Coffee heat rising

Angst

MacBankruptcy…

by

So the decision is just about made: Buy a new Mac. This will lead to MacBankruptcy, I expect. Oh, well.

The MacBook is barely limping along. By an amazing luck of the draw, I hooked up with an exceptionally accomplished and determined Apple support advisor. We’ve been going back and forth for a week or ten days. We’ll think we’ve got it fixed and then…well…not so much. Right now everything is fixed, as far as we know, except for the random crashes that occur for no visible reason. (Such as the one that just occurred when I tried to upload an image to this post…)

After much discussion with The Son, I’ve about decided that a new MacBook, despite its several disadvantages, has fewer drawbacks than a new PC.

Price: Stratospheric. However, the present machine has been around since 2008. The thing is 8½ years old. Probably the only reason it’s acting like it’s on its last legs is the software update, not the hardware. One would probably go through two PC’s — maybe three — for the cost of one MacBook.

Hassle Factor: Vast. Office 2016, the last Microsoft update that is not in the Cloud (which I wish to avoid at all costs), does not play well with the current Mac operating system, cutely named Sierra. This means I will have to subscribe to Office 365, which represents a permanent royal screwing. Over time, you end up paying way, way, WAY more for the privilege of using Word and Excel than you would if you paid a couple hundred bucks for a new Office suite right now. On the other hand, sooner or later I’d probably have to subscribe to the damn thing anyway. And nothing could be more hassle than daily migrating between one operating system and another.

Been there, done that. Don’t wanna do it again.

Customer Support: The formerly excellent service at the Apple store has been downgraded to to “sucks.” However, the phone support is outstanding. If that continues to be true, it’ll be worth the extra cost. Customer service for a PC? Nonexistent.

Downtime: Nil, if I make the buy now. God only knows how long I’ll be spavining my back in front of the desktop if I wait until the Macbook crashes in flames.

Potential Sidestream Benefits: Pages will run on the newest version of Sierra. Pages operates as a layout program. Yes. Good. Not only that, but Pages will convert direct to ePub. Extremely good. Presumably Office 365 will never have to be re-downloaded and re-screwed-around with. One hesitates to say “it will just work,” because evidently nothing “just works.” But it could be slightly less hassle-filled.

So there it is. Makes sense. In a digital, 21st-century sorta way.

Images: DepositPhotos
Computer hair-tearing, © bepsimage
Banner image of the day, © Julos

The Endless Uphill Battle…

by

Ever had one of those One-Step-Forward-Two-Steps-Backward days? Yesterday was one of those. It appears, though, that today may have flipped yesterday on its metaphysical head: one step backward, two steps forward.

Yesterday…oh God. Whatever I touched broke. Wouldn’t work. Dissolved. Undid itself. Turned into a fucking disaster. Required the attention of a professional, who was not available.

First off, the MacBook — the computer I do most of my work on because my back hurts too much to sit at a desk for any length of time — pretty much gives up the ghost. It can NOT maintain a connection to the Net. But then it starts with all sorts of other colorful frolics.

Let us say, for example, that I’ve given up on the Internet and just want to do my work. So I click to disconnect, period, from the wireless connection. So…we’re pretty sure this next antic is not a router/modem issue.

I’m typing along in, say, Wyrd or Excel, and out of the blue…CLICK! It shuts down. Before you can gasp “WTF?” it reboots…of course, losing substantial amounts of new data. Wyrd and Excel, being creatures of Microsoft, now present  you with two or three versions of every file you had open, and you have to figure out, somehow, which one has lost the least amount of data, crash out of the other versions, and save the relatively intact version under the original filename, or under the filename + a numeral to distinguish it from the one you started with.

This happens with regularity.

The machine will stay online, sort of, if I go into the back room and sit within about five feet of the router — which defeats the purpose, because there are no truly pain-free chairs in that room, at least, not one that’s suited for sitting and typing for more than about ten minutes..

MacMail starts opening messages in a pane about a third the size of the window, meaning that to read the messages you have to navigate to the green button to maximize the window…not the end of the world, but when you’re talking hundreds of messages, a certifiable PITA. I cannot figure out how to fix that.

These quirks render the computer pretty much unusable

I decide it’s probably time to buy a relatively inexpensive Windows machine plus Office 2016, the last and soon-to-be-disappeared non-Cloud-based version of Wyrd.

There’s not enough gas in the car to make it to this morning’s SBA meeting, which now takes place on the western border of the Pima Reservation…a long, long, LONG way from lovely North Central. So — all this takes place after yesterday’s encounter with the latest bum in the alley, not so much a bad thing as a sad thing — and I have a check to deposit to the S-corp’s checking account.

Figuring that the computer weirdness will turn an effort to deposit it electronically into a screaming nightmare, I decide I should drive the check to the credit union and, on the way back, stop by Fry’s Electronics to look at Windows machines, Lowe’s to buy a new hose timer, and Costco to fill up on gas. While at the CU, I’ll get two hundred bucks of walking-around cash, enough to last a couple months, at least.

Credit union: after a 20-minute drive through homicidal traffic (traffic is always homicidal here), I drive up to the building and discover the bastards have closed the parking lot! WTF? They just resurfaced that lot a few months ago? Why are they pouring more black stuff on it?

The closest parking space is about a quarter-mile away through 110-degree heat.

I park illegally, blocking another illegal parallel-parker, and fly in the door. Deposit the check, but feeling stressed about the potential for a parking ticket, forget to withdraw the spending money. Fly out the door and get back to the car before the other criminal parker returns to find her vehicle immovable.

Drive down the street to Fry’s. There I find they no longer carry the kind of table fans I used to get there. Okay: no surprise there. Over to the electronics department. They have a glorious wealth of windows hardware…woooo HOOOO! There’s even a refurbished thing with a gigantic screen and 2 TB of memory plus god only knows how many more gigabytes worth (can’t recall just now) and…gee whiz.

Fry’s has not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE sales staff lingering around an empty computer department. Literally, I’m the only customer there. Not ONE of them will give me the time of day! They’re all standing around involved in a personal conversation, and none of them even bothers to say “do you have any questions.”

Disgusted, I walk out. No wonder there were hardly any cars in the parking lot that used to be crowded all the time.

Dodging my fate once again (I’m good at that), I make my way down the street to Lowe’s. The reason I need a new hose timer is that the kitchen-timer device I ordered from Amazon leaked from the moment I attached it and yes, it does have a washer. Some months ago, Home Depot’s guy reported that they quit carrying the venerable Orbit timers because (get this!) some customer was suing Orbit and HD after the disaster that ensued when he set the thing to water his lawn and then went off on a 10-day vacation. Apparently the house’s foundation was afloat by the time he got back.

Moron. Don’t go off and leave a hose running on a cheapo timer.

But knowing that Orbit timers do leak — usually not fresh out of the plastic wrapping, but within a couple months — I figured I’d bite the bullet and get a digital timer, even though I really do not need a new learning curve so I can water the damn plants.

The cheapest digital timer was THIRTY BUCKS! Holy shit.

Exit, stage left, carrying a ten-dollar Orbit.

From there it was off to Costco.

Drive up to a gas pump, stick my card in, and am informed the card is expired, Eff You Very Much.

Hadn’t planned on going in, but now I have to trudge into the store, stand in line, pony up a chunk of dough. Might as well buy a few things. Three hundred dollars later, I’ve stocked up on a bunch of key items whose Lifetime Supplies have run low.

It’s Wednesday afternoon, so the place isn’t too busy…yet they do have enough cashiers, which is not the rule for Costco’s slow times. I get in line with my mountain of impulse buys, behind another customer with a mountain of junk.

A sweet little old lady with three (count’em, 3) items in hand gets in line behind me. I offer to let her go before me. After some politely de-rigueur demurrals, she agrees to do so.

The cashier now gets confused and racks up the guy ahead of me’s purchase to my credit card. We say no, no…confused! She fixes that.

Now our LOL steps to the front and forks over her three little items, but by then my stuff has rolled to the front of the conveyor belt.

This further confuses the hapless cashier, who racks up the LOL’s stuff on my credit card. We go nope nope nope nope and the cashier fixes this, BUT….

In the process of moving the LOL’s purchases to the front of the conveyor belt, I pick up a plastic box of blueberries, which flips open and scatters about a hundred blueberries on the floor, then slips out of my hands, falls to the floor, and (already being open) dumps most of the rest of them all over the floor, the guy ahead of me’s feet, and my feet.

The manager comes over. A clean-up crew comes over. A runner is dispatched to get the LOL a new package of berries. The LOL is upset. The cashier is unnerved. And because I’m now hysterical, I think it’s fuckin’ hilarious. I suggest to the LOL that she and I should throw in together, become bank robbers, and see what kind of fiasco we can create in a Wells Fargo. She thinks that’s funny. The cashier at this point has no sense of humor. The manager is too busy to notice.

Costco has a nice selection of little computers, and they sell the entire Office 2016 suite, on disk, for $125. That is one hell of a lot better than you can do by downloading one program at a time from Microsoft.

Probably a sweet li’l HP or Dell will do the job, for not too many dollars.

There’s just one hitch: We do not know that the problem is the Macbook.

What we do know is that the Arris router/modem the Cox dude installed when he was here is roundly reviled by Amazon customers. They do hate it…because…well…it’s given to shutting your computer down. I’ve been trying to persuade my son to help me replace it with a separate router & modem. He, in the time-honored manner of adult sons, has been dragging his feet.

I think that before I ditch the MacBook, I should make sure the problem isn’t with the wireless connection.

Make my way home through sizzling heat and crazed drivers — counting only five bums between Costco and my house, probably because it’s too hot for pandhandling.

On the way, it occurs to me that soon — very soon — I’m going to have to make a command decision.

I’m going to have to decide whether to stay in my home and do the several expensive upgrades that need to be done, or to pony up a shitload of cash to move into a neighborhood that is not the target of the City’s Bum Relocation efforts.

The Ex and I moved out of an exquisitely beautiful house that we dearly loved in the historic Encanto neighborhood because the area was overrun with derelicts that the City had pushed out of downtown in its elaborate renovation project. Most of these folks lived in SROs. The city bought or condemned the old hotels, leveled them, and left no place for the homeless mentally ill and drug addicts to live. So they all moved into the Encanto district.

And lest you think these folks are really harmless — as Dog appeared to be yesterday, as our Honored City Parents will assure you — consider the case of the paralegal who used to work in a dirty-shirt law office within easy walking distance of our house. She liked to come to work about an hour early, fix herself a pot of coffee, and use the quiet time to do the most immediate tasks before her coworkers and bosses would show up.

One morning, a prominent local bum was informed by his Voices that this woman was the Devil and he should kill her. Being an obedient type, that’s exactly what he did: he walked in the office’s front door and stabbed her to death.

This is not the sort of thing that inclines you to want to hang around a neighborhood that the City thinks is just ducky for its most unfortunate and its most neglected.

I am getting old. I no longer can handle a big dog that might provide a little protection. Nor am I especially comfortable with keeping a shotgun or a .38 on hand…too much potential for error.

Meanwhile, I’ve lived in this house almost 15 years. When I moved in, I installed a number of upgrades, all of which need to be redone. The oven no longer works. The dishwasher soon will need to be replaced. That’s about $2500 to $3,000 right there.

The pool needs to be replastered, and really, the pump should be replaced: $6,000. The exterior needs to be repainted: $2,000 to $4,000. The interior should be repainted, too. Another $2,000. The city wants to abandon the alleys and fence them off, which would help with the bum problem, but they intend to stick the residents with the cost. So we’re at…what? $12,500 to $15,000 worth of repairs and maintenance.

It’s bloody expensive to move…but it’s not that expensive. I’d probably need to replace the kitchen counters, since Mexican tile is roundly out of style and it’s cracked anyway. But that wouldn’t cost 12 grand.

If I decide to stay — really, I do not want to move — and I spend 12 or 15 grand to keep it running, the upgrades should last about 15 or maybe 20 years.

In 15 years, I will be 87 years old…and that is too old to move. I would like to live in this house until I die. But at 87, I almost surely will not have the funds to do all that maintenance over again. Nor will I have the physical strength to maintain a by-then-decrepit (again) pool.

In 20 years, I’ll be 92: even more extravagantly too old to move.

If I choose to move now, where would I move? Fountain Hills, a suburb on the far east end of Scottsdale, is a likely venue: it’s a long way from Bum Central, no ill-advised light-rail runs through it, the housing prices are more or less affordable, and it’s nice and quiet. On the other hand, it’s so far from my stomping grounds that I would have to quit the choir, make new friends (not an easy trick at this age), and would never see my son again.

There really isn’t any place in town that does not host a fair number of homeless. The tired, the poor, the wretched refuse of our teaming shores are pretty well endemic in this city. Light-rail aggravates the problem. You have to go a long way out to find a neighborhood where it isn’t an issue. Or have a lot of money. And I mean A LOT of money to buy your way into a protected district. We’re talkin’ Richistan on Steroids. And being WT myself, I personally do not find Richistan a very welcoming place to live.

I could buy a condo in one of the Central Avenue high-rises. But they’re outlandishly expensive. And what on earth would I do with the dogs in one of those places? They would have to find a new home.

Needless to say, this rumination did nothing to make my day any better.

It’s 3:00 by the time I get home: most of the day eaten up by all this Brownian motion.

I call my spy at Apple Support, having put this chore off until after the Fourth of July holiday. Leave word on his answering machine: he wants the case number, but I have so many case numbers I can’t figure out which was the one he’d worked on.

He does not call back. I’m not surprised. The laptop is now limping so badly it’s essentially dead.

Later in the day, a team of Chinese mathematicians sends over not one but two abstruse papers, asking for a bid. They also would like advice on publishing…meaning these things have yet to be brushed by the eyes of a peer reviewer.

Most of the math I edit is in bioengineering. This stuff is SCI, which has to do with information management. I could advise where to submit a paper in mathematical bioengineering, who to talk to, and how to go about it. But SCI? Not so much.

Table this message while I think about how much to charge. The Chinglish is pretty thick, which is especially problematic when I have NO clue what the authors are talking about.

Wireless connection turned off, I type up the rest of the novel “scenes” I’ve been concocting with pen & ink on paper. DAYUM! The total so far…so freaking far!…comes to over 17,000 words. What? I have eight scenes and am almost at the length of a short genre novel?

Study this and realize they’re not quite scenes: they could be construed as chapters. Okay. So…eight chapters and the first serious confrontation is not scheduled until chapter 9.

Ducky.

Decide to give up and wash the dog. This is never an easy chore; today it is made more difficult by the fact that I’ve put it off for a good two years. Because…well, it is an AWFUL chore.

First, brush out as much dog hair as possible:

Hard to believe one 22-pound corgi could even have that much hair at all, isn’t it?

Ruby, who has a more standard short coat, cannot understand why so much attention is being given to her rival, Cassie, and wishes to reclaim center stage.

She does so by placing herself between Cassie and the Human, then assuming the “WTF do you think you’re doing?” look.

Next: drag Cassie outside, kicking and fighting, and scrub her off in the hose. First shampoo her very thick, heavy hair — a lot like trying to shampoo a writhing bear rug. Then condition her fur; rub that in, rinse it out, clinging to the dog for dear life.

Run after the dog, who races in the back door and SHAKESHAKESHAKESHAKESHAKEs all over the kitchen cabinetry.

Any question yet about why I haven’t laundered this animal since the memory of human runneth not to the contrary?

Frantically dry the dog as best as possible with a couple of bath towels. It’s humid. I can’t get her fully dry, and, wishing to continue living, dare not take a hair dryer to her. She is very, very pissed.

Washing Cassie causes more hair to fall out. Every time. And yea verily. Couple hours later, she’s still damp, and clumps of fur are sticking out.

Try again to get her more dry. Brush her again, brush her brush her brush her brush her…

The second mound of fur is even bigger than the first mound, but now at least she’s starting to dry off a little.

Today…

Up at 5:30 this a.m. to race around and shoot out the door for the weekly Scottsdale Business Association Meeting.

Bolt down a piece of the cantaloupe I bought at Costco yesterday and swallow two cups of coffee while getting dressed and piling hair on top of my head. Fly out the door, running 10 minutes late.

It’s a 30- to 40-minute drive with the Commuter Cowboys, made only slightly more tolerable by the several round-about traffic-jam escapes I happen to know. Cruising toward the freeway…and realize…uh oh! Got an embarrassing urgency: out of the blue, diarrhea!

I need to go to the bathroom right now. And between that moment and the freeway, there is not one fast-food joint with a public loo.

Maybe I can make it to southeast Scottsdale.

Maybe not…

I turn around and manage to make it back to the house without having to put in an insurance claim to replace the driver’s seat, but just barely.

Now I have to wash my clothes. Goody.

What brought this on, I can’t imagine. I was fine when I rolled out of the sack this morning and fine until I got on the road. The only thing I can figure is it must have been the cantaloupe.

It seems unlikely you’d experience the effects of food poisoning in under an hour…but is there another explanation? Didn’t eat anything else today. Nothing that I ate yesterday was likely to make me sick…well, no, except maybe for some salad…I did wash the “organic” lettuce leaves, but unless you soak produce in Clorox, washing it doesn’t do much to get rid of pathogens.

Damn. Are we really so Third-World that I’m going to have to resort to what we had to do in Arabia? That was: soak EVERY piece of produce in diluted Clorox, and never eat anything (strawberries, for example) that cannot hold up to that treatment.

One halfway decent thing has happened, then, over the past 28 or 30 hours: The Apple Support guy called back this morning.

If I’d made it to Scottsdale, I would’ve missed his call.

He noted that the version of El Capitan my expensive Mac freelance guy downloaded is out of date. Suggested updating from 10.11.4 to 10.11.6; and BTW, he said, Expensive Mac Freelance was wrong in thinking the Macbook could support Sierra. Don’t try it, he advised.

He then instructed in a couple of strategies for reviving a more stable wireless connection. This resulted in crashing my iCloud sign-in, so had to jump through MORE hoops for that hassle. And he explained why MacMail has decided I should see miniature slivers of incoming messages; fixed that.

He asked me to use it for a while and then call back if there were any more issues. So far it’s working OK from the room where I prefer to work. Only one glitch in the past couple of hours:

Annoying Apple Photos will not import images from the camera: try that and you get another shut-down-and-reboot. Lovely. So I can’t adjust the color and exposure on the unlovely pictures above without loading them into Preview, which I am not going to fool with just now because my head hurts.

Ugh. Now I must prepare for a teleconference, and so…away!

The Great Hair Conditioner Fiasco

by

The Three Stooges would’ve felt right to home here at the Funny Farm… This place features an ongoing three-ring circus.

Okay, backstory: When the weather’s warm so I can swim every day, I like to shower in the backyard hose. To that end, I keep bottles of shampoo and conditioner on the back porch. These have to be in containers with screw-on caps instead of the pump type, because in the heat, the liquids expand and work their way up the pump and squirt all over the table or pavement.

Since I buy these products in lifetime supplies from Costco, the stuff has to be transferred from the Costco-sized pump bottle to a smaller, more manageable container. Meanwhile, a bottle of conditioner has been sitting in the closet so long it seemed to have congealed: it had become so thick it wouldn’t come up out of the bottle’s pump. I added some water to it, but it’s so thick I can’t make it blend by shaking the bottle vigorously.

So. Now I have a brilliant idea.

What I should do is dump this stuff into a bowl and stir it up with my electric mixer.

🙂 Almost makes sense, doesn’t it?

Convinced, I schlep the gear into the kitchen and whip it up with the mixer. The result: it does whip up: a lot like whipped cream! With lovely soft fluffy peaks…

Oh well. A little air in the mix can’t hurt.

Now I try to insert this thick, gloppy “whipped cream” into an old conditioner bottle, using one of those flexible funnels that you can squeeze and sort of massage stuff through.

Bad idea.

Exceptionally bad idea.

The glop will not go through the funnel. Not on your life. But it will go all over the counter, all over the sink, all over the floor, and all over you!

Holy sh!t.

Ooops…

Now it dawns on me that this stuff really should not go down the kitchen drain. If ordinary cooking and meat fat will clog that drain, THIS stuff will block it like a chunk of cement.

But by the time this revelation appears, it’s toooooo late. The stuff is all over everything and slopped all around the sink and has gone down not one but both drains. And it’s not just gooey: it’s also slippery.

I carry the bowl out to the garbage can, therein to dump its contents. But my hands are covered with this gunk. To get into the alley, I have to pass through two gates, one of which is secured with a padlock. My fingers are so slippery I can’t even hold onto the key!

Finally I manage to get out there and dispose of the glop. But now we have the problem of the sinks and the drains…

Back in the house, I use up almost an entire roll of paper towels wiping the stuff out of the sinks as best as I can, and wiping it off the countertops and the floors. I carry the dirty bowl to the garage utility sink to try to wipe the remaining film of glop out of it, and so of course more of the stuff goes down that drain.

What. A. MESS!

At length (great length!), I manage to mop most of the goop off the house and off me. Result: the kitchen and the garage and my hands STINK of industrial perfume. GOD, how I hate the smell of industrial perfume. The stuff permeates every personal care product on the market, unless you’re willing to pay extra for less. And so far I haven’t found a fragrance-free hair conditioner that works on locks that cascade halfway down to your waist.

So…how much is this going to cost me in plumber’s bills???

I decided to try the baking soda/vinegar trick, though I have no reason to believe either of those substances cuts congealed hair conditioner.

In this maneuver, you pour about a half-cup of baking soda down the drain. Follow immediately with about a cup of white vinegar (any vinegar will do: the white stuff is cheapest). Let it sit while you bring a pot of water to a boil. Then pour boiling water down the drain.

Subjected all three drains to this treatment. Then filled each sink with hot tap water and ran the water through, putting the weight of many gallons into the drain. This should rinse out the baking soda (which can petrify in your drain when you pull this trick) and with any luck will push out at least some of the hair-conditioner gunk.

That exploit consumed most of yesterday afternoon. Too bad I didn’t have a video cam going: it would have made a very funny show.

Images:
Larry, Mo, and Curly: public domain
Steamy water tap: DepositPhotos, © nikkytok

i-don’t-wanna-itis…Is God Tryin’ to Tell You Something?

by

I don’t wanna. That’s where we’re at here. I just effin’ don’t want to!

The Light has shined down from heaven and illuminated reality: I’m not doing all the things I should be doing BECAUSE…

Yesh, all the things I should be doing:

• Get The Complete Writer ensconced at the PoD site, generate page proofs, copyedit page proofs, update the MS, upload corrected copy, and generate a second page proof

• Ride herd on the e-book builder; if he doesn’t get his act together soon, hire someone else

• Re-enroll in Toastmaster’s and effin’ get serious about it

• Build more and better publicity on Facebook, Twaddle, and effin’ Mailchimp (how do i hate Mailchimp? let me count the ways…)

• Hustle up some speaking engagements

• Fix DropBox on the iMac (disabled by fuckin’ OS 10.11.4)

• Get to work, get to work, GET. TO. WORK!

Well, all sorts of reasons not do do these things present themselves:

• 12 weeks of debilitating respiratory infection

• Updating the Macs’ OS fucked up everything on my computers, making it a) difficult or b) impossible to perform tasks I did formerly with easy keyboard commands.

• I’m way behind in the marketing program.

• I can’t even begin to figure out how to run X, Y, or Z program.

• Maybe the GERD is back. Maybe the respiratory “infection” is the GERD.

• I’m not getting enough exercise.

• I have too much paying editorial work.

• I have to do __(fill in the blank)__ first.

• The pool needs to be cleaned.

• The shrubbery needs to be trimmed.

• The groceries need to be shopped for…

Nope. ‘Fraid not. The truth is, I’m not doing all those things for one simple reason: because I don’t want to.

And y’know what? I think that’s my body or my unconscious or God Herself tryin’ to tell me something.

If they were things that would work,
if they were things that were worth doing,
I’d have done them by now.

Not just by now, but a long time ago.

You know what I do wanna do? As you suspect, it surely is none of the above.

What I wanna do is draft the next scene in my current wildly unpublishable novel. That’s what I wanna do. I wanna write unpublishable novels.

The God’s Truth is that I do not need to write any more publishable copy. No. No, indeed.

The editing bidness brings in plenty of income. In the past year, it’s generated more than Social Security has plopped into my checking account. And Social Security plus the Required Minimum Drawdown from retirement savings is exactly enough to support me, coming out even at the end of a 12-month period.

So…why do I want to do anything else?

Why, indeed?

Probably because it’s just what I do. It’s what I’ve always done: work myself stupid, often for no very good reason.

And here’s the thing when it comes to personal finance, the putative slant of Funny about Money: FIREers: beware. 

You can achieve Financial Independence. You can Retire Early. But you may find yourself, at some level, still feeling driven to do something constructive. And because America measures “constructive” in dollars, you may define “constructive” as paying work.

What if “constructive” work is not paying work? What if it isn’t socially redeeming work, like charity or teaching or loving one’s neighbors? What if it’s not even work at all?

What I’m suggesting is that at some point in life you should do what moves you, even if what moves you is not socially redeeming, not good for the society, and absolutely absent any chance of profitability. Corollary: If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it.

If you can’t force yourself to do it, don’t do it. Find something else to do.

As of today, I’m stopping.

I need to reconsider what I’m doing with my life and do something else. If “something else” is the same as “nothing,” then it’s time to do…nothing.

Death’s Door: Still Locked…

by
Not yet, you!

Welp, much as I keep pounding at Death’s Door, they still won’t let me in!

Visited the pulmonologist this morning, just dead sure that the twelve weeks of gurgling, wet, sloppy, asphyxiating goddamn cough has got to be adult-onset asthma. This suspicion was aggravated by a recent check-up at the Mayo, where a physician’s assistant opined that it could be allergy-mediated asthma.

So the doc did a breathing test at the office: not asthma. Then he sent me off for an X-ray: nothing visible inside there. But I did get to see and play with two of THE cutest little kids you ever imagined could exist, whilst sitting around the lab’s waiting room. 😀

Still coughing, but it’s slightly better than it was a few days ago. He thinks it’s probably an infection, because on one (count it, 1) day of the 12 weeks this thing has run, I spiked a 102-degree fever.

There’s still still hope for a dire outcome — the hypochondriac never gives up… It could be GERD, which can cause a cough like this when stomach acid regurgitates up into your lungs. If that’s the case, then the fever would have been incidental, presumably caused by some other ailment.

Pollen, up close

But in fact, the wind has been blowing nonstop for the past three months — yesterday was the first in weeks that the wind wasn’t whipping around. After all that phenomenal winter rain, every plant on the desert has burst into frantic and joyous pollen-spreading bloom. So…even though this thing has never evinced typical cold or flu symptoms — no sore throat, no head congestion, no headache, no collywobbles — chances are it’s just a combination of a cold plus pollen allergies.

Dang it. I can’t lose!

Death image: Statue in the Cathedral of Trier, Germany; photo  by Jbuzbee – CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4835571
Pollen: By Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility, Dartmouth College – Public Domain. Dartmouth Electron Microscope Facility ([1], [2]), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14840522

Shaking the Tail: Women’s Strategies for Safety

by

This morning in comes news, first from a friend and then from a news story, of not one but two terrifying incidents of harassment and bullying of women.

On Facebook, a friend reported that some guy in a pick-up went off on her while she was on the road riding her Harley. One thing you should know about my friend — she does not keep this a secret — is that she is transexual; in her previous life she was biologically a male and a biker. Yeah: that kind of biker…though she always has identified, psychologically, as a woman, she was probably not the sort of person you’d willingly meet in a dark alley. In her present incarnation, she looks like a pretty normal woman whose presence strikes no fear into your heart. She writes highly entertaining novels whose protagonist is a wild-assed woman biker.

So this guy goes berserk and starts to follow her. She does everything she can to shake him, at high speeds no doubt, but she can’t get rid of him. Beginning to panic, she heads back to her house and parks her bike in the driveway. He follows her and informs her that he’s going to come after her. As you can imagine, she’s somewhat alarmed.

Even more alarmed is the woman in a Phoenix suburb whose home was entered — more than once, apparently — by a lunatic who left a note — while she was sleeping — to tell her he wanted to have sex with her.

Most women begin to experience threats and events of this sort starting at about the age of 12 or 14. I’ve repeatedly been followed, harassed, propositioned, and threatened by strange men — after six decades, it gets old. And “old” is an operative term: even after you’re no longer a juicy, nubile young thing, the creeps still think you’re fair game for threats and harassment, especially when you’re abroad in a car or walking across a parking lot.

This is how I developed my taste for German shepherds…

Seriously and no joke: After the downtown neighbors divorced and I got custody of their dog, all the harassment, all the cat-calls, and all the aggressive passes in public suddenly went away when I had her at my side. What a guy thinks a GerShep is going to do to him while he’s sailing past at 40 miles an hour escapes me…but as a practical matter, the nasty yells and lewd hoots stopped dead when I started taking that dog out with me.

But long before I got the dog, I learned a number of strategies to cope with this kind of sh!t. Note that I have never taken a “woman’s self-defense” course, except for one short session that was inflicted on us in a high-school P.E. class. These things generally scare you more than they help you: you’re told all the horrific things that a$$hats have done to women, and then you’re instructed in techniques that have about a snowball’s chance of working effectively for most women.

The trick is to avoid situations that put you at risk. Since you can’t avoid them all — just being female puts you at risk — you must be mentally prepared and you must always have a variety of emergency plans in mind.

First off, when you’re driving around, know where the nearest police stations, emergency rooms, and fire stations are along your beaten path. Mentally map routes to these places. In our parts, police stations are secured like a castle under siege, and so it may be difficult to get a cop’s attention without getting out of a car — but if that’s the closest refuge, go there and lean on the horn. If you have a cell with you, call 911 and report where you are.

Fire stations tend to be more open, and they’re usually populated by large, fit men. And they’re the kind of men whose altruism triggers their testosterone: show up at a fire station in distress, and they’ll all leap on their white chargers.

An ER is also likely to have someone around who will notice if you park by the door and lean on your horn. Often there are police or firemen around ERs, too.

Failing one of these outposts, always keep an eye out for places that have lots of people around: a crowded parking lot, a popular store, a busy strip mall. I once escaped a nut case by swerving left across oncoming traffic into a shopping center. The crazy kept on rolling down the road, unwilling to continue harassing me in the presence of others.

When driving home, watch your rear- view mirror. If someone follows me into the neighborhood and then stays on my tail after I’ve made the first couple of the turns I have to take to reach my house, I don’t go home. Instead, I take another route back out of the ’hood. If the person stays on my tail, I head for the nearest police station or fire house.

While in public, try to look dowdy. Refrain from dressing sharply (unless you have a man with you, of course), and certainly do not wear obviously expensive clothing or carry an expensive, name-brand handbag. I no longer carry a purse at all these days: too dangerous in the grocery-store parking lots near my house. I keep a credit card and a couple of store cards in a business card case, which I can carry in a pocket.

At home: equip your doors with heavy-duty, drill-proof, bump-proof Shlage or Medeco deadbolts.

Don’t know what “bumping” is? Mwa ha ha! Check this out:

As the “burglar” type in this video remarks, a bump-resistant lock ain’t cheap. But believe me: it is so worth it. Try to drill a Schlage or a Medeco lock, and it’ll break your drill.

Obviously, putting a fancy lock on a kitchen door with a window in it is self-defeating. Install your deadbolt on solid-core exterior doors with no window(!), or — much more cost-effective and handy for letting fresh air flow through the house — install security doors and put the high-end lock on those. You’ll need a top-notch locksmith for the job, because many metal security doors are too thin to accommodate this type of lock; the locksmith will need to special-order a type of metal ring that adds space to install the deadbolt.

Do not use double-cylinder deadbolts. These can trap you or a child in the house if a fire starts — if you can’t reach the key that you’ve stashed out of the burglar’s grasp, or if the person trying to get out doesn’t know where to find it, you’re done for. Remember, the likelihood that you’ll need to get out in a hurry is at least as high and certainly more urgent than the likelihood that some guy will try to get in.

Upgrade your windows. The new double-paned windows have more than one locking system, allowing you to complicate a burglar’s life. And if any of those windows are sliders, add a third “lock” by dropping a stick in the track. You also can buy stick-on battery-operated alarms, which will squeal like an enraged cat if anyone (you included) opens the window. Again, bear in mind: You don’t care if they get in, as long as you get enough advance warning to get out a different door or window.

Make friends with a German shepherd. Get yourself a dog, preferably a large one with a protective temperament.

The dog strategy, however, is problematic. German shepherd dogs are overbred and potentially dangerous — truly, too many representatives of the breed today are batsh!t. Pit bulls — pace, dear pit-bull-loving friends — are unpredictable and also potentially dangerous. You do not want a dog that has a higher than normal propensity to turn on you. This includes a number of purebred lines. The best strategy is probably to rescue a mixed-breed dog, preferably one that does not appear to be part GerShep or part pit bull.

German shepherds and many other large, assertive breeds are high-energy, high-drive dogs that require a lot of time, training, and physical strength to help them adapt to living in your home. You must be prepared to train and exercise these dogs — and to do so you will need training yourself that goes well beyond the YouTube variety — and you must expect to spend some time every day exercising and working your dog.

A smaller dog may be better: most dogs this side of a greyhound are walking burglar alarms. They can’t “protect” you the way most people imagine a shepherd or a Doberman will do…but that’s a fantasy. No dog can or should be expected to protect you. The only critter that can protect you is you.

And you do that with common sense.

Is keeping a gun in the house a manifestation of common sense?

Only if you’re fully trained to use it, if you keep in practice, and you keep the weapon clean and lubricated. And even then, only if you really, truly, deep in your heart of hearts are prepared to use it against another human being. Police officers and members of the military are specifically trained to overcome this scruple.

Most people who are not psychopaths will hesitate to shoot another person. And just a fraction of an instant can give an aggressor the chance to shoot you, if he’s armed or if he grabs your gun and takes it from you. For that reason, I personally think that for most people it’s pointless and, if you have kids around the house, dangerous to keep a gun in your residence. Keep your wits about you, and you won’t need a gun.