Join Me For A Cuppa

AND WE'RE BACK!

2016-09-04T16:31:00.001-04:00

Hard to believe it's been two years since I have updated but there has been a lot going on in my life that I cannot share on the web. Well I choose not to share most of it to be honest.

Mom passed away in June of 2014 and I have had my own health issues but things are getting better. I am getting together with friends locally and driving again.

Expect regular updates going forward. At least one every two weeks or so. And if I am slacking on it then please shoot me a message and let me know!

Now back to a cuppa!

Watch the Global Premiere of Origins the Movie - for free.

2014-11-14T21:21:00.001-05:00

Watch the Global Premiere of Origins the Movie: From November 13th through November 22nd, watch the feature-length movie Origins for FREE from filmmaker Pedram Shojai. #OriginsFilm @Well_Org

So yes - I am shilling this. Actually I am not getting anything for it but I did watch it last night and wanted to share the link with everyone I could reach. If you are interested in health (your own or that of someone else) then you should take the 1 hour and 45 minutes to watch this film, not only for the content but also for the photography.

If you do watch it then please let me know what you think. What parts appealed to you? Are you already doing some of the things mentioned in the film or did the film inspire you to do something (or something more?) Or did you watch it and say "Meh - it's not for me" Just curious.

I have made some changes in my life over the last 3 years and practice some of what is mentioned in the film. I need to add more into my life and over time will do so as things settle down.

OK. That's it for now.

Product Review: SpeedStickGEAR

2014-03-11T21:43:00.001-04:00

I belong to an online community called Influenster. The following paragraph, which is taken directly from their website’s “About” page will tell you a bit about them and their “purpose-in-life.” For more information you can visit www.influenster.com.

“Influenster is a free-to-join community of trendsetters, social media masterminds, and educated consumers who live to give opinions of products and experiences.

The Influenster site is a hub where members meet to learn about new products from our favorite brands as well as review the products they already use in their day-to-day lives!

Influenster invites its most active members to participate in exclusive VoxBox programs where members receive complimentary products to test and review. In exchange, we ask our members to do what they already love to do: share their opinions with their friends & followers on social media!”

That said - here is the obligatory legal disclaimer that is required here in the U.S. when one does a review of a product they have received at no cost:

THIS IS A SPONSORED POST; INFLUENSTER PROVIDED SpeedStickGEAR products TO ME AS A MEMBER OF INFLUENSTER.COM I WAS NOT COMPENSATED FOR THIS POST, OPINIONS ARE MY OWN AND NOT INFLUENCED IN ANY WAY.

I recently received #SpeedStickGEAR samples from @Influenster and have been trying them. The package that arrived contained two full size products of their new antiperspirant “Drycore” deodorant line.

The two scents were Fresh Force which had the scent of a rather strong Irish Spring soap bar and the other which is called Clean Peak. I personally found the latter scent more palatable and not as overwhelming.

Unfortunately in the past I have had issues with solid stick antiperspirants and this time was no different. I developed an itch under my arms after two days when I used the first stick and while it went away after a few days, when I tried the other stick it happened again. I believe that it was the active ingredient which is called “aluminum zirconium terachlorohydrex gly.”

That said, your mileage may vary and you may find these products work well for you especially if you tend to sweat heavily. It is a shame as I could see myself using the Clean Peak instead of my current underarm deodorant.

The container is designed similarly to any underarm solid stick deodorant/antiperspirant sold in North America with one major positive exception – the sides have a ridged silver grip. This grip is very handy if you have wet or wet soapy hands when you get out of the shower as the container will not slip out of your hands and down to the floor.

So you might wish to try it and comment below whether or not you like it and if it works for you. Because I could not continue to use these products I passed them on to a friend of mine who plays a lot of basketball and who skis a lot during the winter. He does sweat like crazy. His feedback was that the products work great and that he would certainly consider purchasing them when he needs more. So that’s a positive thing to know for those of you that are extremely active.

You can find out more information and possibly find some coupons (you know that coupon availability always varies on different manufacturer websites) at their website: http://www.colgate.com/app/Speedstick/US/EN/HomePage.cvsp

Until next time – enjoy your cuppa!

Welcome back! To me that is...

2014-02-27T21:04:00.000-05:00

Wow - is it already more than a year since I've posted? I can't believe it! Well - actually I can. I've had some major things going on in my life and yes - Mom is still alive at 93 years old! Her health has declined somewhat and she now has hospice along with help. But she is still chipper most of the time albeit more tired than before.

It's cold out there tonight 10 degrees F or -12.2 C which, with the windchill feels like -11 F or -23.9 C and that's right now. It is snowing but with some moisture in the air giving the ground an icy gloss. There is a Wind Chill Advisory that has been posted by the Weather Service with a prediction of temperatures going down to -29 F / 33.9 C tonight. A good night to stay inside!

I will try to write more regularly. I need to do so. As I have said in the past - this site is for me to write about anything and everything and I will be doing so - from product reviews to generally anything!

So sit back, grab your cuppa and enjoy the ride!

Thanksgiving 2012

2012-11-22T08:07:00.000-05:00

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. Many ex-pats also celebrate it as do other people around the world. Like the toy shopping rush at Christmas the American Thanksgiving has slowly become a global tradition. So I want to wish all my friends who celebrate it "Happy Thanksgiving."

However I also ask that you take a moment at your table and think about the full history of the holiday as well as the impact on that the arrival of the settlers had - not only on the development of what would become the USA but also on the native Americans who were here and how their history and lives were changed.

For every action there is always a reaction. Let us all prepare to start 2013 and move forward being more aware of that.Let us learn from history and make this planet a better place. Doing so can be a small ting as simple as starting to recycle or compost. (Did you know that many coffee shops will give you their used grounds for your compost pile?) It can be a bigger thing - such as supporting and working towards peace or helping those less fortunate than you or volunteering. The point is to just do something. It's more than just "teaching the children" but also about learning from them and their innocence as well.

So - are you celebrating Thanksgiving? The other Thanksgiving "tradition" is not as much fun. This is the busiest day of the year for hospital Emergency Rooms as people arrive from having heart attacks. Let's try and not celebrate that tradition.

Some simple rules and things to remember - a/k/a the 10 Commandments of Thanksgiving:

1. Thou shalt enjoy the food but celebrate the people you are with.
2. Thou sh

alt eat in moderation. Have a little bit of everything you like instead of a lot.
3. Thou shalt remember that this meal has a lot of high fat content from the appetizers and eggnog to the final bit of dessert with the fresh whipped cream.
4. Thou shalt leave that "just one more bite" where it belongs - on the plate - NOT in your belly. When you are full - that's it - you are full so stop eating.
5. Thou shalt remember that it is a holiday usually celebrated with a lot of family and friends. That inherently means higher stress levels. Avoid those arguments and political debates as much as possible.
6. Thou shalt remember that Black Friday is a marketing ploy and not an Olympic sporting event in which you have to participate. Stores are counting on the leftover food high to get you to go more into debt.
7. Thou shalt remember that leftovers can indeed be frozen for a couple of months so you have no need to eat turkey for the next 10 days.
8. Thou shalt not fast until the Thanksgiving meal. It is healthier to eat a small to medium breakfast and then not eat as much food at the feast.
9. Thou shalt take a walk or do some other form of MODERATE exercise before or after your meal. Do not overdo it - especially after the meal as you could end up in the E.R. as the body tries to figure out what to do.
10. Thou shalt, despite all these caveats, enjoy the day and the people you are sharing it with and reflect upon all you do have and the history behind the holiday. Then figure out what you can do to make the world a better place.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE.

Invisible Money

2012-05-03T10:21:00.000-04:00

I know I've been M.I.A. for a while. This has been due to health issues. Writing has just been too taxing. However I did feel it important to start doing something with the blog again so today I will be featuring a post by my good friend Andy Marken.

Andy is a publicist in California who specializes in high-tech. His insights into the entire electronics industry and the directions it has taken/will take are always interesting and make for great conversation.

Periodically he releases a missive such as the one that follows and going forward I shall share some of these with you. Your responses and discussion are always welcome.

Enjoy!

Peter

Replacing Cash Will Be Slow, Painful, Inevitable

“The whole world's frightened to death! So, I see Kemp couldn't sleep, he had to go downstairs, he was frightened. I put my trust in Kemp, I told him my secret and he gave me his word of honor.” -- “The Invisible Man,” Universal Pictures, 1933

Eons ago, the wife and I were in Carmel and found a metal sculpture of Don Quixote we really wanted, but we didn’t have the cash with us and she hadn’t replaced the checks.

The shop owner reached in a drawer and brought out a counter check – fill in the bank name, the amount, sign it.

That was it…done.

We were reminded of that instance when an acquaintance in England told us that back in early 1970s Ireland went without a banking system for six and a half months when the bank employees went on strike.

A funny thing happened.

People, companies resorted to IOUs and bartering to settle payments; and according to the Irish Central Bank, the level of economic activity continued to increase.

We doubt that that level of “faith” in a person’s word will ever return, but weirder things have happened.

Even for a relatively short period, people got along without bank accounts, checks and cash withdrawals from ATMs.

The truth is, the technical aspects of money and banking is limited.

Another acquaintance alerted us to a book by David Wolman, “The End of Money.”

In researching the book, Wolman lived without cash for a year while circling the globe to research the book.

So your banker, broker, tech toy seller won’t have a heart attack, we should note that the book isn’t about giving up money, but replacing it with electronic payments

Electronic and mobile money is inevitable.

Phone Flood

Worldwide, there are more mobile phones than people occupying the planet.

Smartphones are all the buzz because you can do so much with them – text, check email, watch movies, take/send pictures, listen to music, surf the web; and oh yeah, make a call.

What’s more logical than to add all your really personal stuff – ID, PIN numbers, passwords, bank info and contacts?

True, you don’t need all that stuff on your phone to add electronic banking – cheap feature phones outsell smartphones worldwide.

People in Africa and Asia get along just fine sending/receiving micropayments, calling/talking to each other.

There’s even a dwindling population of retro folks who pride themselves on resisting the rush to get an iPhone (not our kids, but) -- so they can figure out what town they are in, what restaurants are around, what the weather is and the need to sling birds at targets.

No one mugs these folks for their phone because fer gawd sake, who wants to steal a flip-phone?

But they do miss out on mobile shopping, which increased from 75 percent to 93 percent last year.

Swipe, Go

Mobile shopping has only begun to slowly catch on with Gen Yers, but a few leading-edge retailers such as Starbucks have been successful in getting customers to use their smartphones to pay for goods/services. Retailers see the advantage of having their specific mobile money application because it brings them closer to the customer to offer coupons, special offers and faster service.

Of course, completing a purchase in the Americas still isn’t as popular as it is in Finland, Japan and other countries. In those parts of the world, people have used phones as ‘virtual’ credit cards for years, paying for everything from parking to bottles of soda and gadgets to dinner.

In the Americas, we’re dipping our phones in the water, using the device for electronic boarding passes, going to movies/concerts, buying a cup of coffee.

Store Visit

Still, the most common action according to Ipsos – 55 percent of the respondents – is to go to a store in person after the smartphone search.

Mobile purchases are the first step toward mobile money, but even that is slow in coming.

Mobile Shopping

People are increasingly using their mobile devices – tablets, smartphones – to do product and outlet research. The predominant solution so far is to find the store/product/best price and make the purchase in the store. Source – comScore

The Harris poll recently reported:

- Only 5% responded that they have scanned their phone for admission to a movie, or to board a plane

- Only 3% have scanned their phone to pay for retail items, enter a concert, or buy a cup of coffee

- 40% replied they had never scanned their phone for any purpose

- 45% said they do not own a smartphone with this capability

- Just 5% and 10% of so-called ‘Echo Boomers’ (Gen Y) have ever scanned their phones for transactions

- 25% were ‘not at all comfortable‘ with the idea of using smartphone as a gift card

- 39% were comfortable using their smartphone as a gift card

- 47% said they were not comfortable with the concept

- 14% weren’t sure

- 63% said they were not comfortable using a smart phone app that would store credit card information for electronic transactions

- 47% of respondents were comfortable using a smart phone scan for movie theater and concert admissions

- Men are more receptive to smartphone commerce apps than women

- Younger adults (not surprisingly) are more at ease with the process than older adults

And on-phone purchases are only the first step in moving to mobile money.

The biggest hold back is security and privacy.

As the Invisible Man warned, “All right, you fools. You've brought it on yourselves! Everything would have come right if you'd only left me alone. You've driven me near madness with your peering through the keyholes and gaping through the curtains. And now you'll suffer for it!”

Of course, up until now bad guys/gals haven’t been much interested in tapping into phones but smartphones – with iOS, Android OS, Windows – is a whole different opportunity.

Due to the difficulty of updating software and patching vulnerabilities on mobile phones, malware writers have started to get busy.

Attacks Just Beginning

Mobile phone malware and cyber theft is just beginning to appear; and most security analysts say it will rapidly increase as people begin to widely use smartphones as their key personal/company information on the devices. With the growing use of smartphones for almost everything, consumers will become more vulnerable to attack. Source – Lookout

According to Lookout Mobile Security’s Mobile Threat Report, Android smartphone owners are twice as likely to encounter malware as they were six months ago.

Lookout notes that botnet networks – integrating thousands of mobile devices into a network to distribute spam, steal private info, install other malware like DroidDream, Geimini – are only beginning to scale.

No Game

While Grand Theft Auto is an adrenalin-raising, addictive game at home or on the go, its mobile version warns smartphone users they can’t be too careful.

Cracking the Code

But one security analyst said the bad guys/gals are only just beginning.

It’s a lot like Willy Sutton’s response when asked “Why do you rob banks?”

Pretty obvious...“Because that’s where the money is!”

Today’s cyber criminals are no different…that’s where you are.

Mobile Pickpocketing (SMS/call fraud) – charging phone bills – is already racking up millions for these people with things like GGTracker, RuFraud and other creative efforts.

The biggest problem – cyber crooks think of it as opportunity – is that all those gazillion mobile apps are developed by folks who have little/no understanding/consideration for data privacy or confidentiality.

And trust us; you don’t have a clue on what types of information is collected, how it is used, how it is retained!

Or, as the farmer said, “Excuse me, sir. There's breathing in my barn.”

That’s probably why people like Juniper Research forecast that mobile payments for digital and physical goods, mobile money transfers and NFC-enabled contactless transactions will almost triple from $240 billion in 2011 to $670 billion in 2015.

Testing the Waters

Almost every retailer is trying to incorporate mobile devices into their customer contact/sales activity. It includes making mobile devices – initially iPads, iPod Touches – as well as mobile configured-websites; and increasingly, they are testing solutions for checkout with the smartphone. Over the next few years, a wide range of options will be available until two or three are tapped by retailers and consumers. Source - AisleBuyer

Retailers are already seeing the advantages of on-phone purchases and the data they can acquire when people use their mobile devices for payments.

The service providers, Google, Apple, Microsoft have been educating/helping them move people to the convenience and “benefits” of using your all-purpose smartphone for just everything.

On-phone purchases/electronic cash won’t come quickly; and it will be chaotic between now and then. After all, “everyone” – banks, credit card companies, PayPal, stores -- will want a piece of the action.

Of course, there is also the little issue of making you feel totally comfortable with it as well.

False Security

There are really smart people like Giovanni Vigna, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who studies security and malware. He said it’s only a matter of time before mobile security will be as second nature to consumers as computer security.

Yeah, Willy Sutton liked bankers with that attitude.

Consumers are a little more cautious, less optimistic.

Yes But

While younger consumers who do virtually everything with their smartphone can appreciate the advantage of using the smartphone and tablet as a means of paying for goods/services, mobile payment is still a work in progress. Security, privacy and payment standards are just a few of the issues standing in the way of widespread usage. Source – Prosper Mobile Insights

Harris Research found that the cashless solution with electronic payments has a ways to go:

- 10% think it will happen in one to less than three years

- 18% think it will take between three and five years

- 21% stated it will happen in five to less than ten years

- 15% said the trend will take ten years or more

- 30% said electronic data stored on phones will never replace cash payments

Wolman was right in his book and cash will disappear globally not to IOUs but to your mobile device.

For most of us, it’s going to take time, lots of time.

When it does, lots will hear the Invisible Man whisper, “I failed. I meddled in things that man must leave alone.”

2012

2012-01-01T19:39:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone! First and foremost I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season regardless of whether you celebrate Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Solstice or some other holiday. May 2012 be a year of prosperity, happiness, health, success and more for all of us!

So certain things happen this time of year in addition to lots of holiday parties, people announcing engagements, etc. One thing is that certain people look forward to the Christmas episode of a certain British show that has been around since 1963. To be a fan of Doctor Who is like no other fan of any other television show on the planet.

One can be a fan of Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon 5 and more but one becomes a FAN of Doctor Who.

So to those of you that are not familiar, here is a link that will give you a history of what has been called "the longest running science fiction show on television: Doctor Who Wikipedia entry

For those of you that are fans here is a wonderful resource for you: The Doctor Who Timeline

This is the official BBC website link: Doctor Who and here is the site for BBC America: Doctor Who - BBC America

So I hope this is good for all of you.

I'm off to watch the 2011 Christmas Special.

Tardis Ahoy!

More to come...

2011-11-29T02:05:00.001-05:00

So on the upper left of this blog you will see a widget that says "I'm losing weight at myfitnesspal." This is new. After a recent hospital stay I finally realized that I can no longer put this off and I'm on my journey to drop about 150 pounds/68.04 kg.

And this journey requires a good scale - but one that fits my budget. So I found one called The EatSmart Precision GetFit Digital Body Scale and as soon as it arrived I began the daily weigh-in. I started this part of the journey at 337.1 pounds/152.9 kg so when I hit my goal I will have shed the equivalent of a small person.

More on this in the next few days...

Ciao.

A Cuppa!

2011-10-11T13:30:00.000-04:00

September 29th was International Coffee Day. Yum. Bunn, the makers of those wonderful industrial coffee makers you see in most restaurants (and of some great podmakers for home and office use as well) had a great little contest in honor of that day and I was one of the winners! Thanks Bunn!

Yesterday was Columbus Day here in the U.S. and The Coffee Artisan, which is where I order most of my coffee pods from had a nice little Columbus Day sale over the weekend. (I don't get anything for mentioning them as I'm not an affiliate.) I took advantage of the sale and stocked up on more pods. If you are looking for pods, pod brewers or even an re-useable K-Cup adapter (they do not sell K-Cups) then check them out. Their delivery is very fast and their customer service is wonderful!

Anyway both my coffee related prizes (filters, mug, scarf, recipe book and scoop) and my coffee order arrived today and so I'm a happy camper!

So - just wanted to post a little something today. I know I've been bad about keeping up. Just have gotten really busy trying to take care of things here at home and time just slips by.

Hope everyone is well.

Peter

Come On Irene

2011-08-25T20:24:00.000-04:00

This will be short and sweet...

OK - It's rather simple. There is a potentially devastating hurricane heading towards the Eastern U.S. Just a couple of days ago an earthquake hit in two places in the U.S. - Virginia and Colorado.
So by now you really should have done your homework and should know what to do but just in case...
First go to www.ready.gov and find the disaster of your choice (hurricane, flood, tornado, etc.) Actually first check to be sure you have an Emergency Supply Kit ready. You may have all or most of the items in your home already. (For example - I have sleep apnea and have to use distilled water in the humidifier. I always keep about 10 gallons around because it does go on sale once in a while and just resupplied - s0 I have water.)
Then go here: http://blog.fema.gov/2011/08/irene-update-4-those-along-east-coast.html - Find your state, open the website and Facebook/Twitter pages if applicable. Bookmark them. Bookmark them again on your phone. (Most phones - even if not smartphones have some internet capability which you can use even without a plan.)
(For those of you not in the Eastern U.S. you can find your local Emergency Management organizations by doing an internet search. A lot of this information is actually usable globally.) Also find out the locations of local shelters and, if your family could be separated, plan where you will meet or who the contact person will be that is out of the area affected.
Most of this is logical but in an emergency we tend to forget this stuff.
I should have put this together at an earlier date for posting but it kept sliding to the back burner.
Right now we are in the middle of a nasty thunderstorm and the power may go out so I'm going to log off and shut everything down.
Good luck everyone.

CATCHING UP PART II

2011-08-09T09:40:00.000-04:00

Well it’s been a while. Summer is here and in full swing and, as a result, some things fell by the wayside. Writing was one of them because after all I’d rather be enjoying nature and fresh air instead of sitting at the computer. (And yes I know I could take the computer or some paper and a pen/pencil with me and, in theory, write while outside but it really isn’t the same. I do have my writing routine of sorts and like to stick to that when I write.)

Combined with Mom’s Doctor appointments and Physical Therapy along with all the lovely events that take place up here during the summer time is the one commodity in very short supply! (See my post from May 29^th: THE TOURISTS ARE COMING! THE TOURISTS ARE COMING! for a list of just some of the events that happen up here during the summer.

Anyway – I have been enjoying my garden and have added some additional perennials to it including 4 Hibiscus and 3 peonies. Come winter I will protect them because sometimes it can get right to the lower tolerable level of coldness for them. An arborist told me that it is a good idea to protect perennials for the first two winters anyway in order to allow them to get proper root depth.

What else have I been up to?

Well – in addition to the ongoing clean up and sorting of stuff in the house I’ve had company. My friend David from New Jersey has been up a few times to help with the sorting and moving along with my buddy Chuck and 2 of his daughters. (The girls are 6 and 8 and like to visit with my Mom or watch DVDs.) We’ve also done “stuff.” David has seen a bit of the area and seems to really like it.

A few weeks ago I drove into Boston with Chuck and his 2 daughters for the day. (We had to pick up my car which my niece had borrowed for a couple of weeks for personal reasons.) We drove around a bit and had dinner at a place called James’s Gate Restaurant and Pub with my niece and her boyfriend. The little ones had a great time.

My college buddy (also named David) showed up for a few days as well. We drove around and tried a few restaurants that I hadn’t been to in a long time – one of which I won’t go back to as it has really gone downhill.

We took Mom up to Williamstown one day so she could see the Pissarro’s People exhibition at the Clark.

That was all Mom could handle so I stayed with her while David roamed the permanent collection as well.

On the way home we stopped briefly at my friend Louise’s home which is also a Bed and Breakfast called Berkshire Shirakaba just to admire the view.

Mom and I have had dinner with friends a few times but during the summer it does get a bit difficult sometimes what with all the tourists. Funny thing about restaurants – their capacity does not expand when they get busy!

So I just wanted to give you all a quick update and this is it but there is more to come!

What are you up to this summer?

THE ORIGINS OF FATHER'S DAY

2011-06-19T13:35:00.002-04:00

Today, June 20^th 2011 is Father’s Day here in the United States. I say here because the day is celebrated on different dates around the globe. While in some countries it is a proper holiday with meaning pertinent to that country’s history, in other countries it is not even recognized.

How this holiday got started has several different sources. One source claims that it was originally a pagan holiday honoring the father-in-the-sky that thanked him for giving us, the children-on-earth the gifts of sun and rain. Animal sacrifices were made with colorful ribbons around their necks and over time transitioned (through the intervention of the church) to a gift of garlands given from sons to fathers. This could explain the tradition we have here of giving a father a tie on Father’s Day.

However for many years Father’s Day was not even known here. In 1908 Dr. Robert Webb and Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton organized a service to celebrate the lives of 210 fathers who had been lost in the Monogah Mining Disaster on December 6^th 1907. This was a one-time celebration and the state of West Virginia did not even register the holiday at the time. Today Fairmont West Virginia is officially known as the home of the first Father’s Day service.

Independently Sonora Dodd in Spokane Washington created her own celebration of Father’s Day. Influenced by the recent enactment of Mother’s Day Ms. Dodd wanted to do something to honor her father who had single-handedly raised his six children after his wife died in childbirth.

The first bill to try and give Father’s Day recognition was introduced in Congress in 1913. It failed. In 1916 President Wilson was in Spokane and he wanted to make it official. Fearing commercialization Congress refused. (OMG – You mean for once – and maybe the only time – Congress was right?)

In 1924 President Coolidge recommended it be observed but would not issue a national proclamation and a National Father’s Day Committee was formed in New York City to explore the idea. It would be another 48 years before the holiday became official.

In 1957 Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine presented a proposal that accused Congress of ignoring fathers while honoring mothers and this led to President Lyndon Johnson issuing the first national proclamation of Father’s Day in 1966. Six years later in 1972 President Richard Nixon signed a bill making Father’s Day a national holiday.

So to all those fathers and father figures out there – Happy Father’s Day!

CATCHING UP

2011-06-13T02:10:00.002-04:00

So first I want to apologize for the lack of a Foodie Friday last week. On Thursday night around 20:10 hours (8:10 pm) the electricity went out in our area due to a rather severe storm. Many towns lost their power. We were lucky in that it was restored after 23 hours. However at that time our internet, cable television and landline phone were still out due to downed trees and tumbled line poles for another day. Even today as I write this (Sunday) there are still crews cleaning up the debris and every hour or so a truck goes by loaded with logs from the storm.

Please note that the two photos below were taken the afternoon following the storm and are on a main road that got cleared first. However this type of trees moved to the side of the road scene can be seen all over the place.

Tumbled Tree As A Result Of Storm

More Tumbled Tree

The biggest problem I had with this storm was that I suffer from fairly severe sleep apnea and being without my bi-pap machine for even a single night can wreck havoc with my sleeping and well-being especially when the air is as humid and thick as it was during the storms. Ironically there is a positive lesson to be learned from the experience and I now have an inverter for my car that I will leave in it.

In addition whenever there is a storm warning going forward I will make sure the car is filled to the top with gasoline so that if there is a re-occurrence and the weather is that bad I can go to the car and set up my bi-pap. Perhaps not the most environmentally friendly thing to do but as a diabetic I have to take care of myself and I simply cannot deal with another night like the one I just had. I am still finding that my thinking is a bit foggy and I feel very out of it 3 days after the fact. Besides – if I’m not in good shape then I cannot take proper care of Mom.

Yesterday I did attend a day-long conference held by Taking Control of Your Diabetes in Albany NY. This is one of several conferences they are holding around the United States this year. While some of the presentations were a basic refresher of things I already knew, there was some new stuff as well. As for the refresher information it is always good to have a review of things like that as one gets a bit sloppy when they’ve been doing something for a long time. As a diabetic this type of refresher is probably a very smart thing to do (as for anyone with some sort of chronic condition or disease.) So if you have diabetes or even just know someone with diabetes you might want to check out their website and consider going to one of their conferences.

Today I got Mom out of the house for a few hours. I took her to brunch and then to get her hair done.

Tomorrow I’ll be going down to New York City for a few days. Wednesday and Thursday is the 140 Characters Conference which is put together by my good friend Jeff Pulver. This conference is a wonderful opportunity for people to exchange ideas and network with each other as well as learn about the multitude of different ways that people can use social media these days. To learn a bit more about this event as envisioned by Jeff watch this video by another friend of mine, Geo Geller.

(Geo is quite the personality and has several websites worth visiting. I'll probably do a blog post on him at one point if he agrees to be a subject.)

You can learn more about the event and get your tickets at 140Conf.com

I hope to see/meet some of you there if you can attend. If you cannot attend because you are too far away you will be able to view it here on Ustream. Having had the opportunity to experience several of the 140 Conferences live as well as via Ustream I can only say that while it is great to watch the speakers via Ustream there is a very special feeling about being there in person for the conference. So if you can go to one you should.

For those of you in education, there will be a special 140 Conference - Education focusing in New York City on August 2nd and 3rd. By the way – these 140 Conferences and their associated meet-ups as well as 140Local have happened all over the world. So there are plenty of opportunities to get to one.

Through the 140 Conference experience I have made many new friends. By now I have met some of them in real life while others I have only spoken to via Skype or by tweets. However the shared experience has created a special bond that goes beyond Facebook or Twitter.

My Mom will be coming down to NY with me. While she probably won’t be attending the 140 Conference, she is looking forward to seeing some friends and family while we are there. I am also hoping to see some friends that I haven’t seen in well over 30 years.

We are also planning on visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. Mom has not been back in New York City in over 10 years so she is really getting a bit excited.

While the trip will probably exhaust her quite a bit, this time it will be a good exhaustion and she will be happy when we return home.

OK – I am a bit tired and tomorrow (actually later today at this point) is going to be a long day. So I’ll say good night. I don’t know how often or even if I’ll be blogging while down in New York as I will be rather busy in my so-called free time getting together with friends but we’ll see. (By the way - if any of you reading this are in the NYC area - drop me a line with contact information and maybe we can also meet for a cuppa.)

Hey – ever wonder why it is called “free” time if one is so busy doing stuff? Just saying!

FOODIE FRIDAY - INTERESTING MIX OF OBSERVANCES INVOLVING DOUGHNUTS

2011-06-03T01:37:00.003-04:00

The first Friday in June is National Doughnut Day here in the United States. Many doughnut shops will be offering a free doughnut to customers either with the purchase of a beverage (after all – they are in business to make money) or with a donation to a charity. The charity that usually benefits from National Doughnut Day is the Salvation Army which started the tradition as a Chicago Salvation Army fundraiser back in 1938.

A cup of coffee or a glass of milk for the younger set combined with that deep-fried sweetened round piece of dough filled with cream or jelly, perhaps topped with glaze, nuts, sprinkles or frosting and oh-so-heavenly smelling as it comes out of the bakery is an invitation to overindulgence. Its ubiquitous presence in workplace break rooms, on coffee carts, in cafeteria lines, etc. make them as hard to avoid as a mosquito on a sweaty summer evening. I have personally seen people down 6 doughnuts at one sitting. Fortunately my tooth is not that sweet. My record is two – an acceptable if slightly overindulgent amount for an overweight diabetic.

These calorie-laden drugs in food form (for they could be viewed as being that because they are so addictive) originally gained popularity during World War 1 when the Salvation Army sent small teams overseas to set up small areas where service personnel could get a cup of coffee, something to eat, stamps and supplies to write letters home, etc. The teams consisted of 2 men and 4 women. The women provided a female touch of mothering to the boys in uniform. Very quickly everyone realized that getting consistent fresh food – especially at the front lines wasn’t going to happen. So pastries rapidly became the food offered. Freshly made at many locations it turned out that doughnuts were the easiest to make and lasted the longest as opposed to pies and cakes.

So – raise your free doughnuts in thanks to our servicemen and women today and enjoy.

In 2007 the United States Federal Government declared that the first week in June be declared "National Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and Automated External Defibrillator (AED) Awareness Week". The average response time for first responders can be up to 15 minutes if you are in a rural enough area. This is important to know – along knowing CPR and how to use an AED if one is available.

Why? Because after four minutes without any oxygen a brain begins to die while after eight minutes it passes the point of no return and irreversible brain death commences. So you can see where learning CPR and how to use an AED can make a huge difference in a person having a positive outcome when an incident occurs.

Many places offer CPR and AED training. To find one in your area contact a local hospital, high school or college to see if they offer them as extension classes as well as your local Y, Red Cross or Heart Association affiliate. In more rural areas you may want to contact your local fire department or police station. Remember that you should take a refresher course every year or two as well to be sure you still have the skills.

After the course you might even want to find out about becoming a volunteer first responder in your community.

So – you have this interesting combination in June of doughnuts and CPR.

Is it coincidence or just clever marketing? You have to decide that.

Either way you have to admit that the doughnut (along with all the other greasy fatty food that is out there) is a great reason to go and learn CPR as well as how to use an AED if they are available in public places in your state. The life you save may well be that of a loved one.

JUST A PIECE OF INSPIRATION!

2011-06-01T05:51:00.000-04:00

As my Wednesday starts I want to share with you some commercials that I find very inspirational. If more people followed the lessons shown here the world would be a much better place! (Note - I'm using links instead of embedding them due to copyright restrictions.)

First - my newest favorite: The Concert
This one is definitely a keeper. Think about how often we tell someone "You can't do that." Then watch this. Later on today - keep it in mind!

Although I'm not the world's greatest sports fan the message in this commercial is another one that I've always tried to live by: The Umpire

Compassion is something I've always had - some people would say to a fault. I disagree. Compassion can never by had to a fault: The Taxi

Whenever I travel and stay in a hotel I usually bring my own soap/shampoo. But, since the hotel will usually throw out the soaps and shampoos once I leave I also take them home and, when I have a bag full of them take them to the local women and children's shelter. This commerical is based on the same idea. Are you doing anything to help those less fortunate? Generosity

Having many friends who are teachers and a brother who just retired from teaching I can tell you that fortunately for us there are a lot of everyday heroes like them - be they teachers, volunteer firefighters, emts, ambulance drivers and more . Have you thanked one of your everyday heroes today? Everyday Heroes

And, of course, there is nothing more valuable in life than friends - regardless of their background and your political differences: Old Friends

Hope you all get out of these commercials as much as I did. Please share them with your friends.

THE END OF THE MONTH

2011-05-31T14:51:00.001-04:00

Wow – a whole month!

Like a great dessert this post will be a small portion and a bit sweet.

While there certainly were days that I thought “will this month never end?” along with “oh man – what am I going to write about today?” there were many more days where I actually had to filter ideas and try to decide what to write about.

I entered this blogathon because one of my godchildren in Australia inspired me to do so (thanks ‘Riss) and because I had hit a real rut in my writing. It was not actual writer’s block but rather that I just wasn’t looking forward to it all that much.

While I had played with blogging on a couple of my sites I really never got into it preferring to write other things some of which saw light of publication and some things which sit on my hard drive hoping that they will see some action at some point.

I did do some recipes on the old AOL which were more like mini-blog posts back in the days when I was a community leader there and today I will visit any number of recipe sites and see them posted there. I suppose I will gather them all and repost them here or on one of my other blogs as well (once I figure out what I want those other blogs to be when they grow up.) Eventually Foodie Fridays will go wherever the recipes end up as well.

By the way – in case you are interested the other blogs are/will be located at From The Gatehouse and Pete’s Place here on blogspot as well as at Join Me For A Cuppa and Whitestone Photo on the web. Don’t worry – I’ll post links here as well as on my Facebook and Twitter accounts when I post any new blogs.

Now that the blogathon is done I will also get back to maintaining iPeter.net my disaster site.

I can always use help with iPeter.net. If there is a disaster that takes place anywhere in the world and you know of organizations that are coordinating or helping in other ways with disaster relief I would really appreciate it if you would share that information with me. I try to find out as much information as I can whenever there is a disaster but some of the information is suspect and cannot be confirmed while other information is just hard to come by. So all assistance that any of you can give me on this I really would appreciate.

However first I’ll be taking a much needed two or three day break from writing because I have neglected some other things that have to be taken care of and need to catch up with them.

What's been a lot of fun has been viewing the stats for the blog just to see what countries you, my readers, come from. So far I have seen readers from Australia, Canada, Chili, Mexico, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey,The United Kingdom and the United States which makes it rather exciting.

So my friends – as they say “The meaning of life is ‘42’ and thanks for all the fish!” I’m not saying goodbye but rather raising a cuppa in your direction until we meet again!

WORDLE

2011-05-30T01:30:00.002-04:00

Today is one of several "theme days" offered during this year's blogathon. While I haven't participated in the other theme days because I really wanted to concentrate on free-form writing of my own ideas, I did want to check out today's theme which is "Wordles." After doing so I decided that this could be fun and decided to participate.

So what’s a Wordle you may ask?

A Wordle is a tag cloud (also known as a word cloud).

Tag clouds are a way of visualizing the frequency in which certain words, keywords or metadata are used and can be utilized as an aid to navigating a website.

The original use of tag clouds on a major website can be traced back to Flickr, Technorati and Del.icio.us in the early 2000’s.

While the original enthusiasm for tag clouds plummeted in the mid-2000’s further software development that led to the use of visualizing word counts in free-form natural texts and brought back their popularity as new ways were thought of to make them truly useful.

Wordle was created by IBM senior software engineer Jonathan Feinberg in June of 2008 and rapidly found a number of ways to be used in different fields including education and art.

According to the Wordle website, “Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.”

Just playing around with Wordle for a bit was a lot of fun and I fully intend to explore it further as I can see many uses for it moving forward. I strongly suggest that you visit the site and play around with it.

In the meantime here’s my Wordle as my May 30^th blog post:

THE TOURISTS ARE COMING! THE TOURISTS ARE COMING!

2011-05-29T00:04:00.001-04:00

Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of the tourist season here in the Berkshires. And we welcome them with open arms (and sometimes a bit of grumbling...)

I live in a very beautiful area of the US. Of course I think that most areas of any country have their own special beauty but, being slightly biased, I think my area has a slight edge.

Of course we welcome tourists. A part of our area's economy depends upon it. We are located almost equidistant from Boston Mass, Burlington VT and New York City NY. I guess the grumbling comes when some tourists treat us as uneducated hicks (we aren't) or servants - on the street (again - we aren't) or just plain old figure they are on vacation so they leave their manners at home. (Simply put - DON'T DO THAT!) I've had people walk into my house because they thought it looked really nice and they wanted to see what was inside. Hmmm - I have signs posted at the entryways to my drive that say "No Trespassing." Now tell me - who is uneducated? I live 1/4 mile from a popular concert venue. When there is a popular concert I've had people park their cars in my driveway without asking for permission. (Yes - I've had them towed. Remember - my driveway is marked with a sign.) I'm not a nasty person and I do understand that I live in a tourist area. During the summer I expect that it will take a lot longer to get places and that I have to plan my grocery shopping around "tourist schedules," etc. meaning go shopping in the early morning or during a concert and get home by intermission. That's OK. And if you enter my property and ask me if you can park your car there during the concert I'll probably say yes. But don't take liberties like that unless you know me. OK - enough with the rant.

Originally inhabited by the Mahicans, the first English settlers appeared in the Berkshires in the early 1700’s.

The original British settlers had farms, quarries, sawmills and textile mills. Potash production and glassworks were also early industries. At one point in the 1700’s iron ore was found leading to the establishment of several ironworks in the county as well.

In the 1800’s the area also saw the beginning of an influx of artists and writers including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Ward Beecher, Fanny Kemble, Catherine Sedgwick, Edith Wharton and Herman Melville to name but a few. In fact Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick in this landlocked area of the country!

The site of Pittsfield High School was originally the farm of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s family!

Since then a number of artists, poets, actors, musicians, sports stars etc. have all been born or made homes up here – either part-time or full-time. Some of them include the late actor Christopher Reeves, musician Yo-Yo Ma, singer/songwriter James Taylor, poet Rosemary Starace, the late writer William Shirer, actress Elizabeth Banks, Arlo Guthrie, painter Norman Rockwell, sculptor Daniel Chester French, actress Maureen Stapleton, actor Matthew Perry, baseball player Dan Duquette, baseball player Jim Bouton and many more.

The first of the large estates had construction commence in 1844. From 1880 through 1920 the wealthy managed to transform this sleepy area into a Gilded Age resort similar to Saratoga Springs NY and Newport Rhode Island. As these millionaires built their “cottages” for entertaining parts of the area developed a “hoity-toity” reputation. Ironically land in some towns went for as much as $20,000 an acre (remember this was in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s) while in a neighboring town it might only cost a few dollars an acre. Today the cottages that have survived are museums, hotels or performing arts venues.

Today the Berkshires are a very popular tourist destination for people of all backgrounds.

You like to hike? Hiking trails abound here including a segment of the Appalachian Trail. Into nature? In addition to several Audubon maintained facilities there are the Berkshire Botanical Garden and the Hebert Arboretum for nature lovers. The Housatonic River and the many lakes in the region offer canoeing, kayaking, fishing, etc. There are campgrounds galore as well. Bicycles are welcome and the country roads make for a wonderful ride.

Photo postcard taken by my father in the 1950's.

Into something a bit more upscale? The area is famous for the performing arts and visual arts with such well known venues such as the Barrington Stage Company, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Jacob’s Pillow, Shakespeare and Company, Tanglewood, the Williamstown Theatre Festival and more all based here. It is also home to the annual Berkshire International Film Festival.

Museums include Chesterwood, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the Williams College Museum of Art and the Norman Rockwell Museum are complimented by a large number of art studios and galleries that are open to the public.

Prefer historical sites? How about visiting the Hancock Shaker Village or Mount Greylock? You might also want to visit the Susan B. Anthony Birthplace, the Colonel John Ashley House, Naumkeag, The Mount - home of Edith Wharton and many other places.

Just want to hang out on a porch? Summer rentals are more popular every year and there are even timeshares available.

Spa fanatics will love Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires while people into yoga will prefer Kripalu. And don't forget The Kushi Institute for people into macrobiotics.

But not to worry. The Berkshires is not just a health food destination. With a wide variety of restaurants run by people from all over the world disbursed throughout the county you won’t lack for different types of food. Many places will even make you picnic boxes to take to an event.

If you’ve ever handled a United States currency note (i.e. a dollar bill) then you have a connection to the Berkshires. Crane Paper Company manufactures the majority of paper used for United States currency right here in Berkshire County.

Interestingly, despite being home to the largest currency paper manufacturer, the Berkshires also has its own local currency called BerkShares. Usable as real currency by participating stores, banks, etc. they have become a very viable alternative to US currency because one purchases them at a discount over US dollars. So, to use the example from their site, “You go to the bank to purchase BerkShares to spend at a local restaurant. You go in with 95 federal dollars and exchange them for 100 BerkShares. You go to dinner, and the total cost comes to $100. The restaurant accepts BerkShares in full, so you pay entirely in BerkShares. Therefore, you've spent 95 federal dollars and received a $100 meal - a five percent discount for you. The owner of the restaurant now has 100 BerkShares. They decide that they need to deposit them for federal dollars and return them to the bank. When they bring them to the bank, the banker deposits the 100 BerkShares you spent on dinner and gives the restaurant $95 federal dollars, the same 95 dollars that you had originally exchanged for BerkShares. The end result? You receive a five percent discount because of the initial exchange, but the same $95 you originally traded for BerkShares all goes to the business where you spent those BerkShares.” BerkShares are available to anyone who wants to buy them at several local banks.

The first street to have an AC transmission system allowing the distribution of electric power over large areas using a transformer was here in the Berkshires. The demonstration took place in Great Barrington where William Stanley the inventor of this system lived. He lit offices and stores along the main street. His design became the basis for all transformers and the AC distribution system formed the basis of electrical power distribution. His Electric Manufacturing Company eventually moved to Pittsfield and eventually became General Electric (GE).

And that all-American pastime baseball – let us not forget that. The earliest reference to baseball was published as a Pittsfield by-law in 1791. It prohibited anyone from playing “baseball” within 80 years of the new meeting house in Pittsfield and was written after someone broke the meeting house windows in a game.

1791 Bylaw Stating In Part " that no Person, an Inhabitant of said Town, shall be permitted to play at any Game called Wicket, Cricket, Baseball, Batball, Football, Cat, Fives or any other Game or Games with Balls within the Distance of Eighty Yards from said Meeting House "

In 1859, the first intercollegiate baseball game was played in Pittsfield, MA and the area has provided many professional baseball players as well. Also located in Pittsfield is Wahconah Park – one of the last ballparks in the US with a wooden grandstand. Built in 1919 and seating 4500 people, the stadium has had a variety of associations including being a minor league affiliate of the New York Mets and the Houston Astros and many professional Major League Baseball players have come out of these teams.

This scenic area boasts year round activities with the busiest seasons being summer and winter.

Now I’ve been writing about Berkshire County but the term “The Berkshires” has slowly spilled over to include parts of New York State, Northern Connecticut and Southern Vermont. These places also have some wonderful activities and places to visit but I’m still a bit biased!

Well – I could go on but instead I’d just like to invite you to visit the Berkshires. It’s truly a wonderous vacation spot.

So let me know when you’re coming up and we’ll meet for a cuppa someplace.

ENJOYING THIS YEAR'S FLOWERS

2011-05-28T14:59:00.001-04:00

For years Mom always planted a simple garden – mostly begonias and impatiens along with some day lilies. About 10 years ago I added some hosta and daffodils to the mix and, after some expression of dissatisfaction with the change (and trust me – it was the fact that there was change) she got used to it.

Last year it was finally time to get a bit more daring and we got a lot of different annuals including hydrangea bushes. We removed some of the bushes from in front of the wall between the porch and the gate and this year it is a beautiful flower bed. Additionally over the last couple of years my friend Steve who used to have a landscaping business up here does a lot of the planting and figuring out what will look good. He also planted tulips last fall that were to come up this spring which they did.

The tulips and snow crocuses are now gone as are most of the daffodils thanks to local wild fauna and their dining preferences along with the severe rains we’ve been having on and off the last few weeks. The leaves of the day lilies are growing nicely although the flowers haven’t yet begun to show.

Last night we had a pretty bad thunderstorm. There was wind and the weather forecast predicted we might even get some hail. At one point they were even talking about a possible tornado.

Today I realized that if I did not get some photos now and we did get the bad weather then later on I might not have any photos of this year’s garden – something I would end up regretting. This is what occurred last year. Everything was planted and we had a very nasty hailstorm. So I have no pictures from last year.

This year's planting looks great. One can sit on the porch or in the sun and enjoy the flowers with their coffee or tea. Hopefully Mom will also decide to spend more time downstairs and enjoying all this.

At one point this summer the windchimes will be finished. This is a project that my friend Alan is doing. I had to have some trees removed before last winter. This one was extremely tall and very dead. The idea of the windchime came to Alan when he and his wife Rosemary came over one day. We were discussing which trees had to go and he said "You know - that one, if they don't cut it down all the way, would make an awesome windchime." And the project was on!

When the fellow came to take down the trees with his crew it turned out that he is really in to windchimes as well. I have photos of that day and will share that all at one point. Needless to say it turned into quite the "treechime fest!"

I do want to thank Steve for all his hard work on prepping and getting my "garden" ready for this year. I could not have done this without him.

Now it is time for the next step. So grab your cuppa, sit down, kick back and enjoy while I share these photos with all of you. (Note - clicking on the photos will enlarge them.)

The Front Of The House

Looking Through Arch On Porch

Looking Through The Gate

African Violets In Teacup

Allium

Alliums, Begonias, Impatiens

Begonias and Tubular Begonias

Begonias, Hosta, Asters, Geranium

Chicks and Hens, Impatiens

Coleus, Tubular Begonias, Varigated Ivy, Geraniums

Hibiscus

Hosta, Geraniums

Hydrangea

Impatiens, Hibiscus

Impatiens Hibiscus

Impatiens

Tickweed, Begonias

Impatiens, Trailing Lobelia

Base of Windchime

Windchime

TAKING CARE OF A LOVED ONE - PART TWO

2011-05-27T01:04:00.005-04:00

Yesterday I wrote partially on a more personal note. Today’s post deals with things that everyone should be thinking about. Sorry there’s no Foodie Friday this week. It will return next week.

No one wants to acknowledge that they are going to die but let's face it. Death is the ultimate act of life. It happens and as of today there really is no way to avoid it in the end.

The following are items that one really needs to deal with while a person is still capable of making decisions on their own. You the reader should be doing all this for yourself and you should also be talking with your loved ones about doing all of these for themselves as well.

1. HEALTHCARE PROXY: If the patient has a healthcare proxy and it is not you, know who it is and how to reach them. If there is no healthcare proxy find out from your local hospital or an attorney what is involved and make arrangements. (Some states also list a sample or official form on their websites which can make your life easier.) A healthcare proxy is both a legal document (sometimes known as a durable power-of-attorney for health care) that appoints someone to make healthcare decisions if the patient is incapable of doing so or should the patient choose not to do so as well as the term used for the person who is that agent. The document does not remove the rights of the patient to make his/her own decisions rather it ensures that in case something happens and the patient is not capable of doing so that someone will be able to act on their behalf. In many cases it can save a lot of time when communicating with healthcare professionals. It is important that a copy of the healthcare proxy document be filed with the patient’s local hospital as well as with any medical professionals the patient sees on a regular basis. One can have a primary and secondary person designated as a Healthcare Proxy (HCP) in the document in case the primary is not available.

2. Advance Directives: This document is meant to ensure that if you are too ill or hurt to tell people your wishes that they will be followed. It is a legal document that deals with end-of-life care ahead of time. The big plus with this document is that if a decision is made in accordance with the directives (also sometimes known as a “living will”) then no one can sue because the patient died or became totally incapacitated. It can address a number of issues including tube feeding, organ donation, tissue donation, autopsy, the use of artificial means of keeping one alive like breathing machines and what to do if breathing stops. If a person has advanced directives and needs a surgical procedure it is extremely important that they make a decision as to whether or not they want to suspend it temporarily during the surgery.

3. WILL: A will is something that everyone should really have. If something happens to you – either in a medical situation or by accident – then at least your possessions and money (if you have any) will be distributed the way you want them to be and by the person you want to handle it all. A will also prevents people from just helping themselves to your stuff – and this can happen – and thereby gives your estate and executor legal recourse. Believe me – some people will just take what they think they are entitled to.

4. FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS: Here in the States it is possible to prepay a funeral. This is an annuity that ensures your funeral (or the disposal of your body) will be done in accordance with your wishes. Because it is an annuity, you are protected over time if the price of a funeral goes up. The contract also will specify exactly what you desire. So when Uncle X shows up and insists on a bigger and better coffin or ceremony or a burial when you chose cremation his hands are tied. This is extremely important for a number of reasons. First the funeral is planned while the deceased-to-be is still alive so he/she has input. Secondly the financial aspect of the funeral is done. (You can even prepay your own memorial stone if you want.) This is good because when people have to deal with burying their loved ones it is a very emotional time and they are vulnerable. Unfortunately funerals are, in part, a sales event and some (not all) funeral parlors will try to upsell the bereaved to a better casket, bigger services, etc. Prepaying does away with not only that but also any family arguments that may arise because someone isn’t happy with the way things are being handled.

Other things that need to be investigated (and that can vary from state to state include looking into inheritance taxes if the person’s assets are numerous as well as property transfers and how they are affected by state and federal assistance programs.

An example would be if a person transfers a car to a family member or friend and then within a year or two has gotten so sick that they have gone through all of their assets – will any government entity or nursing home be able to claim that car thereby reversing the person’s intent?

A consultation with a lawyer who specializes in elders and/or a certified public accountant might be in order to find out these answers and for suggestions on some other paths to take.

Once done, family members and close friends should be informed exactly what has happened and who is “in charge” where necessary. This way if there are any objections they can be dealt with at that point. Believe it or not – there will be hurt feelings. And a family member is NOT always the best choice to be a HCP or executor of an estate. Think about it – how would you feel if you had to make a life-and-death decision for a loved one? Another thing to remember is, if the patient is admitted to an ER or hospital that is a teaching hospital, that an overzealous resident may sometimes try to convince the Healthcare Proxy to go against the wishes of the patient. So the HCP has to also be someone who is strong enough to respect and fight for the wishes/desires of the patient.

I hope that these two articles have been of use to people. Let me know.

TAKING CARE OF A LOVED ONE - PART ONE

2011-05-26T22:01:00.000-04:00

I’ve come to the conclusion that getting old can sometimes really suck. It shouldn’t but it can. My mother will be 91 in August and still has a tremendous will to live. There is so much she wants to do in her life and she talks about it all the time. This is a good thing.

However saying you want to do something and actually doing it are two completely different things. Mom is partially bionic. She’s had both knees replaced and just last year she had a full shoulder replacement as well. The last surgery was probably the most difficult on her. She has never fully bounced back. Mom has pretty constant chronic pain and, given the choice, would prefer to stay in bed all day long. (She doesn’t have that choice too often as I try not to let her.)

We have the technology to keep people alive but the problem appears to be that we may just be living too long. There are many older people who, after living long, healthy, productive lives are seeing their brains start to basically shut down. They may be able to handle day-to-day functions but their short term memory starts to go. (I know – that happens to a lot of us but this can happen more frequently to the elderly.) Weakness sets in so that, although they may wish to go out for a coffee every day, they are not physically capable of doing so. And the more they give in to their aches and pains and baby themselves by staying in bed, the weaker they get.

Some give in to it totally and give up. Their lives consist of staying in bed and going to doctor appointments – even though there is no reason for them to do so because there is nothing wrong with them. Their doctors tell them this but television and magazine advertising by pharmaceutical companies seem to be a bigger persuader than the doctors.

Then you get someone like my Mom who really doesn’t want any more medications and would rather be doing stuff but just can’t. The lack of strength, etc. becomes even more debilitating. Getting Mom dressed and downstairs each day is a chore when she is feeling well. When, as now, she is feeling poorly, it is close to impossible.

It doesn’t help that over the last few years several of her friends have passed away – the majority of them younger than her. Although she denies it, it has to be depressing.

Over the past few weeks Mom has woken up with what are called “night sweats.” She’ll phone me (we use my cellphone and her landline as an intercom system in addition to a baby monitor) and I’ll go in to dry her off. Her temperature, oxygen intake and pulse are all healthy/normal yet she doesn’t feel right.

Last week I took her to see her primary care physician who said that perhaps she had a “hidden fever.” He prescribed an antibiotic to fight the wheezing she’s been having along with her shortness of breath. Since then she has had some more episodes of shortness of breath and wheezing which could be attributed to the very humid weather we’ve been having. However today she was adamant that I get her to the hospital – something she is not fond of doing.

The upshot is that she went to the Emergency Room where we spent most of the day. Tests showed nothing wrong but, again the diagnoses of “hidden fever” was given. I will say that after getting some fluids via IV she seemed to bounce back so, even though the bloodwork did not show dehydration as a cause, maybe she still had a touch of it.

Believe me, it is as frustrating to the doctors as it is to us. And all I can do is observe her and report back to her doctors what I observe. This does help them a bit – whether it’s to rule out things or just to try and narrow things down.

So, just like with a child that might get ill, if you have a parent or other elderly person in your household who starts complaining, remember to observe and keep careful notes so that you can discuss it with that person’s doctor when you make an appointment (or the ER doctor if it comes to that.) Many seniors will, when they talk to the doctor, only tell him/her about what is troubling them at that moment.

I have noticed this with my mother. I’ll make an appointment about her feeling dizzy but, when we get to the doctor’s office her knees are bothering her from her arthritis then, when the doctor enters and asks what is wrong she will concentrate on her knee pain.

Many seniors will also either be constant complainers or they will be stoics. You will either be constantly subjected to a litany of what’s wrong with them or you will notice that they are in pain or something is wrong and they won’t discuss it with you until the pain or whatever it is becomes unbearable. This is another area where being extremely observant is important.

Now I keep saying to be observant. It is important that you also be as objective as possible. This may include having friends of yours over to see if they notice the same things. When you are a caregiver you tend to get overinvolved with the person you are caring for. This means you may become a bit subjective and see what isn’t there. The trick is to take a big step backwards regularly and make certain that what you think you observe is really what is there.

With most of today’s medical practices and the constraints put on the doctors by insurance companies here in the U.S., many doctors cannot practice medicine the way they would like to. That is – they cannot spend as much time as they would like with each and every patient. Where I live we are lucky – many doctors will spend as much time as they can with each patient and they also follow up with phone calls (or have a staff member do it) in order to be sure everything is OK. By keeping accurate observations and even writing them down to hand to the doctor when he/she walks in you can make the best use of their time and the patient’s time as well ensuring better care.

Another thing to have and bring extra copies to every office and ER/hospital visit is a printout of every medication the person is currently taking (including temporary medications and herbal supplements) along with a list of allergies. Additionally bring along with a medical history to the best of your/the patient’s ability.

You can save a lot of time, and earn the respect of medical staff, if you keep these lists on your computer, update them regularly and bring a printout with you to each visit. If it is a trip by ambulance to the ER then make THREE copies: one for the ambulance personnel as they may need it for insurance filing or other reasons, one for the ER personnel (which you can hand to the ambulance people saying “one is for you and the other for the ER” and one that you bring with you in case anyone has any questions and hasn't seen the printout.

Tomorrow we will deal with four important issues that should be addressed to ensure smooth health and end-of-life care for everyone.

SOCIAL MEDIA - HOW DO I FOLLOW A PERSON?

2011-05-25T21:08:00.000-04:00

I’m not talking about stalking here but rather Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media sites along with blogs. There are several reasons to connect with people online. These fall into several categories and that’s what today’s post is about. Personally I use Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn along with a couple of the aggregators and a couple of the music and photo sites such as blip.fm, twitpic, etc . Other people use many more sites than I do and I raise my glass to them.

Facebook:

First you have your true friends. These are friends that you know in real life and who you are in touch with in a multitude of ways. Online connections are just an additional way to keep up with them and possibly feel closer as you read about their day-to-day adventures. You get to see more photos of their families and yes, sometimes even see what they are eating for dinner. Remember – these true friends can be people you have met over the years through social functions, business events or other ways. You may have only met them recently and yet have struck such a bond with them that you feel like you have known them forever or don’t know what your life would be without them.

Next you might have “those people.” These are the people you used to know or had some other potential connection with. As an example, I am the co-administrator of my high school online alumni group. As such I try to not only connect with people who went to the school via the alumni group but also directly as friends. In my case it works because the school was a small school with an average class size of 12 people from grades 1 through 12 and the school was only around for less than 20 years. This might not work with a larger school or other organization but there are people that you never met, that will still try to connect with you because you must have passed each other in the hallway for their last year there. “Those people” and whether or not to connect with them are a judgment call.

Going on from there, you have what I refer to as “affinity friends.” These are people that you have a loose tenuous relationship with. It may be that you share a common interest such as stamp collecting or esoteric politics or chain mail making. You connect through a fan page on Facebook or another site and again, you may or may not interact. In fact you may never ever meet other than that one time you pushed the “confirm” button.

Then there are friends of friends – people that you begin to have a conversation with on a mutual friends page due to a comment your mutual friend made or people you have met via an introduction (online or via email) through another friend. These folks can be extremely interesting and actually become friends over time.

Add to that people who are open networkers. When I first started on Facebook that is what I was. I accepted any and all friend requests. I quickly shot up to almost 5000 friends and had no room left for people I actually knew. Most of these people were connections from LinkedIn where I was also an open networker. I rapidly realized that I had to make a decision and I did. I posted on my Facebook page that I was going to start weaning out people I did not know.

Now prior to doing cut-down process I actually had some great interactions with some of my LinkedIn connections via Facebook. I kept them as friends. But everyone else went and I am down to a “manageable” 626 friends now. What’s scary – but in a good way - is that I actually know most of them in person. There are probably about 40 or so that I only know from online or through an affinity connection.

Facebook does have a cap of approximately 5000 people that you can friend. To get around that limitation you will need either a fan page or a group page. But while those pages will certainly let you communicate with more people it isn’t the same as a true friend page.

Twitter:

Until someone spams me or if they spew vitriolic garbage that shoots my blood pressure through the roof, I will let anyone follow me on Twitter. I figure that if you are really that interested in what I have to say then go ahead. Listen. Unfortunately Twitter does have a 1999 follower limit of sorts. You can only follow 1999 people until more than 2000 people are following you. Once you go past that magic 2000 number you can follow as many people as you want – with a caveat. You cannot just jump in and follow 500 people at once. Twitter has a couple of algorithms designed to try and thwart spammers. If you follow to many people on the same day you will find your account blocked. (By the way – I’m about 500 short so feel free to follow me on Twitter where I’m known as @PAWeissenstein. Just be aware I won’t be able to follow you back so no offense intended.)

Now how do you choose who to follow on Twitter. For some people the rules for Facebook that I stated above apply. Others, once they have reached the 2000 people following them mark, will follow everyone back. While following everyone back may mean that you will find something worthwhile, and you will also, in theory, expand your influence, you will probably need to develop your own rules on how to handle that. Many people will use a client such as TweetDeck, Seismic or HootSuite in order to manage their Twitter account(s). These tools will let you create columns which will then sort your incoming tweets by people, category, etc. The true Power Users have no choice but to utilize these and the other programs out there in order to maintain their feeds and interactions. But then again, this can become almost a full time job and one has to make the decision on how much time do you wish to put in to your social media life?

LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a great job searching tool. You can find things out on LinkedIn and garner leads that you just can’t do anywhere else. Unfortunately the spammers have also discovered that over the last couple of years as well. Whether to keep your network open – meaning you accept all invites or closed – meaning you only accept invites from people you know or have actually met is a personal decision and also a debate that has raged on since LinkedIn was started. There are pluses and minuses to both sides of the story. The one thing I strongly suggest is that you do get as many of your friends and family connected to you on LinkedIn as possible. Then you can make the best decision for yourself.

Blogs – while I will take the time to read a lot of blogs they won’t all make it on to my blogroll. This is not intended to offend anyone. I could easily create a blogroll that would take so much time to read that one wouldn’t have time to read the blogs! So I use a double edge sword there. First I list the blogs of a few of my friends that I really think the world should get to know. Then I list blogs where friends of mine and I all think are worth sharing. It is impossible to read each and every blog I would like to read every single day but I will do my best. I may not comment on each blog I read either. I don’t expect comments every day on my posts either because of that. I just hope people are reading it.

Other social media sites – there are many other sites out there such as NING, MySpace, etc. It is always your decision as to where and what you will participate. I have, over the years, signed up for several other sites but tend not to use them at all. Why? It’s simple. The internet is really like a cavern filled with pirate’s treasure filled with real jewels and gold as well as lots of fool’s gold. In my opinion, unless one is running a business which relies on internet feedback one needs to choose how much time and how many places they will participate in before it overwhelms oneself.

Certainly there are programs out there that can help you manage everything but at what point do you give your own personality up to a program? This requires a lot of thought.

So that’s it in a nutshell from one individual person . What’s your take on this?

TOE-ING THE LINE - PART 3

2011-05-24T16:17:00.000-04:00

Today is the 7th day after the surgery on my foot and I had my first follow-up with the surgeon. As most surgeons are, he was very pleased with his work. And he should be. I can already see that there will be no scar from the incision. Of course the fact that he is a plastic surgeon probably means that I should have expected that.

Most people in the United States hear the term "plastic surgeon" and think they only do cosmetic surgery, Hollywood and tummy tucks. Nothing could be further from the truth. Plastic surgeons do much much more than that.

While it is true a chunk of business comes from “Botox Babes,” “Nostril Nellies,” “Tummy Tonis” and other body augmentation/re-arrangements they are highly trained professionals who also do reconstructive procedures to accident victims, surgery on the nerves, etc.

Several years ago my mother had a serious fall and hit her head on a bookcase cutting open her forehead. She also damaged the optic nerve in her left eye. At the hospital, the eye doctor – a skilled surgeon himself – actually had a plastic surgeon do the procedure. Today you see no scar on my Mom’s forehead. Unfortunately they were unable to save the optic nerve but they did do wonderful work.

The doctor who did my procedure also did marvelous work. Rather than my seeing him again at his office, I will see him in two weeks at the Wound Clinic when I go for my bi-weekly appointment for my toe.

Oh – and my toe, instead of pointing up towards the heavens, now is flat – the way it should be!

SPRINGTIME THOUGHTS AND MEMORIES

2011-05-23T00:16:00.000-04:00

If you live in a house the time tends to arrive each spring when you start thinking about the garden. Now I am extremely fortunate in that I have a friend of mine who is extremely gifted at landscaping/planting and he takes care of this for Mom and me.

Last fall he planted a bunch of tulips, daffodils and other bulbs and they have come up adding a flash of color to the outside of the house. This fall he’ll plant more.

My house is pretty much surrounded by trees. Due to the pine trees some of the soil is extremely acidic. Both these situations limit what exactly one can plant. Fortunately there are several plants the fit the bill. One of these is hosta. To me hosta is a pretty weed. I say this because it grows and grows. Each year it gets a bit bigger and spreads out a bit more.

Fortunately it has attractive leaves and so it will be used in areas where trial and error have shown that we cannot plant anything else and expect good results. As Mom says “As long as it’s green!”

Of course she said that about the lawn in the back of the house which had gone pretty much to moss. Fortunately there have been huge advances in lawn products – specifically grass seed and this year the moss is gone and new grass is coming in.

It is nice going outside each day and seeing yet another burst of blooms coming up somewhere around the house. Some of the summer plants have been picked up while more will be gotten over the next couple of days. So I expect that the majority of our summer plantings will be in place by next weekend. I will get a photo and post it at one point as well.

Seeing flowers coming out of the ground does something very positive to one’s outlook on life. Looking out the window after hearing what you think is a car door slamming to see that it’s Mama Bear and her two little cubs going through your dumpster also reminds you of the “circle of life.” Yes – every year in the spring we get a mama bear coming through the neighborhood trying to scavenge food. One year she actually managed to tip the entire dumpster and I watched as she carefully brought each bag over to a small area of our backyard where she opened them. She then called her cubs over for a dinner picnic.

At the time I had a mac.com account. No one knew then that Apple was planning to delete the entire mac.com website and migrate us all to me.com without doing something to migrate our existing sites. Fortunately they did migrate all the photos to one section of our iDisks and the text to another. Without further ado – here is the text and the photos from a previous visit of “The Visitors.”

THE GUESTS

You know how you get those guests that just drop in without warning?

Well here you see a mother and her kids who decided to do just that to us!

Playing In The Field

Tag You're It!

I'm It!

Bet You Can't Catch Me!

Bet You Can't Find Me!

Mother with Children - Look for the Shy One in Bushes

Suppertime!

Yummy Mommy - Our Favorite!

So I hope you enjoyed that brief trip down memory lane with me.

This year I’ve outsmarted her. No food waste in the dumpster – only non-recyclable stuff. Food waste goes into bags here in the house along with the other recyclables and I do regular dump runs. Sorry Mama Bear.

RAPTUREMANIA & OBSERVATIONS ON ANOTHER YEAR

2011-05-22T08:15:00.002-04:00

Well the Rapture has come and fizzled. The hype leading up to this non-event by individuals of all beliefs/non-beliefs and the media has been rather amusing to me. And yesterday was the crescendo as people on Facebook seem to have decided not to go out and enjoy the lovely weather but rather stay home and make comments on their computers! (Yes – even I fell prey to this.)

Now it is time for the post-Rapturephoria as even more T-Shirts and mugs get made by more people looking to make a quick buck. There certainly were enough of them doing it pre-Rapture; why not continue with what was, for them, a good thing?

And for those of you with a great sense of humor and over the top neighbors – why not try this as it is still early enough today. Get some of your old clothing and shoes and place them on sidewalks and lawns around your city and town. Then hide and watch people’s reactions as they start wondering about IF the Rapture actually did happen. You know there are going to be some people that think they should have been chosen and who, seeing the empty clothing, will have great reactions to view!

Me – I’m enjoying myself; sipping on a cuppa and watching the comments from Facebook.

Last night I got together with a small group of friends for a post-Rapture, pre-Birthday (it’s today), any-Anniversary celebration. Being with good friends trumps a cataclysmic event anytime! Really – it does even if you keep checking to see if you are still there!

We gathered at the bar/restaurant of the local Crowne Plaza. Good food; good company - what else do you need for a relaxing evening?

Today I’ll go out for breakfast later on with a friend and with Mom – if she’s up to it and then tonight for dinner. Overall a rather quiet and relaxing day.

And, while I would have loved to take the day off from writing, instead I’ll just post this short brief update because I have committed to making it to the finish line of the Blogathon and we are almost there!

Well it is Sunday and yesterday my Mom, being nostalgic, informed me that I was born on a Sunday!

Another year gone by; time for some reflection on what I did and did not accomplish and then onwards and upwards to enjoy life!