Dug Out

We're momentarily dug out. Maybe if I'm lucky, no snow shoveling today and instead a chance to snowshoe at the park.

Digging Out

John Berry / The Syracuse Post-Standard

Lisette

January used to be a big birthday month in my family. We used to avoid any potential holiday letdown by anticipating one big party for all the family & friends who had January birthdays beginning with Lisette on the 1st and ending with my dad on the 31st. My dad's been gone for ten birthdays now but this is the first without Lisette.

Lisette would have been my godmother if my family had gone in for that sort of thing. She was a very pretty Belgian war bride who married one of the men in my parents' army unit and she laughed more than anyone at her language mix-ups. She was also the 'craftiest' person I've ever known and she made, among many things I treasure, my favorite throw.

Onion Goggles!

Brilliant.
And more attractive than the vapor mask I sometimes resort to.

The Payoffs

After bitching and moaning the past several weeks about the computers and the television, I feel compelled to come clean about the pleasures I've derived from the changes.

For one thing I've been transfixed, on more than one occasion, by the amazing clarity of some of the television images we've gotten with the digital signals, even on our old analog TV. Although I have no real interest in American football, the game where a foot rarely touches a ball, I watched a good part of a game on Sunday (I can't even remember who was playing–no, wait, was it Tennessee and Baltimore?) just because the picture was so incredibly clear and detailed.

But the real treat I'm getting with DTV is a new channel from our PBS station. It's almost ironic but last week I watched a couple of delightful Jacque Pépin programs that made me painfully nostalgic for the time when people valued simplicity.

As for the new computer, I found a little perk that's made the whole business a lot less frustrating. When I installed the new version of Firefox I took some time to look at the add-ons and discovered "Foxmarks" which I immediately downloaded. I was then able to do the same thing on the iMac and presto! all my bookmarks (I'm not admitting how many) are synchronized between the two computers and even with my account on The Mister's PowerBook.

The real benefit of all this however, has been the distraction it has provided me as I've been trying to avoid the news these past weeks. Between the destruction of Gaza and Obama filling his administration with Clinton right-of-center retreads, I might otherwise have thrown myself in front of a bus by now.

Keepin' Warm

On the outside, silk thermals. On the inside, the cognac.
Twelve hours @ 58º, twelve @ 64º. It's the best I can do.

The Tyranny of Technology

Beautiful, sunny but bitterly cold, 6º/-15º, not the best morning to be sitting here at the desk on the drafty porch, making my first blog entry on the new MacMini with the new display. I love the porch windows but right now I'd rather be looking at the wall and the heat register in front of my desk in the kitchen where I still have my iMac.

The past month has been dominated by the tyranny of technology. I love my 6-year-old iMac and it works just fine but it's no longer supported by Apple and the list of things I can't do with it keeps growing. As I was trying to decide about something new before the end of '08, Mozilla informed me that they were no longer supporting my version of Firefox so I took that as a sign.

I still can't believe Apple can't/won't rebuild my iMac and that they generate so much e-waste but at least I've been able to avoid another integrated machine this time with the MacMini. That still however has lead to more decisions about a display, keyboard & mouse, speakers and an inordinate amount of time on the phone upgrading & reorganizing the phone & DSL service.

Meanwhile there's been the digital television rigamaroll: the coupons, the converter boxes, the discovery that the antenna has to be on the other side of the living room in order to get the fragile, finicky signals and then there's no way to record anything on the VCR because all the channels are now three digit numbers! All this so we can get the same lousy programming plus three or four versions of weather radar.

A Slow Fade

It occurs to me that if I did as much injury to another person as I do to myself I'd be behind bars.

A Small Loss

She hit the window at the kitchen sink which I've never known a bird to do in the twenty years I've been here. I suspect she was fleeing one of the hawks. I wasn't home when it happened; I saw a trickle of blood on the window when I got back from the park yesterday.

I had a bit of a meltdown. I'm practically labile these days. On the surface life around me seems to continue unchanged and people seem blithely unconcerned about the things that leave me paralyzed for longer and longer chunks of time.