POST CONTAINS A CREEPY CRAWLY PHOTO!

The other day I noticed a fly laying on it’s back on the kitchen window ledge.  As I went to remove it, he wriggled his legs frantically in a vain attempt at getting on his feet in order to invade any food he might find laying around on the surfaces.  He assumes we are silly enough to leave food out and uncovered.  He was obviously close to death so I left him to end his moments naturally. I say ‘he’ because anything that ugly cant be female.  Sorry if there are any men reading this, but isn’t that so ladies?  Well Ok, I know there are females really, but ughhh, they are ugly!

As a dutiful blogger who [ahem] always has her camera at the ready, I decided, for your perusal, I would do a bit of happy snapping.  Those who don’t like looking at ugly creatures need to shut there eyes at this point, because I cropped in close in order to see the pretty detail on his body! Actually, I don’t want you to shut your eyes really. I want you to see my exquisit photography.

Anyway, I checked the photos on my computer and settled down for the evening, with no more thoughts of the fly in the kitchen. Before I went to bed I would dispose of it.

At 3am I went into the kitchen to unplug everything before going up, and saw the fly.  I was about to get a tissue to remove him when he wriggled his legs just as frantically as before!  He was still alive!  He’d wriggled so hard his leg had dropped off!  Really! One of his legs was laying beside him! I quickly scrunched him up in the tissue to put him out of his misery. Why do they take so long to die?

As ugly as he was ….. poor little thing.

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Mo and I always eat our evening meal on individual tables in the lounge while watching the evening news.  Last night was a little different because our sister, Tina, was staying with us so there were three eating.
We were having one of my favourites – Spaghetti Bolognese.  I prefer the Bolognese to have a fair amount of liquid rather than a thick sauce, and Mo always makes it just the way I like it, aside from the fact that there is always enough big chunks of garlic in it to sink a battleship.  Mo loves chunks of garlic, I don’t.  Why does the mountain of garlic chunks always end up on my plate?

Anyway, things were not running quite as smoothly as usual.  Our tables are usually set up before the meal is ready.  Tonight I hadn’t set them yet when Mo handed me my plate of Bolognese along with my cutlery.  I put my cutlery on the table and went to put my plate down.  What the……? My plate was empty! I mean EMPTY! I stood, puzzled.  Where’s my dinner?  I gazed, confused at my plate but no, there was definitely no Bolognese there.  On closer scrutiny I saw that there was a single strand of spaghetti on the plate.  A single strand?  Had Mo put me on a diet?  ONE strand of spaghetti?  Then I saw it.

Spread out on our lounge carpet was a 2ft projectile of Bolognese topped with a liberal amount of spaghetti.  My plate was clean, and when I say clean I mean clean.  Aside from the one piece of spaghetti there was no sign anything had been there.  I stood looking in disbelief at my lovely meal spread out on the carpet and soaking in more with every second that passed.  How had it happened? When did it decide to go skating off my plate?  What made it go so far?  I would love to have been a fly on the wall and seen it happen.  Preferably in slow motion.

“Mo! Come and see this” I called, in a state of shock but with a laugh bubbling up inside. “I’m busy” Mo said, but Tina came rushing in. I looked at her and started to giggle.  Tina looked at me and giggled. Mo came in and was a little less than amused.  “Oh you are SO clumsy! Just look at the carpet” Mo said, in a slightly more colourful way than that.  I giggled, Tina giggled and Mo threw out a few more irate comments as she went back into the kitchen to get their meals.  The more irate Mo got, the funnier it was to me. It wouldn’t have been so funny though, if it were not for the fact that Mo always cooks enough for two days, so I was safe in the knowledge that I would be eating Bolognese that night.

By the time we had eaten Mo saw the funny side of it.  I knew she would.  It just takes her a little longer to laugh at these sort of accidents.

And now I’m thinking of firing myself as a blogger.  I didn’t take a photograph of it before I cleaned it up, and I don’t think that suggesting a re-enactment of the scene for photographic reference would have gone down too well, do you?

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Because it was Bank Holiday this weekend, and because my sister has come over from Spain and is staying with Mo and I at the moment, I have had no time to write a post.  I thought I would shift the reponsibility over to you, my readers.

Most of us know the famous line from the film ‘Love Story’, but for those of you who don’t it’s  “Love is never having to say you’re sorry” I don’t believe it’s true, far from it actually.  I think we all have to say sorry to our loved ones, often.

Anyway, what I want to know is what you think love is.  It can be as serious or as funny as you like, and you can list as many as you want to.

OK, I know, this is a filler post and I’m asking you to do all the work but humour me, please.

Love is……..

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I’ve arrived!

I won’t bore you with all the details but a new support chap did, in half an hour, what should have been done in the first place.  I am thrilled to tell you (with my flowers) that I am finally at my new cyberhome!  Better still.  They have now made beetle-blog my main domain again.  Now I can get back to blogging!

YIPPEE!  Hippity hop….hippity hop….

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1. You could see a Happy Bunny Doodle
2. You could see an Ecstatic Doodle
   
3. You could see a Stressed Out Doodle
4. Or you could just see an error page

I am getting ready to change hosts, and as my new host will be moving my site over for me, it should go smoothly.  I have no idea what to expect, or how long it will be offline – if at all.

I am glad to say that I have been able to keep my domain name, though who will hold that seems confusing at the moment.   Does this mean that there won’t be any change to my feed URL?  I do hope so.  One other good thing is that they have already given me a full refund of this years fee.

I hope it will go seamlessly, but please be patient if it goes down for a while.  It could happen today, or it could be early next week, I really don’t know how soon my existing host will act, though the refund came pleasantly fast – and I didn’t even ask for one!

Wish me luck on my journey to a better place.

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There I was, minding my own business and doing my own thing when I heard “OUWWWWW!” It was coming from the kitchen so I went to see what was wrong.

We have two steps leading down from the kitchen, to what used to be a garage but was converted to a room for my work. I hasten to add that the cats now own that room! I digress. Back to the reason for the post.

Mo was lying on the floor, feet in the cats room and head in the kitchen, adorning the steps and not looking as much like Eartha Kitt as she would have wanted – more like a beached whale actually.

“Ooooh” she said. “Are you all right?” I said. “Ooooh” she said again, “I’ve hurt myself.” “Where?” I said. “Ooh” she said, trying in vain to get up. “My back.”  I made sure she was OK, and after rolling around trying to get in a position that enabled her to actually stand up, she managed to scramble to her feet – before I could take a photo! How inconsiderate!  I did ask her to lay back down for me but she just laughed.

She is fine by the way, or I wouldn’t be writing this post.

Photo: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/29/eartha-kitt-obituary

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Yes I am!

If you read my previous post you will know the possible horrors of Wordpress updates, and some of you will know that I have had quite a bit of ‘down’ time with my host.  In fact last night my blog was down again for several hours!    While I was searching for something I came across a ‘10 best hosting’ site.  My host was in the list and ranked 6th. Not good, but when I read the reviews it was a real eye-opener.  Not one good review.  All complaining at the down time, all said it had lousy support and ALL asking what on earth they were doing in the top ten list!

I had just renewed my subscription, so was not happy. Out of interest I looked at the No. 1 spot (JustHost) – Wow!  No down time, no complaints, brilliant support, domain name, all unlimited, and all of this for a mere £2.95 ($1.767) a month.  I was sold at that point, but then I read it………

The one thing that would finally sell it to me.  For just £9.95 a year they would make a daily backup of my complete site, and should I mess anything up, they would take it back a day for me.  That’s right.  THEY. WOULD. DO. IT. FOR. ME!

NO MORE STRESSED OUT DOODLES!

What was a girl supposed to do?  How could I not sign up for this?  I did some more searching and couldn’t find a single negative comment about them.  It was all good.

I know a lot of you are Blogger people, but humour me, please.  This is good news!

New domain name
Unfortunately when I leave my host I have to leave the domain name, but I have plenty of time to ease everyone over to the new one (beetles-blog.com).  I shall be running both for a while yet, and will probably have a re-direct.  I will let you all know once it’s up and running on the new server.

I’m a happy bunny…..I’m a happy bunny….They will do it for me….. *dances the happy dance*

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I’ve been putting off upgrading my Wordpress for ages.  Every time I post something I see the ‘Update’ message, so tonight I decided I’d better do it.  I use the ‘Automatic Upgrade’ plug-in that makes it a breeze.  Well usually it makes it a breeze.

I carefully followed all the instructions at each stage.  All of you who run Wordpress blogs know how stressful upgrading can be.  It backed up my database, it deactivated the plugins, it upgraded and it was all going without a hitch.  Once it had run it’s course it said it was about to activate all the plugins again.  Great!  It was all done and I could breath easy again.

Well I wasn’t going to breath easy for a while yet.  It froze up in maintenance mode and I couldn’t get into my blog. Never mind there was a contact button for just such problems.  I clicked it and was directed to a ‘404 This page does not exist’ page.  Brilliant!  Now what?  I searched until I found a forum, and it appears I was not the only one to have this problem.  I finally replaced the ‘index php’ with the backed up file and managed to get back into my blog.  I then had to re-activate all the plugins manually.

I’m finally running the latest Wordpress version but dread upgrading it the next time.  Have any of you had this problem, or is it just me?

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This post was inspired by this post by Jeff at View From the Clouds.  It got me thinking about the intolerance I have to so many foods in recent years.  I am going to take a trip down memory lane again.

I remember when

1. I remember when Fruit and vegetables were not all perfect in shape.  Some even had flaws in the skin.  Apples were not all round, carrots came in all shapes and sizes.  While they were not perfect looking, they were as nature intended and FULL of flavour.
2. I remember when biscuits (cookies) were not packaged.  You bought them loose, by the pound.  Shops had large wooden barrels, filled with biscuits that had broken and you could buy those at a give-away price.
3. I remember when milk was delivered to your house in glass bottles with silver foil lids.  Sometimes birds would pierce a hole in the top to get at the cream of the milk.  You could clearly see the section of cream at the top and could skim it off yourself – usually to have on cereal
4. I remember when cheese came in massive blocks straight from the farms and would be cut with a cheese wire. A slice would be cut off, placed on greaseproof paper and weighed.  If it was too much they would trim a piece off and weigh it again, until you were happy.  Then it was wrapped for you.
5. I remember when ham was sliced for you, straight from the bone. In fact all cold meats were sliced freshly in the shops – and not from processed chunks of meat, but from real joints of meat.  They would even give you any bones that were left over, for your dog!  Even bacon was freshly sliced for you.
6. I remember when butter came in large blocks and a piece was cut off and patted into shape using ‘Butter Pats’ (what else?).  It was then weighed and wrapped in greaseproof paper for you.
7. I remember when ‘Wagon Wheels’ were huge! You’d be hard pushed to eat it in one go.  In fact I remember when all sweet (candy) bars were huge and a fraction of the price
8. I remember when they used real cochineal to colour food and not a cheaper, chemical replacement that, I might add, I am allergic to!
9. I remember when the only ‘Fast Food’ we had was Fish & Chips.  The only bad thing about that was that it was fried and came wrapped in newspaper!  It didn’t harm us because we didn’t eat them often.  In fact I don’t remember ever replacing a home cooked meal with fish & chips – until fairly recent years. I don’t enjoy them much.
10. I remember when foods were all as nature intended them to be.  No additives, no artificial colouring and full of flavour.   All meat was safe to eat because all animals ate naturally.  You made your own minced meat so you knew what was in it.  There was no plastic packaging, and everything you bought came in a brown paper bag.  Not a promotional carrier bag to be seen.

We didn’t have the food selection we have today.  Fresh foods (and I use that term loosely) from far off countries was unheard of, and obviously not possible.  Given the choice of less to choose from, but foods that are not tampered with by all kinds of processes, or the selection we have today with all the additives and irradiation I would, without a doubt, go with the the foods that are as nature intended.

I know that we are now programmed to go by ‘looks’ more than actual content, and the faster pace we live means that some look for quick meals but I’m interested to know what younger people would choose, given the choice.  Let me know in the poll below.

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Do you remember I had to zap my feed reader from all the posts that had queued up?  Well I started afresh and was finding reading and commenting enjoyable and stress free – for a day or two, at least.

I am having major problems with my connection and now it is anything BUT stress free!  I go down at least once a day, sometimes more.  When I am up, it is very unstable and the speed fluctuates between normal and about 11kps at it’s worst!  Yes, I said 11kps!  I can use email, albeit slowly, but browsing is impossible.

Please be patient with me as I may not be around as much as I would like.  I may not be commenting but I do a lot of reading in my feed reader.  It doesn’t need the same connection speed as the blogs.

I may be posting a little home video next – speed allowing.  I’m working on it.

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