CityCakes located conveniently near the Vet
Ok- so I decided to try the podcast feature that WordPress has added in cooperation with anchor. My thought is that I will post a blog in the morning and in the evening or thereabouts, I will record my blog and add in anything interesting that came up in the discussion. If you have any thoughts or ideas of things that you want to here me talk about, please chime in.
Late morning Tuesday I went to work on something on my computer. When I opened my laptop I could not find the cursor…
I am not the most tech savvy person in the world. I pretty much know how to turn on a computer and find the internet, so things like lost cursors haunt me. I researched it for a bit, tried the old reboot method and nothing.
So I got on my ipad and started a chat with ASUS…
I was on with the tech for about an hour- they had me trying everything. Go into this drive and that window and blah blah blah. They kept saying “Did you try F9?” They kept asking me to install a mouse which I kept insisting that I DID NOT HAVE…
The tech appeared stymied.
At some point I got disconnected from tech chat…
I just started randomly trying things…
F6…
The key that I needed to hit was F6…
F6 and F9 are not the same…
I am grateful that I realize that sometimes there is a correct answer…
and I’m grateful that I got my cursor back…
FYI- you can now find me on spotify…
NYC had a lot of snow this month- 8th highest total ever for a February. Here’s what I read from January 27-February 24:
| Title | Author | How I heard about book | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| The House in the Cerulean Sea | T.J. Klune | I don’t know | 1 |
| The Thursday Murder Club | Richard Osman | I don’t know | 2 |
| Send For Me | Lauren Fox | Jenna (Today Show) | 3 |
| The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo | Taylor Jenkins Reid | Goodreads Newsletter | 4 |
| Hamnet | Maggie O’Farrell | IRL book club (college alumnae) | 5 |
| The Art of Stopping: How to be Still When You Have to Keep Going | David Kundtz | Shannon Ables The Simply Luxurious Life | 6 |
| The Four Winds | Kristin Hannah | Jenna (Today Show) | 7 |
| Tomorrow Will be Better | Betty Smith | one of my besties | 8 |
| The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance during the Blitz | Erik Larson | I don’t know | 9 |
| The Sanitorium | Sarah Pearse | Reese’s Book Club | 10 |
| Simple Organizing: 50 Ways to Clear Clutter | Melissa Michaels | email from Barnes & Noble | 11 |
| Good Neighbors | Sarah Langan | Barnes & Noble book club | 12 |
| The Tea Chest | Heidi Chiavaroli | IRL book club (tea society) | 13 |
| The Discomfort of Evening | Marieke Lucas Rijneveld | IRL book club (college alumnae) | 14 |
My daughter sprinted into the living room:
OMG! A and L made a tik tok that went viral
To answer the two questions that you may have:
Now to the story:
The Grandfather of A&L left the girls a text. In it he extolled the virtues of the Grandson of one of his friends from the country club. He told the girls where the guy worked and what he did, who the family was, and what he looked like. He told the twins that as the guy lived in NYC one, or both of them should text him.
With me so far?
The twins then decided to text this guy while filming it for a TikTok. The video went something like this:
Hey- do you know that your Grandfather is pimping you out?
There was a little more to their words but this was the gist of the video, and I believe the line that made people laugh and cringe at the same time, thus ensuring its viralness…
We can think about this on a variety of levels:
What do you think?
Would you be trying to get your Grandkids married off? Would you retaliate if someone tried to set you up?
Discuss:
I recently got new glasses-
When you pick up glasses from the optometrist, they always make you try them on to make sure they fit properly and that the lenses are where they are supposed to be. As I was testing them out, they had a magnifying mirror that I was supposed to look into.
Did you ever really look at your eyes and eye area close up?
I had bought a very inexpensive eye shadow to wear during COVID as I was not wearing make up every day. It seemed fine when I paid 2.99 for it…
Until I really really really looked at my eye area.
While I was supposed to be checking my glasses out to make sure I could, you know, see…
All I could concentrate on was the little glistening mica crystals that seemed to form right under my eye. It looked ridiculous zoomed in about 15x normal rate….I mean, was this how I was walking around the past nine months?
AHHHHH…
My undereye area looked like it had been caught in a glittery dust storm…my eye shadow managed to be everywhere but my eye lid and I hadn’t noticed…
While I realized that my eye shadow game was a clear disaster, I realized something else.
My mascara- amazing. Caught almost every lash.
But the crowning jewel was my eye liner. It was literally and figuratively on point. I mean, the line I drew across my lashline was perfect. Both eyes looked exactly the same liner wise… I didn’t know that eye liner perfection existed…
It was so good to figure out my make up game. I mean is there anything more important than perfecting eye liner?
Oh, BTW…
The glasses are fine too
I know the thought of getting sick has overcome up this past year…but do you keep supplies in your house just in case?
Last March, I knew we had a thermometer. I didn’t know it didn’t work anymore because none of us had been sick with fever in forever. We are a relatively healthy family, which is great, but can catch you unaware. But it made me think that maybe, just maybe, one should have some preparations in the house just in case you get sick.
What are the kinds of things that you should keep? I keep the following on hand (and I check the expiration dates regularly)
I figure I’ve covered both ends with this list, but if others have things to add I’ll gladly listen.
But that’s the medicine front: what other things do you keep on hand if you get sick? Do you have a secret stash for “just in case”?
After COVID struck I began to think about what I would like to have in the house if I were to become unwell, and I came up with this list:
Now it’s your turn: what are the things that you do/should keep in your house in the event that you got sick? Are there any special things that make you feel better? What are your not so secret secrets to making yourself feel a little bit better?
I hate the term “crisp white”.
Hate it.
As I’ve read a lot of books lately, I notice this phrase becoming more and more popular. It’s usually used to describe bed linens or shirts- It means starched or pressed to perfection. It means a true white: no shades of tan or grey or blue: just pale, bleached cotton.
When you are trying to describe something, it helps having a word or phrase that elicits all sorts of thoughts when you read them. Crisp white is one of those words: it can signal perfection, or a level of order. It can describe contrast. It’s a pretty nifty trick to be able to use a word like crisp to precede a very bland color, and be able to tell a story.
I should applaud phraseology like this: however I shun it.
I just don’t ever want to read the words “crisp white” ever again.
Do you think they could do trigger warnings for words?
Because these words give me anxiety…
Why do some words or phrases just drive us crazy?
Is it overuse? Or is it something else?
Do you have any words or phrases that make you go “ewwww”?
Which words or phrases would you like to get rid of?
Discuss
The other day Claudette asked “what is the most interesting thing about you”. As I am the least interesting person in the world, I had to really think about this…
And think…
And think…
Finally, I realized that I do have the ability to write a post about just about anything. I wrote three- 3- three posts inspired by my stove… I’m not saying they’re Pulitzer worthy or anything…but I can be inspired by just about anything
Is this a blessing or a curse…I don’t know…
However:
I am grateful that I am usually able to make something out of nothing and am able to fairly effortlessly put words onto the page every morning
I like a good debate. Anyone who has ever read my blog knows that I can think about, and discuss virtually anything. Call it my superpower. Call it a blessing and a curse. Whatever. I am always available to talk about how there is no right answer to anything: how there can be a whole bunch of possible answers to any question, even about trivial things like “are tv shows mean?”. How the world is 95% grey…
Today, all of you out there get to see me contradict myself. You are about to see me admit that some things do have a right and wrong answer. Here’s where you get to say that I’m a hypocrite, that I don’t know anything, whatever you want to say to me to tell me that I am/was wrong…
Ready? I know some of you are chomping at the bit to call me some names…
Recently, the Oregon DOE (department of education) sent out an email discussing teacher training re: math. This is standard. Teachers are constantly receiving additional instruction on how to best reach their students. The suggested course of study was this website:
For the purposes of this particular post, I will be focusing on one section of this guide. “The focus is on getting the right answer.”
“The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so. Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
2+2=79:
Discuss…
I’m waiting… I mean, I can give more examples to discuss….
Now, theoretically, I know that we can say that two plus two does not equal four. I get that. Theoretically….
But practically speaking…
Are there certain constructs of mathematics that clearly have “right” and “wrong” answers?
If I hand someone $5 in a single bill for an item that is $4.90, is there discussion as to whether I get ten cents back? Should I argue that I should get back a dollar because the item I’m buying is overpriced? Should the cashier tell me that I don’t get back any money, or that I actually owe them more?
Do you want your accountant to miscalculate how much money you owe, or are owed? Or would you rather have a discussion, also known as an audit?
If you are flying in a plane, or sitting in your house, do you want the people that have worked on these things to have done the math correctly?
After a roof collapses on you due to faulting measurement, do you want to have a conversation about whether or not the math was correct?
Do you want to take a vaccine that hasn’t been measured out to be the proper dosage? Do you negotiate with the nurse as to how much should be in the vial?
Do we need to sometimes accept that there are indeed things that have right and wrong answers?
Is it fair to teach children that “right” answers don’t exist?
Let’s extrapolate. You believe in climate change. You are talking to someone that does not. You are conversing about this because there are no right answers- only theory. When you say to them “But it’s science…” and they respond “There are no right answers…” what do you think about that person?
How about masks. The idea of whether or not masks are necessary (as the CDC now says that we should be wearing two masks…) has been a hotly debated topic for the past year. Do you think there is a right or wrong answer to this question? Theoretically as well as practically.
So….
What do you think about telling kids that there are no right and wrong answers when it comes to math?
Do you believe that there are right and wrong answers to things, or is everything open to discussion?
Discuss:
Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50 