Hello everyone. I hope all is well with you, and that you've had yet another good week. I have too. One of my downstairs neighbors is in the process of moving back in for good.





This week I've been doing some Hadley workshops, in preparation for our garden that's going to be started. That's all for now.

Hopefully it'll work better with my bedroom power strip turned off.

That's right, spring has nearly sprung here in the Chicago suburbs and I for one am super excited. My clocks have been adjusted accordingly, or at least most of them have been. I am now fully vaccinated and as of Tuesday I will officially be good to go. I *hope* to get out and see more friends, although at the rate things have been going I cannot make any promises. But I shall do my best.





A neighbor and I are going to start a garden, with support from some staff here. I'm really looking forward to it, as I've never gardened before. I'd like to send a big shout out to the good folks at The Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired for providing some wonderful study material in that respect. A link to Hadley is available right on this very site. But in addition to gardening, I'm planning to take some other Hadley courses again. All or most of this of course depends on timing. But I'm doing my best to make it happen.





As always I've been keeping up on the latest political happenings. I cannot help but wonder what possesses some people to vote--and think--like they do. I honestly wish I could change this but I guess some brains have just been put in backwards/upside-down/lopsided, lol. But that's all I'll say on the matter right now. And that's all for this entry. Bye for now, and as always please take care and stay safe.

to those who observe it. I don't exactly do this, but I am a baptized Christian and am going to TRY and catch some of my church's virtual Lenten worship. Or at least catch the archives. I'm not exactly giving anything up, but perhaps I'll find something. I was a regular churchgoer up until I moved out of my parents' place in the summer of 2004. Now I just go whenever the mood strikes me, lol! Actually, I'm always one for church because it has always been good to me. This was true as well when I lived out east. My current church has moved worship online during the pandemic, as I know some others have done. But a task force has been called to action in order to look into when it would be safe to return to at least some form of in-person worship. They did that last summer and it apparently worked out really well. My church has had outside worship during the summer ever since I can remember, and it has always been nice. I'm confident that said task force is doing everything in their power in order for a smooth transition to take place. That's all for right now. Cheers everyone and make it a good day.

Hi everybody. The following poem was written by a friend from a local writers workshop. I have not attended it in quite awhile due to a busy schedule, but I'm pasting his poem here for everyone's reading and/or commenting pleasure. I received this earlier this year during the first wave of the pandemic. In addition to the stuff found here we owe a huge thank you to all the veterans out there past, present and future. Now please read and enjoy this wonderful poem.





Just Give Thanks
by Adrian Drower

On a day like today,
Just take time to think.
Think about what you have, 
Just Give Thanks.

Think about your loving family,
or about your amazing friends.
For everyone in your life,
Just Give Thanks.

We all have a past,
proud of it or not.
Let's look to the future,
Just Give Thanks.

For what we have,
For who we have.
For what makes us who we are,
Just Give Thanks.


November 19, 2011

Hi everyone. The title is pretty accurate. I'm going to attempt one of these again. Apple have updated their health app at least on the iPhone since the last of these that I did. Apparently more stuff has been included in their app and the stuff that was already there has been consolidated, but it remains accessible with their screen reader known as VoiceOver. If all goes well for this post, I will start doing them again regularly time permitting. I say that because my days as of late have been more or less taken up by socialization. But I've also forgotten what I called these posts before, so at some point I will backtrack and remedy that.





Having said all that, here is what I did today. Chicago is starting to see colder temperatures outside, but I have managed to get out a bit despite that and the socialization mentioned earlier in this entry. So today I walked a distance of .55 miles. That includes indoors and outdoors. Cheers for now and talk to ya tomorrow!

Yes I did, and not for T&P! That is, Trump and Pence. I think I have enough toothpaste and toilet paper for now. I went back to my parents' place following a great time at a long-time friend's birthday party, and my mom helped me fill out a mail-in ballot. I wish nothing but the worst for the current administration and their boss. I don't think I'm alone there either. Some friends and I have recently started talking about it. I for one don't wish death even on my worst enemy, but I would seriously like to see the Don and his buddies suffer endlessly for what they've inflicted on this great nation since they invaded 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I honestly cannot help but ask the following question: is there *really an alternate society? One in which there is little if any regard for humankind? I now believe the answer is yes in all capital letters, and we are living in it. Don't get me wrong: there are a lot of very caring people among us, and I should know because of my 2 kidney transplants and other hospital visits. But there are also people in this world who just don't give a damn about others, and I think they're proud of it too. Perhaps giving a damn is a spectrum, like disability and some other things. As a matter of fact, why don't we just separate the hard-core Republicans into their own society? I think that would be a really smart move.

Hi everybody. I'd like to share a funny thing that just happened. Awhile back on here I mentioned an app called Seeing AI, developed by Microsoft. See my previous entry on the subject. Well....I wanted some more practice with the app earlier this morning, so I took out a box of cereal bars which my mother had kindly bought for me when I moved back into my apartment. My neighbor across the hall--who is sighted--happened to come in at the same time. So I started scanning the box with the app, and he was guiding me. After some trial-and-error we finally got the following from the app. "A blueberry walks into a bar." The app then went on but we had a good laugh about it. I shared the picture with another neighbor who is also sighted. Just another day in the tech life of this here journalist/blogger! Hopefully I can have more experiences like this morning. It is truly a good time to be blind!

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone. Hope you're all well. I'm fairing well myself. Not much going on here again. I'm still at my parents' place, but I got the go-ahead to move back into my apartment whenever my parents want to kick me out, lol! They wouldn't do that to me, and I know it. Neither would the rest of the fam. But I'm going to move back eventually, and I think we're going to put plans in motion for that. My state has started to reopen, and I think I should too. Everybody involved says it is safe to do so. I've now got my own mask, and there are plenty more being made available in case I happen to lose this one. But I don't think that'll happen.





Anyways....This week has also been a good one. I unofficially joined a virtual book club along with a sister and some friends. They just started another book, which I am going to try and get but my to-read list is rather large so I kind of want to focus on that as well. I'm currently reading Lawrence O'Donnell's excellent book entitled "Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics". Former Alabama governor George Wallace is mentioned in the book, and I think a certain current US president has very similar views at least about racism. I'm not old enough to remember the days when Mr. Wallace was governor, so I don't know if he and the current Commando-in-Chief had anything else in common. What I will say though is that I'm thoroughly enjoying this book. As stated earlier, I really dislike all the hatred that has gone on in this nation and wish it would just cease. Something absolutely has to be done. The killing of George Floyd as well as all the other killings that have happened are really not cool. Call it what you may, but I for one think it's utterly disgraceful and my heart goes out to all the families that have lost loved ones to these senseless acts of violence.





But unfortunately I cannot do much about it right now. I don't know how I feel about all this protesting in the streets. I think on the one hand it's good to get all those negative emotions out and bring awareness to these ongoing issues, but in the end have these protests really accomplished anything? I think not. There's still tons of hatred, tons of violence. Perhaps by some random luck of the draw, a bit of progress is being made in some far-off corner of the universe that has yet to even be discovered. I think that's it for now. Take care, and may you all have at least one slice of deep-dish pizza at the beginning or end of the day.

That is a test of voice control happy memorial day that bad oh goodbye goodbye