Things I Wish I Had Known Before Adulthood...

With time and age comes perspective.  I was thinking about the things I wish I had known or at least acted on when I was younger.  Here is my list.

1)         Junk food has long-term consequences.

2)         You can’t escape your own genetics.

3)         Your kids pick up your bad habits and language faster and remember it longer than your good habits and a civil tongue.

4)         If you need a long-term product (homes excluded in the present climate), figure out how to buy it now.  Whatever it is will increase in price much faster over time than your income will increase.  Fifteen years from now, you’ll feel like a genius for getting in on the ground floor.

5)         Don’t leave school until you have the degree.  The time you think you’ll have later to finish your education never seems to materialize.  And again, it will never be as affordable as it is at this moment.

6)         Circumstances change…get over it.

7)         You can’t change others.  You can only change yourself so others react differently toward you.  As the saying goes, if you keep doing the same things, you keep getting the same results.

8)         Try something new every day, or every week, or every month.  Even if it is as insignificant as taking a street you’ve never driven.  Everything in life is a matter of perspective.  Either change how you look at something, or look at something you’ve never looked at before.

9)         Put yourself out there and meet new people.  More is accomplished by networking than you can possibly imagine.  

10)     There is no shortage of mean, nasty, cruel, vindictive people in this world.  If one angers you, do not sink to his or her level.  Just walk away. 

11)     There is a universal law of reciprocity.  What you put out eventually comes back to bite you, so only put out positive thoughts and actions.

12)     Always listen to that quiet voice inside your head.  Its name is intuition.  When it tells you to go for it, then go for it.  When it tells you beware, then stop.  Intuition is your first line of defense.  Learn to use it.

The Unanswered Phone - A story that bears repeating on this sad day...

I was running a few minutes late for work that Tuesday morning, and I pulled into the parking lot just as the announcement came over the radio that a passenger airliner had stuck the one of the World Trade Center towers.  I grabbed my purse, hurried into the building, and raced to my office.  I announced to all who would listen that a plane had hit the World Trade Center and everyone started searching the web for information and turning on their radios…everyone but me.  I was dialing my phone, desperate to reach my son.  When the second tower was struck, I dialed faster.  And so began the worst 5 hours of my life. 

My son Chris was in New York City on job interviews.  We talked before he left, and he told me that he was very excited to have an interview at 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning in the World Trade Center.  He thought it would be a neat place to work.  I tried to stay calm as his cell phone remained unanswered.  I stood with my fellow workers around the computer monitors and watched news film of the towers collapsing, mortified at the massive loss of life.  My fears grew.

Soon we heard that a plane had targeted the Pentagon and that another plane, heading to the White House, had made a u-turn over Cleveland and subsequently crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.  I watched in horror, but I kept dialing.  My husband got through to me around 11, wanting to know if I had spoken to Chris.  By that time, I was on the verge of hysteria.  Needless to say, no work was being done as we continued to take in with disbelief the events unfolding on the East Coast in real time in our virtual backyard.

Around 2:30 in the afternoon, I dialed for about the thousandth time.  Chris answered. 

“Oh my God, Chris, where have you been?  I’ve been calling you for five hours!”

“What’s up, Mom?”

“What’s up?  The world is ending!  Can’t you look out the windows in Newark and see the smoke?”

“I’m not in Newark.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Perry.  I just woke up.  What’s going on?”

“Then you don’t know.  Terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center towers around 9 this morning.  They both collapsed, killing thousands.  The towers are gone.  The Pentagon was hit, too.  And a fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania.  It was headed for the White House.  I thought YOU were in one of those towers.  Dad and I have been frantic trying to reach you.  Didn’t you have a job interview this morning in one of the towers?”

There was long moment of silence.

“Yes, I did have an interview, but I finished yesterday’s interviews early, so I called the guy at the Trade Center and asked if I could come in right then, rather than wait until this morning.  He said yes.  So I interviewed late yesterday and headed back to Ohio.  I got in around 2:30 in the morning. I didn’t want to wake you or Dad, so I went to Brian’s and crashed there.”

My relief was palpable. 

Chris was profoundly affected by the events of 9-11.  He made a trip to Ground Zero as soon as it was plausible to do so.  I am sure that he still wonders, as do I, about the twist of fate that kept him so far away from a place he was scheduled to be at the exact moment of that most awful catastrophe.

I am eternally grateful that my son was spared on that horrible day.  As a parent, I experienced 5 hours of the most intense fear I have ever known.  And because of that intense fear, and the memory of how it felt, I am haunted by thoughts of the thousands of mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and friends who spent hour after agonizing hour, on that day and in the days that followed, dialing phones that were never answered.

Vernacronym

Is vernacronym what you get when you cross vernacular with acronyms?  As a writer, I love language, and I love listening to English being spoken in a variety of accents and local dialects.  I know I’ve written about books on CD in previous posts, but I’m having a jolly good time listening to the works of Ian Rankin, a criminal writer from Scotland.  The voice-over is wonderful, and the Scot accents are delicious.

The flawed hero, Detective Inspector John Rebus (make sure you roll that R), is unique in his very Scot attitude toward murder and crime.  Although I am thoroughly enjoying the stories, I admit having to go back and repeat sections where the accent was so thick I couldn’t understand what they were saying, or listening to a word over and over with nary a clue as to its meaning.

So when the good DI Rebus kept saying efffff, whyyyyyy, teeeeeeeeeeee, peeeeeeeeeeeee to himself as he was leaving certain interviews or the company of some characters, I was a mite confused.  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what toilet paper had to do with anything.  And what about that “efffff, whyyyyyy” part?  “Flush Your Toilet Paper?”  What if it wasn’t toilet paper at all?  What if it meant “Find yon tiny pub” or “Forget your troubles, Pip?”  There are so many words used in Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales that are not decipherable to the average American English speaker, how is one to translate such an acronym if one doesn’t know the vernacular?  After all, this was written in the language of the loo, and the wash-up, and the dram, and the pint.

Three- quarters of the way through the book, DI Rebus finally gives up the secret.  I was more than a little taken aback to find that all my mind-bending guesses were for naught.  He was saying a very American “F&*k you too pal.”  Had I been listening to a book by an American author, that would have been my first thought, but since those in Great Britain normally use a B-bomb rather than an F-bomb, my imagination ran wild in an attempt at translation.

One good thing did come of the exercise, however.  I will be sending “vernacronym” to Merriam-Webster for a shot at being a new word added to the dictionary for 2013!

Office woes redux…the saga ends...

We’ll start just after 2 a.m. on Saturday morning.  The progress bar was making incremental movements, though each movement was miniscule and slow.  I went to bed at 3 a.m. and decided to let it run.  At 7 a.m., I was thrilled to discover that it had completed.  I clicked the tiles, one by one.  Word worked; Power Point worked; One Note worked.  Excel did not work.  For the next hour and a half, I uninstalled, deleted, and reinstalled yet another new download of Office.  When the progress bar was only half through in 3 hours, I turned it off.  I would wait for the senior technician call…the call that never came.

I practically killed myself getting home from my Saturday errands by 6:00 p.m., the scheduled time for a tech to call.  I glued myself to the computer and phone and waited.  At 8:00 p.m. I finally gave up and called them.  Two hours with another overseas tech produced no real results.  He was convinced that I had downloaded a virus.  He started a restore to the date that the computer arrived at my house.  When the restore took longer than he expected, he gave me a number and told me to call when it finished. 

Eight minutes later, I made that call, only to get yet another technician.  At least this one was in the continental United States.  We had quite a good discussion.  After about 40 minutes of various attempts at installing Office, he asked why I had downloaded a trial version of Office.  I told him I had not downloaded a trial version or any version other than the one for which I had a code key.  I told him that the previous tech had done a restore back to the day I brought the machine home.  He relegated my end of the phone call to canned music, and I watched lots of movement on the screen.  All of the sudden, Office was downloading and installing.  It took all of 10 minutes.  Then he came back on the line.  He told me that everything should work properly and asked me to test all four Office tiles.  They worked like a charm.  I asked if he had found a virus, and he replied that there was no virus.  It seems the computer shipped with a trial version of Office that was in complete conflict with the paid version I had downloaded.  Once the trial version was removed, everything worked great. 

So I spent an hour on Wednesday, three hours on Friday, and four and a half hours on Saturday on the verge of heaving the new laptop out the window.  Eight and half hours of my precious time, down the drain.  I spent six hours on the phone, doing nothing but listening to someone else type.  All in search of a tech savvy guy with a 15-minute fix.  But it is what it is, and the laptop is working well…just another painful tech saga with a happy ending.

Office woes...MS Office, that is...

It was such a simple thing.  Jim’s laptop overheated and the hard drive was trashed.  Since it would no longer even attempt a boot-up, I watched for good deals and found him a new Inspiron with Windows 8 for a reasonable price.  His software needs are minimal, so I purchased MS Office home and student 2013.  It included Word, Excel, Power Point, and One Note. 

I received the laptop, but for some reason, the e-mail containing the download key for Office went astray.  This triggered two calls to Microsoft and eight calls to Dell.  I was assured that they would send me a CD overnight.  What I received was a small box containing a download key.  There were four instructions.  It looked like a no-brainer. 

1)  Go to office.com/setup
2)  Enter the download key and follow the instructions
3)  Sign in or create a Microsoft account
4)  Download Office to your PC

I followed the four steps.  It seemed to me that the download was a bit too fast; it was over in about 15 seconds and then took me back to the install page.  There was no pop-up that showed installation, nothing to indicate that it was doing anything.  I went back to the home page, but there were no tiles for Office.  I searched everywhere, but found nothing.  So I tried it again.  It took me to the install page and I went through the motions.  It took four attempts before the four Office apps showed up on the home page.

I wasn’t quite sure what I had done differently, but I was relieved.  I opened Word and was able to navigate around.  Then I clicked on Excel.  My time promptly disappeared down the rabbit hole.  I spent an hour trying every avenue to no avail.  I gave up for the night, knowing I was tired and work weary and probably wasn’t thinking with a fresh mind.  That was Wednesday. 

Tonight, I attacked the problem again.  Jim had tried to do a “repair” on Excel when he got home from work, but the computer was grinding away for four hours by the time I got on the case.  At 8:30, I called Dell’s Solution Station.  I sat on the phone until 11:30 with no resolution.  First there was an 80-minute system scan, then another lengthy process.  After those things did not work, we used the download key again, but I could have told him it wouldn’t take the same key twice…I had tried that on Wednesday.  Then he uninstalled and reinstalled the program.  He was convinced that it would work.  Finally he gave up, telling me that I needed a senior technician and arranging an appointment for them to call me back on Saturday at 6 p.m.

He was confident because the Office installation window had come up and was loading.  Under the progress bar it states “We’re wrapping things up – please stay online as we make some finishing touches.”  When he gave up at 11:30 p.m., the bar was only as far as the “t” in the word stay.  As of 1:50 a.m., I’m up to the “k” in the word make.  He told me that if it wasn’t loaded by 12:30, I could shut it down and wait for my senior technician call tomorrow.  But I figured I should just let it keep working.  It may be progressing at a snail’s pace, but as long as it is still moving, I’m letting it continue.  At its present rate, the progress bar may make it to the end by about 5 a.m.  Here’s hoping by morning, a working copy of Excel will be loaded on the stupid machine!

Pink Chiffon Tricycle Queen!

In my never-ending quest for better health and a lower BMI, I started a reduced carb diet on June 10.  I’m not cutting out carbs completely, but I have seriously limited the amount of bread, white starchy foods, etc., that I’m consuming.  I am already down 12 lbs.  I was hoping to be down 20 lbs. by mid-July, but 15 will do.  As long as the scale keeps heading South, I'll be happy.  

Toward the effort to be lean and fit (quite an imaginative goal, I must admit), I took my first outing on my new adult 3-wheel Schwinn on Tuesday night.  It was a bit of a fiasco.  I planned to head East up my road, turn North on Webb and have a down-hill or relatively flat ride the rest of the way to my daughter’s house, a mere 4.5 miles away.  

It was to be an easy first ride...right.  

Reality check:

1) I haven't ridden for two years
2) The new bike has three wheels
3) The new bike has only one speed
4) I’m two years older and out of shape
5) I’m nursing a bad right knee
6) This was my first bike ride since the hip replacement

Turns out a bike with three wheels is not nearly as nimble as a 2-wheeler.  Every imperfection in the road caused the bike to jerk one way or the other.  I had to keep a death grip on the handlebars the whole time.  Every upgrade in the road was like climbing Mount Everest.  I got a quarter mile to the East and stopped at the top of a small hill, just short of a massive coronary.

I turned around and headed West, knowing that the upgrades would not be as high.  With no ability to change speeds, it took huge effort to ride up anything more than a 1% grade.  That effort was a real strain on the bad knee, but I doggedly rode on...in the opposite direction of my planned route.

When I got to the end of River Road, there was a steep upgrade to the intersection.  I stopped about 40 feet shy and walked the bike up and across.  I climbed back in the saddle and biked down Lane with determination, actually making it up and over the two sets of railroad tracks without dismounting, but with some serious leg-pumping effort.  After practically getting side-swiped by someone in a hurry to get home for dinner, I pulled into a quiet development and cut through.  I was only pursued by one nasty-looking, large, black, barking dog (thank heavens).  I came out the other side of the development onto Main Street and rode up into the village, then down Center Road.  The whole time I kept wondering if I looked like Will Ackerman’s “Pink Chiffon Tricycle Queen” (thank you Jim Madden for that vivid image).

I stopped at a small market to grab something wet, since I had sweated out every available drop of perspiration by the time I arrived there.  When I got off the bike, I instantly developed cramps in the soles of both feet and on the backs of my inner thighs.  I hobbled into the store and bought a couple bottles of cold Diet Dew.  Then I tried to park myself on the bench outside the place, but the cramps were too painful, so I stood as still as I could and downed 20 ounces of Diet Dew in about four swallows.  I called my other half, who was at my daughter’s working on a project, and told him if I did not arrive in 45 minutes, to drive up Center Road and drag my cold dead body off the sidewalk.  Then I started to walk the bike.

I did about a quarter mile on foot, which helped alleviate the cramping, but caused annoying rubber burns on the back of my leg.  You see, the two wheels on the back tend to hit your legs if you walk the thing.  I got back on the bike and rode the rest of the way, flying down my daughter’s street at about 50 mph, and barely making the turn into her driveway.  I missed doing a header into a hundred-year-old cherry tree by inches.

All told, the planned 45-minute ride took about an hour and a half, and the 4.5-mile distance turned into approximately 7.5 miles.  I am now in my second day of suffering from my own stupidity, with severe aches in my hip, legs and knee.  I know this too will pass.  I have, however, resigned myself to transporting the bike to flatter terrain until I build up my leg muscles and my stamina.  And, just maybe, I'll wait a week or so before I give it another go...



 

Apologies, schools, and round-abouts....

It's been some time since I have written anything on the blog.  There are no real excuses, so I'll quote work, a many days long family reunion, a road trip to Chattanooga, and writer's block!  June flew by without so much as a sound and here we are.

I have to say that I love United Way.  They are always right in there trying to make things better and in a pretty proactive way.  We had a request for donations for the upcoming school year that will be used to provide paper and school supplies for kids who can't afford to buy such items.  I think it's great for United Way to be thinking ahead about these things. 

Unfortunately, I read this at the same time I read the New-Herald article about the beginning of the road work for the 1.4-million dollar traffic round-about in Leroy.  I almost choked on my Diet Dew.  There has never been a fatality at the intersection of Route 86, Vrooman Road, and Leroy Center Road to my recollection, and I have lived right up the road for close to 40 years.  Yet this basically country intersection needs a 1.4-million dollar improvement? 

Perhaps we should have tried traffic lights first...you know the kind where you stop when it's red and go when it's green?  Surely, if there is so much danger as to need 1.4 million dollars in improvement, there is enough reason to approve a traffic light, even on a state route.  Then we could have used the remaining 1.3 million dollars to make sure every kid in Lake County has supplies and transportation for the upcoming school year.  Just saying...