The Old Switcheroo

I finally did it! I changed to the new Blogger.

I am not going to change my template yet, but maybe soon I will play around with the idea. I have to confess that I am a bit leery of clicking that "change" button, not knowing what the options are until I do.

For any of you who have changed your templates? Was it horrifying? Or am I just being a ninny?

Top: My grandmother. The rear of the photo says, "C___hoeing in the garden, 1912. She would have been 24 years old at the time, but I'd swear she looks about 50, wouldn't you? This pic must be the oldest one I have. It is so faded that I had to darken it a little. It needs restoration, I know, and I ought to do that soon. It sure would be a shame to lose that image.

Mom and Dad. I think this might have been their wedding day, October 1, 1935. They eloped, after dating for six weeks and mom was buried on their 50th anniversary.













That's my dad in the middle. I think this trio looks like a gang from a movie; sort of like Bonnie and Clyde or Al Capone. The man on the left appears to be wearing one of those trick glasses-big-nose-moustache things, but if he was, he wore it 24/7, because he appears in other photos with my dad too, looking just the same.....LOL










Yours truly at three months. I remember thinking....."What the heck is going on here?" Well, not really, of course, but don't I look like I might be a little concerned about what the photographer was going to do next?

 

Are You Complaining?

Are you complaining about snow and ice in your vicinity this winter? Maybe after you see these photos, you won't!

Antiques Roadshow ~

For some, it is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.


I watched last night as a man showed a painting his mother had been given sometime in the 30's by the painter, and I am sorry to say I don't remember his name. Both this man and the artist were from Pennsylvania.

The man related how his wife didn't like the painting and would not let him hang it in his living room, so it had been relegated to the basement for the last 30 years or so that the man had owned it. The art expert told a little bit about the history of the artist and the genre of the painting, and then said, "Maybe your wife will let you bring it out of the basement when I tell you that this painting, at auction, would bring between $80 and $120K!!

The man looked as though he might fall over dead from surprise and said "You're not kidding, are you?" "No", she answered. After a few more seconds of disbelief, he again said, "You're NOT kidding, are you?" Finally, it appeared to sink in.

Wouldn't you love to have been a fly on the wall when that guy went home and told his wife?

Bloggers Who Leave Us Hanging

Periodically I check my "closed blogs" file. In that file are those people who have gone on hiatus and stopped posting for a while. Recently I checked it and clicked a few names and found to my dismay that one of the people I used to really enjoy reading has left us for good. She was Arethusa of "No Stalkers Allowed". Edit: I am sorry to have confused anyone. I don't mean she is dead; she has decided to quit blogging!

I was very sad to see that she was leaving us for good; the only explanation given was that a family member had hi-jacked her blog. Since her writing was not intensely personal, I wondered why that was a problem - but I suppose I shouldn't second-guess a person's decision not to write anymore.

Arethusa, you will be missed. Definitely missed. Your posts on art and literature belied your tender years, and I learned from you and was led to see things from your viewpoint that I would never have noticed on my own.

Since you didn't allow comments on your last post, I am writing this here, and I sincerely hope you'll come back to see this. Wherever your life takes you (and I've no doubt it will be far) I wish you luck and much love.

And now - a note to the rest of you:

If you decide to quit writing your blog, please put up a last post. I won't insist that you explain why you are quitting, unless you really want to. But for those of us who might have some parting words, please allow comments on that last post - even if you have no desire or intent to ever go back and read them. I hate being left hanging, with something to say and no one to say it to.

Will Wonders Never Cease? :-/

I have been having a horrible time with my computer - and Blogger - and Haloscan - etc. for about 3 weeks now. I didn't connect it with anything in particular for a while, but then I read on someone's blog about how he had downloaded Internet Explorer 7 and what a pain it is. I think he removed it and that solved his problem. I had already downloaded it and I've been experiencing excruciating wait times for comment windows to pop open, and a few other problems as well. I had begun to think I had a virus, worm or adware.

There was at least one good thing about IE7, at that is it allows you to have open up to 4 windows at one time (with supposedly no degradation of speed). That way, I could open my blog, gmail, Bloglines and Michele all at the same time, and it was fairly easy to click from one to another. However, IE7 also provides a "phishing filter" which is supposed to weed out sites that do something bad (I can't remember what phishing is). When I loaded a blog or some site that I had not been to before, it took absolutely forever (well, it seemed like forever) to load. The little window across the bottom of the screen had a small square window with green waves going across it, to indicate that they were checking for "phishing". Well, Microsoft ought to get all the bugs out of it before it releases a new software, don't you think?? So, I wanted to get rid of this piece of crapola, but I was not clear on how to do it.

In our local newspaper, there is a weekly column called "Stump the Geeks". Maybe you have it too. Some wonderful person wrote to them, complaining about IE7, and on Sunday they gave instructions on how to delete it and go back to IE6. God bless 'em - I just did it and it worked and now I am back to the speed I used to have! It's so freaking fabulous it makes my head swim!

There is one more little thing, though, and I'm hoping one of you can help me. For the last 2-3 days, nearly everytime I get on the computer, I check to see if my firewall is on, and everytime it is OFF! Even though I have set it to be on and clicked okay. What is happening? Is it possible I could have a virus or worm or cookie that turns my firewall off? Would you advise me to turn off my computer every night, instead of leaving it on? HELP!

Tuesday, January 16th is also a special day: this is my second blogiversary! Little did I know two years ago that I would still be doing this everyday, and I certainly didn't know how much fun I would be having doing it! It must be rewarding; this is post # 977!

At the risk of being repetitive, I'll say yet again how much pleasure you bring me daily. I hope it never has to stop. Thank you for all the visits and comments, and thank you for your writings, which are interesting, humorous, educational and compelling enough to keep me coming back. Here's hoping for all of us a wonderful and productive year in 2007.