Birthday cake’s in the bag

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Last weekend, I was feeling industrious so picked up a box of cake mix in the supermarket. I don’t normally buy these things. Having worked in hotels all my life, sweet treats were available whenever. And at the last place I worked, I would have been guaranteed to get a cake…..chocolate. Here’s last year’s version.

Chocolate Cake with a nutty coating. Yum!

Chocolate Cake with a nutty coating. Yum!

Ok, so my camera wasn’t very good.

I should have said cakeS, because there was a second one baked by a friend.

Another delicious cake, this time with coffee.

Another delicious cake, this time with coffee.

Since I no longer have the hotel option, I thought I’d bake my own cake. But why so early Yamfoot? Well, this weekend I might not have felt like baking.

Duncan Hines really is moist!

Duncan Hines really is moist!

There was a lil crack in the cake. Guess I didn’t grease the pan enough. I decided to make a layered cake, but did not buy frosting because that would have been just too much sugar. So I whipped up some yogurt with frozen blueberries. Here’s the remnants of that mixture.

My low sugar version of frosting

My low sugar version of frosting

When I was whipping up the frosting, I realized that as it was yogurt based, it couldn’t stay outside. So I cut up the cake in smaller pieces, wrapped each in foil and they are resting comfortably in the freezer. That was also a measure to prevent me from eating all at once!

In a few days, I will be whipping out one of the packages and saying “happy birthday to meeeeeeeeeeeeee”. Look on the sidebar to see when’s the birthday. Usually I don’t work on my birthday but no choice this year. I will probably be at a business lunch, so not too bad.

I didn’t want to gamble….

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….and I was selfish.

This came up in conversation this past week so it reminded me that I had promised to put my thoughts to paper. What am I talking about? The decision not to have kids. It was very clear to me early on in life that this was not something I would want, for two reasons. I was selfish and I didn’t want to gamble.

For the selfish part, once you have children, your life is (mostly) no longer your own. Any decision would have to include them and in all likelihood, the decision would not have been 100% what I wanted. (Same reason there is no husband.) I only wanted to have to consider one person during the chase for happiness. 

Continue reading →

From The Archives

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I’ve had the blog since 2003. It’s somewhere sleeping, hopefully to be revived. In the mean time, I have had fun going through old posts. How did I get to find out I could do this? Through that very useful website Digital Inspiration! Using the Wayback Machine, you can find old posts, if they were captured. So if you have lost a website, go look up old webpages through this Internet Archive website. Here is a page from the blog in 2005. I thought the Brian Lara post was quite funny. Take a read.

Here’s why GoDaddy is behind Bluehost

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So, per my previous post, I am transferring a domain name from GoDaddy to Bluehost. I am having difficulty, so I sign up for GoDaddy Chat. The Service Rep seems like she is tearing out her hair to figure out why I cannot get through with what I need to get through with.  Then she makes the cardinal error by exposing to the customer – me – weaknesses in her company’s systems.

Here is part of the convo…. Continue reading →

Choose Bluehost

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I was introduced to Bluehost at a bootcamp I went to hosted by Internet Income Jamaica. Before that, I had only heard about Go Daddy. Those Danica Patrick ads came into my email In Box and on my (foreign) TV channels.

Bluehost

So when the tutors said we would be signing up with Bluehost to host the website we were building, I thought “I hope this is not no dibby-dibby small town hosting company”. Well, from that very day, I encountered difficulty. I had already owned several domain names and wanted to use one of them instead of registering yet another. THAT presented a problem.

Enter Bluehost’s terrific support team to ease my frustrations. First, they have online chat, which really is online and instant. I like to ask MANY MANY questions. The fella was quite patient and was very clear in his reply. This was on Superbowl Sunday by the way. There were several email exchanges afterwards. Credit card verification was required and I wondered how the dickance I was going to find a scanner. Fella said “take a picture of it with your phone and email it”. Now why didn’t I think of that!

Since then, I have had one or two reasons to ask them questions and it has always been the same.

Now, I am about to transfer Yamfoot from Go Daddy and I went on to Bluehost and they have a “Walk Me Through” feature where you click on this button and they literally take you step by step. Sure, there are written instructions and video instructions but for my brain, it’s much easier to understand somebody showing me step by step what to do.

So, if you are wanting to create your own website and don’t want to use one of the free services because maybe you want to monetize it, then I wholeheartedly recommend Bluehost especially because of their Support Service. Well done!

***meanwhile, back at the Go Daddy ranch, I’m waiting on Danica’s people to email me a code so I can drive on over to Bluehost. Wouldn’t have this much of a wait were I transferring from Bluehost I am sure.***

I didn’t want to gamble

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This post will deal with some thoughts I have had for a while. Gotta think about it some more. Check back.

Preparing for interviews

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Over the 11 years that I have been interviewing cricketers, I have used several approaches to prepare for one-on-one interviews.

For persons like Lawrence Rowe, I spent MANY days preparing. This was because I knew nothing about him, other than what was said about him in the media for going to South Africa. When he was playing, I didn’t used to like cricket. Hated it in fact. (That’s another story). So I approached the research like I was doing a project for my Masters.

Around that time, I decided I would start watching the U-19 cricketers so that when they got to the West Indies level, I knew something about them and it wouldn’t take so much time. Xavier Marshall was one such cricketer and when he got to the West Indies team, albeit that his was a short tenure, I felt I knew enough about his history not to have to do so much research.

But sometimes, there is literally no time to prepare. Like yesterday…… Continue reading →

What a lovely coincidence!

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I had a query with the bank and called the toll free number where I spoke with someone in the call centre. After describing the situation, I was put through to someone in my branch. The fella explained the process and gave me a time frame within which the matter would have been sorted out.

When I was ending the call, I said to him “and please tell Mr XYZ I said hello”. To my surprise, he said “I am Mr XYZ”. The backstory….

…One day, several years ago, I was transacting business with him when he was a teller. Somehow, as I tend to do, I started to ask him about life and if the job was fulfilling and what he had done before working at the bank. Turns out that he did Art. I urged him to make time for those activities. I think he must have said “no time.” Every time after that when I went in, I would check in with him and remind him about the Art. Then I didn’t see him any more. Asked for him and heard he got a promotion so he was “upstairs”.

….Today he gave me an update on what he had been doing on the side and how he found out what he really liked to do in that area. So a nice coincidence to start my day today. I told him that last time I had to go to a Teller, I asked for him and told her to tell him hello. He said they must have eaten the message because it sure didn’t reach to him.

Moral of the story? Have interactions with random people. Humanize the interaction.

I’m A Dreamer

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I’m a Dreamer, but not in the sense implied in this song (which is an awesome addition to any gym music playlist by the way).  Most nights when I close my eyes to sleep, I dream. Sometimes it’s a dream with one theme; at other times, it’s several vignettes which may or may not have interlocking themes. And my dreams are always in colour.

This is the most recent edition, and it’s the vignette variety. I jotted them down as I woke up this morning, otherwise as the day wears on, I forget. Completely.

Denya Is A Fraud

Continue reading →

Holy Toledo!!!

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At the Hardware store this morning, I saw this scale.

Yikes!!!!!

Yikes!!!!!

Scales are not my friend.

These two cartoons say it all.

scale2                                                                            scale3

I didn’t cry or curse when I stepped on the scale this morning. I just said

“Holy Toledo!!!!!!!!”