the love hate relationship ...

I love my computer ... really. I am also in mourning for it ... the operating system has died and the lovely people at HP don't know quite what to do with it/me.


I just had no idea it was like a co-dependent relationship (and not necessarily a good one).

How addictive it could be.
How I would feel when I wasn't in constant contact with it.
How much I took it for granted.  

The things I assumed it would do for me.

Automatically remind me of appointments/birthdays/holidays
Keep me organized
Be there for me in the middle of the night.

I am waiting by the phone/mailbox (you get the idea) for replacement disks to replace the 'restore' discs that I made which do not work.

If they don't work - the next level decision will have to be made ... do I put it and me out of 'our' misery or do I force it to love me and recover another way?

in the dog house, just in time for christmas ...

In the 70s/80s there was a comedian who went by Gallagher ... lots of specials on HBO (when that was the new and hip thing to do).

What's the point?

He did a thing about cats ... 'Cats can't read but they can COMPARE'. 

Evidently dogs do, too. And they train us to see the world from their point of view.

The longer the blond owns me, the more he's trained me to do. 

At one point, the big trick was to rub his belly and give him a little kibble on bed in the morning.

Then it became a dog biscuit in the morning.

Since he's 'old', he's got some aches and pains. Don't we all?  Except that he can't get to the medicine cabinet on his own.

That's evidently my job.

If I forget to give him peanut butter and cracker with aspirin and other pain killers, I hear about it.  Except that he never barks or makes a noise.  He goes from where the meds are kept to kitchen until he gets my attention ... yesterday it wasn't until it was almost bedtime before I realized my transgression.

If the dog were in charge of Santa's Naughty List, I'd be on it in spades. 

I wonder what the next trick is going to be and just how long it will take me to learn it. Until then, I'll be spending more time in the dog house.

thought for the day

Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research.

This means that by 2020, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

Remembering Pearl Harbor Day

Pearl Harbor Day is an anniversary that is alive and well in my family.  My father-in-law was actually stationed at Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack but was on another ship. Despite the distance, he was still thrown overboard but fortunately not seriously injured.

Though most of his generation have now passed, I still feel a tremendous debt of gratitude to them for the sacrifice they made for our freedom.

Stupid Human Tricks ...

Long ago and far away, I used to laugh at David Letterman's Stupid (Dog) Tricks ... turns out that over the years I've been trained to do my fair share of stupid human tricks.

Blondie Boy, I always thought, is very average.  If you ask him, he's a genius.

Every morning, he gets up and then gets me up to ensure he will indeed be provided with a dog-cookie before he patrols the yard.  If the cookie jar doesn't make the sound (it growls), that cookie doesn't count.  Evidently any cookie provided without sound effects doesn't have calories and doesn't count against the day's consumption.

In recent months, every day at five o'clock, he finds me and tells me how cute he is.  Then there is the reminder to feed him.  (Mealtime isn't contingent on this reminder, but he makes one anyway for good measure.)


Thing is, I had no idea how he knew every day to make the announcement at that precise time. 

In my foyer, there is an old fashioned clock that has chimes.  Every hour and half-hour the clock announces the time to the world.  Or it would if I remembered to keep it wound.

Yesterday, the clock had worn down and wasn't ticking. The dog didn't make his announcement.  I didn't think much of it.

Today, I was in the living room and could hear it chime.  Right after the final bell tolled at five, the dog came in to get his dose of love.

Question is, which of us is smarter?  He waits for the clock and, apparently, lives by it.  I thought he was genius and was looking at the stage of the sun.

I guess if you have to ask, you already know the answer.

what's in a name, really?

In an attempt to 'connect' with my 'authentic self' (sounds like I've watched too much Oprah, doesn't it?), in the past year I've tried to liberate myself from the persona I created that I think of as Alf or Alfonsina.

Alf is me but she isn't.  She doesn't fear what others think or say about her.  She is strange, creative, independent, and she will take almost any dare.  Most importantly, she can be outrageous and dance on top of tables (while drunk or otherwise) and doesn't get those things called hangovers or guilt complexes as a result.

As me, I am far and away too hung up on with other people.  How will/do they react.  How those reactions impact me.  Most importantly, how I let those things limit me.

I've also attended one too many seminars about writing/publishing.  The people involved have been all about third party point of view (and what they call a close third).  Me?  I tend to be vain and think in first person even if I've never been: male, in the military, or even been on the back of a motorcycle. 

I have looked at the authors I like/love and the books that I like/love.  Wouldn't you know it?  Virtually all of them are written from the first person point of view.  By reading those books from that place, I get to become someone I'm not.  I can be rich, thin, exciting, and have my own stable of nearly-naked, naughty men.  I can be a redhead, blond, brunette.  I am transformed into someone who is younger or older.

I get to escape my life and my world and go somewhere completely different for fun, profit, and pleasure.

That is the point of reading and writing (for my own pleasure and that of others), right?

So, I'm going to re-evaluate me and what I do.  Examine what works and what doesn't.  See how I can get back into my own zone.  I've been benched for the better part of a year because I let go of the name, the persona, I created.

I've missed Alf and I hope to reconnect with her soon.

The bad news about Alf/Alfonsina?  When I looked at buying 'my' own domain name, it is a FREAKING PORN SITE!  I can't really compete with that.

I will choose another name to write under (real things) ... I will write as Alf and then sign her name ...

Alf.