New Year: New Buddy

Let me introduce you to my new buddy for the new year. I found him under the couch where he has been hiding since the grandgirls, Naomi and Leah, were here this spring. He stayed clean and happy (as well as very, very quiet) all these months. Mike and I had moved the couch which made cleaning around and under it much easier, so while he was in Bloomington during the last few days I undertook some major projects, including of course cleaning around and under the couch. Lo, and Behold! This happy guy emerged, who makes me smile; a real "feel good" critter that will be a joy to have around. Thanks, girls, for leaving me such a wonderful memory of your visit. I'll take good care of him.

Christmas' Aftermath

Christmas is over and done with for another year. It was low key but very pleasant and family centered, and that's what is important to me about Christmas. We spent some special time with Eric, Colleen, Sheryl, Lucas and Ian at their house; Marty came down from Indy for a few days, which is always a treat; phone calls and blog pictures shared with Danielle and Phil, Naomi and Leah kept us as close as we could get to them, even though they're all the way out in the snow in the Pacific Northwest; we wished Miki and Kevin "safe trip" as they left on a car trip to New York to spend time with Kevin's mom.

Mike is taking care of their houses and cats in Bloomington while they're gone, so I plan to catch up with year-end accounting for the golf course, put Christmas decorations away (few though they were!), and write thank you notes. It has also become necessary for a new fitness regimen to begin after way too much eating of all the wrong stuff over the holidays. Why is it so easy to gain weight and so slow taking it off? No fair.

Marty and I are winding up a big project we undertook this winter involving over a thousand family pictures scanned and organized. Actually, it's the kind of project that will never really be finished as long as we continue to take pictures that we feel need to be online in the Bird Family Albums. Marty and I agree that it was a struggle for us to determine exactly how to separate groups of pictures (by year? by person? by event? by location?) because each of us is obsessed with organization of any kind... making it too detailed, too critical and too difficult... but we did finally make some decisions that made sense (Picasa to the rescue!). When it is all finalized, I will post the URL for public viewing.

What will the New Year bring? No one really knows, but I have sensed an atmosphere of anticipation and hope. Perhaps there will be a resurgence of volunteerism, or at least increased interest in becoming involved in helping our world become a better place.

"Of all the forces that make for a better world, none is so powerful as hope.
With hope, one can think, one can work, one can dream.
If you have hope, you have everything." Anonymous?

Sunshine in December

Many folks are suffering really unpleasant winter weather, including most of the Northwest and the Northeast. Here we are in beautiful southern Indiana with nothing worse than a little humidity caught between the panes of our windows. It's a little cold outside, surely not warm enough for golf, but there is blue sky and sunshine and Christmas is on its way. Aren't we lucky? Birds inside and out are singing ;-)

Early Christmas

Here is my early Christmas present... something I have been wanting for several years. Like everything, my wanting has a history. A few years ago when I was visiting a friend in Massachusetts, the guest room had a lovely, small wing chair that was very comfortable, and like Baby Bear I thought it was "just my size". The internet disclosed that it was an antique and priced in the exorbitant range. Then one day I was invited to try out the new chair at Wilma's house, and it was also small, with a narrow seat which extended just exactly to the back of my knees. It was a glider rocker. So I've been wanting one ever since.
Santa arrived early yesterday in a white Grand Cherokee, and carried into the house a large, heavy box which contained my very own lovely, small glider rocker. It is ensconced in our bedroom and looks great there because it just fits into the available space. (Our house is getting smaller and smaller the longer we live here.) I'll use it for reading in the evening before bed, or any time during the day when I am not on the computer or otherwise occupied. It's wonderful. It fits my body just right and when I sit there it feels like I'm snuggled in all nice and cozy. Thanks, Santa!

Pictures for Posterity

For years I have been the keeper of the family pictures, which are in several albums in three large plastic storage boxes shoved under the bed in the guest room. Younger daughter Danielle is familiar with the albums and with every picture in them, because whenever she comes home she looks at them again. It has occurred to me more than once that it would be wonderful if she had all those pictures more readily available for viewing at her own home. Because nothing lasts forever, and because there are so many available ways to save pictures on the internet, I have been haunted by the need to "get them up there" for some time. Adding to the self-imposed pressure is the fact that the ancients of my mother's family are perpetuated on celluloid in albums also in my care.

Older son Marty (our family technical guru) to the rescue! Recently he included the following in his blog: "Try www.getdropbox.com. Dropbox is an online storage / synchronizing service that is simple - it just works. They say "Dropbox is the easiest way to share and store your files online." I'm sure there is some heavy duty stuff going on behind the scenes, but the programmers have done an excellent job of making the customer interface very simple. 2GB free, 50GB for $99. I love the fact that you can access your files from any internet-connected computer."

What is especially cool about "Dropbox" is that I can scan pictures into MY dropbox and they automatically "drop" into Marty's computer as well. That's the "share" part of "share and store". He is busy editing them, at which he is a master, and knowing his talent for organization, I expect he will have them divided by year and/or person and any other way he finds useful for the viewer.

This can be really tiresome work, even though the final outcome will be so wonderful, useful and important to future generations. Just a few hours of scanning a day is about all I manage at this point. Only I know how many albums there are (many, many, many), so it is a daunting task. Stay tuned!

Making Up

Making up. Why do we bother? In the picture below are products from Avon, L'Oreal, Maybelline, Revlon and Cover Girl. After a lifetime of comparison shopping and trying every new thing, I'm convinced it makes little difference what one buys. What matters is that, once bought, a person has to use the product. In truth, makeup makes me look like maybe I wasn't just dug up, but it is never going to make me look like Kim Novak again. Shucks.

There's a whole lot of water under the bridge between then and now, and no amount of "skin care" and "making up" is going to change all the sun exposure and neglect. It's hard to "make up" for lost time. Even products containing both elastin and collagen can't undo what's already happened to a person's skin, in spite of what the advertisers have to say. So the answer must be to start young and form good habits. Another "answer" at any age is to eat right, exercise, stay healthy, think happy thoughts and smile a lot. It probably wouldn't hurt to use moisturizer morning and night, too. ;-) You're only as young as you feel!!

Backing Up the Backups

Would you rather have your backups on 3-1/2" disks that only fit into your "A Drive" (if you still have one!) or would it make sense to transfer them to CDs that work in any 21st century computer? Or perhaps you have this great external hard drive that backs up everything on your computer every night. But, wait! That stuff that's on the little disks isn't on your computer any more! You moved it to backup disks because you wanted to save it for history, for looking at sometime in the future; and maybe you saved the chapters you started writing for the Great American Novel or for your autobiography in case you ever become famous. Well, you better put all that stuff on CDs, and the sooner the better. Some smarty-pants computer buffs don't even have a 3-1/2" drive.

That's what I've been doing off and on for the last two days... but of course I have to look at every single piece of data so I can remember why I saved it... and if it was childhood memories, or copies of letters I wrote 12 years ago, or several years' worth of emails from my sister, or entries from my Japan Journal, you can believe it took a lot of time.

Only a very few of the old files were corrupted and wouldn't transfer. Occasionally the A drive would start crunching and beeping. Major panic! I developed a devil-may-care attitude, telling myself "nothing ventured, nothing gained". Finally I discovered that things went more smoothly when I created a new folder on the old disk, then dragged and dropped the old files into it... and then copied the folder to a CD. Of course, one CD has skaboodles of room, so 20 disks became 4, and would have been fewer except I organized as I went (my autobiography AND my Great American Novel are both on one disk :)

This exercise isn't for the faint of heart. It's a learning experience all the way. Sure nice to learn how to do new stuff, though, and to figure it out all by yourself. Okay you smarty-pants gurus out there, I know it is a very simple procedure, but for an old dog like me, it was cause for celebration to learn this new trick.

Quilting Revisited

Here's the baby quilt I started some time ago, at the "sewing on the binding" stage. I think it looks pretty good for a first try at quilting. Every step takes me three times as long as it should because I'm learning as I go... measuring, remeasuring... cutting, recutting... stitching, restitching... adding the backing and middle layer and finding I had to measure and cut again. Taking this picture and posting it is supposed to serve as inspiration to get myself back into the guest room and finish it. Get that binding on. Tack the layers together. ... and then... Oh, No! ...start another one ;-)

Knowing that some small child will receive this quilt through Project Linus makes it all worthwhile, though. Surely the next project will be easier for someone who is no longer a "beginner"!