Silvery Moon: Aching Elbow

The Moon from my bedroom window, 2:50 am, April 5, 2012. OK. These digital cameras are idiot proof and point and click, but it’s still hard to properly take a picture of the Moon.

Well, today, I turned on the TV and there was nothing to watch, despite our one hundred billion channel universe,  so I turned to Casper the Friendly Ghost on a nostalgia cartoon station (ie, CHEAP cartoons) because that used to be one of my favourite programs, as a kid, of course. But not any more. Kind of boring, it is.  Although I can see why it appealed to me as a little girl: Caspar with his big head is a baby.  So I turned off the TV. Despite the fact the Jetson’s was coming up.

Now, it has been said that Star Trek predicted the modern world, but I humbly contend  so did the Jetson’s. Ok, not flying autos. But there’s one episode that comes to mind. When I first saw it back in (who knows when) it made me laugh. Jane Jetson gets some kind of finger twisty disease due to pushing too many buttons.

Well! Aren’t we all laughing, or perhaps crying,  now.

I’m writing this post in pain. My left arm, from the elbow to the shoulder and down through the blade, hurts like hell. In fact, I’m going to the see a physiotherapist tomorrow morning. My appointment is at 8 am, so I have to get up at 7 or so.  I assume this is a computer injury. Mostly. (Maybe carrying a purse on my shoulder for 4 decades didn’t help.) I don’t use a mouse, I use the little silver pad and making that little repetitive motion with my index finger of my left hand over and over probably is what did me in.

Now I always get up at 7 anyway, but I asked my husband to set the alarm, because when you HAVE to get up, that’s when you don’t. Knowing this, I was going to worry about getting up late and missing the appointment (which I sorely need) and then I wouldn’t sleep well all night. (Digression: I never have any trouble sleeping EXCEPT when I have an important job interview. Then I don’t sleep a wink. So every interview I’ve ever been too, I’ve been zonked!)

As it happens I am sleeping in the spare room, because we have a memory foam mattress in the -ahem- marital bed and I think that has contributed to my problem. I twist and turn during the night and that takes effort on a memory foam mattress. I told my husband “Now, we have a REAL marriage. Separate bedrooms. But he snores something fierce so it’s a bit of a vacation for me.”

As it also happens I just put up new curtains in this room. Actually, I tore a pretty beige sheet we had and made it into curtains.. And then I tied each panel at waist level with a piece of old lace I had on hand. Pretty.

Last evening, as I turned in, I decided it wasn’t important to pull the curtains closed as I was getting up early and the bedroom window faces West anyway.

But what do you know? At about 2.50 am I was awakened by a feeling that someone was aiming a flashlight in my face. Scully? Mulder? It was the full moon!

Huge in the sky and hanging out (in scary fashion) behind the near naked branches of the maple tree in front.

The moon from my bed. It looks much smaller in this shot. Wonder why. The moon is one mysterious orb.

It was really bright!  (The picture above doesn’t do it justice.) I guess my sons, who each slept in this room at one time, are used to the sight. I`ve missed it all these years, my bedroom being on the other side of the house. Facing the neighbours back yard, where there movement sensitive porch light goes on and off all night, due to animals I guess.

I just had to get a picture of the moon, I decided. So I pushed myself out of bed, very painful with this type of injury (and the analgesic  effect of the two blue Advil I had taken before going to bed had worn off.)

I found the camera, but not the memory card. It was in the computer. So I got the old laptop out from under the bed and retrieved the memory card and tried to take a picture of the moon through the window but the flash reflecting on the glass drowned out the light of the orb. I eventually figured out how to cancell the flash and then I opened the window and took the picture above.

And then I went back to bed. And decided to watch the free light show from Mother Nature.

It lasted for about 8 minutes, and it was wonderful. Clouds floated in and created a large blue and orange halo around the moon and then the clouds got thicker, like in a horror movie, and then the moon disappeared completely and then peeked out for a moment and then disappeared again.

By that time I was wide awake and, boy, did my left arm ache.

So what did I do? I bent over and picked up the laptop off the floor and lifted it up, with great difficulty as that action uses precisely the muscles that are ailing, and decided to write this post, right then at 3 o’clock in the morning. ( I really must get an iPad, my laptop weighs a ton. It’s about THREE years old, you know.)

I am typing now, of course. And using the stupid little pad to navigate, because you can’t use a mouse with a laptop. Where do you put it?  I can hear my Boston Terrier, Bullwinkle, snoring from the next bedroom, my real bedroom. My husband isn’t snoring for once.

I read on the Internet that arm and  scapula injuries such as mine might actually be generated from a slipped disk in the neck. I hope not. (My elderly mother had that problem from years of working as a typist/secretary. But I’m still young! Young…ish)

Anyway, I just thought of one other way the Jetson’s is prescient. Remember that ludicrous scene in the opening credits where George Jetson is walking his dog on a treadmill. The Dog Whisperer does that!

And it seems just as stupid when he does it. Why have a dog if you don’t want to walk it? That’s what I say. And that’s what I feel he should tell his Yuppie clients. But then Caesar Millan (spelling?) would never put up with Bullwinkle sleeping on the bed, under the covers, in winter. Farting away. Quite disgusting in a cute way. He’s about 18 pounds and has a big head and eyes. He’s my baby substitute, no question. Who needs Casper?

Ouch. My elbow!

Philosopeding on Technology

The Nicholsons. Studio Photo, 1893.

I hav letters from right around this time from Margaret to Norm. She is visiting relation in Minerville, NY, that would be Norman Nicholson Preacher man. She says that Herb is outside riding a ‘philosoped’. Velociped. My mother always called bicycles ‘bicyclette’ but the French call them velos.

I have a friend of a certain age who just bought a new laptop. She uses it only to play card games and to keep lists of, say, the books she has read and the wine she has drunk.

I like to poke fun at her. I just bought a new laptop, too, because I am writing this blog about writing a novel, Flo in the City, based on my 2005 website http://www.tighsolas.ca/ (which I am going to get revised by a professional, or 10 year old, some time soon).

I use the laptop to download public domain material for background, and to conduct other research. (Yesterday I took a Google Earth Street View tour of Framingham, Massachusetts, where Flo went in 1908. ) I usually have a BBC Radio Four play or documentary playing in the background as I work.

Anyway, back in 1982, I worked in a radio station as a copywriter, banging my ads out on an IBM Selectric, well, actually, that machine took a light touch. (Only a couple of young men in the office were into computers, whatever computers they had back then, and they tried to sound very smart as they discussed computer business in front of the rest of us.) In 1984, I quit my job and was looking for my own typewriter to do some freelance work. In those days, you could buy ‘word processors’, machines just for typing! (One of the many technological dead-ends existing in time.)I ended up buying a PC, on my husband’s sage advice. I had actually bought a 500 dollar electric typewriter for myself in 1984-which was a total waste, so this time I deferred to him.

(We tracked down one of the few places we could buy a computer in Montreal and trekked out to St. Laurent. (Where I stumbled on a street named after my grandfather, Jules Crepeau.) I recall the sales guy was very snooty. You see, we knew nothing about computers and people who bought computers were nerds.) Anyway, I’m just getting to my point…At about the same time, I recall talking to a friend who was a scientist at McGill. He told me that home computers were ‘an invention in search of a use.’ Most people back then were using computers to, say, keep recipes or play solitaire. Like my friend, today.

Flashforward.. they have found a lot of uses for the computer, haven’t they? And now we have to keep upgrading our computers just to keep up with the exponential growth of programmes. (Well, the Internet was the clincher. In the 90′s, the Powers That Be told us parents to get wired or our kids would be left behind. We believed them, big time. Too bad our kids’ every word and action, from birth to death, may be tracked by those very same Powers That Be, as an inadvertent? side-effect of getting on line, but, hey, who needs privacy?)

OK. So there’s another invention that was sold to homes before it had a use. The microwave. The first microwaves were sold to housewives in around 1967. An advert in Chatelaine magazine shows a lovely Laura Petrie style housewife, with a 15 inch waist, draped in a flowing but dainty sleevless number, you know the image, standing in front of a complete turkey meal (pretty gross looking because food photography wasn’t what it is today)cooked on a microwave.

Well, today, we all know that microwaves are useless for cooking tasty meals. (My father in law, in the late 1980′s, bought a 1,000 dollar microwave, that came with a huge recipe book, and used it to warm coffee. He was typical.) Only lately have they found a use for microwave ovens, other than warming food and drink. They created microwaveable meals. You eat them. I eat them. They are salty and vastly overpriced, terrible for our arteries and the environment but great for the economy.

I have a theory that the reason we all have become so enamoured of Thai and Indian food is because the heavy spices compensate for the fact that fast cooked food tastes like crap.

Montreal Steak Spice for instance. This combination was used by a coterie of Eastern Europeans on cured meat that became a local specialty, Montreal Smoked meat – which isn’t pastrami. Now the company that sells this product has come out with myriad combinations of peppers and garlic, so there must be a demand. I have them all. We over-spice our food because our meat, vegetables are tasteless to start with and we don’t have the patience or the time to slow cook meals.

So we’ve gained some and lost some in 100 years. The computer allows us to check out the Internet for any possible recipe at any time, and as I live in a metropolitain area, I can get any food I want very easily, even if it’s frankenfruit and veggies, (and because I live in Montreal I can get it at a good price, but modern technology can’t carmelize carrots quickly, can it?