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Happy thoughts. Sad thoughts. Interesting thoughts. Un-interesting thoughts. Come talk. |
| Ramblings of someone who likes to ramble. |
| Vincent Van Gogh said, "If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint', then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced." What is your 'you cannot ____' voice always ragging on you about, and how good are you at silencing it? Not in My Head. This is going to be a rather short blog. I don't have a voice in my head telling me I can't do something. When I get mad or upset, there is sometimes a voice which says I shouldn't do something to retaliate, and most of the time I listen to it. Even then I am never mean. Have you heard the old adage, "Just smile and nod." Next time someone yells at you when you know you didn't do anything wrong, try smiling and nodding. It will get them madder and they will most likely get very frustrated. Now just walk away. As I said this is a very short Blog. Have a fantastic day everyone. |
The Dreaded Blue Screen The challenge today is to let everyone know what we would do if the internet went down for an extended period of time. This might not be as hard for me as some of the younger people in our group. I grew up with no computers, only three channels on the television, and the idea it was more fun to play outside instead of sitting in the house. I saw my first television program when I was ten years old and it was black and white, color didn't come into my life until I was well in my teens. I took a computer course in college and it consisted of learning how to read binary code. (0's and 1's) I got my first computer when I was in my early twenties and it consisted of a black screen with a blinking green dash mark. To do anything you had to write a program in Dos. I saw my first picture on a computer in my early 30's. Yes, fellow Challengers, I am old, but it is alright. I have also gotten a bit off subject, sorry. Not too long ago I didn't have problems with the internet, but I had no computer for a week. I never realized how much a computer has filtered into my life. It took me at least twenty-four hours not to automatically walk to my desk to try and turn it on. I had to dig out the phone book to look up a number. (I don't have internet on my phone.) I did get a lot of writing done, and got my craft closet cleaned out and reorganized. I also read a lot. I have a challenge for everyone in this 30-Day Blogging Challenge. Turn off your computer and the internet on your phone for twenty-four hours. There is another world out there, I promise. I would love to hear what happened. |
The Worst of the Worst Equals The Best of the Best When you say something is the worst then you are giving into what is being thrown at you. This is a defeaters attitude. When something bad happens, you need to try your hardest to get through it, get to the other side of the problem and learn from it. There is a lesson in everything that happens to us, good or bad, best or worst. It no other lesson is learned then we learn what we can repeat and what we better not try again. Now, I have seen people have something wrong happen, or they have done something wrong and had a "bad experience." These people just keep trying again and again, without changing their methods, to see if they get different results. It upsets them when whatever they were trying still comes out bad. They haven't learned, and might never learn, to look at what they did, figure out exactly how they did it and see what would happen if they changed even a small thing. I was told once by a very wise lady that "if you don't learn one new thing everyday then the day was not worth living." She never said it had to be the "best" thing or the "worst" thing. It all makes the day worth living. |
Easily Wasting Money and Time I never knew the Consumer Electronics Show existed so it was interesting to see some of the things inventors think we need in our lives. The Faraday Electronic racecar was interesting and I am happy to see they tagged it as a "racecar" and not a future everyday car. It wouldn't last twenty seconds on a road near me. The pavement would first demolish the undercarriage. I have trouble enough with my present day car who has just a small panel of electrical chips. When one of those goes out the car can be disabled. I would hate to see what would happen when maybe something as simple as the lighter doesn't work in this one. There's the Kerastase Hair Coach which is supposed to tell you how damaged your hair is. Ummm... maybe looking in a mirror would be easier. The 42tea. a gizmo which tells you if your water is hot enough to brew a certain type of tea. Now I never knew you had to have different temps of water to brew different types of tea, and I am not thrilled with knowing that now. I laughed when I saw the Smarter FridgeCam. There is no way I would want someone to be able to look inside my ice box. I keep it as clean as I can but that's just a plain invasion of privacy. The Lovebox and the Catspad are just too stupid to even mention. I am glad I didn't know about this show, and really glad I don't have the money to waste my time going to it. |
Papering the World I sat on the front stoop of the small apartment building where I lived, holding my four inch wide and eight inch long piece of notebook paper. My name was written on the top line and my address was written on the back on the last two lines. This would be the second year I would be participating in the New Year's tradition, started by my grandfather about ten years ago. The object of the exercise was to write your Name, City and State on a line and pass the piece of paper along to a perfect stranger. The stranger would write their name, city and state on the next line and then pass it along. When the paper was full, back and front, it would be mailed back to me. It was a thrill to see all the places the paper had been. It had taken until last August, right about the time I gave up hope of ever seeing it again, to end up in my mail box. The paper had been to five different States in the U.S.A. and two countries, Ireland and Egypt. Some of the names were strange sounding and unpronounceable. There was no telling where this year's paper would travel, or even if it would come back. There had been three years my grandfather had received no reply. I stood up and saw a man dressed for the cold chill in the air. I walked up to him, handed him the piece of paper and explained quickly what had to be done. He looked at me strangely at first, but then smiled, nodded and shoved the paper into his overcoat pocke |
| If you had to resort to some kind of evil shenanigans or trickery in order to increase your chances of winning this blogging challenge, what would be your plan of attack? I think the first thing would be to announce "copy and paste" would be one of my greatest assets in my book of tricks. I have found you can put any subject followed by the word "blog" into the search bar and will come up with multi spots to use your favorite tool. In Yahoo search bar I put in "Win Blogging Challenge Tricks" and waa-laa I got five plus pages of places I could go to find out what tricks I could use to win a blogging Challenge. There are hundreds of people out there willing to "help" you win any challenge you care to enter. Additionally: • I would search for a really obscure author of a blog on the subject I need to voice a wanted or unwanted opinion on and quote them extensively. • I would contact the person running the blog and make myself very well known to them. Find them on Facebook or any of the other sites and be on when they are. • I would write scathing reviews of other's blogs, cutting as deep as I could. (P.S. This is a very hard days entry to answer. I have a whole lot of trouble being "mean" and "sneaky". Sorry if it is not a good entry.) |
Are you on the road, or are you safely at home? Think about it... Beep... Beep.... I am always on the road, headed toward the sun. There is no GPS and only a few sign posts. I will admit I have stopped at a few places I thought were interesting, like getting married, having three children and watching the birth of my five grandchildren. I've weathered all type of road conditions, like illness, loss of loved ones and being alone. Life's pot holes can be deeper than you first think. At various times others have joined me on my meandering, hill and mountain filled trip through life. They have given me words of wisdom, pointed out interesting places along the way and helped me keep my wheels turning. These individuals have stayed for various amounts of time and have also left and then hitched another ride at a different time. I'm fine with this trip. I am really not sure I would want to be "safe at home", because I would miss so much. I would miss the joys of finding out what is just around the bend, hoping every time it is not a hairpin turn. I would miss the people with whom I have met who I have laughed and cried. If you pass me on my road, please wave, smile and yell hello. |
| Not Ever Going and You Can't Make Me I live in Florida, in the United States. There is a lot of green, a lot of water and most of the State has a thin to wide band of sand around it. This is all well and good. I love the green, and I love the water, but I have no interest in going and spending the day at the beach. I know this sounds almost sacrilegious, but I hate sand. This being said, I have never visited any of the deserts of the world and I have no plans on ever going anywhere personally near them. I will admit I have several pictures saved on my computer of different desert scenes, because I think the patterns the winds make in the sand is fantastic. I have several pictures of the pyramids, because I think they are a beautiful feat of engineering. I have several pictures of desert plant life and animal life, because I am in awe of how such beauty can thrive with virtually no water and an unrelenting sun. I even have multi pictures of Florida beaches, mostly of sunrises and sunsets. As you can tell the recurring theme is I have "pictures". Just because somewhere is beautiful to look at does not mean I would enjoy going there. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
My Body, My Life Does any government have a right to say what you can or cannot do with your body? I would be willing to take a guess and say the over whelming answer to this question would be a resounding "NO". After that is yelled to the heavens by every group imaginable around the world there would also be a quieter chorus of "But..." A large part of the human condition is the wish and need to be in control. We want to control what our life is, and for most this is possible. This need to control can easily extend past our own little area of the Earth we occupy. Control can become a heady power, a psychological drug, pushing some to want to control others outside their personal life's orbit. It can be accomplished through rhetoric we have difficulty refuting, and though gain such as money or more power for the one being controlled. Governments, made up of people who have learned how to control others, have always and will always try and convince us the laws or rules they devise and enforce are for our own good. The lawmakers, most in good faith, want to protect us from others and from ourselves. They want us to be healthy, so they start thinking of all the things which could hurt us both physically and mentally. Things like drugs, who we live with, who we physically love, where we can go, and how we should treat others are just a few examples. I know this sounds like an excuse for not giving a firm, unequivocal "NO". Yes, I believe human beings should be able to do what they want with their body, both physiologically and physically, but unless you live in a bubble everything you do and say will have some ramifications in the world. There has to be rules of engagement. With any luck the rules will take into consideration the human being is a rational being for the most part. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
Finger Talk Today's prompt, a quote by Isaac Asimov, (1) tells a truth many of us know, but have never been able to verbalize. It came from a man who between 1950 and 1996 gave us over five hundred works of literary art. (2) He wrote about everything from possible life on other planets, to present day and futuristic life on the little blue ball we call Earth. How many times have you sat down at a blank page having no idea or maybe only an inkling of an idea about what you wanted to write. You get a small thought and type it out. This thought leads to another thought and then another. You haven't consciously stopped in-between each thought, they just keep coming. This is what Mr. Asimov was talking about. I tell people my characters tell me where the story is going. In my head I have my characters, I have the setting I want them to start out in. I have the very first move, which might be a kiss, a touch, or a door slamming. In my mind's eye, that space at the front of your forehead between and just above your eyebrows, I see my characters start to move and with my inner ear I hear them talking. I type what I "see" and what I "hear". There are times I just type and then go back and read what I typed when the sentence, paragraph or page is complete. Sometimes it is jibber-jabber, but on that rare occasion it is brilliant or at least good enough to keep. My fingers have literally told me what was in my head. There are times this method has backfired, and told me things totally unrelated to the story, but for the most part, my subconscious stays on track for short periods of time. If you have never tried this method, I recommend it for the times you have the dreaded writer block. Just start typing. Don't worry if it's even about your story, because eventually the exercise will take you where you didn't know you wanted to go. Just type. Let you fingers think. (1) "Writing to me, is simply thinking through my fingers" ... https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/i/isaac_asimov.html (2) A List of Isaac Asimov's Books ... http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/asimov_titles.html ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
The Weight of the New Year Stayed New Year Resolutions are all about making a promise to yourself, you are going to change something you personally feel is wrong or out of step with your world. It can be written on a piece of paper, painted on the wall, or just hidden away in your mind. You can tell a friend, family member or keep it to yourself as a deep dark secret. We all make them, although this year I have decided my New Year Resolution is to not make any New Year Resolutions. When I was fifteen I made a Resolution to lose weight. I have never been small, except unless you count my five foot two inch height. There is plenty of the rest of me to go around and around and around. I made sure I only took tuna and crackers to school to eat at lunch. At home I only ate what I thought was good for me. We didn't have computers then to be able to look up what was the yes' and no's of dieting, so I had to rely on family and friends for information. I checked out a few magazines and went to a few "meetings" at the local church for information also. I even exercised at least once a day. Everything was going fine. I actually was losing the weight and myself esteem started to skyrocket. My boyfriend and friends told me how proud they were of me. Little did I know at the time they would be the ones to send me back to day one of myself imposed challenge. It was May 1st. My boyfriend said he had to work on the 3rd, which was my birthday, so he was going to take me out for dinner that night. He even made the comment that he had carefully considered by wishes as to where we were going to go. He lied. . Before we could go to the restaurant, we had to stop by a friend's house, something about finding out an answer to a question. I told him I would wait in the car, but he insisted I come with him. We climbed the stairs to the garage apartment of his friend and he knocked. The door opened, he stepped back, being the perfect gentleman and let me walk in first. Two steps into the room and I stopped, gasping. All of my friends were there and were yelling, "Surprise" and "Happy Birthday". I turned to Nick with tears in my eyes. Never had anyone given me a surprise Birthday Party before. A hat was placed on my head and the party began. There was punch, which I was told was made with Diet Soda, but that was the extent of the diet stuff. A table had been set up in the small apartment with chips, dip, cookies and a beautiful, professionally done cake in the center. I looked at the offerings and knew my New Year's Resolution had just gone by the wayside. It was my party and I couldn't tell my friends I wasn't going to eat. They were important, far more important than a silly promise I had made myself. I was loved the way I was and the trouble my friends had gone to, said it all. It was a fantastic night. We played games, danced, kissed and acted silly. It was a day I will always remember even though it has been fifty plus years ago. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| Hope everyone had a great Christmas and their New Year is going to be fabulous. Just keeping this open until the contest opens in January, then I need to find something to talk about, lol |
| Hello everyone. Never done a blog before but I think this should be fun. I'm a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I work full time third shift for a retail company. I love to read and write. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
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