This is Awkward . . .

Most days I get breakfast, read the newspaper and putter around, or attack tasks / projects I can’t avoid. Lately, there have been a ton of those  and I’ve been buried under lots of paper. In spite of concentrating so hard, a few days ago, I noticed something different:  SILENCE.

I live in the basement level of the house I share with my daughter and her family. The dehumidifier is going all the time. Or at least it was.

The hot water tank in the laundry-room was replaced about a month ago. Because of the water spill during the switch, I moved the dehumidifier in there to dry up the wet cement floor (decided not to spend the extra money finishing the floor). I shut it down afterwards.

In the past few days, the temperature has been going up outside. Yesterday felt like 35 degrees Celsius. Duh, time to put the dehumidifier back on. I decided not to move it back into the dining / kitchen area and left it where it was—a good thing too.

My dehumidifier is either having an identity crisis or is on strike. I can’t remove the water container—not that it’s full anyway but I keep checking—it keeps icing up inside. When I unplug it, the ice thaws and leaks (on the cement floor, thank goodness). I wonder if a good swift kick might help.

I’m was used to the constant hum it makes; why did it take so long to realize I live in tomb-like silence? Have I forgotten I have a radio? What does that say about me? I am not deaf if that’s what you’re thinking. My problem is neither my hearing nor memory. How can anyone be so busy she doesn’t stop to put some music on?

Anyway, I’ve no alternative. We are expecting a hot, dry summer (as in where’s the rain?). I’m ready to eat nails because I need to go shopping and don’t want to. My dehumidifier is only three years new. Drat.

By the way, now that I think of it, silence is golden or haven’t you heard that somewhere too? My worry is after I swallow the nails I will be screaming and it’s all my dehumidifier’s fault thus breaking the golden silence.

Mucking Around

Friends, Romans, countrymen . . . Oops! wrong speech

I’ve been buried in paper for weeks. Admittedly, I don’t work at the speed of light but let me assure you although I am slow, I am sure. This is my excuse.

Why am I here suddenly?  Robin Coyle found me lurking in her SPAM (not the kind that some people…you know). I hadn’t noticed all the comments I’d diligently sent out into the blogosphere were disappearing until today.

(I cheat when I’m supposed to be working. I sneak a peak  and read a few posts (don’t tell anyone…sh). I send a few comments— now and again. OK . . . I need to know what’s going on even if I am a wee bit furtive. And Busy. You try working your buns off without any fun!

Please check your SPAM. I might be lost in there.  Robin was kind enough to send instructions. If your comment disappears on a post after you hit ‘post comment’, click below. Type in the search problem box “comment spam” and a form pops up for you to fill out. Or just ignore my rambling as I muck about.

http://akismet.com/contact/

Good luck if you need it and please take me out of spam jail. I have been trying to keep up. Honest.

Is This the Stuff Some People Eat or the other one?

An unscheduled post . . . in the interest of saving dignity of all the little people—moi for one?

 I found this in my spam after I sent the following post:

https://letscutthecrap.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/tick-tock-tick-tock/

I’m not touching it until I know it’s the real thing.

If Robin Coyle can be REclassified to spam (which she is NOT), I’m not sure what this can be. Techie is not me. Should I open it? Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Joyce Takeuchi
Submitted on 2012/05/14 at 6:01 am

It has been recommended I delete the clickable e-mail etc. below above name so that no-one clicks by accident.

Hello Web Admin, I noticed that your On-Page SEO is is missing a few factors, for one you do not use all three H tags in your post, also I notice that you are not using bold or italics properly in your SEO optimization. On-Page SEO means more now than ever since the new Google update: Panda. No longer are backlinks and simply pinging or sending out a RSS feed the key to getting Google PageRank or Alexa Rankings, You now NEED On-Page SEO. So what is good On-Page SEO?First your keyword must appear in the title.Then it must appear in the URL.You have to optimize your keyword and make sure that it has a nice keyword density of 3-5% in your article with relevant LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). Then you should spread all H1,H2,H3 tags in your article.Your Keyword should appear in your first paragraph and in the last sentence of the page. You should have relevant usage of Bold and italics of your keyword.There should be one internal link to a page on your blog and you should have one image with an alt tag that has your keyword….wait there’s even more Now what if i told you there was a simple WordPress plugin that does all the On-Page SEO, and automatically for you? That’s right AUTOMATICALLY, just watch this 4minute video for more information at.   WordPress Seo Plugin              

Lost in WordPress black hole.

Waste Not; Want Not

I can’t help thinking about a recent birthday celebration I attended at a Chinese buffet-syle restaurant. It had been a glorious day and a happy time spent with family members. No cooking or cleaning or washing up afterwards. Perfect.

Some things bother me about what I saw. I watched well-dressed, intelligent-looking people act like children. They piled up their plates and then left good food to be picked up and discarded by the servers. There’s so much food (at buffets and weddings), customers go for seconds and waste again. One young man filled up his plate to a cone-shaped disgusting pile twice. I’m surprised he made it safely to his table without an ugly spill—more waste. Twice more he piled a plate but ate only half.

Maybe I’m too conservative. Why not take small portions of something you’re not sure of and go back if you love it. Stuff yourself if you must but don’t waste. I’m not going to mention all the starving people in the world our mothers used to warn us about.

I overheard someone say at a table behind me, “Can you imagine, there’s a buffet restaurant in (fill in a name here) which charges their customers an addition set amount per plate if  they leave food on their plate. Good way to lose customers,” she said.

 To my way of thinking it’s not a bad idea. Just because you pay for the buffet doesn’t mean you should thoughtlessly waste it. Does it? Yet, that’s what customers do without a second thought. It’s not free but they seem to believe because they ‘paid’ for it, anything goes: at the hot buffet, the salad bar, the sweet table and the fruit bar.

And then we have free food at weddings. Call me old-fashioned or a fuddy-duddy. I just don’t get it. Isn’t that considered waste too? Shouldn’t food be respected? Aren’t we lucky in North America to have as much as we do?

One more thing. I have seen people order in restaurants, eat half and complain they didn’t like it and expect a free replacement. The goal is the rip-off. Come on; who is getting ripped off in the end do you suppose?  

Maybe I should confess that I’m not allowed out much.

If we all give this a try, maybe the glitch will disappear faster. Am reblogging from:
Sharp Little Pencil

Sharp Little Pencil

Sorry, poem later – first, help for ALL my WordPress buddies!

We have located where that sneaky unemployed blockhead GWB hid the comment box check that has everyone on WordPress steamed.

On your Dashboard, left column, click “Settings.”
Under “Settings” menu, click “Discussions.”
On “Discussions” page, scroll WAY, WAY down… to just above Avatars section. You’ll find some checked boxes, including “Allow: Follow Comments.”

Uncheck that box.

Nobody really follows someone else’s comments, in my experience. But clicking this means that option (if someone DOES want updates on a comment they made) will disappear. That just means if they are hungry for your feedback, they will take the time to come back to your blog. Never happened to me because when there is a juicy comment, I copy my response to a personal email to the commenter and we continue the discussion there.

Hope this helps. And, as someone says…

View original post 37 more words

Tick Tock, Tick Tock

Something is going on. I wish I had an idea what or why.

Is anyone experiencing an increase in traffic in their mailbox? Is everyone you follow showing up in your inbox INCLUDING all the followers they have when they comment?

I’t been an eventful afternoon but I don’t have time for all this extra READING, which I can’t help doing because these other comments are in my Inbox after all.

Does anyone know how to get a complaint out to the right party at WordPress so this stops?

Another blogger just put out a lament also:

http://theinvisibleshadow.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/whacky-wordpress/

When in Doubt

One home safety rule is to never clip your car door opener inside your car (on the visor). I kept mine in the car for many years but I smartened up; it made sense to carry it in my purse. Until I smartened up again.

 The problem lies with my purse.  One in particular, a soft shelled one, is a problem because at any time it can be bumped (with books, grocery bags, my coffee mug), and the garage door becomes activated after I’m inside the house and I’m none-the-wiser for what just happened. Danger.

 Last night, our garage was pilfered. It’s my fault. I’d been out and had returned home around 10:30 PM with no idea I’d opened up the floodgates of temptation to any passerby.

 The next morning, my daughter advised me the garage door was wide open when my son-in-law left for work. She also thought she heard something but figured it was one of the girls moving around (in bed). Thank goodness she didn’t investigate. The laundry-room door, which opens to the garage, had been tampered with.

A case of beer went missing as well as some restaurant equipment (my son-on-law works for the restaurant supply business).

            I felt exposed, afraid and creeped me out.

This is not my house

In addition, I had an appointment in that afternoon. I couldn’t get my car out of the garage. It was locked somehow, even my remote didn’t work. I tried to contact my son-in-law on his cell phone and ordinarily I would have been able to get through. Just my luck he was off-line, busy training new employees.

I was stuck at home and forced to cancel my appointment. ‘ve never felt so helpless. I apologized for the accidental door opening.  It’s unfortunate I was locked in but who thinks of everything when you’re worried about your family? I do not carry my remote in my purse anymore.

If you park your car outside your house, never leave the remote inside. If your car gets broken into, your house is an oyster ready for plucking. Think about it.

Summer weather is coming. While entertaining in the backyard, make sure your front door and your garage doors are locked.