Seems time passes quickly and I have not added a story in a while. Not much has been happening due to the restrictions of Covid. I go to the grocery store every now and then, usually every other week. I keep lots of food on hand so I have been doing creative cooking and baking. Trying new recipes I find on the Internet or in my cookbooks and food magazines. When I go to the grocery, I look at the food magazines to see if there are any that have lots of recipes I would use. Most of them have recipes I wouldn’t make, especially breakfast ones. I have never been a breakfast eater. I don’t like eggs, unless they are in something and mixed with things so I don’t taste the egg. It’s the same with milk. I remember when I was a child at least once a week my mom would make me drink a glass of milk. I never liked the taste of it. When I am in Texas my friends have cows and that’s the milk they drink. They wanted me to try it and I can’t even think about trying it. It’s the same with Jello. Due to all of my abdominal surgeries sometimes Jello and other clear liquids were the only food items I could have for long periods of time. I only used to like red jello, and I couldn’t eat it because of the dye, the nurses said it would color my output and they limited me to lemon or lime jello which I didn’t like. To this day I cannot eat Jello, it won’t even go down my throat. I also don’t like soup broth unless I use it in rice or gravy or something like that.
I’ve been making different types of breads, cakes, etc. trying new recipes and they came out pretty good. The other day I made a chocolate pudding pie. I thought I cooked the pudding long enough for it to set up firm. I thought I used the correct amount of cornstarch as a thickener, but evidently I didn’t use enough or cook it long enough. My pie tasted really good, but it didn’t slice well. I ended up scooping the crust, chocolate pudding, and meringue into a bowl to eat it. Still it tasted delicious. I also make something like cheesecake bars with a crust, but it was made with yogurt and it was a recipe I will make again.
Otherwise, not much happening here. My outings are occasionally grocery stores, once I am out I go to a few on the same day to limit exposure being out multiple times. So, I buy extra items to have more handy so I don’t need to go to the store often. It’s nice to get out. Over the years I have made friends at the local grocery stores so when I go there we catch up on life. I also bring the various departments some of my baked goods like cookies and bread and they love it.
The beginning of April I went to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. They said they are careful and sanitize everything after each patient. About 2 weeks after my visit, I got a sore scratchy throat, low grade fever, and had a stuffy nose. I took lots of vitamins and stayed home and didn’t go out for a few weeks and within about a week it went away. I didn’t want to go to the doctor for a COVID test, that would just expose me to more germs. During this time the primary grocery I use had the wild caught shrimp on sale. I didn’t want to go out with a sore throat and low grade fever because I didn’t want to give whatever I had to anyone. I called the seafood/meat department and told the person I know in that department the situation and I was told that whenever I come in they will honor the sale price for me. So about 2 weeks later when I was well I went to the grocery and the manager said he knew about the shrimp price. It turns out they didn’t have any in stock. So, when I make room in my freezer for it they will order it for me. I usually buy two 2 pound bags frozen. It makes for lots of options for a quick meal.
I still have not figured out how to import photos into my stories yet since my website was updated by my friend to make it more secure. I also have not really spent time to research it. I also have to connect a cable from my phone to my computer to upload the pictures of the foods I took with my camera to put them in a file on my computer so I can access them. Hopefully, I will get to it soon. I have to admit, it has not been a priority. I had an issue with my phone several weeks ago where it would not let my camera work, nor could I use the video option. I use some of the online meeting platforms to connect with my friends and I was using my phone so we could talk and see each other. Often I use my computer so we can talk and see each other, but sometimes the phone is more handy. I ended up calling the company that makes the phone, since Sprint said it’s not their issue. After quite a long time with the Samsung rep, we got the camera to work again, but not the video. After a week or so it stopped working again. I ended up deleting almost every app off my phone to free up more space and rebooted my phone, cleared cache’s which caused me to lose some info and also I had to input codes, etc. on some other standard apps on my phone. I had to reinstall Firefox and try to remember the sign in codes, etc.
Due to the charging port not working on my tablet that is about 5 years old and still working except for that, I bought a new tablet and it is different and even though it is a little larger, the screen looks different. Firefox operates differently. On my older tablet Amazon stays on so I can download my Kindle books easily. On the new tablet, even though I select the option when I sign in to stay connected, it doesn’t. Then I have to log in all over again every time I want to use it to locate a book. I had taken advantage of the offer of 3 free months of Kindle Unlimited, then it would go to $9.99 a month, so I cancelled before they would charge me. Then 2 days later they offered a half price sale for 6 months, so I signed up for that so I could read more books and finish some series. I checked several local libraries and many of the authors I like are only available on Amazon or from the author directly. I sent a message to an author I like who is not in Kindle Unlimited and I didn’t want to spend $5 for a book to find out what happens in the next book. She informed me that she doesn’t put her books in Kindle Unlimited because if she did she wouldn’t be able to post the book anywhere else. It seems that many authors offer the first book in their series for free, but charge for the other books. They get you hooked and to find out what happens you have to buy the books. There are a few that I have bought the rest of the books in the series because I really want to know what happens. Other ones I use my imagination. I even tried using my imagination, then ended up buying the rest of the digital books and I was often not even close to correct for the twists and turns the author created in her storyline. But, it’s fun to make up my own endings too. So, there are still several stories that I have no way to know what happened, how the story evolved and ended. I just go on to other books and after a while I don’t even remember much about the book.
There are several series I read that have other books coming out several months later in their series. By then, even though I read the previous books I don’t remember the details of the previous books in the series. Sometimes the authors catch up the reader with tidbits of the previous books, but not always. It’s okay, once again…. use my imagination. Other times, I might wait to read a series until more books come out. There is a first book in a series I really liked, there were 2 more books in that series. I contacted the author to tell her I really liked here first book in the series and I am going to buy it, but asked if the story was finished in the 3rd book. She said no, she is going to have another couple of books in the series, so I will wait. It was intriguing, it was a treasure hunt, mystery, murder, etc. so good. I have to check if the other books came out, after I remember who the author is. I write the authors name and books I read, but when I started I had no idea I would read almost all the books by an author before going on to the next one. So, my notes are written really small, without spaces between them. I figure it out the best I can and once in a while I start reading a book and when it sounds familiar remember I already read it.
I read a really good mystery sometime early last year and the author had the first in his series free, other books had to be purchased at $4.99 each for many books. I read a book in a day or two usually and didn’t want to pay $about 50 for a series, and no it is not at the library. So, I didn’t finish the series. I saw the other day that it looks like that series is now in Kindle, so I will read it after I finish the author I am currently reading. And yes, I will most probably have to reread the first book so I remember what happened before the book left off at the suspense ending.
I had no idea what I was going to write when I started this article. My thought was to just put a quick update saying I am okay to let you know I am alive and well. It seems when I start writing that I never know what is going to come out. My stories just evolve as I start writing. I have some other tings to do this morning so I will try to come back sometime soon and finish this story, and perhaps even figure out how to add pictures of some foods I have been making and taking pictures of, even if I have to connect my phone to the computer to do it.
Thank you for making time to explore my website. There are lots of interesting stories and many albums of photos of places I visited. I would suggest you start at the bottom right in June 2011 and go forward to see how my journey evolved and how as I learned how to add pictures more showed up in the story without having to click on the photo album tab. A few years ago Google stopped supporting Picasa where the photos were easily available and put them in Google photos. So I had to go back into over 70 stories, create a link and put it in each story. It was really time consuming, but I made time to do that so the pictures were available in the stories. There is a travel map button on my website so you can see the route I took each year I took a trip.
