Virginia Breeze

Good morning to you and a good morning it is except that Beth is outside raking the leaves from the infernal tree that has a backward internal clock and drops them all summer long.

Her presence in the front yard means that I have only a few moments before I must go out in the heat and start up the lawn mower.

But I am imbued with strength this morning after the nice comments that have found their way here. I am generally not worthy of these but feel it necessary to try and understand them. Wait. I hear a lawnmower. Never mind. It’s two doors down. That could have been real trouble.

A gentleman by the name of Robert R. Marsh who has developed the really cool similar posts plugin you see around here and many other places has been helping me with something this week. Go look at the photos over at Photolinklove.com and see if you see any difference!

These photo shadows have always put a twinkle in my eye since I saw them in Michael Brown’s blog. They are just so cool and Robert just figured out how to do it and put them here! You can’t just get these anywhere as far as I know. Sadish uses them in some of his themes. But hopefully now they will be available if Robert decides to make it so. Thanks, guy!

But that is not all! Things have progressed rapidly in an upward direction since a squirrel took his own life Thursday night and blew out the transformer out back leaving us without electricity all night long. It was like living in a cave only a very hot one.

But last night was much better as I conversed briefly but nevertheless in a very positive way with Jordin. Yes my dear readers. Just one year after she became the reigning American Idol (plus a few days but who is counting) your blogging buddy said something to Ms. Jordin that made her laugh.

I told Beth about it this morning and she was almost elated! But then she decided we needed to cut the grass. So I must leave you now.

Have a great, great day. And let me leave you with this.

Remember to follow your dreams. But also try to keep your grass from getting too long. And if possible set up some sort of outreach program for your neighborhood squirrels.

Mine need to understand that the metal tubes that are affixed to poles among their branches and homes are not rest stops. They are gateways to squirrel heaven. And it hurts me deeply when they go through that door.

Stay here and gather nuts my friends. And have a good laugh as you look down and watch the sweaty refections on the chrome dome going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth while you are bouncing and flying through the air.

Count your blessings but don’t try to make them all come true in one brief moment.

It’s time for a contest here at Virginia Breeze.

And this one will challenge your eye and not your brain. I hope.

Here are five photos containing images from this blog. They are each a part of a different photo and some of you who have been following along since we started here last summer should not find this too difficult.

So this contest starts now and it will end Sunday noon est.

The prize is a 25 dollar gift certificate from Amazon.com.

And all you have to do is be the first person to identify the five posts that contain these images. Then email me the answers (url’s) using the contact page under the header here at Virginia Breeze. Don’t give away the answers or anything else by putting any information here or in another post. We will have a consolation prize and we so don’t want to give the answers away before the contest ends and be disqualified. Here are the five images. . .

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Well it doesn’t seem like very many readers have taken this contest seriously. So starting next week (Sunday) we are going to increase the first prize to fifty dollars. That’s a fifty dollar gift certificate to Amazon. com.

And each week that goes by we will just increase the prize money until I get someone’s attention. It will probably end up being my wife. But hey! She’s a reader too. She just gets to stick her pretty little fist in between my ribs when I am sleeping if she doesn’t like something I have written.

Update://  We have a winner!  It’s Jendrick Hosellmyer from somewhere out there in the tundras of northern Europe.  Thanks Jendrick!  And thank you everyone for playing.  It took quite awhile to get a winner but I’m sure Jendrick will agree that it was worth the wait as he drives his new Toyota Prius around the cracks in the ice while he’s looking for a place to recharge the battery!!

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Today the weather turned hot and humid so I guess play time is over. We had a nice run but now it’s time for some real Virginia weather. I came home and made a drink. The flipped the switch on the AC unit recently installed and sat down to see what was happening here.

I have more time now to go out and read blogs and meet people. My blogs are running (more or less) and it really is fun and interesting to meet other bloggers. Robin Easton is a jewel. And Evita of Evolving Wellness is another very special person. I read her posts and the hair on my neck starts to tingle.

What?!!

Oh no. That’s a good thing actually. It’s not something that my wife minds because it’s a thought process more than anything else based on my fascination with the sincerity and single mindedness of her approach to health and our wellbeing.

So I was reading her post about alcohol and the fact that it is poison while I was enjoying my rum and coke. The big old rum bottle was sitting there. Empty. And I had planned to go out and get another one.

But then I decided not too. I need all my remaining brain cells.

Pretty desperately in fact at this point.

And then Robin and I were talking about fear and dying. I think we agreed that being dead is not really a problem. Because after all we can fly when we are in our spirit bodies. And we all want to do that.

I mean if we could buy tickets to do it there would be long lines out to the sidewalk every day.

Not to die but just to fly. And then we were talking about the hard part actually being PAIN. I fear pain. And I was watching Henry last night on Showtime (The Tudors) go ballistic and start torturing all these poor guys who had done nothing.

Because he thought they had slept with Ann. And by the time he got done with them they all said “Well yes. I did sleep with her” even though they hadn’t. Because you know you will say anything if someone tortures you.

They wouldn’t even have to torture me. I would be like “Please just let me know what you think I did. I’m pretty sure I did it. Just remind me if you would about the details. I’m a little forgetful”.

Torture is so stupid. You want the truth? Forget it. You want someone to agree with you. NO PROBLEM.

They put the poor fiddle player on the rack and pulled him apart. I was very upset even though I know he is an actor and can hit that high C note without being stretched if he wants to do it.

I couldn’t sleep. I’m still upset about it. How can one human being do these things to another human being?

“I was just doing my job mister. I work here in the Tower of London. I’ve got five kids at home to feed. And I just turn the wheel. Somebody else brings em in here. Maybe they should have not gotten themselves in trouble”.

Please. I need to stop watching television. Putting torture on tv is worse than letting naked men and women have at it. And what it says about the human race is much worse.

We have really taken a tour in this effort to install a super plugin for Wordpress. And there is only one thing left to do prior to reaching our goal.

It is time to install Plugin Central by Vladimir Prelovac. So go to this post and locate the plugin. And then use the tools we have discussed in Parts I through IV to install it.

As I have said many times this is a step by step process for seniors or whoever with no background in these things. So please go back and review if you need to be reminded of any steps.

Once Plugin Central and its companion Post-Plugin Library are safely installed and activated in your Plugin file go to the upper left corner of you browser just below the toolbar and click on Dashboard. Now look just below and Dashboard once again in red letters. Just to the right of it you should see Plugin Central. Click on this and the Plugin Central box will open giving you an option to click on and list all of your plugins or only your active plugins.

Now we are going to use this wonderful tool to install NextGen Gallery. Here is the location of the zip file.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/nextgen-gallery.zip

Right click on it and look for Copy Link Location. Left click on this and then go to the Plugin Central/ Easy Plugin Installation box we noted earlier in this post. Below the option to list plugins you will see the area we need. Right click and then paste your zip file in here. Click install plugin and watch as it does its work.

Total Commander is not needed here. In less than five seconds the plugin is installed and ready to use. Or if you are forgetful like me and already installed this plugin you will receive a message that goes something like this “Installation failed. Plugin already installed”.

Oftentimes you do not even need the zip file. Just type in NextGen Gallery and PC will locate it and install it anyway.

Another cool option is to click on the List all Plugins button and get your list of plugins. And then copy/paste any or all of them as you choose into your other Wordpress blogs. This tactic assumes you have installed PC in all your blogs. Just copy/paste into the PC box and click on Install. What could be simpler or easier than that?

It is such a wonderful time saving tool I know you will want to do this. But remember to always backup your database using the plugin we installed in a prior post or one of your own choice prior to any installation.

So you have now installed NextGen Gallery and our mission here is complete. Getting it up and running is a task beyond the scope of this set of posts. However instructions for doing this are in good supply.

Another David has gone into great detail about it. And here is the link.

http://dpotter.net/Technical/index.php/2008/03/04/nextgen-gallery-review-introduction/

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