This is just a minor annoyance, and not one I am complaining about, just curious. Since yesterday, the blogstream serving system seems to not remember that I exist. I must log in everytime I come to blogstream. I've checked the "remember me" box every time and it appears to have Alzsheimers disease. It forgets me as soon as I go offline.

I contacted the "powers" that be and received an email in return which suggested a problem with my browser cache or serving system. Fine, except that it only affects Blogstream, and it occurs on both browsers. Which I let them know as soon as I received the return email. Is it possible that my serving system cookies for Blogstream sustained some sort of damage?

Hey, maybe the sock gremlin got hungry and licked the creamy filling out of the oreo's belonging to blogstream? I've been hanging clothes outside this summer instead of using the dryer, so all socks are present and accounted for. Poor fella, he must be really hungry. I guess I better start using the dryer so he gets fed well before I have to box up my computer for the move. I'd at least like to be able to log in to Blogstream once I'm up and running and at this rate, who knows? If it can't remember me when I go offline for an hour, what's it gonna do when I'm off for two or three weeks?

OK, now this is weird. Even stranger than I thought it was. Blogstream "remember me" feature suddenly is remembering me, and I just received an email that states that I may need to upgrade my browsers to be compatable with Blogstream. I didn't do anything, they didn't do anything and my problem is over for the moment. All I did was wash a load of whites and put them in the dryer. The dryer isn't done yet, bet I'm going to be missing some socks.

Since I have been surfing the internet more these days I am noticing a disturbing number of aggressive people leaving comments on blogs. These are blogs not in Blogstream by the way. The largest number of hostile comments I read are on AOL news blogs, and not aimed at the blogger. It seems that no matter what topic the blogger is writing about, the comments are out of line both with the post and with each others comments. They're insulting, accusatory, use foul language and generally make for very unpleasant reading. Why do people feel the need to attack others for their opinions? There just seems to be so much anger in people these days.

Last year one of our customers was a victim of aggressive behavior. We always found him to be a pleasant person. He used to complain about the speed and noise that vehicles make when they drove by his house. If you didn't know why he was complaining, he did appear to be a bit over the top about it. His house sat on the corner of a fairly well travelled road. His garage workshop was situated so that it was unfortunately close to a dirt road on which 3 or 4 people had brand new expensive houses. His garage was his woodworking shop. He carved horses and built different styles of carriages for these horses to draw. His work was remarkably life like, his attention to detail made his finished product a work of excellence.

He worked on commission, and buyers paid as much as a thousand dollars for a replica of the Budweiser beer truck drawn by the famous Clydesdales, or a morticians wagon of old complete in all it's detail. He needed to leave the windows of his workshop open on hot days and the dust these speeding vehicles kicked up would spread into the workshop and settle on his pieces. That wasn't a problem some of the time, but if a piece were wet with paint or varnish, it proved to be disastrous. He owned the road, and at one time owned the land that these neighbors of his built their lovely homes on. He didn't sell these plots of land to these people, he gave them the land. These were friends of his...he thought.

He wasn't asking anything of them except that they not drive 30 to 40 miles an hour on the dirt road going back to their homes. For the most part they ignored him. My husband serviced some of the homes back in there and he managed to take our big truck back there without provoking any unpleasantness from Tony. Of course, Hubby was driving carefully on a dirt road, which was all that Tony asked of these people who could afford to build their $200,000 homes on land they had the good fortune to receive as gifts. How hard was complying with his requests? It certainly wouldn't have cost them anything, plus they each received 5 acres of prime building land for nothing. Without the cash outlay for the land they were all able to afford to build more expensive homes.

Some of what Tony did was not right. He started arguments with one particular neighbor because he was the one that ignored his requests the most. Somehow it became a matter, in the one neighbors mind, of Tony interfering with his right to use his property as he saw fit. Tony tried speed bumps and was taken to court over the matter. He might have won if his "bumps" hadn't included spikes designed to damage the tires of the people who drove over them. Tony owned the road, but the former friends owned right of ways to their properties. He was not going to be allowed to interfere with their access, and he had to pay for damage to someones vehicle. If they had just respected his wishes, none of it would have happened.

It finally ended during the summer of 2006. No one knows the full details of the altercation, but it ended with the death of Tony at the hands of the only neighbor who wouldn't even try to be careful. He went home for lunch that day, and apparently was confronted by Tony on the road. Following the argument he went home, picked up an iron pipe and walked back to Tony's to finish the argument. He claimed to have struck Tony in self defense. However, Tony's body told a tale of numerous contacts with the iron pipe. There was a delay in calling emergency services and some evidence that the crime was going to be hidden. Unfortunately for the neighbor, another resident on that road came home and saw Tony lying on the ground. Mr. "I'll Fix You" is now in jail for manslaughter. His friends and family were totally unprepared for the verdict. They just don't accept that he was wrong. They feel that he should have been found not guilty, after all, Tony was an aggressive man, he wasn't a very nice person. Did that mean that someone had the right to kill him?

While I still read the AOL news blogs I have stopped reading the comments. Real life is stressful enough without exposing myself to more aggression while online. I also have to ask myself if some of this real life aggression isn't contributed to by some of the behaviors we see online. According to the information given in court regarding the good reputation of the neighbor, he spent many hours each day online. In the virtual world we can be aggressive and the result is hurt feelings and anger on the part of the person we decide to argue with. No one ever dies from that type of argument...or do they?

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of an event that no American ever really expected. During the 50's and 60's school children spent some of their time under their desks in a crouched position with their head buried in their knees. It was the Cold War Era and these air raid drills were considered necessary. I don't know why, if an enemy drops a bomb the effects are going to find you and a desk is no protection. Some of the newer schools during that era ushered the children into the basement where we lined up agains the walls. We stood with our forearms propped against the wall and our forehead resting against our arms until the "all clear" sounded. Possibly safer, but not much.

We weren't doing anything more than practicing. When nothing happened time after time we became complacent. I don't even think kids still experience air raid drills in school. This is fine because as we learned on September 11, 2001 nothing will keep you safe. Which we should have learned on April 19, 1995 when Timothy McVey bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, or when the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. Time after time we experience these tragedies and after the anguish and emotionalism of the situation subsides we return to normal. We go on with our lives as if nothing ever happened. It's just history. They teach it in school. I personally will never understand how, with one attempt at bombing the World Trade Center, our intelligence community could be so asleep at the switch.



On tonights local news a woman in Syracuse was interviewed, her daughter died that day. She was in the second tower at work and like everyone else was prevented from evacuating the tower immediately upon the attack of the first tower. There was a 20 minute delay in this persons being allowed to leave and she made it out alive only to be crushed by the collapsing of the first tower. Her mother says she was 10 feet from safety when she died. Since then, this woman has been asking some pretty pointed questions. I believe these questions need answers, and I also believe no one ever will give her answers. The most important question in her mind is why, since those towers had all ready been the object of an attack, wasn't there an evacuation order given right away? Why was there so little adequate communication between rescue workers? Why wasn't there better security? Why did people have to die?

We lived with the threat of nuclear bombing from Russia when I was a child. Now we live with the threat of Al Qaida. Bush is conducting his "War on Terror" in Iraq where until we went there no terrorist cells existed. We're wasting billions of dollars interfering in what is essentially a Civil War caused by the fact that we deposed Saddam Hussein. We've learned that Homeland Security is a farce once we witnessed their effectiveness in Louisiana and Mississipi following hurricane Katrina. Bushwhackers Inc. have been tapping our phones and viewing our phone records looking for evidence of terrorist cells in America. Laws are being passed to tighten security in our cities and towns, yet money, which is necessary to implement them is being spent in Iraq.



I support our troops, and if they have to be there (and they don't) I want them to have every advantage. I want them to be as safe as they can possibly be while doing the job they are being asked to do, but I want something else. I want something just as important. I want to know that should a disaster of the magnitude of 9/11 or Katrina strike these United States ever again, that the nations firefighters have everything they need to keep all of us safe. The true heroes of 9/11 are the men and women of the NYC Fire Department and every single firefighter in the nation that volunteered to put their life on the line in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. In November of 08 lets vote into office someone that understands that the true path to defeat terrorism starts at home. While we are supporting our troops, lets take a minute to thank our nations firefighters for a job well done.



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One of the things I really enjoy in Blogstream is the Saturday Night Blog Hop. I get to listen to good music and share my tastes in music with other bloggers. It always surprises me that so many of us at different ages have similar tastes in music. I suppose it shouldn't because great tunes are great tunes no matter what age you are.

Many of you know that Hubby and I will be moving our home to a different place shortly. It's an older home and moving it will be touchy but I believe it will make the trip safely. I did find out from my friend Viv that the other home from here didn't fare as well and it's a year newer than mine. After talking with someone who knows a little bit about things like this, he said they didn't redistribute the weight inside. Heavy furniture MUST be positioned so that it is between the frame and not against the walls, plus the weight must be equally distributed. If you don't do this the whole home will twist, which is what happened to the one that moved out on Wednesday. These homes have "tongues" that extend out 3 feet from the frame on either side of the steel. If you leave anything in that space, like a couch, something of equal weight has to be left opposite it. Best to put everything between the frame.

We will be moving some of the heavier pieces out entirely to a truck and then replacing them when we get set up again. Lighter furniture will be left inside along with the boxes of our possessions that can be used to balance the weight of the couch. All this makes me feel so much better but it means we need to be in shape to do this the morning of the move. I will have to remove all the clothes from the closets and place them on the bed which can be left set up because it's in the middle between the frames. I don't want to wait until the last minute to move out heavier pieces of furniture.

My computer sits on my dining room table which is one of the heavier pieces we need to move out of here onto the truck. We don't know if we're making this move a few days before or after the first of October, it will depend on the haulers schedule, so I must be ready to "haul" on September 28th. In order to do that I will need to disconnect my computer and box it up to get if off the table sometime the week of the 24th, which means that until after the move and getting everything restored I will not be able to participate in the Blog Crawl after September 22. If we don't actually get moved until the week of October 1 then I will be offline for 2 to 3 weeks.

One of the reasons for the long delay in getting back to Blogstream will be because we plan on buying a computer desk for me. We have this humongous entertainment center that is too big for the room. That is going to be replaced with a smaller one which will free up space for a corner computer desk that I saw at Staples a few days ago. In addition to the absence caused by my move there will be a delay for assembling the new entertainment center and the new desk. The packing will be done in a few more days, except for clothes and dishes we use everyday. Some of this is being moved out for storage which is giving me more space to move things around to clean. So, my fall cleaning will be done before I move, then all I'll have to do is unpack, put things away and get back to blogging.