Mike was going to be married to Karen so his Father sat him down for
a little chat.
He said, 'Mike, let me tell you something.
On my wedding night in our honeymoon suite, I took off my pants,
handed them to your Mother, and said, 'Here, try these on.''
She did and said, 'These are too big.
I can't wear them.'
I replied, 'Exactly.. I wear the pants in
this family and I always will.' Ever since that night, we have
never had any problems.
'Hmmm,' said Mike. He thought that might be a good thing to try.
Out of curiosity, I've done a quick count of the stuff I have posted on various sites. It's quite an indictment of how much time I must have given to playing with words, characters and situations.
Counting episodes as individual items, which are quite variable in length - bonkers, snafu and Gabysodes are longer than bike episodes - but they take me longer to write.
The grand total is 988 of which 848 appear on this site. Of those 11 are complete works or short stories and one is a poem, another is a drabble.
I obviously spend far too much time on the internet.
Could anyone in their right mind have imagined this lasting so long? Does anyone in their right mind actually read it? We all know the author is barmy - talks to cats and gets sensible replies! Goes into raptures over dormice and bicycles -need I say more?
Apart from uncertain weather, I've had a very nice if exhausting weekend. Met up with my ex twice and we kept things very civil - my daughter was astonished. In fact we had quite a laugh as my ex went up the ladder to repair a broken clothes line while I held it for her - she was in trousers, I was in a skirt and heels and the ladder was rather dirty.
I will be away next Saturday afternoon and evening to stay with my daughter for the night. Then on Sunday morning, I am going looking for dormice on a nature reserve in Darkest Wales. I'm hoping I might get a couple of usable photos. It will also give me a chance to test my new car - well new to me, a Renault Megane 1.9 dci (turbo diesel for the uninitiated). Consequently, I won't promise to post an episode of Bike on Saturday.
I'm possibly tempting providence, but I hope that thanks to a new modem/router and finally getting around to using a new computer I've had in the box for about three years, my internet problems are over (touch wood). It's Vista, so I might yet be swearing - but so far so good, as I learn my way round this different set up.
Apologies to those waiting for their daily top up, but I still have no broadband connection which I find very frustrating. Then to top it all, my little netbook went and lost all of the tonight's episode---god knows how, but I don't. I'm very tired so I'm not doing one tonight, Bonzi also sends his a-purr-logies.
I hope normal service will be resumed tomorrow, although that might be the last one before my holiday.
I can't access the internet via my broadband connection and am waiting for the techies to contact me in the next day or so. My posting of stuff may thus be delayed as I'm using my dongle and netbook computer. This is slow and it loses the signal when it feels like it, losing me whatever I was doing.
I spent ages this morning trying to get Internet Exploder to download the sites I wanted to visit. For some reason it doesn't like Top Shelf. I was cross anyway, because I should have been doing a bike ride today and had to cry off because I wasn't very well. So after taking another long period to download an alternative - this being my netbook with dongle connection, which claims to work at 7.2Mbs, but is more like 5Kbs - I am now writing this with the good offices of Firefox, amazing what you can do with cheese. Thank you Mozzarella for your assistance.
The Manx Missile makes it two in a row at the Tour of Missouri, and his twenty third win of the season - including six stages of the TdF.
The downside is that I won't see him next week when I marshal on the Tour of Britain, because he's in the US. However, Bradley Wiggins is riding so that should be good. Remember he came fourth overall in the TdF and gave Lancie boy a bit of a fright.
I'm away for a week commencing 25th September. I'll be abroad - Menorca again, and I don't think my dongle will work there, so I won't be posting for a week.
I've done a new episode of Whatever Next, my Gaby fanfic, which I have to finish editing. I hope to get that to Maddy over the weekend but with her computer problems, I can't say when it'll be posted.
The media haven't finished milking this story, but this one from today's Guardian is more interesting than most. Perhaps things are beginning to change in Africa. I hope so.
She's called Izzy and is a tortoiseshell and white shorthair. I'll do a photo when I get a chance - Bonzi of course doesn't know yet that there's a another female here to nag him, but he'll find out when he gets home. She's busy (I know busy Izzy but I didn't name her) exploring the place. I hope within a few days they'll have settled down together without blood on the ceiling.
Share the frustrations of carefully, or even occasionally, cleverly wording a comment to a blog or story, pressing submit only to see a fault notice come up and one's efforts disappear into the void?
I suspect the major culprit is MS and their idiot offspring Internet Exploder, although it does tend to happen more on this site than others I visit.
One is from the financial pages which I don't normally read about some gender bending soap opera, which someone might know more about. I'm tempted to write to them advertising my own, here.
The Daily Express triumphs again! This was the headline article on Saturday 15th August 2009. It's about the formation of a support group by transgendered police officers/civilian workers, which might get some funding to set it up. This is cutting edge investigative journalism at its...never mind, bloody tabloid comic.
I wandered lonely in a crowd
That moved towards the checkout tills
When all at once, I had a thought
I hadn’t taken all my pills–
Pills for this and pills for these
I've received several requests/hints to do a follow up to How different from us. Is there much enthusiasm for it? I am emphasising now that would be it - I'm not creating any more serials until some of the older ones are finished. However, if there's enough interest I might do a follow up as the relationship between Mollie and her dad might be worth exploring. What do you think, readers?
I posted this story 'How different from us' last year, around April time. It appears to have disappeared, so I shall repost it tomorrow if I have time. Those who haven't read it will have a chance to do so, and those who have previously read it, will have an opportunity to relive the experience. How's that for value? I think it's quite good, but then I would, wouldn't I?
Psychoanalyst Adam Phillips examines the culture of excess which seems such a part of modern life. He looks at this in regard to all areas of life, including consumerism, sex, and religion. It's well worth the read and it may give insight into how you feel about yourself.
The essay is in today's Guardian Review. Link below.
Who in their right mind would have thought that I'd still be scribbling away at Cathy's trials and tribulations, two years after writing what was going to be a blog about getting soaked to the skin while out riding on Dolly (the picture of the bike at the end of most episodes) in a thunderstorm. Instead, I turned it into what was primarily a comedy romance, which evolved into an adventure story and finally into a soap - exploring some of the issues of being transgendered/ transsexual, and trying to live a normal life as a female.
Bastille Day, 14th July, is the anniversary of the French mob storming the hated fortress/prison in the centre of Paris in 1789, and is commonly regarded as one of the beginnings of the French Revolution.
A few years later, 1986 to be precise, I rather sedately broke out of my own prison, coincidently on the same day. It came about by my going to see my general manager, who had got wind of my intentions via the grapevine--someone who'd been told in confidence, blabbed.
I'm staying with my daughter for the next couple of nights, so real life might well get in the way of my art(if you believe that you'll believe anything!). Viz, I might just be too busy to have time to write.
The connection time to the internet has been awful tonight, taking twenty minutes to open BC to post. I haven't yet managed to get to my emails, lost the will to live before they opened. Must be the location, it isn't like this at home.
I'll post again when I can, possibly sunday or monday.
Checks can be made out & sent to:
Joyce Melton
1001 Third St.
Space 80
Calimesa, CA 92320
USA
Note: $6000 is the operating, maintenance and upgrade budget. Amounts received in excess of the $6000 will be applied to long term debt accrued over the last 19 years.
