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Morwen Oronor

Goodness, it's time I changed my status

May 4, 2011 at 4:38am

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Weekends

March 13, 2010 at 5:57am

It's funny how we enjoy weekends and time off for ourselves when we are young and have busy lives.
Then we retire and suddenly every day is a weekend day yet we still enjoy the weekends more than any other. For me Friday afternoons is 'me' time. The house is all clean and sparkly after the cleaning lady's been and Barry's off at bowls, so the dogs and I park off in front of the TV to watch whatever we like to watch and chat a few zzzz's while we're doing it.
Then on Saturdays Barry has a late sleep then a big breakfast and he goes off to collect the mail and visit some friends who look forward to his weekly popping in. When the weather is cool, I might tag along but mostly it's my time to catch up on blogs, and websites where i post and generally to do what i want to do whether it's reading or sleeping through the afternoon while he watches Saturday sport.
Sundays are more like preparation for Monday, the same way they were when I had to be in an office on Monday morning. I might do some laundry or some special cooking and then watch TV in the afternoon with Barry.
So why is it that the routine is so fixed that we just don't do everyday things at the weekends and weekend things during the week, why do we still stick to the same routines we had 10 years ago? Strange.


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Diet

March 12, 2010 at 5:47am

About eighteen months ago, a really unpleasant experience which involved my dog and a monkey, made me rethink the way I eat.
I decided that I would give vegetarianism a try to see how i would cope with my various health problems and naturally old age and the ravages it causes to the human body.
Since then I've stopped eating anything containing animal products although I have to admit that despite my revulsion for the way dairy herds are treated, I cannot quite give up milk and cheese, although I am only using animal-rennet free cheese now.
Why the revulsion for the treatment of animals, after all, aren't they necessary to our diet and aren't we supposed to be omnivores? The meat is there in the fridge in the supermarket anyway so why fuss about an industry that will continue despite the fuss that vegetarians and vegans make about meat-eating?
Because animals raised for the meat industry and the harvesting of animals is savagery. Well to me it is anyway and I am proof that if we eat the way our primate ancestors did, i.e. a diet consisting mainly of fruit, roots, nuts and other vegetation, resorting to killing other animals only when there is nothing else to eat, we show our true 'humanity.'
The Cove is a movie that received the best documentary Oscar and it's subject matter is the secret harvesting of dolphins to feed the world's hunger for sushi.

Death on an animal farm being shown soon on HBO highlights the treatment of animals being cultivated purely for their meat.

And then there is this:
Quote:

Cheese is made by coagulating milk to give curds which are then separated from the liquid, whey, after which they can be processed and matured to produce a wide variety of cheeses. Milk is coagulated by the addition of rennet. The active ingredient of rennet is the enzyme, chymosin (also known as rennin). The usual source of rennet is the stomach of slaughtered newly-born calves. Vegetarian cheeses are manufactured using rennet from either fungal or bacterial sources. Advances in genetic engineering processes means they may now also be made using chymosin produced by genetically altered micro-organisms.


The killing of calves for their meat and then their stomach enzymes of the child being placed in the mother's milk for humans to dine on.
There are alternatives to animal rennet and more and more cheese manufacturers are using these:
vegetarian cheese.

I'm not saying that people should stop eating meat. If you hunt a single animal and use it's products for your diet, this is the most humane way to get meat products, buying into the factory-farming industry is simply immoral, despite the taste and the idea that the meat is there in the fridge, is it really necessary to support this when there are natural and healthier alternatives.






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Old age and mental attitude

March 10, 2010 at 7:44am

Having just spent two days in the company of someone who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's I've come to acquire new respect for the 'blessing' of good mental health in old age.
It's really frightening to see the lack of understanding and vagueness on the one hand and the easy irascibility on on the other. I wonder if keeping one's mind alert and on a constant quest for learning with conscious effort to control flashes of temper helps in any way.
Does old age have to be a slow decline into illness and decrepitude or can one truly enjoy a positive level of health and will keeping one's mind active with constant new learning and logical discussion stave off the onset of dementia for a bit longer?
We know a couple who've been married for 70 years, he's 93, she just 90 and she's now had to take to her bed with severe movement disability and increasing mental debility. That sounds like a good innings especially that he's still in reasonable health apart from deafness, but to me the idea of a real decline to the point of being a broken shadow of your former self seems a little frightening.
I certainly don't like the idea of becoming that way at just 70, when otherwise good health could keep you in a haze of what is almost insanity and an extreme burden on your caretakers for a good few years.
i guess what I'm trying to say is that when we are still relatively young, it is so important to take care of a working brain and to keep the body in as good a state of health as possible to prevent the ugliness that is possible from taking hold of you.

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Visitors

March 9, 2010 at 3:28am

One of the things that I really miss about living far away from my friends and family is that I don't get to see them very often. Where most people have their kids living nearby and over for dinner at least once a week, I have to be content with emails and visits once a year. But on the other hand, I get to fly up to visit them too and I do that twice a year, so I shouldn't complain. Not everyone gets to take a flight just for fun as often as I do.
So today I'm rather pleased; my sister who is also a good friend is down here on holiday visiting her children and as part of her trip, I get her staying with me for a day or two.
It's funny how, when we are children, we see our siblings as combatants for our parents' attention; then as we get older and build lives of our own, they become friends and we enjoy the time we have with them. This was really brought home to me when our eldest sister died of breast cancer 10 years ago. Now those of us that are left try to enjoy the time we have to spend with each other and are more friends than sisters but special friends who have a common bond.
So today and tomorrow I'll have my sister visiting me with her husband. We'll watch TV together, enjoy some pleasant conversation and our common interest in our computers, and talk about whatever is happening in our lives before she leaves again to visit another child, then home again.
And then in two weeks, it's a holiday weekend in South Africa with a visit from my son and his lovely wife to look forward to.
MO.






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The 82nd Annual Academy Awards - The Oscars

March 8, 2010 at 5:32am

As I usually do on Oscar night, I went to bed early, so I could be up to watch the live broadcast at 3 a.m.
I love movies and we usually get to a lot of the movies just before or just after the awards when they come to our local movie house.
I find with the awards nowadays that there are just too many of them. It seems that once the Emmy's are done in the American autumn, it is a non-stop runaround of award ceremonies and that by the time the big one comes around in early March, everybody is heartily sick of the red carpet outfits and the trite thank-yous.
And last night was no different. I suppose everyone should've seen it coming with 10 movies being nominated in the middle of a war just as 10 were nominated in 1943 in the middle of a war and a war movie won. And then when Barbara Streisand came out to present the Best Director award, it was a no-brainer. James Cameron's ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow was going to be the winner, and the Best Director's movie is usually the one that wins. So The The Hut Locker was going to win, making James Cameron's previous successes with the 'other' movie a little empty.
I think that Avatar deserved the big prize. Surely the highest earning movie ever is the best movie of the year no matter that The Hurt Locker was all politically correct in it's Iraq War theme. Politics should not be a part of the entertainment industry, which is also why i was pleased that Sandra Bullock won the Best Actress award and not the young woman whose outstanding performance in Precious got her nominated, but in my opinion, giving her the win would've been more about the political aspect of the movie than Bullock's far better performance in her movie.
It's all history now and there are lots of movies to look forward to in the new contenders for the next round of awards, with Alice in Wonderland's special effects and Stephen Fry's brilliant performance as the Cheshire Cat definitely the ones to watch for next year.

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User since

Jan 7, 2008 at 2:09pm

Location

South Africa

Occupation

Retired

 

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