Well as regards recreating this topic, I was actually hoping the older topics might have come back, but as it seems not we obviously need to just carry on.
Sorry to hear about your mum Orko and that its caused so much by way of ructions, though good luck on the move to Chicago.
A good friend of mine was also very much in love with the place as well, though most of my experience of Chicago comes from the Harry Dresden books .
I definitely sympathise on the family matters though, My lady's mum died in December of 16, and her dad is extremely unwell. Actually we're looking at going to visit him and my sister in law in Pennsylvania at Christmas, since its likely to be his last one, but as she's got a new guide dog we've needed to wait to get the okay since flying with a new dog might not be a good idea so soon, though seems that's likely to work out.
That's a trifle of a complicated situations since my lady's relationship with her parents hasn't always been a straight forward one/
As for me, right now I'm still waiting for my lady to qualify and bashing out book reviews and articles while I look for a course in creative writing or similar since I think that's what I'd like to do with my life post phd.
More immediately we now have echo buttons, plus it seems like amazon ordering is going to work out okay after all (we even got a load of random shopping including tins of stuff).
The ordering is going to be good since our local Morrisons is being a right pain. Its just around the corner (one reason we chose this house) but they have a great habbit of ignoring me when I ask for assistance.
Its funny, my lady doesn't have half of the problem in this respect that I do, but being tiny and cute and female in addition to being blind seems to help, however after the third time of standing around not getting assistance saying "excuse me" at the counter and being ignored I said bugger it and tried amazon instead.
Its odd I don't have this problem in most shops, and usually once i can persuade someone to actually help in Morrisons it works okay, albeit I still have to sit through a long stream of
"Well this man wants some help"
"I'm busy"
"can you ring through to the desk"
"I can't ring anyone right now I'm busy!"
~"well I'll ring the desk"
Then (to me),
"Is anyone giving you assistance?"
me: "I'm not actually sure"
"Okay I'll try to get someone"
"Is anyone free this man wants some help getting shopping"
Talk about valued customer .
I was also disappointed when my lady's trainer saw all of this and suggested I phone the guide dogs engagement officer, to be told:
"well you need to write to the management yourself"
when I asked if there was anything they could do I was told.
"well we try to empower people"
Aka we don't do anything!
Of course I can! phone the management and have all the hassle, I've done it before but yee gods I'm sick of having to do this and when an organisation for the blind is basically telling you to piss off you wonder what the hell people are paid for.
Its odd, I've always usually thought guide dogs were half way decent, but this so called "engagement officer" seems like a real prat, I wonder what the hell she's being paid for.
Anyway in other news we have the amazon buttons! these are pretty cool when we find a workable game with them. The problem is a lot of games with them involve colours. This is fine if you have some vision (since the buttons light up very well), but not quite as good for my lady, though we have found a pretty cool trivial pursuit game we can play with the buttons.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)