Dr Copa

I have been trying to encourage my sister-in-law Susan to quit smoking for the past several years.  She has smoked heavily for over forty years, so it is not going to be easy for her to quit.  What bothers me is that her doctor has already told her that she needs to quit smoking because her lungs are not working at their full capacity.  And her doctor has told her that the age of her lungs are about fifteen years older than her actual age.  That tells me that she is on the path to an early death.

Unfortunately, she does not seem to have much interest in quitting smoking.  Even though she has repeatedly promised her kids that she is going to quit, and even commits to a specific date, that date comes and goes and she still smokes.  It seems that every time I turn around, she is outside smoking a cigarette and talking on her cell phone.  The smoke stinks up her clothes, and stinks up the car when she sneaks a smoke in there. 

I’ve been hearing a lot about the new electronic cigarette that has recently come onto the market  Although it does not advertise itself as an aid to quit smoking, what I have read about it seems to be a viable option for people who need to quit smoking but really don’t want to.  I’m going to talk to Susan about trying one and see if she would smoke one of them instead of the “real” things.  If these are really less harmful to one’s health, then I’m all for it!

I was browsing the Internet this morning and saw a lot of hoopla about a new creation – a wedding dress that dissolves in water. The photos that are provided with all of the articles look like ballet tutus. What’s up with that? I can’t imagine a bride walking down the aisle in a tutu! Is that really the dress?

The articles talk about how women buy wedding dresses, wear them once and never again. And what a waste it is. In my family, it seems that the women save their wedding dresses in the hopes that one day their daughters will wear them to their weddings! Of course women who only bear sons might have problems with that!

I can remember going to a historical place that held lectures and the lecturer spoke of how wedding dresses used to be black, and that the women wore the same dress to church every Sunday, and that the dress was also used as dress that the woman was buried in. I guess those dresses really earned their keep!

One of the things that I enjoy a lot about where we live is the fact that we have three acres of land, and live across from a large farm. On our land, about half of it is woods. We don’t really notice our neighbors very much, the landscaping has been nicely done so that their houses are not immediately visible out of most of our windows. I like the fact that at night there is no light pollution, so we can look up at the sky and see the stars. For the most part, the only sounds we hear are the sounds of the livestock from the farm across the street, or the birds singing.

One of the things that has surprised me about living out here is how many of my neighbors say that they can’t get high speed Internet at their homes. I can remember when we lived in New England we were stuck with slow dial-up, but technology has advanced considerably and now it seems that people can get high speed wild blue Internet service just about anywhere in the country!

The next time I meet someone who says that they can’t get high speed Internet at their place, I’m going to ask them if they’ve tried satellite internet. It’s worth a try!

One of the reasons we chose this house to buy was because it had a propane fireplace in the family room. We reasoned that it would be a good emergency heat source in the event that we lost electricity during a storm. Well, we have used it once or twice, just for atmosphere, not really for heat, but let me tell you that fireplace certainly did heat up that room!

Well, we DID lose electricity yesterday due to that blizzard, so I went to turn on the fireplace. Wouldn’t you know that fireplace would not start up? I couldn’t get the gas to turn on! So I brought our kero-sun heater into the house from the garage and lit that up for heat. My wife complained that the fumes gave her a headache and she cracked open a window for ventilation. She was convinced we were going to die of some kind of cabon monoxide poisoning. I’m sure if we had been able to get on the Internet at that point she would have been looking that up!

I am always amazed when I meet someone who lives locally but tells me that they can’t get any Internet Services where they live!  When I probe them for more information they tell me that they can’t get cable Internet, and that the dial-up service that they have tried in the past was too slow.  I can understand that – I used to have dial-up service and it was slow, but it was better than nothing!  When we moved to this house and we got faster Internet I was really happy about it!

I think that DSL service is too limited for most people – I don’t understand how and why the technology of DSL only allows for service withing a short distance from the DSLAM location.  I can’t imagine that very many people live within those boundaries!  I do think that people who have children in school should have some form of Internet, even if it is slow.  These kids are going to need Internet access more frequently as the progress through school.  And mobile broadband is just too expensive at this point for people to be able to use that service for personal use.