Dazed and confused

Life somewhat crazy lately, what with a friend from out of town around. Maybe the storm is telling me it is time to stay home for a few days? Did get to the grocery store today. I was running around doing NON-essential preparations for the storm such as going to the movies and getting a manicure. We have several days of anxiety-building news to get us all worked up about the storm. I detest rain, especially a hard rain and don't like the fact that I have no Internet at home.

I am lagging behind. Now I have a laptop but I can't live off my phone like many people and I still pay my bills the old fashioned way, by writing a check and mailing it. My friends look at me like I am a dinosaur, but they send me incomprehensible texts such as, "Matchwood is on". He meant Marshwood, which is some town in a British series called Midsomer murders. He texted me from the sun room, I was in the kitchen.
Earlier, I had texted another friend to say it was gorgeous at the beach and to ask if it was sunny. The message I got back was, "It is dark and sample". I STILL don't know what she really meant. There seems to be an awaful lot of sloppy texting about.

It appears to be the night for walking around for Trick or treat. I seem to have missed that whole scheduling, costumy experience. No one comes to my house anyway cause they can't find my door. I'm not good at costumes and only party was tonight. I am going to the Symphony instead. Killing time in Starbucks cause tired of driving all over the county for this and that.

He was far from being gruntled

I love P.G. Wodehouse. I know his politics are doubtful, but I enjoy the clever repartee between Bertram Wooster, gentleman, and his manservant, Jeeves. Just started reading "The code of the Woosters" since I am spending the night with a friend and forgot my "travel" book. Luckily, "the green room" was well supplied with books and I found a few Jeeves books in there. I laugh when I read sentences such as," He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled, so I tactfully changed the subject."

My friend just handed me a cup of coffee in a cup from Bob's Bunz in Islamorado in the Floriday Keys. A reminder of a fun vaction we took in a big house on "The gold coast". It was sort of a 1950's affair, with many outbuildings, right on the Ocean. We had our own osprey, peacocks (mating), parrot and quite a few more creatures.
They really did have delicious sticky buns. Their slogan is "Bite my bunz" and you can find them at www.bobsbunz.com. We "won" this house at an auction to benefit something or other. A delightful excuse to investigate yet another part of Florida.

Yesterday attended a very sad funeral for a 19 year old. One of two unrelated adopted Brazilian boys, he and his brother had many wonderful opportunities growing up. Hundreds of students were there dressed in black and weeping. He was taken, suddenly, tragicly, in a motorcycle accident on his way to college. He was an adventurous, happy, energetic, daredevil, smiling, friendly, lovely, old soul, according to his dads and many other friends. I knew him hardly at all, but it was one of those services where you get to know him, love him and miss him all in one day.

So many books, so little time

Starting to collect more papers about books I would like to read. I was forced to clean up my office a few months ago and I had to let go of four Princeton file boxes full of papers and one big box piled full of paper....more books than anyone could POSSIBLY read in ONE lifetime. And those were all books which were available in the library where I was working. I threw them all away and went to a list system, losing most of them in the process. Ran across a good quote about reading this AM, will try to paste it in here: Norman Rush (1933- ) wrote, "The main effort of arranging your life should be to progressively reduce the amount of time required to decently maintain yourself so that you can have all the time you want for reading."

Finshed State of wonder, by Ann Patchett. It was an ebook I borrowed from the library on the Overdrive program, so it has just vanished into thin air. Usually I keep the hard copy of the item to remind myself to write a "review". Maybe I didn't quite yet finish it. Perhaps 6 pages to go. I liked it, but it was weird. A lot of physical discomforts, like bugs, snakes, malaria, etc. About medical research in the far off Amazon with strange tribes and rituals. Her new book has been recommended to me.

Must return my other book to a library about an hour away from me. I would like to go through it page by page, cause it is full of gems. I probably mentioned it already, Blogging for creatives : how designers, artists, crafters, and writers can blog to make contacts, win business, and build success, by Robin Houghton. Evan Williams had something to do with the founding of Twitter and also Blogger. In an interview with the author of my book in 2001, he said, "To me, the blog concept is about three things: Frequency, Brevity and Personality". Well, I've got the first two...not sure about the third.

A mistress of the sedentary arts

I just breathe a sigh of relief when it is time to SIT DOWN...and use the computer, drive the car, watch a play, read, etc. OK, I guess I am just lazy...but I have a lot of pain and discomfort moving around, climbing stairs, lugging all of my stuff around. I really should carve out a comfortable space at home and get the Internet, but then maybe I would never leave!

My calendar for 2013 is getting out of hand. Feeling the yearly anxiety...what kind of calendar should I get for the upcoming year? Of course, this decision should have been made in JULY but I am a procrastinator of the first degree. Shall I go electronic, get a bigger paper one or a smaller paper one, go back to the one-page-a-day or the two-page-a-day. I have a lot of things to record...all the possible events, things I should do, things I accomplished, good and bad things that happened to me.

Yesterday I came across a lot of people trying to apply for jobs online. They all looked frustrated as hell. One young woman had been having trouble with the phone giving her all these choices, none of them the appropriate one. Someone had told her she had to go online to apply for a job up at Carll's Corner for Bank of America but wherever she went online, she just went around in circles. Another woman I overheard at the library said, "When I ask for a job near Vineland, New Jersey, they give me jobs in Pennsylvania". The guy to the right of me was being quiet about it, but I could see from the red sentences on his application form that he was having trouble advancing to the next page. The new online application process is just nature's way of weeding out 90% of the people.

I admire your ability to nap

I don't get it. How can people fall asleep at the drop of a hat? I hear them snoring in yoga during the relaxation (which I don't know how to spell), I see them looking oh-so-comfortable on airplanes, I am watching a DVD with someone and he falls right off. I have been retired for almost four months and I haven't taken a nap yet.

I'm tired of getting home after dark. Tonight again, but I won't be so far away. It befuddles me at times remembering how to get home! Just spending too much time ON THE ROAD. Drove over an hour Saturday AND Sunday for my various excursions. Think I need to go back to my alternate-day-stay-near-home plan. It is a gas-saving plan and a sanity-saving plan.

Course now there are GUYS working on my house, so am maybe not so anxious to be home. I came out this morning and one of them said to me, "La casa es muy vieja!" (the house is very old)

Finished up a book, which was a bit of a disappointment. I keep wanting to read memoirs. Well, they are SHORT, which is one good thing. Memoirs by funny people are not always so funny. This one I read is of the genre, "non-famous people with diseases". It just irritated me, more than anything. It is called Monkey mind : a memoir of aneity, by Daniel Smith. It has some positive things said about it on the back and it apparently was a New York Times bestseller, but it didn't do much for me.

It's a jungle out there

Just finished a class on DRIVING for senior citizens. It was enough to make one paranoid. Even if I don't DO any of those things, there are a lot of people out there who are not yielding when they are supposed to and who are making crazy left hand turns. Those are the two biggest causes of accidents with the aged. We learned about how it becomes more difficult to SURVIVE an accident after age 75. I'm not there yet, but it was somewhat depressing to contemplate. Also learned a bunch of curious facts, such as you can be booked for a D.U.I. if you take your medication wrong. I know I drive other people crazy by driving too slow (the speed limit) but they drive me bonkers by turning out in front of me when they are going 10 miles an hour and I am going 50. So which is greater...the people who HONK at me, or the people at whom I would like to honk? I try not to honk, as much as I may want to. Teacher advised us not to encourage ROAD RAGE but to avoid it at all costs.

I tried to COOK the other day. It was pretty much a failure. I tried to make tuna casserole with a recipe with no measurements, just a list of ingredients. I may try it again with some adjustments. Or, maybe I will just rip up the recipe and forget about it. I had just suddenly gotten an urge for an old fashioned casserole with potato chips on top. I don't have the patience for cooking. Although, as the driving instructor pointed out, we have all EARNED the right to be patient.

My local paper is going to regionalize. I HATE that. It started out being the Bridgeton Evening news. I still call it that even though they changed the name to The news of Cumberland County. Now, any day it is going to become The South Jersey times. Libraries and newspapers and social service organizations do not IMPROVE when they regionalize. They just get more out of touch with the local needs. But of course freeholders and politicians LOVE regionalization. My paper drove me nuts the other day. A guy got murdered. Instead of James Penn III, they wrote James Penn!!! on the caption. Lame!

Feeling kinda rushed

Don't have the Internet at home yet, and am having trouble getting my work (and play) done at our local public libraries, including the one I used to work at! They all have different rules....some of them only allow ONE hour per day online. Now, how in the world do they expect a person to function with THOSE rules? Guess I should investigate how to get online at home. A friend kindly pointed out that I am probably spending as much on GAS to get to all of my hangouts as it would cost me to get online at home. Not to mention the shoulder pain I have what with lugging all of my folders, binders, file boxes, calendars everywhere with me. That comes to MORE than one bag per shoulder.

Hmmm...just imformed that the SWAT team is in the neighborhood. What a day! Bad accident this AM forced me to go way out of my way to get where I was going. Road was entirely shut down. Had to get the heaphones going. Annoying patron chatter around me. Playlist not working, as is often the case, so fell back on Youtube.

Really enjoyed this book, Blogging for creatives : how designers, artists, crafters, and writers can blog to make contacts, win business, and build success, by Robin Houghton. I need to examine it page by page but can't really due to FEELING KINDA RUSHED. I could actually spend four hours a day on the computer to feel fulfilled.
The book is a good how to do it but also lists a lot of cool blogs I would like to look up. I am equally passionate about READING blogs and WRITING blogs.