The personal from Mambo Number 6 Land

We received a letter from Mother a couple of days ago In years past it might have been ten pages but thankfully this time it was only two pages. Of course it full of the woes of her medical issues for an 87 year old. She can still amuse us though. Her writing margin drifted from left to right and it was quite obvious. In the blank area to the left she apologised for drifting right, adding just as well I don't drive, 

There has perhaps been a dereliction of doctor duty. In my opinion if she was given a certain heart rhythm drug, her thyroid should have been monitored. Thyroid problems are a known side affect and she suffered the consequences. The heart medication takes months to disappear from your system and stop affecting your thyroid. My mother may at times be a stupid old moaning woman, but in this case she was on the money. She knew.

Sister's wife is 45 and is having a hysterectomy at the end of this month. I've no idea why. Bone Doctor's  doctor dad had a heart attack a couple of days ago, a stent inserted and hopefully all will be well. 

Our youngest great niece is turning one year old next weekend. There is a party in a park and then dinner later. Mambo Number 6 should end by then, but who knows? We have booked three nights accommodation away. Should Mambo Number 6 be extended, and it is a pretty good chance, we won't be going and there won't be a party in a park.

Which of five essential reasons to leave home will we choose tomorrow? Food of course.

Fun Friday

The state of Victoria in Australia has just entered its sixth COVID lockdown. That means us. While we know lockdowns work until the next outbreak, that doesn't make it any easier. It is quite depressing after yesterday being a day of no new COVID cases in our state.

Cheer up Andrew. There is fun to be found on YouTube when you go down a rabbit hole. 

I was watching a YT video filmed in the early 20th century featuring Melbourne's cable trams and some electric trams and both being seen at the same time. Way cool. Of course in the 1920s there wasn't sound with film so whoever put up the video to YT added music. The first track was Vera Lynn's We'll Meet Again. The second track I really really liked but I did not know what the song at all. The tram clip is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=so9F_TUfhOw if you are at all interested.

I played the second tune to my phone Shazam from my tablet and Shazam took three seconds to recognise it.

It is a music genre I don't know. I know swing music but not electronic swing music. It is fabulous. The dancer says he dances because he just loves dancing. I love him dancing. I don't think he choreographs his dancing but just puts in his moves. I found him and the music mesmerising. Skip forward to 1.40 if you want to hear vocals. 

I went on to listen to and see other electronic swing clips by him and others but je t'adore Sven Otten. 

Weather many Thursdays ago

When you have nothing to post, look at your 'Blog for Post/Cloud Folder'. Not bad photos at all, one with the camera, one with my phone. The gods are angry.

Low hanging fruit

Does the topic line make you nervous about reading this post? Don't worry. All is above board.

I had forgotten what this post was going to be about but with this post by Cro, I am reminded. 

At times it can be difficult to use gender neutral language. A tv ad about drainmen here who unblock your drains also has women who say they are drainmen, and then say something like, well, I am drainwoman. 

Is drainers an appropriate word that describes their work? I am not sure on that one. I do say fishers rather than fishermen. 

As I said recently I've been watching YouTube channels of regional train journeys in Britain and all over the European continent. I am loving watching what I cannot do now because of you know what.

But both and other producers of these train videos use the phrase 'manned ticket office'. I bet nearly half would be 'womanned ticket offices'. It is such low hanging fruit to pick and unlike saying drainers and fishers that some may have issues with, who would object to the phrase a 'staffed ticket office'?

If the ticket office has a cute young or hot man selling tickets, I might want to know it is a manned ticket office, but really, I don't care what sex I buy a train ticket from. Staffed ticket office! Low hanging fruit.

Maturity

Just a short post this morning and another short one later today. It may double my daily comments and double my blog comment income, but I haven't received a cheque for that as yet.

Like many childless older people, I am an expert in child rearing. I could write a book with my theory of raising happy and well adjusted mature children who can fend for themselves as I did from about 16. You must have noted how mature I am. "Order! Order! Will The Court remain silent", I say as I bang my gavel.

Children learning maturity, emotional and otherwise, independence and respect for others, animals and environment are partly not things that can be taught. It quite depends on how they are shaped by you and society.

A caller to ABC Melbourne radio station yesterday was talking about the advantages and disadvantages of having her sons in their early twenties vaccinated or not with the AZ vaccine or wait for the Pfizer vaccine to become available to them.  

Did you get that? She is choosing the vaccine for her sons who are in their early twenties! Extraordinary. There was no mention of a disability and that she was their carer.

My jaw fell to the floor.  

Now I have forgotten what my second post for the day was going to be. You may get off lightly if I can't remember.

How to read multiple blogs

EC has been having trouble with Blog Spot's blog reading system. I've looked at it once in the past and it seemed to show what people had posted if they used Blogger, not for anything else.

I looked at it again a couple of days ago and took forever to load and then did not show me anything. I think there is really something wrong with it.

It is rare for me to push a private company, but I use The Old Reader for feeds from all blogs, including WordPress blogs, self hosted blogs, newspaper feeds of what I am focused on such as the Grenfell Tower fire in London, via The Guardian. I also use it for when new podcasts are uploaded by the producer after I have added them. I find it quite brilliant. 

Amusing, I had forgotten about Google Reader. I used to use that. You can read more about The Old Reader and how it evolved and I was there and using it as it did evolve. It is free to use to subscribe up to 100 feeds. I went over that and while it wasn't mentioned, I decided I should pay for such a good service, a whole US$2 per month. The full Wikipedia article is here. It takes a little time to set up, but once it is, forget it until you want to add another site to it, and that is quite simple. 

There is also an app for your phone or tablet. 

You can read new blog posts and see photos within the site but at times it renders text colours differently and makes them hard to read. If you read a blogpost within The Old Reader, it does not count as read on the blog you have just read. If you want to comment, you click on the headline or the blog title and you are taken to the blog post or the blog itself. It can do fancier things, but I don't bother with them, although I do also use it to be notified of new podcasts, mostly from the ABC and they are easy to download at The Old Reader by right clicking on the link and saving. I don't know if they are seen as a podcast download. James? 

Sorry to Canadians because you are in my US folder, and EC is is in my NSW folder. Really now, I wonder why I bother with named folders. It seemed to be helpful when I set it up but it doesn't really matter now.

Here is a Wikipedia snip, "The Old Reader is a web-based news aggregator that delivers website, blog, and other Internet content to a web-based inbox. The service sprung up when Google removed social features from Google Reader;^[6][7] the site supports social media sharing, including the ability to "like" content, and find friends via social media networks".

Monday Mural

 As usual I am joining in with Sami and others for Monday Mural. 

I was going to say I've walked past this mural in Degraves Street over 100 times over the last couple of decades and not noticed it but I haven't as this was new in 2020, so Street View tells me. I can assure you it is an improvement on what was there before. 

But what is this about? I don't have a clue. I seems like mishmash of ideas from a muralist who has taken too much LSD. What a weird brassier she is wearing. Neither hand is hers. The only thing I like about it is the deer that is perhaps feeding from its mother. To use a British expression, what a load of shite.

PS Somehow LSD came up recently in a conversation and Mr Goody Two Shoes aka R denied he had ever taken LSD. He has forgotten the night when a friend put a little bit of what was like narrow sticky tape on our tongues to melt away and to swallow with our saliva. 

Winners Pt 2

Due to popular demand, well one person, here is part two of our lotto win and how we spent it.

How did we spend our lottery win of around $700? Our stick vacuum cleaner is about eight years old. At five years the battery failed and I bought a new one, for about $50. The three year old battery had begun to fail, not being able to run the cleaner on high power for more than a short time. I could see no reason to buy a new vacuum cleaner and I was inclined to replace the battery again. R thought we should buy a new stick vacuum cleaner with our winnings.

We researched different models online. The most popular is Dyson and our old model is a Dyson, so that is what we chose to buy. Taking into account inflation over eight years, we paid less for the new one than we paid for the old one.

We were so lucky that the new model's mounting bracket screw holes matched the old holes. As R correctly thought, there has been great advances in the technology in eight years. The new model is easier to use, easier to clean, easier to push around and best of all even on the normal setting, not the high power setting, it picks up sock fluff from the the carpet easily without the back and forth with old one. I can tell it works better by the amount of dust it has collected. We are so pleased with it and it proves consumerism makes you happy! Well, sometimes. And god forbid dragging out a barrel or upright vacuum cleaner, pulling the cord out, adding the extension lead and putting it together. Stick vacuum cleaners mean you can vacuum easily and often and so it no longer a big weekly job, just a small five minute job every couple of days.

Several times R proclaimed that the one of the best thing about the new vacuum cleaner is that it cost us nothing (because our lottery win paid for it). Hey R, that could have been money in my pocket. But not wanting to spoil his party mood I said nothing,. 

With the new cleaner in the car boot, we pondered where we could go for brunch and R suggested a place on a beach front where we would pay a little bit more than we would normally pay. From our $700 win, the cleaner cost us $500, so we still had $200 to spend that wouldn't cost us anything. Brunch cost just over $30, so we still have money to spend that won't cost us anything. What do you think of R's reasoning?

The new vacuum cleaner wall mounted, a five minute job that took about 45 minutes.