July Memo 2004

Welcome to our July Memo. It sure has been hot lately which makes us very thankful for air-conditioning. Well a few things have happened this month, so grab a cool drink and we’ll get started.

I’ve been working on finishing up my report of my trip to Toronto last month. It is turning into quite the story and may not be finished for awhile. I also found it was slow going and I didn’t know why. Then, I realized I was squinting a lot – I couldn’t see the screen! Maybe it’s because I’m at the computer so much or maybe it’s just my eyes. Either way I needed to get them checked. Having had a check-up just last November so I couldn’t imagine my eyes had changed much since then.

I made a call and soon had an appointment with my eye doctor for the following week. It was rough doing anything on the computer for the next few days. I could see alright for awhile then I’d have to tilt my head back so I could look through my bi-focals and this was not the least bit comfortable.

As it turned out, my eye physician said he needed to change the strength on my computer glasses. Yes I have two pairs of glasses, one for reading and one for the computer. I was hoping I wouldn’t be without my glasses for long, as my reading glasses just aren’t any good for the computer. I was thrilled when I received a call less than 48 hours after dropping my glasses and the new prescription off. So I’m now trying to catch up on all that I didn’t get done for the weeks I couldn’t see.

Around the second week of July Mom and decided we both sit far too much. Since we have the lovely “green” behind our house we decided to walk it at least twice a day. Well, that’s what we started out with. As the daytime heat becomes more intense we now walk once a day after the sun has sunk behind the mountain. It’s amazing how fast it cools off once the sun is gone.

We usually walk around the “green” and than backtrack part of it and go around to the sidewalk and come out in front of our house. It’s almost like having two blocks to walk around, although there is a bit of a hill at the one end of the “green.” Not only is it steep, but it’s on a slant as well which makes it a little more challenging. In the picture to the right we are looking from the furthest point directly across the "green" from our home. That's our house in the middle of the picture.

Sometimes we still use the treadmill we have upstairs, but it seems to be easier to go outside rather than all the way upstairs. I’m sure we’ll use the treadmill more once winter has set in.

Remembering I hadn’t saved the Website for awhile I decided I better get that done. (As this is something I could do without too much trouble when I couldn’t see.) I ran into some trouble when saving the site. As I investigated the problem I found myself reading one of the past memos – it had a few typos in it! Yikes! I better fix that. So after I finally figured out what I was doing wrong, I spent the rest of that day going through all the other memos. You might be wondering how I read them if I couldn’t see, well I stood in front of my monitor and read them through my bi-focals. Every time I found a typo I sat down and fixed it, needless to say I got my exercise for the day! One day soon I’ll go through the author visits as well, there’s always something to do.

Because of the trouble with my eyes I decided to start taking some vitamins for them. Mom has been taking them and they have helped her eyes greatly. Unfortunately four days after starting the vitamins, I knew I could no long take them. Because there are herbs in them, they just didn’t agree with me. It’s funny how some things with herbs I can take, and others I can’t.

I guess that just about does it for this month. I’ll get back to finishing up my travel story and then it’s back to working on the second half of Too Much for One Lifetime. Oh, almost forgot to mention, I have found a very talented Artist who has agreed to do the cover for the second book at a very affordable rate. I can’t say too much about it as we are still in the very early stages of design but I’m just thrilled to be working with this talented fellow.

So until next month, stay cool, read much and be well! J 

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