Upside Down

Upside Down

My partner and I are very compatible. However, we are very much un-alike. I am older than he so, of course, I consider myself smarter. When I am a little too smug in my superiority, he can always find a way to bring me down off my high horse. Dimitris and I have lived together five years. When I met him online, he lived in Athens, Greece. Prior to meeting Dimitris, I was, for many years, the only person who lived here, and I lived in every room of the house. Why not? It was mine. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could live with someone and share my home with that person. What I had to do was to make room for Dimitris, something that has become easier the longer he has been here and the more I have realized that I want him to stay around for a long time. Of course, I had to tell him which way the toilet paper should be put on the roll in the bathroom. I also had to show him how to open a box of cereal. Imagine my chagrin recently when I opened the cereal, careful not to tear the box so that it could be closed easily so as to retain the freshness of the cereal until we finished it. The only problem was that I had opened it from the bottom which ensured that it couldn’t be closed tightly. Guess who pointed out my mistake.

Reader, if you are not a follower of my blog, I hope you will become one. Go to http://www.bobosbest.wordpress.com and on the bottom of the right hand corner you will see the opportunity to sign up so that you receive this blog every time it is published. At present, I have 244 followers. I’m eager to have as many readers as possible. If you’re not already a follower, click on the word FOLLOW and enter your e-mail address. Thank you.

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Waist-Watcher

If we are home in the evening and not going out, we usually watch the evening news programs after which we watch some quiz shows or watch a movie on DVD. Regardless of our activity, at 8:00, we stop for ice cream. Since I have no weight problem, I don’t restrain myself. On alternate nights, I eat a bowl of ice cream–usually a lemon ice cream or butter pecan, my two favorites. On the nights that I don’t eat a bowl, I eat ice cream on a stick. They are small but just as satisfying. If we are out of the stick ice cream, we have Klondike bars. Thank goodness, neither of us is diabetic. Dimitris restrains himself more than I do and sometimes doesn’t indulge. He’s the waist-watcher in the family. I think my love of ice cream goes all the way back to my childhood when the big event of the summer was when the family (or perhaps a neighbor) cranked up the ice cream churn for some homemade ice cream. The only other place where I got ice cream was a cone from McGees Drug Store. I went through a period in my life where I did have to watch my weight, but that is long gone. At 175.2 lbs, I can stand to gain a little.

Reader, if you are not a follower of my blog, I hope you will become one. Go to http://www.bobosbest.wordpress.com and on the bottom of the right hand corner you will see the opportunity to sign up so that you receive this blog every time it is published. At present, I have 244 followers. I’m eager to have as many readers as possible. If you’re not already a follower, click on the word FOLLOW and enter your e-mail address. Thank you.

Fighting Squirrel-dom

I love growing flowers, and I prefer growing them from seeds. The problem is that about the time the seedlings are showing promise, they are buried as squirrels dig for acorns nearby. Although I have tried all sorts of foils–sticks, hanging baskets, aluminium foil–nothing has been completely successful. I continue to have my crops plowed under by squirrels. My latest attempt is planting flower seeds in a planter in a window inside my house. I was amazed how quickly the new plants pushed through the soil. Because of the success of the first indoor planter (I have eight flower babies flourishing in there now), I have just started a second crop which are all cosmos, one of my favorite flowers and one the squirrels have decimated. I realize that the challenge will be transplanting. I will, however, look forward to that task but will continue to pray for a diminution among the squirrel population.

Reader, if you are not a follower of my blog, I hope you will become one. Go to http://www.bobosbest.wordpress.com and on the bottom of the right hand corner you will see the opportunity to sign up so that you receive this blog every time it is published. At present, I have 244 followers. I’m eager to have as many readers as possible. If you’re not already a follower, click on the word FOLLOW and enter your e-mail address. Thank you.

The Kooky Cooker

I grew up in Clinton, South Carolina, speaking the southern dialect of that southern state. Of course, at the time of my learning, my language and pronunciation sounded just like everyone else’s until I spent a summer in Lake George, New York, where I learned that some “Yankee” people thought I talked “funny.”. They said “Hi;” I said “Hey.” They said “there;” I said “yonder.” They put oil in their cars with three syllables (o-i-ul) whereas I put oil (oll) in mine. When I began teaching in Florida, I introduced myself to my students as Mr. Cooper (I did not pronounce the “oo” in my name with the “coo” sound that is used in Florida). The students tried, but they sounded as though they were exaggerating or as though they were trying to imitate a southern drawl. Finally, I came up with a solution (sort of like “Liza with a Z”). I faced my students and asked, “Do you say that you mother is a good kook or do you say she’s a good cook?” Only the class clowns said their mother was a kook. I then said, “If you can pronounce ‘cook,’ then you can say my name correctly: ‘cook’ becomes ‘Coop’er. Now you know you can pronounce my name as I grew up pronouncing it,” and they did.

Reader, if you are not a follower of my blog, I hope you will become one. Go to http://www.bobosbest.wordpress.com and on the bottom of the right hand corner you will see the opportunity to sign up so that you receive this blog every time it is published. At present, I have 242 followers. I’m eager to have as many readers as possible. If you’re not already a follower, click on the word FOLLOW and enter your e-mail address. Thank you.

Dealing with the “Blues”

When my computer is down, I am down. I am frustrated and flustered. I sit in my computer chair staring at the empty space on my desk where “it” sits. This latest absence was caused first by the failure of my hard drive, then the installation of a new drive followed by frequent blue screens that just would not go away despite hours online with the Geek Squad. After three blue screens in one day, I decided it was time to unplug and take the computer in, which I did. I have now received my computer back, re-plugged everything in, and it appears to be running just fine. However, I’m holding my breath that the blue screens do not return. I was told by the Geeks that my anti-virus was causing the problem so they installed Trend Micro to replace the previous one. I am a happy camper now that I am re-attached to the world via my computer. I must remind myself though that my “frustrations” with being computer-less were minor compared with having a medical emergency or losing a friend. Sometimes our priorities can become misaligned by a relatively minor problem like a blue screen.

Reader, if you are not a follower of my blog, I hope you will become one. Go to http://www.bobosbest.wordpress.com and on the bottom of the right hand corner you will see the opportunity to sign up so that you receive this blog every time it is published. At present, I have 243 followers. I’m eager to have as many readers as possible. If you’re not already a follower, click on the word FOLLOW and enter your e-mail address. Thank you.

From One to Another (Mission Impossible)

I live in peace so long as my computer is working. Unlike cell phones (which I can live without), I depend on my computer entirely too much. When my computer is down, I am down. Recently, I learned that a new hard drive had not solved the problem of my computer’s powering down. Checking in with my computer savvy friend, he agreed with the agent at the Geek Squad that I needed to begin shopping for another computer. I settled on a refurbished Hewlett-Packard machine and faced the ominous job of transferring files and programs. Having a back-up program for storing files in outer space helped, but the process was slow and tedious. Today is my deadline for completing this mission impossible. I will have help from my friend who helped me choose this computer. Let’s hope that I live with this computer in peace for many years to come.

Reader, if you are not a follower of my blog, I hope you will become one. Go to http://www.bobosbest.wordpress.com and on the bottom of the right hand corner you will see the opportunity to sign up so that you receive this blog every time it is published. At present, I have 243 followers. I’m eager to have as many readers as possible. If you’re not already a follower, click on the word FOLLOW and enter your e-mail address. Thank you.

Movies are Worse Than Ever

Remember when TV first started, and the movie industry feared television would take over and eliminate the drive for people to go to the movies? I do. The industry created 3-D, CinemaScope, wide-screen and eventually surround sound, all gimmicks to entice people to the movies. The industry proclaimed: “Movies Are Better Than Ever.” Movies today incorporate all of the tricks of the trade, but now the traditional gimmicks aren’t enough to satisfy movie-goers. The enticements now are sex, violence, and crude language. Even a wonderful Christmas movie like “Love Actually” was loaded with offensive language. You would think that everyone in the world uses foul language irrespective of who is nearby. Although smoking has been diminished, drinking alcohol and using drugs are still laughable in the cinema. I don’t consider myself a prude and crude language in a movie where crudity is necessary does not offend me. I rarely go to the movies, and I don’t feel that I’m missing much. Give me a good story that garners my attention without vulgar language and graphic sex, and I might return to the movies.

Reader, if you are not a follower of my blog, I hope you will become one. Go to http://www.bobosbest.wordpress.com and on the bottom of the right hand corner you will see the opportunity to sign up so that you receive this blog every time it is published. At present, I have 241 followers. I’m eager to have as many readers as possible. If you’re not already a follower, click on the word FOLLOW and enter your e-mail address. Thank you.