Tonight I had the privledge to give a talk to our local computer club about using Evernote to remember stuff.  Here's a few pics from the event:

I did a lot of stuff today - see:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/flitterg/sets/72157623713683747/

While I was standing in line at the library waiting to check out my book, I happened to be privy to observing a tiny little girl of about 4yrs, entering the library with her family. She seemed to be looking right at me with the biggest smile of recognition - and I smiled back as that kind of smile you just can't resist returning. It wasn't me she recognised though. She was seeing the Children's library section which was behind me and down the stairs. You could tell she'd been in that little bit of heaven before.

I thought about what magic it must seem like to her - a zillion trillion bright, colourful intereresting books - all there for her to have a look at, to hold, to TAKE HOME for awhile, to sit at the little tables designed just for kids her size to look through and decide what treasures to take home with her and what would stay behind, perhaps for another day.

Even as a grown up, I find the library to be such a wonderful place and it's still magic to me that with a wave of my library card I can take home a few books or other media to enjoy ... for a little while.

Quite awhile ago, my daughter put up a poll on DeviantArt asking something about learning to ride a bike without training wheels. I remarked that I never had training wheels and asked if I'd ever told her the story of when I learned how to ride a bike. Turns out I hadn't and I've had her request to tell the story sitting on my messages page on DeviantArt for **ages** now.

Maybe I have it as a stereotype in my head, but when I think of kids learning to ride a bike, I think of a patient and loving parent or family member helping to guide the bike along and letting go when the kid is ready. Or kids on bikes with training wheels getting a feel for how it's supposed to work. My sister tried hard to be that loving and patient family member for me - and I think we tried several times, but her bike was much larger than what I could cope with (as in higher off the ground), and truth be told, I don't think either one of us had the patience for the other.

No, my story is that of a very bored kid on a Saturday morning with nothing better to do. It was one of those weekends I was spending at my Dad's house in Saginaw. Dad was at work - not very far away at all - it was less than a block to the drug store he worked at. Two of my brothers and my sister were sleeping in - they were all very much older than me so were teenagers at the time. My other sister had stayed with my Mom where I normally lived. I hated these weekends. My 'other' siblings who lived at my Dads, being teens, were like the weirdest people. I was often bored. They used to lock me in the attic at times just for the heck of it... which I found interesting as there was cool stuff up there. (I'm such a geek).

So it was a quiet Saturday morning and I'd already checked out all the usual things that kept me occupied and the only other thing I could think of was getting my brothers bike that was in the basement and taking it upstairs and outside to play on. I'm almost positive I didn't have any permission from my brother to do that, but you know, I was bored. I also can't imagine how I got the bike up the stairs, but I must have. Steve's bike was low to the ground in comparison to Pam's. I could sit on the seat and my feet would reach the ground. So I sat on the bike and used my feet to push it around the block. I think I was on my 2nd trip around the block when a few older boys went by, riding their bikes on the street. They came back around and teased me about pushing the bike with my legs instead of riding it like a normal person. That bit of teasing apparently was all I needed. I was hurt, angry and thought I'll show you! And I rode that bike for three quarters of a block - to the front of my Dad's house, when I realised I had no idea how to stop! I ended up riding the bike into a tree.  I fell down and laughed. I got back up and back on and spent probably the entire day riding that bike around the block. Did I get in trouble for using Steve's bike? I have no idea. I don't remember. All I remember was being elated that I'd learned how to ride a bike - on my own - without help, aside from the nudge of 3 kids teasing me.

This new skill prompted a new problem when I got back home to my Mom's place. We lived in Shields, on Gratiot Rd, which was very busy and there were no sidewalks. I know it was a heck of a dilemma for my mother who wanted to keep me safe and yet let me enjoy my new found joy. Somehow I managed to learn the rules and no, I never even had any near misses that I'm aware of, but I sure biked everywhere after that. There really wasn't any stopping me.

Later my brother gave me that bike after he'd fixed it up. It was blue and had a banana seat, those old handle bars that were more Y shaped than a regular bike, and an extra long black fork in front. It was the COOLEST bike ever!

So, my dearest Kerstin, that is how I learned to ride a bike.

I recently signed up on a website named 750 Words. The idea is to write 750 words a day. For some people this can be a personal journal or an exercise in writing. I've been using it a few days in a row now and have found it very satisfying.  It also gives you some feedback when you're done - like how many minutes it took, your total word score for the day, how many minutes it took you to write your days text, and how many words you type a minute. My current average is 38 words a minute!  Because of this excellent exercise, you may be seeing more blog entries from me as a direct result of getting stuff out of my head and onto 'paper'.  While what you type on the site remains private (unless you choose to share it), you can also export your writing so you have your own personal copy of it.  This will be great for just getting into the habit of writing regularly and also sharing some of my writing with you. What follows are excerpts of what I wrote Saturday morning.

                  NOTE - some of the links and videos below are NOT SUITABLE if you're easily offended or at work!!

.............

Here are a few videos representing the acts that we saw.  As above, they contain language and may offend so don't watch if you're at work, church or just can't cope with use of the F word or gross stuff.  You've been warned!!

Axis of Awesome:

Ronnie Johns Half Hour:

(Warning - Not Suitable for wankers or people at work)

Ronnie Johns Half Hour (Chopper Job Interview):

(Warning - Not Suitable for wankers or people at work)

And to end on a cute note, here's a couple LOL Cats that made me laugh this week:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Apparently having family and family pics on Facebook brings out the best in me in terms of writing about memories.  As I wrote 2 rather long comments / wall posts or whatever they're called this morning, I reckon I should share them here in my blog.  If you are reading this on Facebook you may want to skip the rest because you probably already read the same stuff elsewhere. 

First up, my neice, who was adopted and only found her birth mother (my sister) a few years back met her grandmother the week that my mom passed away. This morning I read Facebook and she sweetly asked: "Auntie Gaelyne tell me what my grandma Jean was like. you said under one of her pics that she was fun. please tell me more" ...  How could I resist that request?  So this is what I wrote this morning...

She was the best Mom. She really was. Always managing to cleverly teach us about things even as adults by example. I found this especially when I was a young mother and had no clue. She'd just step right in and distract the acting up kiddo and in no time any tantrum, bad feelings, etc had disappeared.

She was fair and honest - if she told even the littlest white lie she'd feel guilty. She was in hospital once when I snuck up to see her (was only 12) and the nurse said that kids had to be 13 or 14 to visit. She told the nurse I was that age and then felt guilty about it for the rest of the visit. She'd try to always do the same or similar for each of us kids. Like on Christmas she'd try hard to make sure everyone had the same amount of stuff or for Grand kids if she did for one, she'd try to do the same or similar for each of the others. I suspect we were each her 'favourites'. :-)

Grandma Jean's favourite things to do included rummage sales, bargains, fishing, travelling in their RV and visiting us kids. She'd save things in boxes for us and then either give them to us when we came to her place or bring them to us when she visited. Stuff she'd found at rummage sales or stuff like Readers Digest magazines she'd finished. Grandpa Bill worked for Dow, so she had a discount card for their store and would stock up on ziplock bags, saran wrap, etc for us. One year she gave each of us a big box of that stuff for Christmas. It was great!

But most of all, she was fun. We could laugh together and there were times that Aunt Pam, Grandma and I would be near tears from laughing so hard - usually from something silly she said wrong or some mild misunderstanding of what she meant and then we'd be in stitches.

Oh, and she had a lead foot in the car. I was always reminding her what the speed limit was. LOL.

I hope this gives you just a tiny glimpse what Grandma Jean was like - I sure miss her heaps. Feel free to ask me anything - I love writing and reminiscing about just about anything! :-)

Pics of my Mom can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flitterg/sets/72157603408669474/

Then later in the day my dear brother uploaded a couple more old pics - including one that nearly brought tears to my eyes - my cat, Tommy. I have missed that old cat.  I had him from the time I was 11 or 12 until he died when I was 23.  So I ended up writing a bit about him too...

.. Just showed him to Rod and said I loved him more than I loved him, my kids or anyone else in my life (which probably isn't quite true, but close). This cat just accepted me and loved me even while going through all that teenage angsty stuff.

...

Tommy disappeared for about a week when he was a kitten. One day on my way out the door to go to school, there he was, on the porch. He'd been hit by a car and dragged himself home, somehow. My sister and brother organised to get him to the vet, and bless them they decided to pay the costs of getting him fixed up (he had a broken both his hip and his leg). They couldn't 'put him down' because they knew he was my cat, and I wasn't there to make the decision, but really that's a decision I couldn't have made myself anyway because I wouldn't have had the money to pay for his surgery either. From then on, he'd sit with his leg out as that was the only comfortable position for him.

He survived my weird teen years, a few years with my brother when my family moved into a new home, and then came back to me later when I had my own place. He then survived my first born as a youngster, but had to be put to sleep while I pregnant for me second son. That was a hard hard time for me, but he was old, and he was in pain.

When my brother taught his young pup Sommer how to shake paws, he inadvertently taught Tommy, who was very selective about who he'd shake hands with (like only me). I remember telling my husband about this ability then seeing his jaw drop to the floor as Tommy and I proved it to him. :-)

Tommy James Nuisance, the Legend!

 

 

 

 If you are reading this on another site besides Gaelyne.com, my personal blog can be found here: http://gaelyne.com/content/random-experiments-ii-blog

Audette is here!

I have a new Granddaughter!  My first and ONLY Granddaughter at that!  Her name is Audette Irean Gaelyne Andersen (yes she has my name as one of her middle names), and she was born on 15 January 2010 at 10:25am. She weighed 7lbs, 2oz and is the cutest baby girl EVER.  Biased? ME?  Nah! 

In the first photo is Audette of course.

The next photo is my son Terrance, his son Ricky, and his newborn daughter Audette.  What a beautiful piccy. I love how Ricky is checking out his little sister!

New Keyboard

Definitely not on the same scale as the news of my granddaughter, I have a new keyboard...

What's odd is I remember writing about how thrilled I was to stumble into a great deal on the keyboard of my dreams and how ordering it was the highlight of my day, but it's certainly not in my blog so I wonder where I wrote about it?

Last week Catch of the Day just happened to have the Logitech diNovo keyboard on sale at about 1/3 of it's original cost so I snapped one up for myself. Not long after I bought my laptop I'd researched keyboards for my regular PC as I loved the soft keys on my laptop and wanted the same for my computer. One of the ones I saw was recommended a lot was the diNovo but the price tag was over what I'd be willing to spend (about $175 - OUCH!). So when I saw it on sale for $50, I jumped. Well, it arrived today and I'm using it to write this blog. It is so quiet. It's nice not having to hear the keys as I write. Now if I could only get Rod to use a quieter keyboard... I can hear him typing in the office all the way from the bedroom.  Not only is this quiet, it's also got a nice feel to the keys (like a texture), and it's wireless.  So now both my keyboard and mouse have no wires. Joy!  

The real surprise for me was that I plugged in the USB thingy for it and fully expected I'd have to reboot my computer at least, but no need - my Ubuntu Karmic Koala system recognised the new USB keyboard and that was it. Even the media keys and calculator keys worked first go with it.  I did have to do some extra bits to get my music player's main keys to work with the media keys but that's not something related to the keyboard - it wasn't working with my previous keyboard either. This is because I prefer to use Amarok for music, which is KDE based while my actual window manager is Gnome. However, I got that sorted out tonight too.

A Nerve Root Block

In other news, last Friday I had an appt with the rhuematologist at the Repat. We had a good discussion and next Monday I'll be having something called a 'Nerve Root Sleeve Block' done on my left S1 in my spine, which should make a difference for the sciatica I've been dealing with.  The worst that can happen, I'm told, is that it won't work. I asked how this is different from the other that I had in November and it's a totally different approach. The injection I had in November was in the facet of the joint rather than the nerve sleeve which is the most affected area. It's not a permanent fix but should allow time for things to settle down with it.  Generally during the day I'm doing OK with it, but if I walk any distance, it's quite painful and of course sleeping and staying asleep have been an issue for months now with this - it's no way to start the day, that's for sure. Anyway, I'll have this done and hopefully it will help a lot. If not well, at least it's been tried. 

One of the problems for me (and the rhuematologist) is that it's hard to discern what pain I'm having from bursitis in both hips versus the sciatica.

My brother's on Facebook!

My brother Steve has signed up on Facebook - he's been uploading family photos which is so awesome. Many he's shared I have either never seen or haven't seen in many many years.  My oldest sis is also on FB, and hopefully my two other siblings will join too. It'd be really nice to be able to share stuff so easily.

Yesterday I tackled the patio... but not the whole thing, just the area where we hang out. It's a big patio - almost the length of our house. There's no way I can do the whole thing at once. But a section at a time - yeah I can do that.

Rod got a bit miffed when I listed off things I need him to do but eventually - and without any further prodding - got with the program. I think he must have felt guilty - because he did about 10 other honey-do's I hadn't asked for - well, not this week anyway. LOL.

I have a 'Flip It' dry/wet vac that made all the difference for mopping the tiles. As it vacs up the water into a filter, I wasn't just smooshing wet dirt/mud everywhere.