by Judy Handley | Feb 9, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 40—Google Driving Me Crazy
Date: Friday, February 9, 2018
Weather: Mostly Cloudy; High 32, Low 31 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
More specifically, it is Google Drive that is driving me crazy. I am writing this log a day late because I had to take my computer to the shop and leave it overnight. It is now Saturday and I obviously have my computer back, but it is still trying to resolve its problem. The young man at the computer shop doesn’t think my computer has a virus. He believes that the problem arose because of something that happened with my Google Drive. I pay for this service as it constantly, I thought, does a sync with what is on my computer and the Google “cloud”. Justin encouraged me to use Google Drive as the cloud storage services store my files and photos in a central location, the “cloud”, which gives me some backup protection in case I lose something. But the automatic syncing function has been turned off on my computer. When? How? I don’t know. And then for some reason, the syncing function went bonkers on my computer on Tuesday and started sending random files and photos to the recycle bin. On Wednesday and Thursday, I spent my time trying to back up files and photos on a hard drive in case the problem was a virus, but even that was more difficult than normal. And when I would restore the files and photos that were being put in the recycle bin, Google Drive just put more and more in there. Yesterday morning, I thought I had everything under control, so I left the computer and went to the kitchen to do a bit of cooking. When I got back to my computer about two hours later, the recycle bin was once again full. I finally panicked and called the woman who helped me with a computer issue this fall, only to find that she is in Hawaii. So, reluctantly, I headed to Cape Coastal Computers. I say ‘reluctantly’ because in the fall of 2016 when I had a major email catastrophe, I took my computer there and was less than happy with the results. When I picked up my computer this afternoon, I was told to keep it on until Google has finished syncing. This was done yesterday and during the night and when the process was completed this morning, the young man restored everything that was in the recycle bin, uninstalled and reinstalled Google Drive, and started another sync. It is not halfway there yet, but at least I can use the computer while this is happening. When the sync is done, the young man thinks things will be fine. But if I still have the problem of files and photos being sent to the recycle bin, he said he was clueless as to what could be causing it. At that point, if he is clueless, I don’t know where that puts me! I don’t even want to think about it. But for now, I will continue checking my documents for items that have been deleted through this process. I started with my Travel Logs yesterday and found that there are definitely missing logs as far back as 2005. I do have these backed up, but it is painstaking process to find the missing ones and replace them. Fun, fun.
I hope you loved watching the opening of the Olympic Games 2018 last night on NBC as much as I did. I had read that the event executive producer Yang Jung-woong said the “Peace in Motion” ceremony was designed to unfold like a winter fairy tale. And it did so beautifully. The only negatives for me were the commercials and the fact that our vice-president and the sister of Kim Jong-un were sitting just a few feet from one another, yet neither recognized the other. But at least North and South Korea acknowledged each other and their athletes marched as united Koreans. Imagine . . .
John Lennon, Plastic Ono Band
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world, you
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
by Judy Handley | Feb 8, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 39—Loony
Date: Thursday, February 8, 2018
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High 41, Low 22 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
This morning I attended a Newcomers Meeting. The speaker was a Woods Hole Oceanographic scientist, Dr. Ralph Stephen, who spoke about this experience of setting up seismographs in the Antarctic in an attempt to track climate change. Dr, Stephen has spent his like tracking seismic activity, mostly on the ocean floor. But in 2014, he went with a team to the Antarctic in an attempt to measure the impact on Antarctic ice from violent storms in Alaska. Yes, you read that correctly. Storms off the Alaska coast sent waves all the way to the Antarctic that have an impact on the ice flows, and as storms intensify, the impact on Antarctic ice intensifies. It was a good presentation, but as always, I think the best part of these presentations are the questions from the Newcomers at the end. The questions are always so poignant. Great group of people.
When I got home, however, that is when things once again went ‘loony’. Yesterday I called my computer issues weird, but today, at the same time that I was dealing with the same weird issues, I saw some newcomers in the harbor. There was a pair of loons courting and I just had to go down on the dock to try and good a photo of them. I was not particularly successful at the ‘good’ part, but I did get a photo.
It was much colder than I thought and my fingers were freezing, so I didn’t stay long. But I loved watching the pair of loons and listening to their haunting calls. So that was the part of my ‘loony’ afternoon. The other part was continuing to deal with my computer issues. I still don’t know what is going on. I either have a virus or I have managed to do some things on my computer that seem almost impossible. I will continue to try and track down the cause of the problem tomorrow and if I am not successful, I will call in a computer ‘doctor’.
Since Jed is out of town, I did take a mid-afternoon break to go pick-up Ollie from school and then go back in an hour to pick up Jonah after his Reader’s Theater after-school club. I worked with Ollie to get his bag of 100 identical items to take to school tomorrow. It is the 100th day of the school year!
by Judy Handley | Feb 7, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 38—Weird Day
Date: Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Weather: Overcast and Rainy; High 53, Low 24 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
This whole day was just a little weird. I’ll start with the weather. It was cold and rainy this morning when I went to the gym and it was still that way when I headed to Heather’s in the late afternoon. Heather had an all evening PTO meeting and Jed was headed to Boston to fly to North Carolina. So, I fixed dinner for the boys and put them to bed. Between dinner and bed, we turned the kitchen into an Olympic speed skating rink. I showed the boys how to use paper towels under their stocking feet to make the floor slippery and away we skated. And before dinner the boys entertained me with the remnants of dry ice Jed had brought home for them yesterday. They well know what happens when you add water to dry ice, but tonight’s experiment dealt with what happens when you add liquid detergent to that mix.
They thought it would make a bubbly mixture, but they didn’t expect that the liquid dish detergent would solidify like a bar of soap. I always enjoy their inquisitive minds. By the time Heather got home, the boys were in bed. She went up to say her good nights and I snuck out the front door. I was shocked at how warm it was outside. The high temp for today was 53, but that didn’t happen until tonight. The high for tomorrow will be 32 degrees F, so by morning it will be freezing again. Just weird.
The next weird thing that happened today has to do with technology. I kept getting these strange messages from Facebook friends on my phone, but then I realized that they were really messages from mutual friends of Mark. Something is going on with his Facebook account and I have put out a call for help to Heather and Justin. But at the same time, I was having weird things happening on my computer. I was working with photos and accidentally deleted a photo. I went to the Recycle Bin to retrieve the photo and found that there were hundred of photos there that had been deleted today. I spent a lot of time dealing with that and thought I had it all straightened out. But when I got home from Heather’s tonight, I found my Recycle Bin once again full of hundreds of my photos. Thankfully I have back-ups of most everything, but I am going to need help in figuring out what is happening.
I will start tomorrow morning by attending a Newcomers monthly meeting and I’m pretty sure that won’t be weird. So I’ll have a little reprieve. The meeting will take all morning and then I will head home to work on the ‘technical difficulties’ that arose today. Back to weird. But none of the weird things that happened today touch a candle to what is happening in Washington. I keep hearing the same refrain playing inside my head. “May you live in the most interesting of times.” I just never wanted that refrain to refer to my government. I’d really like that to be normal, not ‘interesting’!
by Judy Handley | Feb 6, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 37—Photos, Photos, Photos
Date: Tuesday, February 6, 2018
Weather: Overcast, Snow Flurries, Cold; High 34, Low 22 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
This is a recurring theme and it will continue until the jobs are done—Judy spent her day working on photos. I did go to Tai Chi this morning and to a class at the gym in the late afternoon. But in between, I worked on photos. Today’s project was gathering the just right photos of family to put in frames that I bought yesterday. Then I went to a photography class given by the leader of our Newcomers Shutterfly group. Most in the group are serious photographers with serious cameras. I still cling to my Canon PowerShot ‘point and click’ camera. I’ve taken some wonderful photos with it over the past 13 years, but then I have traveled to some spectacular places and it would have been hard to not get good photos. Now I am learning new skills. Today’s class was focused on portrait photography. David Margaretos, who leads our group, is a professional photographer who has moved here from the Boston area, and he is more than generous in sharing his knowledge.
by Judy Handley | Feb 5, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 36—More to the Artichoke Story
Date: Monday, February 5, 2018
Weather: Most Sunny and Windy; High 52, Low 20 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
I continue to work on my photo projects . . . miles to go . . . but at least it is truly enjoyable. My day today consisted of exercise at the gym, working on photos, running errands, and enjoying the mild winter weather. That was today, but I want to go back to yesterday when I received an email from a good friend of many years in response to my artichoke email on Saturday. That was when I wrote about having artichokes with the Goldpebbles and shared some of my story of traveling from Idaho to California in search of artichokes when I was three months pregnant with Heather. In response, Patsy Decker shared this artichoke story.
“I loved your artichoke stories. I, too, have always loved artichokes. Growing up in New Hampshire, we didn’t get them often, but whenever they were in the grocery store my mom bought them. So did my best friend’s mom. I don’t remember any of my other classmates talking about them.
In 1969, Eric’s parents were living in California. Eric and I went out to visit at Christmas and took a detour through Castroville. He had received a new suitcase for Christmas. We filled the old one with artichokes, tiny ones, small ones, medium, and large ones. A big snow storm was brewing on the east coast, flights got messed up, we lost some of our luggage, but the artichokes made it. It was very sad to think that a whole suitcase of them might have frozen! So glad they didn’t.”
I met Patsy in the mid-1980’s when Justin became friends with her son Warren. We have stayed in contact through the years, but I certainly never knew we shared the same love of artichokes. I can absolutely understand filling a suitcase with artichokes. On Saturday I wrote that I didn’t want to bore you with the details of my story, but after reading Patsy’s story, I’ve decided that I should share a bit more. All I said in Saturday’s log was that after walking to town on my birthday and finding no artichokes, we drove to California in search of artichokes. The real story is that when we walked to town, acquaintances said they were driving to California that night. Would we like to go along? We were tempted, but good sense told us to decline and walk home. Which we did. But on the way home, we continued to discuss the possibility and decided to go along. We took our groceries home and headed back to meet up with the people going to California. It was a couple with two children who we didn’t know very well. We knew Dave was an ex-con, but he was reformed and this all seemed so innocent. But at 5 am the next morning, we found ourselves in the dessert in Oregon (which I never knew existed) in a broken-down car. When I woke up, Dave was removing the license plates. I asked why he was doing that and he responded that we were abandoning the car and hitch hiking the rest of the way. Hitch hiking? Not something I had ever done or ever wanted to do, especially not when I was three months pregnant. But hitch hike we did. Shhhh. Don’t tell anyone. My mother went to her grave not knowing that I did this and I don’t want her find out. But it actually turned out to be a fantastic experience. Mark and I got a ride with a truck driver from Oakland, California, who took us home with him and then delivered us to a ‘safe’ hitch hiking destination in Berkeley. From there we went to San Mateo to the home of one of Mark’s public television friends. And from there we went to get artichokes. We were having so much fun that Mark and I continued hitch hiking down the coast of California to Los Angeles, then east to Phoenix, on Arkansas, and up to Illinois to visit with Mark’s sister and brother-in-law. Never in my life would I have thought I would do such a thing, but we were lucky and had great rides. Since I was pregnant, and we were out of money, Mark’s friend in San Mateo got him a job producing a pilot program for Los Angeles public television. So, we took a bus back west from Illinois to Salt Lake City. From there, Mark went to Los Angeles and I went back to Idaho to get our truck and eventually met up with him in LA. It was quite the adventure, but the greatest thing was that I was no longer suffering from morning, noon, and night sickness. The artichokes cured that problem. Thus, my life long love and dedication to that prickly thistle!
by Judy Handley | Feb 4, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 35—Raining Tears for Our Patriots
Date: Sunday, February 4, 2018
Weather: Nice Morning, Rain Since 1 pm; High 46, Low 38 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Studio, Falmouth, MA
I just drove home from Heather and Jed’s after having a great dinner and then watching Super Bowl. It has been raining since early afternoon, but it was pouring on the way home. I felt a bit like the heavens were raining tears for our Patriots. We Patriot fans have become accustomed to winning, but, honestly, the team that played the best game tonight won. It was refreshing to see the young Philadelphia Eagles quarterback play with amazing control and ability and Philadelphia’s defense was definitely on tonight. Sam, Jonah, and Ollie had to go to bed before the end of the game, and I know there will be tears in the morning when they find out that the Pats lost. But life will certainly go on and we’ll be back out there next year cheering on our home team.
The weather this morning offered enough warmth and sunshine to send the boys and myself outside to play after a big breakfast. Ollie brought his little John Deere tractor with him for the overnight
and all three boys took turns driving it around The Studio parking lot and the parking lot next door that belongs to MacDougall’s Marine Service. This is a pedal tractor and the longer your legs, the harder it is to pedal, but even tall man Sam still enjoys doing this. And the MacDougal’s huge parking area with no traffic this time of year is perfect for this. It also afforded Jonah lots of room to kick his soccer ball around.
Since this parking area is right on the harbor, sea gulls and ducks gathered thinking we might provide food for them. The boys got the hint and talked me into providing snacks for our fair feathered friends. The boys headed out onto the docks and had a great time feeding our fair feathered friends.
Heather arrived about this time.
She had run the five miles from her house to mine and she joined in the fun. She runs five miles and acts like it is nothing. Those days are gone for me, but I am so proud of her for working constantly to stay in tip top shape. Go, Heather!
