Peter Diamandis’ Laws for Life

I was on Facebook today, and my friend, Steve Sheets included this link for Peter Diamandis’ Laws for Life.

I love this so much!

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Unfortunately, the first thing I need to fix (rule 1) is Blogger. You many or may not have noticed that this blog is published on Blogger. Earlier this week, they removed a beautiful, elegant, easy-to-use interface, and replaced it with what looks like the first try at a really clunky, difficult, problematic way of publishing a blog.

I have loved Blogger, but this mess is enough to make me investigate trying another way to post my blog. They've taken precision tools that are a snap to use, and replaced them with crayons, but not so easy to use.

I won't enumerate all it's flaws, but this has to be fixed!

If my blog isn't up to snuff for a bit, that's the reason why.

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I got on the internet today, and there were all sorts of conflicting reports about Social Security. A statement by the President that Social Security may not be paid on the third (when I get mine), and other reports that it's separately-funded, and will go out no matter what.

There are many people who depend on SS for their income. They spent their lives paying into SS, and now, when they need it, the possibility is that it may be pulled out from under them is just not acceptable. Particularly when it seems to be proposed as a way to allow millionaires to cut their taxes. They should be grateful. I realize that the US income tax on over a million dollars is a lot, but it's nothing compared to England, where the Beatles song, Taxman is accurate: "One for you, nineteen for me!" and "Be thankful I don't take it all."

I can't help thinking about a song I loved back in the '70s, called Streets of London by Ralph McTell.

In spite of being so sad, it's very beautiful. I'm afraid that this is what we're going to be seeing all over the US, possibly very soon. I live in a building where virtually everyone is on Social Security, and the whole apartment building may be emptying out next month if the Republicans have their way.

In case you're feeling sad from that song, here's a ragtime medley, also by Ralph McTell. It seems to be mostly Windy and Warm.

Here's a version of Windy and Warm for comparison.

It's always been one of my favorite songs!

That cheered me up a bit!

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Tonight we'll be having a usual Tuesday night line-up on TV.

We have White Collar and Covert Affairs on USA, and The Nine Lives of Chloe King on ABC Family.

I know that Chloe is a kids or teen program, but, like Harry Potter, it's good. Possibly not as good as Harry, but worth a watch.

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I want to try posting a photo, too, just to see how the process works with this version of the interface, so (hopefully) here's a photo of some kind. I haven't decided what I'd like to put up here as a test.

This is just a photo I had hanging around that seemed funny. The process for putting up photos is almost the same as it was.

I have some yarn ordered, and I really thought it would be here today. Maybe I'll have some knitting input for tomorrow or Thursday!

Have a wonderful evening!

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Happy Summer!

Today is the Summer Solstice, otherwise known as the first day of Summer! It's (obviously) the longest day of the year. You can get more sun today than any other day of the year!

Some people would argue that Memorial Day Weekend marks the beginning of Summer, and it certainly seemed to where I live. We had cool weather this year until that weekend, when it suddenly shot up into the 90s, and hasn't had a high lower than about 80 degrees for any day since.

I hope your first day of Summer has been the best!

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I think Susan was in an especially good mood yesterday or something. A asked her if I could have the doorbell since it's installed with Velcro, and she said that would be all right.

I also got a plan to deal with having to check in twice a day to prove I'm still alive OK'd. It's not in effect yet, but will be soon. What a relief!

I also put a notice up on the bulletin board to see if there are other people in the building who have hearing problems to form sort of a support group. I haven't heard from anybody yet.

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The only real science fiction that's on tonight is the second episode of The Nine Lives of Chloe King on ABC Family.

But, if you like spy fi, Covert Affairs will be airing a brand new episode on USA. Immediately before it, a new White Collar will be on, and that's always lighthearted fun.

TNT will be having a new episode of Memphis Beat, too, which I've gotten fond of mostly for the music. Oh, and it's got heart!

Have a fabulous evening!

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Fiberarts Content Is Back!

For all you people who are not interested in fiberarts, skip down. I may get to another topic before I'm finished.

I got a catalog from Mary Maxim on Monday stating that they have 500 new items. They used to have those  catalogs with all the tacky, ugly yarn. They still do have that kind of yarn, but they have a lot of really fabulous yarns at great prices, too!

Most of the new items are not yarn, but some of them are. I've been going through the listings of new yarn, and will list some of them for you. Bear in mind that since these are new, I haven't had a chance to try them. I'm just passing along information, here.

For you sock knitters, they now have Simply Sock Yarn. They do not, unfortunately still have the wonderful Comfort Sock Yarn that they used to have at such a great price. I'm finishing up the last sock from the batch I ordered from them right now.

For novelty yarn interest, they're now carrying Bernat Boa Yarn. I've tried this before, and it's a very interesting novelty. It feels (and looks) like knitting with feathers. I think it's listed as new because there are new colors. Another novelty fur yarn is Patons Moxie Yarn. They appear to have taken the "fur" part literally, and it only seems to be available in colors that could be natural fur grown by something. More fur yarn in decidedly unnatural colors is available in Red Heart Fur Sure. I, personally like it in eggplant. For the ultimate in novelty yarn, try Red Heart Sashay, which is supposed to be a self-ruffling yarn. You can get a free ruffled scarf pattern (shown below) for this yarn if you register and sign in. I have no idea how this works to make the ruffles.

The scarf shown was made with one skein, but I think I'd like it better with two. But it's still not bad for about $5!

If you're looking for a hand-dyed, multicolor effect, there's Lion Brand Amazing, which has just come out with some new colorways, so maybe that's why they're listing it as new. There's also the Mary Maxim sport weight wool blend yarn, Mardi Gras, which is not new, but has come down considerably in price.

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Still on the fiberarts topic, but switching gears, Holly sent me an email about a sheep named Shrek. You can read about it here. Shrek managed to evade the shearers for seven years, and when they finally caught him and sheared him, the fleece weighed 60 pounds! Knowing Merino fleeces, probably half of that weight was lanolin, dirt and vegetable matter, but that's still an incredible weight for a Merino fleece!

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World Wide Knit in Public Day (which is not a day, but a bit more than a week starts on the 11th of June. That sounded like a long way off when I read about it a few weeks ago, but it's coming up fast (Saturday). You can click on the link and it will lead you to lots of organized events in a lot of different places, but if there's no organized event, you can just go out somewhere and knit while you're there. Pick a project that's easy to carry around, and go!

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Some of the new seasons of Summer shows have begun, even if USA did call the first episode of the new season of Covert Affairs the "Season Finale!" If any of you haven't seen it yet, it's more of a spy fi than science fiction. It started last night, right after the season premier of the delightful con called White Collar.

Doctor Who is continuing on Saturday evenings on the BBC in America's Supernatural Saturday. I, personally, find their idea of Supernatural Saturday a bit disappointing, since it consists of one hour of new programming which follows a rerun of the previous week's hour. I really like the idea of rerunning that hour, but my idea of an evening of programming is more like 4 hours. Once they've run through all the new Doctor Whos, they'll be switching off to another show. One of the new ones will be Battlestar Galactica. If you haven't seen it and always wanted to, keep an eye on Saturday evenings on BBC in America. They'll be rerunning it from the very beginning. They're also advertising several new science fiction or supernatural shows for Saturday evenings.

One of their new shows is called Outcasts.  It'll premiere on June 18th, and there's far more then I can put here if you click the link. When it comes out, it will replace Doctor Who, which is having it's mid-season finale on Saturday, and will finish up the season in the Fall.

It's getting late, and I want to watch some TV (if my TV is still working). I've (finally!) found an LCD TV
and ordered it through Amazon, and it will hopefully be here next week.

I hope your TV set is healthier than mine, and that you have a great week!

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Happy D Day Anniversary

This is the anniversary of the D Day landings in Normandy.

Having lived in Normandy, I have been to some of the beaches where the landings happened. The first place I visited was Arromanches, which is a pretty little town with a museum about the invasion.

I lived in France from around the middle of September, 1964 to just at the beginning of October in 1965, and at that time, de Gaulle was in power, and he really didn't like Americans. There was a cartoon in one of the newspapers showing him at one of the cemeteries of Americans who defended France in the war saying "Americans, go home." The whole country seemed to have adopted this attitude, and one time there was even a yarn store owner in Evreux who refused to sell me yarn because I was American!

Once we got to the vicinity of the beaches, though, it was a different story! The people there clearly remembered being invaded by a hostile force, and all the fun that entailed, and they remembered even more the D Day invasion. It must have been spectacular for the people who lived there, because all the people we spoke to had very vivid memories of it! And as soon as they realized we were American, they rolled out the red carpet for us.

I went with my daughter, Holly, who was around a year old, and my then-husband. It was a grey, overcast, cold day.


During the ride there, we went through a section of the country where there were lots of fields with hedgerows, which I hadn't seen before. France, at that time, was very scenic because a lot of it was still as it had been about 500 years ago. For instance, we were the only people in our town (Boisset-les-Prévanches) who actually had running water. We had hot running water, too. Several times, I watched the little old lady who lived next door pumping water from the well in front of her house.


Anyway, when we got to the museum, most of the people were allowed to walk around and see the exhibits, like you usually do in a museum, but when we came in, they realized that we were from the United States, and found someone who spoke English to show us the museum. There was a movie about it, and they got special headsets for us so that we could watch the movie in English rather than French.

After the museum and a bit of a walk around the town, we drove along the coast, stopping in a few places to look around, as far as Utah Beach, where we got out to walk a bit. We stayed in the car more than we otherwise might have due to the extreme cold weather that day.

At Utah beach, though, we walked around a bit, although there was really nothing to see at the beach other than the beach itself. Holly's dad pulled off one of her mittens, and stuck her hand in the freezing water of the English Channel. She screamed bloody murder, and it must've been painful. I was stupid enough to put my feet in ice water one time, and I'll never do that again! He said he did it so that Holly could say that she'd stuck here hand in the English Channel, and then he never bothered to tell her about it when she got older. But I didn't notice him sticking his hand in the icy water!

There's not much to tell of my trip. The Wikipedia entry tells more about the actual invasion, but maybe what I can remember is a bit more alive than the bare entry.

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There's not a lot on TV today (other than the White Collar rerun marathon on USA). There's a rerun of Hawaii 5-O, but we're stuck in the doldrums between the May sweeps and the July sweeps. A few new shows will be coming on later in the month because they want people to find them and build up a following before the July sweeps (which actually starts at the very end of June).

Two shows that will start their season tomorrow, include White Collar and Covert Affairs, and I really like both of them. Check them out!

Speaking of TV, I've been trying hard to replace my ever-increasingly-malfunctioning TV. I've worked my way down to where I'll be satisfied with a 19 inch model, or anything, really that lets me watch what my TiVo is recording.


I found yet another TV from WalMart, and tried to order it online today, but they've got a new thing that's supposed to make your payment more secure. It looks like it makes your payment much less secure to me, and I really didn't want to transmit all the information there is about me over the internet, where it could be a jackpot for ID thieves, so I still haven't found one to order.


I hope you're having a great week!

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Scary Monday Night

I've been wanting to see the movie, Avatar, for a while. I considered renting it from Blockbuster, but then realized that I could get a copy of it free (for a week) from the library! I asked for it to be sent to the library right behind my apartment building, and yesterday I went and picked it up.

But I'd had trouble connecting everything when I got my TiVo, so had to plug in the DVD player, and wanted to plug in the DVD recorder, too. After I was finished watching TV last night, I did that, and thought I'd blown out the RF modulator that I need to connect things because the TiVo doesn't have an RF output.

I couldn't get anything to work! I thought I wouldn't get to see any more TV until I could replace the modulator, and wouldn't have enough money to do that until the third of September.

But I did some more investigation today, and finally discovered that if the modulator doesn't have something plugged into it, or doesn't have something that works plugged into it, it will not function. The true culprit of the piece turned out to be the DVD recorder, which either doesn't work, or it's RCA jacks don't work. I have to do some more research on that.

The recorder is going to be more expensive to replace than the modulator, if I have to do that, but at least I can watch TV at the moment. The bonus is that the DVD player is hooked up, it works, and I can watch Avatar later tonight, after all the good TV is over!

Speaking of which, tonight there are new episodes of: Warehouse 13 (I think this is the season finale), White Collar, Covert Affairs, and Memphis Beat. Almost all the new episodes of shows this week are season finales. After all that, I'll be checking out Avatar. If I can find the remote, that is. It's been so long since the DVD player has been hooked up that I'm not sure if I can remember where the remote is.

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I finally got the last book in Meg Cabot's Airhead series (Runaway) from the library yesterday, and, as with all her books, it's a fast read. You may recall that I mentioned I bought the second book, Being Nikki, for the Nook application on my phone. It's the first real ebook I've bought, and it was an interesting experience. I suspect the actual reading might have been more comfortable on a real Nook, but it was OK. On my phone, it ran the battery down fairly quickly, which shouldn't happen on a real Nook. Otherwise, it was enjoyable.

The one surprising thing about it is that it was suddenly over! With a real book, I can see that I'm near the end, and I kind of expect it to finish soon, but this just suddenly ended.

Part of that was because the three books are really more of one big story that's been chopped into three pieces. The first two don't really have endings, they just stop. I'm already near the end of the third book, and I'm assuming that it's going to have an actual end.

The one thing that I could really get addicted to is being able to decide I want to buy a book, selecting it, and then having it just be there, ready to read! No going to the bookstore, or ordering online and waiting for it! Just press a few buttons, and the book you want to read is magically in your hands! And some of the money in your account is magically in the hands of Barnes and Noble!

It's truly amazing the first time. If I get a Nook WiFi (which I'd like to do), I could download a book at home without having to plug it in to my computer, but with the phone, I can get a book to read almost anywhere!

The twenty-first century is truly amazing!

Eureka is on, and I'm going to go catch the last few minutes of it.

Have a wonderful evening!

Update on the Imagination Contest

If you read this blog all the time, you know that I set myself the challenge of entering the Lion Brand Imagination Contest.

Well, it has to be submitted tomorrow, and I'm not even done the knitting, let alone the finishing, which is going to be extensive, so this post will be short, and you can expect nothing up here tomorrow!

As usual, it's my own fault. I have a hard time finishing/letting go of projects because if they're done, what will I have to do?

And this is especially boring for you because, I can't publish photos of it! You're going to just have to imagine that I'm busy and doing lots of really neat stuff to finish this.

But if you want some really entertaining stuff from a knitter, you should read today's post from The Yarn Harlot. Actually, her post isn't really about knitting, it's about baseball, and it has a very funny science fiction twist at the end.

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If you're reading this and it's still daytime, the SyFy Channel is running a Primeval marathon on their daytime rotation as I write.

But don't touch that dial just yet! BBC in America is doing the same thing with Torchwood!

There's a new Warehouse 13 on SyFy tonight, and a new White Collar and Covert Affairs on USA, too!

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I have to get going. I have a lot of knitting and even more finishing to do, and somewhere in all this, I really need to get some groceries, so I'm going to be very busy today and tomorrow.

Have a wonderful week, and I'll be back later!

I Ignore the Universe for One Day, and It Gets into Trouble

I had lots to do yesterday, and was online for about a half hour, and then went to do my stuff. As a result, I didn't get to read much on Facebook or really connect with other people.

I thought that would be all right. I mean how much trouble could all of you get into, right?

Well, John's sister, Doris had a heart attack and died. I found out about it when I got on Facebook today.

I feel sad about that. The last time I saw her was right after she'd had heart surgery. There's so much I want to say, but words are failing me at the moment. We'll miss her.

Then I read down further on Facebook and find that his daughter, Sara's boyfriend was in a theater when someone started shooting randomly. He's OK, but someone else was shot and died.

What's wrong with the world? I can't leave it alone for a minute!

There were a bunch of things I wanted to talk about today, but this has really taken the wind out of my sails. Everything will be postponed until later except for the TV info.

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Tonight, the new shows on include: Warehouse 13 (SyFy), White Collar, and Covert Affairs (USA).

On Saturday, BBC in America will be having a Doctor Who marathon, culminating in The Pandorica Opens, and The Big Bang, two episodes comprising a two-part story, and the last two episodes of the season. They showed The Pandorica Opens last week, and it is so good! I expect that the final episode will be equally good, maybe better.

And, as if that weren't enough, it will be followed by the first episode of the new season of Being Human.

I am so excited to see the last episode of the season of Doctor Who, but am expecting to be really sad that it's over.

For any of you out there who haven't been watching the Doctor and thought there was no way for you to catch up, BBC in America is giving you the chance to see the whole (new) thing, right from the beginning. They've been airing Doctor Who episodes every day at 5 pm (here), and they've cycled through, and will be starting with the first new episode (Rose) on Thursday!

Do not be discouraged by watching by the first episode. It's almost a rip-off of one of the old series, and not one of the better ones, either, but it sets things up for what is to come, and the stories get better and better as the season progresses. For Torchwood fans, you can get to see the beginning of Captain Jack Harkness in the two-part story The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances! Those two are followed by Boomtown, which has a kind of reunion party vibe, and Rose wears a beautiful knitted scarf. And learn about the founding of Torchwood itself in Tooth and Claw. Eventually, you'll work your way along to Blink, which is one of the best little horror stories I've ever seen. If you don't want to see Doctor Who, watch for Blink anyway, because it's a teriffic stand-alone story that you won't want to miss! And Captain Jack reappears from time to time, and fills in the blanks about what happened when he was absent from Torchwood.

On Friday, there will be a new Eureka and Haven on SyFy! Haven (the series) is based on a Stephen King book, The Colorado Kid, which I haven't read, and so can't comment on, but the series is shaping up to be good.

So, now I'm caught up on the TV part of the blog for the next few days, at least through Saturday.

I plan to blog before then, but if something happens and I don't be good and have fun!

Just Another Tuesday

There's not too much to talk about today. I've been busy trying to earn some money by finding neat stuff to sell in the website I'm putting together. I think I've found at least one super product that all you knitters are going to love!

Of course, there will be patterns in both printed and PDF format, and I'm working on those, too. But until I get some of the products I want to sell and test them, I'm going to be a boring person who's busy with other things.

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Tonight is the premier of Covert Affairs and White Collar on USA! I'm really excited about Covert Affairs! 

That's Christopher Gorham and Piper Perabo shown above. If I understand it correctly, it'll be spy fi, but with the usual USA twist.

I'm still waiting to get the card installed tomorrow by the Comcast repairman in a policy that's intended to rip off customers. I still hate Comcast! Until it's installed, I can see some TV, but not everything. They really seem to be trying to punish me for getting a TiVo (translation: a DVR that actually works as opposed to the piece of malfunctioning junk I got from them).

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I have lots to do at the moment, I just wanted to check in with you and let everyone know that I'm still alive and haven't forgotten you.

In the meantime, have fun, and I'll be back with another post in a couple of days!