“The RoseBouquet”

I think yesterday I caught on to creating the Facebook “LIKE” buttons. I’ve struggled for two weeks to get the hang of it the SBI way. On Friday I finally got one step right that I’d been missing, but they were still not showing up on my web pages. I’d asked for help at the forum, but I’d also wondered about the placement of the first piece of code, and when I tried that, voila! - it worked!

So then I prepared my codes for the Aloe vera site again, the right way, and then I stumbled on the instructions for applying for a developer account at Facebook, so I could make myself a moderator over the comments that people might leave on my site. I got that part too, but ran out of time to paste all those codes on every page of that site. That part will now be easy, just time-consuming.

On Saturday night I tried those Facebook “LIKE” buttons, just the FB way on the http://revival-time-ministry.info site (for the ministry in Uganda). They are said not to be as good as the SBI way, but they showed up right away when I tested the code on 2 or 3 pages.

Now that I’ve got the hang of the two different ways, I need to tackle pasting the codes on each page of - well maybe not all the sites in my care. Some of them are on the back burner and need a complete renovation first.

See…? There’s another job for when I can hire employees or virtual assistants to do them for me. I’m starting a job list for them.

I’ve just been preparing another order for supplements from my favourite supplier, Puritan’s Pride. It occurs to me that I haven’t mentioned this for a while, but you might want to know about them. They have this special offer on quite frequently, where you may buy 1 item, and get the second one free, or if you buy two, you’ll get three free. When I divide the total by 5, I find that the per item discount makes the shipping quite affordable. And - I’m stocked up for a number of months!

Buy 2, get 3 FREE, or Buy 1, get 1 FREE at Puritan’s Pride!

By the way, I get another separate rebate by first logging into BigCrumbs (that’s free to sign up), and I click on the link there to Puritan’s Pride. The next month BigCrumbs deposits a rebate of about 12% on my total order.
< BIGGRIN > Yep, I’m a smart, frugal shopper! Want sign up under me? my.bigcrumbs.com

Winter has come after all! This morning I woke to hear Sheila Coles on CBC radio say, “You thought yesterday was cold?!” (Yesterday was not all fun for me!) They made a big fuss how yesterday’s -29C was beat by this morning’s -36C with a wind-chill factor making it feel like -46C! So I put my glasses on and looked at my weather station on the chest of drawers; it has a sensor to read the temperature right outside my bedroom wall. That read -29C. (The official temperature is taken at the airport where all the winds get at the equipment. Mine is sheltered by buildings and trees in the city).

However, as I continued to listen to the radio while I had my bath, I persuaded myself that it would be really smart today to stay home and not venture out at all. I could certainly write the RoseBouquet from home. True, the mission project I work on right after lunch is only on the office computer, but…I could something else in place of that.

You see, for some time now my car has trouble starting in the mornings. Having it plugged in helped, but we’d had a big dump of snowfall over Saturday night to Sunday, and the temperatures had plummeted down-down!

My car moaned and groaned but it did start in the morning, and again when I moved it to the parking area behind the mission building (Joe had been shoveling that area when I arrived). However, at 5 pm when I went out, hoping to do my banking, and some grocery shopping, it would not start.

After trying for about 10 minutes I came into the office and phoned the CAA. The woman said there would be about a 45 minute wait, but the big orange tow-truck arrived in about half the time. The young man tried boosting the battery, with his box n’ cables, and with the big truck cables, and no go. He gave up after about 15 minutes.

(Sigh!) I went back into the office and found a tangled yellow cord, so I plugged the car in and came back into my office and set about making myself a supper with a box of macaroni and cheese (from my emergency stash). I tidied up some shelves of computer/electronic parts too.

Finally, after about an hour and a quarter, I bundled myself up and in faith took along my purse and backpack, believing the car would start. It took about three tries and earnest prayer, and lo, it finally kicked in! Hallelujah!

I had phoned my neighbour Joe, during my wait and he advised going to one of those Parts Source stores, and asking them to test the battery. I headed over there, but they had closed at 6. (This was after 7 by now).

I stopped for gas, and then spied an ATM for my credit union, so did my banking and then headed home.

Back to this morning. Through my prayer time, my attitude gradually changed from wanting to hole up at home and work from there, to thinking that I could go try the car again at noon, when it would be the highest temperature we’ll have all day, and then see about having that battery tested. I could go to the office after that. Then it changed again to thinking, well, I could start out about the usual time at 9ish and go do that, and if I had to buy a new battery, I would. Then I’d be fine the rest of the day and henceforth.

A woman/clerk cheerfully came out to test my battery, but found it doing fine. She figured it must just be losing charge. Maybe even just one cell was low.

I was heading toward the office, but dreading a repeat of last night, so I detoured around to Atomic, the taxi service station where I’ve found good mechanical services before. They are booked up for the next two days. So many are having car problems, but Scott, the desk man, took pity on me and when to find a mechanic who would come with me to the office, and drive the car back so they could check it for me.

He has already called once to say the battery really is fine. But they are looking at the block heater now.

We’ve had cold winters like this every year of my life, and I know we can’t make it go away by waving our hand, or any magic formula, so I accept it. The hardest part to bear is to have car troubles at these temperatures. Yet, once I accepted that my grocery shopping plans were cancelled last night I found grace and peace to deal with the situation at a sensible pace. I was reminded this morning too, from 2 Cor. 9, about “God’s abounding grace…” So I’m not in knots over these experiences as I have some other times. That’s good too.

AFTER LUNCH: A couple of calls and I got a ride to pick up my car. Turns out there is nothing wrong with it. Just deal with the cold by keeping it plugged in when not driving! Also - no charge! Amen!

As part of my plan to learn how to use social media this year to promote my websites, I’ve been fussing with learning how to get the codes so I can put “Like” and “comment” buttons my sites. It is more involved than I’d thought. I’m hoping in another week to have them installed all over the two SBI sites.

It will be interesting to see whether these really increase visitors to the sites as they say. I’ll let you know when you can go click on my “Like” buttons and give me a spike in popularity.

I’m waiting for some “occasional clients” to get some material to me to update their sites, and another friend wants to discuss a site when they get back from Hawaii. That will probably not take too long, so I can probably tell another prospect that I’ll be able take his site on in a couple of months. So my Thursday nights will soon be promised away again.

How to fill the meantime? I’m grabbing time for my own projects and a learning curve. I think last Thursday night I caught on to how to change a Word Press blog theme to look like the site I want to match it too. That will be useful information for my clients as well as myself!

Just out of curiosity, how do you fill your “meantimes” when you are between projects or clients? Is that your time to veg-out?

On Sunday I had a guest and showed her an email I had received as a forward, which listed all kinds things that honey and cinnamon would help or cure. She was eager to have copies of it. Now I was looking for it here, to share with you and find I don’t seem to have that on this computer.

So I did a search online and wow, there are plenty of sites with this information. In case you have yet to find this, here are some links, including one at the snopes site, which checks on the validity of such emails.

www.benefits-of-honey.com/honey-and-cinnamon.html
www.naturalnews.com/034280_honey_cures_cinnamon.html
www.advancedhealthplanhealthplan.com/honeyandcinnamon.html
www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/honey.asp

Guess what I’m sipping these days, with some relish!

Guess what Canadians love to do; talk about the weather. This January we have really had some interesting weather to talk about too! Over the last two weeks a number of records have been broken for temperature highs, some that were over 100 years old.

Normally, January is our coldest month of the year, when we tough it out at -36 or -40 below 0 Celsius. Over the last two weeks we have seen as high as +17 C in Maple Creek, a small town in the southern part of Saskatchewan. In fact, they were the hottest place in Canada one day last week, and I believe this week too.

We even hear that in Florida it is colder in the daytime than up here! Wow!

Most people can take this as a friendly joke, and remark that this is easier to take than spring flooding that wipes out all your crops and ruins your home’s basement. So if we are to have freak weather we’ll happily accept these warm temperatures, sometimes known as a January Chinook.

I’ve seen a warm thawing Chinook in February or March, but never this warm in January.

Ah, but even this is too good to last. The forecast is for a cold front to come in from the north, and our temperatures will drop this afternoon. By tonight we are to have snow flurries and a drop to -17 C.

I have friends leaving today for Hawaii. What perfect timing!

Yesterday I walked to and from the office for the first time since my fall in early December. Yes, all healed up. I really felt winded, but this morning when I weighed myself I had lost 4 lbs since Sunday. So I need to discipline myself to do that walk more often again.

Remember last week I told you about losing an important program for doing my work on web pages? Well, I hunted and tried to find replacement programs…. oh, a long saga over the rest of last week. Then suddenly on Friday morning, at about 11 o’clock, I found it by a slightly different name in one of my root folders. Oh what relief when I clicked on a file called quanta.desktop and my program opened up. Oh hallelujah!

Then there is the matter of computer monitors. It seems whenever friends or acquaintances got a new monitor (the LCD or LED kind), they would offer me their cast off CRT monitor. (Yes, those big monsters that are hard to lug around).

For years my policy has been not to sneeze at gifts, and to see if I can find a use for theses castoffs. My office was cluttered with them. Over the holidays I had carried about 5 of them to the landing at the top of the stairs outside my office. My plan is to wait until some stronger friend is available and ask them to carry them down the stairs for me. I nearly popped an aneurysm in my neck the last time I tried to carry two of them up.

However I was having frustrations with the biggest one that I was still using with my own desktop computer, even when I’d set the system font to a large size, and finally said to myself, “Squinting at the tiny font on this huge screen is nuts! I’m going to use some gift monies to buy myself an LCD/LED monitor too!”

A quick computer search before 5 pm showed me which store had the best price, and I headed across the city to that store. The lowest priced one was $80 and I snapped it up. I have not regretted it for a moment!

What a wonderful difference!

SarCan, here in Saskatchewan takes electronic stuff for recycling. I see with a quick search that there are other options in other places, so don’t take it to the garbage bin, but drive your stuff over to a recycling center when you are ready to get rid of it.

But hey, if it is still working, consider donating it to a charity that provides computers to those who can’t afford them. There are still many people left who don’t have any computer at all, and no hope of buying one.

Oh say, thanks to all my friends who rejoiced with me over my tent garage or carport, and my crocheted collar recycled into a cute hat!

Someone asked me yesterday about links to free graphics of good quality. I was just browsing for some of my standard favourite sites that I go to first. They didn’t seem to be in my bookmarks now (!) so I went hunting and found some other great ones to share.

www.sxc.hu/home (these are free if you abide by the terms of service and respect the copyrights).

www.usa.gov/Topics/Graphics.shtml

www.dreamstime.com/index.php (here is a low cost for credits which you can use up carefully, before you pay up again).

www.picdrome.com/index.php/categories (not so big, but beautiful nature shots in the public domain!)

pdphoto.org (I’ve used many florals from this one)

clipart.christiansunite.com (a good one for Biblical art)

www.wpclipart.com/browse.html (another free clipart site that I use often)

etc.usf.edu/clipart/sitemap/sitemap.php (oodles of black and white clipart).

Do you recall when you were in primary school, how the teacher would give each student a chance to show and tell whatever was special to them. This would be particularly interesting after a long weekend or holiday. Well, I don’t mean to brag, but I have some exciting gifts to show and tell you about.

(You may feel free to write me about your gifts too).

Do you recall in my last RoseBouquet before Christmas I mentioned getting some money in a card. Well, at lunch that day I gave some away to my co-workers, also missionaries here at Western Tract Mission, where I have my office suite. After work I went to deposit the rest and do some grocery shopping. When I got home just before 6 pm, it was getting dusk already, but I saw these aluminum pipes forming a frame over the spot where I park my car, just inside my back alley gate.

As I pulled into my spot and closed the gate I was busy looking around, taking in details and wondering…. All at once, Penny, my neighbour to the west side, came out their back door, calling out loudly, “Merry Christmas!” She confessed that they and Priscilla (all my co-workers at WTM) had pooled the money I gave them, and bought this tent garage for me, and they had been busy setting it up all afternoon, but they had not been able to finish it before dark.

Joe and Wayne, one of the Board members, went back the next afternoon and put the canvas part up and finished it up for me.

I spent the next few days grinning and giggling to myself, and murmuring things like, “Wow, I just can’t out-give the Lord!”

Then there is my new hat. I had dropped some hints that I was looking for a warmer winter hat for when I walk to and from the office, and I got one from Anne Peters, who manages the office at the front of our building. but while cozy, I didn’t think it was quite thick enough for -40C weather, so I kept mentally planning how I would make one if and when I had time.

Then one evening while I was doing my bookkeeping, a strong impression came on me that the thick, heavily ruffled crocheted collar that Mom had once made for me, but which was way too bulky to wear under a coat as a collar - that might turn into a nice double thickness hat. I couldn’t help but jump up to find it in my scarf drawer and have a look.

Sure enough, there was enough material in it so that I could lay it double and sew it up the back with yarn, and turn it into a toque or hat! But since the crochet work with the yarn was so lacy with large stitches, I was afraid the cold winds would still get through it.

So the next day I went to Fabricland and bought a bit of arctic fleece, and a bit of wind-proof fabric, like that of which parkas are made. I sewed that into a a toque that fit snugly over my head and ears in less than half an hour. Then I saw that permanently sewing the crocheted hat to it was not going to work well, and it might be too warm some days. Ah-ha, then I’ll make it detachable!

However, it wasn’t until Christmas Day in the afternoon while I was waiting for the turkey to roast so I could take it to my brother’s place, that I finally had time to sew four white buttons on the toque part, put elastic in the brim of the crocheted hat and tried them out. Hey! Not bad, eh? I was rather tickled with the results.

What’s more, wherever I go. wearing this hat I get compliments. They usually say, “I LIKE your hat!” and I respond enthusiastically, “Yes I do too!”

What’s more, I’m finally using a gift that Mom made for me years ago, and I’m thinking of her more again these days.

As I had planned, I spent last week in prayer and planning at least the first three days. Thursday and Friday I spent here at the office, and I got three computers installed with the latest version of openSUSE 12.1 (One old laptop didn’t turn out so well). I also did some serious housecleaning and moved some furniture around, hoping to be ready for more volunteers and eventually employees here.

There’s still a number of projects on my to-do list that I didn’t get to, so I’ll have to squeeze’em in where I can throughout the year.

One frustration on this desktop is that now I can’t find the program I used to use for creating web pages! I only found that out yesterday, so there’s something I MUST work out today.

On my aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com site I had announced a new ezine to start in January, and promised to send out a small aloe vera plant to the first 20 subscribers. Well, I had 58 by yesterday, but getting addresses to which to send the plants is another story. Some emails bounce back and some don’t reply. Anyway, by this morning I had four and I took them to the post office to send off this morning. The interesting thing is that so far none of those went to a Canadian address Two went to USA addresses, one to Ireland and one to Pakistan. It’s all an experiment to see what is entailed if I should go to selling my plants world-wide. (Looks like at the least I’ll have to charge enough to cover the shipping costs).

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and holidays to rest you up, and that you have cheerful prospects for the coming year. Remember, we can choose our attitude.