#440a Bump

Just a bump, in case anyone is still getting alerts - I'm now at http://TheSilkenTouch.blogspot.com.

~~Silk

440 New Journal

Well, I am moving to http://TheSilkenTouch.blogspot.com. Maybe temporarily, maybe permanently. We'll see.

I'm NOT moving because of the ads AOL has decided to burden us with. I don't like them, but I could stand them. I'm experimenting with moving because in the 250+ emails I got yesterday and today about the AOL community's furor over the ads, a lot of people said interesting things about other blog hosts, so I looked at a few, and I liked what I saw.

Blogspot doesn't have some of the stuff AOL Journals has, like alerts for readers, but it's got other stuff like much easier editing, and you can preview and accept or reject comments from other people BEFORE they are posted in your blog.

The user interface is awkward at first - like I didn't know I had to log into www.blogger.com to update the blog at blogspot, and I went around in a lot of circles before I found out how to edit certain sections - but if you play with it for a while, it all starts to hang together and make sense.

And it's free.

So until I say otherwise, that's where I am now.

Come on over to http://TheSilkenTouch.blogspot.com, and check out my new format.

~~Silk

#439 This Journal Will Be Moving

Since AOL has added advertising to our journals, I am considering joining throngs of other AOLers in moving to another host. I have begun a new journal at http://TheSilkenTouch.blogspot.com. There's nothing much there yet, and I plan to explore a few more options, but I thought I'd let you know, I'm packing up.

Dinner last night with a friend. Mixed reviews. He had lemon chicken, and it was so lemony it literally took his breath away, in the not-good sense. Both of us had partially cooked pasta, too chewy. On the other hand, my chicken S-something-or-other (a chicken Cordon-Bleu in a wonderful mushroom cream sauce) was delicious.

He's one of the few men I've known who will actually complain when a restaurant meal isn't up to par. He was obviously annoyed and would have sent the pasta back except that it took 45 minutes to arrive, which is exactly what he said to the waitress.

I'm not sure what I think of that. On the one hand I admire his assertiveness. On the other hand, it frightens me a little. So far I've been able to get away with annoying him occasionally (I hope it's occasional), but how much can I get away with before he tells me my pasta is tough?

I think that his frightening me a little is part of the attraction. Passing my fingers through the flame, maybe.

~~Silk

#438 Old Letters

While I am cleaning out the paper in the den, I am finding a lot of old correspondence.  It's amazing to revisit my mind from years back.  I'm afraid that's something that today's youth will miss.  With all their correspondence being of the ephemeral variety (online, phone), they will have less opportunity to revisit their younger mind.

Anyway, it has slowed down the house clearing project considerably.

I am finding many letters and (paper) journal entries I had written to and about Jay back in the beginning, when we first realized how things were between us, but we didn't know what to do about it.  I am amazed that many of the same things I felt then, I am feeling again now.  But I'm much calmer about it now.  I guess because there's no "baby lust" now.  No "tick, tick" of the hormonal clock.

I found very upbeat and positive letters from my youngest sister, written two years before she drank herself to death.

I am also finding letters I had written to friends and Jay's sisters when we were fighting his cancer.  Now, I can't believe what we went through.  Really rough.  One of the letters was the infamous "Christmas letter" of 2000.  Jay's entire extended family is really big on the "our year" letters, where you brag about the wonderful year your family has had.  I dislike the whole concept.  If you can't keep in touch during the year, what makes you think people want all that information at the end of the year.  But, as a member of the family, I had to meet expectations.  (Although I flatly refused to send those silly photo postcards.)

I had missed writing the 1999 letter because the tumor had reoccurred, right before Jay was supposed to get the bone marrow transplant, and the whole treatment plan was changed, there was another craniotomy, daily radiation, and so on, and everything was just too frantic.  I didn't even get cards out in 1999, let alone a letter.  So the 2000 letter covered two years of brain cancer battle.  I mean, how could it not?  That's ALL we'd done for two years. 

I will never forget (or forgive) a subsequent telephone call from one of his sisters.  Her comment on the letter was "Merry Christmas" in a very bitter tone, "way to throw a wet towel on everybody's holiday."  Gee.  Sorry about that.

So I'm reading and keeping instead of simply  sorting and pitching.  A temporary hitch in the git-along.

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BTW - Piper called early this afternoon, and I answered the phone in the kitchen.  I needed to get some information from the den for him, so I set the kitchen phone down, and picked up in the den.  We talked for long enough that I forgot that the kitchen phone was off the hook.  So if anyone tried to call me today, that's why you couldn't get me.  Sorry.

~~Silk

#437 The Wine Tasting Outing

Programmers' Drinking Song

99 little bugs in the code,
99 little bugs,
You fix one bug, compile it again,
100 little bugs in the code.

100 little bugs in the code,
100 little bugs,
....
Repeat until bugs=0.

___________________________________

Well, I missed the wine tasting yesterday.  The newsletter said it was in Pine Bush, so I dragged out the map and found Pine Bush on route 209, north of Kerhonkson.  The directions further said to follow the "wine trail" signs to the winery.  Pizza afterward at a pizzeria in Pine Bush.  I gave myself an hour and 15 minutes to get there.

There were NO signs for Pine Bush on 209.  I went all the way to Ellenville, then back north to Kerhonkson, then  back to Ellenville, then back to Kerhonkson, then I found an old man who told me that Pine Bush was on route 52.
"Go to south Ellenville, then turn right in town onto 52.  You'll see a sign for Pine Bush."
"Turn right on 52?  That's west, right?"
"Yeah."

I found 52, and turned right at the "Pine Bush 12 mi" sign.  A few blocks later, the road split.  52 west went right, 52 east went left.  No Pine Bush sign.  Old man said right, right?  West, right?   Right.  I took the right.  Twelve miles later, there sure enough was a little town, but it wasn't Pine Bush.

Found another old man.  "Um, am I anywhere near Pine Bush?"
Laughter.  "Nope.  You gotta go back to Ellenville, go straight through town, and up t'mountain on t'other side.  Pine Bush will be on 52, about 12 miles t'other side of Ellenville."

By the time I got to Pine Bush (which was in the next county down, by the way, and therefore this version of Pine Bush wasn't on my map), I was an hour and a half late.  So I gave up on the winery and found the pizza parlor.  Where I found the Mensa group.  Which consisted of the two organizers.  They had just ordered. 

It's just as well that I hadn't looked for the winery.  The couple wondered where everybody else was, and I suggested that maybe they were wandering the highway between Ellenville and Kerhonkson, or somewhere west of Ellenville.  Laughter.  Then the guy who had written the directions speculated that they might be wandering out there somewhere nearby.  He said it was just as well that I hadn't tried to find the winery.  It seems that the "Wine Trail" signs I was supposed to follow don't point to this particular winery.

Ah, typical Mensa. 

Turns out there are at least two Pine Bushes in New York state - a village and a hamlet locally (a hamlet being a wide spot in the road).  Just as there are two Rochesters - the city and the town.  There are two Red Hooks - a village and a scary section near the NYC docks.  There are lots of duplicate names.  I don't know how the postal service handled it before zip codes.

Ah, typical New York.

~~Silk

#436 Patrick's Saturday Six - Episode 83

The famous Saturday Six, from Patrick at "Patrick's Place", http://journals.aol.com/pattboy92/PatricksPlace/entries/1341.

1. You are invited to spend a night, alone, in a large house that is believed to be haunted.  A close friend of yours whom you trust tells you of his or her own experience, and you have sufficient reason to believe that there may be a genuine haunting going on there.  Without promise of any kind of reward for staying the night, would you agree to do so?  Yes.  If there are no ghosts, it would be interesting.  If there are ghosts it would be interesting. 

2. What do you most enjoy about your job?  Being retired.   

3. Who was the last person you had a conversation with?  What was the main topic of the conversation?  Well, in the past few hours I've talked with the deli lady about how good the bacon smelled, and a telephone discussion with my gutter man about his coming to clean the gutters today, but I don't consider those real conversations.  The last real conversation would have been with Roman about what's going on in his life and how it affects us.

4. Take this quiz:   What kind of "smart" are you?  All-around.  Big deal.

5. What was the last food that you totally ruined -- to the point that it was inedible -- when trying to cook?  Oh, come on.  I ruin everything that requires mixing ingredients or more than a little heating.  Restaurants and doggie bags are how I "cook".  Mostly I eat yogurt, raw vegetables, and fruit.  Monkey diet.

6. STRANGELY-OBSCURE QUESTION #1:  If you had to do over again, would you change anything?  If I could do it over knowing what I know now, I would not have been coerced into marriage #1, I'd have waited for Obie, I'd have stayed in teaching rather than joining The Company back in 1968, I'd have flirted with a certain person at my last job (I didn't know what he had to offer), I'd have forced my baby sister into rehab, stuff like that.  But then I wouldn't have had Jay or Daughter.  So many possible branches on the tree, each with its own pros and cons.  Mainly I wish I could say that at every juncture I did the best I could.  Unfortunately, I didn't always.  I guess that's the big thing I'd change - I wish I had followed my own heart and mind more.

PS - Back to #3 - My gutters are getting cleaned right now, and I had a nice conversation with him about cruises.  He's a talker.  I showed him my pictures from the Hawaiian cruise, and he helped me locate the site for the wine tasting this afternoon.  When he's finished with the gutters, I'm going to ask him to help me get the African screen out of the van.  That would be such a relief!  He also cleans vinyl siding, and knows a good roofer, so we're lining up next spring's projects.

~~Silk

#435 Disappearing Saturday

Here it is Sunday already, and I haven't the faintest idea where Saturday went.

After finally falling asleep at about 4 am, I got up at 9 Saturday morning to go to the recycle center.  I unloaded some storage containers from the van, and then filled the body of the van with cut-up cardboard, plastic-glass-foil mix, some basement paper, and one of my four vacuum cleaners.

Explanation for four vacuum cleaners:  The one I took to recycle is a huge heavy upright Hoover.  Cleans well, very powerful, but it had come with Jay, and it's just too big and heavy for me, and won't fit under the furniture.  I dislike uprights anyway, because you have to move the whole danged thing when you use it.  Cleaner number 2 is a good and expensive canister, but the power head choked on oriental fringe one day and burned out.  When I couldn't get it fixed real quick, I bought a small cheap canister to use until I could get the good one fixed.  That was back when we had two dogs and a long-hair cat, and we couldn't possibly go a month without vacuuming.  Then I finally got mad at not being able to easily find bags (or remember which bags to buy), so last fall I bought a bagless vacuum.  I LOVE it!

The recycle center has set up a building where you can take books and almost any kind of household stuff and anybody can take away anything they want.  I've found some wonderful books there, and I've gotten rid of television sets, Christmas trees, knick-knacks, and packing materials.  Local Bard college students furnish their digs from that building.  (They won't accept the recliner.  Too big and too hard to dispose of if no one takes it.)

And that's the last thing I remember until Ballykissangel came on and I watched the Saturday PBS Brit-com lineup.

I don't have the faintest idea where the rest of the day went.

Tomorrow (Sunday) - wine tasting at a valley winery, with Mensa, followed by pizza. (??)  If I get up in time.

~~Silk