First day of cleaning accomplished

 A busy Monday for sure and the top floor is all cleaned. Today is the main floor and the basement. It is working out very well to do these two floors the same day as the Robot vacuums the basement whilst I am vacuuming the main floor. Then just the dusting on the  main floor and then the same in the basement, scrub the bathrooms and wash the floors and stairs and the task is completed for another week. But this is a long day of cleaning and about all that I do although will play my solitaire weekly game and I have completed 9 out of 16 already. I do enjoy spider solitaire. 

Picked up the letter and I now realize that likely I will be asked to test with the prescription glasses and without so really great that I insisted on having the bifocals made last year (the distance portion is basically just plain lens with a very slight astigmatism correction in the right eye) and the only change in my prescription this year was a slight weakening of the reading portion of those glasses and I am having a pair of strictly reading glasses made as I prefer to have the entire lens be reading lens - that dates back to my proofreading days in my mid 30s when I first started to buy reading glasses along with my bifocals. Imagine wearing bifocals since you were 32 years of age and now actually going a great part of the day without glasses (about 75% of it actually as I can read some things on the screen without reading glasses).  Amazing really - cataract surgery. But likely most people do not experience it in quite the same way as I did since most people have depth of vision. The optometrist (and actually the ophthalmologist who did the surgery) both said I did not have to wear glasses for normal distance vision after the surgery. But I did get the bifocals made anyway because the Ministry says on their website that I need to go and have a retest of my eyes to stop wearing them for driving. Since I was going to be tested at 80 I decided at 79 just to have the glasses made and it does look like that was a good idea on my part as I look at the Optometrist's letter to the Ministry re my eyes. Although he said to me I didn't need glasses for driving he did not write it in the letter. So a cautionary note there that one must fulfill all the actions on the website regarding any change in prescription lens or not wearing them at all and they must be cleared with the Ministry or continue wearing corrective lens. 

 I also picked up a cord for my new speaker - practically nothing comes complete anymore. But I just bought the cord as I have USB connectors I can plug into. The new speaker though is quite nice and the old one does not run on Windows 11. But the workhorse computer will be used for any zoom meetings and the like so just as well. 

More transfer of files very selectively to the new computer as I continue to set it up for my book writing. The other computer will handle anything else. 

The Canadian Air Force dropped 10T of food in Gaza yesterday and more drops to come. I did think it strange that the Palestinians would ask for more trucks rather than the air drops - are they trying to help Hamas steal food from themselves so Hamas can sell it and have money to buy weapons. That is so weird as Hamas has caused them so much grief.  The pictures of people picking up the food from the drops showed a great many people carrying away food. A plane can drop a lot of food and so many countries are doing it. But the people have a much greater chance of getting food quickly with a drop instead of the long process of getting food out of a truck especially as Hamas appears to hijack the trucks for their own use. Pretty hard to hijack a plane and they would have to murder all those Palestinians waiting for the food drop to take it away as they are starving and not likely to pay any attention to them to get at the food which is free and waiting for them to take it. One must be cautious of Hamas as I suspect they are all over the world now trying to cause trouble in countries. Hamas is more of a satanic philosophy really than a particular ethnic person. Anti-semitism (illegal in our country if expressed as it is hate language and people should be charged with a hate crime) is the root of Hamas philosophy and why this group is outlawed in Canada including making any donations to this group within the Canadian banking system or any other type of system that permits one to send money outside of the country. 

Time to make my tea and empty the dishwasher. The day begins already.  

 

The joy of going to Church online

Prayers for the children of Gaza and Israel - both of them should be able to have a life that is rich and peaceful. Changes have to happen for that to be realized. Hostages have to be released; Hamas must go - they do not respect the people of Gaza (they only use them as victims in their pledge to annihilate Israel). When Hamas and all the rest of the Satanists like Hamas are gone then the people of Gaza have an opportunity to create a government that would work for them and not use them as cannon fodder. They have not cultivated the land (God says we must take care of the land and produce what we need from it). The United Nations could certainly provide farming equipment and seeds, etc. 

I noticed a bit of newspaper reporting that Palestinian Canadians do not think that our government is doing enough to help in Gaza. Basically the Palestinian Canadians could have brought thousands and thousands of the Palestinian children to Canada - all that was needed was their DNA to return them to their parents/family and that was way back near the beginning (January 2024 I believe) following the attack by Gaza (Hamas) on Israel. It is rare that an aggressor country gets to protect their children when they attack another country. As far as I am concerned the latest position put forward to the UN by Saudi Arabia and France and supported by many other countries including Canada is  more than generous and the Palestinians (there are a million or more of you) have to make it happen - kick Hamas out; they are satanists (I saw lots of stones on the ground in the pictures of Gaza). The video of the hostages was criminal and sick and revolting and you have done nothing to free them as far as I can tell. Since my childhood (and I am nearly 80) Palestinians were murdering Jewish children in their schoolyards (think of the generations of Jewish children lost over the last 70 years because those children were murdered). Many countries around the world offered to take in the children of Gaza.  There are lots of well to do Muslims in Canada and it would need to be Muslims who take them in so they are not frightened. Discussion closed. 

Dreams and their value in our lives and my own experience with dreaming about my grandparents has been an interesting event in my life. I think part of that is my total concentration on the past as I write the books that meant so much to both my grandfather and my mother. As I puzzle over items that are a bit vague in my memory a dream will reveal that wonderful conversation that I had in particular with my grandfather. Usually it was at the Office where my Father had his business because those are my strongest memories of my grandfather most times but not always as he did live with us and I do have memories of him when he lived with us. But I used to go downtown with my father (I was the sort of child who really didn't make friends and avoided a lot of that; generally it would be mother reminding me that I had said I would do something and off I would go to do whatever it was but mostly I just preferred to be alone and reading) as he liked to take me to visit with his Dad whom I adored (as did he). I loved it when that happened. Sometimes he would be working with wood and making things usually for my father to use in his work. Other times I learned to sort items into their appropriate type (huge gaskets and things like that as there was a large wall devoted to this type of equipment used and the men could just pick them up and take them to the job they were doing). That was fun organizing that and we would do it together as my legs were young and I could easily run back and forth to the storage and pick whatever was needed as Grandpa kept that all organized. Other times we just sat and talked. It was lovely. 

I do  want to dream about the fun times that Edward and I had canoeing in Northern Ontario, playing with our children, going to Church together and discovering so many things about his father that he did not know (that was about six months after we married long before we moved here and after we bought the car). We would regularly drive to his home town (just 45 km away) and visit with the people he worked for as a child mostly but also his cousins and of course his close family. But I must admit a great deal of time was spent visiting with people who had known his Dad (one distant cousin after another would introduce him to yet another distant cousin that he had not known) and others who knew about the various Kipp lines that he wanted to learn more about.  They loved that all of those distant cousins (2nd/3rd/4th) (some quite elderly in their 90s when he was just in his mid 20s) spending time with Edward and knowing that their stories had a place which brings me back to Edward's material and my desire that none of it should be lost. But he did scan everything we are discovering and entered a great deal of material into his Family Tree that is online. 

I updated the Siderfin book online at the two repositories that I had submitted the earlier copy to and just one more place to update that. I also placed the Companion Book online at the two repositories (Library and Archives Canada and the Guild of one-name Studies). I just have one more place where I sent the first version of the revised Siderfin Book and will get that done today at Family Search. 

We had six tasks to complete this year and just two remain. One is a copy of the VHS tape from the Centennial Service of the Diocese of Ottawa (and booklet) and I offered it to the Church Archives in case they would like the copy. The other is a large box of original pictures of the Kipp family of Oxford County, Ontario including the members of this family that went to Chilliwack, British Columbia - a large collection of originals that Edward collected through the years from family members.  

Today I go and pick up my letter that says I do not need to wear a prescription lens to drive as it wasn't available Saturday morning unfortunately - life is busy. I just want the letter to remove the X from my driver's license. I have my test for 80 years shortly and if I am successful then I would like my license to reflect my actual condition (silly I suppose but after wearing glasses for 78 years of my life it just seems nice). As a child I never would have guessed that one day I would have this beautiful depth of vision which to be honest I never really realized I was missing. Seeing into pictures is a marvel for this old person. If they let me then I will do the eye test with my prescription glasses as well but time is short at these things so probably not but it would be interesting. I had the glasses made after my surgery with a bifocal reading lens so that I could still drive as my license is restricted. But one day I accidentally forgot to put them on for a couple of blocks and discovered that I really did not need them but quickly put them on. I actually never drive alone except to the grocery store so always have some one with me namely my daughter. 

Time to go and make my tea and then do my solitaire games.  

Sunday and the 3rd of August

Still in Ordinary Time in the Church Year or Trinity or Pentecost depending on the generation you belong to but always God the Creator's world. The smoke still with us as Climate Change reeks its horrible disaster onto the world. Protect the world; without the world we do not exist and so we must protect it. God gave us a plan to live by and protect the earth was part of that plan; we need to work at that for sure. Everything else is just gravy as my uncle used to stay. Do not forget what has to be done and when that is complete time for the gravy. 

Sometimes just waiting works very well as we continue to tear down those provincial barriers and buy Canadian; buy up all the goods that went south before and offset recession. Re-invent our industries of the past bought up by free trade; sitting behind a computer all day long is not good for you. We were not meant to sit all day long - it shows for sure that that is a great truth. We are meant to run, to work hard with our hands and make the things that we need to have a comfortable life - washing machines, dryers, dish washers all of those things we did make and can make again. Keeps us on our feet and independent; we do not want to be a weak nation. 

My great uncle who fought in the First World War's memories of the war were mostly of Paris where they went on leave occasionally. A beautiful city he said and when we went several times actually that is absolutely true. Paris is beautiful; viewed from high up on the Eiffel Tower it is stunning to see the perfect lines laid out below you. A gift to the future of the peoples of France and will always be like that because they love that and will sustain it through the centuries. We are a country built by the First Peoples who taught us how to survive in the winter here; we also have two founding countries in terms of colonial - France and England and they brought new blood to this continent which had been decimated by Eastern Hemisphere diseases after the arrival of the very first colonials namely the Spanish. Together we can build a Canada that is strong and free; our democracy is ruled by the people in the long run. When we do not like something; we get it changed but it is all of us not just a minor grumbling group because they just want more money from whatever. But the value of Canada belongs to Canada; we bought and paid for it and so we must work together to make Canada even greater. Those were my Great Uncle's thoughts. He was a marvelous man and when my mother was sorting through his things after he passed away I went over and helped her. What I remembered about him she reinforced because she had known him all her life and by then she was 56 and I was 27. We chatted about him all that time as we sorted his belongings into what she would keep, what she would give away and what she would throw away. As always the throw away part is the hardest. I did learn that lesson then at 27 and it stayed with me all these years until I too am faced with downsizing and must reduce the amount of material that I continue to hold in memory of Edward. Interesting really.

So today Church (two services) and this is always our downsizing day and we will work on my closet likely. Not that there is anything to downsize but more to clear away the dust which does accumulate in the corners I do not reach like the shelf. It is smokey outside so a good day to be inside and my daughter is very busy at the moment with her research (AI is on the brain for sure along with another colleague) but will take a couple of hours to downsize. We will not go out once again as we do not need to although the gardens call out to us for sure to weed them. 

Yesterday not a lot of accomplishment in terms of my research but my research time in the summer is always somewhat scant. It is the winter that sees me spend long hours on my research. The hermit in me has become stronger and stronger as the days pass by. 

Drinking tea and solitaire puzzles are next.  

New reading glasses

I had an appointment for new reading glasses yesterday and a form/letter for the Ministry of Transport stating that I no longer need corrective lenses to drive (I was willing to pay the $50) to get the Vision form filled in but I also do not mind having the Vision Test at my Driving Test). I want to be sure that I fulfill all the requirements for continuing to drive at 80. I did get my prescription for the reading glasses (they will be ready in three weeks; not sure why so long but I am not in a rush) but my letter even after checking earlier when my daughter had her appointment a week ago that I could get a form/letter for that it did not happen although the optometrist said he would write it up for pick up today for which I will pay $50 with the nuisance of going in as I do not know if the Ministry will accept a letter emailed to me. Really weird why a form letter doesn't exist that you could just run off on letterhead and sign; send it into the ministry with the person being tested named and Driver's License number as I filled in the Vision form from the website - could be done easily as well. Will check today on the phone/web contact form to see if it is available for pickup. Medicine was very streamlined when I was working in it back in the early 2000s. I did find it somewhat ridiculous given that my appointment time was used up by someone making my appointment twenty minutes late! I was careful to be very quick and not waste any time. I even said at the end of the appointment that every two years suited me but he seemed to think I needed to come every year. Given the large group of baby boomers who will need optometrist care over the next twenty/thirty years I really think optometrists should rethink this idea of every year personally unless one runs into problems of course. 

A little work on the matches as I have now moved my file folder for that work over to the new computer.  I also worked on the old computer as I want to start putting time into Edward's material that is on that computer as I backed up his drive to my old machine which has a 1.5 T hard drive. My work doesn't take up that much room but also I do not have music or videos or any space gobbling apps on my machine. Edward loved his computer and spent hours on it every day writing the hundreds of people he corresponded with around the world about his family lines. I continue to wish he was still in this world doing his own work (he did it so very well and I loved helping him with it) but one doesn't always get one's wishes. It has been very hard on his daughters and grandsons as well; they still talk about him and miss him very much. He was the center of their lives for sure. 

 Today drinking my tea and perhaps I will get outside and do some work. I have not really put much time into the garden this year other than at the beginning. Gardening at best is never my thing and without Edward's love for gardening I find that my liking for it has diminished greatly. 

Solitaire puzzles are next and the day is open for exercise and work and hopefully picking up my letter.   

 

 

 

 

The Medical Centre

 The Medical Centre was new when we moved here and later doubled in size and when I went there yesterday to get my Blood work done I was shocked to see how run down it is. I haven't been there for a year and it has really changed. The parking lot was not full and inside it just felt old - amazing really as it is just fifty years old but it has had a lot of business through the years with primarily doctors, dentists and other health agencies available on site. Hardly anyone there when I arrived; somewhat late as I had booked in online but forgot my requisition so had to go back for it and then go to the Health Centre. However soon in and done fairly quickly but I can tell I am aging as I popped right up and started collecting my jacket and other items but already the individual that took my blood was back with a patient for that room. I must move quicker I guess but I had taken the moment to put my jacket on. All done though by 9:33 and back home before 10:00 and had my breakfast by 10:30. 

Continued setting up my computer yesterday and I am now ready to begin working on the matches once again. The new computer is fast but the other one was also. My main reason for upgrading was Windows 11 - my old machine would not upgrade from Windows 10 and it was seven years old (between seven and nine, I have basically forgotten that although I could look it up).  That machine is a workhorse though and is now attached to the printer scanner station which is also remote and accessed through bluetooth but now has an actual computer attached to it so will be very useful as I work my way through Edward's collections of images for various projects. His website will be maintained for a long period and so the information that he has collected through the years will be available to anyone wishing to have it. The 40 binders are on my mind and I need to downsize them so that they too will remain a central part of his gifts to  his family through the years. He was a thorough cautious hard working person with interesting aims in life and his 78 years were well lived I do believe. He was a person who did his own thing and I always respected that probably because I liked to do my own thing which was mostly reclusive although I did come out of the wood work on occasion! He did give me lots of my own time which I appreciated and he did what he wanted to do although I must admit that some of the items he followed he was led to rather than it being a strong interest that attracted him. That was certainly the Ontario Genealogical Society now Ontario Ancestors but when Gordon Riddle asked him to come to the meetings with him he went more out of support for this "cousin" who was a medical doctor and Edward knew the strains attached to that profession so he thought it would be nice if he did do that. We had considered the OGS when we lived in London but Astronomy was a much stronger interest and genealogy endeavours there most consisted of taking the materials that we acquired from farm auctions in his home area to Ed Phelps I think he was in the library at the University in London. A number of interesting items emerged as Edward sought and found information on his Kipp lines when we were first married. However Edward loved the OGS meetings and it pretty much took over his spare time as the years passed (and eventually some of mine when he persuaded me to do items for his Gene-O-Rama and such). In retirement OGS and FLAC became his main items of interest although we did a lot of hiking in the Adirondacks with the group that he belonged to there. Plus I did always help him when we went to the many repositories in the United States looking for ancestral information on his lines. But I digress from the computer which will aid me now in getting more work done on his items that he acquired through the years. 

Another busy day today and the air is quite good; we will see how that transpires. Had a lovely walk at Petrie last evening. Gradually the air is clearing here for a bit but summers have been plagued with wildfire smoke. 

A new tariff today 35% up from 25% and the blame was initially placed on our Prime Minister supporting the two state solution (Israel/Gaza) although he is also supporting Hamas being locked out of power in Gaza, disarmed, the hostages being released, an international force managing Gaza until the mandatory elections are held in 2026 and that was the proposal put forward in the United Nations by Saudi Arabia and France along with a number of other nations including Canada. Apparently though the reason is fentanyl after all; life flows for sure. I like the way that the Prime Minister is handling the trade negotiations. We are not in a rush, our provincial barriers are all coming down and we see more products from across Canada now and will buy them in preference passing up on Florida oranges and the like sadly as I do enjoy them. But our peaches, apricots, cherries are on the market now and apples will soon be ripe and enjoyed as always. Then in the winter we will have canned fruit, frozen fruit, dried fruit and always apples. We are actually the largest buyers of American exports in the world so it must be affecting the producers in the United States and the Governors of the 38 States for whom we are their largest customer do come up to try to persuade us to give in and just do whatever is wanted (but we must continue to diversify our exports and buy Canadian produce since it is tariffed going to the United States if any of it does). We lost so much to free trade these last fourty plus years that we can not afford to lose anymore of our industries especially Supply Management as it supports our hard working farmers who have maintained family farms for many years to give us fresh local food. The only prepared food we bought yesterday was crackers made in Quebec (four boxes of them as they were on special with good dates). We mostly buy all basic ingredients and make everything ourselves. It is a fun time when we are not on our computers doing our research. 

My thoughts - Release the hostages Hamas; Hamas get out of Gaza; you do nothing for these people and are responsible for all the deaths and tragedy in Gaza since you invaded Israel in your barbaric attack that murdered babies, young children, older children, women, men, old women, old men on the 7th October 2023. You are satanic and do not belong in any society that respects the existence of people. Live in Iran they will like you.  

 The day beckons; solitaire games are completed and the weekly solitaire games as well. I play spider for the weekly game - love that game. Drinking tea and will begin the work day shortly (amazing how much my retired activities resemble my working days of eight hours a day).