Saturday

Saturday morning
Trying to remember what I have done lately, but further back than 24 hours is a bit of a stretch.   I did have a highlight last night though, Bruce and Rosalyn invited me to the theatre on the OBU campus to see  "Much Ado about Nothing"  in a modern setting, but with Shakespeare's original language.  It was a lovely evening and I so appreciated them asking me.




Saturday evening
The day has moved on, a lot of it spent hanging out at Staples, behind the counter at the technical desk.   I have been having computer issues. Although I was invited behind the counter I wasn't supposed to be there, the technician and I were  doing things we shouldn't, like trying to get into my e-mail - he said they are not supposed to be privy to information like that but the manager was turning a blind eye.  I told the technician I wanted to at least be able to Skype, and access my e-mail and my blog this weekend - he said he understood.


So I might be taking it back on Monday.  Although the guy helping me today was very computer savvy he wasn't actually one of the technical guys, none of whom seemed to be about this afternoon.


I have also been doing more cooking than I felt like.    The hospital gives it volunteers a turkey just before Thanksgiving, and I took mine on Thursday where it has been thawing out in my hall.   I'd thought of donating it, dropping it off at the Salvation Army, but I am sure they have plenty, so I am cooking it.  Then I will cut it up and freeze it in portions - like I say, a lot more work than I really wanted.    ALSO, tomorrow at Emmanuel we are all asked to take a crock pot of soup.   One church member, a potter, made 50 ceramic bowls which we are asked to buy at $15 each, and have a lunch of soup.  The money raised will go towards the feeding ministries - the lunches for the homeless and their monthly breakfast.  I just got the calculator out and 50 bowls at $15 each I think is $750, so that is worth doing.




So as I type, I have got soup in my crockpot, a turkey in the oven, and another soup for my supper simmering on the stove.  I threw the turkey giblets into a pan for the stock for tonight's supper; why do I give myself so much work, I ask myself.    Not only that, my dodgy shoulder is hurting from all this carrying around of printers, computers and turkeys.


While all this activity was going on I did have a phone call from Michael at the monastery at Beaumont, inviting me for Thanksgiving, he said he'd recorded 'Last Night at the Proms' for me to see.   Bless.  I said I'd let him know after the weekend, but I don't think I can manage it, it is too soon to my trip home.  I did appreciate the invite and the affection though.

Veterans Day

Veterans Day -  is a BIG DEAL holiday, not one on which only banks are closed, and everyone else goes about their normal business, but  the Senior Centre is closed as well, a sure sign that a holiday is IMPORTANT.      

 

It originated as “Armistice Day” on Nov. 11, 1919, the first anniversary of the end of World War I, then Congress passed a resolution in 1926 for an annual observance, and Nov. 11 became a national holiday beginning in 1938.

 

It is not to be confused with Memorial Day (the fourth Monday in May) which honours American service members who died in service, while Veterans Day pays tribute to all American veterans - living or dead - but especially gives thanks to living veterans.   I may have said this before, but I do admire tremendously the way in which servicemen and women, and veterans, are treated in this country.   If they appear on television they are always thanked for their service.  The Golden Corral gives them free meals on Veterans Day.

 

 I don't think it was always ever thus - I have an idea that it came about after Vietnam, when returning military were treated so badly it became a national disgrace, that people have been putting right ever since.

 

I haven't done anything special.  Just went out to fill the car, and  gas prices are falling, I think this was the cheapest I think I have seen here.

$2.93 is £1.84 a gallon.

 

I am bemused at the fact that £1.84 a gallon isn't cheap enough, motorists also need to be bribed with free popcorn every day, and coffee on Tuesdays.  And another pump was advertising a free fountain drink, which I think means Coke, or something like that.  $26.92, which is what it cost me to fill up, is £16.91.  Oklahoma is cheaper than the national average.

In the news....................
I have of course been watching the news all day.    Remember her?????? It was a big murder trial I was telling  you about when it was going on last year, and her sentencing trial has just begun..

In self defence she stabbed her boyfriend 22 times, slit his throat, then shot him in the forehead for good measure.   But it is being said she might walk free because police apparently deleted evidence. I don't know why that didn't come out in the original trial, I thought the jury were just called to sentence her.   I don't hold with all this dragging out the case - the jury should just bring in a verdict and let the judge hand down the sentence, like we do.

The weather is very bright and sunny, but COLD.  I keep reminding myself that this was what I wanted when it was 103.

I think this is the first time I have seen Oklahoma actually mentioned on a weather map.  I usually have to look at Arkansas and New Mexico to give me a rough idea.

Over 2 feet of snow up in Michigan, round the Great Lakes.   I am glad I am down here, it doesn't get that bad south of the Mason Dixon line.

My readership plummeted from 46 the other day, to 4 yesterday.  That should tell me something.

Monday 10th November

Goodness, this has been hard work today.  When I changed my tv company back in June I told the providers, Dish Network, to collect their equipment, I would leave it on my porch.  And it has languished there since then.   Then at the end of last week I discover, without any by or leave, that they snatched $243 out of my bank account for said equipment.   The last thing I wanted to do was risk a fall carrying these big boxes down my porch steps, but felt I now had no choice, and did so very gingerly.  Then I struggled to open - with  my hands full - the door of the local office, and threw them in.  

 

I'll give them a day or so to refund the money to my account.

 

Before that though I took the flowers from Emmanuel to the hospital and had lunch with Bill and another chaplain, and that was very nice.  

 

This day in history..........

 

1971

Two women are tarred and feathered in Belfast for dating British soldiers.    I remember that.  I do sometimes forget though Northern Irish antipathy to the British, I just remember the tremendous kindness of  all the people I knew in the Irish Republic toward myself and my father, who lived there.    There's an Irish-American woman who lived in Shawnee, but has recently moved away, who was always very hostile toward me, and her husband murmured once, very quietly - so quietly I afterward wondered if I'd heard right - that she is anti British.

 

1941

Churchill promises to join the U.S. "within the hour" in the event of war with Japan.   I don't know who is being sceptical here, me or Churchill.   Didn't the US  'join us' after they were bombed in Pearl Harbour? 1989   German citizens begin tearing down the Berlin Wall.   I remember that, and it has had a lot of news coverage over here, remembering it.

There are said to be as many rodents in New York as people.   Although someone said they don't know how they were counted.

 

Sunday 9th November

I was going to say "Winter has Arrived"  and it certainly seemed like it when I was scraping ice off the windscreen this morning so I could get the donuts.   But by lunchtime it was a warm, beautiful, balmy day, blue skies and temperature in the 70s.   So I don't know.

 

I lost my cell phone, searched through all the recently used handbags and pockets, and was just on the point of going to get a replacement when it turned up.  But it was such a lovely day in the late afternoon sunshine that I went to the AT&T store, just to see what phone I might have bought had the missing one not turned up.    I was quite captivated by a slim smart phone, under a $100, but I didn't succumb.

 

Seem to have got behind with the blog, think I have been feeling a bit under the weather, but perked up today after talking to Jeremy, Tim, precious grand daughters and Marie's very sweet mother, via Davina interpreting.

 

Nothing notable has happened in the last few days.  Was at the hospital on Friday, then had lunch with Bill.   I don't think I am breaching any confidentiality - since you don't know anyone in Shawnee, far less anyone who might be in hospital - if I say I came across a patient with 'beer potomania'.   It is a disorder in which someone drinks so much beer  - a really excessive quantity of beer - that they become very ill, not just from the alcohol, but from the huge quantity of beer destroying, I think, the electrolytes in the body.    I have never heard of this, and I worked in a hospital.  I wondered if any doctors in the UK had ever heard of it.  Or if it is a newly discovered American thing?

The number of people daily reading the blog ranges from half a dozen to ten,  but yesterday an astonishing 46 read it!!!    I can't imagine how 46 people suddenly stumbled across it.

Remember, Remember the 5th November .....

Hope you all had a good Guy Fawkes Day......fireworks, bonfires?

Oh Woe is Me.    I felt for a few days the car wasn't quite right, was going to call Terry, then turning into my drive this afternoon, it felt as though the engine was falling out.   I rang Terry and he came straight out - I said to him after we took the car to his workshop and he was running me home, that he was more than a mechanic, he is a really good friend.   I don't know what I'd do without him. Anyway, it needs some major repair but he should finish it tomorrow.

 

Driving me home we were talking about the fact that there have been quite a few home invasions lately in the area, including the old woman who was woken up by the bandits demanding money, and in spite of trying to give them everything she had, they still beat her up.  I said I thought perhaps I need to get a gun, so Terry was telling me about the arsenal he keeps in his bedroom, on his nightstand and under the bed, and if he is away from home for a night he leaves the big pistol on the nightstand for his wife to use.    He was also saying he was very happy about the Republicans taking the Senate last night because they won't interfere with his gun rights, and also from last night Oklahomans have got the right to openly carry them.   They used to have to conceal them.

 

I asked if we would be charged with murder, or manslaughter, if we shot dead an intruder and Terry said that as long as they were on our property, and we were obviously defending ourselves we wouldn't be. 

 

Anyway, I am giving it some thought, and don't worry, I am not going to waltz into Walmart tomorrow to pick one up.    The local gun shop owner is a good friend at Emmanuel, I will chat to him when I am about and mobile again.   He has a gun range behind the shop, and would show me how to use it.

Anyway, enough of me and guns.   Yesterday was the Election, today is the 'Inquest'.  Phrases like 'Tide is Turning' and 'Start of a New Day' are being bandied about.  And probably because I watch the evil Fox News there are lots of beaming, smiling faces.   I was telling Chaplain Bill that although the Election doesn't make any difference to me, one result I felt really glad about was the defeat of the wannabe Democrat Governor of Texas because she is in favour of - and would have brought in - legislation for late term abortions.  So we had a little rejoicing at the unborn saved by her defeat.

 

Earlier in the day, before going to the hospital (my goodness I've been busy today) I made some orange jellies for the young people at Emmanuel this evening, and had actually just delivered them and was going home when the car crisis occurred.    I took them in daylight because of the clocks going back, I am now a little unsure at driving after dark, but it is just two straight main roads to Emmanuel, I think I will probably be able to manage that in future.

 

 

Election Day

It has been very, very wet.  Really heavy drenching rain for hours on end.  No wonder Oklahoma is so green, it is like Ireland.   And not only wet now, but cold too.  I can't believe it was less than a week ago I took that photo of the Horse in the City, and what a lovely day that was, what a brilliant blue sky, temperatures in the 70s, and I was running around in a tee shirt.   I thought summer was here (I don't know what they call that season when it is unbearably hot, in triple digits) but it seems to have gone, the lovely short lived summer last week.

 

As to the Election, it is as they say, all over bar the shouting.  I have been looking at the results coming in and fairly early in the evening - 10.30 Central Time - the Republicans had gained 6 seats which was what they needed to have control of the Senate.   So Republicans have control of the Senate and Congress, and Obama is said to be "irritated".  

No surprises, no interest, in Oklahoma.  The Republican Governor is, predictably, back for another term.

Saturday 1st November.

Pattisue and I enjoyed the movie last night, The Judge.  It took some time to get into, but it was brilliantly acted from start to finish, and I was surprised at the ending.    I would see it again if it came downtown, I think there were nuances I didn't pick up on, things I am not quite clear about.    When we came out it was really chilly, and we decided winter was on the way.   And today it was 47 as I drove through town.

Today has been uneventful, enjoyed a chat with Jeremy on Skype.

Today in history.....

1903		London's Daily Mirror newspaper is first published. That's earlier than I would have thought.
1920		The first radio broadcast in the United States is made from Pittsburgh.  And that's later.
1942		Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower arrives in Gibraltar to set up an American command post for the invasion of North Africa.   My Dad was there then, I wonder if he saw him, or knew he was there.  But if he did he probably thought he was just some Yank.  I got into a bit of a pickle with the layout here, copying and pasting, and don't know why I can't put it right.   1960    A British jury determines that Lady Chatterley's Lover is not obscene.  I remember that, it was a big deal.  Everyone was talking about it, and queuing up to buy it.   1936    The first high-definition public television transmissions begin from Alexandra Palace in north London by the BBC.    That's earlier than I would have thought.  We got our first television for the Coronation in 1953.   (Anne - do you remember that?  Your parents were there as well, and we lived in Birdhurst Road)   Born on 2nd November 1734   Daniel Boone, American frontiersman and explorer.  My friend Vicki Sparks, chaplain Larry's wife, is Daniel Boone's 5th great grand daughter.