Happy Birthday!

 To the best mother in the whole world!

Write Protect

When was the last time you heard that phrase? Do you even remember what it refers to? For that matter, you might even be too young to remember it at all.

I’ve learned that in the office of landscape architects, the office employees don’t get upgrades a lot. It makes sense. After all, the work of the firm is to draw huge landscape plans and print them off or upload them. They have to spend money on the updates to CAD and Photoshop and have really nice, huge printers. Which means I have had to step back in time and remember how to use Office 2003…and sigh over how little it does compared to what I’m use to. Now I can manage without my arsenal of Excel shortcuts that weren’t created twelve years ago, but you have to laugh at computer towers that still have floppy drives.

Now, of course I am not talking about the floppy drives I used in elementary school with disks that really did flop and DOS commands that made them work. These are the harder disks, so we’re talking middle school now. Carol, the woman who is training me, did purchase a zip drive when I first got here, but she refuses to use it. And since her accounting computer is off the network, if we have to transfer something to my computer she hands me a disk.

Last week she handed me a disk and told me that it might not work – she was having trouble with it. I put it in my tower and pulled up the documents I needed. After I transfer them to my computer, I always delete them from the disk so we know I have them. That’s when the pop-up appeared and told me I couldn’t delete them because the disk was write protected.

Write protected…write protected…that phrase had a hazy feeling about it. Like I knew the answer to the problem, but it was stored nearly two decades back in my mind. The first solution I thought of wasn’t the right one. Then it dawned on me: there’s a switch on the disk itself! I used to switch it all the time when I was backing up the stories I wrote and didn’t wasn’t to loose on my own disks. Sure enough, a flip of the switch got rid of the write protect.

My kids won’t know what a floppy disk is. Some of my siblings probably don’t know. They’ll have limited knowledge of CDs. I’m not sure they’ll ever use a phone with a cord…and certainly not one you have to rotary dial. A TV that isn’t a flat screen? Or HD? And what’s a fax machine? An atlas? In fact, they’ll be born knowing more about technology than I do. And it will change so fast, what was here today will be gone tomorrow.

How fast this 21^st Century changes!

Happy 25^th Birthday, Gracie!

To-Do, To-Do, To-Do

I swear I have a To-Do List as long as Santa’s list of good and bad little girls and boys. If it gets any longer it will take over the desk that is referenced on it: “Clean Off Desk”.

Don’t think that counts for cleaning it off.

Even as I write this, I’m mentally adding things to it. Gather 2014 financial stuff. Get tax forms (federal, Pennsylvania, Minnesota…doubled for Ed and me). File taxes as soon as W-2s arrive. Work out the 2015 budget. Resort the boxes in the basement and add to them. Clean under my bed. Honestly, it’s no wonder I can’t sleep some nights for thinking about it all.

It’s just that not only is there always a lot to do as one year ends and another begins, but this year I feel like I’m doing some of it for two people. (And I guess I am.) While trying to get other things done as I’m thinking about three people. Because some days I feel like I can barely handle two – let alone three.

There are just a lot of things I want off my plate before the baby arrives. Things like my wedding album. Or packing my wedding dress away. (It’s clean and hanging wrapped in a closet – just need to get a box to put it away completely.) And thank you notes written. For Christmas…for my birthday in two months…for the box of things the baby is collecting in the spare room. And we won’t even discuss the spare room that is meant to be for the baby. Right now there is space on the floor for the child, while we wishfully hope nothing falls on him.

Sometimes I think I’m over-thinking the whole thing. I tend to do that. Does all this stuff really matter or have to get done? (I mean besides things like filing taxes…) Back in 1974, Ed was supposed to be a Christmas baby. Instead, he arrived in September. Obviously, his parents weren’t quite prepared for that. So, if this baby suddenly arrived today instead of April, almost nothing on my list would get done. And it wouldn’t matter.

I suppose the truth is I get a lot of enjoyment out of making lists. And adding to them things I like to do next to things I hate (like sorting books on my shelf vs. filling out 1040s). Some psychologist would say I have OCD and control issues. And they’d probably be at least hitting the target on that. But then there are things a lot more harmful than writing up lists.

So, I’ll just go home and keep working down my list. And then, maybe, I’ll sleep tonight.

Book Review

History – and adventure – abound in the disrupted nation of Greece, especially on the isle of Patmos. In sore need of work and money, Dmitri takes on a job to sail some goods for a client to a pick up spot in the midst of the sea. Although he knows the goods must be illegal, he has no idea what he will be asked to do in exchange. Or how he will be caught up in the adventures of two Americans, Nick and Carey, who are in search of ancient Greek artifacts which have gone missing.

With the backdrop of the lovely Mediterranean and a Greek world thrown into economic turmoil, Davis Bunn tells a story of a plot to steal an infamous artifact from the isle of Patmos. Fast paced and easy to read, The Patmos Deception is an interesting book, although the author doesn’t give a lot of time to building a truly intriguing plot of missing artifacts or answering the question of how they might be recovered. I thought the mystery could be deeper, but still enjoyed the book.

http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-patmos-deception/345150

This book was provided by Bethany House Publishers for review purposes only.