Sentimental Journey

I suspect that most people my age have a place where many photographs are stored. I wonder how often they take those memories out of their hiding places and look at them. For me, not very often. The reasons are many; not enough time or other things take precedence.

Recently I started thinking about my memories on paper and decided to go through all of those hundreds of photos. A fire that destroyed someone else's paper treasures made me think I should scan my photos and store them someplace safe, like a bank safe deposit box. But as I started looking at those photos a terrible thing happened. I realized there were so many of people whose names I can't remember! So many places I can't really recall. They look familiar but try as I might, the names just don't come back. Why oh why didn't I take the time to write names and dates on the backs of those photos!

The color photos have mostly faded, a great many to the point that scanning and editing won't really help. This is probably due to the fact I am not expert at bringing old photos to life. I am going to try, but I don't hold out much hope. A great many were made with a Polaroid camera and some of those haven't stood the test of time too well.

Hundreds and hundreds of photos, maybe thousands! Albums and boxes of photos! What I really need to do is sort them into 'times' to make it easier to find that certain memory.

One of the disturbing things about looking at those photos is comparing 'then and now'. I see how young we all looked and then how we look now. I think I will have to stop looking at photos or stop looking in the mirror! But the saddest part of all is seeing the faces of those family members and friends no longer here. But I realize how fortunate I am to have these precious memories and now I have to work to preserve them. I suspect after I am gone, no one will really care about these captures from the past. But if a disaster occurs while I am here, I will surely be glad to have my memories safely stored away where they can be retrieved.

So now I have sorted enough and have started the scanning process. This is going to take a long time, weeks, months, maybe years! So guess I'd better get to work.

Martha

WARNING!

When you receive something in the mail that proclaims in big letters 'Warning!', you tend to check it out. So when I received a letter a few months ago with this 'warning' on the envelope I checked it out in a hurry. Hmph, turned out to be a notice to renew my subscription to Money magazine. All well and good, but what's going on? I had just subscribed to this magazine a few months before, so did I forget to pay the bill? I checked the label. There was the date the subscription runs out, July 08. So I tossed the letter. I'll subscribe when the due date arrives.

Then a month later I get another letter telling me how much I will miss this magazine if I don't renew now!

"Marketing is getting out of hand" I think and toss the letter.

Last month I received a third letter saying they just don't understand why I haven't renewed my subscription. I am tempted to send the letter back telling them my subscription is still good for six months so why are they so excited? However, that would mean I will have to put a stamp on the letter, so I toss it.

Today I received my copy of the magazine with a cover over it. This is what over half of the cover looked like.

The second half just had my subscription information.

I have decided I will not renew this magazine; I don't need the harassment.

Martha

Yahoo ID Fun (Not!)

I moved a while back and before I moved, I had SBC DSL (Now AT&T). When I moved to my new location DSL was not available, so of course my email account became disabled.

When DSL became available at my new location, I signed up again.

Here was my problem. All of my Yahoo Groups were tied to the now dysfunctional original email address. I couldn't remove that email address as it was the primary and there was no option to change it. (Yahoo should allow users to change the primary email address! I guess they have a reason for not being able to change it, but I couldn't find out what the reason is.)

Yahoo said AT&T has to fix it, they couldn't. (Why not? No one seems to know.) AT&T said Yahoo had to fix it. They couldn't fix it. (I think someone could fix it if they just would!)

I could log in to the original email account. I couldn't send or receive email from this account. (Every now and then spammers managed to send spam to it!) But I had to be signed in to this account to access my Groups.

Bummer!

So I finally took the challenge and setup another Yahoo ID and joined my Groups again. Some of them are still in a pending status and may or may not be activated. (Some owners/moderators don't check their mail often.) That's another gripe that could have been avoided if Yahoo would allow the primary email account to be changed.

I put this off for a long time, but it was time to do it. Sigh! I belong to too many Groups!

I finally got everything sqared away; Groups joined with new ID and unsubbed from the old ID. The moment of truth arrived and I deleted the old ID. That was a little scary, but the deed was done.

Joy! The old email address that was un-usable is gone! 'I' fixed it! Sorta fixed it, anyway it's gone.

I never, ever want to do this again!

Martha

Another Gripe

My, my, the older I get the more I find to complain about. I think this is a privilege that goes with old age, so I exercise it!

This 'gripe' is about 'come on's'. You know, offers to sell you something that are worded to make you think this is just what you have been looking for all your life, or this is exactly what you need to make your life just wonderful. Right.

I usually don't fall for such drivel, but occasionally I get curious and check out one of those offers. (Isn't the Internet great?) However sometimes I think I already know what the offer is and I bite. You'd think I'd learn.

This time the offer was for a magazine, Prevention. I subscribed to this magazine many years ago and I liked it then, so when I got an offer to subscribe again, I bit. What I didn't realize, what used to be a fairly good magazine is now primarily a purveyor of advertising. I left Readers Digest for that reason. I understand these periodcals have to pay the bills and want to make a profit as well. But get real folks, who wants to pay for more ads! Especially for those obscenely priced prescription drugs that I should 'ask my doctor if it's right for me'.

Out of curiosity I counted the ads. There are 91 full pages of ads! And this isn't counting the articles that are touting products like shampoos, beauty aids, etc! I didn't count the partial page ads either. To make matters worse, there are 'Supplements' inserted by Prevention offering me the wisdom of the ages for books that cost 'only four easy payments of $7.99 plus shipping and handling'. Geeze, this magazine is so full of 'buy me' they should have named it 'The Ad book'!

Since I did fall for the offer, I paid for the magazine, but you can bet your bippy when it comes time to renew, I won't!

Martha

The Wind in My Hair

It was also everywhere besides my hair. Last week the wind blew and blew, up to 59 miles per hour. It was also the day our trash was supposed to be picked up. Notice I said 'supposed'. The wind beat the trash trucks to the trash. Since we have to use unwieldy bins for our garbage and recycle trash, the wind had a great time blowing over those bins. First it would catch the lids that don't latch and then it would swoop underneath and turn the bins over.

That devilish wind was having a blast. Trash and garbage was blowing everywhere. I live on a hillside that runs East and West. The wind was blowing from the West and all the stuff was blowing downhill toward the East. The cacophony of aluminum cans, plastic water bottles and empty boxes bouncing along the street was almost hilarious, but when I realized someone was going to have to pick up all this stuff it wasn't funny at all. I really tried to pick up as much as I could, but that wind was blowing faster than I could run.

After up-righting the bins for I lost count of times, I gave up and moved them back to the garage. Finally the trucks came by and my younger son managed to get the garbage bin to the curb in time for it to be emptied. Missed the recycle truck, but we were too pooped to care.

Now I try to be a good neighbor and when I saw empty bins rolling along the middle of the street and noticed the bins were missing from my neighbor's, I went running to see if those bins belonged next door. Now the wind was still blowing so hard it was almost hard to stand up and that wind was getting colder all the time. I was trying to hurry to get out of the wind and clumsy me caught my foot on the step up to the porch and the next thing I know I am laying on that cold hard cement.

I don't know why I didn't break any bones as hard as I fell. Perhaps there is some good in being on the chubby side, that 'cushion' probably saved me from a broken hip as I landed hard on my right side. To top it all off, those bins weren't my neighbor's after all.

Today is trash day again and the wind is blowing. However, it didn't blow that hard today and the trash has all been safely removed and empty bins are now in the garage. I am still finding sore places from that fall, but I think I will live.

I used to like the wind.

Martha