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I think I’m going to make this the banner image on my home page for a while. Maybe I’ll be banned in Mississippi.

You know how you get applications for credit cards in the mail? (It helps a little if you opt out of pre-approved credit offers at 1-888-5-OPT-OUT.) And how all the banks and credit card companies tell you to tear them up if you don’t want them, to prevent someone else from filling them out in your name? Guess what—doesn’t help.

And people think I’m being paranoid because I bought a paper shredder.

Shark swimming after kayak

I put my little strength training log into an Excel spreadsheet. Just because I’m that much of a geek, or that anal-retentive, or maybe both. I thought it would be kind of cool to have a graph over time of how much weight I’m using.

I didn’t actually know how to make a graph, since I rarely use Excel for anything more than a glorified calculator/list sorter. But that’s what we have kids for, right? My teenage son was quite happy to show me how to make a graph, and all the various options I had. I think he was a little disappointed that all I wanted was a simple line graph.

This isn’t a new phenomenon for me, by the way. As tired as the cliché may be, my kids are much better at gadgetry than I am. They were on a par with me, techie-wise, by the time they were two—my youngest was figuring out how to work the VCR¹ by the age of two. But I knew they had surpassed me when my youngest, at the age of six, told me the purpose of a button on my CD player which I had never figured out. The CD player was older than he was.

I don’t mind being the old fogey who needs help with the new-fangled gizmos. I figure by the time they’re adults they’ll be firmly convinced I can’t do a damn thing for myself, and so I won’t have to. I’ll just sit and do my little cross-stitch projects on the sofa while they wire up my new entertainment system for me, and make awed murmurs like “Thank goodness my children are so good at this. What would I ever do without you?” It’s pretty much what I do already with my spouse.

¹A “VCR” was a device used in ancient times to watch movies at home. Back then movies were on tapes, called “videos,” and the acronym stood for “Video Casette Recorder.” These devices were notoriously difficult for the older generation to control, particularly in regard to setting the clock.

Eclipse!

 Geek Wannabe, General  Comments Off
Mar 292006
 

There was a total solar eclipse today. Kewl!

Swim Meet

 Geek Wannabe, General  Comments Off
Mar 272006
 

Saturday was the first big swim meet of the southeastern Special Olympics teams. Conveniently enough, we were the host city, so there was no overnight travel involved.

My young man swam in five of the races, and did quite well.

The very first race of the meet was an 800-yard freestyle.

Let me just repeat that, in case you missed the significance of that number:

Eight. Hundred. Yards.

Don’t tell me they’re disabled.

Ow.

 Geek Wannabe, General  Comments Off
Mar 132006
 

Yesterday I was useless. My legs were stiff from strength training a little too enthusiastically, so I tried not to stand up unless absolutely necessary. I watched television and worked on a cross-stitch project I’ve been doing off and on for several years.

Other stitchers know what I mean. The big-ass project that you work on for a while, then you get tired of it and put it aside in favor of something smaller and more quickly finished—or in favor of another, equally large project that has different colors you’re not sick of looking at yet. I might go from cross stitch to Hardanger, or from aida to linen, or just mess around with plastic canvas. But dammit, I have to do something while I’m watching television, I can’t just sit there. Television rarely captures my attention enough to watch it without something in my hands. Plus I tend to enjoy the arts and crafts type stuff.

My eldest observed my melodramatic groans and whines whenever I stood up or walked around, and later when I told him I didn’t want to stand up again just yet, he went to the closet and brought me a blanket. It was a bit hot for a blanket, but I accepted it anyway because it was sweet of him to try to do something for me.

The spousal unit is out of town until Thursday; he was going to come back Saturday, but the bastages cancelled his flight and all the other ones were booked and overbooked. So he’s just going straight on to his next job site. Sigh.

 

Driving my son home from school, he mentioned that in his fourth period class he had learned about the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

He asked, “Do you know what they are?”

“Yes, we just listed them.”

“Yeah, but do you know what they mean? Like, do you know what denial is?”

“Yes.” I paused, then added, “It’s a river in Egypt.”

He cracked up.

One of the great things about kids is that often they haven’t yet heard these old jokes.

Mar 062006
 

Cadbury is recalling about 10% of its chocolate Easter eggs because one of the molds in the manufacturing plant chipped and a few bits of plastic got into the eggs on that production line.

Personally, I don’t care. I’ll eat ‘em anyway. The caramel ones are so good it’s worth a little bleeding.

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