My favorite musical group of all time is (if you know me, you know this already) Jethro Tull. Now that I’ve reached my 60th year (hey, my retired friends think I’m a youngster, but I feel like I’ve reached an important milestone!), I’m doing some reminiscing. I listened to a CD the other day, and this song played. I Googled the title and I found this link, where Ian Anderson plays it with a group of musicians…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE8YLPHZImw

And here’s a link to the lyrics…

http://www.metrolyrics.com/life-is-a-long-song-lyrics-jethro-tull.html

Enjoy!

My back! My aching back! That’s been my story since early December. Things got worse until Christmas. I missed some services at church. Finally, I went to a walk-in clinic (twice). Got some medications, one of which worked. Finally got to see my doctor early in the new year. Prescribed physiotherapy. I’ve been going for the last couple of weeks. Doing exercise to strengthen core muscles. Seems to be helping — slowy. I definitely have a lot more empathy for people with ongoing health problems and chronic pain. Heading back to physio in a few minutes. Will let you know how it goes.

Here’s a photo of what Kathleen and I were up to last night. It was our monthly games night at Mount Olive. The group you see was playing Train Dominoes. A good time was had by all!

Behold, the new essexcresent! Thanks to son-in-law Tom for getting everything working. One my new year’s resolutions is to blog at least once a week. Kathleen and I agreed that essexcrescent is to take on a new form as a Terry and Kathleen site, with news from both of us. Stay tuned.

I’m still here. Haven’t blogged for a long time. Sorry. Just couldn’t get motivated. I guess that means many things have been going on and I’m preoccupied with other things. I haven’t read a book for a long time. That’s another sign that my life is in transtion, because I normally always have a good book on the go.

Since late August, I’ve been going to the gym at the University of Regina 2 or 3 times a week. Treadmill, elliptical, walking the track, rowing machine. I’ve really enjoyed it.  A whole new thing for me. Not sure why I didn’t do it 20 years earlier, but better late than never.

And then there’s the cell phone saga. The unlocked Samsung smartphone I bought in January 2009 turned out to be a dud. The firmware was a nightmare. Support for an unlocked phone is nonexistent. Big investment. Tiny benefit. After updating the software (a story in itself!) I sold the phone in early September for $250. And then got a  BlackBerry Bold 9000. What a difference! Does everything I want AND IT WORKS! Not some of the time. ALL OF THE TIME!

Lately, I’ve switched from Vista to Windows 7. Vista was a nightmare, especially for drivers, specifically USB drivers. Thumb drives not recognized. GPS device not recognized. Everything worked on the Dell Win XP laptop, by the way, but not on Vista. My review of Windows 7 is mixed. GPS still isn’t recognized. BlackBerry is recognized sometimes. Ho hum! Windows 7 is quicker. Starts up faster. But doesn’t live up to the hype, in my opinion.

… to be continued…

This is our newest acquisition, sitting in our driveway. I took the photo with my cellphone. It’s a 2010 Camry LE. We sold our beloved 2001 Camry back in May. We have already put almost 7000 kilometers on this one. Very solid, quiet vehicle. It gets 34 miles per gallon around town and 44 on the highway.

This has been a baseball summer for Kathleen and myself. We bought season tickets for our local Western Major Baseball League team, the Regina Red Sox. We’ve been at the ballpark more than once a week since May. Our team’s final game of the season was last night. We traveled twice to Moose Jaw to watch our team play. We also traveled to Melville. We’re going to miss it. But there’s always next year! 

These arrived today from Joel and Jasmine for Kathleen.

Well, we’ve decided to see our beloved 2001 Camry. It’s been the best car we’ve ever had — bar none! But, with 185,000 km and at 8 years, it’s time to move on. This time around, we live in a larger community and selling it privately shouldn’t be a problem. Stay tuned!