Change Is Hard

…but change is certain.

Category Archives: technology


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Mashup

Did you know that’s a word?  Mashup.  I had to get a graduate degree in information to find that out.  And I’m still only vaguely sure what it means.  So for the purposes of today’s post, class, we will define it as a bunch of unrelated topics mashed into one post.

First up are technological problems.  There was the blog issue where it suddenly one evening stopped behaving in the way I’ve become accustomed.  Even with the graduate degree in information I have a phobia about technology.  And when things don’t work the same way they’ve worked before I get a little weirded out.

I’m trying to be better.  I really am.  And braver about clicking away at different things in an attempt to fix stuff without making other stuff worse.  But it’s still uncomfortable for me to do that.  And during the past two weeks we’ve been having cable issues here at the house as well.  Intermittent outages, little blackouts, for a few seconds, or hours.  So the odds of having internet work when I needed it were low.  The combination of blog problems, work problems and internet connection problems was, at times, overwhelming.

So I did what any good person does when technology lets her down.  I made soup.

I haven’t made this recipe before.  It’s the Weight Watcher version of potato soup.  I make another potato soup full of Velvetta cheese and bacon that is purely heaven but hardly healthy.  This one is full of onions and leeks, and though I’ve only tasted a bit of it as I cleaned up the pan, I think it just might be a different version of heaven.

And after the soup was made and put away Katie and I went for our weekly adventure. I’ve been wanting to take her on longer car rides.   I’m hoping to get her used to trips of greater and greater lengths so that we can explore further afield on weekends this summer.

So with high hopes, and virtually no planning, I loaded her up and off we went.  I got approximately 1/2 a mile down the road when she started complaining.  Loudly.  Seems I forgot to do the potty break prior to the loading of the sheltie.

So we stopped at her favorite local park.  I figured she’d do her thing like she always does, as soon as she’s out of the car, then we’d continue on our way.  But no.  We had to EXPLORE first.  Did I tell you it was cold yesterday?  We had blue skies and sunshine, but the temperature was in the high teens.

Yes it was very very cold.

Eventually she got her jobs done and I started back to the car.  She was like “WHAT?!  We haven’t done much of anything and this is MY FAVORITE PARK MOM!!!!”

But we headed off to MY favorite park, about 40 minutes away anyway.  Because I had the car keys and she doesn’t even have her learners permit to drive yet.

Once at my favorite park we headed out to the end of a point of land that extends into a big inland lake.  It’s a picnic area when times are warmer, but during winter it’s just a part of the park with no cars going by and no runners and nobody on bikes.  And it’s down a long hill so it’s sort of out of the wind.  Did I mention it was COLD out?

There are some big old hickory trees out there with the most beautiful bark.

There are lots of beautiful places to look at the lake and enjoy the sunshine.  It was almost totally frozen over with a smooth sheet of ice that reflected the blue sky.

We saw a pair of swans who were doing synchronized swimming just for us.

We had fun walking around and pretending it was summer.  Which it clearly wasn’t.

Then I had to go to the bathroom, so I loaded up the sheltie again and off we drove in search of an open restroom.   Once I got to one I debated leaving Katie in the car.  But I never do that..so she and I walked across a playground to the bathroom building.  Katie didn’t want to go in the big scary building.  But she did.  And she certainly didn’t want to go into the stall, even though I used the handicapped stall so she’s have more space to freak out in.  But she did.  And she was not OK with the fact that the toilet paper holder thingy squeaked.  A lot.  But she held her own and only tried to get under the wall to the other stall once.  But the flushing thing?  In a big empty concrete building with all it’s echos?  Oh boy.  That’s why she was on a leash.  Picture it, crazed sheltie, all four feet going, head down, pulling wildly on the leash and Mama just trying to get her coat back on.  Good thing we were alone.

So after the bathroom adventure we came home.  She was pretty quiet on the 40 minute trip home.  I guess she figured if she stayed quiet she wouldn’t have to go into any more scary places.

And for our third and final mashed up topic, husband and I went to see “The King’s Speech” last night because the TV and internet were down again, and we’d read all the hard copy magazines and newspapers we had in the house.  Technology let us down, so we had an old fashioned date night.  Not such a bad thing.  The movie is wonderful and deserves all the praise and awards that it has received.

When I got home the internet was back up, so I looked up more information about King George VI, his brother, Lionel his speech therapist and Wallace Simpson.  I guess I have a love/hate relationship with the internet.

Class dismissed.

 


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And the decision is….

You can see that the blog is looking traditional again.  I lived with the big formating changes for a couple of days, but looking at it made me feel sort of frenetic, less peaceful and even slightly stressed.  So I changed it back. Thanks, Spike, for making me consider something outside the box!

Partly I changed it back because I liked the idea of putting my own photo at the top.  This one is a photo I took from the boat of the mountain where we put my parents’ ashes.  It’s a beautiful place and I think I’ll enjoy looking at the photo each day.  Eventually I’ll change it to something else, probably just as pretty!

The good news in all this is that I was able to change it back all by myself!    WHOOOOHOOO!  If you really know me (Susie, Spike, Erin etc) you’d know how this computer stuff has been elusive for me; it’s all a bit of magic black box hocus pocus and not something that is intuitive.  So it took a lot for me to even try to change something – to poke around at what was admittedly a pretty easy formatting software site to add specific widgets in order  to make this blog a reflection of me.

So much of the time our fears are truly just that – ours.  Things that seem insurmountable can actually be handled by just trying to make one decision at a time.  Or a piece of one decision.  Or the decision to just try to make a piece of a decision.  If we don’t give up, if we don’t allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the big picture – which I agree is often REALLY big and scary – if we just move one foot in front of the other…well…eventually we can all get to where we want to be.

And if we pay attention, we’ll learn a little bit about the world and ourselves along the way.


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It's Saturday…must be I'm at the library

library-022 Seems most Saturdays find me working at the library. Not that you can really consider it work, at least not compared to my previous life. Though sometimes I wish I didn’t have to go to work, most of the time I enjoy the people watching that comes with the job. For instance here’s a small smattering of things I noticed while working today:

A small boy, maybe 4 or 5 sitting in a big overstuffed chair. His feet don’t reach the floor. In fact they barely reach the edge of the chair seat. He has a big picture book in his lap and he’s studiously reading to himself. Around him is chaos, other people in the library talking loudly, joking with each other, comparing notes about movies they’ve seen. This little boy just continues to read, lost in thought. Later I was close enough to hear him read out loud and his words in no way resemble the story as it’s written.  He’s making up the story as he goes, describing the pictures. He’s going to be a wonderful father someday, reading aloud to his own kids.

A young girl checks out a book about why women and girls don’t like their own bodies. I hope she picks up some pointers about learning to like herself. I wonder what made her get that book; I know there must be issues to be resolved.

A middle aged guy is writing a paper and preparing for a college group presentation on high blood pressure. He’s having trouble getting the articles he’s found on the Mayo website to print. I can’t get them to print either. It’s this kind of trouble that makes middle aged students (and I can relate to this!) think they are too old to be in school, what with all the technological changes that have occurred since we went to school the first time. But it wasn’t him, it was the website. Hopefully he gets that and doesn’t become discouraged. Sometimes it’s hard not to think you’re just too old to try something so new.

Another middle aged man is working on his resume, checking out job websites. It’s discouraging for the unemployed middle aged patron as well.   A young woman plays games on the computer, killing time until she has to go see her doctor.  Just a checkup she says, but you see the questions in her eyes.   I wish I could make it all better for all of them.

A grandmother comes in with one of her grandchildren. She wants a book on aerobics. A book? Why not a DVD? No, just a book. I can’t find one specifically on aerobics, but I find one on walking, and one on Yoga and she seems happy. I’d think chasing after grandchildren would be aerobic enough!

Another older college student, this one needs stuff on anatomy and physiology. I’m working in a small branch today, not much on our shelves, but lots of stuff in our reference section. He’s happy with that.

And of course the movies. Movies being checked in and checked back out just as fast. Seemed like hundreds of movies, might have been. With the occassional book thrown in, just to make me happy.

Libraries. Here’s hoping we never have to live without them.

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Extra, extra, read all about it!

I listened with a combination of sadness and excitement when the Detroit Free Press announced this week that it would stop home delivery of newspapers in the manner we have been accustomed to for the past 100 years.  Well.  I haven’t been accustomed to home delivery for 100 years, but you know what I mean.  Beginning in January they will only be delivering a paper newspaper (and to so many people what other kind of newspaper is there?) to our doors on Thursday, Friday and Sunday.  The rest of the week customers will be receiving their subscriptions through email delivery, where a PDF format of the newspaper will arrive for $12.00 a month.  This is a real example of so many things that we discussed while I was in graduate school getting my Masters in Information.  And here it is in real time, real life, happening so much faster than I imagined.  Remember when we were kids and they told us someday in the distant future there would be cars that would drive in the air, above the congestion of the freeways?  Well this feels, to me a librarian, like that.  Only it’s now.  And right here, not out in California, always a technology leader, or in New York City, it’s happening right here in the Midwest.

I’m not sure how I feel about it.  Suddenly I am nostalgic for the feel of newsprint.  And I wonder how libraries in the area are going to respond.  Will they send someone out to a newsstand to buy a paper newspaper on the days it’s not delivered?  Or will they subscribe and have a computer monitor available for our regulars that read the paper every day.  And will those regulars revolt?  And what about people that have been getting their newspapers for decades and don’t have a computer?  In these economic times (because face it, it’s the economy that is forcing this issue to happen now rather than later) is the Detroit Free Press turning it’s back on those customers who aren’t technologically astute?  Mostly older folks, or folks from economic disadvantaged families may find their access to the news limited.  Is this fair?  Or right?  Hard to say.  The newspaper will still be available in printed form, just not home delivered.

On the other hand, how exciting is this?  We discussed in classes that this period in the world history, particularly the United States’ history, will be considered a time similar to the Industrial Revolution because we are going through so many significant changes.  We don’t always recognize when something changes in life altering ways.  Each individual change may not seem significant, but we are living through so many of these changes.  Someday, maybe in 100 years, people will marvel at these days, and remark how the world shifted at the turn of the century.   And perhaps they will laugh at how antiquated we were, reading from newsprint, waiting for the news to show up in our driveways every morning.

But for now I wonder about that older person who has received the newspaper every day for the past sixty or seventy years.  The people who depend on that newspaper to connect them to the world.  I hope they can stay connected, and not just through the television pontiffs.  Reading a newspaper allows for individual thought and independent opinion making.  I hope the Detroit Free Press doesn’t leave a whole segment of our population behind as the rest of us move into the future.