Everything Snoskred

parent

Warm Feeling In Leg – Oh Bye!

9 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Last week I mentioned in this post that I kept having a warm feeling in my leg. Since then many people have arrived here searching for things like – warm feeling lower leg – warm feeling down lower leg – warm leg feelings – what causes warm leg – warm feeling in leg – warm leg – warm calf – hot warm leg – warm shin – heated leg.

So I didn’t want to say anything too soon, but the same day I posted that post I went down to the chemist and got some of the B vitamins which were suggested in the thread I found when I searched for warm leg. I actually got a B complex which had b 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 12 and Folic Acid. I also found out that my local chemist has incredibly cheap vitamins, they were about half the price I was expecting. It says to take 2-3 per day with food, and I started out taking 3 per day because any extra is flushed right through according to my pharmacist, so I would only use what I needed.

I was already taking a daily vitamin anyway, but that one doesn’t seem to have an awful lot of B group in there. For example, B1 was 1.7mg, and taking 3 per day of the B complex = 45mg. Quite a big difference there.

I started taking them on the Tuesday, and by the Friday I was still getting a little bit of the warm feeling but it had changed quite a lot, it was a lot cooler than it had been before and it was much less often. However the warm feeling was replaced by an annoying muscle twitch in my face which also had me panicking a bit, because it lasted two full days. By Sunday the warm feeling was completely gone and as yet it has not returned. For the last few days I have cut back to taking 2 B group vitamins a day. I’ll keep up that amount of B vitamins until I have finished this bunch of 100 tablets and then see how I go, but unless I am under a large amount of stress I think it should be ok.

That was the big problem I feel – there was a situation going on here which had really caused me quite a bit of stress. It had been a while since I was under any kind of major stress at all, a good couple of years. So if you do have anything like that going on in your life, it may be worth taking some extra vitamins to get you through it – your body needs your help! ;)

health, life lessons

A Paddle Boat

1 Comment Posted on by Snoskred

When I lived back in Adelaide, we were living within a short distance of West Lakes. I always used to love seeing the (manmade) water there. My dream at the time was to live in a house with a little pier and to have a paddle boat to paddle around the lakes with.

So a few years later, a completely different state, a completely new life that I did not anticipate, and I still want a paddle boat. Though not quite the same kind. I want me a Kayak. To be specific, a Hobie Mirage Outfitter.

This from the girl who never swam in the sea until a year ago for fear of sharks. This from the girl who went kayaking for the first time about a week ago and was utterly terrified by it because we couldn’t get the kayak to go where we wanted it to go. It wasn’t a Hobie, it was a cheap crappy double kayak that we hired and the darn thing was like a shopping trolley that refused to go straight.

Did you know you can get kayaks with pedals as well as “paddles”? Seriously there is some amazing kayak technology going on from Hobie.

Tomorrow we test drive the one we intend to buy, and hopefully will have it by the weekend. w00t! Of course I’ll post pics. :)

There is much going on in my life at present, much of which cannot be blogged about. Community volunteer work,  the other half on holidays and actually smiling for a change, an exercise bike, roast chickens, kitties being cute, blog design, and filing cabinets. There is much I want to tell you and I hope to have some time to do that soon!

About Snoskred, kayak

Where Is Snoskred?

5 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

It’s insane here at the moment – The Other Half is on holidays. I have been busy working on a community project or ten. I’m also behind with my posting ahead of time.

The Thought Of The Day is taking a little holiday – it will return soon. ;) I usually write an entire month’s worth in one sitting and then WordPress just posts them for me daily, but I don’t see a chance for doing that until Friday or so.

And I have a confession to make.. I am obsessed with Dexter. I will write a post about that soon.. ;)

About Snoskred

Life In Fast Forward.

13 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

So. Once upon a time, I used to have a routine. I used to do things in some kind of order. I used to daily read over 170 blogs, plus comment on 20-50, write one major post on my blog per day plus the thought/song of the day plus respond to emails plus get loads of stuff done around the house.

Then, I had the crazy idea of hosting blogs for people. On average since the start of this year, I have created 6-7 blogs every week. There is a huge amount of work involved in the process of doing that. It isn’t just set it up, activate the plugins and away we go.

People tell me which blog template they want to use, and then I customise it for them. I create them a blog header. I answer all their questions – and they are not one or two questions, sometimes it can be up to 50-100 emails back and forth. And even though I have cut and paste answers to a lot of the stuff people ask me now, I haven’t had a chance to organise them in a way I can access them easily to paste to the next question asker.

Life has become a game of catch up – I can rarely plan things because I don’t know what is going to come to me as a surprise in my email. Or I might have a plan – like tomorrow, I would like to write all my thought of the days for March. But then I’ll wake up in the morning, turn on the computer, and someone will be having a crisis or a blog meltdown, and I have to figure it out for them.

Most of the time I love doing it, don’t get me wrong. But there are days when it gets old fast, when I want to politely suggest that people learn to search the net first and then ask me if they can’t find an answer – because that’s what I do. That’s mostly how I solve their problems – I’m not any kind of genius, I just type their problem into Google and see what comes to me as a surprise.

Don’t be offended by that, people that I host blogs for. Like I say most of the time I love helping you out, but you can imagine that if you solved one problem and were handed another by someone else, and that went on all morning when you had planned to write a month’s worth of blog posts and get shiznit done fast, you’d get frustrated too.

The service I offer is somewhat unique. You don’t get that from most other blog hosts. They install WordPress for you, and then you’re on your own – people have to sink or swim on their own. I get people swimming pretty quickly, and then they can always ask me if they have issues.

And let me not get into updating all these blogs. The recent upgrade that happened – 2.3.3 – the other half handles the upgrades and he did one file across all the blogs as soon as it was released, because that was security related. That took an hour.

When he went to do the other four files it  took the other half five hours. This is because people had been installing plugins other than what was in the package, and some of them did not react well to 2.3.3, and we had to work out why and then solve that. That’s his spare time – he works full time. So the more blogs I take on, the more time it takes him to upgrade them.
Recently I’ve been given some important volunteer roles in the local community here which will require more of my time and effort.  And I need to do housework. And it might be nice to occasionally get some time to write blog posts like I used to.

I feel the need to slow things down.. if we keep going at this rate, we’ll have double the amount of blogs in 2 months.

So I’ve made a difficult decision – I am limiting myself to one blog a week from now on. If you want me to host a blog for you at some time in the future, you’d better pop over to the blog and put in a contact form, so I can give you the dates when I can do it. If you can’t wait till I can do it, I won’t be able to help you. I’m sorry. :(

Apologies for any inconvenience, but I’d like to try and get some routine back. ;) And I’d like to put some posts here more often.

About Snoskred

Does A Lack Of Comments Break You?

13 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

One of the bloggers I read regularly has little melt downs when they write a post and nobody comments on it. Watching this happen is not an easy thing for any reader, but for me it is extra difficult because I am the kind of person who doesn’t normally lie to people they think of as friends. I don’t like to sit by and pretend that I’ve never seen this happen before. It has happened many times.. It seems to me that this is some kind of cycle, a pattern of behaviour.

If you are a blogger and you base your worth as a blogger on the amount of comments you get on a post or you find yourself hesitating before you press the publish button because you’re afraid of what people might think, it turns out you might be a people pleaser.

It is hard to say goodbye to someone – even if it is someone you’ve never met in real life. The more I think about it the more I believe I have to do it, because I am enabling this person to continue their pattern of behaviour – and when I speak up and point out that they have an issue in this area, they attack me rather than face the issue. Honestly these days I have a lot of things on my plate and I don’t need someone treating me this way.

Have you ever made the difficult decision to walk away from reading a blog? How did you manage it?

life lessons

Snoskred Update..

7 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

So just lately I haven’t had a lot of time for me. As I type this I am in the process of creating at least 5 blogs. And then theres the volunteer work in the community which I put my hand up for a while back. Not to mention the house work.

I do think it is very important to have some time that is just me time, time when I don’t check my email for an hour or so, time when I switch off and relax. I have a pretty strict routine on weekdays otherwise nothing gets done. I always take an hour at lunch time to sit and eat lunch and watch a show. It was The West Wing for a long time there but recently I got season one and two of NYPD Blue. I have been wanting to watch that show in order for a long time now.

I also have been taking some time out in the evenings to check out a few new shows which have turned up on a new channel we have here on Pay TV, a channel called Showcase. There is one show called Dexter. It is twisted but I kinda like it.

Tonight I did something very rare for me. I sat down for two and a half hours to watch a movie I had wanted to see for a long time. In fact I mentioned wanting to see it here on the blog in October of 2006. It was The Departed with Leonardo Di Caprio, Mark Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Martin Sheen, as well as many others. This movie did not disappoint. It was fantastic.

It was nice to have a short break from all the work but tomorrow it is get shiznit done fast day. I want to get a lot of work done. So I’m off to bed now. ;)

About Snoskred, movies

Blame It On The Whales.

8 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Some of you have noticed that I have only been posting one post per day for the last few days. I’ve got the evil flu which the other half had a couple of weeks ago. I started feeling a bit unwell on Friday, had a terrible sleep on Saturday night but it was Sunday that brought the straw which put me flat on my back for the last 3 days. Sunday, a bush hike, and some happy hikers who told us we might see some whales.

Whales

And see whales we did, even though the winds were ferocious we were so captivated we could not leave and when we did leave we tried to chase the whales to the next high point, taking a 1km hike and turning it into about a 4km hike, some of it through terrifyingly tiny paths which made me freak out quite a bit. There seemed to be several different pods of whales and they were all doing a jumping out of the water. I have many more photos, but I do not have the energy right now. When I’m feeling better I promise to share.

baby echidna

We also found a baby Echidna. I have no idea why it was showing us its feet. Anyway I am not 100% better yet and really only managing short amounts of time out of bed. Apologies for not dropping by everyone’s blogs. As soon as I am better I’ll be by.

About Snoskred, photography

Making Progress – Accentuate The Positive

Leave a comment Posted on by Snoskred

All of the communities near where I live have their own progress associations. I was recently talking to someone from the local progress association and I was amazed to find out the real story behind a local road which used to be a dirt road but was closed for about a year while it was made into an asphalt road. It has completely changed the way I view this road.

We drove down the dirt road when we first arrived in the area. It was kind of spooky. A huge amount of dust would be kicked up by any passing cars even though it had recently rained. In some places the water had eroded the road making it a bit dangerous because people had to drive on the opposite side of the road on blind corners. When we got back to my parents place the car was absolutely filthy.

The progress association had been trying to get the road fixed for 10 years. This road was the only way for several towns to access the main highway if the other road became flooded. One year right before an election, one of the candidates made an election promise to have the road “sealed” (changed from dirt to asphalt) if they were voted in. The election happened, they were voted in and just two weeks later the president of the progress association was on their doorstep reminding them of the promise they had made.

Some time passed before work finally began. The road was completely closed to through traffic and we looked forward to it opening even though we weren’t residents here.

The new road opened in early 2007. I believe they got one of the best pieces of road I know of anywhere in New South Wales. It is my favourite road. It is smooth and beautiful to drive on. Here’s a picture of it from Google Earth. I’ve put little pink lines around it so you can see which road it is.

road

What an accomplishment – what a thing to get ticked off the to do list! 11kms of road, costing just over 4 million dollars. I didn’t know about all the hard work and effort that had gone into getting the road before I went to the meeting. Now I am just amazed by it every time I drive down that road. I’m only a recent newcomer to the town but I feel so proud of them – and I can’t imagine how happy they must feel about it after working so hard for so long..

Some places in this country, progress associations are the exact opposite of their name. They try to stop anything they don’t personally approve of. I am so thrilled to be living in a place where the progress association is all about progress. I have joined the local association myself. Last month I attended the first Progress Association meeting and met some wonderful people. I intend to get involved in the excellent work they are doing.

Each little step they take, every bit of progress they make is the result of a lot of hard work by a lot of people. But as this road proves, when you work together amazing things are possible.

life lessons, power of positive thought

Halloween? I Don’t Think So! This Is Australia, Right?

20 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

I live in Australia. Contrary to popular belief, Australia does not = America. Halloween is not something that was ever celebrated in this country as I was growing up. It was a virtually unknown about holiday other than seeing it on US TV shows.

One day around this time last year, I was sitting at home waiting for my Mother to come and pick me up. The doorbell rang and expecting it to be her I answered the door. I was surprised to find several children who immediately said “Trick Or Treat. No, surprise doesn’t quite explain it. I was SHOCKED. So shocked that I had no idea what to do other than say “wait a minute” and I ran to see if we actually had any lollies in the house.

We are not big fans of lollies at all. There was nothing in the cupboard. Faced with the prospect of disappointing these kids, I looked in the fridge to see if maybe we had any chocolate. I found a bag of snack size chocolate treats that we kept winning in these chocolate machines – the skill tester ones? The other half loves those but neither of us eat the chocolate you find in there – they don’t put Lindt in for those of us who cannot stand the common “Cadbury” chocolates. There was probably $10 worth of chocolates in there and I figure we don’t eat it, I’ll give it to these kids.

It wasn’t until my Mother had picked me up and I was telling her the story that I realised – these kids didn’t have costumes on! They were just wearing normal clothes. I had been SCAMMED by trick or treaters who didn’t even bother to put effort into making a costume – and the same kids had got lollies out of my Mother too! You see how easy it is to get yourself scammed, people? ;)

It’s ok though, the other half told me later he thought the bag of chocolates I gave to these kids had been in the fridge for about a year, so.. Parents, do you know where YOUR children are or more importantly, the origin of the treats they might receive this Halloween? Hopefully they’re not ringing my doorbell – I won’t be answering it today.

embarrassing stories, scams

Where In The World Is Snoskred?

9 Comments Posted on by Snoskred

Some of you may have noticed a distinct lack of Snoskred in the blogOsphere over the past few days. I apologise – I have over 1,000 unread posts in my Google Reader and I have about 24 hours to read them all so you might not get a comment from me on your posts this week. But why have I been missing in action?

The Other Half

For the last couple of months The Other Half has been getting a few colds and flu. This week he has the worst one yet. I have never seen him this sick actually and we’ve been together almost 9 years. Several nights this week he has had zero sleep and this also means I have had less sleep than usual even though he tried to sleep sitting upright in his recliner a couple of nights rather than the bed.

It’s Not All Bad

The good thing about his being sick this week has meant we have discovered the local doctors surgery. It is within a 5 minute walk (great if he is at work and I need to go there) and extremely acceptable – and it has a female doctor as well as a male doctor. I’ve got an appointment for next week to have a couple of moles looked at by the female doctor (yes I was inspired when I saw a post from someone who had them removed but I forget who now?) and The Other Half has been there twice this week. He has severe tonsilitis, he has had a terrible sinus, bad ears, fever and the sweats since Wednesday and there seems to be no end in sight even though he is taking antibiotics.

Parts Of It Are Very Bad

My routine has been thrown completely out of whack this week. No checklists completed. Only some daily tasks getting finished. Laundry and dishes are on the increase – I’ve washed the bedsheets and quilt cover daily. One very miserable person lurking around the house so unwell he doesn’t want to watch tv, read, use his computer or anything yet he can’t sleep, doesn’t feel like eating much. He’s mostly been trying to nap on the futon in his room. I keep checking on him, which is not good time management, but very necessary to make sure he’s ok.

Parts Of It Are Very Good

On Thursday it was like someone had given The Other Half a dose of speed or something. It may have been pure sleep deprivation. However for about two hours he was like an insane robot. Sephy and I had been talking about the possibility of moving the scam email blogs to WordPress and I had mentioned it to The Other Half. We have a domain which we’d bought for a scam warning website and we figured it would be worthwhile using and getting away from Blogger which had always caused us major problems. The Other Half set up the new blog for us and just as he finished it the burst of energy ran out, and he retreated to the couch for an afternoon of just falling asleep to be woken up again by not being able to breathe.

Since Then

The insane robot baton was passed over to me and Sephy. We have been working flat out to try and get this up and running by Monday at the latest. We have a lot of content which we need to put on the site as the “base” before we can open the doors, but as soon as we do I’ll let ya’all know so you can see it – and hopefully link to it, because it’s for a good cause.

Scam Emails?

The four sites we already have up and running are –

These sites get some serious traffic – up to 20,000 hits a month, and we’re only able to post approximately 50 scam emails a day. The new site will have upwards of 200 scam emails a day being posted. We won’t be putting any advertising onto the site but we would love to get a sponsor willing to pay the site costs. We may also need volunteers to answer the potentially large amount of contact me forms we may get.

Chicken Soup Time

I make a mean chicken and sweetcorn soup and I’m going to make another fresh one shortly. I’ll take pics and write up the recipe for one day next week. :)

Back Soon!

I will be back to my normal around the blogOsphere self soon. I mean, this flu can’t go on forever, right? RIGHT? Please tell me I’m right! I crave my routine..

About Snoskred, The Other Half