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Name: Kate
Country: United States
State: California
Metro: Sacramento
Birthday: 1/2/1944
Gender: Female
Interests: Reading, music (listening, attending performances and festivals), gardening, hiking, snow shoeing, genealogy.
Expertise: I don't consider myself an expert at anything ... only a very enthusiastic amateur at many things.
Occupation: Other
Industry: Computers (Internet)
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
4/9/2002
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| I Am NOT Dead!!!
But I certainly have been away a long time! Part of the problem is that Comcast arbitrarily decided to stop accepting my daily subscription digest. And life has been so squirrely that out of sight meant out of mind. So I've changed my e-mail address here, in the hopes that maneuver will foil Comcast and I'll start getting my daily updates from all my friends.
I'll try to bring you up to date quickly and succinctly. It's been a fraught year.
First, and foremost, I had two best friends in high school. One of them was living in Alaska. She had to have quintuple bypass surgery last February, and then wasn't going to be able to live alone, at least not for some time. In the meanwhile, my finances were getting rockier and rockier, and I wanted to try not living alone any more, so I asked her to come live with me. Which she did, as soon as she was able to travel after the operation (and because MediCare only pays for so many days of convalescence ...) She arrived April 19th, went back in the hospital May 1st, was stepped down to a convalescent hospital May 5th ... and died of heart failure on June 16th. It was a desperate, difficult time. And it took a lot out of me -- coping with the grief, and just the physical requirements. I'm beginning to get myself back, but it's been a while.
Her death was a wake-up call for me. She was diabetic, as I am. She watched her diet, monitored her blood sugar, did all the right things. Except get the weight off. (In her defense, she had problems with her foot that made it impossible for her to exercise, and she believed in the Overcoming Overeating theory. It worked for her, but she hadn't lost weight yet.) Although I'm not as overweight as she was, I'm definitely too big for my own good. So I started paying attention to my diet again, started exercising regularly (water aerobics four times a week, walking when I could), started trying to lose weight. I lost 15#, but am back to struggling. Probably because of the next big revelation:
I've discovered that I'm adult ADD. What?! You'd think I would know a thing like that, long before this advanced stage of my life. But I didn't. It's getting worse with age, as so many things do. And it certainly explains a lot about why my life isn't working very well, why I never have enough time, why I can't finish projects, stick to regimes, etc. I'm doing something about it -- I'm in therapy, will probably go on medication to see if that helps, and am trying to find an ADD coach. I'm hopeful that even if I can't ever process time and money like normal people do, I can be better.
So that's where I've been, and what I've been doing. I missed you guys. I'll try to be here a bit more regularly.
It's finally unmistakably fall! A soft rain has been falling since yesterday, and I've got the back door open just enough to listen to the welcome sound of raindrops on fallen leaves. I've made a lovely great stew -- one of my favorite fall and winter dishes. The biscuits are baking now, and then it will be time to curl up in front of the television and enjoy a couple more episodes of Hamish MacBeth!
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| Once again I'm conspicuous by my absence -- this working 8 hours a day is for the birds! And I've been walking with the Walking Sticks (the local Volkswalkers group) as often as possible -- just to keep the collywobbles at bay & hopefully lose a bit of weight in the process.
It's been perishing cold here, at least by California standards. Snow level down as low as 1,000' and the Sierras brought to a standstill. It's all good, it's driven the drought away.
I have an insane urge to redo my web page. And I haven't the faintest clue how to do it, nor do I have the time to either read the directions or plunge ahead and learn from my mistakes. Sigh.
Only 2 more years until retirement, if I can hold out that long.
 The Currently doesn't seem to be working, but I'm reading Written in Blood by Caroline Graham. One of my favorite English cozy authors. After I get done with this one & the next one, then I'm off to read Cranford with a friend, in anticipation of the DVD becoming available this side the pond. And then ... who knows what I'll pluck out of that heaving mound of books in the spare bedroom, just waiting to be read!
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| I am SUCH a sucker for these lists!
So I heisted
this from k8tthelate. Feel free to give a go yourself:
These are the top 106 books most
often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users.
Instructions: Bold what you have
read, italicize what you started and couldn't finish, strike through what
you couldn't stand, and underline what you loved.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of
Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers
Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and
Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind
Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : A
Memoir in Books (but it's in my TBR mound)
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The
Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : A
Novel
A Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of
Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte
Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future
King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian
Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
To
the Lighthouse
Tess of the
D'Urbervilles
Oliver
Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Miserables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the
Fury
Angela's Ashes : A
Memoir
The God of Small Things
A
People's History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly
Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable
Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlett Letter
Eats, Shoots &
Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
The Mists of
Avalon
Oryx and Crake : A Novel
Collapse: How
Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The
Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the
Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre
Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership
Down
Gravity's
Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
Looks like I have some reading to do, especially those Russians. They're always so dark and ponderous, not exactly my cuppa tea (which would explain why I haven't read many of them, wouldn't it?)
Well I'm off to cook myself a bit of dinner, & then settle myself down with the next installment of Midsomer Murders courtesy of Netflix. I've hauled all my Caroline Graham books out with an eye to rereading them. I get these sorts of strange fancies when the weather is dark, damp & dreary -- the way it's been the last week or so. I'm finding out that I really need a light box, & possibly more medication. I can't afford either at the moment. 8-(
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| It's the season, isn't it? Things are proceeding mostly on schedule here -- the tree is up and decorated, and this year I love it! It's just the right shape, just the right height, etc.
 I collect snow globes, and belsnickles, and rocking horses. True to my nature, I have LOTS of all of them, and they're all twinkling in the living room. For the first time in years, I look forward to sitting there at night, surrounded by all the spirit of Christmas.
All the presents are bought, all the packages that must be mailed are mailed, but one -- which will go out this morning and is only going about 40 miles up the hill, so it should be all right. There's only the wrapping left to do, and another batch of my world famous rum balls for The Kid, who demands them every Christmas. Nothing like family traditions, is there?
I however, am busier than I can even say -- I'm still on probation at the new job even though I'm full time permanent. Which means I don't get paid for holidays. I didn't realize that, took the customary 2 days off at Thanksgiving, and have been behind the 8 ball ever since. It didn't help that I went to Santa Cruz for a Christmas dinner with "The Ladies" (we all worked together back in '82-'83, and have been meeting regularly ever since then.) I'd intended to work on the train, but discovered the trains don't have WiFi. Couldn't work on my friend's computer either as everyone has the password on automatic in their computers & couldn't give it to me. Lost another couple of days there, but I just about have that made up. Looming ahead is Christmas, New Year's and my birthday -- my fellow Capricorn friend and I are going into the City. And I need to get those hours made up, all in the same week that they are lost.
Worst of all, there are so many movies out that I want to go see, and just don't have the time! I started reading the Golden Compass while I was in Santa Cruz -- it's delicious, and I can't wait to get the book & finish it (& read the rest of the trilogy), and to see the movie. Along with Enchanted, Mr. Magorian's Wonder Emporium, The Waterhorse, & Sweeney Todd. Me, who never goes to movies!
A wonderful Christmas season to each any every one of you! May your stockings be full as well as your hearts, and may you get exactly what you whispered in Santa's ear. Nollaig chridheil huibh!
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I have no idea why my red bars don't show up -- how frustrating!
Well I suppose I can't get away with just posting a quiz since it's been so long since I've written here.
Here's all the news that's fit to print:
1. We didn't do the puzzle. I finally read the box -- it's almost 10' long when it's finished! (if I did the math correctly, which is always problematic seeing as I'm enumerate due to dyslexia). It's sitting in its box, waiting for some saw horses & long planks and next summer.
 2. The van had an encounter of the unpleasant kind, and didn't survive the experience. This was an unmitigated disaster -- it happened while I was in another town, training for my new job. And it was the sole means of transporting the goods to be sold in my little business. I had a big games the next weekend, so I rented a UHaul truck -- a financial disaster! The next two smaller games I got to by hook or by crook. The last games of the season I had to let go by, since I couldn't afford to rent anything else.
 But I do know what I want to buy to replace it: an HHR. These are the cutest little guys, but cuteness isn't what sold me on them. The seats sit straight up! Yes, instead of some buckety, faux lumbar seat which just kills my poor back, they sit straight up. And there's enough leg room so that my left leg doesn't go weird on me (which it tends to do if it's cramped up too long, ever since I twisted it so badly in Texas several years ago). And the back seats fold down so you can have cargo room. I am really jonesin' for one -- but I can't afford it now. Sigh. So I got the old Ford Ranger back up on its tires, and hope it lasts for another year or so, until I can acquire an HHR.
3. The new job seems to be going well, despite the proximity to my daughter. I'm going to be made full time permanent starting Nov. 1, which is absolutely terrific! I love telecommuting -- love being able to walk in my office with a cup of coffee in my hand, sit down & go to work in my jammies. I love being able to get the laundry done while I'm working, love being able to decide to go sit on the patio in the delicious autumn sunlight and read for an hour or two, and then work longer at night to make up the hours. What's not to like?!!
Well, the pay could be a bit better. I still need to augment it, at least until I can get a raise. Not sure how I'm going to do that because I'm not sure I'm going to continue with the haggis biz. I'll get it sorted though, & let you know.
4. It's Indian summer! Last week was chilly and rainy, and I thought about soups and stews, and cocooning. Today was in the 80s, and I craved a BLT for dinner. Stopped by the store & got the bacon and a tomato and fixed myself one too. The last of the season, I'm sure.
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