Weather-wise, Monday was a repeat of Sunday. Record warmth both days, Heavy rain was predicted for later in the day so I brought in my Christmas display before anything else. It is light work and didn't take long. After lunch I went out to the garden and straightened up a little. I also set the timer for the gazebo lights to go on after dusk and off at midnight. They had been on with the Christmas decorations which I left on all the time.  I also brought the empty boxes up from the basement and put away the interior decorations. It seemed like they were just put up! The boxes were taken down to the basement, one dragged, the smaller one carried ready for the day when a strong grandson arrives to hoist them to the crawl space to await next November.

After feeding Mikey, I put a tape and a blank disk into the VCR/DVD machine and methodically and slowly went through the copy process, avoiding the mistakes made the last time we tried doing it and then processing beyond. When alone, without pressure, I seem to work better and so did the copy process. I was able to pick only Albano boys birthday parties from a 1991 tape that included a lot of other events. Moving through the tape using the fast forward and rewind, I was able to select the start and end times of segments containing only what I wanted to copy. When I selected "Copy All" the machine rewound the tape to the first starting point and began the copy to disk process. Amazing!  The computer was then used to play the newly created disk, fast forwarding to scenes I knew were there and taking "snapshots" of several.  Using my photo editor, I selected one, cropped it and enhanced the exposure. Then using that "snapshop" an insert for a DVD case was created and printed. Anne Marie will give the DVD  to Rose Albano for her birthday. You see, those birthday videos not only included her grandsons but some videos of her husband ... and his photo is featured on the face of the DVD case. Hopefully the knowledge gained while doing this project for her will give me the impetus to start converting all my old VHS tapes to DVD.

My brother Jim had a collection of movies on VHS tapes. He has recently finished converting selected ones to DVD and he has relegated three book cases of tapes to the trash bin. We have a lot of movie tapes as well. Anne used to rent VHS movies on Wednesdays when they were 3 for a dollar, make a VHS copy and return the rentals. We would then have movies to watch whenever we wanted. After I convert our home videos to DVD I may see if any of the old movies are worth keeping and if so, copy them also.

An email came from England:

"I have found your pages thoroughly enjoyable and enthralling. My wife is also a descendent of the Packards. We live in England and we have been compiling a complete Packard family tree starting from the earliest Packard known. It has led us all around the world and has introduced us to lots of people around the world.

Do you mind if I add your families details to the tree I am compiling? I will send you a copy as soon as I can."

You bet you can Dennis. I sent a reply with a copy to Peggy Cecora of course along with a genealogy file of everything I know about the Packard family line. Only a small part of it is included on my Packard page. I am anxious to see what he can add to it.

 

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Monday evening the conflicting warm and cold fronts brought spectacular thunderstorms with lightning illuminating the heavens in a glorious display. Not so glorious were the tornados spawned to the north of the city. During the night the storms settled down to produce an over abundance of rain, not needed for our saturated soil. It was raining lightly when the alarm awakened me at 6:30. The garbage and recyclable bin had to be put out by 7:00 and Barbara would be coming to clean soon after. The house needed to be cleaned since it had been four weeks since she had been here due to Christmas falling on her usual day. Her cleaning includes washing the towels (double this time)  the bedding, and the bathroom rugs along with the dusting, cleaning mirrors, windows (as needed), bathrooms,  counter tops and of course, doing the floors, washing or vacuuming as the case may be. She is a wizard at it all and an indispensable part of my life. She even spruced up a Christmas gift of flowers, removing the wilted and rearranging the rest giving the arrangement a fresh look. Barbara is here for six hours on alternate weeks. She goes about her work, cheerfully humming or singing and all I need to do is stay out of the way. Mikey does also. She leaves a spotless house and lets me know if I need to replenish any supplies, always inviting Mikey to go with her, at which point he runs to my side to let her know that I am his person.

I have been wrong! Well, ... in part. My Wednesday morning bit of wisdom from C' S. Lewis has corrected a misconception that I apparently share with many well-meaning people. That misconception is that Christianity is all about un-selfishness. He would substitute Love! He reminds us that un-selfishness is a negative approach and that to hope for good things for ourselves is a good thing and indeed the ultimate goal. He tells us, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too easily pleased."

This makes a lot of sense to me ... the fact that we should want to have the very best for ourselves and when we include Love, we will want everyone else to have the same thing. It will not diminish what we have, but make it universal. Anyway, this does not make a major change in my thinking but it does refine it a bit, ... maybe more than a bit. And that is part of life, making progress towards understanding the plan of God for us. I don't know if the human mind is capable of grasping the whole thing but I am convinced that some people , C. S. Lewis for one, was definitely on the right track. He also had a great talent for putting it into words. And so, I'll continue to read, and re-read, his works or excerpts from them. He manages to get through to me.

I took Mikey to see the vet and the same medication was given as was used to clear up his skin problem the last time along with another to sooth the itching as well as a medicated shampoo to have Paula at Touch of Class use for him. As for his  seizures, the doctor did a simple neurological test to rule out brain damage and also had blood drawn for lab work to check for liver problems that may be causing the problem. They will call me with the results in a day or two. She suspects that the cause is Epilepsy  and if the lab tests rule out liver problems a treatment can be started which should control the seizures.

When we returned home I dug into my recent family digital photos. My new digital photo frame needed to be loaded up with pictures of my kids and their family members. An array of photos was prepared by cropping, resizing and otherwise manipulating them. When I went to load them on the photo frame it lacked an internal memory and had to work from a memory card or a card reader. To further complicates matters the new device was not compatible with cards or readers that are used in my camera or with my computer. Completion of this project was delayed for the moment.

The call from the animal clinic came Thursday while I was out. The Vet who called said the the blood tests were negative for anything that needed treatment so that is good. He also said that monthly episodes of seizures in dogs are borderline and that I should simply keep a record of their occurrence. If they become more frequent we can start a treatment of Phenobarbital given twice a day. This would be an on-going treatment for the rest of his life. And so, we watch and wait and life goes on. 
 

As soon as you trust yourself,  you will know how to live. ~ Johann von Goethe

Thursday morning found me at the resumption of our weekly Bible study. We will study the Gospel of John and his letters and the introductory video was most interesting. We spent a little time discussing our individual experiences of Christmas and I am afraid I may have monopolized the discussion telling about the book of writings by my father. In my defense, all seemed to be captivated by the story and the poem which I read to them.  One asked that I bring the book back next week so she could read some of it.

From there I made a short trip to Circuit City and got a CF memory card and a card reader for it. Returning home, I plugged the card reader into my computer and transferred the photos I had prepared on Wednesday. The card was then inserted into the photo frame and I enjoyed for the first time the new slide show.  It starts with my oldest son's wedding photo and proceeds to show individual photos of him, Karen, Nick, Kelsey and Ana. The show continues in the same manner for Anne Marie and her family and then Tom and his family. There are a total of 18 photos, all displayed in sequence in one frame. It is now displayed in the family room with a similar display of my parents and siblings in another frame. The bonus is that I now have yet another variety of  memory card reader added to my collection of devices in the event that someone with a camera that uses CF cards  visits  and I need to "borrow" some of their photos.

As I was completing the aforementioned task, Joe arrived. In short order, the Christmas boxes were returned to the crawl space, their repose until after next Thanksgiving. He then went out to the yard and using my trusty pooper-scooper collected a generous amount of  Mikey's contribution to the environment. I thank him and Mikey thanks him. I invited Joe to join me for lunch but he had other tasks scheduled and was soon on his way.

I had a major victory over a problem and only because ... I did the unthinkable! I mentioned previously that I had a problem with "Hidden Files" on the web server and that Kevin, my computer guru, had given me a "secrete link" to them so at least I could find them. The problem was that that link offered a clunky, slow way to work with them and there were over a hundred that needed to be deleted. I could make short work of the task if I could work with them using WS-FTP, the program normally used to access the server. Well, I put my pride behind me and used the HELP utility of the WS-FTP program. After stumbling about for a bit, I discovered that there was a thing called "File Mask Text Box" available but not normally displayed. A File Mask is a way of selecting what is displayed. After enabling the File Mask, I was able to enter the *.* code which is the designation for ALL FILES. Presto! my missing files were unmasked and in plain view. A couple clicks later, my archived "Events" pages from 2004, 2005 and 2006 were deleted from the server.

T

The "Forwards" have returned from their Christmas vacations and I received several worth sharing this week. I still don't understand why otherwise intelligent people can't understand that they don't need to send layer upon layer of "forwarded" emails when all they need to send is the one with the meat on it. It reminds me of the way I used to like to wrap gifts for Anne with a small box within a box, within a box .... within a box. When I did it years ago it was cute! When it is email ... it is annoying! And they should PLEASE ... delete all the previous email addresses! But of course to take it all a step further we have the clods who steal it from web sites or even books, ignoring copywrites and striping the original author of any credit. To pile insult upon injury, they sometimes alter it to suit their agenda (it was copyrighted in the first place to prevent that) or turn it into a chain letter ... worse yet, a chain prayer! That verges on superstition or even blasphemy. But, enough of my ranting and let's get to the subject at hand. I have found several of these on web sites which display them better than on an email and at least in one case restores it to its original condition complete with the identity of the author. I would suggest that the proper way to distribute these pages is to simply send an email that has a link to the page. I have done that in the "Links of the Week" at the end of this page. It is very easy to find these pages. Just Google the first line of the message or story and you will find a list of pages. Select one that you like. By the way, I do appreciate getting these "forwards" from my friends, it's just that as a member of the Order of St. Isidore of Seville I feel compelled to promote the responsible use of the internet.

Ooops ... I went astray again! These stories are well worth the read and I offer my thanks to those who sent them.  Your Dog sent by Don Hall, from Canada, is a great instruction on how we should behave. The Pear Tree courtesy of Bob Clarke from Southern Pennsylvania is an inspirational piece found on You Tube.  God Lives Under The Bed! was sent by Bob Lewis from his winter quarters in Florida and shows how the simplest among us often have a better understanding of life and God than do we.

By the way, the Prayer for this week (see top of page) was lifted from a "Chain Prayer" email. The prayer, I believe, is a good prayer and so I share it with you. As it stands, it has merit and when freely prayed, without coercion of any kind it has even more merit. I think God hears prayers based on the sincerity of the one who prays and doesn't care much how many people to whom it is sent. On the other hand I do believe that if 100 people are praying for the same thing He may be more inclined to listen. It is just that, again, I fear a slip towards superstition in our efforts to do a good thing. If you feel a particular prayer has merit, feel free to pass it on ... just the words themselves ... no conditions ... no incentives. If  enough people sincerely agree, God will know.
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He who cannot pray when the sun is shining will not know how to pray when the clouds come. ~ Anonymous