Look here and wonder what your plants are saying about you?

I shudder to think what my neglected bay tree has been saying to my last rose of summer - but it does make you realise - that people who talk to their plants have obviously got good hearing - they knew this was happening!!

I have had a lovely day! I know it isn’t over yet but as my dinner is just finishing off in the oven and smelling gorgeous I thought I would share it with you (the day - not the dinner).

It was a rare opportunity to be alone - my daughter went to Alton Towers early this morning with her boyfriend and won’t be back until around 10.30 tonight. Don’t get me wrong I love the company of my family - my son and his wife were here last weekend and my daughter is usually round on her weekend off from her caring job but this was a special event. And sometimes its nice to be alone, I like my own company - we don’t argue…. ever!

To some it would be boring but for me today has been one of self indulgence - nice!! The sixties and seventies music went on and I sang along.

I got the jobs all done early half sorted the dinner, cleaned the bungalow, did the ironing etc. ready for work in the morning.

Then I spent a happy hour in the hot tub….. mindless hot bubbles…. it was amazing….. although, as usual I had to shift Maxie off the top.

After a shower I decided to go through some of the cupboards in my bedroom, I have promised a friend that I will find some photos my Dad took years ago and I just need to remember where I put them when I moved out of the big house to here!

I went through three of the built in cupboards in what we affectionately call ‘the tart’s boudoir’ - cos it looks like one…. and for no other reason!

found lots of interesting things I had forgotten I had, but not the photos. So I gave up for today - but at least I know where they are not lurking!!

Then I answered a few emails and chose my new wordpress theme - nice isn’t it?

Fed the animals and they are very happy and chilled out..

Ahh look at his little pink nose….

And bless her its hard to see the little greyhound by candle and fairylight but, she too, is very chilled out.

And me well currently I am here typing but you can’t see me ‘cos I had to take the picture - no starring roles here..

But now its time to wind this up - I have a lovely chicken dinner to eat (and one to plate up for the day tripper!!) and a film to watch.

Its the little things that count - I have done nothing special but I have had the nicest of days - welcome to my world!!

photo credit: Jacob Bøtter

Okay so I changed the words but it does make me think of the chirpy cheep cheep song.

I now have ‘Twitter’ on my system - another learning curve for my addled brain to deal with.

So far its all going well although it reminds me of some of the chat rooms watching people chat - sorry ‘Tweet’ to each other - some of the conversations look very disjointed like you are only seeing half of it (which you probably are) but when my name is at the beginning I know its for me and try to jump in quick so that my answer is not too far from the question - so to speak…

Confused yet? You will be -  I was challenged by my lovely son to find some people to follow - fortunately I saw some names I recognised and I’m happy to report that there are nice people twittering - including Grannymar - good to see that at least.

But I have already been the victim of a twitter maniac - wherever I go they find me - he must have been lurking around looking for newbie tweeters as victims - politely asking them to follow him then bombarding them with strange tweets. I HAVE BLOCKED HIM!!! He will not tweet at me again!

So in the last week I have found people, tweeted at them and had conversations with them on Twitter, blocked one and perused the bio’s of many.

I’m not sure where this is going but I will keep you posted!!

Tweet for now!!!

I read a post by Grandad yesterday which was about the lack of interesting blogs out there. I think its quite a shame that we all put our thoughts out onto the internet only to read that it is not interesting to some - even though it may be to others - confidence knocking stuff maybe? Who knows?

I started writing on a review website many years ago and was paid for my thoughts on films, books, shampoos, shower gel, electrical items etc. There was also a place on this site for free writing - obviously unpaid but it was possible to build up a network of ‘virtual friends’ by reading and commenting on each others free writing. I enjoyed this for a while but became aware that some of the members would join together to get people to leave, not for any reason other than they thought it was fun. I left - although all my reviews still sit there and I still get comments and payments from them.

My first blogsite was much the same - a mixture of reviews, poems, life, and the universe but I really could see that it didn’t work (for me) like that and began to change.

I still have that site and will use it for reviews because I feel they have no place here unless its because they have historical interest

The two sites that I show my real face on are the ones you already know, this one and the one for our girl. The dog one is about Hippie and little else, it has its own little following of other greyhound owners and I find their interest very comforting when there is a problem with the dog, as much as I find their giggles wonderful when I blog about the silly things she does.

This site is for my rants and rambles about the world in all its glory plus little snippets of fun and the occasional meme (I’m still trying to get my head around those).

My review site remains the same but needs modernising a little - a project for the future, and the last one is purely for my diary on a medical condition I have with my hands and arms - it gets a lot of ‘hits’ - a lot of people suffer from this.

I think to some extent I have separated the sites on purpose to avoid boring some and entertaining others all on one site, but also because I know when I go through my reader there are always posts there that I cannot relate to in any way, they are techie and over my head, or political and I’m not one for politics. I may read them but they leave me cold and I have nothing to say.

So, to finish, I agree with my bewhiskered friend that there maybe no good blogs out there but maybe that is because the community put them off, or they ran out of things to say, or they tried to mix their content unsuccessfully.

Whatever the reason I believe that we are still in the early days (realistically) of weblogs and like all things they will grow, outlive their usefulness and die - to be replaced by a newer shinier model.

Its just another whirl on life’s carousel!

photo credit: shareski

This was an email sent to my new boss this afternoon. He is away at a conference all week and I thought I would clean up a bit today…. big mistake…. HUGE!!!

The email went like this…

I only switched it on to vacuum up the floor.

It really smelled quite hot so I opened up the door.

It made a funny noise, a kind of growling sound.

Picked up some bits then spluttered and threw them on the ground.

Suddenly there was silence, no growling not a yell….

The dyson it had snuffed it and left this awful smell!!!

So far I still have a job - I’ll let you know!!!

It all started as a way to use up leftovers from Sunday dinner roast in a way that my family would be happy to eat.

I just layered all the leftovers in a pie dish - poured the gravy over and then put a shortcust top on it.

The trouble is - its too nice and nobody wants the roast dinner now they want to go straight to the pie! And the word is getting out - I am getting requests for pies.

So today I have made three the small one has already been baked and delivered to an elderly neighbour whose name begins with M of course and was last seen thoroughly enjoying every morsel.

One is for dinner for my daughter and I tonight…

with yorkshire puds of course..

And one for tomorrow because my partner does not like missing out on these!!!

We bought the jars last year ready to do some preserving in bottles but the tomatoes didn’t grow and the jars stayed in the cupboard.

This year, however we had loads and decided to ‘go for it’

First we dipped them into boiling water to loosen the skins.

Then we boiled them with tomato juice and garlic and herbs..

Then we packed them into very clean jars with lemon juice..

Ready to put into the canner. Of course its really a huge pressure cooker but it can hold so many jars in one go that its preferable to using a small one and taking all day. Easily prepared by smearing a little petroleum jelly around the seals.

Then we loaded the jars in

First  layer..

then another one on top…

Until it was full!

Then on with the lid and get it up to 10lbs pressure

Note the easy to read dial!!!

After ten minutes at 10lbs they were ready and after the pressure had gone down it was time to get them out. Bit of  problem here - how do it without burning oneself?

Oh yes - get up higher - that helps..

And even then its all quite hazardous..

But it was all worth it and we have a stock of canned tomatoes - it probably cost much more than buying but at least there is the satisfaction of knowing they were our own home grown ones.

I am one of those annoying people that like to get things ready before writing a post. Not the words you understand, I like to write as I would speak and I don’t think it works writing it all down and then copying it across to my blog sites.

So, imagine my frustration last night when I wanted to write a post for my canine site and was trying to get the photos from my mobile to my computer and it just wasn’t listening!!

Normally I just attach the little dongle thingie to my usb lead and plug the mobile in,  then a window opens and I can choose which photos I would like to insert.

No window opened and further investigation showed that either my mobile didn’t want to talk to my computer or vice versa. I tried again - nothing…. nada!

A few days ago Firefox performed an update - I didn’t ask it to - it just did it anyway and it informed me afterwards that Real Player would not be working - it said nothing about my mobile.

Has anyone got any ideas?

Answers on a comment please…..

photo credit: JoeBehrPalmSprings

Action at last!

The European Commission is imposing bans on imported milk products and other foods will be tested for melamine.

Maybe we just don’t realise how lucky we are in this country, we might be in a recession but our food safety standards remain high.

Still don’t think I’ll be having a takeaway anytime soon - but then I’ve always been wary of them!!!!