Author: Peg

This downward cycle sort of started last night at dinner when my friends and I were discussing what I wasn’t going to take on the Little Old Lady Eclipse Road Trip – LOLERT. No Obama For President T-Shirts, no little buttons with liberal sayings. You know – controversial shit like “Love Thy Neighbor”. And, not one single snide remark, snigger or eye roll. No bad puns when ordering grape NeHi – Make America Grape Again!

And then this morning I printed out some tickets to the Wilson County Fair.

Notice anything? No black people. No brown people. Heck, not even any people with good tans! I guess only white people go to the Wilson County Fair. 

It is 1961 again. Except, this time I am a tired old woman. And, I don’t want to do this again. 

But, on to happier things. The contents of my house mail box this week. (Here at The Asylum we have USPS mailboxes where we get out real mail. And in house boxes where management leaves bills and flyers.) Today I have my monthly bill and an in house newsletter.

The newsletter starts off with a cheery article “Tips for Your NEXT Hospital Stay”.  Makes it sound like you have a Rewards Card at Hospital. NEXT Hospital Stay. Which means you have already stayed at the fine hospital and you will be making a return visit – some day soon. Gotta rack up those points. 

My monthly bill is rather cheerier.

Lots of beer and liquor charges. But, with all my drinking – I am still paying less here than I was at the old apartment. I just never thought I would run a bar tab at an old folks Asylum. 

And on the technology front – Alexa had a baby – Dot. And, thanks to a tech tip from a son-in-law – Forbin now has a 2nd monitor.

It did require yet another cable. And it works really fine with the MacBook Pro and a large-ish iPad. I think it might be a little silly if you have an iMac and a Mini iPad.  Duet. $15. Plus a lighting to USB3 cable. It wouldn’t work going through an adaptor.  

Speaking of the iPad Mini – I think I’ll take it on the LOLERT. It has a T-Mobil sim. The iPad Pro has Google Fi like my phone. Like to have lots of options out there in the boonies. Lot of options. 

 

The sun popped up just before I ran out the door this morning. And with the double pane glass and my cheap long lens – I got all these cool “sun spots”.

Whatever happens is what I planned.

Scored some additional yummy cake from yesterday’s birthday girl … I think there is a diet in my future. I KNOW there is a diet in my future. 

And a very happy birthday to our Asylum Sister, Sally.

About these cakes. The chocolate one is from our much loved local bakery. Pastries by Randolph. No surprise that the chocolate truffle cake was to die for.

But, the white one with the berries – extra yummy. Worth the calories – and not a hint of chocolate. It is from Sweet Lady Jane’s in LA via Goldbely.

And those are your shopping tips for day. Recommend both cakes. And both bakeries. Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first. Tomorrow – I will exercise moderation. Moderation did not happen tonight. Not. Even. Close.

Intellectually, I know it shouldn’t matter. But I just think that electronic gear is happier when it’s wiring a neat and label correctly. This is what the connection between the XP machine and the big Samsung in house TV’s looks like. 

I did succeed in getting a rather simple PowerPoint to work. But the output quality is really poor. Most of our residents can not see too good – so, I am not sure it really matters. 

Happy with the technology refresh.  Size/weightwise Forbin is about the same as Airness2.  The iPad Pro is happy on it’s stand – behind Forbin. While Alexa holds court on the top level of the desk – just behind the iPad. 

She who dies with the most toys wins.

Now, I didn’t get to the land of Apple until 2009. Before that I was a Windows/Linux chick. I didn’t become 100% Apple (well, except for Shamu, the Android, Phone) until 2015, when I moved to The Asylum.

Still after all these years, you would think that I would have fired up Automator at least once. If  you thought that – you would be wrong. Windows PowerPoint allows you to put make a little quick and dirty photo slide show. Mac PowerPoint doesn’t. Enter – Automator – which is a script generator built into OSX. If I end up having to use PowerPoint to show off my images from the Last Great Photoshoot – Automator will help. A Lot. It stuffs images into slides and slides into PowerPoint “automatically”. Think I’ll have to investigate it some more – in my copious spare time!

But hey, we are still here! The tin pot dictators did not burn us up – yet. My traveling companion on the LOLERT – Little Old Lady Eclipse Road Trip – said that she wondered what she should take with us “in case we don’t have a home to come back to”. Only half in jest. We decided on Lethal Drugs. 

Still no video joy, but… thanks to my friend Laurent. I returned my focus to the real problem. The problem is not the vintage machine with legacy codecs – the problem was the file that I was trying to feed to the vintage machine with legacy codecs. I converted my files to old school Microsoft AVI’s and the old machine ran them fine. On the computer monitor – the movies did not make it through the maze of RCA jacks to the Samsung TV. That problem may or may not have a solution. I will see if I can get the setup to play a DVD on the TV. That might work better. I know that the setup will run a Powerpoint – I may have to use Powerpoint. Which is a lot harder and crappier than using iMovie.

But, thank you Laurent – for pointing me in the right direction. The Last Great Photo Shoot is back on track.

Now, I just hope that our old tin pot tyrant and North Korea’s boy tin pot tyrant don’t get us all into nuclear Armageddon before the eclipse. A mushroom cloud would upstage a corona. And mushroom cloud is NOT on my bucket list.

Why don’t we just give them dueling pistols. And let them shoot it out. That way at least one of our countries will be free of their tin pot tyrant. 

Total technology failure today. The Asylum has an antique XP Dell that only has one job in the world: Send Powerpoint Presentations 24/7 to a couple of big TVs. Using RCA jacks I think. 

Silly Peggy, MP4 has been around since 2003 or 4 – so I assumed that the aforementioned system would run the cute little mp4 movies that I have been making. WRONG.

I will try to embed an MP4 into a Powerpoint – I know I can do that. And, try to slip it past the antique computer that way. But, I don’t hold out much hope. Maybe The Last Great Photo Shoot has been a total waste. 

Maybe I just need to Try A Little Harder… 

A friend from worktime sent me an article about an 82 year old Japanese woman who develops iPhone Apps for seniors. The woman says: when we get old we lose our husbands, our jobs, our hair and our eyesight – and every new skill we learn is a plus. She learned coding and piano after 75. So, Try A Little Harder,

Alexa Play Try A Little Harder – She did Santana – I had The Stones in mind. Santana’s is better.

Gotta dress for dinner tonight – time to round up some lady clothes.

Going to Cookeville TN for the eclipse – added Cookeville to my weather app. By this time next week I will be hyperventilating about the weather. You go and take your chances. 

You know, I hate to say this – but I think that I am starting to “slow down”. I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised. I am well and truly over 70. Maybe I should pull over to the right hand lane of life.

Oh well, with enough naps and coffee – I’ll keep on kicking. And, yesterday I was my regular energizer bunny self. 

Accomplished nothing today. Nothing at all. In fact, I didn’t even attempt many things. Laundry doesn’t count as an accomplishment.

 

The day started ominously when I woke up and found NO COFFEE. The coffee pot had not come on at 5:30 like it was supposed to. And, it wouldn’t come on. So, I had to get dressed and ride the elevator downstairs to get coffee. Major hardship. I treated the coffee pot like a computer and I think it is working again. Tomorrow morning will be the test.

Then off to the farm market (in a car!) and breakfast back at the asylum. Putzed around with my accounting software. It still isn’t perfect. Remembered how to burn audio CDs. And, actually made one.

Saw the head gardener pruning rose bushes – so I rushed down to take her picture.

Watched the building a block away catch fire and every fire truck within 20 miles showed up. It was a non-trivial fire – the residents of 25 units are out of homes. But, alive. 

Then I went for a nice walk – to get my miles logged and because it was a great day for August. 

Took a little nap and then went down to collect the “vegan hors d’oeuvre for 8” that I ordered from the Asylum kitchen.  They were fine. But, I do have a lot of left over hummus. Maybe the kitchen had a lot of leftover hummus. That is why they gave me so much. It is in the freezer. 

Then people showed up for predinner hors d’oeuvre and wine.  And after awhile – Alexa reminded us that it was time to go down to dinner. 

Back from dinner, cleaned up the mess, fired up the dishwasher, made some tea and that was one fine day…

This washing machine amused me yesterday. It didn’t seem to be doing anything. Just spinning around. Making noise and vibrating madly. Like The Orange Lord???

I find that I have been snappish with the staff at work. I seem to expect that everyone knows how to “open a blank Word Document.” Hey, it has been 33 years since MS Word was released. And how is it that people are so ignorant about spreadsheets. Visicalc was released in 1978. “Dump the data into Excel and sort it” seems to be rocket science or maybe brain surgery.  “I didn’t learn this in school” doesn’t hack it with me anymore. 

Guess this is a sign that:

1. I need a vacation
2. I need to go to Hawai’i
3. I need to retire
4. All of the above

So, what seems to be my problem? Things didn’t work out 100% like I planned. So – get over it and get on with life.

On my way to work, I pass the poison ivy. It is encroaching seriously on the sidewalk. Of course, I am just glad that there is a sidewalk. 

But, there was a monarch butterfly. 

And more joy. I got my appointment for my stress test. Only have to be caffeine-free for 4 hours, I can do that!

And yet more good stuff. I got new bluetooth earbuds.  Took a chance on BeatsX since BH Photo had them on sale and I had a bunch of “points” so they ended up being cheap. Normally I hate Dr Dre -but the bass on these are fine. They are really comfortable. And they pair with all the Mac stuff – natch and with Shamu the Phone as well. I am sure I like them better than the Apple ones. 

Was even less successful shooting bees in flight this afternoon. No bees in sight. Only a couple of hover flies.

And what is unremarkable? My visit to the boy-cardiologist. He still wants to do a stress test. But, he says as long as I can walk up the stairs to my office – which is one floor above his – and have breath left to say “damn” then I am OK. He gets points for not wanting to monkey with my BP meds or to insist on cholesterol or other testing. He says I just have coronary artery spams and since I have had them for years – not to worry.  So, I am not going to worry.

Hope I ace my stress test. Maybe I should start training in the Asylum gym. But seriously, I think you have to be caffeine  free for 24 hours. Me, sans caffeine 24 hours – not pretty.