Category Archives: Life reflections

My New Year’s Resolutions

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I try not to make too many NYRsNew year concept, because type A personalities like me tend to overburden the spirit of the thing, and then sink beneath our own weight. So, here are my three (ish) resolutions:

 

1) Return to blogging three times a week. Come hell or high water, I am GOING to get this back on track. It’s fun to blog, and when people honor you with their reading time, you should honor them. So, three times a week. Help me, people. Make this work! Send Monday Book reviews! It’s easy; 300-400 words on what it’s about and why you liked it. We tend not to publish “why I didn’t like it” unless the book is so bad, it’s art. Y’all help me with Mondays, and Jack and I can get Wednesday and the weekend together.

2) I wrote some fiction that’s set in West Virginia. Gonna get that signed with somebody in 2020. Where there’s a laptop, there’s a way. It’s in serious rewrite now after a few beta readers had their way with it. I love editing. The original writing is harder. Editing is the best part of writing. Having fun!!!

3) Learn to make poached eggs. In Philly recently I must have had five different kinds of poached eggs, on top of every conceivable form of veggie platform. I’m not much of a cook, but they’re fun, nutritious, diverse, and low carb. Eggs are our friends. Imma learn to make poached eggs this year.

Things I am not making resolutions about: playing the harp. I have finally taken my beloved instrument up again, after we closed and sold the bookstore. There was nowhere to keep my harp in the shop where it was out of the case and safe. People mean well, but no one can resist plucking a harp string when it’s sitting out. And our basement apartment was not a good climate. So it waited–until now. Now it sits in our library, atop its box, happy, healthy, and played every day. Having a good time with that, I am.

I’m not resolving to lose more weight. Since being diagnosed as pre-diabetic, I’ve lost 11 pounds. Goal: 7 more. It has taken me a year and a half to lose those 11, but they have not come back. Slow loss is permanent loss, and built into our lifestyle now. Substituting cauliflower for rice, zucchini for wheat, and sweet potatoes for those moments when nothing but a potato will do, I have come this far with God and His better vegetables’ help. I don’t understand how a potato can be a whole food, a vegetable, easy to grow, and super-cheap to buy, all while being so freaking bad for us. Sigh…. But I have learned to make them treats rather than staples. All of that to say, it’s a journey that will never end, experimenting with tasty ways to eat wisely and still have fun.

This is one of those places where life is unfair in my favor, though; it’s fun for me because I can afford to buy the kinds of food that are good for us. It’s hard work staying away from corn syrup without blowing a budget. God bless and stretch grocery dollars for everyone trying to do the same on a tight salary. And remember: zucchini is cheap and not hard to make into noodles. Cauliflower I’ve never seen cheaper than $2.29 per head, sadly.

I have one more resolution, but I’m not telling anybody what it is. If it works out, I’ll let you know. :]

What are your resolutions this year?

Power ain’t Necessarily – –

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Jack gets way over his deadline but pleads Christmas recovery  –

I noticed that Christmas has become a very ‘on-line’ thing over the last few years and that got me thinking.

Random thoughts – – –

I got my first computer around 1998, just after the college where I worked began to introduce them. Prior to that I hand wrote memos, handed them to my secretary, who typed them, copied them and then sent them to the designated recipients. There was a whole protocol around memos including who was ‘CCd’ and how that could be used as a weapon! I learned – – –

Back then there was hardly an internet as we now know it. There was eventually an ‘intranet’ within the college, and on my personal computer at home (with great difficulty) I could eventually connect via ‘dial up’ with the college.

Ah – dial up! One of the guys at the college could imitate that sound perfectly

I joined ‘America on Line’ (AOL) and got an email address, which I still have. Back then, in Scotland, you connected to your email via dial up. They had three numbers for the whole of the UK and Ireland! So getting your emails was sometimes a frustrating experience. But that was just to get your mail and not to surf the internet. There wasn’t really any internet!

When I assumed the position of Head of Construction Trades, I found by accident that the Department had ten computers. The trouble was I couldn’t find them. After a search, I was told that the computer department had pauchled fifty by attributing them to other departments! So eventually ten Commodore Pets briefly were in my department as they were wheeled to the dumpster – – –

pet

The final story is much later. I had been promoted again, had gained my MBA and was teaching management classes. Like everyone else I had great difficulty getting any kind of urgent response from the IT team to fix any problem (check out ‘The IT Crowd’ on YouTube https://youtu.be/nn2FB1P_Mn8). Nicola was their manager and was in one of my evening class programs. That night we discussed the different forms of power within organizations – hierarchical, fiefdoms and expert. Expert was the one! As soon as I had explained expert power to Nicola I never had an IT problem again.