It's a beautiful day

It is 73°F, the high for today, and with the house's windows open, I'm actually a bit cold. We haven't had air conditioning (except in my room) all summer, and it's been hot most of the time and unbearable at times, even with fans. Welcome to the American South.

But today is pleasant. It's headed towards autumn, it's sunny. The sun is dappling the trees. There's a gentle breeze. It's nice. Here is the view from my window...

Listening to:

Bastille, Bad Blood

Well, it's been a fairly pleasant and productive day, I'd say. This morning it was nice weather, not too hot, and although I can't say for sure this afternoon, as I was inside, at least it was sunny, after so much rain of late.

I'd thought about watching something on Netflix now that I've finished my other activities, but I decided instead to listen to some music, my Bastille CD. I have 1,628 songs on my phone, either ripped from CDs I own, bought as .mp3s, gotten from the Lexington Public Library through the Freegal Music service (which allows you to download three songs a week to keep from their collection), or gotten as .mp3s in addition to CDs via AutoRip through Amazon. The nice thing about getting music through Amazon is that although you can play them through the Amazon music application, or store them on their cloud service, you can also just move them to a music folder, and play however you like. I'm not sure you can do that with iTunes music. I always gathered you had to do everything through iTunes. But I might be wrong; I don't know much about Apple, to be honest. People constantly bring me iPhones to figure out, and usually I can figure out the problem (usually with their settings), but I'm much better with Amazon. One thing I learned early about the Freegal Music, though, is to move it to my SD card shortly after downloading it, because if there's a factory reset or something (I had to do that at some point due to a problem with getting into my phone when I was using the fingerprint scanner), you lose everything on your phone. I keep all my music and photos on the SD card for this reason. Which reminds me...

Dear Samsung,

I read with interest the other day that your sales of the Galaxy S6 were disappointing. Perhaps it is because you have misunderstood those who buy your phones. You sacrificed usability majorly for form, trying to make things more like an iPhone. I bought your phones because, among other things, they had removable batteries, expandable memory, etc. As much as I complained about the little flap door on my charging port on the S5, I appreciated that I could drop it in snow or even water and it would live. But you took all that away to make your new phones 'prettier'. I like the form of the S6 Edge but will not buy one, even though my plan allows me to upgrade, because 1) You took aways some of the most useful things about the phone, and 2) I would have to buy a more expensive, larger storage model to duplicate my otherwise cheap SD card, which I think cost me less than $20 and gives me 32GB of space, of which I've filled about 11GB already, in addition to about three quarters of the phone storage in applications and such. And if I did have to factory reset, I'd lose everything and have to back it up on the computer or such instead, and reload everything, which is a pain. I don't care if my phone is made out of gorilla glass or plastic. If I wanted something more like the iPhone, I'd get one. I don't like iPhones; I prefer the customisablity of Android and all the different things I can do with an Android phone that iPhone users are just now getting with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. And what I care about is that it is durable, usable, and does what I need it to do. So I'll pass on the S6, or even the S6 Edge, and hopefully by the S7 you'll see the error of your ways, or I may just keep my S5 for awhile and shop around for a new phone manufacturer. So there you go, in case you haven't figured it out yet. And I'm sure there are a lot of people who feel the same way, hence the lagging sales. Consider your next design carefully (but keeping the curved edges may be a plus. :) )

What can I say, I am a Windows, Android, Google, and Amazon kind of girl. :) I like to tinker with things, not have them delivered to me in a a nice little package I can't do anything with except consume through some sort of monolithic operation. Just saying....

Okay, I've gathered up my laundry for tomorrow, gotten into comfy clothes, wrapped up the bread, and I'm ready to turn in. Good night; I hope your weekend is going well. Good night.

It looks deceptively nice outside

It's sunny, but it's only in the 30s, although it's supposed to be warmer tomorrow, thankfully, as I am going out to a doctor's appointment. I finally did have to turn on the heat, which isn't bad, given it's December 12th. Apparently my apartments are pretty well insulated. I do have it on 68 degrees, as I don't want to get too hot. :)

Today is the two-month anniversary of the accident and me being homebound. I'm hoping tomorrow to get news of when that will end and I can return to work.

I've started coughing a little, and my asthma is kicking up. I think it's from those now dry towels from where the bathroom flooded. I need to get them into a plastic bag and then do them in some laundry as soon as I am able. I don't really feel right about asking the people who have been doing my laundry to do those--they're nasty.

Today has been pretty decent. I've been on the phone with several people. Last night I discovered that the maximum talk time on my phone is about four hours, as it kicked off at 21% battery level after about that amount of time. Thank goodness I had charged my phone during the day as well as at night. It really has been a lifeline. I do have a home phone, but I've kept my cell phone with me virtually every moment in case I fall or have an emergency, so more people now have my cell phone number than ever before.

I didn't sleep well last night so I took a nap around midday and that really helped. I'm not feeling like eating much today. I bought a bathroom scale the other day when we were at the grocery and managed to weigh myself with some difficulty. It's designed so that you tap the lower right corner and then stand (with both feet) on the scale, otherwise it gives you an error. So I had to tap it with my left foot, hoist myself onto the scale using the walker, balance on my one foot and barely rest the other foot on the scale, while making sure my weight wasn't being carried by the walker and that I was just touching that to steady myself. The last time I was weighed at the doctor was a week after the accident and I'd lost six pounds. This was a little higher than that, but I have a boot on my foot that weighs several pounds; I'm not sure how much. I'm not sure I want to try to weigh without the boot on, as I don't want to hurt myself. And this scale won't let you weigh the boot itself. But I figure I've lost somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10-12 lbs. I probably lost more originally, but I've gained some back. I seem to have lost most of it in my stomach, which is good. My blood sugar has been much better than normal for several weeks; I'm interested in seeing what my hA1c will be for January.

Okay, I think I'm going to get away from the computer for awhile and take a break. Have a good day.