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In this week’s episode of “life is handing out so many lemons there has to be lemonade here somewhere,” also known as Thankful Day, let’s see how many thankful things there are in spite of the sour stuff.
Sweetie wears glasses. He has always, since he was 6 months of age, worn glasses. After many ups and downs, he is legally blind in his right eye, and his left eye sees 20/20 with correction.
He’s a bit of a diva (musician), so his glasses need to be frames we can afford and that he can live with design-wise. He found a pair and ordered them, and the shop was going to reshape his still good glass lenses to fit.
Of course, the nice man doing the work chipped his left lens. The one for his good eye.
We’re thankful he can still see at all in spite of everything that has happened to his vision over the years, thankful he found a pair of frames he likes that we could reasonably afford, thankful the chip is bad enough that the lens has to be replaced but not so bad as to be unusable meanwhile, and glad the shop admitted the chip was their fault and let him order two more pairs of the frames with the new poly-special-whatever lenses instead of glass for their cost. What could have ended up being a $700+ problem (his glass lenses cost a lot) wound up being two pair of really good glasses for under $200. They’ll be in soon, too, they covered for express service.
My good friend DiDreaming has not been feeling very well and received a serious diagnosis. She’s finally home from the hospital, and i’m thankful i’ve been able to set up my work next week so that i can drive down to the coast and visit her for a day. She and i both need it.
Many of you read the Six Sentence Story from Thursday and know about The Baby. There's another thankful, that Baby actually learned, after i'd been going over there for a couple of years, to like me. While she'll be missed, i am thankful she's not suffering any longer.
This brings us to our cat, Horizon the Hider, so called because of his feral and timid nature. He'd been getting thinner and weaker despite all we could do, and Sweetie was especially heartbroken to face it. Horizon was his special cat, but when Horizon was staggering trying to get to the food bowl the other day, even he agreed it was time.
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| Horizon, giving his opinion of the photographer. |
The thankful things are that Sweetie recognized it was time, the vet had a time slot available that i could get to after work, and that Horizon was kept comfortable throughout. The fact that Dr. Bea is going to bury him out on the farm with Badlands Blackie and a few of our other cats is a bonus. Sweetie loves the idea of our cats being where there is grass and a pond and plenty of space.
Yesterday morning, standing by the table getting ready to leave for work, my back "went out," as we say. Suddenly it felt like someone was stabbing an ice pick into my lower back, and i couldn't move. The thankful things are that Sweetie grabbed me a naproxen right away, we had some cold packs in the freezer so i could use one and take some with me to work, and the naproxen and cold packs between them kept me numb enough to do what i needed to do.
A final thankful thing, we've had good weather, which is always icing on the cake.
Please write up your own list and link up to Ten Things of Thankful, where Dyanne and her co-hosts always have a warm welcome waiting.
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Today is:
Abolition Day -- Saint Barthelemy
Cephalopod Awareness Days: Nautilus Night -- celebrating the most intelligent invertebrates in the world; today, celebrate all of the lesser-known extant cephalopods
Community Day -- Valencia, Spain
Curious Events Holiday -- Fairy Calendar
Establishment of the Samitinget in Norway -- Sami People's Parliament
Fall Astronomy Day -- Bringing Astronomy to the People (local astronomical societies, planetariums, museums and observatories sponsor public viewings, presentation, workshops, etc., to increase public awareness of astronomy and our amazing universe)
Saturday at or before the first quarter moon between mid-September and mid-October
sponsored by The Astronomical League; find out what your local astronomy society is doing today, and go enjoy
Feast of Abraham the Patriarch -- Christian
Festival for Fausta Felicitas -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of good luck and joy)
Festival for Venus -- Ancient Roman Calendar
Give Peace a Chance Day / Instant Karma Day -- in honor of the birth of John Lennon
Guayaquil Independence Day -- Ecuador
Independence Day -- Uganda(1962)
Korean Alphabet Day -- Korea (Hangul Nal)
Leif Erickson Day -- Iceland; Norway; Minnesota and Wisconsin, US
Messenger Appreciation Day -- 10/9 in radio talk is a request to repeat information
Moldy Cheese Day (sorry, but i do not like the stinky, moldy cheeses, at least not the heavier ones; if you enjoy them, then by all means you may have my share!)
National Chess Day -- US (declared by President Ford in 1976)
National Day of Honor -- Peru (sometimes translated as Day of Dignity; commemorates the nationalization of the countries' oil fields)
National Submarine/Grinder/Hoagie/Hero/PoBoy/Pierogi Day -- each of these has its own special day, but today you get to pick which one you want
Ruler's Birthday Holiday -- SRW, Malaysia
Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word -- Nashville, TN, US (through Sunday)
St. Denis' Day (Patron of possessed people; France; Paris, France; against frenzy, headaches, rabies, and strife)
St. Dionysius the Areopagite's Day (considered the first Bishop of Athens, mentioned in Acts 17; Patron of Zakynthos Island, Greece; against headaches and the devil)
St. Louis Bertrand's Day (Patron of Caribbean vicariates; Columbia; Dominican novices)
Takayama Matsuri Autumn Festival -- Takayama, Japan (ancient, elaborate floats parade through the old city; through tomorrow)
Universal Music Day -- celebrate music as our universal language
World Post Day / Universal Postal Union Day -- UN
Ziua Nationala de Comemorare a Holocaustului -- Romania (National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust)
Anniversaries Today:
Mission San Francisco de Asis, the oldest building in the city of San Francisco and now called Mission Delores, is founded, 1776
King Louis XII of France marries Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII of England, 1514
Birthdays Today:
Zachary Ty Bryan, 1981
Brandon Routh, 1979
Eddie Guerrero, 1967
David Cameron, 1966
Michael Pare, 1959
Mike Singletary, 1958
Tony Shalhoub, 1953
Scott Bakula, 1954
Sharon Osbourne, 1952
Robert Wuhl, 1951
Jackson Browne, 1948
John Entwistle, 1944
Brian Lamb, 1941
Joe Pepitone, 1940
John Lennon, 1940
Russell Myers, 1938
Donald Sinden, 1923
Jacques Tati, 1908
Bruce, Catton, 1899
Alfred Dreyfus, 1859
Camille Saint-Saens, 1835
Mary Ann Shadd Cary, 1823 (with her husband, the first black newspaper publishers in the US)
Robert de Sorbon, 1201 (founded Sorbonne University, Paris)
Debuting/Premiering Today:
"High Button Shoes"(Musical), 1949
"The Iceman Cometh"(Play), 1946
"June Moon"(Play), 1929
"Topaz"(Play)1928
Today in History:
Leif Ericson discovers "Vinland" (somewhere in New England or Nova Scotia, possibly?), 1000
Leif Ericson lands in L'Anse aux Meadows, Canada, a definitive European landing in the "New World", 1003
The Korean Hangual alphabet is devised, 1446
Founder of Rhode Island Roger Williams is banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a religious dissident after he speaks out against punishments for religious offenses and giving away Native American land, 1635
Collegiate School of CT (Yale University) is chartered in New Haven, 1701
Father Francisco Palou founds Mission San Francisco de Asis in what is now San Francisco, California, 1776
City of Hobart, Tasmania, founded, 1804
Official opening of the University of Ghent, 1817
Isaac Singer patents the sewing machine motor, 1855
Joshua Stoddard of Worcester, Mass., patents the first Calliope, 1855
The first US underground pipeline for carrying oil is laid in Pennsylvania, 1865
Aaron Montgomery starts the mail order business that will later become Montgomery Ward, 1872
The Universal Postal Union is created as part of the Treaty of Berne, 1874
The first 2-way telephone conversation over outdoor wires occurs, 1876
Washington Monument opens to the public, 1888
Woodrow Wilson becomes the first US president to attend a World Series Game, 1915
National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) forms, 1926
Hoover Dam begins transmitting electricity to L.A., 1936
A day after being captured, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia, 1967
The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia, 1970
Abolition of capital punishment in France, 1981
A 13 kilogram (est.) fragment of the Peekskill meteorite lands in the driveway of the Knapp residence in Peekskill, New York, destroying the family's 1980 Chevrolet Malibu, 1992
North Korea allegedly tests its first nuclear device, 2006
First lunar impact of the Centaur and LCROSS spacecrafts as part of NASA's Lunar Precursor Robotic Program, 2009
Women's rights and education activist Malala Yousafzai is shot three times by a Taliban gunman as she tried to board her school bus in Swat district of northwest Pakistan, 2012
Producer Harvey Weinstein is fired from The Weinstein Company after allegations of sexual abuse, 2017
The Nobel Prize for Chemistry is awarded to John B. Goodenough, M. Stanley Whittingham and Akira Yoshino for their work with lithium-ion batteries, Goodenough becoming the oldest-ever Laureate at the age of 97, 2019
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