Category: Miscellaneous babble

A copy of Redbook magazine appeared in the mailbox yesterday, addressed to me and indicating a 2 year subscription on the address label. Not even a sample “Subscribe to me!” copy.

It wouldn’t have been the first time something strange has appeared in the mailbox. Why I would subscribe to Redbook, I have no idea. I certainly didn’t subscribe to it intentionally and it definitely doesn’t have anything of interest to me.

I logged into Redbook’s customer service part of the website and found that I did indeed have a 2 year subscription with no balanace due, but no indication of who subscribed me. Since there was no point in keeping a magazine that’s just going to go straight into the recycling bin, I decided to cancel the subscription. The site told me the subscription was placed through some agent and that it would be canceled, but that I would need to go through the agent to pursue a refund.

Still no idea where it came from.

This little blog of mine reached a milestone a few days ago and I missed it. Over the weekend, the blog turned 10 years old!

10! That’s like old and decrepit in Internet Time I think.

The past year since the blog turned 9 has been pretty exciting, interesting and fun. Blog got moved and rebooted, and I fired up a second blog for the radio stuff.

I don’t see myself quitting the blog anytime soon and I’ve grown to enjoy the outlet blogging gives me. I think I probably need to post more often though. I’ll try to make myself do more of that.

10!

Go blog!

At a visit to McKay’s this past weekend, Connie found three volumes of a bible printed in Braille. I’ve only been to McKay’s a handful of times, but each time I’ve always managed to find something interesting there. These Braille bibles printed by the Braille Bible Foundation are so far the most interesting and unique thing we’ve found there.

Neither of us had ever seen an entire book printed in just Braille. I’ve seen signs and elevator buttons with Braille on them, but never an entire book of Braille.

The books use a pretty heavy weight paper, similar to construction paper. The volumes we found were in pretty good condition and didn’t look like they had been used much at all.

One thing I thought was interesting was that both sides of the page were printed/embossed. Making sure the raised dots on one side don’t mess up the dots on the other side must take some careful aligning in the printing process. The Wikipedia entry on Braille refers to the process as “interpoint”. I can’t really “read” Braille, but I think it’s pretty neat to run my fingers across the raised dots and feel the different patterns.

Connie decided we needed to purchase the volumes because of the note printed on the front page:

Please do not destroy this Braille book
Braille is very expensive to produce. If this volume is no longer needed please return it to the Braille Bible Foundation. It may be returned free of postal charges by writing “Free Matter for the Blind” on the upper right-hand corner of the carton.

Didn’t know that USPS would deliver material for the blind for free. Good to know.

We decided that rather than leave the volumes sitting on the shelf at McKay’s, we’d buy them and ship them back to the Braille Bible Foundation. Hopefully when they go back they’ll get put back to use.

The city of Ringgold, GA does a very impressive display of flags and crosses to commemorate the fallen veterans from the area. It’s a pretty remarkable and moving display. Each cross has the name of someone and the war(s) they served in. Some also included the branch of the military they were in.

I don’t know a whole lot about Ringgold’s flag display other than that it sounds like it’s been going on for quite a few years. Each year, the number of flags grows.

There’s one road where the flags are especially impressive. Flags line both sides of Robin St, and as you crest the hill you see even more flags and crosses along the road

If you’re ever in the Ringgold, GA area around Memorial Day, it’s definitely a sight worth checking out.

Theresa’s obituary said she wanted flowers.

In lieu of donations, Theresa requests flowers. Being a Cystic Fibrosis and transplant patient, Theresa was never allowed to have flowers, so she would want them in her celebration of life.

She got a lot of them. At the brunch (at Morgan Creek Grill) following the funeral mass, just about every table had two or three vases of flower arrangements, and there were several other larger arrangements on stands and on the floor. There were so many flowers it was almost like being in a florist shop.

As brunch wound up, guests were encouraged to take whichever arrangements they wanted. As pretty as they all were, I’m sure Theresa’s parents just didn’t have room to take them all.

I looked around for the arrangement we had sent, but I guess someone else thought it looked nice and claimed it. I picked out another nice colourful one instead.

She would have loved all the flowers.

It was a nice funeral mass (even though the priest told a rather different version of my gym story during his homily), and a nice brunch gathering afterwards, sharing favourite Theresa stories.