First the greeting - and that is to all my blogging friends in the United States : Happy Thanksgiving Day. One of the most enjoyable elements of blogging is being part of an international community : a United Nations of the keyboard. There is something rather pleasing about discovering the people, places, holidays and cultures of countries outside our immediate knowledge. Ah, if only blogging had have been around in 1914.
The challenge comes from the blog of Gerald Gee (and he lives down in the south of England which more than illustrates my previous point). Last night, in addition to posting one of his cartoons (and they are the type of cartoon which illustrate that the internet slang "LOL" can have a literal meaning) he threw out a challenge - to reveal our current computer desktops. My current background image (I change it about once a week) is a picture I took from the bottom of the drive to my niece's house in Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. It was early one morning when The Lad and I had got up early to beat the heat.
And finally let me leave you with a piece of advice. Yesterday the GLW and I were booked in at the doctors to get our various inoculations in advance of our January holiday. My advice is - never go to get your holiday injections accompanied by a Consultant in Infectious Diseases. The GLW and the Practice Nurse had a detailed discussion based upon our intended itinary and the likelihood of us cutting ourselves on a cactus bush, finishing up in a jungle hospital or kissing a rabid dog and it was decided - with the minimum of input from me - that she just needed a tetanus booster whilst I needed an armful of almost every vaccine currently doing the rounds. "Oh I think there was a case of dengue fever a couple of years ago in St Lucia", "Oh was there, you had better give him that", "and there is always the every-present danger of Chagas disease", "Absolutely, better to be safe than sorry" ... the 20 minute consultation went something like that. This morning I can hardly move my arms they are so painful and swollen.
And thus, to my friends in America, I say that I would like to help you celebrate Thanksgiving Day by raising a glass and toasting your continued health and well-being. I would like to, but unfortunately my arm aches too much.
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GERALDGEE : A great painter, a great cartoonist, a great photographer and a great blogger.
MAN AND INSTRUMENT IN PERFECT HARMONY : From the News From Nowhere archives - for no other reason than when I searched for Tortola it came up with this.
Looks like you got first prize!
ReplyDeletegreetings and thanks for the compliments.
Alan, the exercise of lifting is guaranteed to have beneficial effects. Made a comment on your other blog ref 8GB.
ReplyDeletethanks for the warm wishes...and i would raise a glass with you any day!
ReplyDeletemy desktop is rather plain...hmm...
Alan! Thank you so much for Thanksgiving day wishes. And I do hope your arm(s) is/are better soon. GLW must really care about you. I will post my current desktop photo as soon as I can locate it.
ReplyDeleteOh poor thing. And you probably won't even see a cactus or a rabid dog! I'm taking up the screen challenge too.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness, you visited a person who took their job way too seriously. Those shots really hurt. We are inoculating all the children over here for h1n1 and thus only the old people are losing their lives. It sounds like I want the children to go, but it it isn't that. We are not giving shots to those who are needing it most. We have over 300 million people over here, and they are bragging that they have inoculated 20 million. I guess I won't have to worry about getting that shot as we survive the flu back in August. Get your camera ready to go as I want to vacation with you.
ReplyDeleteYou are one witty character, Alan.
ReplyDeleteI have a severe phobia of needles, so I'm not taking your advice lightly, believe me.
I will post the desktop soon, but I've just put up a new poem, so if you don't mind, perhaps I'll add it to Saturday's Sepia post which, by the way, I'll be able to do on schedule since my mom's flight doesn't get in until 5:00 in the afternoon (I was looking at her flight# which is 1245!)
Oh, forgot to mention (I do tend to ramble on) that YOUR desktop is cool!
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the Paludrine and salt tablets.
ReplyDeleteDear Alan,
ReplyDeleteMy desktop photo is one of flowers. It came with the computer.
I'm sorry you've an arm full of vaccines at the moment. In had a doc who once advised that the regular flu vaccine places an unnecessary burden on the immune system, so no need getting it unless one is high risk...Now, though, with H1N1, I'm not so sure. I sympathise as I grew up in the tropics and was innoculated regularly for a host of diseases found in the Americas.
Thanks for the good wishes for this holiday, and I hope that arm feels better soon. I'm a bit behind on reading posts at the moment but promise to catch up.