Alexa said, “Your cat, Papi, is at the front door asking to enter the house.” He answered, “Open the door and let Papi in, please.”
“Letting Papi in,” Alexa replied.
It’s really the best thing that Alexa does for him.
And then he woke up.
Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts
My wife exercises three mornings a week. Been doing this since we moved to Ashlandia in 2005. Friendships have developed through the years. A coffee clatch after class — which I call the zoo — was added a decade ago.
Today, she came in and handed me half a package of Trader Joe’s dark chocolate espresso beans.
“Where’d you get these?” I asked.
“Deborah. She said she can’t stop eating them so she’s giving them away. Everyone took what they wanted and told me to take those home to you.”
“That’s kind of her.” I sampled three.
OMG good. I understand Deborah’s decision. The damn things are addictive.
Learning
One of the finest aspects of having a partner is the impact it has on learning and memory. In my case, this spot is filled with my wife, a woman. She’s smart, reads many books, and researches matters. Most of which she researches involves women rights, social justice, and health. She shares all that she learns with me, often piquing my interest to go read more on the subject. Not infrequently, some of what she teaches me ends up in some character in a story. For instance, she taught me two things today.
- Men have more collagen and thicker skin than women, in general.
- Women donate more kidneys but receive fewer kidney donations. When you think about it, it kinda makes sense. If men are having kidney problems, they can’t donate them. So the next step would be to look for information to vet that.
We also act as memory augmentation for one another, covering the other’s weakness. She’s great with social memes, voices, faces, poetry, cooking and baking. I’m passable with math, science, history, pop culture, and technology. It works.
I think it’d work for most, regardless of gender or pronoun, sexual orientation, and maybe even political persuasion. Everyone should at least should not have the right to try taken away from them. Who knows what we all could learn?
Tuesday’s Wandering Thought
He saw a window sticker on a car’s back window. It originally said Southern Oregon University. Some letters were lost, rendering it as uthern Oregon University. Now he couldn’t stop wondering about uthern Oregon, wondering, where was it? What was it like?
Someday, he vowed, he would find uthern Oregon and the university. The journey might require some drugs.
Couldn’t Resist
Completely stolen from a Facebook page, Vince the Flag Guy, but I couldn’t resist spreading this far and wide.
Red Dream
Going across a dark, almost dystopian urban landscape, I came across Dad. He was hustling around, his normal mode, with that odd, splayed-leg walk of his. Seeing me, he said, “Here, come help me.” He was pointing and directing. “We need to paint this place. Get that brush and paint over there.” He pointed to a red brick wall.
At that point, I realized that most of the place was already painted red. “You’re painting everything red.”
“Yes,” he answered, taking up a roller and resuming.
“Why?”
“It needs to be red.”
I saw that besides the buildings being red, so were the pavement, grass, trees, and roads. Even the sky and clouds were red. “How did you do that?”
“Hurry,” he answered, “we need to get everything painted red.”
Although I didn’t understand and disagreed, I began painting. As I did, I found red rubies surrounding me. I picked them up with huge astonishment, admiring the cut gems, and called out to Dad, “Look what I found.”
“I know,” he replied without pausing his work. “Take what you want. They’re yours.”
Dream end.
Overheard
A woman was enjoying a latter with another woman another at a nearby table. I heard her say, “One time my son ended a text with TTYL, and all I could come up with for what it meant was ‘Ta Ta You Loser’.”
Yeah, cracked me up.
Wednesday’s Wandering Thought
We’re such individuals. Not just from one another but from what we were when we were younger.
I used to be aghast that someone didn’t like chocolate. Or ‘don’t care for sweets’. Dad is one of those.
I could understand why people didn’t like coffee, beer, or alcohol generally, between flavors and effects. Now I see, as I age, how my taste buds and preferences have morphed through my decades. I still enjoy chocolate, beer, coffee, etc., but things taste sweeter or saltier to me.
Life. Takes so long to learn and understand, and then things change.
Tuesday’s Wandering Thought
He was hot. She was, she said, “Freezing.”
This wasn’t new.
But her fingers were white and waxy, like bloodless white candles. Their appearance stunned him into silence. She said they ached.
He merely sweated. So it was not the same thing. For her, it was pain. For him, it was comfort.
DIY, Kind Of
Telephone charging. That’s what gave me my answer. Of course, I wouldn’t have been there if I’d not taken shortcuts. But I like shortcuts.
Our net connection went dark last Friday night. After rebooting, I figured, ah, something wrong with the local provider. When it was out the next morning, I reported it to see what they said. The tired sounding female on the other end said, “No one else is reporting any problem in your area.” She followed up with basic questions. What lights do you have? Are all the connections tight? After my answers, she said, “We’ll need to escalate.” Like, that was all she had. “You’re get a call between now and Monday morning.”
The cable modem was showing the ethernet was up and the power was on, but nothing being received or sent to the provider, even after reports. T’ain’t a flicker. I checked my notes. Cable modems normally last five years. This one was five years old. Time for a new one.
Basic research was conducted about what worked with the provider’s network and what didn’t, and if there would be anything to look for to match it with my router. A few reviews were read on the phone, then we went shopping. I bought a simple Arris SB6 series which wasn’t too pricy and was said to fit my network. We plugged it in and got lights for everything, so it was the cable modem, but couldn’t connect to the network. I knew from past experience it was because the provider had to activate it on their end.
Monday morning, I called it in and they brought it up. All was well. Until…
When I returned from my coffee writing session, my wife darkly informed me that our net is not fixed. “It keeps going out.”
I tracked that. Yes, it was going out every six to ten minutes, rebooting, then coming back online. Connections were checked. All was good. WTF?
I noodled it over for several hours. Plugged in new cables. No change. Did research. Nobody had anything else. But the cable connection didn’t make sense to me anyway. Looked like the modem was going off, then we were losing the connection. Then it rebooted. Could be an attack but doubtful.
Then it hit. Power. Microvolts and amps.
Like in the phone chargers and Fitbits.
We’ve learned that not all chargers work with the trackers and phones. Minute differences cause problems. That could be the case now with the cable modem. At least, I needed to check and eliminate it.
The cable modem’s power is embedded in a very sophisticated system that I set up thirteen years ago. Color coded and everything. Hard as hell to reach. So when I bought the new cable modem, I used the old power line and supply. Now, I dug out the proper line, disconnected it and plugged in the new one. Everything booted up properly. The cable modem stayed on and the connection remained solid.
I put everything back together. Lesson learned, again. Beware of shortcuts.
Michael Seidel, writer 