Drifting through life

Welcome back to Whimsical Wednesday! The day for your googled giggle that gets you over the hump that is Wednesday and sliding down into the weekend. We probably don't need this so soon after the Christmas/New Year/Australia Day feasting, but, Mmmm, donuts!

Tough question. I'm not bored with the blogging. I'm not disinterested. I still read all the blogs I used to and leave comments too.  I am here less than I used to be though. What's changed? It's the kindle. She calls to me....the books, the books. Come curl up on the couch and read....read.... So many stories waiting for me.

Welcome back to what irritates you Monday. This meme was began by Delores and I'm having fun being able to air some of my irritations publicly. Irritation #3 is related to work.  "if you have a flybuys* card, please scan it now". When scanning customers items we are required to ask if they have a FlyBuys * card. When using the self-serve checkouts however, the machine does the asking. As soon as you select "start" on the touch screen, a voice asks you to "please scan your first item". Fair enough. And then it reminds you about the card. "If you have a FlyBuys* card, please scan it now".  But it doesn't stop there.  It continues to "remind" you at short (very short) intervals until you've finished your shopping, paid and taken your receipt. I bought one item yesterday and in the time it took me to start, scan and pay, the machine requested that I scan a flybuys card four times. FOUR.  When I touched on &q

Welcome back to Sunday Selections! This once-a- week-meme was originally begun by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock , as a way to showcase some of the many photos we all take, but don't get around to showing on our blogs. The rules are very simple:- 1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title 2. link back to me, River, somewhere in your post 3. leave me a comment so that I know you've joined in and can come over and see what you've posted. I usually go with a theme for my Sunday Selections and this week I'm continuing with some photos that I took while in the Botanic Gardens recently. BEGONIAS  In one of the shade houses there is a large Begonia plant, I'm not sure what variety of Begonia it is, there are so many.   This one has speckled leaves and delicate pink flowers. Elephant's Child has one of these in her garden, perhaps she can tell us which variety it is.  This is a different plant,

Joining in once again with Toni and her A-Z,  "a....is for" meme, this week's letter is D and I bring you..... Davenport. I used to read about Davenports in fiction novels set in times past, but never really knew what they were. I imagined they were some kind of porch swing. Once I found out, I wanted one.  I didn't buy one though, for several reasons, one being I had no place to put a Davenport, another being I couldn't see myself actually using it. Similar to old style school desks,but fancier,  these small writing desks, have a sloped surface for comfortable writing that lifts up to disclose storage under the lid, for paper, envelopes etc. There are different styles, as with any furniture.  I quite like this one above with all the little drawers down the sides. The long and narrow storage box above the writing surface would be for pens and possibly the bottles of ink as well. This model has drawers above the writing surface also, perhap

I've noticed a lot more "anonymous" comments creeping in to my comments section. Most of them get sent straight to the spam folder, but there's enough of them getting through to annoy me, so like JahTeh , I have switched to Google Accounts only comments. Then I checked my spam folder and deleted what was in there. I hope all my readers can still leave comments......

Welcome back to Whimsical Wednesday! The day for your googled giggle that gets you over the hump that is Wednesday and sliding down into the weekend. Don't throw away those empty tins, Mum. Barbie needs a drum kit!

Started last week by Delores at The Feathered Nest, today is "what irritates you Monday" and for me, irritation number two is internet connections. More accurately, LACK  of internet connections. I'm living in an internet blackhole! Or so close to it, there's really not much difference. Just yesterday, I turned on my laptop, connected to the internet and got about ten minutes before being unceremoniously shut down. Three times.  Remotely shut down, with a nice little window saying"connection to remote computer has been reset and this port has been closed" or something similar, I don't remember the exact wording. This happens often.  Still, the times I'm able to get on and stay on serve me well enough, (just ignore the stamping of feet and throwing of stuff, okay?) But things are about to get worse, according to an article in last Saturday's newspaper. Here it is, word for word..... "Phone glut to jam networks   A bi

Welcome back to Sunday Selections! This once-a- week-meme was originally begun by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock, as a way to showcase some of the many photos we all take, but don't get around to showing on our blogs. The rules are very simple:- 1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title 2. link back to me, River, somewhere in your post 3. leave me a comment so that I know you've joined in and can come over and see what you've posted. I usually go with a theme for my Sunday Selections and this week I have photos of the lotus pond in our Botanical Gardens. I'd heard on TV that the lotus were flowering, so I grabbed my camera and caught the bus into town.  I have in my head that this is a Lily pond, but as you can see the flowers are Sacred Lotus.   There weren't as many open blossoms as I'd hoped for. So pink it's almost purple. As the seed pods develop, the petals begin to ope

Joining up again today with Toni  in her A-Z, a.....is for series, today's letter is C . And C is for......... C-foods. Years ago someone came up with the Seafood Diet, which is supposed to be mainly anything that comes out of the sea . Well, I've seen what's in our oceans lately,  rusting old ships,  dead people wearing concrete boots, , floating islands of plastic trash..... and I don't think any of that is appetising at all. Soon enough Sea Food became See Food - Eat Food, (any food) then someone somewhere made a list of  C foods that would keep any dietician happy. C abbage, C arrots, C elery, C apsicum, mini C apsicums are great, this one is a C hocolate C apsicum, quite sweet, but not actually chocolate flavoured. I made my own list of C-Foods, truly a dietician's nightmare. C hocolate. C hocolate cake C aramel C andy and so on. The list was quite long, but I didn't use it as a diet sheet.....really, I didn't and le

Dear TV stations, how dare you interrupt our advertisement viewing with snippets of "real" programs.  Sincerely yours, disgruntled watcher.  Week after week, our TV Guide has letters from viewers who are not happy with the number of advertisements disrupting our programs, whether they be weekly series or actual movies. For years now, the TV stations have ignored these. So.....maybe the above statement will get their attention.  I'm even more annoyed with previews of reality programs that run on for so long I feel as if I've watched a complete episode. Yes, I understand that advertising pays for our viewing, but most of what we see is old stuff. Repeats of repeats of repeats..... Surely that can't cost too much? Maybe they could show an entire episode of something and then have a full half hour of advertisements, before showing a whole movie , then another section of ads. They do it for the Home Shopping program, which is just one gigantic adve

Welcome back to Whimsical Wednesday! The day for your googled giggle that gets you over the hump that is Wednesday and sliding down into the weekend. just a lick of sauce, not too much now.....

I have a fan in the lounge room to create a breeze on hot days.... and on hot nights I've been dragging it through to the bedroom and adding an extension cord, so that I can run it while I'm sleeping. But I've decided to bring in the spare fan from the back porch and set that up in the bedroom instead. Ta Da! I laid the extension cord along the open doorway .... and fed it up behind the door to plug in by the bathroom mirror. then I taped the cord to the floor so it wouldn't kink up and trip me in the night. Because I didn't want to land face first here>>> Can you imagine explaining a forehead bruise shaped like a toilet rim? Anyway, it worked, I haven't tripped over that cord at all. I have, however, stubbed my bare toes on this . Twice. ah phooey!

Over at The Feathered Nest, my friend Delores has thought up a What Irritates You meme for Monday. I'm not sure if it will be a one-off or a weekly meme, but I said I'd join in if my internet connection agrees to play nice.(so far, so good) Delores, in turn, said she'd be happy to hear "what chips my paint". Well, there's irritation  numbero uno right there. Chipped Paint. Actually chipped nail polish. Over the years I have tried many different brands of nail polish, all of them claiming to last and last no matter what. Hah! They lie. Or maybe they don't.....I'm sure the problem is my nails , not their formula, since I see women at work (and everywhere else) with beautifully manicured nails with nary a single chip on any of them. I do my nails, they look lovely and by the end of the working day they are chipped to hell and back after scrabbling around in the till for change (coins) to give customers. At other times they chip for no re

Welcome back to Sunday Selections! This once-a- week-meme was originally begun by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock , as a way to showcase some of the many photos we all take, but don't get around to showing on our blogs. The rules are very simple:- 1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title 2. link back to me, River, somewhere in your post 3. leave me a comment so that I know you've joined in and can come over and see what you've posted. I usually go with a theme for my Sunday Selections and this week I have a selection of photos from 1990. 1990 started out badly for us. Three family members died in a road accident, I had major surgery and "died" on the table, being revived with two full blood transfusions, then we had to sell our home and move to a rental. But after the dust had settled, things began to look brighter. My two youngest children settled in to their new schools and made some friends..