Maybe it’s my Thyroid that’s causing the dry skin? 20 years ago I had a tumor on my thyroid that was pre-cancerous and had half my thyroid removed. Then, this past spring I discovered that I have another tumor on my remaining thyroid. I do take Synthroid and my thyroid levels are normal … but still … maybe I’m slightly hypothyroid. That can cause dry skin and other problems.

I think I might do a little research and find our which are the best wrinkle creams to use for dry skin. Also which ones are fairly inexpensive! I do use skin creams – facial and body, but they don’t seem to be helping all that much lately so maybe I need to change brands.

Can anyone recommend any good skin creams for dry skin? Again, inexpensive ones … we’re on a tight budget lately! At least if summer ever does kick in around here I know the humidity will help too!

A week or so ago I mentioned that Chris’ parents were going to be coming down on the weekend to take us out for dinner … well that didn’t happen. It was postponed and they are coming into town to take Chris and I for an early lunch this Saturday.

As it turned out it was just as well that my in-laws didn’t show up as my sister had an operation on her leg and knee last Friday so we went to visit her in the hospital on both Saturday and Sunday for several hours. She’s doing well- thankfully!

Then … just as the week started and I thought things were settling down, I got an email from my brother in Vancouver stating that he’s coming to Toronto this weekend and uhm … could he stay with one of us (ie us, one of my other brothers or my sister).

I volunteered our home, and since none of us have seen my brother for oh about a year and a half we decided that sometime on the weekend we’ll all get together for dinner. We might end up having a BBQ here on Sunday if the weather holds up. Right now the weather forecast says it’s going to rain on Sunday so we might all meet up in a restaurant after all.

If we do have a barbecue I think we’ll have at least ten guests! So it will be a busy day getting food prepared for the BBQ and preparing for guests. At least if it does turn out to be a nice day we can all sit outside in our garden.

I think I’ll be spending the next two days making sure our house is immaculate! I wish our dog wasn’t a shedder!

LOL I’ve been so busy lately with all the things Chris and I have been doing and now weekend guests every second weekend or so … I certainly wouldn’t want to be getting a life insurance quote right now as I think I’m getting a bit stressed out. In a good way of course, but still … I always get a little stressed when expecting house guests … especially if they’re my in-laws!

Have you been having a busy summer too? Expecting any house guests? Do you get a little stressed out as you prepare for guests in your home?

It was Chris’ birthday yesterday and he loves Jazz music so he suggested we go to the “Mosaic Does Jazz” Jazz in the park festival that’s being held every Wednesday evening from 5 pm until 8 pm at the Coxwell Parkette from July 1st to Sept. 2nd. It’s close to our home and man, was the music ever fantastic!

We saw the Terra Hazelton Quartet and as I said the music was great. The singer had a beautiful bluesy voice just made for singing Jazz songs. She was accompanied by a Jazz guitarist, a bassist and a drummer.

We had thought that the music was to start at 8 pm so we didn’t actually get there until about 7! Oops! We brought a friend from work, our dog and three folding chairs and parked ourselves about 15 feet from the center of the stage.

I didn’t realize that there would be other things going on in the small park, but when we got there we noticed that there were a couple of vendors selling food like hotdogs and hamburgers, a coffee shop, a person doing massage, someone doing therapeutic touch and a jewelry booth with lovely pearl jewelry. I’m sure there were a few other tent booths that I missed.

There was a good crowd. Probably people that lived in or who were shopping in the neighborhood. Lots of kids too. One little girl, maybe a year old, kept trying to climb onto the stage! Oh and our dog barked whenever anyone applauded and that warranted a “woof” from the singer. LOL

Oh and in response to the person that commented on my post “time to stop letting life pass me by” where I first talked about attending a Toronto event once a week …

He said “An event every weekend? Isn’t that kind of overdoing it? Doing nothing can feel like a waste of time, but doing too much can be too.”

My response … well I’ve been sick and on medical leave from work for the last few years. Believe me, I haven’t done too much and I’m sick of it. Toronto is a great city with tons of things to do in the summer (despite the garbage strike stinking up the place!). Believe me, I won’t overdo it as my body won’t let me. Going to a park to watch musicians play won’t overextend me nor will going out for a couple of hours to one of Toronto’s many food festivals. I just want to get out and do things when I’m feeling up to it and as I said summer in Toronto is the perfect time to attend events, try foods that you’ve never tried before and just get out and feel alive.

My husband has changed the shower head and that didn’t stop the dripping. He also tried a few other things to fix the shower and still it dripped. So, since he’s the main one in the house that uses the shower he started turning off the water supply for the shower after he has a shower. For a long time that seemed to stop the constant dripping as the water supply to the shower was only on when the shower was being used. However, recently the shower started dripping again even when the water supply was shut off on the pipes outside the bathroom.

I rarely use the bathroom in the basement, but I was down there last Friday and I realized that the constant dripping of the shower head was making a very moist environment. In fact, the shower appeared to have some mold in it. So when my husband came home from work that evening I told him we had to try to do something about the shower’s constant drip.

So on Saturday my husband got busy trying to fix the shower. First he took care of the possible mold problem by washing down the shower walls with a bleach and water solution (several times). Then he tried to take the hot and cold water faucets off the shower. Maybe we just needed to put a washer inside?

Now I have to tell you that while I wanted him to fix the shower I wanted him to do so without having to spend any money on it. Our funds are very low these days and we just can’t afford to get new Moen faucets for the shower right now. Not if we can help it!

Of course things went wrong. He got one of the shower faucets if no problem, added a washer (as suggested by one of the guys at Home Depot) and that stopped the dripping for the cold water. However he had a lot of trouble getting the hot water faucet off and when he did he couldn’t get the two pieces apart to add a washer.

He decided to take the part to Home Depot to see if he could find an inexpensive replacement. I think they laughed at him! The part is apparently about 25 years old and not easy to replace. Even a specialty plumbing store didn’t help!

I started to think this was going to turn out like our kitchen tap story! Remember a few months ago I posted about how Chris was trying to take the Brita filter off our kitchen tap and ended up breaking the end … causing us to have to buy a whole new set of kitchen faucets? Yeah that was fun!

In the end we didn’t have to spend any money on new faucets or smaller replacement parts. Instead we took one of the plumbing specialists suggestions and soaked the faucet part in vinegar for several hours to remove some of the corrosion on the fixture. Then, yesterday evening, my husband used two wrenches to carefully pry to pieces apart. He added a washer, put the parts together again and installed the faucet in the shower where it had been before and ta da! It seems to have worked. No drip, drip, drip!

I really have to be careful when I ask my husband to do home repairs! It seems to always cost us more money and or frustration than we think it will!

At least the water bill should be a little bit lower now. I’m sure all that dripping was wasting a lot of water. Plus, now that the shower area won’t have a constant supply of moisture the room and shower stall should hopefully be mold and mildew free. I hope!

Have you ever tried to do what seems like it should be a small home repair only to end up spending way more time and money than you ever thought you would to fix the problem?

Now back in 1995 when I started my first website it was a heck of a lot easier to promote your site. There was less competition and since my website was in a very specific niche I was able to join (and fully participate) in forums specific to the topic, which of course, was a great way to inform people about my site.

Every time I start a new site I also make sure that I get it listed in Google, Yahoo, MSN and basically all of the best web directories that I can submit my site to for free. I’ve never paid for site submissions. I just don’t feel it’s worth it. However getting your site listed in a general directory or even better one that’s specific to your sites niche is still important and worth spending some time doing.

Over the last couple of years I’ve read that Google doesn’t give as much credit for directory listings as it once did – but hey, a link is a link, right? Plus if people are actually visiting a website directory to find sites that discuss specific topics it’s another way to get a few new visitors.

When it comes to blogs one of the best ways to promote your site is to visit other blogs and leave comments on their posts. If you leave a decent comment that adds to the conversation not only will the blog owner be more likely to visit your site, but so will some of their readers.

I used to be really good about commenting on other blogs. Over the last year or so I’ve fallen behind on commenting on my favorite sites and posts. I still visit my favorite bloggers and the blogs of those who leave comments but I just don’t seem to have the time anymore to concentrate on visiting sites and leaving comments. I guess I have too many sites to maintain and of course my health problems get in the way too.

It’s a shame because commenting on other blogs is a great way to build a community, get new visitors and of course get back links to your site. I really have to figure out a way to make more time to visit and comment on the posts I enjoy.

What do you do to promote your website or blog? Do you do the basics that I’ve suggested above? Have you ever paid to be listed in a directory or elsewhere?

It just seems that I got so busy over the last month or so that I haven’t managed to do much writing in any of my many blogs. Life got in the way, you might say!

For some reason my garden has kept me busier this year than the last few! Maybe it’s just that I feel more like working in it? Anyway … over the last two weeks or so my husband and I managed to add about 30 big bags of mulch to the garden beds (after weeding of course)! No wonder my back has constantly been aching lately!

We’ve also taken our dog to the beach for a swim in Lake Ontario a few times, plus we’ve attended a few events that have been going on in Toronto. Namely – the first annual Beach Ribfest and the Toronto Ribfest, the Mississauga Waterfront festival where we saw Bruce Cockburn play, Woofstock in early June and I think a few more things.

Even though my Crohn’s is still flaring and makes me feel awful a good portion of the time I’ve decided to stop letting life pass me by. Toronto is a great city, with lots to do, especially in the summer. There’s something going on just about every weekend!

So, a few weeks ago I said to my husband lets try to attend one Toronto event every weekend. Provided the event is of interested to the two of us of course. So that’s what we’ve been doing. Hmmm maybe this weekend we’ll try to view the Molson Indy (we don’t have tickets). There’s also the Toronto Fringe Festival and the Outdoor Art Exhibition this weekend. Summerlicious is on too (gourmet meals for a deal of a price) – maybe we’ll eat out as well!

If you live in Toronto or within driving distance and you’re looking for interesting inexpensive things to do check out the Toronto Festivals and Events Calendar. I’m sure you’ll find something that suites your tastes.

We didn’t do anything special this past weekend, but last Wednesday was Canada day and we had a friend over. Actually it’s a guy that Chris works with at the hospital. So I was entertained by two talented guitar players (Chris and our friend) as they played guitar in our backyard for a few hours.

Unfortunately, due to the ongoing garbage and city workers strike here in Toronto Canada Day festivities were canceled. So no fireworks … but it seemed that many of our neighbors bought their own Fireworks and set them off on the street or the park just down the road from us, so we could see fireworks all around our house!

Odd that all the rest of the big Toronto events (Gay Pride parade, Molson Indy etc) can all go on with the garbage strike and city worker strike, but national festivities for Canada Day were canceled? Unfair!

It’s Chris’ birthday on Wednesday. I don’t know what we’re going to do yet, but I think Chris’ parents are planning on coming into town for a visit sometime on the weekend. When Chris was talking to his mom the other day she said they wanted to take us out to dinner, so i guess along with the other multitude of interesting activities that we might do this weekend, going out to dinner to celebrate my husbands birthday will be on the list.

Anyway … if Chris and I stick to the plan we’ll be doing something new and interesting every weekend so even though I might be a little busier than I have been in the recent past I’ll try to blog more often and I should have some interesting tales to tell about the things we’ve been up to – photo’s too!

Do you find that life gets busier in the summer? Do you try to attend various events or festivals going on in your city during the summer?

BTW A belated Happy Canada Day and 4th of July to my Canadian and American visitors!

I spent so much time searching on the web and reading posts and the Wordpress.org forum trying to figure out a fix for this problem that I think it caused a delay in my posting new posts on my blogs over the last few days. I was seriously determined to fix my blogs.

So do you want to know how I fixed my blogs visual editor problem? I discovered that during the automatic upgrade Wordpress didn’t upload some of the necessary files in the wp_includes/js/tinymce folder! I found the answer to my quest in the Wordpress.org forums near the bottom of this page.

My Wordpress install on all of my Feverishthoughts.com blogs were missing the following files in the wp_includes/js/tinymce folder:

wp-tinymce.js
wp-tinymce.js.gz
wp-tinymce.php

I downloaded a fresh copy of Wordpress 2.8, unzipped the files, and then used my FTP program to navigate to the wp_includes/js/tinymce for each of the affected blogs.

I then deleted the FILES – (not folders) in the tinymce folder and uploaded the tinymce files from my copy of Wordpress 2.8. This got rid of old files that were no longer being used by this WP upgrade and added the three extremely necessary new files (listed above).

I actually did this for all of my blogs (17) in order to get rid of the old files that are no longer being used.

Once I was done adding the files that weren’t included in the automatic upgrade I cleared my browsers cache, and restarted my browser. Once I logged back into my Wordpress sites I found that the Visual editor almost always loads. When it doesn’t I just do a CTRL- refresh (for a hard refresh) and it loads.

So now I can once again upload or add photos to my blog posts, alter their size if necessary and add tags to my posts! Yeah!

I think the reason why I ran into this problem was that I had upgraded from 2.33 to 2.62 using the Wordpress Upgrade plugin (this was many many months ago) and then when 2.7 came out I used the plug to do the upgrade and finally used the WP automatic upgrade to update my Feverishthoughts blogs to 2.8. Neither the plugin or the built in automatic upgrade seem to delete old files and in the case of the 2.8 upgrade it missed a few very important files!

All the rest of my blogs worked fine. I had updated them using Fantastico in my C-panel.

So the moral of the story … maybe wait about a month before upgrading your Wordpress installation when a new version comes out as this will give them some time to discover and hopefully fix the bugs. And two – if you are having a problem with your WP installation, back everything up and then read the instructions on how to do a proper manual install. That will probably fix the most major problems.

Most of the installations went well, but I’m having trouble with my blogs on Feverishthoughts.com. The visual editor doesn’t work. Normally this wouldn’t bother me all that much since I do most of my writing in the plain text HTML mode, but if you want to add a picture via the “add an image” tab it doesn’t work. I click on the tab and nothing happens.

Same goes for adding post tags. I have to add tags for my posts by saving the post as a draft, then going to the Post section and doing a quick edit to add the tags.

I tend to upload most of my pictures to my Flickr account and then use the Flickr code to add them to my posts, however without being able to use “visual mode” I can’t re-size my images if they need an adjustment.

The two blogs that suffer the most from my lack of ability to use visual mode and add pictures are my photo blog (naturally!) and my gardening blog. I have tons of new photos of the flowers that are blooming in my garden and I can’t post them! How frustrating!

It sounds like the current beta version of Wordpress 2.8.1 will address these issues, but given my experience I think I’ll hold off downloading the beta version for now.

Oh and it’s not a plugin conflict. Even with all my plugins deactivated I still can’t use the visual editor. I’ve also cleared my browser cache and tried re-installing wordpress (automatically) and that didn’t help either.

I think I’ll try manually upgrading one of my blogs and see if that helps. Maybe some of the files were corrupted when I used the automatic upgrade.

Anyone else having similar problems with Wordpress?

Next time I’ll wait a couple of weeks before upgrading after a new version comes out.

All that needs to be done in the living room dining room is to put up the tin ceiling tiles and then put molding up around the ceiling and at floor level. Then our long time living room/ dining room reno will finally be done.

Sometime after that I think we’ll start to work on renovating our kitchen. It’s a tiny kitchen, but I think if we rearrange the way the cupboards are set up and move the refrigerator from the area between the back door and basement door (unsightly!) we can modernize the kitchen and make it look quite nice.

Moving the fridge will make a huge difference in the look of the kitchen. I can’t wait to be able to do that. Of course as I said we have to rearrange the cupboards and probably move the sink over in order to do that.

Speaking of the sink. We currently have a double sink, but each sink is on the small side. I think I might look at a large undermount sink as a replacement for our small double sink. It will be nice to be able to soak a large roasting pan instead of only soaking half at a time!

As usual, if we do start renovating our kitchen sometime later this summer we’ll be doing most of the work on our own. We really don’t have much money to spare and we’re pretty handy Do it yourselfers. It will just take longer for us to do it on our own!

Have you ever done a kitchen reno on your own? Any advice?

Woofstock is the largest dog festival in North America and it’s going on this weekend here in Toronto.

Instead of driving downtown we decided to take the subway. It was Midnight’s first time on the Subway so it was an adventure for her. She did well, but didn’t like all the long, steep sets of stairs that we had to go up and down in the subway stations. Why … well we don’t let her go upstairs with us in our house or go into the basement, so she isn’t used to climbing big sets of stairs. Otherwise she did really well on the train.

It had been an overcast slightly cool day when we set out for the subway, but by the time we got downtown the sun had decided to come out so it was quite warm walking in the crowds at Woofstock.

Midnight had a ball meeting all kinds of other dogs. Luckily every dog we met was fairly friendly. The only dogs that we saw not getting along were two un-neutered males that got too close to each other.

We came home with a ton of treats for Midnight. Two big Mammoth bones, a beef knee, 6 pigs ears, liver treats and two types of special baked dog treats.

We also bought two more leashes – the same kind that we bought last year at the show. It’s a leash that has rivet holes in several places and hooks at each end so that you can wear the leash around your waist as you walk your dog, or attach one end of the leash easily to a pole when you need to leave your dog outside a store for a moment or adjust the length of the leash in anyway that suites you. Obviously we loved the leash we bought last year so much that we wanted to make sure that we’d always have one!

We also got Midnight a new collar. It’s vinyl or rubber. It will be great to use when we take her to the lake for a swim as it won’t soak up water, stretch or get smelly like her current collar does whenever it gets wet.

Just before we left Woofstock we took Midnight to this area that had small pools that the dogs could wade in. She was hot (we’d been giving her water all afternoon and there were several water bowls near most of the booths) and needed a good soak. She got right into the small pool and the lady that was there managing the pools sprayed her with a hose. I took some pictures but I’m too tired to transfer them to the computer, crop them and upload them just now … so pictures of our day at Woofstock will follow in another post.

Midnight was wet when we got on the subway since her soak in the pool happened only minutes before we left the event. She’d shaken herself off a few times, but just as I feared she did a good shake while we were on the subway and got water droplets all over a lady who was reading some kind of diet pill review pamphlet. Oops! Luckily she didn’t mind!

Our dog is sleepy this evening, just as I expected. We wore her out!

Tomorrow if I feel up to it (remember I’m tired out too!) we might go down to the waterfront and see some of the final LuminaTO events. There’s going to be performances by Cirque de Soleil members in two areas of the Waterfront / Harbourfront area. I definitely want to see that! Being an outdoor event I’m pretty sure that we can take our dog with us, so she’s going to get some more outdoor activity tomorrow – more than likely!

Does your city have a lot of outdoor activities and events throughout the summer? Ours does! That’s one of the reasons I love living in Toronto. There’s always something interesting to do.