Anniversary # four squared

The Wife is NOT the easiest person to shop for.

Carol_Lydia.2010.IMG026Some totally random stuff re: My Spouse and Myself:

The first movie we ever saw together was Speed, probably the least representative of the films we generally see together.

Our anniversary is roughly halfway between my birthday and hers.

There are relatively few pictures of us alone together. Quite a few with her and the Daughter, usually taken by me.

Every year around St. Patrick’s Day, she reminds me how she had me cook corned beef for hours, at her house, and then we didn’t even eat it.

I was overwhelmed by her extended family, especially meeting them at the Olin family reunion in 1995. Her mother had seven siblings, so my wife had about 35 first cousins. MY parents had zero siblings, and I have zero first cousins.

She does the REAL cooking, and all of the baking. I do the stuff that you can make with a mix, or things that can be cooked on a stove (eggs, e.g.) or microwave, so I usually do more of the kitchen cleanup. Though, occasionally I’ll make a ton of lasagna.

I suppose the first TV show we watched together was Gilmore Girls. The only thing we watch together now, and only occasionally, is Who Do You Think You Are. Everything else either has been canceled (Boston Public) or we gave up on it (American Idol) or both (Glee).

It’s probably my influence whereby she realizes the value of seeing the movie in the cinema, rather than on DVD.

My favorite place we visited together is probably Niagara Falls. The first time was right after her last class one semester in grad school. I went to a conference, and she went along. The only expenses were her meals and incidentals.

I used to give her a lot of grief about being unaware of current/recent events. That happens far less often, which is one part her being more aware, and one part me being less of a pain about it. She is a WHOLE lot more politically aware than when I met her, and surely is less likely to believe that right usually wins out. Oh, dear, she’s more cynical, and it’s probably my influence.

She is NOT the easiest person to shop for. She doesn’t hint, only makes lists when I beg her to do so.

It still makes me crazy when she moves something from point A to point B, making a need to “put away” stuff at the latter location. It was FINE behind the sofa…

Our single most source of disagreement has to do with lights at night. I like to keep the hall light on downstairs, in case I get up in the middle of the night, because I’m really night blind. She finds even that amount of light problematic. We had the same problem on vacation this spring, with the light in the bathroom on, but with the door closed, was too bright for her and too dark for me. (One of our church choir members recently broke a toe ramming into a dresser in the middle of the night; that could be me!) The solution was a little flashlight that the Daughter has borrowed, and I can’t find anymore.

She continues to be late more often than she’d acknowledge, usually because she squeezes in some last-minute task; I’ve learned to have reading material for such inevitability.

This is strange, even arcane. There’s a couple who got married six months before we did, and another couple who got married six months after us; we went to both weddings. All of the couples are members of our church, but NONE of the couples were members when they got betrothed.
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Love to you, dear.

The Lydster, Part 133: In someone else’s blog

When the project was just getting started, Lydia would scour the neighborhood to find bottles and cans to bring to school.

TanzaniaWaterCatchment_girlbucket_lgOn Saturday, March 14, I briefly went to this pancake breakfast, but I had an all-day meeting involving the Albany Public Library to attend, so I needed to leave.

Later, I discovered that my wife and daughter had been interviewed that morning by a College of Saint Rose student named Molly-Kate Webster for a blog in the Times Union.

I found this all mildly amusing because I too have a blog for the TU and I almost NEVER mention them there, mostly out of a sense of their privacy.

Anyway, the story ran a couple of days later in the Pine Hills blog.

A pancake breakfast and garage sale to raise money to build a well in Tanzania, Africa took place Saturday morning at the Pine Hills Elementary School…

Students who began the project came out to support the pancake breakfast. Fifth grader Lydia Green said that she was the first group to work on the well project. Back then the community didn’t know as much as they know now and they are excited about where it is going.

“It is pretty amazing that little kids could raise this much money,” said Carol Green, Lydia’s mom. They enjoyed hot pancakes and Lydia even picked up a play horse from the garage sale.

When the project was just getting started Lydia scoured the neighborhood to find bottles and cans to bring to school, her mom said. If students brought in 10 bottles and cans they received a homework pass. The project teaches kids to learn more about others, she said.

Now, I DID write about the Daughter vigorously collecting bottles last year. But I was not aware of the Tanzania well angle. This puts the homework tradeoff in a whole new light.

Oh, and she really loved that horse, washing, then brushing her mane in the week after she bought it. (It IS a she horse, I am told.)

A tree-killing Valentine’s Day

No, I’m not sending The Wife an electronic card.

heart-in-handsLast year at this time, New Republic published an article called Valentine’s Day Is an Environmental Travesty. It noted:

Sure, you could criticize on environmental grounds all manner of small pleasures, such as eating burgers, or driving gasoline-powered cars, or drinking frostily refrigerated beer… Yet sending a greeting card is worse as an example of personal carelessness, because its greener alternative is so painless and, indeed, so much more convenient. I don’t like veggie burgers, I can’t afford a Tesla, and I hate warm beer. But forsaking a paper greeting card for an emailed Valentine? I’m pretty sure I— as well as my family and you— could live with that.

Reason is no match for emotion, of course, so it’s no surprise that the dead-tree greeting-card industry continues to thrive.

Sentimental sap am I – guilty as charged. No, I’m not sending The Wife an electronic card. It feels too ephemeral. And if you’ve ever seen The Wife’s e-mail inbox – it had been over 1000 unread messages for a time, and is still over 800 – you might conclude that she might not even SEE my e-card.

So it’s the dead tree, carbon footprint Valentine. At least I walk to the store.

And NOT this.

Oh, I was reading the magazine Redbook in a waiting room. There’s an article in the December 2014 issue, “Things that (mostly) happy couples know” by Lisa Miller. LESSON #1: “Go looking for signs of relationship trouble in a self-help book and you’ll find them.” Makes sense to me.

Here are Top 50 ‘Love’ Songs of All Time, from Billboard magazine.

Here’s a 12-minute film Encore un Hiver.

 

Why I didn’t text

I’m still a digital immigrant – heck, just off the boat – when it comes to texting.

Samsung_SPH-M340_Mantra_Camera_Basic_Flip_Phone_Virgin_Mobile_24307_03My old cellphone died recently, a flip phone that totally broke in half, and would no longer charge. I’d had it only about five years, or maybe seven. I KNEW there was texting capacity on it but even though I READ THE MANUAL, I couldn’t figure out how to type words on a telephone keypad. I played with the # and * keys and got different, inconsistent results.

Anyway, I read RTM for the new phone; same thing: no information, assuming I’m SUPPOSED to know. But I don’t. But I Facebook IMed my old friend (and by old, I’ve known her since kindergarten) Carol (not to be confused with my wife Carol, who wasn’t born when I went to kindergarten.) I let her know that I could RECEIVE a text, but that I didn’t know how to SEND one.

She sent me this link http://phonekeyboard.com/alphabetmode.htm:

The Phone Keyboard uses the phone in the same standard way. Pressing the desired number keys [1] through [9] and a [0] still produces the numbers 1 – 9 and 0. Pressing the left asterisk [*] key once exits the standard number mode and enters a 2 key Alphabet Mode. Letters are produced in the Alphabet Mode by pressing the desired letter on a number key [1] through [9], followed by one of three position keys: the “left” asterisk [*] key for the left letter, the “middle” zero [0] key for the middle letter or the “right” pound [#] key for the right letter…

Pressing the left asterisk [*] key 2 times exits the standard number mode and enters a Shiftable Alphabet Mode. Letters are produced in the Shiftable Alphabet Mode by pressing the desired letter on a number key [1] through [9], followed by one of three position keys: the “left” asterisk [*] key for the left letter, the “middle” zero [0] key for the middle letter or the “right” pound [#] key for the right letter…

Pressing the left asterisk [*] key 3 times exits the standard number mode and enters a Multi-Tap Mode. Letters are produced in the Multi-Tap Mode by pressing the desired letter on a number key [1] through [9] once, twice or three times….

This explains everything, including how I kept shifting from mode to mode without intending to do so. Now I text. Not a lot, mind you, to friend Carol and my sisters. And I showed The Wife how to do so on her phone that’s about the same vintage as my old one.

BTW, I have a plan that costs $20 per three months, but I get charged more if I exceed the allotted number of minutes/units/whatever. I have been SO not reaching the threshold that, after I got the new phone ($12 off the balance), I still had $170 left. Texting will probably eat into that, but not sure how much.

And I’m still a digital immigrant – heck, just off the boat – when it comes to texting. Now that I know HOW to do it, can’t imagine spending hours on it. Then again, a decade ago, I couldn’t have imagined blogging every day. So what do I know?

Also, I DON’T have a smartphone yet. It’s not the cost of the phone that bugs me, it’s the cost of the monthly service. I considered doing so when I got this new phone, but then they started talking about “picking a plan,” and I bailed.

I must be cheap; I see this TV ad for a smartphone for ONLY $150 per month for four people, and that’s supposedly a good deal; not on OUR budget, it’s not! Well, maybe when the Daughter’s a little older… (Sound of blogger kicking and screaming.)

http://wronghands1.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/important-texts/ used under CC license: by-nc-nd/
http://wronghands1.wordpress.com/2013/07/06/important-texts/ used under CC license: by-nc-nd/

Crummy, we feel

This may shock you, but people related to me have actually suggested that I might be just a touch cranky when I’m sick.

sickIt started with the Daughter a week before Halloween, sluggish going to school, going to her team’s soccer match that Saturday but too weak to play, tired on Sunday, then home sick from school on Monday. She went to school late on Tuesday, but too fatigued for gym.

The Wife, who is never sick – just ask her – was feeling off on Wednesday, stayed home from work on Thursday, and still recovering on Friday.

There’s something unfortunate about being ill on Halloween. The night before, I slept extremely poorly. The Wife, when she’s ill, wheezes audibly so that I can’t sleep. I went down to the sofa, but the cats running around made that not a viable option. Finally, at about 3:20 a.m., I went to live down on the floor in the Daughter’s room. I literally crawled back to bed one minute before the alarm went off at 6 a.m. I thought when I went to work that I was just tired, but realized by midday that I too was becoming ill.

This may shock you, but people related to me have actually suggested that I might be just a touch cranky when I’m sick. When I got home, I schlepped furniture from the front porch to the shed, because The Wife had asked me days earlier to move them, lest the trick-or-treaters use them in their pranks. I was spent after that and could put on a happy face briefly as I handed out the candy before the others took over the task. Home all weekend with various ailments: sore throat, headache, congestion, body aches, and vivid dreams.

The result of which is that I can’t write a cleverly coherent post here, though I wrote TWO posts for my usually neglected TU blog, one on the NYS ballot proposals and Albany School Board election, and one on the governor’s race, which was time-sensitive.

I did watch about a half of (US) football on Sunday, Cardinals over Cowboys – YES! I also saw this unfortunate gaffe on NBC News Saturday night in real time.

Back to work today, but just muddling through…

This shall pass. I hope so.
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My friend Dan’s story on how fear, nastiness and dirty tricks sideline public discussion of the Albany City budget.

Ramblin' with Roger
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