cheerfulmonk.com

What do you think will happen?. Will the kitten be safe with the huskies and other cats? See tomorrow for the next step.

May 1, 2025

noun
good luck in making unexpected and fortunate discoveries

When Andy came out for dinner the other night he said he had fallen when he got out of the chair. He wasn’t hurt, but we were wondering how to avoid that in the future. Then later that evening when I was looking for something else on the web I came across this video. It wasn’t our favorite — it was slow in presenting the information and there were a lot of interruptions with advertisements, but we each found some things to practice.

I would call that serendipity. Has anything like this happened to you lately?

April 30, 2025

When I published yesterday’s post everything looked fine on my desktop, but when I looked later on my iPad this is what the pictures looked like:

Arghh! I have no idea why why there was a difference. I took the picture out and put it in again, and at the moment it looks fine on the iPad too:

But who knows what the future will bring? Sigh.

April 29, 2025

Kaitlin sent me these pictures of Tempi and Zoe yesterday.

They must take after their grandmother…I usually take an afternoon nap too. What about you?

April 28, 2025

An English language teacher says to his student. “English can be a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.”

It’s the pronunciation that makes English so hard. Hurray for phonetic languages like Spanish.

April 27, 2025

Andy always wanted a solar-powered atomic wristwatch so he bought one in 2008. (Click on the picture for higher resolution.)

It worked fine until it fell off a couple of weeks ago. We looked at it and even though the watch was working fine, the material holding the band on had deteriorated and was broken.

We had bought it from Amazon, so I went into their record of past purchases and found it. But when I clicked on the link it said the page was no longer available. Oh, Dear. Models do change after almost 17 years. So I looked to see what else they had, read the reviews about them on Amazon and other websites, and decided this one would be the best one to try. (click on the picture for higher resolution.)

It came, but (1) it didn’t have a user manual in English, just a couple of other languages, and (2) the resin watchband was hard to put on. I started searching for a band like the one he had before, one with an easy-to-use clasp, but didn’t have any luck. So I went to the Casio website and started a chat. The fellow couldn’t tell me about watch bands, but he could tell me how to change the time zone. And he sent me an English version of the user’s manual and the address of the closest parts distributor to ask about the band.

I never received a response from the distributor about the band, but the manual came in handy when Andy was trying to figure out how to tell how charged the watch was.

It was hard to figure it out even with the manual and a magnifying glass, so as Andy struggled with that I went back to Amazon to see if another watch might be easier. All solar-powered atomic ones do have complicated faces, but… I found Andy’s old watch! They still made it. I had mistakenly assumed because they didn’t have a link to it when I tried in the beginning, that the watch was no longer made. So we ordered the old model, with the great band, and returned the new one.

The only thing remaining when the new watch came was to shorten the band by two links. Andy had done it on the first one but his hands are too shaky now. Fortunately our small town has a jeweler a couple of blocks away, so Andy took it to them to see if they could do it. The answer was not only yes, they did it on the spot and didn’t charge him for it. That was the second pleasant surprise.

So, am I sorry I didn’t search for the watch’s model number in the beginning and save all that time? It makes me laugh because I often start a search that way and don’t know why I didn’t this time, but I’m not sorry at all. I’m thrilled every time I think of Andy and his watch, and I think the whole adventure of dealing with the problem was good experience in problem solving. That’s the one big advantage we oldsters have — experience — and I’m happy to keep adding to it.

Stay curious and open to life. No matter what happens keep learning and growing.

As I’ve said before, that works for me. 🙂

April 26, 2025

April 25, 2025

We had forgotten about them but the Senior Center had a vaccine clinic Tuesday for Covid and other diseases. We made an appointment with our local pharmacy, because they already had our data and it was simpler. But bless the Senior Center for reminding us.

When I got home I was wondering about the flu shots this fall so I looked it up. According to the FDA website doctors from the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Department of Defense, recommended vaccines for the 2025-26 flu season on March 13. (Apparently in the past an outside committee made its recommendations but that meeting was canceled and government doctors made the decision this time.)

Anyway, they expect the vaccines to be ready in time this fall. That makes us happy.

April 24, 2025

Click on the picture to see the video, and turn on the sound to hear.

I love that ending.

April 23, 2025

I don’t know why some people couldn’t see the weather forecast for last Saturday:

It predicted snow, and sure enough Andy didn’t go up to the land that day. Sunday he went to the mesa across from ours and took this picture of it, but didn’t go any farther.

We knew it would melt fast, so he went all the way up yesterday:

The temperature is supposed to be in the 60s for the rest of the week so the snow should continue to melt.

April 22, 2025