The Kindness Of Strangers

The Kindness Of Strangers
(Ok, so some of them aren’t that strange…)

Have you ever slagged off about Facebook?
…..Yeah, me too!

But all that has changed, I’m a new man, changed…now I love Facebook.

….Ok ‘love’ might be too strong a word for a soul less web site, but I’ve been awakened to something far bigger…the spirit of mankind! (mainly womankind actually)
Apart from the great, the funny, the uplifting, the wise, the thought provoking, the wonderful, the sexy and the nutters among you… you know which categories you belong in… (Whew, got out of that one)

But something else happened recently that has left me simply stunned….
My daughter, her husband and their four kids under 6yrs old moved here from a long way away and on the way lost most of what little they had…not remarkable in itself, but…
One of my other daughters best friends put a message on Facebook asking for spare bits and pieces for them to set up house…the result was staggering to say the least.

We live in a small manufacturing city of just over 20,000 people, how many of them would you think were Facebook users?

How many of those will have seen the little call for help or had spare stuff to contribute?

Daughter 2 (D2) has been inundated with gifts from people we don’t know… a bag of clothes here, a box of toys there.. a spare this or an old that, furniture otherwise destined for the shed, and some much better than mine!
In all, perhaps 3 or 4 trailer loads of household items which will be added to the 3 or 4 trailer loads contributed by family and friends of family.
The great and the good among us have come forward to set up this small family, piece by piece. Their first days in their new home will be quite comfortable…

We move them in today!


I wish I knew how to thank them all!

Bliss Is A Little Like This

At last all three of my daughters are living in the same town and there no arguments, no hassles and no fights!

…Ok, so that bits a lie! Girls will be girls and there are the usual problems but all things being equal it is a pretty good situation just now.
We try to picnic and BBQ quite a bit to get everyone together and get the grandkids familiar with each other…(the bludgeoning seems to have stopped for now) and more than anything else a BBQ at the beach means not much cleaning up to be done.

Why would that be important?
Well! Three daughters mean three sons-in-law and eight and a half kids. (number nine is due in two weeks)

A new feeling seems to be taking over me lately, as I watch the kids playing and the daughters catching up on the latest chit-chat a feeling of pride swells within me and at last I understand why generations have done all this hard work before us.

Son-in-law Stan and I were watching the other thirteen or so swimming and he made the comment that this was my legacy to the world… It is just what I was thinking! (…although he was laughing about it)
This small group of happy healthy kids, their parents and partners are my gift to the world and it is all good…enjoy!

Common viral infections...Avast? or antibiotics

REACH OUT FOR A CURE





Lately I've had one sickness after another, it all started with the dreaded ‘Swine Flu’. That left me so sick that I’ve become an incubator for every minor ailment going around, even now, several months later I’m still picking up every bug or lurgy.

This got me thinking…When a virus attacks my PC my three anti virus programs take over and warn me of the attack, even shutting down the PC if the attack persists… Why cant they protect me too! Strangely enough I'm doing a scan right now and Avast Pro just found and killed two ‘dropper’ virus files…why cant it scan me?!

How does one install a personal anti-virus?
I’ve searched all over my body and except for a couple of remote possibilities there don’t seem to be any input ports. There aren’t any CD trays and although I've looked well enough, there aren’t even any card reader slots (I’m old technology)… and as for Floppies...just don’t go there, alright!

So what do I try now? ..I’m open to suggestions here folks…
Subliminal suggestion?
Hypnotic suggestion?
Alcohol ingestion?
Drink Bleach? (not sure about this one)

New Years Resolutions

Our written and known history only goes back some 200 years here in Australia, (England has toilets older than that!) so we take and adapt customs from all over the world, trouble is we sometimes get it wrong and since they're borrowed traditions we don’t know any better.
I’m really having doubts about Boxing Day…but that’s a story for another time.

New years resolutions annoy me, we seem to purposely make crazy resolutions that we have no hope at all of fulfilling then brag about how quickly we break them. It seems to me that if you were making a resolution you would expect to at least try to keep it…but no!
January is full of stories about having given up alcohol then celebrated the fact with a beer or three. Given up smoking and celebrate with a cigar, or given up sex and…well, we might not go there eh!
For the next few weeks you are pestered by friends and people in general wanting to know how badly you failed and how long you didn't last. The celebration seems to be about how badly you failed, the winner being the saddest, loserest most inept promise maker. (strangely, wedding vows sprang to mind here) Hmm! But I digress.

About twenty years ago I decided to opt out by making and keeping a new years resolution. (very un-Australian of me) I decided and swore an oath to never again make a new years resolution… and I’ve never broken it.
I still get asked about what I've sworn and when I tell them they look blankly at me for some seconds, waiting for the punch line.
Sorry folks, no punch line…and no resolutions…I resolve!


I RESOLVE TO STOP PARTYING SO MUCH

Are men hopeless or not?

Yeah, good party trick mate!




Recently I stuffed up a simple recipe, I expected to get some good-hearted stirring but instead got the old ‘men should stay out of the kitchen’ routine.
No one expects men to be able to cook, and when we do, it is a choir of ‘Hmm, that’s not bad…for a man.’
Ladies, let me remind you how sexist that is!
If a woman’s house is untidy they are reminded to get off their ass and catch up, but when a mans house is untidy it is all, ‘Well, he is a man, what do you expect’, or ‘let me do that for you. (you hopeless dimwit)’.

Once we lived in caves and ate dead things…raw! All one had to do was throw the yucky bits out the front of the cave or back into the corners, thereby giving archaeologists something to work with in the future. No floor to sweep, no windows to wash, nothing to paint, clean, trim or mow...and man was as happy as a pig in shi… alright, maybe that’s not a good analogy.
However, somewhere along the line someone decided that we desperately needed to move to a more affluent neighbourhood. I am guessing it was someone’s wife…
Now I have to tell you that men and women have different standards, what is clean to a man may not reach the lofty standards set by most women. When you ask your man if something is clean or not, he is looking to see if you can see the thing through the layer of dust…if you can, it is clean! Simple. (remember the cave)
Cooking is the same, is the meat bleeding and moving about? No, then it is ready, dig in.
For some reason women recoil at this relaxed state that men seem genetically predisposed to??

Then there is the ‘Hopeless Gambit’ an all-encompassing theory put into practice when you are asked to do something you do not want to do. It works like this, stuff it up badly enough, often enough and you will not be asked to do it again. (it works surprisingly well) I have witnessed this done by all manner of men, from lowly husband’s right up to our Prime Minister.

What I am saying here is that some men are lowering the standards well below the achievable. Whether deliberately or coincidentally they make us all seem inept and childlike…and I am confused! I do not know whether to scold them or thank them.