Drifus' Travels – Well he thought he would

Well I hadn’t talked to Beth all day and didn’t want to call her and possibly wake her up. So after work yesterday I made up a bunch of spaghetti and a batch of brownies. I put together 3 small portions in containers and 3 small individually wrapped brownies and took them over to her. Keith and JoAnn were there and just finished up working on Beth’s SSD & SSI (Social Security), hopefully they will approve the application immediately but we will see. Beth looked good and seemed up as much as up can be these days. David, Keith and I think JoAnn are taking shifts to watch Beth around the clock so she doesn’t fall again. Larry should be back from his cruise later this week and then things might change as to where Beth would stay. Anyway so I stayed about an hour or so and had to leave to get my other car from the shop.

Well as most of you know from reading this atrocity on the internet my last long term relationship was with a woman named Beth. She has been diagnosed with cancer and just a few months to live. She is 53. Check your bucket list, still got time? Well yesterday morning she fell when try to get out of bed. It appears that she fell on her face but was able to get her elbows out to minimize what probably could have been worse. He nose did get crushed and of course it was bloody. Her son David heard the noise and went up to see and he said that she was not breathing and have to give her CPR. He cleaned her up and the mess all over the floor, then got her back in bed. He called Hospice and then called me.

At first I thought this is the call I do not want, but when I heard what had happened I was less worried. So I grabbed my work laptop and headed over to her house. Besides her nose she look good, she was awake, conscientious and glad to see me. I think David was glad I came over as fast as I did. Well long story short I spent the day working from the foot of her bed to insure that she did not leave her bed unattended. Her youngest brother (Keith) made if over before 4 pm and we all talk for about an hour or so with the social worker Kay. Then Keith made a run to Steak n Shake and bought the three of us dinner, Beth, me and himself, David was asleep. After dinner we talked about nothing in general at 8:45 pm I decided to go home and catch back up on things.

Yea it’s been six months since I last posted but that is the privilege I get for having a blog that no one reads.

Well recently I have decided to re-write my site layout using HTML5 and CSS3. Most of it is done and one the specifications are finished I am sure I will make more changes.

House is in a holding pattern, I am really waiting till winter comes so I can go back in the attic without turning into a raisin in .5 seconds.

Online dating well as always it has it’s good days and bad days, but I am taking it less serious as it’s really just another game in life. I have a PS/2 if I want to play a game I will load one and play. I really think online dating is more a popularity contest that people play with their friends. Between 1 and 10% are people actually hoping to find someone. I rest put up a profile to see what happens and they compare notes with their friends. I have met a lot of great women through online dating, heck the only friends I have are women, kind of funny. I wish them all of the hope and luck, as everyone should have someone with whom they can love and confide to without judgment.

I went to my first singles party, I talked to 2 people, both who I met a year ago. We spent time catching up, it was kind of fun to go to my first event and know people. I am sure I will go again, this one was great as there was no band playing so loud you couldn’t talk to someone. I like listening to bands but when you are trying to meet someone, either turn the band down some or have the party on a NON band night. A DJ or just good Muzak will do just fine.

Well, so maybe I am back to writing, heck if anything it will be my own journal I already have 5 years in it. I did go back and clean some of the previous writings mostly spelling and it was blast to re-read them.

Well nite all.

Well to all of my non-readers Happy New Year, wow I can hear the echoes, echoes. Well the dating world changed recently and I have met 2 people, one in person and one I chat with from Texas. Both are going well based on their geographical location, it keeps me busy and I am having fun.

I am not sure where I left off with my house purchase so if there is some repetition, sorry I am too lazy to read my previous posts. Well I have some kitchen utensils and plates, bowls etc. I have always found the kitchen to be the easiest to deal with, I guess 7 years in food service can help.

Now furniture was a real pain in the ass, I looked for months, I had decorators come over, I visited every furniture store in the St.Louis area and even checked out things online. Well 3 months in the making and I now have a recliner and sofa, both are black leather. The real issue was the room I have is a dining/living combination and it’s more rectangular. So length of a sofa was a big issue, most of what I liked was over 90″, I did however find one in the mid 80″ range. Finding a recliner wasn’t too hard, especially after going to name brand stores who would want upwards of $1700 for a recliner. Well I bought one I really like for under $400, both the chair and sofa are brand new and I still have the tags on them.

So now the next endeavor is the dining room or dinette room as it should be called. I like the thought of a counter height square table with a built in lazy Susan, that when the edges are flipped up it becomes a round table. I have also entertained a square to rectangle table without a lazy Susan. Still on the fence with this purchase but within 30 days I will have it in the house.

O forgot to mention that I did find bedroom furniture, it’s dark merlot in color with a black leather head board. Which is nice when reading in bed. So now I have a dresser/mirror, 2 nightstand and a queen bed.

So once the last of the furniture is purchased I will revisit the kitchen as there are many gadgets I still want to add. A bowl-lift mixer with all of the attachments, magnetic spice rack, I want to also “gut” the little pantry and add shelving that adjusts. Other things like a mandoline, a rasp and other veg. and fruit carving items. Now am I chef, well not professionally but now that I am alone on my own I plan to learn how to make great meals and blend some nice drinks to go with it.

While this latter stuff is going on I will get back to finishing the wired network and micro server room. This will allow me to then start on the home automation and add some additional insulation and sound proofing.

I have CAD drawings of my place so I can play with ideas until I run out. Eventually the main upstairs bathroom will get a make over. Yes the house is only 5 yrs. old but the previous owner didn’t do much and when she did, she didn’t take the time to research what she was doing or hire it out. If I had the money I would gut all of the inside perimeter walls and add some additional power wires and make sure the insulation is as high an R factor allowed in that space. Then I would have it professionally re-drywalled and painted as I know I could do it but sometimes things should be hired out to ensure it’s right. But that is a pipe dream for another time. Other things I am planning is to make this place as “green” as possible, wrapping water line, wrapping and sealing duct work. Add flashing insulation to the attic, after i finish wiring for ceiling fans and network.

As much as I like living in my RV I think I could handle living in this condo, I can spend more time on the changes I want to make while someone is outside taking care of the exterior. I do have a little green place I can “play” and from what I have seen the more you grab the less they cut. So my patio and to be built deck may help with that. Well it’s almost Friday and I can talk about the garage another time.

Nite all.

Well I have solved all of my BB (BlackBerry) issues. I updated the OS from RIM and then installed apps the I actually use on any given day. Now on a fresh boot of the phone I have just shy of 26M of memory. By the end of the day I still have 24M, the only other time I reboot the phone is when loading a 20M Cacheberry file. It’s not necessary but why invite trouble if you can avoid it. I do wish the phone had infrared, yes it’s old school but you could control more things like TV, VCR, DVD etc, a remote you wouldn’t have to look for.

I guess I shall let the cat out of the bag, I have bought a house, call it a large hobby. There is nothing wrong with the place I just thought that with the market like it is, it would be a shame to pass up an opportunity to own real estate. So now I am out of the RV for quite some time. I will probably list it for sale in the spring as I know I will not be using it anytime soon. So anyone looking for a 2006 Montana 3400RL that has traveled maybe 320 miles and looks like new let me know.

Ok on other fronts, online dating again. Yes I am about as sick of it as you are reading about it. Online dating has to be the most depressing thing in life. Death is less depressing because it’s over, dating goes on and on unless you say stop. What if you don’t find a person or maybe the ones that contact you aren’t close to what you are looking for. Like I am sure I have mentioned before, I have contacted people and never hear back. At least you can check your sent messages and see that they were read and or deleted. I think sometimes children are more mature than adults, a simply “sorry not interested”, “I am dating someone”, “my dog has 10 days to live so I want to be there for him”. Think of online dating as being at a bar or some local pick up spot, someone comes up to you and asks you to dance or have a drink etc, do you just sit there and ignore them? Really? I think not, you would say thanks but I am not interested, or I am with someone, at the most you would have some light conversation out of politeness. Well same goes for the anonymous online dating it’s just COMMON HUMAN F’n COURTESY!!!!!

Anyway back to the depressing part, for the most part I have given up on being invested in it. My new approach is more like a science project, I change my profile (it’s all true, I just add and subtract things). I change the “title” of my posting and I click on a bunch of profiles so they know someone looked at theirs, yes I do read them. I am not going to collect data on my “experiment” as it’s not scientific by any stretch of the imagination.

It just came to me On-Line Dating (O-L-D) hummm