Sissy stuff to keep warm with during the "VORTEX"?

[samantha1]

Hi Angela M,so you were born in Manchester,how long were you there for,I was born in Hampstead and now i live in Berkshire,if you cannot get used to the cold in Canada ,what made you stay for many years.

[Angela M...]

Hey samantha 1, my parents emigrated in 1957 when I was 8. My father and uncle were looking for work and friends tipped them off to the many jobs in Canada. We came over in October and although we liked all the Fall colours, we were shocked by our first winter. We did not have a car at that time and my sister and I walked to school about 2 miles from our apartment. Picture a little boy in an English school uniform with short pants and knee socks and T bar sandals walking through the snow. I was frozen and my teachers suggested some long pants or jeans like the other kids wore and a winter style coat but we did not have a great deal of money at the time. My mother tried to help by putting me into a pair of my sisters white tights under my shorts and knee socks. I loved how they fit and made my legs so smooth and kept me warmer but I was teased mercilessly by the other kids. The next pair I wore were the beige colour but the kids still teased and after a few weeks my father had saved enough for a pair of long pants that were plaid flannel lined. I was warmer but missed the tights so I would wear them at night in bed and put them back in my sisters drawer later. I have been hooked on tights since that time although I was wearing my sisters clothes in England since the age of 4 but she never had tights back then. When I was about 5 or 6 living in England, I still had longish curly blond hair as my mother loved it and brushed it all the time but my sister was born with blond straight hair. I was into my sister dress and white ankle socks with lace trim and a ribbon in my hair, playing house with my sister when dad came home. He had a fit and got me back into my own clothes and rushed me out to a barber for a very short haircut. My mother and I were both very upset and I cried all night about that but mom said it will grow back. I am glad it did before we moved to Canada and with the cold climate dad never insisted it was that short again but then I never let him see me in my sisters clothes again either. I have only been back to England a few times but I pretty much liked our life in Canada so I never thought of moving back later in life.

[Betty]

Yikes! 80mph winds, that's officially hurricane strength. Glad you're OK. My power stayed on. But I usually shut down my computers during severe storms, or nearby lightning anyway. Even without lightning, & my equipment is pretty robust, don't want brief power on-off surges, & static coming down the lines screwing them up.

During lightnig nearby or to the north of my, my internet DSL connection cuts out a lot anyway.

Could run a laptop, phone, or small tablet on battery, but once a storm is severe, I like to preserve the battery life in them for a power outage. Even after an outage, I usually leave everything off that I don't need to survive, except for emergencies.

During the last outage, I put out a message that I would be shutting off my phone to save its battery. At 11pm I sent out another message that I was still OK, & again in the morning, otherwise, I kept the phone off.

My phone is & its battery is almost 7 years old so it don't hold a charge as long as it was new anymore. So if I think I won't be able to charge it in a while, I have to be very frugal about using up the battery.

I just switched mobile phone companies to someone who offered a senior discount. For $50, I got a brand new modern smart phone (to own, not lease or on payments) with a large 4.5 inch screen, & the first month of phone service free. After that, it's only $10/mo. for phone service. 200 minutes or 600 texts per month. They tally each text as 1/3 a minute. Good for me. Almost everybody texts me, & hardly anybody calls anymore.

No data plan. I can get on the web with it through wifi. It will even play HD movies, & makes a nice mp3 player. It'll keep a charge on standby for 3 days, 8 hours of talk time, play movies for 4.5 hours, & music for 11. I added a 32gb SD card from my tablet to hold all my favorite stuff.

If my internet went down for an extended period, a $30 basic data plan for it could keep me online for a month as long as I'm not using too much bandwidth streaming media. I can even tether it to my computers or use it as a wifi hotspot through a data plan.

But a 4.5 inch screen is plenty big enough for Facebook, online news, mail, manage my bills, banking & Betty's. It's always nice to have back-up plans.

I used to be quite famous at work for no matter what went wrong, I had a backup plan, or some old spare backup unit, & parts to use in a pinch.

[samantha1]

Hi Betty,i use lycamobile and for £10.00 per month ,i get unlimited texts and 500 minutes plus 2 gigs for internet every  month .my phone is pay as you go.at this present moment  i am suffering from bronchitis and talking antibiotics and just sleeping allot

[samantha1]

Hi Angela M ,Having never been to Canada for a long time is the cost of living like the states or england.When was the last time you came  to uk.

[Angela M...]

Hey samantha 1, the last time I was in England was for the Queens Silver Jubilee in the 70's and at the time I had quite a few relatives to stay with including my grandmother. We stayed for awhile in Manchester in the front bedroom of her rented house where I was born in 1949 and walked to the park at the end of the road where I would play as a child. I took hundreds of photo's (35 mm slides) but many of them are fading away after storage for so long. After traveling to London for the Jubilee celebrations it was off to visit family in Windsor and then on to Scotland. I find the cost of living in the UK seems high these days based on our dollar and earnings but here in Canada everything is getting expensive and mobile phone and Internet charges are very high as well as hydro. If I am to survive into my 80's or 90's I would need to sell my house to supply enough income for future years and upkeep is getting expensive and hard for me to do on my own now also.

[samantha1]

Hi Angela M,do you still have family in Windsor as i live in Slough and so cost of living is still going up in Canada and you are not married.I also would  have problems ,but my inheritance will keep me going plus 3 private pensions  ,so if i lived too 100[NO CHANCE]   i would have no problems plus state pension

[Angela M...]

Hey samantha 1, even with two work pensions and the Government money I find it hard these days. They remain constant but everything else goes up monthly. I still have not touched my investment money yet but by the time I am 70 I may need to dip into those funds before I think of selling the house. I worked for the same company for 42 years and they do have great health and drug plans that pay for my meds, Dentist and Opticians visits and most of the tests I need to maintain my health. You have NHS but does it cover everything? With extensive Arthritis, Prostate and back problems, I am lucky to have great treatments for these and great doctors and a pharmacist who have become friends also.

[Betty]

lycamobile and for £10.00 per month ,i get unlimited texts and 500 minutes plus 2 gigs for internet every  month .my phone is pay as you go.at this present moment  i am suffering from bronchitis and talking antibiotics and just sleeping allot

Good deal. They really price gouge us for phone & data here in America. I don't think you can get 2gb of phone data around here for under $30/mo., & that's not even including any calling or text service.

Ouch. Take care of yourself. It seems a lot or people eventually get lung or breathing problems living in modern civilization.

But it's a trade-off. We probably wouldn't live any longer by abandoning it all & to live in the wilderness. Technology has fought off many diseases, & life threatening conditions but something eventually knocks you down, at least for a while.

In the wild, if you don't freeze or starve to death during a rough winter, some bear as hungry as you gets you.

I'm finding I need more sleep these days too. I used to get by on a about 4 hours sleep a day, & 6 hours on a lazy day a couple times a week. It seems I always need 8 hours a day now. Not all at once though. 4 hours for bedtime, & an hour or 2 here & there in naps the rest of the day or night.

Maybe not being well enough wears one out more, or it's just something that comes with age. The kitties are a bad influence too. I see them curled up together comfortable sleeping (cats sleep a lot), or they're begging for some cuddling in my lap. So I take a break to stretch out & cuddle with them a while, & the next thing I know we're all dozing off cozy together.

And they know if I lay back, it's break time, so they come running for petting, brushing, belly rubs, & cuddling. Or they pile on top of me & doze off. I feel guilty about waking them up when they just got cozy & fell asleep. So I just lay there a while feeling cozy, & then doze off. Sometimes I gotta go pee, but I hold it a while because they're sound asleep cozy on me, & don't want to wake them up.

I think cats are a natural sedative. If they want to cuddle or sleep on you, it makes you feel cozy & real tired.

[Betty]

I took hundreds of photo's (35 mm slides) but many of them are fading away after storage for so long. ...I find the cost of living in the UK seems high these days based on our dollar and earnings but here in Canada everything is getting expensive and mobile phone and Internet charges are very high as well as hydro. If I am to survive into my 80's or 90's I would need to sell my house to supply enough income for future years and upkeep is getting expensive and hard for me to do on my own now also

If they're slides, those photos faded from the bright hot projector light too. You should have those photos converted to digital before they're lost or fade too far. Once in digital form like a jpg, someone or even I can restore them to pretty close to what they originally looked like & maybe even fix a few that weren't photographed well in the first place.

It's a damn shame, unless you're very rich, if you work very hard all your life to build something, once you get old enough where you can't run your butt off like crazy anymore, you stand a good chance of losing everything just to barely survive a few more years. Even a minor health issue can bankrupt somebody thanks to drug companies & hospitals over-charging by 1,000 to 50,000%.

They get away with it because the elderly, sick, & disabled won't be picketing, demonstrating, & rioting in the streets about it. Many of them can't even get out to vote, or are able to vote. So medical industry & rich politicians have no motivation to help. They're in it for mountains of money & votes at all costs.

And that health insurance isn't very helpful if the deductible is $10,000 that you gotta pay up front before they pay the rest.

I worked hard, scrimpted & saved all my life. After the fire set me back, I struggled like crazy working 50-70 hour work weeks to build my future back up again. When I got a heart attack from drowning in my own lung fluids caused by a terrible flu (which also permanently scarred my lungs), those high deductibles, high hospital bills, & high doctor bills totally cleaned me out in less than a month, even though I had health insurance at the time. Then I could no longer afford the insurance premiums after that anymore.

I have to self-treat myself with severe COPD. No money or insurance for doctors, hospitals, or even a dentist.

Meanwhile, only 8 people own half the money & wealth of the world. You don't get that rich unless you don't give a crap about anybody else but yourself.