U is for ukulele

That's right folks........... I play the ukulele (a little) ............I only started this year.

 Today the ukulele is having a resurgence.

It's cross-generational.  

It's important.

 Don't believe it? Do a quick search on YouTube.

There's a lot happening with this four-string, two octave instrument.

 

I'm grateful for the ukulele because it's  

• cheap (I paid $30 for mine)
• fairly simple to learn (also on you tube)
•  a new challenge and
• even the mention of it tends to make people smile (if not simply LOL).

I simply feel happy when I play or hear the ukulele. If it has that effect on you........why not try it yourself?

T is for texting



I think texting is possibly the greatest step forward in communication since the telephone was invented in 1876 and before that, language itself.

With friends and family all over the world, face to face communication is just not possible most of the time. Skype and live messaging are good, but require the internet.

Texting on a mobile phone can be done basically anywhere, and any time these days (although I do draw the line at texting someone who is in the same building as you!)

Even the shortest text to someone says "I'm thinking of you." Making a phone call isn't always simple or easy. Texting is.

Perhaps I'm easily pleased but I'm grateful every time friends and family text me (especially my big sister who has taken to texting an abbreviated form of "good morning" to me in a variety of languages, just to keep me on my toes!).

I still like to spell words out and use punctuation - I'm old school- but I don't mind if others are not.

In fact, here's a list you can text me any time.

 <3                    “sideways heart” (love, friendship)
.02                     my (or your) two cents worth
2EZ                    too easy
2G2BT               too good to be true
^5                       high-five
*s*                     meaning “smile”
*w*                    meaning “wink”

S is for sleep



Life in the middle ages is often associated with an inability to sleep. I am grateful these days for knowing I have had a stint of three or four hours of slumbering bliss as I peer at the clock radio in the early hours of the morning.

I am also grateful for happy dreams and perhaps even more grateful when I wake up from nightmares.

Sleep is essential to good physical and mental health and I read that adults still need 7-9 hours each night.

I hope you enjoy these quotes about sleep.

Sleeping is no mean art:  for its sake one must stay awake all day.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche



Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth




People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.  ~Leo J. Burke


Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.  ~Fran Lebowitz



A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor's book.  ~Irish Proverb


And if tonight my soul may find her peace
in sleep, and sink in good oblivion,
and in the morning wake like a new-opened flower
then I have been dipped again in God, and new-created.
~D.H. Lawrence




Insomnia is a gross feeder.  It will nourish itself on any kind of thinking, including thinking about not thinking.  ~Clifton Fadiman





If people were meant to pop out of bed, we'd all sleep in toasters.  ~Author unknown, attributed to Jim Davis



Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.  ~Thomas Dekker


People who snore always fall asleep first.  ~Author Unknown


The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to.  ~F. Scott Fitzgerald


O bed! O bed! delicious bed!
That heaven upon earth to the weary head.
~Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg - Her Dream


There is no hope for a civilization which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock.  ~Author Unknown


It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.  ~John Steinbeck


Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.  ~Author Unknown




All men whilst they are awake are in one common world:  but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.  ~Plutarch




The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep.  ~E. Joseph Cossman


Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole.
~Samuel Taylor Coleridge




I'm not asleep... but that doesn't mean I'm awake.  ~Author Unknown



The amount of sleep required by the average person is five minutes more.  ~Wilson Mizener

 

R is for radio

R is for radio. I would much rather (if I ever had to choose) live without TV than without radio.

In the middle of the night if I am awake it's the radio that keeps me company. On a plane I can nod off listening to music while movies and TV keep me awake.

Despite the multiple free TV channels I can access now, there is simply nothing to watch most nights. Not so for the radio. The majority of stations do not broadcast repeats of their programs, instead offering a “listen-again” feature accessible online. Many stations also make their programmes available as free downloads in the form of podcasts so you can listen when it suits you.

Radio caters to a wide variety of tastes, from literature to gardening and to all genres of music.  It is informative, intelligent and highly entertaining - an art form in itself.

I can listen to a local, national or international channel depending on the time of day and my mood and interests.

In times of emergency, such as during the flood in Brisbane at the start of the year, the TV screen was replaying dreadful images again and again while the  radio was providing essential information to those affected.

T.V. is also more subject to developing technology than radio. Now there's high-definition and bluray and an even more expensive generation of T.V. viewing is up for grabs: 3D.

In order to keep up with these advances, viewers are forced to purchase new equipment. Not so with radio.

I am grateful for radio. It provides me with all the information I need
http://www.abc.net.au/newsradio/
and a soundtrack to my life.
http://www.mygoldmusic.co.uk/
Long may it prosper.

Q is for quirky

It would be terrible if we were all the same!
I am grateful we're not.

P is for Pockets

Got to be grateful for pockets. Especially in winter!

O is for Oprah

Ok. I hear the collective groan. BUT............  I believe Oprah has done many generous and positive things with her wealth and position of influence.

Did you know............

The business press measures Oprah's wealth in numerous superlatives: the highest-paid performer on television, the richest self-made woman in America, and the richest African-American of the 20th century.

More difficult to calculate is her profound influence over the way people around the world read, eat, exercise, feel and think about themselves and the world around them. She appears on every list of the world's leading opinion-makers, and has been rightly called "the most powerful woman in the world."

Oprah Winfrey's business interests have extended well beyond her own production company. She is one of the partners in Oxygen Media, Inc., a cable channel and interactive network presenting programming designed primarily for women.

With her success, she has also become one of the world's most generous philanthropists. In 2000, Oprah's Angel Network began presenting a $100,000 "Use Your Life Award" to people who are using their own lives to improve the lives of others.

 Over the years, she has also used her program to promote the many philanthropic ventures she supports. After filming a Christmas program in South Africa, she established the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, near Johannesburg.

Her legendary generosity has extended not only to her favorite charities, but to her loyal viewers. She celebrated the beginning of her 20th season on national television by giving every member of the studio audience a brand new Pontiac!

Born to an unwed teenage mother, Oprah Winfrey spent her first years on her grandmother's farm in Mississippi, while her mother looked for work in the North. Life on the farm was primitive, but her grandmother taught her to read at an early age, and at age three Oprah was reciting poems and Bible verses in local churches. Despite the hardships of her physical environment, she enjoyed the loving support of her grandmother and the church community.

Since her book club debuted in 1996,  Oprah — who personally chooses which books to endorse and does not financially benefit — has invited 66 titles into her club. Introducing the first book, The Deep End of the Ocean by first-time novelist Jacquelyn Mitchard, Winfrey told her audience, "When I was growing up, books were my friends. When I didn't have friends, I had books. And one of the greatest pleasures I have right now in life is to be reading a really good book and to know I have a really, really good book after that book to read."

I am grateful for Oprah and all the people like her.