Dear Readers,
Isn't that a gorgeous oil painting of Mairo. It was done by a Twitter/Blog friend - @MaxTheQuiltCat's mom, Lou Belcher, Artist and Writer. Lou is going to run a special on her 6" x 6" cat portraits for the month of February for $40 + shipping. She isn't gong to do the one-a-day challenge this time and only wants to do cats presently. If you have a special kitty living with you and would like to have his/her portrait done, see her kitty's blog for details: http://www.maxthequiltcat.com/ She does beautiful work and at $40 + shipping, this is a real bargain that you'll probably never find again. Just look at the attention to detail - even little hair on the edge of his ears!
Taaadaaa! This post is coming to you via Dragon. Woo hoo I think we are finally getting there.
Dragon and I are getting along quite well. Last week I had about five different calls to their help Center to the point where I'm sure each help person was thinking – quote "Oh no, not her again." But I did learn a lot and hopefully I won't make stupid mistakes so I get into trouble anymore. I don't know why but the user profile and I just do not get along – I guess I just don't understand it. But the help Center walked through it with me so now I hope I'm on the right path.
I do find dictation is easier as long as I try to think ahead about what I want to say. I do have to do better job on punctuation however. And I'm still a long ways away from using the commands with the microphone instead of my hands to make corrections. I guess I'll have to copy down all of the commands and keep them in front of me if I want to go that route. In the meantime I'm stable enough with my shaking that I can use a combination of microphone and typing. So for now Dragon is a keeper.
Hope all of you are staying away from all the many viruses that are out there and staying healthy.
Until next time,
Mary
Hi Friends,
Well, here I go again. This will be my 3rd try at the Dragon Program - the program that will type for me if I ever learn to use it well. I flunked the first two versions. Yup - FAILED! In fact about 4 months ago I gave up using it because I was out of help minutes. You are allowed 90 days of help from the date you install the program.
This is Version 12 and supposed to be new and very improved., or so the salesman said when he called. What sold me was that I get 90 days of help again and this one will type in Twitter, TweetDeck, Gmail. without having to use that stupid drop-down box first then telling the program to paste it into whatever program I'm using. Now if only it won't give me problems with the computer.
Because of my past history of not learning it well, I'm locking myself in my office from this coming Monday morning until the following Saturday or Sunday, depending on my progress. Last time around I gave everything else priority and gave learning Dragon left over time. This time it is going to take priority over everything except doctor appointments or other scheduled appointments. That means I can't read blogs, can't get on Twitter, Can't help Mario with his blog or help him read his blogs either. I'm determined this has to be given priority.
I hope you will understand why I am not visiting. I will resume everything on Monday January 28 - back to normal. Hopefully by that time I'll have ironed out all the bugs between Dragon and my computer, and learned to use the program better than the last two times. I simply have to make this work for me as many days typing is extremely difficult and time consuming with making corrections or letting all the errors go through because my hands are tired from being at the keyboard.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you come back again in a week or two when hopefully I'll be dictating the blog!
Mary
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| Alaskan Cruise - 2010 |
Hi Friends,
Recently a good friend and I were talking about our local football team (Packers) and how she was so excited for the playoff game about to happen in our city. She said "aren't you excited?" In reality, I don't usually get very excited about anything because if I do, that special thing ends up not happening or I'm disappointed. So, I guess that ever since I was a kid, I've learned to dampen my enthusiasm about things so I won't be in for a big letdown. That system has worked well for me through the years, but every now and then I slip and get excited about something.
Case in point. Yesterday I saw the Pain Specialist at the clinic. She told me I might be a candidate for the Radio Frequency Ablation (RFA) treatment. If it works, it could get rid of my back pain and sacroiliac pain for up to 6 months. I immediately got excited about it, and when I got home I called one of my friends and told her about it.
This morning my hopes were knocked out from under me when I called the clinic to schedule the start of the process. That's when I found out that it's a very slow moving process. They will first give me another shot in the sacroiliac of a shorter acting medicine, which will tell them if I am even a candidate for the RFA. Then they will write to my insurance to see if they will cover the procedure. Nothing is firm yet - too much has to still be decided. So my being on top of the world yesterday, to be able to finally get rid of the constant pain, came crashing to the floor once again. Yesterday I even told a friend on Twitter that I had good news and would post about it - wrong!
Stay tuned friends. This is obviously going to be another ongoing, long saga - if it ever happens at all. In the meantime I'll just keep taking the pain pills and taking naps with an ice pack and go back to being my calm, non-excitable self. It just doesn't pay to get too excited!
I was really looking forward to becoming radioactive. Daughter was teasing me about glowing in the dark and how I might need blinders to sleep at night. he he! Love her sense of humor - she keeps me laughing anyway.
Until next time - we'll just shuffle along.
Mary
Dear Readers,
Singing "We're having a heat wave..............We're having a heat wave.............!
Our temp will reach all of 32 this week -- maybe higher. In fact, they are talking "melting" this week. January thaw - here we come!
Hope you all are having a good 2013 so far. We were humming along here until the other day when I managed to screw up ALL my word documents. Java came knocking at the computer door first thing in the morning, so I let her in to do updates. I then walked away from the computer for a few minutes to give her privacy!
I then shut down the computer, rebooted, and left the house for awhile.
At that point, someone else must have come in - probably that old lady and man that hide things on us. Only this time they got into the computer and shook it up!
When I returned and sat down at the computer, I noticed some of my word documents were missing (first clue that things are NOT right). When I opened up the document I wanted - this is what it said:
"..come-with-us-as-we-follow-Alice-In-Wonderland-down-the-rabbit-hole (paragraph symbol).
WHAT???
Upon checking all my documents were full of codes and dashes!
HELP - I emailed son-in-law - our computer guru (whom Don and I can't live without). Everything else on my computer was acting normal! i'm sure he was JUST thrilled to hear from me again. (By the way, I talk to him way more than my daughter because of all the computer things I manage to goof up!)
Some days I am more shaky than other days. The morning this happened, I was very shaky. It seems that in all my shaking, I somehow managed to hit a computer shortcut or two which caused this problem. (who - me!!! Can't believe that! he he).
SIL took awhile to think about the problem (I keep him busy solving problems he's never heard of before) but he found a computer shortcut that fixed the entire problem with a couple of key strokes. I tell you - that guy is a life saver to me, especially, and also to Don. I told him he was a "saint." But he said the Pope might want final say! I think the last time I told our daughter I was so glad she married him (even tho I didn't like him at our first meeting) instead of a doctor! It was better to have him in the family rather than a doctor anyway. he he - my way of teasing and making up for the fact I didn't like him at first impression!
So, here's to our Saint Son-in-Law - You have been such a great son-in-law - over and above the issues of fixing the computer. We do love and appreciate you as we would a son! Thank you again for bailing us out of computer problems.
Now if this isn't cause to get back on the right PD medication, than I don't know what is. I've been dragging my feet at starting the drugs again because mentally I'm so much more with it! But the downside is much more shaking going on.
Until next time,
Mary
