More 'Bliss':

"Live with integrity, respect the rights of other people, and follow your own bliss."--Nathaniel Branden

"If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn't have opened for anyone else."--Joseph Campbell

"Nothing is more important than reconnecting with your bliss. Nothing is as rich. Nothing is more real."--Deepak Chopra

"That perfect bliss and sole felicity, the sweet fruition of an earthly crown."--Christopher Marlowe

"Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven."--William Wordsworth

Wednesday through the following Tuesday hot, 90°s to 100°s Fahrenheit,with a light hot breeze. A cooling trend is forecast.

Gail found a dead bat inside the house. Poor thing probably flew in an open window and the cats may have gotten hold of it. This opened up quite a can of worms because of rabies concerns. Chrissy dropped the bat off at the animal control office in Placerville so it could be analyzed. After Gail and I wrangled all the cats and dogs, Gail took a number of trips to the vet to update cat and dog shots... quite pricey !!! We're now praying that the bat proves rabies negative.

West Nile virus has been confirmed in Sacramento in dead birds... horses and people surely to follow. There's no way the various water sources can be made safe against breeding mosquitoes, that I see, in the foothills of home... I'd like to be proved wrong.

I made up a number of yellow-jacket wasp, or meat bee, traps. I used a similar method to that in the link. The following is the method that I learned in an newspaper article a number of years ago that I've had excellent results with in the past. I use gallon-sized plastic milk cartons and merely poked holes in them, large enough for the critters to enter. I then rigged a wire, I used coat hanger wire, through the milk carton cap to hold the bait, I used chicken and bits of 'hot dog', suspended within the carton to attract the little beasts. A bit of water with a drop or two of dish washing detergent in the bottom of the carton, about one-quarter full below the entry holes made, will do the dirty work. Made seven traps and have trapped maybe 30 of them so far.

Grandson, David, went with great-grandma and great-grandpa, my in-laws, to the north coast of California to camp out for two/three days. My sister-in-law Glenda and her husband, and Gail's nephew Paul and family also went. David, on returning Sunday, presented me with some shells and shore rocks... cool!

Saturday... received my care package from Mom. Included a nice dress shirt and beautiful tie ( Elder approved )... and a telephone??? Nice telephone... called Mom re: why a telephone??? She purchased it at a garage sale and thought of me. While Mom, non-LDS, was shopping for the tie she noticed two LDS Elders also shopping and asked them if they thought the tie would be appropriate for Church. Had a nice long chat with Mom over the phone... though I was pre-empted by "Masterpiece Theater", or such, on PBS for a while.

Watch crystal broke on my K-Mart $4.95 USD watch. Gail bought me a new watch that my grand-daughter, Ashley, picked out. It's perfect!!! Exactly what I might have chosen... I'm very fussy about the watch I wear... and under $15 USD!... cool².

More work:

"Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you."--Henri-Frédéric Amiel
"Laziness may appear attractive but work gives satisfaction."--Anne Frank
"Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results."--James Allen
"Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself."--Samuel Butler
"There is a kind of victory in good work, no matter how humble."--Jack Kemp

BLOGGER has changed its HTML format slightly... again, along with a few tweaks to the BLOGGER interface.  The main problem I had was the use of the "span" coding instead of "font" coding for formatting my text.  That wasn't too difficult but the new interface is throwing random garbage code in and garbling all the links that have to be debugged as well.  And woe be to the person who edits a past post, like correcting a typo... that code gets all garbled too.  I edited my template I keep on my desktop for the "span" coding... going to have to see what's up with this new coding and cross my fingers that I'm not overlooking something.  Perhaps a trend toward CSS over HTML in the posts ?

Went with Gail to her physical therapy session for her hip/leg pain on Thursday.  As she was sleeping, with the muscle stim machine pumping electrons through her muscles, the therapist explained, with the help of a partial skeletal model, where he believed the pain was originating... possibly her hip, slightly raised, and her lower vertebral column, where she has a defect.  These problems, and possibly others, cause her muscles to spasm terribly.   Luckily her injury didn't, apparently, show any harm in the way of anything broken when the x-rays were analyzed.

Friday the 16th... before dawn... "Seattle Sunshine"... a short, light sprinkle of rain that brought me off the computer and outdoors to close Gail's windows in her van.  Just enough to muddy any dusty windows.  What a pleasant surprise!!!  I neglected to go to bed Thursday evening... and Friday morning... until Friday evening at 11:00 p.m. ... my mind too active and my body too awake.

Gmail update:  "Safari browser support... Everybody's gone surfin'… now Mac OS X's Safari is surfing Gmail as well (versions 1.2.1 and newer)."... cool!  Now maybe a little Opera browser support in the future?  The beta of Gmail is being updated at a nice pace... glad I signed on.

My wife, Gail, went with her parents to Nevada, Saturday, to meet up with her sister Glenda and her husband Art.  They might have stayed in Carson City if it wasn't for the terrible fire still going on.  Reno and Tahoe, I believe to be their stops.  All by my lonesome in the house... daughter Chrissy and family with company over at their place for pool fun.  Not too noisy until they fire up David's motorcycle.  Soft tunes on TV, DSS channel 838, watering the plants... 'putin... reading... studying... poetry editing.  Gail set out a steak for me to cook for dinner.  I added some garlic bread and spinach and corn to accompany the repast.  Sunday evening dinner al fresco with the entire family.

Two e-mails from sister Debi... sick from flu, and recovering from a surgery... and then some pictures of Mandy's wedding last March.

Sunday... I have Gail's van to go to Church this day... Gail's still away.  A chance to exercise some self-reliance.  Sunday school topic:  work... and God's expectations there-in.

I'd like to get back to work... the obstacles not entirely over-encumbering, though to complicate things further, my care giver and his office have retired.  My health is to be re-evaluated soon.  Physically, being obese, I have problems breathing and tire easily.  I need an apnia mask at night to help me breathe when I sleep so I have some energy during the day... we've been getting aid in that respect for as long as I'm still on disability.  Gail's concern is the burden of me finding and keeping a job once I'm released for work... the job climate being what it is... with financial pressures already strained to the breaking point.  Transportation is ever an issue and problems with vehicles always rear their ugly head... our vehicles being at times un-reliable at best.    Psychologically, I believe I'm ready to get back into society... depression not withstanding... but that determination is not made by me.  My problems with panic attacks when I drive other than on the back roads is a concern also... my problems driving on the back roads being not as acute... unless there's a high or long bridge.  Becoming involved with the Church has helped immensely with my social anxiety.  To become productive and able to meet my financial responsibilities head-on, be what may, is most desirous... albeit daunting.

Short hard drive scan, cleaned my memory cache/cookies, and defragged the hard drive (this I let run while I was at Church) on my Win98SE 'puter.  Just needs to be done 'bout monthly for my system... done.  Updated anti-virus and anti-spyware aps.  Still having a problem with 'Spybot Search & Destroy' not able to update online... the problem seems to be at their end.  Already have updated my Microsoft Critical Updates.  Let's rock!  Oops... 'spoke' too soon.  With the new virus updates downloaded my AVG anti-virus program picked up a trojan horse (Trojan horse.Dropper.Small.5.AQ) that already has infected four files in my 'Zip Genius 5' program... or perhaps it came with the program and is only now being picked up with the update?  Dunno.  AVG (freeware anti-virus) has quarantined the offending files for me, automatically.  Just in case I ran a free online trojan scan... that is available for Windows users with Internet Explorer 5.0 and up... with no problems found... cool!  While I was at it I copied some files to my USB thumb drive as a backup... including exporting my Favorites list to the thumb drive.

Monday:  The weather is heating up.  We're in for a bout of near 100° Fahrenheit, and maybe beyond, weather for the week.  Luckily we have a slight breeze every now and then to take the edge off.  California experienced its largest demand for power, ever, this day... and it's only in the 90°'s at this point.

I started my/Dad's car to get its vital juices pumping.  Unfortunately I forgot Dad's jury-rigged electrical connection to the fan via an alligator clamp directly to the battery.  Started getting some excess heat on the engine block creating some type of burning.  Soooooo... I shut the car down and then reconnected the alligator clamp for a short time to run the fan and then let it sit.  I've killed off all the black widow spiders and wasps that had moved into and around the car in the near five year hiatus of time.

Gail's van has problems.  The fuel pump cannot handle the heat and will go into vapor lock at the most inopportune times.  This happened last year as well... but this year her "check engine" light has made an entrance into being.

Gail's sister, Glenda, and her husband, Art, have been visiting her mother, and Gail and I, and her son Paul's family here in Garden Valley.  They're soon to go up the north coast of California for some camping. 

Talked to my Mom on Monday evening... she and Bob are doing well. She's sending down a care package that includes a tie for a "just cuz" present. We updated each other on family goin's ons. No trips down here, from Alaska, in the near future for her. After the call I checked the news and found that the fire in the city of Fairbanks, north of my Mom, is still out of control with an area of 500,000 acres charred.

Wednesday meeting at the Church... subject:  Adversity... or as I explained the term to one that had asked me what adversity meant:  when things just go wrong in life.  I haven't dealt with adversity very well, to say the least, in the past... Heaven knows.  The "True to the Faith" book gives great guidance in dealing with adversity with faith... the quote above a memorable reference.

On the way home... Gail's nephew Greg's truck broken down and abandoned.  Not too far from there 10 or 12 or so turkey vultures lording over a deer carcass... perhaps Greg's truck next?

Moved Gail's computer to another known good phone connection in another room.  More diagnosing and tweaking of Gail's XP computer... ridding still more spyware with another application that I use but had yet to install on Gail's computer called "Spybot Search and Destroy".  Fewer problems... still digging... the modem may be suspect.  I'm trying to find an external modem to test.  Gail has an internal v.92 WinModem, if I recall correctly, that appears to be 'dropping off' on occasion.

Trying to clean my "office"... it's even too cluttered for me !  Found a few lost 'treasures'... still looking for others.

Thursday:  Bowled, for the first time in 7 years, three games of a rather dubious nature.  My memory muscles have all forgotten... and I can no longer bend my knees to slide.  Being an impromptu  stop I did not have my own bowling ball and shoes... which is not much of an excuse... I just don't 'have it' any longer.  My last league bowling average before my 'demise' was in the 210 per game range... my historical sanctioned high series for three games 794.  At the rate I was bowling on this outing I may have achieved a 794 total in 5.37 games.  Gail was going to try... but when she stepped on the approach she got all dizzy-like and quit before starting.  I too had that dizzying feeling when I first started... not quite like a panic attack dizziness... but of an overwhelming sense of space and light type of dizziness.  And awkward... I now know how my learn-to-bowl students felt many years past... perhaps even re-defining the term.  Too much weight gained and too many years passed I guess.
Even the business of bowling has changed.  At this venue, Crestview Lanes, one asks for rental shoes, at $3.00 USD a pair, receives them, and is then asked to put the before mentioned $3.00 USD into a machine which then spits out a red ticket... which you hand to the person at the desk who gave you the shoes???  Not exactly like I remembered in my 10 years plus in the business and a near lifetime in the recreation pursuit.  AND you have to pre-pay for the games you wish to bowl at about $2.50 USD per game.  AND the automatic scorers, in this case an AMF version, are STILL very non-intuitive and buggy.  It's no wonder that bowling has lagged in popularity over the years.  I can't wait to go try my luck, elsewhere, again !!!

Fire in Cameron Park noticed on the way home slowing traffic on the freeway... apparently close to the LDS stake center and not too far from a municipal airport.  I pray all's well.

Played pitch, hit, and grunt with grandson, David, with a hard ball.  The softball has disappeared, so Gail bought a hard ball?  Needless to say my reflexes need to be a bit sharper... he almost tore my head off with a blast from his aluminum bat... his transition to hitting the smaller, harder ball most excellent.

More on sacrifice:

"As soon as sacrifice becomes a duty and necessity to mankind... I see no limit to the horizon which opens before him."--Ernest Renan

"The artists must be sacrificed to their art."--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"In everyday things the law of sacrifice takes the form of positive duty."--James A. Froude

"Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness."--Napoleon Hill

"True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes."--St. Theresa of Lisieux

"Let others laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You have time and eternity to rejoice in."--Theodore Parker

"There is no moral authority like that of sacrifice."--Nadine Gordimer

"Nothing so much enhances a good as to make sacrifices for it."--George Santayana

"The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality."--T.S. Eliot

Sorry for the length of this posting... I must post more often...

Now having "Networking" problems on Gail's WinXP computer. The "Opera" browser had seemed to help a bit as far as the "Browser" errors are concerned but now the "Networking" errors occur. Gail does like the "Opera" style and functionality better than IE6. Same problem with different error messages ? Did a "System Restore" to try to help... but some problems persist... and now I can't re-download "Opera". Still digging for answers. Wednesday p.m. thru most of Thursday a.m.: Un-did the system restores and "Opera" has re-appeared. Created a new network launch for browsing and continued to tweak Windows. The problem seems to be a heating problem with the box itself... it has been very hot weather wise for computers. The main fan is functional, but I'm leary of cracking the seal of the box in case Gail wishes to try the warranty route to check the CPU fan and air flow through the cables, et al. I've no such compunction with my old box.

My/Dad's car... Gail's nephew, Greg, connected the coil wire I found inside the car and put some gas in and it started right away... and nothing was done for repairs... it ran until the gas ran out. Dunno... it's been sitting almost 5 years since it died on me. All I remember trying way back when was installing two new gas filters, changing wires and plugs and I couldn't get it to go. Maybe it just needed a long nap... that's pretty much how I've felt these last near five years. With depression hitting I just hadn't cared pretty much about anything. I pray I'm over that hurdle... but I know it's just not that simple. Time to start saving for tires, et al.

Temperature near 100° Fahrenheit on Monday afternoon (on the 5th). Gail and I toughed it out until late afternoon and then retired to the pool to cool off. The water was too cold for Gail, she got out rather quickly, but just at the limit of my tolerance... sweet ! Dinner al fresco with the in-laws, who also own the pool, a large doughboy that's about as deep as 6 feet, just about 17 centimeters less than 2 meters. More of the same, temperature wise, on Tuesday. I went in the pool at about 4:00 p.m. for a l-o-n-g soak. The grandkids, David, 7, and Ashley, 3, joined me after about two hours... they, perhaps, tired of the heat and cartoons in our non-air conditioned home... well, maybe not the cartoons. We then left the pool about an hour later much refreshed and me a bit prunish. Thursday thru today... the heat down to a modest 85° to 90° Fahrenheit with light breezes on occasion.

Chrissy and the gang arrived home just as we finished dinner from San Francisco on Monday last (the 5th). Newish motor cycle, for Richard, in the back of Richard's cousin's truck. Tales of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Wax Museum by grandson David. No Alcatraz this trip... evidently now $40.00 USD per person for the package deal they peddle... the Wax Museum was something like $14.00 USD. It's hard to believe it's been nearly twenty years since I've been to The City by the Bay... and I lived relatively close, in Campbell, as late as 1991... it just doesn't seem possible.

I'm a space buff, amongst other things. The Cassini project studying Saturn and its system has me as jazzed as when the comet, Schumacher/Levy, plunged into Jupiter a few years back. Here's a link to a site keeping tabs on the Cassini project from Space.com (I get a daily newsletter). Makes me glad I get the NASA, National Space Administration, channel on DSS satellite TV now too !

Power Macintosh / Power PC 850/180 (box only) w/ O.S. 7.5, 64MB ram, 2 Gigs hard drive only $ 15.99 USD at a thrift store !!! Had I not a need for cash to fix up Dad's car I would have snatched it up !

Wednesday... we went to Auburn for some x-rays for Gail... the technician took at least 3 x-rays of her back. An interest was definitely piqued by the tech, though Gail was not apprised of any info at this time. Gail said it may have to do with an extra vertebrae she was once told she has... news to me. Gail can barely walk at times with her pain.

Wednesday night "Sunday school"... reading from "True to the Faith... a Gospel Reference". I was asked to say a closing prayer in advance by one of the teachers, which I managed with some trepidation and halting. I have an immense aversion to speaking in a group, let alone in front of a group. In school I would rather avoid standing in front of class by being absent for a verbal report and take a lower grade than deal with the angst of being bared. There are those that believe getting out of one's "comfort zone" is good... but I still have a long way to go in this discipline... my failing. The evening's readings and discussions have aroused intense feelings within that need much more reflection... as I continue on His path toward salvation.

Nearing home on Thursday we were passed by fire units tearing off down the American River Canyon (south fork). Sure enough, a fire perhaps five miles from home just off Highway 193 near the turnoff to Mosquito... evidently an exercise by the local fire departments. A helicopter appeared to actually land in a turnoff on the Highway. I'm thankful that the fire was 'knocked down' in quick fashion... the fuels for a disastrous fire are quite available up in our area and the dangers of out-of-hand exercises do exist.

The Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) has been formed as of June 2004... cool !!! Another link added to my Accessibility page, see side bar. I've had an interest in designing for accessibility for years, unfortunately I have minimal skills at this point, but now have a place to perhaps answer some of my questions and lead me on to the straight and narrow in that respect.

Friday... sister Deb finally got hold of me after some phone-tag. Looking forward to the pictures of Mandy's wedding from last March. I have yet to edit the pictures I took with my modest digital camera... most of the pictures were under- or over-exposed, due to the lighting conditions and my lack of a flash unit for the camera.

Saturday noon... My mother-in-law, Candy, was having problems breathing... EMT's, Emergency Med Team, drove her to Auburn for monitoring. I had no clue what was going on 'til my sister-in-law called, long distance, to see what was going on. The EMT's left shortly after with Candy. She returned home in the early evening after treatment.

Gail and the family... and many of the Breland family, Richard's brother(s), etc., went to another picnic at Bear Creek on Sunday the 11th. I elected for some peace and quiet at home after returning home from Church.

Wonderful day at Church on Sunday... Ward conference... A talk on "Centering your life in Jesus Christ" and a lesson on 'sacrifice' the most memorable.

Walks to and from the point of my ride to Church accomplished... no foot pain at all !!!

Interesting... I had noticed my BLOG appearing differently on my sisters', Peg's and Debi's, MAC and PC in times past... but now that I see the difference using Opera versus IE6 on Gail's and my computer I am aware of the greater truth... HTML tables, especially my tables of 'tiled .gifs', do not render as I format them in other browsers... in fact they're apparently non-existent except when using IE6 with my current settings. Guess I'll have to learn the CSS method and see if that will solve the disparity, not that the white background looks bad in my eyes. My main hope had been to set off the poetry from the main. What one should  see is (2) tiled .gifs as a background that lies in a layer under the verbiage: a lighter background 'tiled .gif' for the main body, and a darker 'tiled .gif' background for the heading quotation and poetry. What really fries my mind is that sometimes the darker background 'tiled .gif' seems to render on my "More Poems" collections pages once in a while in "Opera" ? Other differences are apparent, like the fact that hovering the cursor over my animated .gif of Figaro and I gives a small caption identifying the picture in IE6, but does not in "Opera"... the ALT attribute ignored. These differences are near moot aesthetically... a few template HTML edits made.

Interesting Too... my gmail account with Google is not supported in "Opera" ??? Weird... looks like no matter what one does for an alternative browser, IE will still be needed for this application or that... as well as the plethora of patches and fixes for Microsoft Windows itself.

Updated my Accessibility links web page... it's at the top of the list on the right in my links (recht!!!) section.

My entries... " Poetry in Motion " daily contest:

~~~~~~~~~~ Rose Moon Rose Moon in daylight Pearl set in an azure sky Canyon's rough crags fête :Bobby Nichols 7-7-2004 The Desolate Tree Lone stark witness stands Against a desert of snow As ranch hands drive herd :Bobby Nichols 7-6-2004 ~~~~~~~~~~