THINKING ALLOWED

Reason for the flowers...just wanted to begin this post with something beautiful to offset what is to come although it's not really all bad.

I in no way want to upset any of my American friends but Phil and I were both disappointed with the results of the presidential election this week.   We realise that the workers of America were promised plenty of jobs but unfortunately there is no way we can see anyone being able to start up huge industries again in the near future and bringing back work that had gone overseas?  It would be a miracle.  Enough said on that topic.

 It is understand the new President does look on Australia favourably but not other countries in our neighbourhood so it is somewhat worrying just how our friendship with the Asian nations may be compromised.  Time alone will tell.  After all, we are the ones who have to get on with OUR neighbours, or else.

Phil's blood test results arrived and all was well except for his cholesterol!!  We had recently begun to eat butter (the softened type) and also use full cream milk and are wondering if that could be enough to cause the rises shown in the report.   We had been thinking "here we are in our mid-80s so what the heck?.  The reasoning behind was this......how many extra days or perhaps months could we expect to live if we ate an absolutely strict diet?  It is rather a miserable life when you can't indulge in all the lovely things like chocolate, fruit cake, ice cream etc. etc. so we decided to kick over the traces a little.  Some serious discussion needed here between the two of us.   My cholesterol was fine last time I had it checked but maybe now....who knows?  Not easy to keep up these things when you are aged.  Notice I didn't say OLD!!  Letter in the post yesterday....the doctor wants to see Phil about the results which is rather what we expected.

Daughter K told me recently that her father (my first hubby) is not doing too well.  He and I have remained friends over the years and I am saddened that he is having health problems.  He was a man who always prided himself on his vitality so it must be hurtful to him to know his health is failing him.  He was to see a specialist a while back and I'm hoping to hear how that went.  He is very fortunate to have a wife some 10 years younger than he is but she at 75 is not finding it easy as he can sometimes be a little difficult.

Phil went to his poetry group Friday morning and they had chosen lyrics by Bob Dylan as he had been given the Literature Nobel Prize.  A few months back my printer decided to call it a day and we'd not bothered replacing it as I don't print or copy much these days.  This week I began researching Bob Dylan's lyrics and found some great ones but suddenly I couldn't print them out.  Panic stations on Thursday....rang Office Works and told them the type of printer I was replacing and could they recommend one.   The young man said yes he could so I asked him to send it up to the front desk so Phil could pick it up in a short while.   This printer is better than my precious Canon printer but so different it took us some time to work it all out.  In other printers I have had the black ink always is on the left of the coloured ink so we couldn't understand why the alarm light kept flashing telling us the ink hadn't been installed correctly.  Back to the instructions went I only to find that in the new printer the coloured ink goes on the LEFT of the  black ink.  I often wonder why this type of change is made when there seemed no reason to change it.   Lots of lyrics copied out so another challenge accepted and won.  Incidentally, both the ladies had computer or printer trouble so were unable to bring along anything so Phil was pleased we had managed to find half a dozen to share with them.   They agreed the lyrics were somewhat sombre but then most of Bob  Dylan's are.

When Phil arrived home I suggested we pop down to Phoenix (our nearest shopping centre) to have lunch,  We both had grilled fish with *chips and a side salad.   Their fish dishes on Friday only cost $15 so it's good to have an enjoyable meal and save a little money at the same time.  My main reason for going there was to visit Big W as Lee Child's latest book "Night School" is out.  We also bought a couple of DVDs as TV is atrocious these days (at least for us) and we've watched nearly all our DVDs several times.   *Tut tut tut.

I hope everyone out there in blogging land has a great weekend and that next week will treat you well.