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A gift to encourage a musician

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My husband has always said that he wants to start playing guitar at this local bar that has a Sunday open mike night. He hasn’t done it yet, but he keeps talking about practicing some songs and then going out and playing.

I really don’t know why he doesn’t just get up and go and do it. He’s an amazing musician. He’s been playing guitar since he was 9 years old! He actually plays 13 instruments. I’ve always said he should either try to join a band or maybe try to become a studio musician. I know he probably wouldn’t want to be a studio musician, but he has the talent to play on records. I’m sure of it.

Anyway .. I was thinking .. maybe getting him something to use at one of these “open Mike nights” might encourage him to actually go and do it. Eh .. doesn’t that sound like a good idea? I was thinking something like looking maybe buy vocopro wireless microphone for him to use on stage. He could even use it when he plays at work related events. He always gets asked to play at the Hospitals charity related and Christmas events, I’m sure he could use a wireless mic there too.

I’m going to think about it. Perhaps I’ll come up with something else that looks good but for now that sounds like a great idea. Any other suggestions?

My blogs are going truly mobile

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I’ve been setting up my blogs with a new mobile plugin. Well the plugin isn’t new but it’s new to my blog because I was using a different mobile plugin prior to using this one. I’m using WpTouch now and so far it seem to be working fairly well.

I’ve been using my smart phone and my ipod touch 32g to look at my various blogs mobile webpages to see how they render using the new plugin and there are some differences depending whether I’m using my phone or the iPod. When I use the iPod I can see the Adsense ads on my pages and a few other features and when I use the Nokia I can’t see the ads at all. It’s very strange.

At least with this Mobile plugin I can set up Google analytics and track visitors to the mobile pages better. Hopefully I’ll have better stats on my sites now because I think I’ve been missing stats on my mobile visitors in the past.

If you have a website have you made sure that it looks good when people visit it with a smartphone or iPad? Since mobile usage is only going up and up it’s really important to make sure your site is viewable and user friendly to mobile users.

Time to replace some curtains

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I’ve been looking at the curtains in my upstairs bedrooms and I think it’s time to replace them. Actually I wouldn’t call them curtains, I suppose they’re roman blinds? Anyway, they’ve been up in the windows in the two spare rooms for several years and they’ve been exposed to the brights sunlight for a long time and as you can guess the sun has caused some fading in places. It’s definitely time to replace the blinds.

I’m thinking the rooms need a whole new look. New window treatments can give a room a totally different look, especially when combined with new bedding. I was just looking at some valance styles. The windows aren’t very large so a Valance might be enough, but they are bedrooms, so maybe full narrow curtains would be better. I’d better do a little more looking around.

Speaking of the upstairs rooms, the two spare bedrooms could use a repaint as well. The hallway too. I guess we’ll get to that soon. We’ve in the middle of finishing a renovation in the living room and dining room but I’ve been thinking of refreshing the paint in several areas.

Making the basement usable again

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You may remember my many posts about trying to clean the basement. Well the basement is a little bit of a mess again right now but it’s better than it used to be. I’m hoping that someday it’ll be usable space. Maybe guests can sleep downstairs on the couch, or use it as a rec room or something.

Speaking of the sectional couch, it has a pullout double bed and if I remember correctly, that the bed is really really uncomfortable. I wonder if I can get a new foam mattress for it. That would be great. Maybe a memory foam one. I’m sure anybody sleeping on it after that would want to sleep on it all the time because it would be really comfortable.

It’s a shame that in the 11 years that I’ve lived in this house the basement has never really been much of a usable space. Hopefully that will change soon. It has has been usable for storage but not much else.

I am a klutz

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Did I tell you I’m a klutz? It seems that every few months I managed to injure myself. The last injury I had wasn’t totally my fault though, I’ll tell you about it …

You see we’ve been renovating our house and around the beginning of June, my husband had an extension ladder and he left it inside the house in the living room in the hallway and somehow late at night when I was walking from the kitchen, I managed to trip and fall on the ladder. This resulted in a lot of noise – a very loud clatter, a lot of bruising to one of my legs and a lot of swelling to my left hand and then an hour later a trip to the emergency room.

So to keep a long story short, I seem to have damaged ligaments in my left hand which of course is my dominant hand and I’ve been in a splint for a little over a month. Were still not 100% sure exactly what’s going on with my hand. This Tuesday, I have a bone scan because one of the bones in my upper hand, apparently, is swollen, at least that’s what the MRI showed. so depending what the bone scan shows could have a slight break in that bone. Who knows? Either way it’s good to be at least a couple more weeks before my hand is back to normal.

So as I said at the beginning I am a klutz. If I keep injuring myself every so often I’m going to need one of those roll about rentals. you know, that’s like a walker. Hopefully my klutziness stops soon. In the meantime, maybe I’ll just wrap myself in bubble wrap.

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