There is just no helping my younger brother. After he got home last evening from wherever it was that he had been drinking, he soon had installed himself in his favourite chair in the living room and issued unto me with a growl the directive, "Put on something interesting."
I had the news channel playing that we can receive on our T.V.'s basic cable package, whereas we use our T9 Android 8.1 TV Box to watch episodes of the T.V. series that we follow.
That Android TV Box allows us access to such a wealth of T.V. series that no one who has not experienced such a device is able to appreciate what they can provide when the device has the proper applications ("apps") installed within it.
For T.V. series, the app I most prefer is called Titanium TV; but there are a few others that I also have installed that appear comparable. I tend to adhere to Titanium TV because these apps can each 'remember' where it was that the user left off in any specific series that is being followed ─ but each app will only do so for shows watched through that specific app.
Thus, since we follow perhaps a hundred or more T.V. series, I cannot possibly recall just where in a series I had last watched an episode ─ Titanium TV will reveal that to me.
But if I am jumping around using different apps at whim every time I am watching T.V. shows, then the whole purpose of this fabulous memory feature is lost ─ each app will only remember where it was that the last episode of a series had been watched on that specific app.
So it only makes sense to stick with one app for as long as it keeps finding the episodes being sought.
Sometimes Titanium TV will let me down if the series is an older one, and I will then have to try one of the other apps to see if any one them can come up with a functioning source.
It does not commonly happen, but every once in a very long while it will happen ─ Titanium TV will fail to find a valid working source. And almost invariably, the other apps will also fail...but not quite always. So they are in our Android TV Box as fallbacks.
My younger brother does not know how to operate our Android TV Box, so that is my role.
Well, early into the very first episode of one of our shows, he began falling in and out of consciousness. Often he was just sitting there with his eyes closed.
I wanted to wash my hands of the evening and turn off the device so that I could freely go upstairs and eventually get to bed, but I needed for him to pass right out.
He teased me until the episode was at least half done, but my chance finally arrived when his head sank and he began snoring.
I turned the T.V. volume low, turned off the device, and switched the T.V. over to basic cable to leave as my brother's company for the rest of the evening.
I now cannot recall just when it was that I got to bed, but it was after 9:30 p.m., but before 10:00 p.m.
As always when I expect that my wife will be arriving home sometime later on after her long day working in her friend's Thai restaurant, it can be difficult relaxing enough to fall asleep.
Nevertheless, sleep did finally come.
I slept intermittently until I finally decided to check the time because I felt somewhat refreshed ─ it was 1:26 a.m., and I was still alone in bed.
I rose and dressed; and upon opening the bedroom door, I was just in time to see the dining room light go on downstairs ─ at least one other light was also on downstairs.
My youngest stepson is typically up much of the night, so lights do tend to be on downstairs. However, the only reason that the dining room light would get turned on would be if someone was about to sit at the table and have something to eat.
My youngest stepson does not do that ─ he eats at his computer, or else while lying in bed watching a movie or something. Thus, I correctly concluded that my wife was having a pre-bedtime meal she must have prepared for herself.
Anon I heard her speaking in Thai to her youngest ─ the eldest lad usually has to rise early for work, so he would have long since gone to bed.
I didn't go downstairs at that time. Instead, I came here to my computer, which is kept in a small room next to my bedroom. I wanted to complete the post I have been working on since the start of the month at one of my six hosted websites ─ in this case, Thai-Iceland.
I have no idea how long my wife had been home by that time, but she did not waste too much more time before coming upstairs to clean up before going to bed.
She asked me if I noticed the 300-ml bottle of Hong Thong (rum) that she had left out for me when she went to work that morning? ─ she had brought it back with her from her recent holiday back to Thailand to visit her mother for something over a month.
I of course had noticed it ─ I included a couple of photos of the "half bottle" (as that size is called) in yesterday's post.
My website work was to keep me occupied until the night was fading out, but I got the job done ─ the post finally got published: Iceland Plate Tectonics.
My youngest stepson had gone to bed a couple or so hours earlier. My own bedtime was just after 5:00 a.m.
No matter how carefully I try to enter the bedroom and sneak into bed, my wife always stirs. It is as if she is hardly ever soundly asleep, and it makes me feel bad for her.
I had eaten nothing during the time I was up, nor did I have any coffee. Yet sleep was extremely difficult to find. A large part of that was because my body temperature had evidently dropped, and the bedding was unable to help me gain a fully comfortable elevation of body heat.
I only ever managed a series of brief naps, and I never did warm up. I was awake enough just after 8:00 a.m. to be making a check of the time, but I stalled until well after 8:30 a.m. before getting up.
My brother had not yet emerged from his bedroom, but he was apparently set to ─ I was downstairs boiling water for my morning's first hot caffeinated beverage when he appeared with an armload of laundry he was going to wash.
I took my hot beverage upstairs here to my computer, and was whiling away some time when ─ not much after 9:00 a.m. ─ my wife emerged from our bedroom.
And she was up to stay. Normally she does not rise until around 10:00 a.m. on those days when she has an 11:00 a.m. start at her friend's restaurant.
When I enquired of her early appearance, she allowed that she wanted to do some cooking. In other words, she was sacrificing her time in bed in order to prepare a couple of dishes for the household to enjoy later.
By the way, when I rose in the early a.m., it was raining outside. Everything was still very wet when my wife left for work ─ with her youngest son. Apparently she was taking him to work first ─ he works about a mile from where we live, but in the direction opposite from which my wife would need to be driving to get herself to work.
By this time I was in the living room with my brother ─ I usually join him at 10:00 a.m. during the workweek to put our Android TV Box to use.
The first show I summoned for us was that episode that I had cancelled out of last evening. I could have allowed the app to commence playing the episode from where I had left off (another of the app's features), but I opted to restart it entirely.
We were to watch an episode each of two other series thereafter, by which time it was around 12:40 p.m., and my brother was ready to seek some bed rest ere taking off for the afternoon.
I also wanted a nap, so I soon enough also returned to my bed. However, I only managed to be down for about an hour before next checking the time and getting myself up.
My brother had not yet left ─ evidently the arrival of the day's mail had kept him from heading away straight off, for the front door was left open despite the rather cool day.
But before too very long, I was finally home alone.
The afternoon had more sunshine than I had expected to be seeing after the weather conditions of the early part of the day.
I had some backyard toolshed exercising scheduled for today, but earlier I had been too hungry, weak, and tired to essay them before my early afternoon nap, and so I had a small meal before lying down.
Consequently, when I weighed myself dressed exactly as I would be while exercising, i was delighted to find that I registered at around 193 pounds. Today I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, whereas yesterday I had been in cutoffs and a tank top and weighed the same ─ but on an empty stomach.
I was expecting to be rather shocked at the additional weight I would have to be hauling up and down during the full pull-ups section of the exercising.
My eldest stepson was home from work by this time, so when I had exercised and seen that the sky was remarkably clear and sunny, I opted to spend some time slouched low in a deckchair or lawn-chair, and my bared feet on the ground.
I put in at least 22 minutes, by which time it had become 5:00 p.m. I had to get back into the house to continue working on this post; otherwise, I could have remained out there for some while longer.
To completely change topics now, I want to say that as a 69-year-old, I do not feel myself likely to ever develop any sort of age-related dementia such as Alzheimer's disease.
Nevertheless, it is definitely possible ─ perhaps likely ─ that I have one or more types of viruses lying more or less dormant within me. I think everyone does.
This article I recently read concerning the properties of a certain plant was initially interesting, for it sounds as if the plant may be beneficial in terms of Alzheimer's disease treatment and as a viricide; but the article concluded rather disappointingly by not offering any suggestions on just how much of the plant to actually use. Instead, it recommended consultation with a knowledgeable "naturopathic doctor."
HSIonline.com
Wikipedia has some related information and much more concerning tansy (Tanacetum vulgare).
This is also a rather good article about the plant's health benefits:
- NaturalFoodSeries.com: 11 Amazing Benefits of Tansy Essential Oil.
The first article mentioned research published in 2011 relating to tansy's apparent ability to overcome the herpes simplex virus ─ this article from 2011 backs that up:
- ScienceDaily.com: Tansy may be used to treat herpes, study suggests
As for Alzheimer's disease, research is still being wasted on rodents instead of trying to see if actual humans with the disease can be helped ─ I located the follow research published in 2016:
- NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov: Neuroprotective Effects of Herbal Extract (Rosa canina, Tanacetum vulgare and Urtica dioica) on Rat Model of Sporadic Alzheimer’s Disease
I didn't exactly understand what "sporadic Alzheimer's disease" was, so did some research and found that it is merely the most common form ─ the following quote is from an article titled Alzheimer's disease at Dementia.org.au:
Sporadic Alzheimer's disease can affect adults at any age, but usually occurs after age 65 and is the most common form of Alzheimer's disease.Familial Alzheimer’s disease is a very rare genetic condition, caused by a mutation in one of several genes. The presence of mutated genes means that the person will eventually develop Alzheimer's disease, usually in their 40's or 50's.
I intended to delve into one other health-related topic, but my evening is nigh and I would like to do a wee bit of preparatory work on a brand new post that I wish to begin creating as soon as possible at another of my six hosted websites ─ as said earlier, Thai-Iceland is one of six that I have in operation, so I wish to work on one of the other five websites.
I will close with the following two photos that I can offer no detail concerning, except to say that they were taken early in June 2018 when my wife was en route to visit one of her sisters who tends to live in Italy.
My wife had never flown anywhere before except the back-and-forth trips between here and Thailand where her mother is, so going to Europe was enormous for her ─ I haven't even been to Europe!
The date embedded into the photos by the Canon PowerShot SD870 IS digital camera she used has June 4, 2018 registered as the date the photos were taken, but that is uncertain on a few counts.
For one thing, the camera's date setting may not have been manually adjusted to account for the most recent time change here in the Pacific Time Zone that we fall under here in Surrey, B.C.
Also, I have no idea what airport the photo was taken at ─ my wife could have been in an entirely different time zone when she took the two photos of what must have been an aquarium.
Anyway, here are the two images:
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