Typing Wars?

I came across this fun online typing game called Qwerty Warriors or Word Shoot. It helps improve your typing speed and requires no download or installation to your computer.

To play you type the word that appears below each enemy (cartoon tanks, army men, etc.) Press enter to fire. If you typed the word correctly, the enemy is killed and you get points. If not, you can try again but hurry before the enemy shoots you! I know it sounds a tad violent, but I promise no one gets hurt - it's just typing!

A couple of hints: As you play you will figure out how you can use the fullhealth and detonate tools that are sometimes available for you. Also, a couple of the "enemies" look like misspelled words. In order to kill them you must spell them the way they are spelled on the screen even if it's a misspelling.

There are multiple levels of difficulty. Start where you feel comfortable. Warning - this game can be addictive. Would anyone like to challenge my score on the "Medium" difficulty level of 104610 points and 97% accuracy?

Click here, then click the "PLAY" link on the other site to play. (Do not click on the monkey's face - you could get lost.)

Broke a Tooth

At the beginning of the year I sat down with my dentist and did a little budget planning. We figured out which tooth it was most important for me to get a crown on this year and which one could wait until next year and which one might need a crown the year after that. One crown a year - all planned out.

I scheduled my first appointment for yesterday - February 6th. On Sunday (two days before the appointment) I broke a different tooth on a soft sandwich! I spent the two hours in the chair yesterday having the prep work done for a crown on the tooth that got broken. That means the tooth I had planned to get done will have to wait until the broken one is completed. Since each crown requires two appointments that will be 4 dental appointments in a short period of time.

I tried arguing that the newly broken tooth could wait, but the dentist pointed out that if the other side of the tooth breaks too that could mean I would need a root canal. Of course we can't have that, so I had to let them go ahead with this new plan. Although it was a bit of a "pain" to spend two hours in the chair, the bigger pain will come in my wallet later.

It may be time to give serious consideration to calcium supplements.

Superbowl Commercials

Are you a football fan? If so I'm sure you are glued to the set today, Superbowl Sunday. Since the Seahawks aren't in it this year I have to say I'm not such a huge fan that I have to watch the Superbowl. I do find the commercials enjoyable, though.

Today presented a dilemma for me. I had some things to get done away from the set, but I didn't want to miss the Superbowl commercials. It looked like I would just have to wait and see if they repeated the commercials in a TV special as they have done in past years.

But guess what! I found out you can go here on the web and view the commercials online at your leisure. Check it out if you missed them. Some are pretty entertaining.

A Miracle

Most of the information I was able to give about Genora's condition in the previous post was thanks to my sister-in-law Cathy. Cathy stayed in North Carolina with Genora until Saturday and on Friday she went with her to her doctor's appointment and got all the scoop.

In the week between Genora's surgery and her follow-up appointment Cathy and Genora had lots of time to hang out and go window shopping. One day they were at WalMart and they happened to be looking at the silicone breast enhancers that women sometimes use to enhance their breast size.

While they were looking at the silicone breast enhancers another woman was there too. She started a conversation with Genora and Cathy by telling them she had just had a lumpectomy and that's why she was looking at those. Surprised, Genora told her she had just had a mastectomy. The woman said "well then you will need a full prosthesis. These won't be sufficient for you." And she proceeded to tell Cathy and Genora about the perfect store where they would want to shop and told them exactly where to find it.

According to the woman this shop had everything a woman needs who has breast cancer. Bras, prostheses, gowns, wigs, etc. On Friday after Genora's follow-up appointment they went there and had a great time. Genora got 2 prostheses (one for day, one for night) and 6 bras. And Medicare paid for all but 30%. Cathy says Genora now looks great in her clothes again and one side looks just like the other.

When they saw what good quality the wigs were, Genora became less fearful of the possibility of chemo. And of course Cathy fell in love with the most expensive wig in the store and wants to get one for herself.

Cathy was astounded that they just "happened" to run into this woman in Wal-Mart. Cathy had planned to help Geonra find a store to get a prosthesis, but she was just going to look in the yellow pages. That may not have yielded as good a result as what they found by way of this woman's recommendation. As Cathy so aptly put it, "God works in mysterious ways!"

Post-Mastectomy Report for Genora

My mother-in-law Genora went back to the surgeon who did her mastectomy on Friday (one week after her surgery). She is healing well and was relieved to have the drain tubes removed.

After testing the tissues and the lymph nodes they removed in surgery it seems Genora's cancer was pretty extensive and involved most of the breast tissue removed. Before the mastectomy they first took out 3 lymph nodes to test them. I am told that if those lymph nodes had been cancer free they would not have bothered to remove any other lymph nodes. But two out of the three contained cancer. So they ended up taking a total of 14 lymph nodes - 9 of which were cancerous. This means that her cancer is closer to a stage 3 or 4 than the stage 2 they originally thought.

The next step for Genora will be to visit two oncologists - a medical oncologist for hormone therapy and a radiology oncologist for radiation treatments. She doesn't know yet if they will need to do chemo. They think they got all the cancer for now, but may recommend chemo to make sure it doesn't come back. Nothing is going to happen for 4 to 6 weeks because she needs to heal from her surgery first.

I'm happy to report she is in good spirits and keeping a positive outlook. I appreciate all the good wishes and prayers for her.

Wear Red Day

As you may have gathered from my lack of posts, this has been a whirlwind week for me. I had ideas for posts and then couldn't find the time to get them done.

One of the entries I meant to post was about Friday's Wear Red Day. Did you know that Friday, February 2nd was Wear Red Day for women? It's a national observance to give women a personal and urgent wakeup call about their risk for heart disease. Did you know that heart disease is the number one killer of women in America?

I'm sorry I didn't get this posted in time for you to wear red if you didn't already know about it. I will mark my calendar to do better next year. In the meantime you can go to this site to learn more about National Wear Red Day and here are some tools for lowering your heart disease risk.

Excel Recipe Manager/Shopping List Creator

I came across this fun and free Excel tool for meal planning. It's an Excel spreadsheet that allows you to list your recipes along with the ingredients you usually have to buy to make them. Once you have the recipes entered you can click a button to have it give you a random 5 recipes to make for the coming week. You can pick from those or click again to get more choices.

Once you've selected which recipes you want for the week, simply click the Shopping List tab where you will find a shopping list already generated and ready for printing. Pretty cool!

The tool is called Cathy's Recipe Manager and you can find it here at Juice Analytics, a web page about Excel. The article is called "Instant Shopping Lists, or... How Excel Can Improve Your Marriage."

When I first looked at it I was concerned because the dropdowns did not have the recipes in alpha order so it was a little difficult to find the one you wanted. But then I figured out that I could sort the Recipe Main sheet by recipe and voila - alphabetized dropdowns.

If you have Excel and want to try this out I encourage you to do so. It's super easy to use. And I'll answer any questions if you get stuck with it.

Happy meal planning!

Beautiful Day

What a beautiful day we're having today. It feels as though Spring is almost here. As I was driving down I-5 toward downtown Seattle today I noticed quite a few sailboats on Lake Union. Of course I was not able to stop and take a photo, so I found this one on the internet. Today's view had almost as many sailboats as in this photo - a lot for a January day. Seattle is such a beautiful place and I feel fortunate to live here.

Post-Surgery

Walter's mother's mastectomy surgery was today. She's doing well after the operation. They had to remove a couple lymph nodes in addition to the breast. The difficult part now is waiting for biopsy results to tell us whether the cancer has spread any further than thought. Apparently those test results won't be back for a week. Please keep Genora in your thoughts and prayers.

The "C" Word

A week ago yesterday was a sad day for us. We got two pieces of bad news on the same day. First, Walter's brother called to let us know that Walter's mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer and she must undergo a mastectomy this coming Friday.

As a woman I can't imagine what it would be like to be told one has cancer. What a scary thing. At first Walter's mom was so upset she had to ask Rusty to call Walter because she was afraid she would be too emotional. Walter has talked to her since of course, and I spoke with her just the other day. She seems to be handling it okay, but I know it's hard. As she put it to me, "you just never think you're going to have to say those words: 'I have cancer!'" Surely that sort of thing only happens to other people. None of us thinks it will be us.

Genora's breast cancer is Stage 2 which I'm told means she needs a mastectomy but should not have to undergo radiation or chemotherapy. The blessing as I'm told by my mother's doctor and also by Genora (who heard it from her doctor) is that when you are "more mature" shall we say, you have less hormones which feed the cancer and your chances of survival are greater because the cancer does not spread as quickly. That's why you hear about very young women dying of the disease.

Are you on schedule for any mammograms needed? Do you do your breast checks monthly? (Those questions are for the ladies, of course.) No one deserves to go through what Genora will be going through, but sometimes it happens. We have to take care of ourselves as best we can.

Now for the second piece of news received. Last year my good friend Betty passed away. I try to keep in touch with her dear mother Helen who is a very sweet lady and did a wonderful job of caring for Betty in her last year of life. We got a New Years' card from Helen. Her note inside explained that she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in early December.

I don't even know what to say about that news. I have been told that pancreatic cancer can be particularly painful. I am going to try to call Helen tomorrow. I wish there were something I could do to help her.

On the up side, both these ladies have families who love them and who will do a good job of taking care of them. Please keep Genora and Helen in your thoughts and prayers.

Digital Photo Frame

I mentioned in an earlier post that my mother-in-law got me a digital photo frame for Christmas. What a fun gift! I decided the best way I could show it to you was to actually show it to you. So here is a little video demonstration.

You can click the big button below to view the video here or if you would like to see it a bit larger click here. Be sure your sound is on.

Thank you Genora!



Digital Photo Frame

Blog Upgrade

I mentioned previously that I would eventually need to do an upgrade on this site. I finally decided to stop procrastinating and dig in. I'm happy to report that the upgrade is complete and I am pleased with the results.

For the most part, Cozzie's Corner should look very much the same to you. I made a couple minor changes over on the right hand side. Do you remember that Flickr badge that rotated a set of photos and postcards? That was a cool idea I suppose, but eventually it just got too distracting. So I removed that and added links to my Flickr picture sets and also to my Webshots photo albums.

You may also notice that the archives list looks slightly different. You can click those little arrows to expand and collapse the lists of posts for each year and month.

My favorite change, though, is the addition of the labels feature. If you look at the bottom of this post, and at the bottom of each post on this page you will see that there is a label (category) or two assigned to each post. If you scroll down past the archives list on the right-hand sidebar you will see a list of all the labels I have used and how many posts are assigned to each label. If you click one of those labels you will see a list of all posts labeled in that category. Pretty cool, huh?

Going back and labeling 195 posts would take quite some time. So for now I just did the last 25 posts and then went back and labeled a few here and there of the older ones. For example, I labeled all the posts relating to Walter's eye surgery as "eye report." That's so it's easy for me to find all those posts. I will try to go through and label a few more posts each weekend until everything is labeled.

I thought about changing the template - the look and colors - of the blog, but decided against it for now. I may revisit that idea later - perhaps when the blog celebrates its 2nd anniversary in October.

WINTER Pansies

This is what my pansies looked like about a week ago when the temperatures dipped to 19 degrees in Seattle. I seriously didn't think they were going to make it. They are supposed to be winter pansies, but this is not a normal winter for Seattle. And I know they are more vulnerable in little pots like this than they would be in the ground.

As of yesterday though they are back to normal and looking perkier than ever. I suppose I should take a new picture....