Hatched!

 

The video is not new – but it WAS the start of something new. Have a look.

 

Poor little thing. Two seconds into the world, he already gets his first whacking.

 

I tried to post this video on my blog almost a year ago and failed. My free WordPress plan wouldn’t allow me to. That was the first time I considered an upgrade. Later, when ads started appearing annoyingly mid-post, the idea took more concrete form. Being a somewhat elderly blogger, it took me yet a while longer – five months or so – to gear myself up to taking the step. Today, finally, I clicked on the “Upgrade” button. What ensued was . . . surprisingly quick and uneventful.

It may not look much different to you, but it feels different to me. Like I am now really out there in the blogosphere for the first time

And now here I am, taking my new-and-improved Trek out for a spin. Checking out what it can do. Different font sizes? (Nope, that doesn’t work.) Can I finally use different colors? (The answer is “Yes!”) Next will come layout changes maybe. Before you know it, I’ll be following those WP tips for increasing readership. Scavenging for views.  Foraging for Likes . . .

“Let the bullying begin!”

What Did I Tell You?

After uploading my last post, I logged out of WordPress. Then I went to my site out of curiosity to see which, if any, ads appeared.

Just had to take this screenshot to prove my prescience. And yes, those are real ads – not graphics put there by me on purpose for effect. Coincidence? Educated guess? Or is Big Brother watching me?

Refreshed Start

 

Here was the first sunset of 2020:

 

But the world is not the only thing starting a new year. Here we go . . . (sound of throat clearing) . . .

It’s my baby’s 5^th birthday. I’ve decided to give it a present: an upgrade. For no other reason than to get rid of those crappy ads showing up in the middle of my (so carefully designed) posts. I bet you are seeing one right now. Probably one telling you that you can learn to speak a foreign language fluently in just five minutes. Or maybe it is that picture of ugly feet that keeps popping up.

I’m a bit nervous about how this will go – if and how my blog will change in content or appearance.  Or something worse. If you happen to notice in the coming days that it has disappeared from your Reader (or the face of the Virtual Earth), well, then you will know that I messed it up.

Wish us luck!

 

I Blame Bill

 

Of course it is partly my fault. Over the past year, I have allowed digital chaos to creep into my life. Thousands of school and work photos remained scattered over 5 different devices instead of being regularly uploaded in an orderly fashion onto my laptop. Work and private files were saved . . . oh, wherever. (I’ll clean it up later.) Blog posts – finished or not – were also saved willy-nilly in various dark corners of my hard drive. Backing up files was something that could be perennially put off till some later date. I’ll get to it during my next work break, I told myself . . .

I never did.

And then came the ominous news that Windows 7 would no longer be supported after January 14, 2020. A few days later I discovered that the 2/” button on my keyboard no longer worked (which might have had something to do with the water I spilled on it the previous day). I found a workaround using Insert and Symbol, but it was (and is) a pain in the asterisk. To make matters worse, I started noticing that it was taking longer and longer for my laptop to fire up in the mornings. Between the moment I turned it on and the moment it was ready to accept my password, there was plenty enough time to take the dog out for a quick walk. Between entering the password and it being ready to use, I could go take a shower. After clicking on Thunderbird, I could go make my morning coffee and still get back before the Inbox showed up on the screen . . .

I put “new laptop” on my Christmas wish list.

 

December 24^th, 2019. 10:32 pm. My entire family has now gone to bed after our wonderful Christmas Eve. I plug my new super-duper laptop in and nervously push the power button. A screen appears and asks me if I want it to speak English or German. I choose English and a “Please wait . . .” message appears on the screen for a matter of seconds. Suddenly I hear a pleasant female voice.

“Hello,” she says. Out loud.

“I will be helping you through the process of setting up your laptop,” she continues. Then she asks me if I want to respond to her manually or by speaking back.

I am completely freaked out. And speechless. I just click my way through the rest of our “conversation”, feeling like a dork. I can tell she thinks I’m a loser.

Five minutes later I am immersed in the foreign-looking bowels of Windows 10 with offers of tips and random websites popping up on my screen, email notifications dinging one after another on my nearby cellphone. I am in over my head. I get the hell out of there.

Once she has gone dark, I lean back and my first thought is that my new laptop is female. In the future I’ll probably be referring to . . . her . . . as “she”. I’m pretty sure my old one was an “it”. My second realization is the horrendous amount of work ahead of me before I can make this transition. My third thought is that I should write Bill Gates a letter of complaint, asking him not only where he gets off gendering my machine like that, but also pointing out what should be obvious to him – the fact that a lot of older people also depend on computers and he’s putting us through some major stress. I’ll tell him it is his fault that the first half of my Christmas vacation is going to be spent carefully ordering all my files and readying them for the move from my old machine to my new bff. (Actually . . . more like “bf for 10” – or however many years she lasts till Bill decides to end her.) Then I will quickly thank him for all his good work in Africa and sign off with “Indignantly yours”.

 

Fortunately, the computer specialist in my husband’s school is willing to spend a few hours with me tomorrow, helping me find my way around this new terrain. He’ll show me how to install all the programs I need and to get rid of all the useless stuff that is already on there. I don’t suppose there is anything he can do about her being a girl.

 

America Report – Day (Minus) One

It hasn’t been mentioned here before (as far as I can remember) but I’m back in Milwaukee for Mom’s 90th birthday party slash family reunion. It’s 10:00 am on Day One and I have already been up for about six hours. I’ve had a pot of coffee and listened to a couple of podcasts on yesterday’s impeachment hearings, which I find oddly calming. I have taken a long walk, bought a Christmas present, and written a blog post longhand – this one – which I am now trying to type up on an IPAD. (It is my first time using this particular device and it is not going quickly.) I have also started my latest crocheting project. It is another symbolic one – a pink flamingo – to bookend the bat (-shit crazy) one I made during my last visit . . .

(screeching brakes sound)

Back up to Day Minus One.

There is nothing like flying direct on a decent airline (Austrian). Having stayed overnight in Vienna at my generous brother-in-law’s apartment with its impressive collection of single malts, I awoke at a civilized hour, had an unhurried coffee and shower and then meandered casually the two blocks to the airport train station (with its convenient check in counter where I relieved myself of my heavy suitcase. ) I arrived at the airport with plenty of time for duty-free shopping and podcast downloading and breakfasting.

The plane started boarding and, as always, the first impression was that the plane would not be full. Of course things changed. A half hour after we should have been I the air, passengers kept straggling in – most of them harried American senior citizens who had had the misfortune of being randomly selected for an extra security check. They were NOT a happy bunch. Women in a tizzy shared their stories of being “tickled”. The men were more angry and the baseball capped specimen in the seat behind me was particularly enraged. After his first sentence, the thought “Twump voter” passed through my mind. He went on with his complaining:

“This is just a third rate country trying to act important,” he said. “We should strike Austria off the list for the next trip.”

I went through a myriad of unspoken responses to this affront to my adopted country, but finally landed on “Austria says thank you”. Later I leaned my seat back at the first opportunity.

Despite delays, we made up all the lost time, the food was actually good (haven’t said THAT in years!), the landing soft, the arrival procedures quick and my bus to Milwaukee left just ten minutes after my leaving the terminal. My sister was there to pick me up, and when I brought my suitcase up to my room in her house, what did I find?

Next it was all talk talk talk talk until Rachel Maddow finally gave my sister some respite from me. Ten minutes into her A block on the impeachment hearings I was fast asleep.

It is going to be a wonderful week.

Senior Moments – Chapter Five

I went to the kitchen to refill my coffee this morning and while I was there, I saw the leftovers of yesterday’s chili, still on the stove-top. I thought I should probably transfer it to a bowl and stick it in the fridge, which was what I proceeded to do. Of course, in the process, I forgot to take my coffee with me as I returned to the library.

So I went back to the kitchen to get it. The bowl of chili was curiously still sitting on the counter and my coffee cup was nowhere to be seen. I tried to focus and mentally retrace my steps. I opened the fridge door . . .

Sigh.

This is just the latest in a string of my recent actions falling somewhere on the spectrum from merely “Absent-minded” to downright “Moronic”. Just last week I booked and paid for a flight with the wrong return date. Then I accidentally claimed to be the sole caregiver of the family in my tax filing. Days later I got tricked into an internet scam which necessitated locking down my credit card and replacing it with a new one. Which in turn meant changing my payment method in places like Amazon and Spotify . . .

 

Again. Sigh.

 

But before you start worrying about me, most of these things turned out to be fairly easy to deal with and filled with unexpected silver linings. Despite the mistake (or because of it??) this is first time I can remember that my taxes aren’t being audited – releasing me from the yearly half hour drive to the nearest Finance Ministry office, documents in hand. I also get an extra day in my upcoming trip to the States. And having upgraded to a Gold card last year, replacing it was free AND the fraudulent charge is going to be reimbursed. This episode alone more than covers the slightly higher credit card fees I have been paying.

Still! This series of brainless moments has gotten me thinking about mental and physical health. Rather than worrying about creeping dementia, I realized that a person can allow their brains go to seed in the same way they can neglect their physical bodies, and that I have been guilty of that. I’ve decided it’s time for me to give myself a kick in the mental butt.

It’s 6:00 pm on Sunday, December 1^st and my Christmas decorations are up, my advent wreath is made, my courses are prepared for both Monday and Tuesday, all the laundry and ironing is done, the house is clean, and I just finished a project that has been meandering from one To Do list to the next for the past 15 months.

Now hand me one of those mints!

 

In Search of Lost Opportunities

 

This one is for Alison With One “L” for making me laugh out loud with her last post (“Lost Time, Indeed”) in which she deals with her PTSD (Proustian Traumatic Stress Disorder).

As much as I would like to help you with your weightier existential questions, I am, unfortunately, a bit of an agnostic when it comes to packing peanuts and quantitative tomato decisions. I also won’t be much help when it comes to an obsessive need to finish every book, however recklessly started, because I share that particular quirk . . . ( . . . although! . . . I admit to the occasional skimming – e.g. the last 30 pages of “War and Peace” or the Mueller Report footnotes). How I CAN help, maybe, is by telling you the advice I would have given you had I known you were about to crack open a Proust – in the hope that it may positively influence your future choices in reading material and help you toward the non-remembrance of painful things past.

Belated Piece of Advice #1: To start off, I’m thinking what you need now is something  . . . shorter. So when fondling the next massive tome, stop and consider the alternatives. Behold:

Behold again (the novel you just finished in a nutshell):

 

Belated Piece of Advice #2: In case the above is a bit too superficial for your current frame of mind, here is a more philosophical yet still logical approach to decision making. Starting with some basic Math, I think we can agree that:

if A=B, and C=D, and B≠D, then A≠C.

Now let’s apply this logic to a certain French novelist.

Life is short. Proust is long. Short ≠ long. Therefore, Proust equals death.

 

I rest my case.

Happy future reading, Alison! May it be pithy.

 

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

P.S.

In case you liked the first sample from this book, here are a few more of my favorites . . .

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