Scattershot

So many things to say, so many things I can't share.

It's a dilemma. So here are some random things.

Can I be boring and tell you how in love I am with Lupita Nyong'o? It just feels like I am jumping on an already over-populated bandwagon. But, oh, hell -- here I am, plopped right in here, trundling along with the mainstream media. I predict a huge uptick in the popularity of the name "Lupita"among babies in the years to come. Yeah? 

Today is National Day of Unplugging! ....Oops. Oh, I guess you are supposed to be unplugged from electronics from sundown tonight until sundown tomorrow. Unfortunately that is not going to work as we have some serious family medical shit going down right now (see above re: can't share). Blah Blah Fail.

In related news, we have undertaken the task of getting Viva a cell phone for her eleventh birthday, which fast approacheth.  She will be graduating from elementary school in May and moving on to middle school in August. I want her to have a way to keep in touch with her old friends since she will be switching school districts and it is highly unlikely any of her friends will be at her new school. I also want to have a way to contact her because I anticipate a variety of after-school activities and needing to pick her up hither and yon. We plan to have a talk with her about our expectations for her usage and care of the phone and to provide her with something along these lines as reinforcement. 

Wow, do people have a lot of opinions on whether YOUR kid should have a phone. Sweet Dub and I are both rather sensible most of the time. I said, most of the time. And Viva is fairly mature and responsible most of the time. I said, most of the time. I am aware that she may abuse her privilege of having a phone. And she will be aware that she will be in Huge Unspeakable Trouble should she abuse the privilege. There will be consequences, and then we will move on. 

Have I mentioned how much I adore Viva? Perhaps not lately. (I mean perhaps I haven't mentioned it lately, not that I don't adore her lately.) I love this age. She is fun to be around, and we have long talks and just enjoy hanging out with each other. I will always love her, but I also really *like* her as a person because she is so thoughtful and funny and insightful. 

Oh, and to head off any friction in the event her sister reads this someday: yes, I also love Ceeya. How can there be any doubt?? 

And finally: I think the laundry hampers in our apartment are being filled by fiendish elves while we are out. Why is there so much laundry, always? What is to be gained?

Happy weekend. Peace out.

Holding Out Hope

Nothing from Google seems to want to load this evening. I had a whole photo post I was planning, and now:  zip. Hmf. Is it time to ditch Blogger? I finally am back in the groove, wanting to put fingers to keyboard, and technology is gettin in the way. I will now hit send and see if my blogging by email works. Stay tuned for further griping.

I am not THAT bad

I have posted to my blog via email a couple of times in recent weeks (no, really, it's true), and then today was looking at my blog and realized neither post actually posted. So much for all my great intentions! Although I have been able to post by email previously, apparently this feature was disabled at some point so nothing I wrote recently was showing up.

You did not miss anything earth-shattering. I'm just ticked off that I actually made the effort and nothing happened.

Oh, and on a related note:  the check is in the mail.  And I have a bridge and some swamp land to sell you.

(No, really!  I did actually type up two posts which have gone off into the ether!)

Duh...Smartphone

I had a pretty good week there where I posted something every couple of days, and then: I fell off the face of the earth.

Hello, and welcome to Monday. I am back, and not necessarily better than ever, but better than some days, which is better than nothing.

Quick update on Ceeya: her occupational therapist came down with the flu, so she couldn’t make it to what would be only our second session with her on Saturday. She emailed me on Friday to tell me this, rather than calling me, but since I was out of the office at an all-staff event all day on Friday, I didn’t see her email until Saturday morning, 45 minutes before I was supposed to leave the house. Fortunately, she had arranged for another therapist to take us at the same time. I was a little irritated because our appointment was for 12 noon—smack in the middle of Ceeya’s usual lunch/naptime groove—and she emailed to ask if we could do a 10 AM time just this once. That would have been my preference.

All this boils down to: I am really in need of a Smartphone, don’t you think? The more I think about it, I don’t even understand how I am functioning without one. Wait! Clearly, I am not functioning without one. I have my pathetic Motorola flip-phone and it is a piece of garbage. Wait, I didn’t mean that. It has served me well, but Ceeya threw it on the ground a few months ago and ever since then my screen has been badly cracked and I look like a total loser with my Fred Sanford phone. I have been waiting for my Verizon “new every two” deal to kick in—whereby I can get a new phone at a deep discount every two years—and that just happened last week. So I was merrily researching Droid Smartphones and mentioned to Sweet Dub that I was thinking of getting one.

Leave it to my husband to throw a wrench in the works. “Why don’t you just get an iPhone?” he said. “Maybe because I already have AT&T, we could get a deal and you could get the new iPhone 4. Maybe we could both get one!”

(Note that Sweet Dub was forced to buy a cell phone when he got laid off in April because his employer reclaimed the company cell phone which he had had for 6 years, thereby forcing him to switch phone numbers after 6 years, and by the way not letting him take any of his contact info off the phone, so he spent several laborious days emailing people and asking for numbers, oh my God, the humanity. At any rate, at that point, he chose the iPhone 3, and he LURRRVES it.)

I could be wrong, but I think it’s highly unlikely that we will have to pay less money for two new iPhones than for one Droid on the plan I already have, which will give me a substantial (read $300) discount on a new phone. Hence, this is all very pie in the sky.

You know those people they call early adopters? I am not one of those people. For many years, I thought the whole concept of every one having a cell phone was ridiculous. And even as a mom, who you’d think would be paranoid and need to have her phone with her at every moment just in case something happens to the kids, it took years—I mean seriously, only until the last year or so—for me to not leave my phone inside my purse, inside my desk drawer, and walk off to meetings and such for hours. I am just not all that plugged in.

Anyhoo: at some point in the next week or so, I expect to get a new phone and I will be up-to-speed for about five minutes until the next thing comes along. But most importantly, I will be able to get email anytime, anywhere, forever and ever, the end.

And maybe get all of my appointments synced up and know where I am supposed to be, with kids and without. That would be handy.

Technical Difficulty, Part I

Oh my God. So after two weeks without Internet access, I am finally online, I just wrote a post and hit "publish," and Blogger tells me an error occurred. "Hit the back button," it advises me, and when I do, my post has completely disappeared.

What the Pf--??

I am filled with rage.

Note to My Future Self (First in an Occasional Series)

Dear Self,

We (You of the Future*, and I of the Now) have this problem. Rarely do we use our printer to print anything other than an 8.5 by 11 standard letter-sized document. About once or twice a year, usually at Viva's birthday and Christmas, we try to feed odd-sized paper into the machine to print out invitations or Christmas cards. Inevitably, the format is all screwy. Inevitably, we have forgotten since last time how we got the damn thing to work. It's a silly thing, but it's annoying.

The problem is that the paper is non-standard size, and the computer for whatever reason is not communicating to the printer that are feeding it non-standard paper, even though we have typed in the measurements in page setup. So it goes through as if it is printing on letter-size paper. Which is to say, it will print halfway across the (test**) page and lose half of the intended message. Why is it that this sort of thing never works to my advantage? Like, doesn't it seem to you that if I have to experience some sort of technical snafu, couldn't it be of the electronic banking variety, in my (our) favor? I'm just saying.

Here is what I have discovered, Future Self: you have to trick the computer. Ooh, tricksy. Tell it that you are printing on paper that is 8.5 inches wide. Measure the difference between 8.5 and the actual paper width. Add the difference to the margin in page setup. Try it, try it, you will see. Future Self, it will work. And there will be much rejoicing across the land.

Of course, it is after midnight and although I've figured this out, I haven't tried it yet because our husband is sleeping scant yards away and he will undoubtedly wake up if I make even the slightest sound, aside from tapping on the keyboard. Have you noticed he's a really light sleeper? Have you trained him to sleep more than 5 hours at a stretch, Future Self? Does he still say things like "I'm going to tattoo a blog across my body so maybe you'll pay attention to me"? Oh, you forgot about that?

Good luck, Future Self. Especially with the ozone and all that.

Muchos smoochos,
Me of the Now

* Hey, by the way, Future Self, what is it like there? Can cars fly? Can pigs fly? Has an asteroid hit the earth? Hello? Are you there?

** I never never use the actual "snazzily pre-printed, limited number of pieces" paper on the first go. I always start with a sample on the basic Office Depot multipurpose paper. Learn from my mistakes, Future Self (and any other poor souls out there).

E-mail blogging

Testing, testing, one two three...

Oh my God, can it be true? I can't post anything on my blog from work, and I have been having trouble with my wireless at home. However, theoretically, I can post via e-mail, which I could theoretically do from work as a break between projects and meetings and the like.

This is my first attempt. Fingers crossed...

Quickie

The IT department where I work has reconfigured our firewalls or fortified them or some such gobbledygook. What this means for you is that I can apparently no longer post anything on Blogger from work (this includes comments on my own and other people's blogs). Thus, unless I am either working from home - which I do only once a week - or get up earlier or stay up and try to put two sentences together after Viva goes to bed, I will most likely be blogging even less than I currently do. I'm not sure how that's possible.

I like to blog as a quick break from work. I feel like it lets me release other stuff that's been on my mind and that helps me refocus on work. You may call that a juicy rationalization. All I know is it's 6:13 AM and I have to go begin my day. Rushing to blog is kind of sucky.

P.S. Our plasma screen TV, which we have had for less than 6 months, suddenly decided it's done with pictures this morning. We can only get sound. Sweet Dub had to leave the house to give vent to his rage. The TV was very expensive.

A quick Google search indicates that on LG plasma TVs, there is a known problem whereby the boards inside the TV blow pretty much right after the warranty expires (around 18 months). Ours is a Sanyo. Can't seem to find much about it yet. Have to go, now, or I'll be late for work. See you on the weekend, maybe.