Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 18 August 2019

Annette - I actually have around 2,500 photographs of my trip, and that's after deleting the rubbish! I have to prepare to talk for 45 minutes to an hour, so obviously can't show them all! Some of the slides are 'titles', so don't really count. But I've still got half the trip to cover ...

I'm also on Auto Updates, but the new mega-update was massive. However, everything seems to be working much as before, if a tiny bit faster, which is never a bad thing. And everything - so far - looks the same as well, so goodness knows what it was all about!

Pat: the bit where you can click onto the bottom of the screen, on the left hand side, is now different. It still pops up for you to 'search' but is altered now. I use that to get to my Virgin account and hence my emails. I expect I should be doing that another way, but I'm self taught and have no idea what I'm doing most of the time!

A sunny day here, but very windy, so only managed a small amount of gardening. My OH has picked lots of plums and apples and distributed them around the neighbours. We stewed some apples to make apple sauce, which he's very fond of when we have roast dinners. I had another go at learning my new phone and I seem to be getting the hang of it.

Talking of photographs, I intend sometime to get on with picking up where I left off with our last cruise - nearly a year ago, now! I had only done a small part of it when I was interrupted by Christmas or something......

DIANE – Thank you for giving us a fresh new week. I hope the project is progressing.

This morn I stumbled out of bed, muddled my way to cereal, thinking I had church, quite forgetting I had been yesterday. It was only the paper, being a weekday one, that alerted me before I made a fool of myself to OH. It was chilly and raining yesterday, hail in some places, snow on Mt Lofty.

FB – Some docs are far too ready to prescribe pills and treat the patient as stupid, after all, they had done all the study, blah blah.

OG – I do hope J gets some results soon. Not knowing cannot be good for him or you.

LINDA – Photos are a menace for displaying the unwanted. I can look in the mirror and not “see” the neck getting scrawny. Not to mention those extra pounds round the middle.

HEATHER – Enjoy your “dropping in” family. We only see our eldest g-chn when we seek them.

PAT – I went off to church in my warmest slacks, thick jumper & overcoat and the rain beat down on the roof during the sermon (he just raised his voice), luckily it cleared briefly after service.

ANNETTE – We had 8 mm yesterday here. More in the Hills and of course there was hail in some suburbs. Rain expected to ease over next few days. The almond blossom has been out for weeks (usually starts July) and I have noticed prunus flowering last few days. The birds are thinking “spring”.

Hello to Everyone Else and Lurkers.

Good Morning. AQ -- The first thought every morning is "What day are we on?" - I don't always get it right!

Dry here at present and my OH has gone to golf today instead of tomorrow, just to confuse me. I must ring up the window blinds company, now that I've (should be we've!) decided which kind to have, so the Man can come and measure and quote.

Hope that OG and family get better news today.

I'm glad that I'm not alone in getting mixed up with the days!

It has been a busy but happy few days here, now back to what passes for normal....

Weeds are growing faster that I can pull them, Spiders are appearing because like me, they have given up on the weather and think it is mating season. A huge one was sitting on the carpet in the bedroom Katie was using on Saturday night. She was not happy and neither was I!

As for low maintenance gardens - when my front garden was redone in the Spring, the landscape gardener put a good layer of weedproof matting under the new stones. Alas! I'm out there pulling little weeds every other day. It has been so wet and the little beggers will root anywhere if there is some rain about, it seems!

OG - I made large lasagnes for Friday evening's dinner.

LYNETTE - I hope that your son's injuries continue to heal well.

FORESTBOAR - Doctors may mock Dr Google but when I was nursing it was not uncommon for junior doctors to carry little books around in their pockets. Now of course, they have smart phones to hand. I'm not suggesting that statins are bad but I do think that they are over prescribed. DIANE is our expert on medical research etc. She may or may not agree with me about the role of pharmaceutical companies in all this.

Morning all:  Popping in as am off to take friend to doc for cataract op on her second eye, then to her house to be with her OH, who is ailing and tends to be unsteady, then back to pick her up later.  My OH has offered to pitch in so we'll see how it goes.

Heather:  Spiders:  This last week I've noticed our Fall spiders are now building webs - across walkways, between various plants and fixtures, etc., something we typically don't see until September/October.  Big Pharma has a lot to answer for, especially in the area of opiods, which have decimated so many communities.  I hope they nail the b******s big time.  No idea about statins, but it's definitely a "more is better" as far as their bottom lines are concerned.

OG: Glad J ;went off to work okay.  Re mixed up days, I do it sometimes too, but somehow never get the weekends confused - they must get my DNA from all those years in the workforce.

PatO; Would you recommend the same round-the-world cruise to others?  Not that we're contemplating it, but I'd be interested to know what, if anything, you'd do differently.

AQ;  Spring signs down under and Fall signs  up top - it's all happening.. Hope you get more rain before the season is done.

Off to make myself respectable for friend's doc's office.

Annette, I would certainly recommend a world cruise! You only unpack once, you avoid airports, in four months you can really get into the swing of a totally different lifestyle. You don't make beds, go shopping, cook, do housework and be at the beck and call of the telephone/e-mails for an extended period. You see amazing places without too much disruption. BUT I would not recommend the ship I sailed on. It was the right size, but the organisation was appalling. The food was OK - the cabins were a good size and the 'housekeeping' staff were (almost) all lovely. The entertainment was not to my taste, but others enjoyed it. The guest lecturers without exception read their scripts in monotonous voices, and their material sounded as though they had been downloaded from Wikipedia. There was very little information available on board about places we were due to visit - I was very rudely told I should do my own research! I would also be more selective about the itinerary, and would definitely want to know whether we were going to be berthed in container ports where we were not allowed to walk!

A friend had been on a world cruise a couple of years earlier. She went with a different cruise company and had very few complaints. I doubt whether my bank balance or my stamina would allow me to do it again, but I have learned a lot, mainly what to research before booking. One person I met was on his SIXTH world cruise, and several had done it more than once.

J seems to have had a good day. In Service Training but none of his colleagues were there so he seems to have spent most of the day on various CBT courses in the library. He walked home, stopping for coffee on the way.

Nice sunny day and a bright evening.