“The RoseBouquet”

Remember my RRAP program? The one whereby the provincial and federal governments go together to pay for some basic repairs and renovations to my house? Well, yesterday Jake Wollf came back to install my new back door and door frame.

I had hinted that I wouldn’t mind if it had a window to bring in some of that sunshine from the south side, and he was going to try, but the place where he went for the door, didn’t have one with a window in the size he had to get for my space. Oh well. It’s a nice white door with steel on the inside.

It was also the perfect early winter day for it, as it was sunny, and the temperature came up above freezing about noon. I had dressed warm expecting all the heat to escape while he was taking out the old door and putting in the new, but it wasn’t that uncomfortable at all.

Mind you, by lunch time, the back porch and the kitchen looked quite messy. Plaster lumps came tumbling down, and well, we just both tracked it around as we walked in the area.

Since I had promised to stay home from the office to let him in, I had decided to make some chili con carne in the crock pot. (That way, if he brought a helper I’d have enough to go around to share). However, I hadn’t taken into account how much moisture the frozen hamburger meat would contribute, so by noon I had a nice hot bean and hamburger soup. I made some garlic bread. (Which was basically just some thick slices of brown bread spread with garlic butter and warmed in the oven).

After the hot meal, Jake got the new white door and frame into place in a short time, and began to fill in the gaps around it with this spray foam called “Great Stuff.” Also some caulking material.

I spent most of the day at the computer fixing my Ruthes-SecretRoses.com site (more in a moment), but when Jake was wondering what to do about the wooden frame on the wall around the door I helped him find a big 2×4 he had left behind from the roofing job, and also a 2×6 for above the door. They need painting, but I promised to do that myself on Saturday.

He cleaned up to a degree, but after he left, I took time to clean up the porch and the kitchen floor myself to my own satisfaction.

This means there are just three jobs left for Jake. The crawl space and the two support posts he’s to put in there, the new bathroom flooring, and to block off the one basement window. I can now visualize how these might all get done this year yet!

So have you got a website or two, or more? Have you ever had to go through every page to fix something in somewhat of a hurry? That’s what I’ve been doing in the past week, sacrificing most of my normal agenda too.

I have a hosting package with HostGator, one of the largest hosting companies, and with a good reputation for support services. They host about 1,300,000 websites, so they sort of have the routine down pat. My package is such that I can host all the sites I want for one price, and offer to rent out space to other clients. I even host some Christian ministry sites for free as my gift to them. Right now I have four of my own there, and I host 17 others, 11 of which I personally look after. (There’s room for more, if you are interested).

Well, HostGator has been upgrading all their servers, and last week Sunday and Monday they were up to the one all these sites are on. Normally, things should go smoothly, but they do warn to let them know if our sites disappear or have some other hiccup happen to them as a result of the mass upgrade. I discovered that all these sites were present - at least the ones I have worked on personally, but the includes files had some problem so they didn’t show up the header, the navigation links, or footers, depending on where I had used includes. I contacted support and discovered by late Tuesday evening that I now had to remove a single character space gap in the line that calls for the includes file to show up. It came right after the # sign and before the word ‘includes.’

Well, not that hard to fix, but some of these sites had from 3 to 5 or 6 of those lines on each page. Some sites have 100s of pages. I got a bit melodramatic and exclaimed that it would take me the rest of my life! And with whose should I begin?

However, I tackled this big job on Wednesday morning, and by the time I was called to come join the Christmas party downstairs, I had already fixed three smaller ministry/client sites, plus started on the much larger WTM site. After a prayer for help I found that I could speed up this process in several ways.

My HTML editor program has a Find and Replace feature and it could remember the thing to find. I entered the start of those includes lines, then how it should be done without the gap and in just a couple of clicks could take care of ALL appearances of those characters on a page instantly. Then I found that by keeping the left Ctrl button down when selecting files to open, I could open a whole long row of pages at once. Before long I had a smooth, fast rhythm going; Hit Ctrl+R to do Find/Replace, hit Ctrl+S to save the file, and hit the close button. The next page would be open before me, so I repeated the process. When I had done a whole batch of pages, sometimes a small site completely, then I switched to my Konqueror program, and highlighted all those pages, and uploaded them by ftp as a batch. Presto, done!

Incidentally, two friends do their own web design so I wrote and asked them to fix their own sites.

I spent the rest of Wednesday and Thursday and Friday doing this, and though I didn’t get to it on Sunday, by Monday morning I had only my large Ruthes-SecretRoses.com site and two smaller sites that get the least visits left to do. I got about 432 pages done on my big one yesterday at home. I hope to finish the articles in the Sharing Library today. Then I’ll get to the last two sometime this week yet.

Wow! I’m impressed too! Actually, yesterday I kept spotting a few other corrections to make in the RSR site, so I did more than the speedy routine above.

Hopefully the above account, instead of frightening you away, shows you that it is smart to get your website hosting from me. I’m the kind of person who sacrifices my own work for my clients’ and I look after those in my care. Get your Economical hosting with me, or go higher to my own good host, HostGator

What do you prefer to eat for your Thanksgiving feast?

Because wild turkeys were said to be in abundance when the early American pilgrims settled in what later became New England, it has become a tradition in many homes to roast a large turkey to share. Some people today are fussy about whether they will eat white or dark meat from a turkey and some folks won’t eat it at all. They would rather have ham, or venison, or even chicken, or no meat at all. They stick to a vegetarian diet altogether.

Let’s take a totally different look at the thanksgiving turkey. We may amuse ourselves, and we may end up learning a good moral. First, a quick review of some basic facts about turkeys.

Observations About Turkeys:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The wild turkeys could fly, but were fast runners. They ran at speeds up to 55 miles an hour.

These are large meaty fowls, now largely raised on farms for their meat and eggs. Their running may be curtailed quite a bit.

Like chicken, their meat is lower in cholesterol, thus better for us, and the dark meat contains some fat, making it more tasty.

The meat also contains tryptophan which sets off a chemical reaction in our digestive system that makes us sleepy. Now you know!

Turkey eggs are tan and speckled with brown and twice the size of chicken eggs.

When turkeys reach maturity they can have as many as 3,500 feathers.

The male turkey, called a Tom, is more colourful in feathers. He also has a brightly coloured fold of skin hanging from his bill and along his neck called a wattle. With some imagination you can think of him as a gentleman with a long beard.

Turkeys are raised to give up their lives so that others can have joy at a celebration.

Let’s use some more imagination and see in what ways you and a turkey have things in common.

Ways You and I are Like Turkeys
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In your younger years (wild period) you could probably move at an amazing speed too. Just think of how much you ran around and all the activities you took part in.

Now that you are more mature you are probably focused on productivity, and walk instead of running from A to B. The work you do has more quality to it and probably gives you more joy. At least when you stop to think of it objectively, right?

I venture to guess it doesn’t even take turkey meat to make you sleepy after a big meal. Any hearty dish will do it to you. (Notice I’m blushing myself).

If we compare turkey eggs to your children, they may not look flawlessly white, but they have sure grown, and are your pride and joy.

You may not have 3,500 feathers, but if you are like me, you are dressing warmer and in multiple layers when you go out. Us older birds just need more insulation than the younger ones do.

If you are a male, you may be doing things to be seen as a gentleman of importance - perhaps a mustache or beard, and if that doesn’t work, more flamboyant clothes?

Here is the trickiest part; are you willing to give up your life so that others may have the joy of a good celebration? A turkey is raised to die for others. Do you exercise self-sacrifice to the nth degree?

We know that Jesus did, and He urged us to put others first too. May every turkey meal we eat remind us of this, and may God show us just how to ‘die’ so that others may have ‘joy.’

Are you into your Christmas baking already too? I do NOT do it on the scale that some women I know go at it, but at Western Tract Mission we are having a Christmas party tomorrow for our volunteers, office staff and Board members. It happens to be the day we do the collating and labeling for mailing of the fourth issue of Reflections for this year. Since we already have them in the office building, we have for a few years now, turned the noon hours into a Christmas party.

Instead of everyone bringing a little gift for exchange, the Director asks them all to bring a money gift for a project. The other year it was our missionaries in Alberta. This year, (he asked my permission), he has made me the gift project!

Wow, eh?

So I decided the least I could do is bring some Christmas baking to share with everyone. Now, I enjoy baking to a degree, but I’m not one of those with a magic touch. Sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I have to eat up my mistakes.

I decided to start last week over my supper times in the kitchen at home, so if one batch didn’t work out, I could try again.

First, a batch of mom’s recipe for cream cookies. That’s a favourite in many Mennonite families. However, I didn’t have enough white flour so I added my whole wheat flour, which I prefer, and they do not look so downy white, although if I ice them tonight and put some coconut on top - they may do.

Then I tried a recipe for a Christmas cake that both Mom and Dad had agreed was the best they’d ever had when I first tried it at home. Well, I think it tastes okay, but it doesn’t look so great. Maybe that had better get some icing tonight too.

Sunday night I tried those famous Neiman Marcus cookies. You’ve probably received that popular internet forward (a fabricated urban legend!) which tells the story of the woman who was charged something like $250 for a cookie recipe in that high class store. For revenge it was spread it all over the internet. I’ve used it a number of times, and it is a rich, decadent cookie, so I went at it with pleasure. (NeimanMarcus.com And - Hoax-Slayer.com/neiman-marcus-cookie.html )

Unfortunately, in my notes I had divided the flour into 2 cups regular flour and 2 1/2 cups of oat flour. Somehow I forgot to mix the first two cups of flour in, and when I pulled the first cookie sheet out at the bell - oh no! They had spread and joined together to form one giant thin, bubbly and fine smelling cookie!

I scored the cookie with my lifter into squares and as it cooled, I bunched each square together with my fingers to form a lumpy cookie.

I’d quickly removed some from the second sheet, but much the same thing happened, except that they didn’t join.

Then it hit me. I’d forgotten two cups of flour. No wonder all that margarine and sugar, with the white chocolate chunks, and smarties, and so forth was all runny. While I scurried about to open a new sack of whole wheat flour and pour into some pails with lids, that second sheet of cookies turned hard. When I got back to it I found myself scraping hardened candy like stuff off the sheet.

So I turned to put flour into the rest of the dough, but forgot that I had already removed some for the first two sheets full. I should have reduced the flour proportionately. I decided that I was tired of making mistakes, and put the dough away in the fridge in a covered bowl.

Last night I tackled finishing them. I can tell that they would be better if they didn’t have quite so much flour, but they are passable. I’ll have to tell the story of how I got the recipe to make up for not having perfect-looking cookies. The taste is okay.

Now, question is, dare I press on with my idea of baking jars full of peppernuts to give away as gifts? For those I have almost a month’s time.

Oh, how I miss my BBN Radio online!

On Friday my laptop, which had a hard drive that was “going” but which I was using to listen to my favourite Christian radio station online because it’s sound just worked better, suddenly started freezing up. I’d found a way around the sickly hard drive by using a Knoppix CD which allowed me to go online and enjoy BBN in the office. (Knoppix is a LIVE operating system on a CD that can be used for repair).

I rebooted a few times, and finally it gave a piercing shriek, so I unplugged it, zipped out the battery pack, and got it to shut up. But after that, I couldn’t get Knoppix to work. Nothing worked.

I was busy helping Priscilla decorate for tomorrow’s party, so I let the matter be. But yesterday I worked all day on four desktop computers here, and could not get the sound to work right on any of them. in the process I messed up some important operating files on this particular computer that I use most, so at 3 pm I decided to re-install my operating system. It was not done yet when I left at 5:30.

Glory be! This morning I found the installation had paused for my input near the end, and when it finished, I logged in to find all my files still intact! I could plunge right into working here again. (I haven’t done a thorough search yet, but I believe nothing is lost).

However, the sound problem is still a mystery. I’ve got Knoppix in the next computer here, and it looks like it is working, but no sound. I’m really torn between digging in and doggedly working through to a solution, or sticking with my regular work agenda.

I’m going to have to break down and buy some computer parts, and maybe even new computers, but I need to do some careful research and advance window-shopping online. Pray that I will not make mistakes here. They are not as funny as they are in baking!

Need to make your limited Christmas budget go an extra mile or two? I’ve long been frugal in my gift-giving by making the gifts, but there comes a time when you really need to buy things ready-made. From one frugal shopper to another, here’s a good tip. Do some comparison shopping online. Do a Google search, and then do another search in MyPowerMall to compare prices.

If you are not sure about signing up for MyPowerMall, just go to my Mall, and go through the motions of checking out what stores there are and what they carry at what prices. Then if it seems worth it to you, sign up, and go find that store again and buy it. (Note, if you don’t sign up, I will get the rebates or commissions on your purchases!)

Here’s where you go to check out the shopping potential; browse My Power Mall. Here’s where you go to sign up; MyPowerMall.com/Biz/Home/30799

My copy of Back to Eden is the Kloss Family Heirloom Edition, so it has a section of family photos and some history or background on Jethro Kloss and his life’s work.

I first came to hear about Back to Eden through a woman and the nursing home where my Grosz’mama Kroeker was staying in the mid 1980s. We were talking about alternative health remedies and this woman, Mrs. Rempel, told me about plaintain which grew wild beside the sidewalks in Hague, my hometown. Since I lived there again, as my parents’ live-in caregiver, I went out to look for this wonder plant. Sure enough! I could pick a shopping bag full in just a few paces along the sidewalks.

The next time I was at the nursing home I asked Mrs. Rempel where I could find out more about such herbs. She recommended I get a book called Back To Eden . My next trip to the city, I tried to find it in the usual bookstores, and second hand shops. No such thing. When I met that lady again, I reported this to her. She said to try the health food stores. I didn’t normally think of them as selling books, but that’s where I found it.

I have worn my paperback copy ragged and need to go find a hardcover copy somewhere. However, then I’ll lose a lot of my markings and margin notes. So I’m sort of ignoring the need.

From the forwards by his daughter, Promise, and Jethro himself, I realize that he wrote Back to Eden after he had already done most of his experiments and had tried out his remedies on many patients. He could say with confidence that what he suggested really works. The range of his topics are probably broader because of that.

[Read the whole article at Back-to-Eden]

Since I have emails on my mind just now, may I suggest some webmails and email client programs that will give you better service?

If you have a website with a registered domain, you can create all the email addresses you might ever want. These are secure and you can set up just the filters you like best. I consider this one of the best perks of having a domain website.

If you don’t have a domain site, or prefer to use webmail services, I would recommend yahoo over hotmail and aol. Gmail at Google is getting a great reputation. I’ve got one now to try out, but webmails have serious disadvantages. The main one being that too easily you can lose everything you have saved there. I prefer to have them on my computer, and to make weekly backups.

To deal with emails on your computer you need a program as your email client. Most people are familiar with Outlook Express, or Outlook 2007 for example. Those who are in the know say they are as riddled with holes as swiss cheese. You will be plagued with viruses if you stick with them. But there are alternatives - much better ones.

If you have a Windows computer, I recommend Pegusus Mail at PMail.com, or Thunderbird. The browser called Opera comes with an email client program built in. Opera.com/

These are free to download and install, and they allow you to access your web-mail accounts as well as any domain POP3 or IMAP accounts.

If you have a Linux computer you have dozens of choices. Of the ones I’ve tried, I like my KMail best!

Winter seems to have arrived. I’m grateful it delayed as long as it did. Sometimes it sets in before the end of October. We had snow on Sunday and though much of it melted yesterday afternoon, there are patches that linger. I could taste winter in the air already on Sunday morning, and feel the chill in my bones.

In Celsius countries like Canada, 0 degrees means freezing. Our nights are usually below 0 now, and we are lucky when the daytime temperature climbs to 2 or 3 degrees above 0. However, this is just the start of winter. Our temperatures will likely plummet to -20 and -30 for most of the winter. On really bad days it goes to -40 or more! I like the variety of seasons here, but winter is my least favourite one. I try to endure these five to six months with a positive attitude, so as not to make my suffering worse, but I keep looking forward to the joy that comes when spring arrives. If you’ve known me for a while, you know that I can get a serious case of spring fever when I start pining for change.

Cold hands and feet are my trial, and last year I was blessed by a pair of mukluks and a pair of good leather boots. (Thanks again, Shirley!) I’ve been wearing my thick purple parka and a fleece hat for some weeks already. Yesterday I got out the boots. (Note to self: allow more time for dressing to go out, and removing boots when coming in).

These boots are a good fit, and still quite stiff with newness. The soles don’t bend yet with each step, so I had to keep my eyes down to watch where I was going. One mis-step on a patch of thin ice, and one of the boots would start skating away. I think in a few weeks they will be broken in more, and I’ll have more assurance of my grip with each step.

My feet were warm in these boots yesterday, but when it gets colder I may have to try a new trick I have.

On Saturday I was cutting and tucking something called Reflectix in my basement in those spaces above the basement wall, but between the floor beams - up against the inside of the foundation. I’d discovered a serious, blowing draft in the south east corner (in the summer I even found a 5 inch gap where the mice could waltz in at will, so I’d filled it with some lumber). This double-layer of foil with a double layer of plastic bubble pack in between, is suppose to keep things 5 times warmer, or 5 times colder, depending on how you use it. Dad’s old staple guns wouldn’t work for me, but just pressing the stuff into those space cut out that draft completely!

I saved a strip of it for insoles for my Sunday shoes. Wow, that helped! So I am prepared to put that into my boots too when it gets colder. Meantime, I need to go back to HomeDepot for two more rolls of that stuff to work around all of my foundation!