Wishing you a very Happy new year. Hope that this is the year that things really get moving in the retail sphere. Everyone is talking about the economy picking up, but in reality only some segments are picking up in some places, it’s not really a worldwide phenomenon, nor is it across the board. I do hope that 2012 will change that and that the confidence returns to the markets. Let’s be positive about it all.
Winter is here and even though we have such a great sunny winter, sometimes I do miss the cold and chilly weather too. And snow too. It’s been ages since we had a winter with snow, and at times I do miss the beauty of snow. I miss how quiet it can get when it snows, hushing everything, enveloping us in a lovely kind of quiet beauty. It all came back to me when I happened to see a photo of these glacier sunglasses that reminded me of the days when we saw nothing but snow for days on end and had to have a pair of good sunglasses to cut the glare. I didn’t think I’d remember these things from such a long time ago.
Christmas time is almost here. We’re counting down to it, and all around us are little reminders of the season. Even though we live in the desert, we have a good amount of Christmas spirit going on here, with lots of seasonal gifts to go with the season. My favorite way to celebrate it, is to be a bit creative about a tree and all the other ornaments etc. Instead of the usual tree, we’re going to make something creative and just be different. It will work well, since our surroundings are not the usual traditional ones. I haven’t decided exactly how we’re going to create this innovative and creative tree, just that I am. It’s good to push oneself to be creative isn’t it!
Living in a city that is constantly undergoing some stage of construction or the other, often one’s view is of a variety of construction materials. So much so that they just become part of the scenery. Earth movers, cranes, road rollers, steel rods and bars, steel drums and so much more, we’ve seen it all and these days can even see it from one of our windows, since they’re building a new filtration system center for the lakes. Luckily for us, the work is almost finished, so we hope to have a normal view once the landscaping takes place around the center. It makes such a difference to be able to see some lovely greenery all around.
For anyone who has lost online data, backing up data is serious business and not to be taken casually at all. I lost about a month’s worth of work last year and since then make sure that I have back ups of my work. Losing photographs is no easier, especially since one usually deletes them as soon as one downloads them onto the computer. I’ve written about online backup services earlier as well, since it is absolutely essential to be serious about it. Some of the newer innovations in online backups have enhancements on earlier services that allow you to create and manage multiple accounts online. Most companies offer basic accounts for free, where you can usually store up to 2GB of data in a secure environment. Most companies offer backup files to be encrypted on your PC and can be restored easily.
They never gets old do they, certain movies, certain books, certain songs that stay young forever and make you feel young as well. It’s almost like magic they way they work their charm. I’ve been thinking about all this since this weekend, we’ve been all retro. Quite unintentionally, but it just happened that we ended up seeing Grease and Sholay and listening to music like Duran Duran and Scorpions. Took us right back to when we first saw and heard these bands. It really ended up being a completely retro weekend after all!
As hot and humid it has been getting here, all I can do is to dream of going somewhere cool. Actually, cold is more like it. I would love to escape to a snowy spot in the Alps. Ah what fun, to mess with ski’s and snowmobile goggles instead of chilled cucumber towelettes to battle the humidity with. It’s been ages since we lived in a cold country, or a country that had a cold winter. I remember when we last did, we had a bumper winter, full of snow, full of winter storms and full of the drama associated with stocking up one’s pantry to enjoy the storm from inside one’s home, baking rugelach, drinking hot chocolate and then going out to play in the snow. Our old neighbors had a snowmobile and boy it was fun to go for a ride along with their kids. It was like being a kid oneself!
The summer is the time to enjoy the outdoors usually, but out here, the other seasons are the most favorable. Despite the heat, I always find so many bikers out and about in the summer, so it’s all just in the mind, right! Heat or no heat, the summer is the time to take the bike out and hit the road. One of the stores even had a flyer in the paper about a great sale for everything from helmets to a yakima bike rack, which it seems is a really popular option. Little did I know! So, dust of your biking gear and get into shape by hitting the bike tracks as well as exploring new areas. I’m getting set to do all of this!
As a former student of a boarding school, I can attest to the fact that they are the perfect learning grounds. Being away from one’s family, makes teenagers realize the responsibility of making decisions on their own and this puts pressure on them to make the right choices. Our boarding school was a regular residential school, although some of the students there had come from specialty boarding schools. As teenagers have lots of issues to figure out for themselves, to let them come up with solutions to these under the guidance of mentors is a great learning experience. There are many specialty boarding schools that specialize in providing teenagers a place to learn to make the right choices. Most of these schools follow a strict regimen of discipline and routine to establish order in lives of struggling teens. The idea of living away from one’s family can be quite a lot of fun for most teenagers, especially for struggling teens.
After the endless amount of time it took to get batteries for the speaker, this time around we’re thinking of getting some conventional home speakers as an alternative and move our current one into the study. Music is such a wonderful thing to include in one’s daily life and little E really responds so well to music that we thought it’s important enough to pay more attention to it. I’m still looking to see which will suit us best, but it’s seems to be the smart way to go.