I was not going to write a post today, but then…

On the way to Laura’s gig, assisting Mrs. P with an art class of active youngsters:

“We had a lab in chemistry today. We put a penny in nitric acid. The reaction releases a toxic gas, so we stoppered the flask, and put in a glass tube to another stoppered flask filled with water.”

“What noxious gas was released?”

“Sulfur.”

“I just read an article this morning, some university study says there can be no alien life to be found due to the lack of sulfur in the atmosphere! Perhaps you should have released it outdoors.”

“Oh, wait, it’s nitrogen dioxide that’s released. You know, NO2.”

“And I’m wrong, too; it’s phosphorus that’s lacking. You know, P.”

“Then we did homework until the reaction completed.”

“What did you have then?”

“We weighed the penny again. It lost 1.3 grams of mass. Half its mass.”

“No longer legal tender, then?”

“Oh, no. But it looked the same and was very shiny.”

I might as well have a job

           

For the second day in a row it is early afternoon, and I am so tired I am losing words and thoughts. I don’t like this state of mind.

I went to breakfast today with a friend, who texted before I left, “Put weights in your pockets!” It did rain all day yesterday, and stormed all night. The forty mile per hour wind advisory remains until eight tonight. When I got to the restaurant, the sun was fighting through. When I left, the snow was pouring down.

Breakfast was good old laughter stuff, and I left girded to tackle three jobs when I came home. The first, assimilating the changes in Excel commands in order to straighten out a couple of file transfer errors. Frustrating!  I’ve used spreadsheets since 1979. Why don’t they get easier!

I spent a good deal of time searching Google for my problem and its solution. Once I threw my hands up, gave up, and told my computer wizard I could not drag the job across the finish line. But before he could answer, there was an Ah Ha moment, and I texted “Never Mind!”

Job two was a trip to the phone store, to tell the nice Verizon guy that I owned my last two phones for five years each, and brought each into the store once, to buy the next. Here I was, back with a problem for how many times now? He hadn’t counted, either.

My phone gratuitously butt dials. According to my friend Google, Motorola Moto’s butt dial. There was no solution on Google. I’d at least traced the problem to knowing that when opening the contact list to select someone to call, the list opened to the last call, and sometimes, though not always, called the last person again. Well, he’d never heard of that!

We tested my theory several times, to no avail, of course. But I was not closing the app properly, he said. I was hanging up and returning to home, leaving the last call “open”.  In fact, I should hang up, go to the overview button, clear the call, then go home. This is just stupid. As stupid as the solution to my Excel problem.

Back there, I could not insert a new sheet into a multi-sheet file. Actually I could insert the sheet, but not where I wanted it. The Ah Ha solution was to drag it to where I wanted it. To all you folks out there writing code, this is not the easiest way to get the job done, and not intuitive.  But, who’s listening?

I ran the phone call business past Laura when she came in. “When you hang up and go home, you leave the call open. You should use the back button before home.”  That’s not intuitive, either, but one less step.

Job three was to review the new one year lease management wants everyone to sign. I have twenty two pages of lease, well annotated in red, to present to the office. That will be fun.

Mind boggling

I had a funny feeling yesterday, it had been my birthday, and I had not received my 2018 car registration and license plate renewal sticker by mail. I looked, and there is no current tag.

This morning I called DMV. Ours is efficient and courteous, so bad news is a little easier to take.  I had to appear with ID and they could see if there was current registration, in which case, for a fee, they could issue replacement registration and sticker.

“Well”, said the clerk, comparing my driver’s license to his screen, “they have your address wrong”.  “I’ve lived here for three years”, I complained. “No accounting for the bureaucrats,” he said, correcting the mistake and passing over my current registration.

That was the easiest part of today.  I have a new computer. Windows 10. My easy peasy Windows 7 is gone. Years ago my computer guru convinced me to use Google. “It’s the future”, Jim said. “You should start with gmail. And Google Drive”. 

Having my life out in the cloud never appealed to me, but the ubiquitous ease of gmail is astounding. It can appear on any device, I’m sure, and there it is, back at fingertips. Though the next generation seems to be texting, instead.

And so I am learning new stuff, like how to locate missing files that did not transfer. Finding an accounting program. Staying out of the Microsoft Store, where I might find original Mahjong. Who remembers that old DOS version? Was it really so great, or just the novelty that appealed?

In spite of the learning curve, I am grateful for one component of the new system. I have a keyboard with registration bumps on F and J. I wore the mark completely from J on Windows 7, that I bought in 2010.

Birthday tulips

Spring rolled shut

I told Laura to watch for spring rolling out as we went south, and though it didn't happen until Oklahoma, we did see it happen. And we watched spring roll shut again on the way home. But, I ask you:

On April 2nd! Enough, already. On the other hand, it melted quickly.

The ten year old orchid keeps on blooming. Good job, little thing.

Rose sent these three photos for River. These are interchanges near her home in Grand Prairie. I'm glad I could cut my teeth on these, first. They were higher and higher in Dallas and Fort Worth.

This is all freeway. Imagine surface roads squeezed between those pillars, even a place like the triangle of grass. 

And, I need to correct a glaring error from my last post. I called the pillars "cement". I can hear my father saying, "Cement is glue. That is concrete!"

Stiff driving

Laura and I set out to visit friends and family in Texas over her spring break. My cousin Pat opined a trip to Texas in a week was a bit crazy, but, then, I was a Lytle and it would happen. We got up and out of here before seven in the morning on the 24^th of March. My plan was to bunk for the first night past St. Louis.

The route was Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, to Grand Prairie, Texas. We left in dense fog. By Indiana it was rain, by Illinois, accumulating snow. The Illinois interstate was two lanes of hills and  terrified drivers trying to negotiate two inches of snow at twenty miles per hour. Then, cars began littering ditches to the left and to the right. Accidents, emergency vehicles blocking lanes.

About four in the afternoon, still in Illinois, I lost my nerve. We checked into a motel and fired up the weather channel. The band of foul weather stretched from South Dakota to Arkansas. For half an hour I sat on the bed and glowered at the stinking cold front stealing another four hours from me.

To boot, Comfort Inn motels have come down many notches since I used them back in my travelling days. This is the most stupid eighty dollars I’ve ever spent, I told Laura. I’ve driven in worse weather; let’s try it again. We packed up, checked out and got back on Interstate 70.  I’ve never liked that road, and it did not change my opinion.

St. Louis arch in fog-Gateway to the West

Laura’s phone probably is approaching overload of pictures. Every sunrise and sunset. Every new state sign. Every river we crossed. The things I hoped she would notice. The first day we crossed the Ohio, the Wabash, the Mississippi, the rivers that opened the interior of this country. I have no idea where they fit into Laura’s understanding of geography, but she knows where they are and has been across the mighty bridges.

We made St. Louis by dusk, checked into a Best Western and slept until seven. We were back on the road by eight, in sunshine and the great Oklahoma and Texas landscapes. We came through the low, rolling Ozarks, headed for the Indian Nation Turnpike, into Texas. I thought much of Oklahoma “unspoiled”. It is the prairie grasslands I remembered; the houses are cottages in the country. Outbuildings, old farm equipment, extra vehicles; family centric housing and businesses.

I stopped at a toll booth to see if the toll cameras were reading my electronic pass for the eastern toll roads I use. The short answer is No, I will get an invoice in the mail. And so we passed into Texas, destination Grand Prairie, to visit my blogging friend RunningRose. Rose has no blog, but follows many with her observations and comments.

Grand Prairie was an eye opener. We moved on to Dallas and Houston, and I’m glad we started with Grand Prairie. When I last visited Texas, probably in the eighties, I lamented the multi lane highways.  These have morphed into multi lane, multi level highways, with hundreds of long cement legs sunk into the ground for support. We counted as many as ten stacked one over another, and the surface road(s) forced between the legs on the ground. I had GPS and Laura navigating, and without them I would have spent a lot of time backtracking for the right route.

Monday was bright and sunny, perfect for visiting Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose, Texas.

"They'll drive around us"

"Food?"

 Laura and "old people"

 "Food!"

 To quote Rose, "43 babies"

 Don't do this!

 Or this will happen

Roses' car and disappointed ostrich

I love this picture!

Tuesday it rained. Rose’s granddaughter took Laura shopping at a Texas mall. Laura spent all her money, and came back with a nice stack of new clothes.

Rainy day

Wednesday we visited my cousin Pat and her husband, Ellis, in Dallas. We attempted to work out Pat’s relationship to Laura, but it was one of those fourth cousin twice removed Southern things, and we gave it up in a gale of laughter. Pat is the daughter of a brother of my dad’s mother, which begins the cousin part.

Pat and Ellis!

Pat has lived in Texas since the age of eight or so, and is pure “yonder” and “fixin’ to” Texas. Ellis quizzed Laura’s level of enjoyment of her spring break, and she allowed listening to old people was OK.

Pat and Ellis and supervision

Early Thursday morning we set out for Ellen Abbott’s home and studio, down yonder in Wharton, Texas, southwest of Houston. The drive down was pure spring. Bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, Indian blanket, vervain. Broad landscape, bayous, barely marked roads, red dirt that I also associate with Arkansas and Louisiana.

Ellen’s house and studio are pure Texas, in my opinion. She lives in what would be deemed a flood plain, back north here, and they suffered mightily post hurricane Harvey. Ellen, and all her surrounding area, is recovering. Ellen has workmen in and out, daily. I’m sending you over to her blog to read Ellen’s recap of our afternoon there.

Ellen's "Big Mama" turtle

Friday morning we started early, home through Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio. I anticipated two and a half days to cover the 1,400 miles from Wharton to Peninsula, but the days were beautiful, as was the landscape. Traffic was pretty thick, and ruder than I expected. I attribute it more to the volume and the holiday travel than a sea change in the American personality.  Great soft mattresses at Best Western’s and ice cream and milk shakes on the fly from Dairy Queen got us back in two days. The laundry is done, the shopping is done and it’s time to get the cat.

I love my cousin, and was happy to see her. The adventure of meeting bloggers I’ve corresponded with for the last six or seven years is hard to put to words. I could cheerfully live next door to any of these people. If you have opportunity to meet bloggers you admire and respect, just do it!