Sunday, March 24, 2013


It was on Palm Sunday last year that the water came through our dining room ceiling. I approach the day anew with some trepidation. The weather continues savage and no relief is forecast for the coming week, but at least Edinburgh is dry.

We have taken to going to Mass at Our Lady Star of the Sea in Leith by car because of the awkwardness of getting to our local cathedral – I have to drive my husband up there, then come back and park at home because there is never a parking space and then walk up myself. We take a bus home. OLSof the S is having an earlier Mass today, too early for us, so it’s back to the cathedral. It will be our first visit since the recent trouble, and therefore potentially interesting.

Great, weather-related news, though: our niece would like a few days in Strathardle right after Easter. She’s willing to shoulder the question of how’s-the-water-after-the-winter which I have been dreading. A water crisis I could still deal with (just about) but my husband, even in his glory days, gets very disagreeable in such circumstances (where gallows humour would actually help). Dealing with water, disagreeableness, and anxiety about his frailty all at once is what I was not anticipating with pleasure.

The water anxieties are two: one, that the pipe has frozen somewhere in the field between the house and the mains connection, and there is no water at all. That has never happened to us, in 50 years, but it does happen to people. And two, that the ends of pipes in the house have been forced apart by ice, despite careful draining, so that a flood results when the water is turned on. That has happened twice in those 50 years. Here is my account of the more recent event.

If our niece is willing to take on those anxieties, it means that I will have nothing to worry about except the routine worries, when we finally go ourselves. Bliss!

I’ve had a lot of trouble with spam lately – some have crept through Blogger’s defences, as you may have noticed. I hope I’ve caught and deleted them all. There is a huge additional volume which doesn’t get through because they are aimed at older posts and therefore moderated. But it still takes me time to go through and delete them.

A blogger I was reading recently said she had reluctantly set her system to exclude Anonymous comments. But I really can’t do that – not just for your sake, Ron, but because a number of other good comments come Anonymously. See yesterday for examples.

All well otherwise. Cries for help from the Toshiba-user are definitely diminishing in number. He successfully saved a couple of documents yesterday, although I don’t think he has yet loaded one on his own.

And although I didn’t get as much second-sleeve done on the Relax  as I would have hoped, I did do enough that I think I’m still on schedule to finish on Tuesday, block on Wednesday, take to Loch Fyne on Friday. (Lent is nearly over!)

No news from Rome. They probably don’t have access to wi-fi.  I texted both Helen and Archie yesterday, and have had no response. I’m not reeeely worried, but…

5 comments:

  1. It amazes me that people buy services or things from companies that phone them, send them junk mail, or send them spam. I can't imagine agreeing to let people, who picked my number out of a phone book, come and clean my carpets, or buy medication from a company that sends out spam. However, many people must or all of it would stop.
    I'm glad your niece is going to help you out with the plumbing. I used to think that frozen pipes was a problem unique to Canada.
    Ron in Mexico

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  2. Anonymous4:22 PM

    I'm glad that you continue to accept anonymous comments. A personal quirk: I refuse to join Blogger, Google, whoever to be able to comment even on my favorite blogs.

    And I agree with Ron: who would think it a good idea to do business with spammers or telemarketers?
    -- stashdragon

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  3. =Tamar7:50 PM

    I also refuse to join a site solely to comment, and I refuse to give them access to my passwords for other sites just to be allowed to comment. Name/URL gets my (hidden) email address and my name; that ought to be enough.

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  4. Anonymous3:58 AM

    Me 4. I 'm not willing to put my name and/or address (physical or otherwise) out into some great unknown whose policies could change at any time and I'd never know it cause I don't keep up with social media. (Yeah, a run-on sentence.) I'm heading on 60 yrs and I have to keep enough focus on real life.

    It's great that the Surface has led to your husband tiptoe-ing into a Brave New World. He may well find a satisfaction in achieving a goal he didn't expect at this time in his life. Hmmm, maybe I'm projecting. I really don't know that he tiptoes. I tend to.

    Thank you, Jean for your blog and thanks also to the other commenters. I've appreciate your efforts.

    Jeanne in Rochester

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  5. Anonymous9:46 AM

    Jean,

    my employer's security people just posted this
    'The California-based online information storage firm Evernote has advised its users to change their passwords after it was the victim on a hack attack. The company is used by about 50 million people to remotely store and organise video clips, images, web pages, documents and diaries in the ‘cloud’.

    Evernote said that user names, email addresses and encrypted passwords may have been stolen but that there was no evidence that payment details or stored content was accessed, changed or lost.'

    Does it affect you?

    I'll have to post as anonymouys as I've forgotten my acct details!

    Rachel(knitobsession)

    ReplyDelete