Random 5 for April 17 – Memories, restaurants, classes, inspiration, bloggers

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Jake: I miss you too Cupcake. The bar is open 24/7 and the 'nip martini is fabulous!

Jake: I miss you too Cupcake. The bar is open 24/7 and the ‘nip martini is fabulous!

Reverie –I came across one of Jake’s old insulin pens in my desk. (Jake is my dearly loved deceased cat.) I ordered insulin pens on-line so I kept an old one in my drawer to check against the order. It’s been seven months and I was surprised how much emotion I felt. RIP good buddy.

Dining out – Locally Friday nights are the biggest nights for restaurants — more so than Saturdays. Most places (the casual ones) no longer take reservations. It’s often hard to get a table and if you do, the service isn’t quick and disappointment hovers nearby. It’s becoming my hard and fast rule – Never on a Friday!

School days – I rarely take classes and rarely teach classes but both are happening during April. The classes I am taking have a different instructor every week. I will be looking critically at their performance as well as their material. Maybe I could learn something new.

Muse – Over the next few weeks I will spend time with someone who has always been a muse to me. When I was active in the Toastmasters organization, I could spend five minutes with her and come up with a dozen speaking topics. I am hoping her influence includes blog topics.

Follow me – Some of the blog formats don’t have a “follow me” button that I can find. Note to bloggers: if I can’t easily find the button, I won’t follow you. WordPress took the easy one off the top menu so I have to rely on you to put a widget or whatever on your blog.

So how was your week?

 

46 thoughts on “Random 5 for April 17 – Memories, restaurants, classes, inspiration, bloggers”

  2. I really do understand what it feels like to find reminders of Jake and then to feel that sinking feeling of loss. For a couple of years after our dog was gone I’d find a little milk bone hidden somewhere. She had the habit of hiding them “for later” and each time I’d find one I’d feel that sense of loss. They really are our lifelong friends. I think it’s wonderful that you have a mentor who inspires you. Toastmasters is a great organization! You are just full of surprises, Kate. 🙂

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  3. Here’s one of my “Life’s great truths” – Never trust people who don’t love animals. Your love of Jake, and all the emotions that still brings just solidifies why I enjoy your blog. You are “good people” as they say! Your kitty love makes me smile!

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  4. Thinking happy Jake thoughts for you. Can’t believe it’s been seven months. That can’t be right (but, of course, it has to be right). Time is such a strange little creature. Rushing forward at times, and at other times, crawling in slow motion. I love it that “Jake” and “shenanigans” belong in the same sentence. Of course, for me, “Jake” and “Mr. Beautiful Boy” have always been linked. Although I’m sure he would prefer “shenanigans”.

    Just this week I’ve bumped across a couple of new blogs that I would have liked to follow, but no matter how much I poked and lifted up rocks, I couldn’t figure out how to follow their page. So then I do a screen save … problem is, I never seem to get back around to trying to track them down again. Especially new bloggers, who very likely don’t know (yet) how to add a FOLLOW button to their widget bar. Either blogging needs to get easier for everyone, or I need to quit getting old(er). Heck, as it is, I can’t keep up with the number of blogs I’m already following. Never mind ever having time to write on my own blog. But every now and then, I just decide to stop everything for a bit, and write something. Reading has become much more fun these days. I think my brain is better able to absorb, than produce, if that makes sense.

    As for that “never on Friday” thing about restaurants — no kidding, Kate. Heck, I don’t even like DRIVING on Friday afternoons anymore. Everyone (understandably) in a big hurry to start their weekend. It’s like traffic on steroids. A bit more aggressive and pumped up, and not always very friendly. I’m better off staying at home, especially since I’m probably the one going too slow that is aggravating the hell out of everyone else. Friday nights? Home. Almost always. 🙂

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    • Sometimes WordPress does some things that seem nice and then they take something I like away. Or maybe they hide it in a new place. Go figure! Yay for home on Fridays (maybe with a pizza!).

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  5. Kitties have a way of being with us forever. I think of all of our cats pretty much daily and they always pop up in our conversations. We tend to eat lunch out, I am not much for eating dinner out because.. the wait and noise, children. Going to have lunch out today!

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    • We have pizza lunch more than we eat out usually. I agree with you about the noise though. Love when it’s not crowded but then the restaurant isn’t prospering. I am often the kiss of death. When I like a place, it closes.

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      • Remind me if I ever decide to open a restaurant who NOT to invite to the grand opening. J/K, of course. That’s a bit like finally finding the perfect shade of lipstick (like my mother did), and then it got discontinued (which sent me scavenging back alley nickle and dime stores to find her color). All I can say is thank goodness for ebay. It saved me from having to have her color reproduced. It’s funny … I was trying to remember the number, but I can’t even remember the brand now (much less the number). Guess it is no longer required in the memory bank, with it being close to seven years that she’s been gone. But really, I never thought I’d forget that number. Made me smile.

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  6. I love your weekly randoms Kate and in this one I so relate to the pain that comes from almost anything that triggers memories of a beloved pet. I am now seriously thinking of volunteering at our local SPCA. The problem is, I will probably come home with a cat or a dog or two or three.

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    • I was turned away by our local SPCA. The weren’t looking for cat volunteers, just dog walkers. As I left the place (and there are other rescues I would volunteer for) I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to be there for any length of time. The smell was awful.

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  7. A packed restaurant reminds me of that old Yogi Berra line, “No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” We don’t go out to eat much (mostly a financial choice), but when we do it tends to be only when visitors come or we’ll do appetizers and drinks will sitting at a bar. We’re gearing up for an overnight trek, though, and I am looking forward to the eating out component of it. 🙂

    I like it when bloggers have a search widget too. Sometimes I’ll try to find a post someone wrote a while back, and if they have no search availability it becomes nearly impossible other than scrolling through their site.

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    • Yes I like that too. Some had asked me about something another blogger posted. I had a hard time finding it. When I go out with the girls, we will do drinks and appys too or we’ll split entrees. My husband likes his full meal though. Enjoy your trip.

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  8. I see you stole your Random Five back. Sorry about your cat. I have a little picture gallery of my departed pets – even Gina the B made it in there. I still miss all of them.
    What do you teach?

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  9. We rarely go out to dinner… and almost never on a weekend night. A retirement bonus is that a Tuesday night can be a weekend night for us! Thanks for the “follow me” heads up! I think most of us don’t realize what might be missing – or made easier – on our sites. I’ll re-check mine now.

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  11. Oh, Jake. It’s so hard to endure those memories that seem to come out of nowhere and cause us pain. I think it takes a long time before we can remember mostly the happy stuff, but that will come.
    We eat out only mid-week for lunch now. Friday night has become our favorite stay-in night. Yup, we’re geezers!

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  13. RIP little buddy! When I’m on a WP site, I usually see a little follow icon pop up in the bottom right corner as I’m scrolling on the page (like I do on yours and it already says I’m following). I wonder if some WP users deactivate that option.

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    • I just looked for that on another blogger’s site. On my screen it bounces around and I’m not sure I’ve really noticed it before. I will have to go back to those bloggers I tried to follow this week and see if that’s the answer.

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        • I just tried it again on the person I tried to add earlier today, and it worked. Sure enough, when I scrolled down, there was nothing there. But when I reversed directions, and scrolled up, then it popped up on the bottom ride side of the screen.

          After you click Follow (the + sign next to the word Follow), then you have to go to your Reader (top left of the screen) and click on Manage, and a list of all the sites you are following pops up. If you want to receive a notification in your email any time someone posts something new, then you also have to click on that option, and to activate it, you click the button from the default (off) and you choose “on”. Then you’ll receive an email notification whenever that person posts something new. You can choose “immediately” or “daily” or “weekly”. Some people prefer to just follow their Reader for new posts, as opposed to actually receiving an email with the blogger’s name and the title of their post.

          Anyway, thanks for sharing the information about the Follow button only showing up after you click on their name / link, and that you have to scroll down, and then back UP, in order for the follow button to appear. Dumb bunch of hoops to jump through, but hey, it works. And thanks again for sharing the info.

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          • I know we’ll get used to it but it sure sounds complicated. I manage the blogs I follow. Most I get the email but there are a few on the fringes that I just get in my Reader. Too little time to read everything. Thanks for you comment on the follow button.

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  15. Whew! Glad I already had you as a follower before button-geddon. I know what you mean, though. There are a few blogs where I literally cannot figure out how to subscribe or follow. So I check back every so often and miss all kinds of stuff. Then catching up is demoralizing and you feel stupid commenting on old stuff.

    Timing is everything, right? And the internet — especially Twitter — is all about knowing when the moment is gone.

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  17. Awe Jake..of course you miss him, he was like your son. And seven months is nothing. Talk to me in five years. Then maybe your heart, though epoxied, will have somehat recovered.

    I only go to lunch these days because of my hearing loss. Dinner noise has become just too painful, like dining in a hive. Most people eat home at lunch so it’s great when you and your linguine have a whole place to yourself.

    Nice to have a muse…it’s so Greek 🙂

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    • I have a lot of trouble with noise in some restaurants. It’s part of why we like weekdays and early. As more restaurants move towards no carpeting or drapes, the noise amps up. It’s like dining in a buzz saw joint.

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  18. Jake will always be locked in your heart, Kate . . . I mean, Cupcake.

    We avoid eating out on Fridays and Saturdays ~ too crowded and noisy. We usually avoid eating out Sunday -Thursday as well. Except for picking up a pizza to go. I enjoy eating at home ~> I know WHO prepared the food and HOW it was prepared.

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    • I enjoy eating out. We have some great restaurants locally. There is a Mexican one (I rarely cook Mexican at home) and also a Chinese one we like. I can do Italian at home but every once in a while……

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  19. It was nice hearing Jake calling you ‘cupcake’ again! He could not have asked for a better treat than to have you in his life. You gave him his “tenth” life!

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