Slow Slog

 I have been working on restoring the pictures to my blog posts that were affected when my husband and I removed photos from Google Picture from our cell phones without realizing that the blog would lose them.

I have about a 4 1/2 year period that needs to be fixed. Of course not every post had photos, but some like the one about Winona Lake had 2 dozen. 

I have reached January of 2014 so still have about 3 years to fix yet. It is a slow slog. I discovered that if I went to "view" rather than to "edit" that sometimes the photos would appear if I clicked on the gray box; then I could save them to my computer to be inserted into the posts. Mostly I have been using the photos in a folder in Google labeled Blog Pictures. Using that makes the photos appear in the order they appear on my blog which is better than searching through all of the photos already saved on my computer.

 In some cases the photos are gone. They do not appear when I click on the gray boxes, they are not in the Google Blog folder, and they are not on my computer. I have to edit the text sometimes since what is being described has no corresponding photo.

What I don't understand is not all of the posts that have/had photos were affected by our blunder. I am wondering if once things are fixed and I remove the Google photos off of our phones, will these that were not restored because they hadn't disappeared suddenly disappear. I will have to test that hypothesis carefully. 

Once I reach 2016, the Live Writer mechanism I used to create posts was discontinued and I had to use Blogger direct, and those photos were not stored on Google. As I mentioned before I did not know that the Live Writer photos had been stored on Google Picture at all or that there was a link to where they were stored to the blog post. 

It has been interesting to see what I talked about 9 years ago. Hard to believe I have been blogging that long. Some of the memories relived while restoring have been hard reminders of challenging times such as when I tore a tendon in my foot that required surgery and staying off my foot for 6 weeks, slowly regaining use of it. Most are just the stuff of routine life with a trip thrown in sometimes. Next week is very busy so I doubt I will get much fixing done. It is going to take time and persistence.

Reality Sinking In

 Tucked back in a corner of my brain is the fact that I will be having posterior cervical fusion surgery May 26th. Yesterday it came to the forefront. I picked up my Aspen neck brace which I will wear home from the hospital and wear for at least 2 weeks post-op.

I did receive a little bit of encouraging news. I am allowed to take the brace off when I eat. I am to sleep in it for two nights in a recliner; then I can try sleeping without it. If the pain level ramps up I will have to continue wearing it for more nights. The muscle fascia that supports the head will be cut during surgery. I will have to come to a point of head support without a lot of pain before I can sleep without the Aspen collar. 

Next Monday I will have the pre-op testing (blood draw, EKG, MRSA swab). I don't have to go to Fort Wayne; I can have it done at the Parkview facility in Warsaw. So the thoughts of surgery are now intruding in my routine days. 

We did receive snow yesterday afternoon and night. When I left choir practice a little before 5 p.m. after about 80 minutes of rehearsal, I had to brush away the snow on the back window of my car. The windshield cleared off using the wipers and the defroster running. As darkness fell, the snow was starting to stick to the grass. The roads stayed clear though. This morning I woke to snow-covered roofs and vegetation.

I think my plants are going to survive OK. Not sure about the quince blossoms. We are going to have a hard freeze again tonight. Today's weather was crazy. Sunshine with enough warming to melt snow this morning, but then at 2 p.m. we had a real flurry of flakes, followed by sun but only around 32 degrees, then a few more lighter snowfalls. I'm not sure we even hit 40 degrees today. 

I mostly stayed in my warm condo. I got some frozen grated zucchini out of the garage freezer last night and put in the refrigerator to thaw. I baked zucchini bread this morning. When I went to add the walnuts to the batter I discovered I had none. So I used pecans. I haven't eaten the bread yet, but I think I will like pecans though this is the first time I have not used walnuts.

My loaf of bread tends to sink in the middle. I cut it in half, putting one half in the garage freezer, the other half in a plastic freezer bag but on the kitchen counter. We are going to Cerulean for lunch tomorrow which means soup for supper with zuke bread.

After a soggy Saturday we should start warming up until Monday we will be in the 70's. Such is spring in Indiana. 

Windy Walk

 

That is not snow on the ground; it is pear tree petals. I walked today in the wind because tomorrow we may have snow on the ground. I am wondering how the tulips and other spring flowers will fare when we get down into the 20's the next two nights. 

Anyway, I enjoyed them while I was able and they were available.

The Grace Village landscaper got into rocks in a big way last year. They are attractive on Sunset Dr. We did not have phlox until this spring.

This group of phlox and daffodils are near the main entrance.

These tulips in front of Assisted Living have been blooming for at least a week. I saw them last Tuesday when walking to choir practice but did not have my camera with me. I also took a photo with my new cell phone camera, but I am still very awkward doing that. 

My backdoor neighbor has some pretty tulips that opened last weekend.

My flowering quince bush has blooms since last week. That is about two weeks earlier than last year.

Over by the pond there are wild violets and hyacinth.

It was not a good time of day for pond photos, but I couldn't resist trying to capture an image of the baby goslings. I think I counted 8 bobbing yellow heads.

Some flowering trees and tulips around the neighborhood round out my sharing today.

I was planning to grill some Impossible Burgers tonight, but around 4:30 p.m. we had some sprinkles and now the grill cover is wet and it looks like we have more rain coming. As a part of my grocery order (pickup), I included some corn on the cob. The first I have seen in the ads this year. Time to get supper started. Hope your spring is beautiful now, too.

Spring Rambling

 Today is a lovely April day. A bit cool when the wind blows, but the sun shining all day. We drove to Fort Wayne today. Pear trees, red buds, new-spring-green leaves, green grass presented a pretty scene.

The pear trees on our block peaked about a week ago. I see a few tulips blooming. My daffodils are spent, the blooms drying up, but some others are still blooming. It looks and feels like SPRING!

In the perimeter of the daffodils are some Veronica plants which surprisedly already have some bloom shoots though they haven't changed from green to mauve yet. The Asian lilies have also broken through the soil but it will be awhile until they even have buds let alone flowers. Promises of good things to come.

           

                         

The cheddar pinks have 3 little blossoms that opened today.

 Wednesday was my turn to hostess at Winona Literary Club. I used the decorations and plates and napkins I bought in spring 2020. Just 3 days before I would have used them, Grace Village closed its facilities to "outsiders", including use of the community center where our club meets. We did not meet again until September. Luckily, I was able to find at Dollar Tree a few weeks ago another centerpiece like the 5 I had stored all year. We are setting up 6 tables instead of 5 so people can sit a bit apart (distance). 

I think these decorations are meant to be balloon holders as they have weighted bases.

I put them on books about gardening or plants with a pair of garden gloves. The gloves were "door prizes". The person at each table whose jelly bean cup had a smiley face on the bottom won the gloves.

I bought some Jelly Belly candy at Costco about a month ago. The plastic cups remind me of communion cups LOL but the packaging said shot (as in alcohol I guess) cups.

It was fun to munch on interesting flavors during the meeting.

The napkins (28) and plates (36) I would not have been able to duplicate this year. We ended up with 23 attendees so everything worked out fine number-wise.

Originally I was going to make up chocolate pudding cups with chocolate graham cracker crumbs (dirt) topped with a gummy worm to tie into the gardening theme. However, the meeting before we were served vanilla pudding cups. I wanted something different. I decided I also didn't want the work of making up individual cups. Instead I bought some cheesecake samplers (12 slices per container with a variety of flavors). I told the ladies at my table that we were having a flavorama refreshment experience with all of the cheesecake choices and the 49 different flavors of jelly beans. 

The worms looked a bit odd I guess and mostly went uneaten, but at least they added interest to the plate.

While going through the blog photos I located on Google because of the phone learning fiasco, I saw my bright multi-colored Skechers shoes I had shared when new. At least 5 years ago. They are starting to look pretty old. The "knobs" on the bottom are eroding away. They are really comfortable so I searched online for another GoWalk pair of shoes. I looked at several web sites until I found a pair I liked and that were also available in my size.

I ordered them from Penneys not only because they had them in my size, but I knew I would be going to Fort Wayne soon and could return them to the store rather than pay return shipping. (Zappos did not have my size.) They fit fine though and I am keeping them. They feel about the same, but you can see the pattern of "knobs" has been changed from my old pair. They are more subtle in color.

I wore them to Costco today. Our main purpose in going to Costco was to return some items. One of those was ink cartridges for my Canon printer. For some time now, the printer would put out an alert that the paper tray lid was closed when it wasn't. We would close and open and hit "OK" to get things to print, but now we have to do that 4-6 times. Time to look for a new printer; but I don't think we will find a printer to buy that uses the same cartridges. In fact, we stopped at Best Buy today and it turns out the trend now is to have tanks to fill with ink. Need to do some research.

Almost time for supper. We had nice pasta lunches and side salads at Casa Grill. We will just nibble on the Costco rotisserie chicken (drumsticks and wings) and add a croissant and some carrot sticks. The main work on the chicken will be tomorrow night. I will need to freeze some of the croissants. Per usual, Costco sells big packages of things.

Wood shavings. The sign of a happy busy woodworker. Hope you are busy and happy, too. 

Learning Curve Woes

 My husband and I bought new cell phones about two weeks ago. They are Google Pixel phones. Yes, Google actually manufactures cell phones. This is my first smart phone; before, I just had a little flip phone for emergencies. My husband owned a Samsung Galaxy previously. For both of us it is a learning curve.

I was totally surprised when I opened the Pictures app on my new phone to see photos from my blog. I had no idea I had stored them on Google Pictures. I guess when I used Live Writer rather than the Blogger template when I first started blogging, the photos were put in Google Pictures. Live Writer was discontinued by Microsoft so I was forced to switch to using the Blogger composer. Those are not stored in the cloud.

My husband also found himself staring on his phone at all of these blog photos as well as the few practice photos I took on my new phone. I could see his photos as well. Turns out it is best to use the File app where the images taken by the phone are stored. That way a person isn't looking at all of the photos stored on Google. 

I noticed the photos stored in the Pictures app from my blog had duplicates. I tried cleaning some of them up by removing one of the duplicates to save space. Today my husband told me was deleting my blog photos on his phone. Except of course he wasn't removing them from his phone but from Google Pictures online.

When I went to the early posts of my blog, I found a gray square with a null circle in the middle for most photos. For some reason, a few still retained photos. I had seen this before on the blog of a woman that I read regularly. She had stored her photos on Google. One day she found all of her photos on her blog had turned into these meaningless squares. She was so despondent she was going to quit blogging, but many of her followers convinced her to ignore the past blogs and move on with new posts. 

Tonight I went exploring. Unlike this other blogger left with no pictures, most of my photos are stored on my computer, not just on Google. In fact, that was the only place I thought they appeared. Since between my husband and I we have messed up several hundred photos, it will be a big job to restore them to the affected posts. However, I see there is an album marked Blog on Google Pictures that still seems to retain the photos. Apparently what was "destroyed" was some kind of links on the post from the photos to Google Pictures. And this album mostly has the photos in the order they appeared on my blog. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to "select" all of them at once and download or copy in one fell swoop. I am copying them one-by-one into a Fix-it folder on my computer. Once I have them copied, I will restore a few at a time on the blog posts.

So if for some reason you are looking at my posts before February 2017, you will probably currently see the ugly null square instead of a photo. I apologize. I am working on fixing the problem. I have fixed two posts and it appears deleting and replacing the ugly null square with the saved copies does work.