I suppose you’ve noticed that I’ve changed the blog template yet again? I really didn’t want to, I thought the old one was much nicer – cleaner, sleeker… but I was given no choice! The old one didn’t show comments – so although I liked the old one better, if I hadn’t received an email notification to tell me that someone had left a comment, I wouldn’t have known it was there! So I hastily scouted around for a semi-decent template that displayed comments, then I used the old header, chopped it down to the right size and re-framed it. Instant blog template change… well, almost instant, anyway… I guess it took me about three minutes to get the header re-sized, and about 10 minutes to find a suitable template to use.
I was going to tell you yesterday, but I guess I got a bit carried away with the house that I want us to get that I forgot to. Remember I told you that I was going to try out that new Windows Office look-alike thingy? Well, I did try it, a bit, but I didn’t have time to put it through its paces… now, I wish I’d never heard of the damn program! Apparently it uses, or has something to do with Thunderbird, the mailer that I use, because I opened Thunderbird to get the download address from an email I’d received from SoftMaker, and when I started installing the program it asked me to close Thunderbird. I just thought it was one of those installers that doesn’t like anything else being open when it’s installing something. So I closed Thunderbird, as one does when requested to by an installation process. However I didn’t have occasion to use Thunderbird again until the next morning, when I went to check my email. Thunderbird was there, installed an’ all, but everything else was gone! Thunderbird had been newly installed, but not set up to send or receive mail… and all my mail, all my settings, my address book, my filters, were gone! I was beside myself with anger, grief, and disbelief! OK, my email might not be terribly important to the fate of the world, but it was important to me! All my registrations! All my book records! All my personal emails, all gone! Blown away because this stupid SoftMaker Office 2016 program thought it would be a good idea to install the latest version of Thunderbird for me, and clean out all the “cobwebs” of my email setup and email at the same time! Thank ghod for nightly backups! While Julian was busy with the rather complicated process of retrieving my email for me, I got him to uninstall SoftMaker Office 2016 – and I can guarantee you all that I’ll never download or use anything from SoftMaker again! What if we hadn’t had backups? Lots of people (who should know better!) don’t… What if this was an important business venture, or a law firm? What if overnight we’d lost important contracts, or irreplaceable legal documents!? (not that we would have – just about any high profile business or law firm would have been running nightly backups from which to retrieve the lost emails – one would hope, anyway!) So let that we a lesson to you all! If you’re going to try out a new, unknown piece of software, back up everything first!
We called in at the Commonwealth Bank this afternoon after I’d been to the Hairdresser, and you wouldn’t believe how long it took, and how difficult and complicated it was, to retrieve my “unclaimed money”! We needed an account number. A Commonwealth Bank account number. But we haven’t done business with the Commonwealth Bank for about 30 years, so we didn’t have an account number! We didn’t even know, at that stage, where the money was from, before it got handed over to “unclaimed monies”. We were there for about three-quarters of an hour before we were able to contact someone higher up in the Bank hierarchy who knew how to handle cases like this, so I should get my missing money in a week or so (hopefully!) Oh, and we did find out where the account was and how it had been “overlooked”. It had been with Bank West, as an account for e-trading with Andrew West (stockbrokers) both of which had been taken over and gobbled up by Comsec and the good old Commonwealth Bank – so once I gets me money, it’ll be “all’s well that ends well!” 🙂
Tomorrow we’re going to have another look at “our” house (or the “C” House, as I now call it) and on Sunday we have a couple of houses to look at in the Caulfield area. Normally houses aren’t open for inspection on Sundays, but Caulfield is pretty much the heart of Melbourne’s Jewish quarter, and they can’t have houses open for inspection on Saturdays (the Sabbath), because that would be considered “work”, so they have them open for inspection on Sundays instead! 🙂 And speaking about strange practices regarding not working on the Sabbath, did you know – or rather more to the point, would you believe, that in certain places in America (I think New York was one!) lifts (as in ‘elevators’) have a special device attached to them so that the lifts operate automatically, because pressing buttons is considered “work”… and some of the ultra-ultra orthodox even go so far as to believe that the movement of the lift’s counterweight constitutes work, and because you’re operating the lift, you are ultimately responsible for this work, which is a big no-no! (Winter shakes her head in sad disbelief) …But to each his (or her) own…
Did I tell you that I started writing this a little later than usual? 🙂 Time for my evening Stair Walk… 
+————————–+ * Dinner & Television Break * +————————–+
Weigh-in this morning. Well, as expected, the spike is on its way – I clocked in at 88.2kg again – the same as yesterday. The timing’s about right – approximately six days into the fluid retaining pills, up I go… Oh well…
So. I got a little bit of Rifting in this morning, then we went out, and by the time we got home I had time to write this up until I went on my evening Stair Walk. It’s now 9.30pm. You know that handy little LAN Messenger thingy that I use to ask Julian things when he’s not around? It works great, when he’s in the Office. It works just as well when he’s in here and I need to pass him a url or file. It doesn’t work when he’s in the kitchen though – not because he doesn’t have a computer in the kitchen, he does – but because at this time of night in the kitchen he’s usually busy cleaning up after dinner and making cups of tea, and not looking at his laptop. I was going to ask him what time our… sorry, it’s not yet, I mean the “C” House is going to be open for inspection. I hope it’s not going to be raining again tomorrow – I’d like to see outside, and I also hope that not too many other people turn up! The less people who know about it, the less competition we’ll have! 😉
I have a horrible confession to make! While we were doing the Supermarket shopping, after I’d been to the Hairdresser, and we’d been to the Commonwealth Bank, I bought… a packet of sugarless, orange flavoured mints (guilt! guilt! guilt!) And I ate two of them… they were only little… (guilt! guilt! guilt!) They were delicious! (guilt! guilt! guilt!) I should never have bought them! I promise I won’t eat any more – Julian can have them – and if I do eat any more, I swear I’ll do an extra Stair Walk to compensate, even though they’re sugarless and have less than a poofteenth of a kilojoule per tiny little round, delicious mint! (I should never have bought them! What was I thinking?!)
And that, gentle readers, brings me to the end of my rambling recounting of today’s adventures! Be sure to call back again tomorrow night to see if my weight did spike up – or boringly stayed the same for the third day in a row. Will we still love The “C” House, or will we start to notice tiny little cracks and flaws in its magnificent façade? Will it rain on our house hunting (well, this is Melbourne! 😉 ) and if you want to know the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything (it’s 42, by the way!) as well as the answers to heaps of other questions you haven’t even thought of yet, then this is definitely the place to hang out! But until then, please endeavour to bee good, remember that a smile is a curve that can set a lot of things straight – but above all, remember to stay warm and dry, to drive carefully, and to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 