That’s the word on the street

Posted on May 10, 2007 by onesanevoice

Last night’s telephone call from Son who graduates college next weekend:

SON:  Hi!  How ya doin’?  I took my last final today.  I’m finished with school.

OSV:  That is so great!  I hear traffic noise, are you on your way home?

SON:  Yeah, I’m on the road.  I should be there in about 4 hours.  I have everything in the car.  Everything.  All my clothes, my electronics, everything.  What kind of hookup do you guys have now for the computer?

OSV:  The house has DSL but my laptop is wireless.

SON:  So you have a router?  Can I hook mine up?

OSV:  I’m not sure.  Does your computer have wireless capability?

SON:  How is the box connected?

OSV:  What box?

SON:  Who do you pay for your monthly wireless service?

OSV:  Why are you answering my questions with other questions?  It’s like I’m talking to The Riddler.  I don’t pay anyone monthly.  We have a router.  I’ve never seen a box.

SON:  So if there’s no box then you’re stealing service.  That’s all I wanted to know.

OSV:  Stealing service?  How could you think that?  I’m your mother, I don’t steal.

SON:  It’s a term, Mom, calm down.  If you don’t pay a wireless provider for monthly service it’s known as ‘stealing’.  It’s the term that’s used.  I wasn’t accusing you of anything.  I mean it’s not like you take things from hotels or anything.  Right?

OSV:  Are you trying to annoy me?  That is definitely not stealing when you take things from hotels you’ve paid to stay at.  It’s considered enjoying the establishment’s hospitality.  I don’t take anything of value.  I take soap.  Lotion.  Stuff like that.  They mean for you to take it.

SON:  What about that little white thing in the kitchen, the pitcher, the thing from when you went to Italy?

OSV:  It’s a creamer.  Europe has different rules.

SON:  Of course.  I’ll be home for about a week and then I’ll head back here for graduation the day before you guys come.  Is the spin cycle on the washing machine fixed?  Did I say I have everything in the car?

OSV:  I believe it is and I believe you did.  I hope you’ll be around Sunday so we can all go out to dinner for Mother’s Day.

SON:  Sunday?

OSV:  Yes, Sunday.  Did you make plans for Sunday?

SON:  Sunday I’ll be at some friends’ houses.

OSV:  Why?

SON:  Their mothers are all so nice to me.  It’s Mother’s Day, right?

OSV:  I thought we’d go for sushi.  And I invited a girl from my class to join us.

SON:  You did?  Why?

OSV:  Because she’s a doll and she’s a year older than your sister and I talk about you guys all the time and she has a brother your age and I just like her.  I think she lost her mom so I thought she might not have plans for the day and maybe she’d like to hang out with us.

SON:  Who wouldn’t?  You did good, Mom.  I look forward to meeting your friend.  I can’t believe I’m done with school.  For the first time ever I’m done with school.  And now I wouldn’t go again unless somebody paid me.

OSV:  In that case I don’t think you have much to worry about.  Listen, I’m doing some laundry now but I’ll be done by the time you get home if you want to get started on yours.

SON:  My laundry?  First I have to sleep for a few days, Mom.  I’M DONE WITH SCHOOL!

OSV:  And I am so proud of you!  We’ll have a lovely Mother’s Day, a nice dinner with the family.

SON:  And the new girl.

OSV:  And the new girl.  Drive very carefully, okay?  I’ll see you in a few hours.

SON:  You got it.  Maybe I’ll be home in time to watch you do your homework.

OSV:  Funny.  You’re a funny guy.

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Before the House Comes Down

Posted on May 6, 2007 by onesanevoice

Last weekend Daughter and I got a treat when one of my Brooklyn Girls called with two extra tickets to Yankee Stadium.  Her husband couldn’t make it which meant my husband wouldn’t make it so she was bringing her son which meant Daughter lucked out.  The boys in pinstripes were playing the 5th game in a six game series with the Red Sox and the only problem I could foresee aside from the obvious troubles the Yankees are drowning in was that Daughter is currently a Red Sox fan.  She went to undergrad in Boston and even though she came back to the Yankees when she graduated and returned to the city a few years ago, I wasn’t aware the wind had changed again until she walked out of her apartment building and onto the avenue in a Red Sox shirt.

My friend, her son and I were sitting in her SUV parked by the hydrant and we all rolled down the windows when we saw Daughter approach so there could be no mistake about our feelings.  My friend is a non-profit administrator, mother of four and just a total betty.  Her son is likewise a sweetheart and I myself have been known to give to charity but all three of us nonetheless yelled that Daughter had to put on her sweatshirt and zip it before we would allow her in the car with us in that Red Sox shirt.  She yelled back to basically get a life but she knew without being reminded that it is one very crowded train to the Bronx on game day so she zipped up.

I’ll tell you what I love about going to baseball games:  It’s the only thing you can do while you’re there.  Multitasking is not an option.  It’s too noisy to talk on the phone.  There is nothing to read except what’s on the big screens and the painted chests of rabid fans.  No backpacks are allowed so you cannot eat anything you don’t buy from a vendor who then aims it at your head after you’ve passed $20 through the hands of two dozen strangers.  You can’t even cross your legs.  When I’m at home watching the game I do some homework, catch up on my New York Magazines, go online, even watch parts of a movie on another channel.  But being live at a game is all you can do while you’re doing it and I don’t know of many other situations you can say that about.  Employers would like to say ‘work’ and teachers would like to say ‘school’ but all us workers and students know otherwise.

Look away from the field and you could miss the play of a lifetime.  Unless your attention has been rightfully diverted by the shenanigans in the stands.  The House that Ruth Built seats over 50,000 and this Red Sox game was near capacity.  Directly in front of us was a young Asian family with a gorgeous little boy about seven who sat on his knees in the seat between his parents with an arm around each and a huge smile the entire game.  It reminded betty and me of that MasterCard commercial, “Tickets to the game:  $120.  Snacks:  $180.  Being surrounded by beer-soaked cretins shouting BOSTON SUCKS:  education in America.”

This season you have to weave your way around the construction site to get in and out of the parking areas.  It’s anyone’s guess when the new stadium they’re building across the street will be completed.  I know they’re saying it’ll be better than this house; they always tell you new is better.  Bigger.  Improved.  But when Posada blasts one out and the Sox are sinking and Mariano Rivera strides onto the field with Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” filling every molecule of space in the air, you just can’t convince me.

soxyanks

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Blogoir (blog-wahr) -noun 1. an online memoir

Posted on May 1, 2007 by onesanevoice

The title of this entry is one of the ways I amuse myself after my homework is done and the dinner dishes are either washed or thrown away depending on how rustic a dinner it was and Husband is in the next room researching investment options online.  He pretty much calls the shots in the family financial arena with my encouragement to study independently since I can only concentrate so long on Morningstar and Value Line, etc.  I hope it doesn’t sound tacky of me to require we have oodles of money to retire on without researching options to get there but he seems to truly enjoy it.  In my defense, I reconcile the checkbook and credit card statements since when I met Husband his checkbook had no figures in the last column to the right, the one marked BALANCE, and none of his credit card statements had little red check marks next to the amounts indicating they had been cross-referenced with actual receipts.  This is my specialty (obsession) so we have gravitated to the areas of family financial service that speak to us and it seems to work.

We do make investment decisions as a team, though, and this is how that happens.  Husband will come out of the room after doing extensive research and say to me, “I think it would be a good idea to buy more Pfizer at the next drop because…” and he proceeds to inform me of percentages, margins, price earning, yield and many other things that I know he is saying because I hear his voice and see his lips moving.  But what is going on in my mind is, “Pfizer makes drugs.  People take drugs.  Nod head yes.”  I don’t deny that it is definitely the Flintstone mentality toward future planning but I just don’t have the particular bone in my head that makes me want to investigate further.  Misspell Pfizer, however, and I’ll catch you every time.

I inherited some shares in gold securities when my parents died and I couldn’t imagine ever, ever selling them because it was GOLD.  I owned GOLD.  This is not sewer caps we’re talking about, this is the stuff of jewelry and pharaohs, the stuff that dreams are made of.  Real investors know this kind of thinking is absurd and that personal or mythical attachment to stocks screams “support group” since what you really own are shares in the company that mines the ore or refines it but the ending here is that when it spiked, I sold.  It actually went up even higher after I sold and I never regretted selling when I did because it also could have plunged just as easily.  Not being prone to seller’s remorse would seem to make me a good candidate for learning more about how to invest but for some reason it doesn’t.  And if it didn’t happen with the gold it sure ain’t coming with municipal bonds.

I started out telling you about the title of this entry, Blogoir, and what my strategy is here.  Raise your hand if you’ve ever Googled yourself.  Raise your other hand if you’ve ever Googled someone you know to find out more about them or where they fit in the hierarchy of entities like them.  Okay, now we’re on the same page.  Over the months I have been blogging, I occasionally enter One Sane Voice into a search engine to see where my blog falls in the web information infrastructure.  About a month ago, on a random query, I was the first entity listed on Google.  It was a fleeting moment but it was a hoot to see that out of 1,284,663 possible listings mine was in the top spot.  I may still come up first on an msn.com query but my Google star has since dimmed.

Individual entry titles have shown up in searches with more consistency.  A link to “Dear Mr. Fairbank” showed up everywhere for a short while after that entry appeared and that’s what makes me think Blogoir has a shot.  It would seem that it’s a short hop from writing a memoir to writing a blogoir but the term doesn’t appear to formally exist.  I looked on netlingo and webopedia as well as the idiom dictionary and no definition comes up for blogoir.  A memoir is defined as a personal account, autobiographical in nature, which can take the form of a journal, log, confessional or personal essay.  And in the same way you would tack an ‘e’ onto memoir to add pretension without changing meaning, you could be every bit as faux French with blogoire.  Search as I might, the word blogoir can only be found on a few myspace pages and other obscure references.  Not to say I’m any less obscure.  But one can hope.

So I’m going to wait a few days after I post this entry and then start clicking around to see if blogoir catches on or if it was already defined somewhere and I just missed it.  But if you do start seeing the word appear in places it never did before, remember where you heard it first.  And now you know what I do for fun online when you’re not around.

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Ghosts in My Head

Posted on April 27, 2007 by onesanevoice

May is a loaded month at our house for good and for bad.  It is the month both Husband and I were born.  It is the month in which Son will soon graduate college.  It holds Mother’s Day.  And it is the month in the year that marks my gathered sadness for the three giants I lost from my life in 2004.  Both my parents and maternal grandmother died in the first five months of that awful year which also saw one of my children in surgery and the other in a life situation equally painful.  Husband and I had been married about three years when this series of personal crises erupted and looking back he must have felt like a medic in ‘Nam.  He was in an unfamiliar landscape surrounded by people he hadn’t known very long but truly cared for who were suffering.  My kids and I drew him into our lives in a way that required powers far beyond those of mortal men.  If the definition of hell is terminally ill family, kids in danger and a new marriage thrown into the most stress possible, 2004 gets my vote hands down.

When you look at the people who brought you into the world you see where many of your wonderful and infuriating personality traits originated.  My mother had the most optimistic attitude of anyone I have ever met.  Most of her adult life was spent struggling with a chronic neurological illness that became progressive as she aged.  Despite the huge physical and mental limitations the disease imposed, my Mom always thought she had it made in life.  Nothing ever brought her down, even paralyzed in a hospital bed.  She had an impish smile and a bottomless reservoir for happiness she was eager to share.  I know by looking in the mirror that she gave me her smile.  And if my inherited ocean of optimism occasionally flows into the river of denial, well, you could choose a worse fate.

My grandmother was a pistol.  Despite living to 100 and never once wearing a pair of pants, Grandma could wrestle with the best of them right to the end.  She was 4’10” tall and all of it steel.  She ran her own business well into her seventies beginning at a time when women barely worked outside the home let alone run an independent business.  As a teenager working in her store, I watched her reduce burly contractors to whimpering rags with her unwavering will to have things done her way.  You may have met her at some time in your life.  She was the tiny woman shopkeeper barking, “Hey, this is not a library!” at youngsters lingering too long over the magazine rack.  But I always had the luxury of observing from a golden balcony since I was her only granddaughter.  For her, I hung the moon.

My father, however, would have preferred to see her hung.  He repeatedly accommodated his mother-in-law’s most outrageous requests in an effort to appease my Mom who must have carried her own baggage in this area.  Except for once overhearing an argument as a child where my father referred to my grandmother as “a beauty” and knowing instinctively it wasn’t a comparison to Elizabeth Taylor, any overt tension involving my elders was never exposed.  Then one day as a young adult I asked my father about his father-in-law of whom I had only vague memories.  By this time my Mom had begun losing some memory and couldn’t always respond so I said to my father, “Grandpa was pretty young when he died, wasn’t he?”  To which my Dad replied, “He was 58.  But he didn’t die, sweetheart.  He escaped.”

Very shortly after my father’s death in May 2004, there was a movie on TV that had recently been in the theaters called “Big Fish”.  It was the sweet story of a father dying of cancer and how the myths and legends he had created about his life had estranged him from his son who was now on a search to discover the truth about his father.  Halfway through the movie I could hear someone crying and was stunned to find it was me.  My father was the person with the most profound effect on my life.  He nurtured my free spirit by being my anchor.  He assumed the role of both parents when my Mom was too ill and never let it seem like a burden.  He became enormously successful with little education and inspired warm feelings in all those who crossed his path.  For me he was larger than life.  My Big Fish.

Soon it will be May.  I wish Happy Birthday to my husband.  Happy Mother’s Day to my mother-in-law.  Happy Graduation to my son.  And for the three giant oaks I lost from my forest in one crash, you may be ghosts in my head but never in my heart.

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The South’s Gonna Do It Again, Last Part

Posted on April 22, 2007 by onesanevoice

In Birmingham, Alabama we got to spend some time with a couple we’ve known almost since we got married.  Our stories are kind of parallel, theirs being a second marriage occurring a little bit after our own.  I ran the boiled peanuts thing by the Wife who is not a native of the area but also not a northerner.

She straightened me out about the situation right away saying, “First of all, honey, they’re not boiled peanuts.  There’s no ‘oi’ sound down here.  They’re bald peanuts.  Say it after me, bald peanuts.”  I said, “Bald peanuts,” drawing out the ‘aul’ sound like she did.  She nodded her approval and said, “Second, if you didn’t eat any of ’em you’re not missing much since they taste like something crawled in your mouth, shit, and then died.”  As I registered this description I thought of another sign I had seen and asked, “What about Cajun Bald Peanuts?”  She continued without any change of expression, “Right.  Same thing crawls in your mouth but this time it shits fire, then dies.”  Got it.

Birmingham is an incredibly lovely city; lush, green and gently hilly, but the real kick for us was the listening.  The accent in the Deep South is a killer in general but not nearly as hard on the ears as our Noo Yawk must be for them.  We had a lot of southern treats like fried green tomato sandwiches and key lime pie.  And when you order iced tea in a restaurant you get asked if you want ‘sweet tea’.  Sweet tea is the equivalent of an insulin coma.  It’s like sucking on syrup.

I didn’t think anything in the world would be too sweet for Husband but he actually went back to ordering unsweetened iced tea with sugar on the side.  One waitress asked why, saying she just loved sweet tea.  But she brought the plain tea and sugar packets anyway, about twenty of them, carrying them over with both hands.  When Husband picked up two and started to open them she wailed, “Two?!  You’re gonna use two??  Shoot, two would just make me mad.”

Another southern phrase as popular as it is cryptic is “Bless your heart.”  We heard this everywhere and discovered it can somehow be molded to fit every conceivable situation.  When we first arrived in Alabama we realized we had left our state map behind so we pulled over to a half dozen service stations to get one and were told repeatedly, “We got no maps.  Where do you want to go?”  We kept explaining we just wanted a map so we could explore the area and the response was always “Bless your heart.”  We walked out each time wondering if we were being thought endearing or pitiful, as in “How lovely of you to want to visit our town” or “You came all the way down here with no map, you morons?”  Depending on the intent and demeanor of the person saying it, “Bless your heart” can mean anything from “Well, aren’t you just the sweetest thing?” to “Get out of my sight, you wretched pile of walking skin.”  When people are smiling that big you just can’t tell.

After Birmingham we aimed for Nashville, Tennessee and the first sign we saw after we crossed over into Elvisland was a giant billboard inviting truckers and anyone who fantasized about what truckers purportedly fantasize about to come visit Boobie Bungalow.  Fast on the heels of that sign was one offering a tour of the Jack Daniels Distillery in Lynchburg.  I won’t insult my intelligent readership with the reasons we bypassed the apparently world famous Boobie Bungalow but we also vetoed the liquor tour since Husband and I really aren’t drinkers.  Except for me.  I am a big fan of a glass of white wine with dinner and if given a choice would choose two glasses of wine with one dinner over two dinners with one glass of wine.  There have even been evenings of tough days when the kitchen could have wrapped my dinner to go before it even reached the table as long as they didn’t touch the wine.

Which reminds me of my ex-mother-in-law who used to order dinner and two desserts when we took her out and then tell the waiter to just bring the desserts to the table and wrap up her whole dinner to take home.  I also remember her frequently calling family members by the dog’s name and the dog did not have a human name, it had a dog name.  Come to think of it I never once heard her call the dog by the wrong name.  Bless her heart.

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The South’s Gonna Do It Again, Part Two

Posted on April 18, 2007 by onesanevoice

In times past, Husband and I would choreograph our vacations by plotting out a route on a map and consulting travel books and the Internet to arrange stops in historic little towns at quaint bed and breakfasts.  Nowadays we’re still drawn to the picturesque towns but for the last year or so we’ve gone for Embassy Suites or the like because we enjoy the wireless hookup and basic guarantee that the rooms aren’t going to be flooded with Glade Plug-ins or scented something or other to hide some more objectionable fragrance and all of them make me feel like I’m gagging on a spoon.  I may be high maintenance but I’m worth it.

So for this road trip from south Florida to Nashville we figured we’d throw caution to the wind and just pull over wherever we damn well felt like it since you can always find a national hotel chain nearby and chances were slim there would be hordes of tourists streaming through panhandle towns like Sopchoppy, Florida on a weekday in April.  Speaking of Sopchoppy, don’t go on a Monday because the town is closed.  I don’t mean that some things are closed.  I mean the TOWN is closed.  There were signs posted in dark shop windows advertising the upcoming 7th Annual Worm Gruntin’ Festival but unless they celebrate by shutting the town and going somewhere else we had no clue what this desertion was about.  Husband had been carrying around a letter he promised to mail for his parents who we had visited a day or two before so when we passed the Sopchoppy post office he said to pull over and he’d run it in.

He came back to the car a few seconds later which made me ask him if the post office was closed.  “Let’s just go, GO!” he said and I noticed he was holding something in his hand and there was a funny look on his face.  I asked him what was going on since a quick glance around confirmed the fact that there wasn’t anyone to notice if we go’d or if we stayed.  “Pull away from the curb and I’ll tell you.”  I drove forward slowly while he unrolled the sheet of paper to show me a notice about the Worm Gruntin’ Festival we’d seen advertised in the shop windows.  I asked if we were hanging around for it to begin and he said no, he wanted to frame the notice because he likes to do that with funky small town ads and menus and we have others on our wall at home he’s collected.

Then I said, “What are these two holes at the top?” and that’s when I figured out why he was looking so guilty and insisting we make tracks out of town.  He’d taken it off the bulletin board at the post office.  Husband is so law-abiding and has such positive karma sometimes it just brings out the pixie in me.  “You stole this?” I demanded.  “From the Sopchoppy post office?  In broad daylight?  Christ, now we’ll never be able to come to the Worm Gruntin’ Festival.”

He shot me a look.  Husband spends an inordinate amount of time shooting me looks and I spend an inordinate amount of time earning them although this look wasn’t as potent as the one he gave me at the end of our trip as we were heading into Nashville.  Our pattern was that I’d start calling hotels about 40 miles before our destination and we’d be booked in time for our arrival.  Forty miles outside Nashville, in the pouring rain, we discovered Nashville was booked.  Solid.  There were kids’ sports tournaments in town and an animation convention and a dozen other things we wouldn’t be at but whose attendees would be staying in our rooms.  Finally, I hit on an Embassy on the outskirts of town with ONE room left and I told the desk clerk we’d take it.  Of course he asked for our credit card number to hold the reservation and I told him I don’t give out my number over a cell phone because of the possibility of identity theft and he said he totally understood but nevertheless he needed the number if we wanted the room.

This dilemma reminded me of that African tribe (Aboriginal?  Amish?) who are fascinated by photos but won’t allow their picture to be taken because of the fear it will steal their souls.  Well, times have changed and these days your identity is worth way more than your soul and I felt I was on solid ground here until I looked over at Husband who was giving me a look.  The look said, “See that cup holder?  That will be your bathroom at two in the morning unless you give the freakin’ number.”  Which made me think this might be a good topic to discuss with the Wise Man, this modern form of paranoia, but I don’t have to now because I gave the guy the number.  So I’m cured.

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The South’s Gonna Do It Again, Part One

Posted on April 15, 2007 by onesanevoice

Last week we took a little vacation since I had a break from school and Husband is a sweetheart.  We flew down to south Florida (see What, Me Worry? for an overview of my history with flight) and visited his parents because they are adorable and we haven’t seen them in months and I am also a sweetheart.  They surprised us and made dinner reservations for 7:00 pm which is pretty much the middle of the night for elderly people in Delray Beach and it was strange eating dinner with them later than two hours after we had lunch.

My mother-in-law, who I adore, again pointed out the things in her home I might want to claim after she dies unless her daughter has already put in dibs.  The first time she did this after I married her son it really threw me.  I wasn’t sure how to react and wondered if she was kidding or losing it or testing me or I don’t know what but I’ve since had conversations with other people about it and discovered it’s not so unusual.  Now I see it as a gesture of her affection for me and a desire to live on through her bequests although I continue to remind her that all I want after she’s gone are wonderful memories of our time together.  My daughter, who has visited them many times with us and is likewise adoring and adored, says I should just get over this sentimental tug-of-war and put my name on the cool chairs by the drop-leaf table before someone else does.  Like her.

After visiting the folks we drove up through central Florida and stopped at a gas station so we could continue to be violated by the oil producing nations and fill up our rental SUV.  While Husband paid the cashier and stocked up on enough York Peppermint Patties to get us to the panhandle, I was drawn to a large cauldron with a lid on it and a ladle sticking out underneath a sign that announced HOT BOILED PEANUTS.  I stirred the ladle around a little to see what the story was with this and all I can say is it looked like giant ovaries floating in squid ink.  I would never presume to diss another food culture but I was kind of repelled.  And I would be a person who once ate chocolate covered ants.  I may not have known what they were at the time but the important part here is I ingested them.

Chances are if I had a taste of what was in that cauldron I would see the lure of this roadside delicacy and maybe even want to move to Florida to keep it in my daily diet.  But I really can’t see us moving to Florida (sorry, Honey) so I’m going to stick with passing my petty judgment on a treat I have never given a chance and continue to live out my days in a place where Sunoco stations don’t ignite wet legumes for mass consumption.  I know, pity the fool.

We stopped in Gainesville on the chance we’d see friends living there who turned out not to be home since it was Easter Sunday and despite the fact that we’re Jewish and they’re not you’d think we’d have considered this possibility.  Also neither of us brought their cell numbers which is totally not like us since we’re both Taurus and incredibly – well, let’s call me anal and Husband meticulously organized – and how often do you plan to pass through a city 1000 miles away where you have friends and not bring their cell numbers?

I am blaming this lapse of ours on the paint job, the stress of my finals and a rash of last minute meetings Husband had before we left.  We still had fun driving around town and noticing all the bumper stickers that said “You’re either a Gator or you’re Gator Bait” in honor of the University’s recent NCAA victory.  For a while we rode behind a car with an amusing sign in the back window, “Watch for Finger, Horn Broken”.  And if you’re friends of ours in Gainesville and we missed you Easter Sunday we hope you had a great holiday and we’ll catch you next time around.

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Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be hackers

Posted on April 11, 2007 by onesanevoice

Since computer woes was a theme of the last entry, here is a reprint of a newspaper column published in 1997.  Even though last decade is now technological medieval times, our effort to coexist with what we have created is eternal.

The computer room in our house had been buzzing all day with my teenage son and his buddies dashing in and out clutching disks in their hands.  They seemed solemn of purpose and steadfast in their commitment to a project that seemed of great importance.  I am only computer literate to the point that I can use Microsoft Word to enter and record my writing assignments and then AOL to transmit them to my editor.  And as the pig would say “Th-th-th-that’s all folks.”  For further knowledge of the technical aspects of our equipment I can only look to the toll free numbers inside the manuals we have stacked on the shelf.

After the friends had all departed and the room was free I moseyed in with my notepad to enter my latest assignment, now on deadline.  My son sauntered in behind me.  “You know,” he began, hands in pockets, “this may not be a good time to do that.”  Over the years we all get to know our children dangerously well and I knew this particular child well enough to feel a slight wave of panic at the sound of his words.  As he explained further it became clear that the procession of friends that day had been attempting to help him rectify a problem he had encountered while downloading a document off the Internet.  Mildly annoyed, I told him it was okay, I would put my story on a disk and drive it over to the newspaper in the morning rather than using email.  He said no, the problem wasn’t really with the Internet.  It was more like Windows 95 had been, shall we say, accidentally erased.

Perhaps if you were sitting in your quiet living room that evening you might have heard me scream.  It was not a scream of anger but rather the more pathetic, dirge-like wail of a person who would rather swallow a fork than call for technical assistance.  In an attempt to avoid a lengthy and impossibly confusing telephone call I first asked my friend’s computer knowledgeable husband to come over and have a look.  An hour later he emerged from the room with his face drawn and Son behind him, ashen.  “Call technical support,” he advised solemnly.  This amounted to summoning the National Guard only to have them tell you that you need the Marines.  I fear needing the Marines.

The 800 number for Dell brought us a friendly man named Doug with a gentle southern drawl.  He and Son chatted extensively and then the phone was placed into my hand.  Apparently, our free assistance had recently expired and Doug needed my credit card number.  As I read off the digits to our new friend I looked up to see Son mouthing the words “I’ll pay you back.”  Dignity prevents me from repeating my mouthed response.

As Doug explained it, the document that the “young customer” downloaded off the Internet contained a virus that essentially ripped through our Windows 95 program.  In an attempt to reinstall it the “young customer” unfortunately used not one but two different corrupt Windows programs which succeeded in also corrupting the boot disk, or Windows rescue system.  The bad news, as Doug continued, was that the repair procedure incurred by the “young customer” would require not one but two separate charges to my credit card since it certainly looked like the hard drive would have to be totally wiped out and erased.  This would result in the loss of any files currently stored in the computer as well as all existing programs.  Overwhelmed, I mentioned to Doug my hope that at the very least a lesson had been learned at which point he urged me “not to be too hard on the young customer, ma’am, because life is a series of lessons.”

Sometime after midnight I finished entering my assignment into our newly renovated computer and clicked on the Internet connection so I could send it via email and save myself a trip in the morning.  The screen lit up with the greeting “Goodbye from America Online!  Your account has been terminated!”  It’s a good thing the young customer is a deep sleeper.

Copyright 1997 by author

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The Nature of the Beast

Posted on April 6, 2007 by onesanevoice

I ran into a computer problem this week and had to arrange a rescue.  Lately, every time I published an article it would show up on everyone else’s computer but mine.  I’d have to wait hours and then log back on and suddenly there it was.  I actually received a comment before I could even see the entry.  I emailed my blog host and asked why this was happening and they said the site looked fine from their end so I might have a virus or my settings were off or my browser needed refreshing or the moon was in the seventh house, whatever.  They sent me a list of troubleshooting actions I could take but I knew the action I would really take was to call someone else to do it.

I opened the phone book and started calling local computer virus hunters.  The first one sounded like a rip-off, the next sounded like I woke him up, one appeared to be operating from his parents’ basement or the Laundromat and the last one I had actually heard advertise on the radio, as in “This traffic report has been brought to you by TeleTechie.”  I hadn’t planned on calling anyone with an advertising budget but he was pleasant and the price was reasonable and he didn’t talk to me like he had all the answers and I was an idiot so I hired them.  One thing I know is there will always be time down the road for people to find out you’re an idiot, you don’t have to offer it up for free.

TeleTechie sent a nice young man filled with knowledge who ran a diagnostic on my laptop and found nothing overtly suspicious, just lazy settings and unnecessary cookies.  Now that I’m so informed, what I suspect happened is I was downloading something and there was another item attached that I accepted indiscriminately because I always just hit Next when the computer says Click Next.  It’s like I want to please the computer or something, like I’m afraid it’ll be pissed off if I dare to be so cavalier as to X out after it just gave me permission to hit Next.  Oh God, the desire to satisfy inanimate objects, if that isn’t one for my list with the Wise Man I don’t know what is.

Electronically, I’m humming along nicely now and also trying to curb my spontaneous nature and look at what the hell I’m doing.  But acting on impulse has served me well in my life.  It’s how I buy shoes and earrings, even real estate.  A few years ago Husband and I were upstate spending a weekend at a Bed & Breakfast near where Husband went to college and he started getting nostalgic about how much he loved the area and how beautiful it is.  And it is.  We decided to just price small condo units in the area so we looked in the Sunday real estate section.  There was ONE condo listed for private sale and we called and went over to see it.  As soon as we walked in I knew it was for us.  Husband said let’s talk about it (he loves to talk about things, he’s a social worker) but I said let’s buy it.  I love the adrenaline rush of saying YES!  He said, “No, really” and I said “Yes, really” and he said “No, really” and it went on like that the whole way back to the B&B.

Eventually Husband called the owner to negotiate price.  Buying I know how to do.  Haggle price, never.  And I’m not alone in this.  I’ve talked to my friends about it and it seems to be a female thing, at least among my circle of females.  We can’t resist a sale but square off against an individual seller and hard bargain?  I don’t think so.  This is not to say that women who can pull this off, like Manhattan real estate brokers, are any less feminine or that medical science should be researching them for undescended testicles.  I’m just observing that the scenario is more like guys love to negotiate and women love to watch them.  For men it’s like jousting except with checkbooks instead of swords.  And for a woman, watching the man she loves win something for her using his wits and powers of persuasion is romantic.  After all, that may be how they got us in the first place.

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Tough ‘R’ Us

Posted on April 1, 2007 by onesanevoice

I need someone to tell me exactly when things became so difficult to reach.  I bought a new toilet brush to go with our new paint job (hey we’re living now, huh?) and I could tell right away it was going to be a battle getting to it.  It was in one of those hermetically sealed plastic bubbles with no visible point of entry.  I scrutinized it in Target wondering if my life really required a $20 craphole scrubber and I decided yes, this is my reward for living through this ordeal which can only mean I must have enough jewelry, I don’t know about that.  The whole experience reminded me of buying action figures at the toy store with my son and gritting my teeth as far away from home as the parking lot as I predicted the blood I would shed trying to free Wolverine from his plastic prison.  What I recall even more is that the look on Son’s face when the figure was finally in his hands was always worth my shredded skin lying at our feet.  Must be love.

In preparation for liberating the toilet brush I left the utility scissors on the stairway for days before I got them up to the bathroom.  This evening I went at it after the rest of the house was back in order and the only thing left is that I forgot to get our spare house key back from the painter but it’s no problem because he’s kind of related to us and just a stellar human being and probably didn’t think our stuff was so great anyway.  He asked me how old one of our bookcases was and he guessed the seventies but it’s actually more like from The Beginning of Time but without any added value.

I got up to the bathroom and started stabbing at the plastic bubble with my giant scissors which made me wonder why manufacturers don’t spend more money making their products to die for instead of to die trying to use.  I got the brush out okay but the pod-like cone it lives in was just a nuisance.  I worked at it inch by inch with these big machete-like shears and it made me think of that playground rhyme about a 19th century murderess:
Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks
And when she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one
I’m thinking Lizzie should have had some polystyrene resin products to work out her aggression on.  It was exhausting.

Finally I just started whaling on the package without any plan at all until suddenly the pod-cone ejected itself from the plastic cavity and went sailing across the bathroom and landed in the tub.  Strangely, when I was pregnant with my kids I considered the possibility that this might happen at the moment of birth.  I mean it’s a long time to carry something around that dedicated to making an exit and who knows, maybe when the moment finally came it would be more projectile than previously imagined.  It wasn’t, though, since I ended up having two Cesareans which was dramatic enough.  Daughter came into the world wide-eyed and bopping, looking around like “Where’s the party?”  Less than three years later Son emerged and fixed me with a steady gaze that said, “If you’re responsible for this you better make it good.”  Now that they’re grown I have to say they both really created the party.  Although to take whatever credit I can it does all start out with the packaging.

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