INTERNET FUN AND GAMES

July 23, 2008
INTERNET FUN AND GAMES


Face it, the home computer/ethernet tech world is too complicated for us. A typewriter, file cabinet, plain old push button phone (remember those?) gives one far less headaches. So do paper, envelopes and stamps - in my book.

I’ve been having a great deal of difficulty getting on the internet lately and I’ve been on the phone a LOT with Bombay. First it was with the Dell people, now with the Windstream folk. One great thing about the latter is that they speak English VERY WELL. Unlike the former. And the Streamers really listen to you. Unlike the Dellies.

So I can’t get connected and I call the Streamers. I already know how to do a diagnostic test on their modem (the BLACK BOX). You don’t need an internet connection to do so. As long as you can bring up the browser window you can put in their ISP address. It takes you to their - I don’t know what it’s called...router page? It has a System Summary. There are two main Connection Summaries. They should be green. RED mean BAD. So if you see BADNESS you click on Tools and then Reboot. And you have to put in the code and then your modem lights up like a Christmas Tree with pretty flashing lights. You are re-setting the modem to factory defaults. (This is known as a soft re-set.) Why they would become un-set is not a question I’ve asked. (Of course there’s also a hard reset with a sophisticated pointed implement [pen tip] poked into the little hole in the rear. No comments please.)

After you’ve done that you click on Diagnostics and put in the appropriate Connection to Test parameters and it gives you the results. There’s the Connections in the Home; Connections at the Carrier; Internet Service Provider; and Internet Connectivity. Within those sections are a minimum of two and a maximum of four results. You want to see them PASS in pretty green. You don’t want to see the red (BAD) FAIL.

Since I would rather NOT have to talk to Bombay on a regular basis, I have written all these instructions down so I can do them myself. But it doesn’t really matter. There’s always something new wrong, or something new to learn to do.

So last week I can’t get connected and I run the tests and it says FAIL and I call. And it turns out that my Firewall (Zone Alarm) was suddenly blocking the internet . Why? Because they put in a new update, but the rest of the tech world hadn’t been informed and the update was not compatible with something else - Microsoft? I think. I’m told that a patch will be due out shortly. Swell. Meanwhile I’ve now learned if my service is down to first shut down my firewall, then my virus sweep and finally my spy protection. Which of course leaves me TOTALLY VULNERABLE TO ALL THE BAD PEOPLE OUT THERE.

That problem eventually gets solved. I think. Then once again I can’t get on the Net. I’m getting to know these guys real well by now. They use fake American names because they think we’re all too stupid to be able to understand, let alone pronounce their real names. I’ve talked to Kevin and George and Thomas. Whose real names were probably something like Kailash and Gobardhan and Jhareshwar. (The reason I know they’re made up names is because I asked and actually got an honest answer). Now before I call I first disengage all protective programs. If that doesn’t work I do a diagnostic test. One guy actually told me I knew more than he did! Fortunately most of them seem to believe and trust me when I say I’ve already done the test and give them the results. Perhaps they have notes on my file that say ATD (meaning this one Ain’t Too Dumb)

Well then I was told to go to Start and select Run and type in “cmd” and then ping Google. (I guess if you ping a known site and IT comes up, things should be working fine.) If this all makes absolutely no sense to you - WHY SHOULD IT? That’s my point. Why do we have to know all this STUFF??? It’s too complicated!

BUT, I now know it. And so I try to troubleshoot my own internet connection. Yeah. Everything starts to work fine again. Then it’s down. I run the test. FAIL. I call Bombay. I get a PASS. Great. Then it’s down again. Then it up. I feel like a boxer in a ring and I’m getting trounced. I begin to think I’m losing my mind. What is happening here? When I CAN get on it’s like molasses. So they tell me to do a speed check. Great. I learn a new bit. Got my very own internet Radar Gun, oh boy! Radar Gun says the speed is great. REALLY????? I put in one trouble ticket, then when they fix it, they close the ticket, only to have me open another one.

Meanwhile this is costing me HOURS AND HOURS of my time. And for what? So I can get some sappy “You’re my friend for life and if you don’t pass this on to 150 people in the next 45 minutes you’ll DIE!” forward???!!!! Or those reeeeeeaaallly cute Youtube rocking the puppy to sleep videos. AAAAaaaargh!

Finally we get a call from a local God bless America Southern drawling Streamer. He says “they’ve” been having some kind of trouble between Charlotte and Arkansas. He wishes he could get his hands on it to fix it, but it ain’t in his territory. But he THINKS it’s fixed now.

And you wonder why I’m afraid to leave my computer illiterate husband home alone with the computer when I go on a trip? He can’t even grasp the concept of a document being on the screen and still inside the computer at the same time, let alone what software vs hardware means. The fact that he can search for houses for sale on the Internet and compose and send a missives is a miracle.

These machines are miracles. When they work. But when they don’t.......

A Small Miracle & a New Friend

A couple of nights ago I was in my office and I heard a squawking. How odd, I thought. What creature would be squawking at 11 pm?

I opened the door to find Harlie, our black and white killer, under my office window and I figured I'd then find the squawker, which I assumed was a mouse. Wrong. It was a bird. Oh swell. Don't know what kind. Not a baby, I think, though small, maybe a Sparrow? Wren? But it had no tail feathers at all. Which could mean that they were all plucked off by the Killer. (What is it with me and birds this year? Is there a Chinese Year of the Bird?)

It was standing upright when I picked it up. It got out of my hand, briefly, Harlie went after it, I grabbed it again and brought it inside to examine. It lay in the cupped palm of my hand on it's back. It's chest was heaving and there was what looked like a pretty good hole right in the middle of it. Swell. Just swell. If you've ever had the misfortune to watch a cat with it's prey, they usually give it one nice chomp. Not enough to kill it outright, just enough to slow it down so that it can be "played with." God. Well, I thought, I'll just sit here with it, and hold it tenderly 'til it breathes it's last. I really didn't think its "last" would take too long. The breathing got shallower and shallower, the chest no longer heaving in spasming gulps of air. I've held wee creatures in my hand that were dying before. If you own cats, it's bound to happen. And always it's heart wrenching. The little eyes were closed, it's little feet motionless. But it continued to breathe.



Sometimes, when I'm emotionally strong enough, and I think the animal is going to experience a long, slow, painful death, I will put it out of it's misery myself. Don't ask the various means I've used, they're all hideous but mercifully quick. But I haven't been too chipper of late and was not up to that task on this night. Rand suggested putting the creature in Pam's head, and I thought what better place to put it then in the little nest that had recently been vacated by a family of baby birds (see blog below). I considered taking a picture of it when it was in my palm, but it was all too depressing and I considered it rather dishonorable to do such a thing to the poor creature. That much of a ghoul I am not.

I got the step ladder out and climbed up to peer inside Pam's head, and the nest had a HUGE spider web in it. One of those really messy funnel webs made by one of those really LARGE funnel spiders? - wolf spiders I think they are. Husband handed me a stick and I gathered up the web like a wand of cotton candy and then gently laid the bird in the nest. It opened it's eyes and looked at me. Did it understand I was trying to be kind?

I prayed for the little creature but didn't hold out much hope. Had visions of climbing the ladder the next morning and finding it all limp necked, probably with some hideous eight-legged monster gnawing on the hole in it's middle. Very depressed I went to bed.

The next morning came and I couldn't face the consequences, because the images I had conjured in my brain were just to awful to confront first thing. So I asked Rand to look at the remains. He stepped up on the ladder and looked inside the head. Said he couldn't see it very well, to please get him the flashlight. I did so. He said he still couldn't see it. WHAT?!!! I practically thew him off the ladder and bound up there. Peered in and... NOTHING. Blessedly NOTHING was there! Just the empty nest. I cannot tell you how grateful I was. How it could have survived the night, I don't know. It was surely a little miracle.

Now my only fear is that I'll find it somewhere nearby on the ground under a bush. That maybe it had managed to fly just a bit but landed under my Mums or something. And maybe Harlie will catch it again. But then maybe God wanted this little fellow to live for a while longer yet.

One must keep the faith, eh?

******************************************************************

On another note: another visitor stopped by the other day.

More Gifts

July 1, 2008 More Gifts


The birds were squawking outside the front porch. Why? Well, the cats were around. Or one cat in particular - our black and white, named Harlie (short for Harlequin.)
She’s a killer. Skinny as a rail - she looks half starved (though gets as much to eat as she wishes), and is faster than a speeding bullet. Has brought down many a bird, and THAT takes skill.

Something about this particular bird squawking caught my attention. It seemed more urgent than normal. Very insistent. Then my mind latched onto a happy possibility. A nest full of babies in my sister’s head.

This needs a brief explanation. My half sister, Pam, was a sculptress. Not as a professional, she didn’t try to make a living at it, though I think she could have. But she was married to an artist and just enjoyed drawing and sculpting. Constantly took classes in both. (We shared the same father, but she was 40 years? older than I. Another story - another time.) Anyway, she did a sculpture of herself which had hung on a tree outside their kitchen for many a year. And when she passed away, I asked to have it and was granted the privilege. It currently sits against our front porch wall. The top of the head is hollowed out. Last year there was a nest in it and so I was hoping that that might be the case again this year. (I had cleaned it all out at the end of last season.)


So I get the step ladder and climb up and look inside the top of the head. And sure enough there are four wee baby birds. They looked like they had just hatched. Have never seen babies this small.

I got to watch the growth process for two weeks before leaving on a trip North. Harlie practically lay up-side-down under the head with her mouth open just waiting for that first flight and the potential of a fluttering failure.

I figured they’d be gone by the time I got back. And they were. But these are the shots I managed to capture beforehand.

New Chiropractor

July 21, 2008

I’ve never been Rolfed. But I understand it’s quite unpleasant. Something about digging deeply into tissue. Something Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, would dole out as a pleasant past time treat. “You Vill Tell Me Ewvreting I vant to know!”

No, that never appealed to my idea of alleviating pain. But currently I’m being Grastonated. Not merely satisfied with using one’s hands to do a deep massage, some skier who'd hurt himself, named David Graston, came up with state of the art stainless steel torture devices. The object is to break down scar tissue - which is bad for you because it inhibits movement and causes pain. But nothing like the pain of going through this process. Imaging someone taking the backside of a strong steel hunting knife - the EDGE, not the flat part - and rubbing it fast and as hard as they can at a 45 degree angle over various portions of your body. Which are already sore, because that's why you're going to get treated, right? Sound like fun to YOU?

The chiropractor, a sweetheart of a guy named Daniel Becker (828) 817-5524 (if you live in NC), told me that the pain level should be kept at 7 or under. Now I can take a lot of pain. We women have much higher pain thresholds then you men (generally speaking). After all, you faint when a needle goes in your arm. We open our pelvises and human beings pop out. But pain like this I have never experienced. Then again, I’ve never given birth, but I think I might prefer it.

He told me I might bruise from his work. That when tissue has been in a trauma state for a long while, capillaries pool around it. (I also have heard blood tend to pool around certain areas of a dead body - but what of that.) And when you press on this scar tissue those pooled capillaries tend to come to the surface. Well, yeaaaaah. If you press hard enough on your skin tissue, it’s gonna bruise. I looked like I should go to the battered woman shelter down the block when I got out of there. Thank goodness he wasn’t working on my face. I can imagine attempting to audition looking like my husband clobbered me with a baseball bat.

Buy hey, this guy was recommended (as was this technique) by two people I know. I’d call them “friends,” but now I’m beginning to question that. And they were helped by him. So it must work. Right?

He wants to see me two days later. TWO DAYS LATER? Oooookay. I am so sore when I walk into his office that I tell him he is not laying hands on those bruised areas. Oh he has no intention of doing that. Today he’s going to do manipulations. Ah. Good. I’ve had that done before. Doesn’t hurt at all. YES IT DOES. I’m not sure what he did to my neck, but it felt fine before I went in. Maybe after the Ibuprofen kicks in I’ll be able to sleep tonight. He took the shoulder that was bothering me (with the bruises now all over it) and manipulated my arm in ways that only a contortionist should know.
Let’s see if we can slowly rip it out of it’s socket! Ilsa, She Wolf, has NOTHING on this guy. This, apparently is known as Active Release.

He finally finishes and I’m not sure where my body went. I try to grin. It’s a bit lopsided. “Well, I guess you’ll want to see me again next week,” I say. “Friday,” he replies. “THIS FRIDAY???” “Yes.” Shouldn’t there be some healing time here? The bruises probably won’t even be gone by then. “It’s better to do it all up front. Otherwise it’s maintenance, and this is not maintenance.” He’s a sadist. Right? Gotta be. I must be mad, but I say okay. Well, this is as it should be. He’s the sadist, and I’m the masochist. Can’t have one without the other.

I ask him if I can play tennis after, assuming that I can’t. I mean every other chiropractor that has ever worked on me has told me to take it easy for the rest of the day. Not Herr Mengele. “Yes, go, it’s good to keep working muscles and tendons.” I almost cried.

Am SO looking forward to my next visit. What new and wonderful torture will he have in store? Read it all in the next chapter!

Chapter II

As you might imagine I was not particularly looking forward to my third visit. What new torture was going to be perpetrated by Dr. Mengele this day? I figured there wasn’t much left that could be considered new. WRONG!

He was running a bit behind by a fellow masochist and so told me to lie on what I call the Tsunami. Looks like one of those typical chiropractic manipulation beds where they do their adjustments. (Actually called an Intersegmental Traction Table



He told me to lie on my back and then kindly put a pillow under my head. Most people who put a pillow under your head do so in attempt to make you feel better. Not Dr. Mengele. Showed me where the adjustment dial was, which in order to reach I had to bend my arm out of it’s socket. “This will open the joints of your spine,” said he gleefully. Oh? Uh huh! Can’t wait! “Each time you press this switch up, it will increase the wave. (not his term). If you want to decrease it (why on earth WOULD you I could hear him thinking) press the switch down. If you start to hear a grinding noise you know it’s at it’s upper limit.” Or I am, I thought. And he’s gone.

OK. Imagine a ball, the size of a big man’s fist, rolling under your spine from your lower back to your neck. A hard ball. A very HARD ball. And each time you press the up button the ball gets bigger and thrusts your spine in more of a convex wave. I began to feel like I was on my back in a small dingy in a Force 7 Gale with a cannon ball running under my back. I thought, well, gee, then if this opens my spine I guess he won’t need to do any more adjustments. WRONG.

At this point I don’t remember the order to the torture. But I still got to kneel on the “beheading chair” in the guillotine position. That’s the only way to describe it. It might be considered a praying position but your butt’s sticking out too much for that. At least I don’t tend to pray with my butt sticking out, although your back is kept in a flat position. At least I think it was flat, before he mashed it into submission.

I kept trying to relax, but after my previous visit my neck was none too happy and an actor’s sense memory is very keen. So I was awaiting the disintegration of every vertabra in my back and that, yeah, kinda tensed me up. Snap Crackle Pop rice crispies!

I made the mistake of telling him my elbow was hurting. Stupid. I now have a new bruise going the entire length of the underside of my arm (that’s the soft part) to my elbow. I think that occurred AFTER he tried to manipulate my ulnar by bending my elbow BACKWARD. Great if one were double jointed. Perhaps now I shall be?



I didn’t really think he’d re-work any of the areas he’d already Grastonated because they were still bruised. HA. WRONG. The thing that really puzzles me is that I LET him???!!!!! Obviously I have a deep need for abuse somewhere in my psyche. I must feel guilty about having a happy childhood.

So now I’m sitting on the “bednch” (well it’s not really a bed, seems more like a bench don’t it) and he’s digging into my right ankle and it’s HURTING LIKE HELL. And I’m trying to distract myself. So I start singing. LOUDLY. I think he was rather surprised. His eyes looked rather bright. Was that surprise or glee? I’m sure mine were too. Bright with pain.

But there was more fun to come. He puts me on a wobble board. No, not one of those manual disks with a ball underneath that YOU can control. Are you kidding. That’s child’s play to this guy. No, this is an electronic cutie known as the I Joy Board . I’m telling you, all these devices were thought up by people who are into whips, chains and blindfolds. At least they had the decency not to name it the I Enjoy Board.

He asks me if I have a sense of balance. Stupidly I say yes. (I think I’m just beginning to learn that you want to lie to this guy whenever possible.) How can I even begin to describe this machine. Thank God I did have a sense of balance, is all I can say, else I’d be on my ass on the floor and he’d be manipulating THAT next. It’s your basic two foot long teeter totter that sits eight inches off the floor. You know, you put your feet hip distant apart and lean right and left and.... Only in this case you don’t do anything. Except hang on for dear life. He hands me the remote (not dissimilar to a car lock remote) and says, “This button controls the wobble, and this one is the emergency shut of. Make sure you point it down toward the ground if you want to shut it off.” Oh. Ok.

Yowza and we’re OFF! Holy Cow. Give me a hula hoop and I wouldn’t have had any trouble keeping it up on my hips. I mean I’m being WOBBLED. Well, big deal, you might say. Yeah, well, Dr. Mengele has only just begun. WHILE I’m being wobbled, he’s got his happy stainless steel hunting knife and he’s rubbing it as hard as he can on my ankle - I think it was. At this point all I remember is pain. AND then he asks me to do slow squats DURING the process. “If I want.” IF I WANT???? I’m not kidding here. Honest to God. I wonder if he’s as demanding on the octagenerians? I don’t even what to imagine what he does to folks thirty years of age and younger.

Well of course, being the patsy masochist I am, I do nice slow squats while he's scraping on my wobbling ankle tissue with all his might. I’m not sure I actually fully grasp the concept here, but I think it has to do with the wobble board and the squats making your muscles work in certain ways that he can only torture with his device that couldn’t be reached else.

Then he proceeded to work on certain of the areas that he’d previously worked on that were already bruised. I could easily now walk into the local battered women’s shelter and have my husband arrested should I so desire.

I hope I don’t have an audition soon. Because I’d have to wear pants and a long sleeved shirt. Really.

I asked him, (because he’d made the comment when I’d told him I’d had physical therapy elsewhere and they’d used sonar on me and it had hurt like Hell....actually burned, and he'd said if it were done properly it shouldn’t hurt) I asked what I thought was a very logical question given his previous response: "Why should one turn black and blue and suffer enormously during your technique then? Hmmm?

That was when he handed me the butcher’s knife and said, “Here, feel for yourself. The instrument will tell you. Scrape along here.” And he placed it against the lower part of my wrist. And I scraped. Then he moved it up eight inches to my forearm and said, “Now do it here.” And I did. “Do you feel the grittiness?” Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I did. And he said, and proved it by rubbing against the lower part, “if the tissue is well, it will not bruise. It is only when there’s scarring underneath that you’ll find the capillaries coming up.”

I asked him if HE knew what this all felt like. He said indeed he did, because when they were learning and practicing the technique they did it on each other. He was not looking forward to the arm pit area. I didn’t want to go there so I didn’t inquire about that. I just pray I don’t have any symptoms that lead me to that area.

The bottom line for all of this crazy agony is....it seems to really work. I may only feel this way at present because the pain of the techniques he’s using oer’pass the pain of my original complaints. Sort of like if you have an ache and you hit yourself in the head with a hammer you no longer feel the original ache. But I don’t think that’s the case. I may have discomfort because of the bruising but the interior parts of my body that were bothering me actually feel better.

Time will tell. And you can be sure I’ll relate it. I expect to end up with the ability to be able to do this. Well, at least pain free. Which one wonders if these contortionists are, eh?

Making a Hanging Decorative Cage in 42 Hard Steps

............
Do not attempt this if you are Bi-Polar, suffer from ADHD, AADD, have quit smoking or drinking recently or are contemplating a divorce.

Tools:

Tape measure
Marking pen
Jig Saw
Extension cord
Drill
Small nails
Hammer
22 small sticks
Patience.

1. Go to the woods and find eight small sticks as straight and equal in 2" circumference as you can.
2 Get a marking pen
3. Get a jig saw.
4. Get a tape measure.
5. Measure the sticks 6" long each
6. Cut them.
7. Go back to the woods to get more sticks because you didn’t put them in a vice while cutting them but simply held them in your left hand off the end of the front porch steps which made them very wobbly and uneven.
8. Cut them again.
9. Starting at one end of the sticks, with the marking pen mark four equidistant points along the length of one side. Don’t put the mark too close to the end or you will split the wood when putting in the nails.
10. Get the hammer
11. Attempt to start a small nail through each mark. When that doesn’t work...
12. Get the extension cord and the electric drill.
13. Remove the bent nails from the pieces of wood
14. Drill small holes through each mark
15. Hammer the nails through so that just a little bit of their tips are showing.
16. Go back to the woods and get 12 longer sticks (same 2" circumference)
17. Cut these to a 12" length
18. Mark the center point of each end
19. With the smaller stick as a base, held so that the nail points are facing up, hammer one long stick at a time onto each nail point. When the longer sticks fall off...
20. Go back and hammer the nails further through the base unit
21. Now try again to hammer the long sticks onto each nail point. Once accomplished,
you should have 4 short pieces with 12 long pieces sticking straight up from them
22. Because you forgot to drill a hole in the center of each end of the smaller sticks, do so now. When the longer sticks fall off,
23. Pound the longer sticks back onto their nail posts
24. Because you forgot to drill a hole through the sides of four of the smaller sticks perpendicular to the hole that holds the longer stick, but rather drilled into the end of all of them, go back to the woods and get four new pieces.
25. Follow steps 2-7
26. Follow Steps 10 & 15
27. Drill a hole perpendicular to the ones at the ends of four of the smaller sticks. Make sure they won’t interfere with a nail going through the other hole.
28. Follow Step 16
29. Follow Step 20
30. Now you are going to make two squares with the eight small pieces, hammering nails through the perpendicular holes.
31. Place the top square onto the vertical bars of the base unit and hammer the nails through the pre-made holes. When it won’t lie flush..
32. Go back to the woods and get another piece of wood to replace the one that is slightly warped.
33. Follow steps 2-7.
34. Follow steps 10, 15 &
35. Go to the medicine chest and gets some drugs to calm yourself down

Later:

You’ve finally completed the bottom part of the cage. Now it’s time to work on the top.

36. Get a pruner
37. Go to the woods and find some vines - watching out for the poison ivy and snakes. Bring back a healthy handful. (You’ve learned by now that you can never have too much of what you need from the woods.)
38. Cut two vines to about an 11" length
39. Wrap one vine around one corner of the top then draw it across the diagonal to the other corner and tie it allowing a good deal of slack. Do the same with the other vine.
40. Go back to the woods and cut another vine because you still didn’t have enough.
41. Make a small 2" loop around the top of the criss-crossed four corner vines.
42. As an added artistic touch, trail some of the left over vine around the cage

Voila!

And because you’re not too stupid - get a thin piece of green wire and wrap it around the vines. Because if the vines holding the cage should break, the 5,000 man hours you’ve spent trying to create the damn thing would all be for nought and then you’d have to hang yourself with the vines.

You might wonder why I took it upon myself to attempt such a task. Well because I had a decorative cage for years that I’d found at a tag sale or thrift shop (don’t remember which). But it eventually rotted and I thought, “Well, I can make one of those! Looks real easy! Just a bunch of sticks from the woods.” HA!

Live and learn I say.

Acting and Computers

Now here’s a typical actor story. Or perhaps it is only typical for us.

Around 2 pm the other day I get an e-mail for Rand from one of our agents (we have one in each of three states) saying he has an audition for the series Army Wives in Atlanta.

"HEY FOLKS,
AUDITIONS ARE THIS AFTERNOON AND TOMORROW MORNING ONLY! THE SOONER YOUR AUDITION GETS TO THE CASTING DIRECTOR THE BETTER. THIS EPISODE BEGINS SHOOTING NEXT WEDNESDAY 5/21/08 AND GOES THRU FRIDAY 5/30/008. PLEASE CALL ASAP FOR AN AUDITION TIME. PLEASE LET US KNOW BY REPLYING TO THIS EMAIL IF YOU ARE NOT GOING TO AUDITION FOR ANY REASON.

THANKS,
ALI (the name has been changed to protect the innocent)

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO LIVE OUT OF TOWN PLEASE CALL USE (sic) TO DISCUSS HOW TO GET YOUR AUDITIONS TO US."

He has asked them time and time again NOT to send audition notices via e-mail but to call. And to ensure such, he never gave them his e-mail address. That’s why they sent it to MY e-mail address, so I get to deal with it. We do not spend all day at our computers. We have a life. And sometimes, golly gee, the computer or the internet is down for a period of time and you can’t access your e-mail, so we feel it’s important to call your client. Especially when time is of the essence.

Why they insist on doing business this way and not picking up the telephone is....well, it’s apparently the way they do business here in the South. Or, to give the South a break, let us say - smaller markets. Never did we experience this with our NY agents when we lived there. Nor did they send out mass mailings saying HEY FOLKS. Nor did our NY agents tell us to remember to bring a picture and resume to the audition, “dress the part,” and try to memorize our lines. If you’re a professional, you know that - you don’t need a nanny. But I guess the FOLKS down here need nannying and live attached to their computers. The level of professionalism here is - well it’s...just a step above community theatre. (And I mean no offense to the community theatre world when I say that, but professionals know what I mean.) It’s a whole ‘nother world. The majority of the "talent" down is is non-union.

So, where was I? Oh yes. “AUDITIONS ARE THIS AFTERNOON” - well that lets US out. It’s 2:00 and it’s a three hour drive to Atlanta. But then there’s also...”TOMORROW MORNING ONLY!” Well of course he had a 10 am doctor’s appointment in Spartanburg. “FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO LIVE OUT OF TOWN PLEASE CALL USE TO DISCUSS HOW TO GET YOUR AUDITIONS TO US.”




That’s when the trouble began. We call. Normally in situations such as this you can put yourself on tape at home and then send it to the casting director. Neither of us, nor no one of our acquaintance, has EVER gotten a job this way, but hey, we’re actors, we ever live in hope and...ya never know!

OK. So we’re told that the way to GET YOUR AUDITIONS TO US is to send it through the computer. Oh? And how, exactly, does one do THAT pray tell. We’re not in our teens, nor are we Geeks. My husband is more or less computer illiterate, although he DOES know how to work in WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. I am literate - to an extent. I more or less at least understand the language of today’s technology. And I can send my computer back in time by doing a reset and know how to troubleshoot my high speed internet connection. But fire wires are new to me.



I’m told that it’s very easy. But apparently I need QuickTime Pro in order to make it all work. So I purchase QuickTime Pro over the internet for thirty bucks. Download that, go to plug in my fire wire (which is still in it’s package from when I bought my digital movie camera last year, which the sales rep assured me I’d need for $25) and realize I have no fire wire port on my computer.

Time is rapidly running out here for the submission of this audition. Rand says NUTS to it and decides he wants me to put him on tape anyway and he’ll just mail the thing in to the casting director directly. So I tape him and it looks good. We then call our agent and say we’re sending it directly to the casting office ourselves and to please let them know. We’re told they will do so. They encourage me to get a fire wire port. I tell them I will.

CUT TO: several days later I’m on the phone with Bombay. And even though I was told at Office Depot that my computer did NOT have the capacity for an external fire wire port, I am assured by Dell that that is not the case and so I purchase what I assume will be a device that will enable me to use my fire wire. For $47.97.

It arrives a few hours before I am leaving for a ten day trip to Florida. Swell. I take a quick look at it and come to the conclusion that it is NOT what I was told it would be, and will NOT enable fire wire connection. And I do not at this moment have 45 minutes of extra time to talk to Bombay again to see about getting my money back.

CUT TO: I return from Florida and look at the Dell return policy. It says I have 21 days to return it. So I know I don’t have to rush. I received it May 23, so I’ve got until June 13th. I call customer service in Bombay on the 6th of June. They say their system is down and to call back in two hours. I then decide to call their tech dept. to make sure that I am indeed correct and was sent the wrong thing. Yes, it’s true. They informed me that they had misinformed me. The only way to get a fire wire connection on my three year young computer is to have my internal modem removed and to put in a fire wire card (or whatever the heck it’s called). And of course I could do this by myself...my friends in Bombay are quite happy to help walk me through the process. But first I would need to hire a translator.

By this point I really didn’t want to talk to Bombay again, so I had some Tandoori chicken for dindin and went to sleep.

NEXT DAY: I call customer service which is back up and running. I’m told that my 21 days elapsed YESTERDAY. That the period is based upon the day the item was shipped, not from the day of receipt. It doesn’t matter that I received it the day I went away to Florida and wasn’t here to discover that it was the WRONG hardware piece. I pointed out to them that I did attempt to call them yesterday. “Yes, but you see there is no record of your call.” I KNOW THERE’S NO RECORD OF MY CALL, BECAUSE YOUR COMPUTERS WERE DOWN! “I’m sorry but that’s the policy.” “OH. SO YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT BECAUSE YOU GAVE ME MISINFORMATION TO BEGIN WITH AND SHIPPED THE WRONG ITEM, AND BECAUSE YOUR COMPUTERS WERE DOWN, I'M GOING TO LOSE MY FIFTY BUCKS??!!!! I did make a call to the tech department about it yesterday, PERHAPS THEY HAVE A RECORD OF MY CALL!.” “I will speak to my supervisor, just one moment please.”

I’ve given Dell about $6,000 over the years. And they’re about to lose me as a customer.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting. My supervisor says they will make an exception this one time....” And I feel happy now. Why do we allow our lives to be run by machines and foreigners.....

They sent me a UPS label so I could return it for free. Only - not really, because they deducted the original shipping fee from my rebate.

So for a five dollar fee I got to talk to strangers in a strange land, learn that my computer does not have fire wire capacity and thus I am not able to send auditions to my agents via computer.

Which means, I suppose, I will soon have to buy a new computer with VISTA (an operating system with which I am unfamiliar and have not heard good things about) and transfer all of my files to IT.

Life was a lot simpler and more pleasant in the old days. And my office was a lot neater because computers take much more time than good old file cabinets and now I must deal with both.

Foundling

Every year the Blue Ridge B-B-Q festival parks itself in Harmon field in Tryon for a weekend. We went the first year we were here. $10 to park, $10 to get in the park and for what? Bad music, high priced trinket hawkers, kiddie rides and mediocre BBQ. Sorry, folks, just our opinion. But they did have a fairly nice fireworks display. Of course we were in the shuttle that takes you back to the parking lot and it was raining when we saw it - but it was better than anything else we had seen there that evening.

CUT to dinner two nights ago. I hear the familiar sound of booming outside our windows at 10 pm. Ah, must be the festival fireworks. I made a mental note and determined to go park at the post office nearby to watch the next night.

And indeed, we did do that last night. But as the "works" were slow to start, we decided to walk down the road a bit to get closer to the field for a better view. Ended up in 7th Day Advent church parking lot. Rand began walking around the left side of the church, but something caught my eye on the right side. I suspected what it was and when I got close enough my suspicion was confirmed.

There, hopping about, was a goodly sized baby bird that obviously hadn't mustered it's flying abilities yet. I heard mama somewhere emitting a chirp or two. I went over and picked it up. Just as I did the fireworks display began. Poor thing. I had it gently enclosed between my two cupped palms for the entire display with the loud pops and bangs and booms and bright flashing lights. And I clucked at it and whispered to it, ssshhh ssshhhh, ssshhhh, it's all right. And it's little heart was beating about it's breast and it was trying to get free from my safe hand held hollow. But eventually it calmed down.

When it was all over I was able to hear mama chirp once again. I tried to put him in the crook of a tree from which I had seen her fly (I'm assuming it was mama for birds don't usually talk at night), but he just flopped out of it. And so I let him be. With three cats at home, taking him there seemed a foolish idea. And we watched him hop hop hop off.

I stopped by that parking lot on the way back from church this morning and happily (in one sense) did not see him. I hope he made it.

(Baby Blackbird photo submitted by Jim McGee)

Biker Trash

I have an uncle, Michael, only a few years older than myself. He and his wife, Jeannie, are bikers. Not as active as they used to be, due to bad backs, etc., but still.... One of the places they sometimes hang out is the Cheyenne Saloon in Palatka (their home town). Ah, the tales I've heard...

I've long longed to get on the back of a bike with my uncle. It's been a dream for years. And finally two weeks ago when I went down to Florida to visit, that dream came true.

Too cool. And they took me to the Cheyenne saloon and bought me the tank top you see me wearing.

What a joy. And what a learning experience. Now when I'm in my car and see bikers it's from a whole 'nother' perspective.

Maybank's Pond (Sept. 2006)

I awaken and lazily look out the shuttered window past the porch rail to the pond beyond. A piece of grace upon first opened eyes.



I got back from rehearsal at 11 pm last night. Was wise enough to leave a lamp burning in the house, how else would I ever put key to lock in the gorgeous utter blackness of my first night here.

Worked on my script while cooking dinner, during the eating thereof, then after as digestion took place. The crickets paid no never mind to my rantings. They just sang their hearts out while a distant dog barked.

To sleep around 3 am - a note left saying as much to SHE, who had worked for Mr. Maybank for 42 years was it? and was due at 8:30 the next morning.

The pungent scent of Lysol assaulted my nostrils around noon, I guess. Time has no sense when you’re rehearsing a play. I shuffle out and there’s Wessie in the middle of the kitchen ironing Mr. Maybanks’ shirts.

I make some coffee while she makes talk. She is not a silent one. She gives me lessons in more ways than I can name. Deep learning of the soul variety that’s far from mundane.

But that came later. First was: “Is that your raft?” Not her words exactly, I can’t remember them, only the feeling of them. I had brought my blow up raft with me, for I was told by both He and She that swimming was de rigeur in the “Lake.”

“You’re not going out there with that raft, are you?”

“Well, uh, yes, I had planned to.”

“Uhhh huh, you don’t wanna go out there alone, you might get a cramp.”

I told her that I was a very good swimmer, was used to swimming across lakes.

“You shouldn’t go out there alone!”

Then she regaled me with horror stories of BIG fish - big bass and big carp. If THEY didn’t eat me, there were water moccasins and terrapins as big as cahrtahrs. “Terrapins?” She had such a thick accent I had her repeat that one several times. Actually I had heard her correctly, just had never heard that word before. “What’s a Terrapin?” I asked.

“There’s one on the dock,” she replied. My brain went scuttling. I had walked down to the dock yesterday before rehearsal. There was a metal sculpted turtle on it as I recalled. Ah! “You mean a turtle?” Oh yes. But not just little ole painted turtles - these were as big as cahrtahrs. “What?” “Cahrtahrs!” Ohhhhhhh, car tires.

Ooooohkaaaaay, so if the carp and bass and moccasins and turtles as big as cahrtahrs didn’t get me.... “Don’t walk down there in those things,” she admonished. I had on my flip flops. “You gotta watch out for those fire ants. They kilt a cow in Greenville. One bit me right here...” and she proceeded to show me a rather nasty scar on her wrist.

Yes, Wessie was full of horror stories. But also stories of angels. But more on that later.

Now I’ve been here a week and have paid a certain amount of attention to what Wessie has said. I’m sure there are carp and bass and turtles - moccasins...well, fire ants - yes...but...

So I spend a glorious hour or so in the morning floating on my stomach on the raft. I’m toward the far side when I notice some movement at the pond’s edge. OH MY. Is that? ... Yes. There is a VERY LARGE turtle lumbering into the water. VERY large. Not quite cahrtahr size, but maybe a mini spare tahr size. To give an example, place you hands on your elbows and make a circle with your arms. Uh huh, that’s the size. Oohkeeeydokey. Terrapin. I hope. Let’s hope it not a snapper. I know from snappers.

I watch him/her go into the water on the fahr sahd and then he/she bobs back up. Big head. Big body. Uh huh. Ok. I think, since I just put nice bright nail polish on my toes this morning, I’ll just keep my feet out of the water.

Time for lunch. It’s a bit windy. Not stupid me, I don’t leave my raft on the dock where it might get blown off into the water. No. I lay it carefully up on the lawn. Go up to the house, am eating my sandwich looking out the window and see something odd in the pond. What is THAT? Oh. Dismay sets in instantly. I know what THAT is. Oh swell. Yes, indeedy, THAT is my raft which has blown into the middle of the pond.

After lunch I go back down and sit longingly on the dock in my bathing suit gazing at my raft, trying to will it back to the dock. Where’s Uri Geller when you need him? The wind is blowing it hither and yon. Mostly yon. I have my script with me and am going over lines as I send silent wishes for the wind to change direction. My prayers are unanswered. The raft, most of the time, is hovering right where that terrapin entered the water.

I am beyond frustration. I make a determination. If that raft has not been blown over to my side by 4 pm I’m going to swim out and retrieve it. Gulp. With moccasins and carp and bass and Big Turtles. After all, Frank has said he’d swum in the pond. And when I’d asked the Mrs., “Can you swim in the lake?” she’d gleefully said, “Oh yes!” YES? At this point I suspected both of them probably swam in that “lake” MANY years ago, perhaps when it was first dredged, before the carp and bass and moccasins and terrapins.

The wind is increasing. The clouds are scuttling and that damn raft is NOT moving in my direction. And tomorrow is my day off and I’ll want to float and it’s now 4 pm.

OK! I put my shower cap on because I don’t want to get my hair wet. So now I’m standing on the dock in a bikini and a shower cap and my accursed raft is not far from where that terrible terrapin tiptoed in. But This is IT! I’m going in no matter WHAT!!

I ease myself down the dock ladder, knowing there’s a spider under one of the rungs because I saw it earlier. I do not like spiders. Yup...there she is. She tries to melt into the rung but I see her.

The rung beneath the water is slippery with algae and mung. Yeah, right, y’all have been swimmin’ in the “lake” a LOT have you? I don’t think so. If people had been going up and down that ladder on a regular basis - no mung on the rung.

I thrust myself away from the spider and the mung into the TERROR. Noooo, I will not let my feet go down any length. Please, God, do not let me touch bottom. Bottom. Oh God. Who knows what lurks on the bottom beneath me? Carp and bass and water moccasins and....

I kick hard, plunge my feet into the murk, hands and arms flailing, creating as much noise and disturbance as humanly possible. No graceful crawl is here, no gentle backstroke, just plunging loud terror. A pterodactyl startled by my noise takes off from somewhere nearby. Well, I suppose it might have been a heron. Who knows what Wessie would name it.



It seems to take forever to get across the pond and the amount of energy spent creating such a disturbance is enervating. I reach the raft...finally...it’s up-side-down. I curse it and right it and desperately attempt and finally achieve getting my body onto it. All limbs out of the water - nothing available any longer for munching creatures, thank God! My heart is exploding in my chest, my breath hard to catch. I’m not in my 20s any more. Double it. No, almost triple it. Am I really that old? Yeah. Pant, pant. But extremities are out of the water. That’s the most important thing. Who cares if I have a heart attack.

Finally my heart returns to normal. The wind picks up, the sky darkens. A storm is coming. OK. Fine. So much for floating blissfully in the lake. Excuse me. No. POND. But...there’s a bit of smugness too at my self proclaimed bravery.

Oh, and yeah, Wessie of course was right about almost everything. I went to snip some pretty wild flowers in my flip flops and suddenly felt nasty stinging on my feet. Yoweee! Ants. And they’re red. But small. Ok. I brush them off. Both feet have been bitten. No big deal, they’re just ants. Mmmm, noooo, these suckers really bite. Fine. I put some antibiotic on them and on the bottom of my foot where I had removed a one inch piece of the dock which had splintered off and lodged itself under my skin.

So we’ve seen the terrapins, experienced the red ants, I’ve watched the fish jump - but please, I don’t need to see the moccasins.

But my this is a glorious place. There’s a lizard that makes his home under the ceramic fox on the stoop where the “not so secret” key is hidden. How do I know? Because whenever I go to the door he scurries under it. And there’s that magnificent heron. Is it? Or could it be some delicious pre-historic pterodactyl that abides in the area Wessie told me the bass spawn. And if Wessie tells me something - I believe her. Because I have seen the terrapins and felt the fire ants. And she has told me stories of love and kindness that have made me weep. And her own struggles she shrugs off emotionless. Even the story of the angel at her hospital bed. It had a skeleton head, but a normal body - with wings. And she recognized it as an angel and knew God was protecting her.

We are given these moments in time. I have been given this play, this cottage and this Wessie. And I am grateful for them all.

Tonight as I left for rehearsal seven wild turkeys fled across the driveway into the field. How precious they were to me in their terror. Reminding me of my own in that pond and the Northern life I left two years ago where the wild turkeys also roamed.

A New Friend

Today I made a new friend.









I was out whipping (my term for weed wacking) in the back yard and came across this little fellow. Yup, he too went in the bug jail for a time. We had a lovely few hours together.

The Bug Jail

April 24, 2008

I was playing tennis at Harmon Field the other day and went to pick up a ball by the back fence. Bent down and HALLO! A snake on the other side by the garbage bin slithered away under it. A goodly size he was (about 2 feet I’d say), but no Copperhead this - just a cute Garter Snake. Two days later when I was back playing again I went to examine the area, but couldn’t find him. Then an hour later there he was, all coiled up sunning himself watching the game. (First photo is on the way to the courts, taken last year...couldn't just leave you with a picture of a garbage can after all...sorry there's no snap of the snake but he was shy.)

Last summer I reached down to turn on the outdoor water spigot at the house. Had my hand on it when I saw the Copperhead lying coiled directly under my hand. I mean he was 4“ away. I very gently moved away and said a very large “Thank You Jesus!” Why that snake didn’t strike I don’t know.

Also last summer I saw my first Black Widow. I’m one who is constantly enthralled by creatures and can spend hours studying them. This lady happened to be right on our front porch by the front door. I noticed her because there was a splash of red on her back, and that made me curious enough to get the Bug Jail.

The Bug Jail, I should explain, is perhaps my favorite gift from my husband. (See photo.) We’ve caught many a creature - large and small - in it. From a wee Walt Disney field mouse that was attempting to leap up the stairs in our house in Millerton, to bats. Yes, you heard me correctly. Bats eventually get exhausted from flying round and round if they get caught inside the house, and they will finally land somewhere. Usually on the top molding near the ceiling. All you do is place the open Bug Jail over them and Voila! My favorite creature that I’ve caught with it is a Luna Moth. Of course all creatures I eventually free.

But back to the merry Widow. She was quite large. I had no idea what she was never having seen one before. And I couldn’t see her belly, just her back. Looked up what she might be on the internet and all descriptions seemed to indicate she was an Australian Redback. That didn’t make any sense. So I called a zoo and left a message for an entomologist.

Meanwhile I kept her in the bug jail. Eventually she created a web and hung up-side-down and I noticed the red hourglass on her abdomen. Yup. Had to be a Black Widow. Quite a specimen she was. After I saw her tummy I decided to let her go. So husband and I drove off with her and HE let her go into the woods far away. (I was too chicken to open the cage top.)

Wind Chimes

April 18, 2008

I love ‘em. But they need constant attention. Or seem to. Either the clapper falls off or the metal tube falls off or the part that wafts in the wind and makes the clapper bang against the tubes falls off or the whole bloody thing falls off the hanger onto the ground.

I have about six or seven outdoor chimes and several indoor. The outdoor ones range from a single bell with a huge clapper, to the gorgeous Woodstock Chimes with precisely tuned tubes.

Yesterday I began the process of fixing two of the latter. The wood is very weathered and I first sanded them down and then put spar varnish on . Really a fun task when you do it without first removing the tubes. They get in the way JUST A BIT. One had fallen off it’s hanger AND lost a tube. The other had lost it’s flapper and banger. Clapper and flapper? I’m sure these things have proper names but I don’t know what they are.

So. I had already bought string that I thought was more or less the same width as that on the chimes. First I tackled the one that had lost it’s flapper and banger. I got a very large needle and eventually managed to get the damn string through the eye. At the top center of the circular wood part (from which hang all the tubes) is a drilled hole. (From this hole dangles the clapper and flapper.) I tried to get the needle down through it. The needle eye was too large and it got stuck. I attempted to force it. The hole was too small. I got a pair of pliers and pulled. And pulled. The needle eye was TOO LARGE and the hole was TOO SMALL! Okay. It really WON’T GO THROUGH. I get it. Now I have to try to push it back out. Swell. I did. It wasn’t easy as I had really jammed it in there good and hard.

I then proceeded to get the battery operated drill in order to make the center hole large enough for the needle eye to pass through. Slapped the battery onto the bottom and began to look for the correct bit. Odd. I THOUGHT we had drill bits for it but I guess not. I only found phillip and flathead heads for screwing. Screw it! Then the battery fell off and knocked over an open jar of paint remover which I had used to clean the varnish off the brush. Aaargh! I knew this entire procedure would take patience. I just didn’t know how much. So then I wiped up all the terpentine.

Back into the garage cubby to get the extension cord and the electric drill. Figured out what size bit I’d probably need and proceeded to drill the hole larger. A wee bit larger. Finally got the needle with the string down through. Now - how to secure it at the top? Contemplated just making a big knot to keep it from going through the hole but opted to tie it around a small nail first. Not terribly pretty but functional. Had kept the old string so I had a template of sorts for the new one as far as length and where to tie the middle knot under the banger (clapper).

Then had to drill through the center of the banger (another round piece) to increase it’s size so I could get the string through IT, tied a big knot under it to keep it in position and tied the clapper on. Voila! That only took about half an hour.

Onto the next one. This was a bit tougher. The whole cording system at the top was different. So once again I drilled a larger hole so I could get the needle through, then added a new hole. But I could NOT get the needle eye through. So instead I managed to poke the string down through, then threaded the needle, pushed it through the tube holes and then poked it up through the other hole at the top. Make sense? Of course not. Ya had to be there. Then I found some old carpet tacks, put them in the holes, wrapped the string around them and hammered them down. Voila! That took about a half an hour.

So. I spent at least an hour and half sanding them, staining them, varnishing them and an hour fixing them. Think they might make it through the summer?

Oh, and PS - Husband told me of course we have drill bits for the battery operated drill. Yup. I just didn’t see ‘em.

Mrs. Warren Closing

Feb. 17th CLOSING

Spent the day packing up before and after the matinee. Pussies will be glad to be home and able to go outside once again.

I am sad to be saying goodbye. Even though I won’t particularly miss doing this role, I’ve met some good people here and it’s a wonderful place to work. Our director, Preston, was just a joy and a hoot - self effacing, dry wit, a laugh riot, incredibly bright and wonderfully wacky. He’s multi-talented, thoroughly professional, and a tremendous supporter of the arts in the community. Greensboro is lucky to have him, and I feel fortunate to have worked with him

I believe we are the second highest grossing show for a three week run. And this was the first time a Shaw play has ever been presented at Triad Stage. A credit to Mr. Shaw and our production I daresay.

I was rather teary when I got to the theatre today. Nothing like trying to put on false eyelashes when you’re crying. In Act III, during my long absence from the stage, I took down all the photos and cards, dangling beads, etc. from around my dressingroom mirror, washed up the makeup brushes and put away most of the makeup. It looks so barren when you do that. The entire room loses all persona and goes back to being a blank.

The staff and crew are gearing up for the next show (they have been for the past week). You’re about to be part of their past. And you really feel it. There’s a huge psychological change that occurs. You’re not only saying goodbye to everybody you’ve been with for the past 7 weeks (in this case), but you’re saying goodbye to the character you wore six days a week. Long runs are particularly hard to let go of.

You’re off to - who knows what. If you’re lucky, another job. If not, back to being unemployed. I can count the number of jobs I’ve had consecutively in this business on one hand. That statistic is not changing in this instance. It is said that 90% of professional actors are out of work at any given time. We must be nuts to be in this business.....

Ta.