Sunday, September 11, 2011

Here's my news, folks .....

Well as you will all know, today marked the 10th anniversary of that
terrible day in US history, 9/11. On the day in question, Mrs C and I
were on holiday in Scarborough, staying in a lovely apartment
overlooking the North Bay. We’d taken my mum with us, who was rather
frail and who was prone to falling over. We watched the bad news …
there was continuous news coverage of what was happening … it was so
appalling that we had to switch off the TV after an hour or so.

The next day, 9/12, my mum tripped over on a door step smashing her
Rt hip and shoulder. She ended up in hospital for several weeks
(following a hip replacement). 9/12 was the start of a long downward
spiral in her health, ending in her death just over a year later.

So it was bad news all round.

Other news


I've been keeping busy with website stuff and taking more photos, plus
playing guitar with my mates.

Mrs C has been badly hit by an out-of-season spring-cleaning bug, and
has been roping me in to sort through several heaps of junk (mainly my
stuff) before binning it all. All very distracting!

Two of our granddaughters, A & M, have just started school (after
attending nurseries part-time) ... big changes for them, and changes
for us too … we’ve been enlisted in helping out with the school runs
walks and after-school care 1-2 times a week. A’s little brother JJ is
starting nursery part-time, so we won’t be asked to do full days
looking after the kids, except in the school holidays …. why do
teachers have to take holidays?

I’m pleased to say that all the kids are settling in well, into their
schools and nurseries.

We had A and JJ and their mum round at our house today, partly because
Daddy K was away on business … due back from Amsterdam early this
evening. So all that went well, though Mrs C and I weren’t feeling
our best because of insomnia last night … Mrs C woke up at 2.00am
and I woke at 4.00am … I’m still awake at this late hour (11.30pm),
though I’m feeling very tired.

I’m in the process of re-vamping our Sony Vista laptop, as various
things are wrong with it. In the past 2 weeks I’ve been sorting
through loads of photos and documents on the laptop, & today I’ve
managed to do a full back-up onto an external hard drive … my first
go at using one of these. I’ve bought from Amazon a Buffalo 1TB
MiniStation (which is 3.0/2.0 USB capable), and spent some time
today setting it up and then backing up everything onto it …
about 24GB of stuff. It took me a while to work out how to access
all the info on the drive … but now it all looks very good.

Next job: to re-install Windows Vista, if I can, using some recovery
discs I made a few years ago. If these don’t work, I plan to buy the
same from Sony. Oh what fun!

3 Comments:

Anonymous Keith said...

Best of luck mate; but Vista? Have you got a death wish or something?

Stick to Win95, it's simple and very good. I've tried Windows 7, but it kept hanging up and/or crashing.

I now use Linux Ubuntu and have not had a single problem as yet. I can't get to grips with that bloody 'Gimp' thing though.

8:17 pm  
Blogger andrea said...

I have always really enjoyed your blog so I wonder why I don't visit more often. In similar news, my dad had a stroke the week after 9/11. He's still alive but it's been a long 10 years and he won't make it to 9/11 next year.

12:59 am  
Blogger justin said...

Good to hear from you both.
Keith: I wouldn't have chosen Vista with hindsight, but the laptop was given to me by my family as a surprise birthday present. I would have liked to have stayed with Windows 98, but anti-virus software wouldn't cover it, and my new cameras required more modern machines to work with them ... it's all a conspiracy to squeeze more money out of us. I couldn't get the hang of installing Linux on my old machine. As for Gimp, I've got used to using it and like it ....
http://jwebdesigns.angelfire.com/gimp1.htm
Andrea: I'm sorry to hear about your dad's ill health ... it must be very difficult for you and your family to see him slowly going downhill.

9:25 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home