All posts by reneeinnd

Family, History, The Future, Uncategorized

501 Jeans

48 Comments

My husband is a pretty finicky fellow, and has definite preferences regarding the clothes he wears.  He has been somewhat distressed lately after futile searches for his favorite jeans-Levi’s 501 jeans. Those are the ones with the button fly.  I have no idea why he prefers them, but there it is.

He has had trouble finding the size he needs  as well as the colors he wants.  His secret worry has been that they are no longer being manufactured,  and that he will have to find a new style and brand of jeans to wear.  This makes him feel as old and as out of date  as the Dodo. It is as though he can still imagine himself as a young man  at U of Wisconsin when he wears those jeans with his Frye boots.

He was delighted this weekend to find some on-line.  He tends to shop in stores instead of on-line, and our choices out here are limited.  Now his youthfulness  is preserved, and he can go forward into his mid 60’s with confidence.

What keeps you feeling young?  What do you fear will go out of production?

Stories, Uncategorized

The Best Laid Plans

35 Comments

I have written before about a friend of mine at work who is delightfully  goofy and funny. She loves to play practical jokes on people, and she recently told me about one that didn’t go quite the way she had planned.  She has a bit of guilt about this one.

Several year ago, my friend somehow obtained a  realtor’s sign advertising an open house.  In the dark of the night, she planted the sign in the front yard of a couple with whom she was friends. The next morning, the wife of the couple was awakened by people wanting to view the home for the open house.  She was, understandably, perplexed.  My friend was not aware that the couple was having serious marital problems. When the woman  saw the sign, she immediately jumped to the conclusion that her bastard of a husband was trying to sell the house out from underneath her.   No amount of denial on his part would satisfy her outrage.  When she vented to my friend about the incident, my friend confessed all, but the woman wouldn’t believe her.  The couple eventually divorced.

When have your plans not worked out?

 

Family, Media, Technology, work

Phishing

17 Comments

The deadline for renewing our State psychology licenses looms large this week. Husband and I sent in all our papers and fees for renewal a couple of weeks ago.  Imagine Husband’s surprise yesterday when he received two  notifications from “Google ” telling him that he had better renew his license immediately, along with a link to do so.

I am happy to report that Husband didn’t fall for this apparent phishing attempt.  He had already received confirmation from  our Psychology Board office that everything was in order, and that any communication from the Board was directly from the Board, not from Google.  I contacted the Board office to report this scam attempt.

It amazes me how clever scammers are. It also surprises me how easy it is to fool people. Our State Government IT office sends State employees fake emails at work to try to teach us to spot suspicious communications, and a special button to click to report an email as either fake or suspicious.  It is pretty easy to spot them, I think.  Our agency IT guy told me, though, that 50% of the fake emails are actually opened by staff who don’t suspect a thing or are too trusting.  That is a big concern given how devastating it would be to have our system, with all our clients’ confidential information hacked or compromised.

I hope none of my fellow psychologists are duped by these phishers.  It is an anxious time around the renewal period, and anxiety makes it hard to be wise sometimes.

What are your experiences with scammers or hackers?  How do you keep yourself safe?

Family, Food, holidays, Kids

Spoiled

26 Comments

I am an only child.  When I was younger, I cringed when I said that to people, as I invariably would hear the same phrase “Oh, you must be spoiled”.  It always made me want to apologize.

Spoiled, to me, brings up images of the nasty girl from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I think that people can be spoiled in good and not so good ways, and I have tried to spoil my children and the people I love in good ways.

Our daughter is coming home for Thanksgiving. We haven’t seen her for six months.  Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday, and she has great expectations for her trip home.   Every year we “spoil” her by letting her plan the Thanksgiving meal.  She has old favorites, and likes to try new things as well. She doesn’t help prepare the food, but leaves it to us.  This year she has requested French bread, an apple crisp for desert,  cranberry salsa, a basic turkey dressing, butternut squash casserole,  mashed potatoes, a simple turkey that is covered in cheese cloth and basted with herb butter, and, of course, green bean casserole.  She also wants cranberry mimosas.

Daughter has also asked that she gets a down comforter on her bed, and has other favorite food requests for the 10 days she is home.  I think this is a very good way to spoil her.

How do you spoil the people you love?

 

Family, History, Uncategorized

Strange Happenings

32 Comments

When she was a little girl of about 5, my best friend took piano lessons. Her father was the hired man who lived with his family in a small house on the farm yard next to the farm owner’s  house.  The owner’s house  was a very old, very large, well-appointed, two-story farm house with an enormous attic. It had been in the owner’s family for several generations.  My friend didn’t have a piano, but the elderly farm owner did, and he let my friend practice on his piano in his parlor.

My friend complained to the farm owners’ wife that she wished the old woman who came and listened to her practice would just go away, as she found her presence kind of upsetting. The owner’s wife asked my friend to describe the woman.  Friend did so, and after that, the owner’s wife came and sat in the parlor while Friend practiced, as the old woman my friend described had been dead for many years and was the owner’s grandmother. Friend had never seen a photo of the woman, and  everyone assumed she had seen her ghost. I am not making this up.

Strange things happen. What have you had trouble explaining?

 

Music, Uncategorized

If It Is Worth Doing, It Is Worth Doing Badly

31 Comments

The title of this post is something allegedly said by Gustav Holst regarding amateur music groups  and church choirs taking on ambitious works to perform.

The recent musical performance at my church for Reformation/Confirmation Sunday is just what Holst was referring to.  Although we are a larger congregation and boast a lovely pipe organ and two fine organists, our choir is small and aging.  We have four first sopranos, four second sopranos, four altos, three tenors, and four basses.  (We suspect that at least half of the bass section can’t read music. They also have no sense of rhythm.)  Our big number was an  arrangement of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God  with a six person brass choir, timpani, anvil, snare drum, and two hand bell players.  The brass players and percussionists and were borrowed from the college, congregation,  and community. I think the percussion instruments came from the high school.

We worked on the choir parts for a few weeks, and then practiced once as a full ensemble the day before our performance. Our choir sits by the organ in the front of the church, facing the congregation.  The brass and percussion were wedged  behind the altar and pastors. The organ pipes were just above them.  Our organist for the performance likes to play really loud.  Strategically placed pillars  obscured the instrumentalists’ view of the conductor. (Some members once suggested that the pillars be removed to help with better visuals, but an architect in the choir said the building would fall down if we did that. ) Between the loud brass and percussion and the louder organ, it was very hard for anyone to hear one another.

It went just as you might imagine. When we were together, it was great. When we couldn’t hear, we just watched the conductor and hoped for the best.  Sometimes the trumpets hit their high notes; sometimes, well, they were close.  What was important was that the congregation loved it.  It was worth doing.  The young people who were confirmed may fall away from the church as many do, but by golly, they know they are Lutheran!

What endeavors in your life have been worth doing, albeit badly?

 

Family, Food, pets, Travel, Uncategorized

Free Time

80 Comments

Husband loaded his pickup on Monday of this week and headed to Denver to see his dad and stepmom. His dad is in an assisted living facility due to Alzheimer’s Disease, and he hasn’t seen him for a year. Husband returns home  later today.

I am accustomed to Husband spending time away from home during the week when he works on the Reservation.  He is usually home on Friday, and it was strange not having him here yesterday.  Strange, yet somewhat restful,  since yesterday was the first Friday for eons that it was the end of the week, I was at home, and we were not planning what to cook for the weekend.

Husband is a compulsive cook, grocery list maker, and menu planner. I can tell when he is thinking about cooking something.  He has this broody look on his face and gets real quiet. If I ask him what is going on he says “Just a minute”, and, many, many minutes later, he tells me what foods  he wants to prepare.  This only happens when we are at home. He recognizes how odd this is and confesses that he can’t stop thinking about cooking when he is at home.

I got off work early yesterday. I was content to eat ham sandwiches and breakfast cereal. The free time was nice, and I had had a restful afternoon playing with the cats.

What do you like to do in your free time?  What do you find relaxing?

Business, Uncategorized, work

Confusion

46 Comments

I have mentioned before that I serve on a regulatory board that ensures that the members of a certain profession practice ethically and are appropriately licensed.   My job on the board is to approve continuing education requests. The licensees need a certain number of continuing education hours every two years to  keep their licenses to practice. Trainings have to meet certain requirements for  content and presenter qualification. I am the one who has to make recommendations to the entire board whether such requests are approved.

We have reached the month of license renewal , and I am amazed how slapdash some of the licensees are in submitting their continuing education requests for approval.  Some wait until the last minute before submitting the requests, blissfully unaware that they have missed the deadline for final Board approval.  Others send in approval requests with insufficient detail of their trainings,  and then don’t respond to my entreaties for more information.

It amazes me that the quite well-educated people who we license don’t pay attention to important details that, if ignored, could mean the loss of their licence to practice, or a else hefty fine for all the bother they have caused the Board.  Who acts like this?  Perhaps I am naive, but really, this make no sense!

When have you been flabbergasted?

 

 

History, Uncategorized, Words

Good Words

40 Comments

I ran across a list of old English words that have lost favor over the centuries. They are cool words!

Bedward:  heading to bed

Elflock: tangled hair as if matted by elves

To gorgonise: to have a paralyzing effect on

To hugger-mugger: to act in a secretive manner

To kench: to laugh loudly

Monsterful: wonderful

To twattle: to gossip

Twitter-light: twilight

Widendream:  a state of mental confusion or excitement

Malagrugrous: dismal

To jargogle: to confuse

To degust: to taste carefully

Illecebrous: attractive

To brabble: to argue loudly

What words currently in usage would you wish to see disappear? Make up some words you would like to see in usage.                                    Make up some sentences from the old English words listed above. 

 

 

Family, pets, The Future, Uncategorized

Surrender

29 Comments

Today’s post comes from Crystalbay.

Tonight, I lost the battle. I’m defeated. I give up. For one month, I’ve kept my two kittens blockaded in the bedroom.  I have a big door on one side; no door on the other.  Because I felt they should only be kept in one room for a while, I moved a big bench to close off the opening without a door and nailed in a throw a few inches higher than the bench to fool them into thinking there was no way out.

This worked for a while, then “Trouble” found a way over it, so I nailed the blanket half a foot higher. That worked for a while until tonight when I nailed the blanket up so high that only one foot was still exposed. Trouble climbed over it in seconds, even though I repeatedly squirted him with a water bottle. He’d dart off, then return to finish his task of penetrating the barrier to full freedom in seconds. He didn’t care that I yelled “NO” or that I’d pick him up and toss him back in the room or that I squirted him.  He had no respect or fear at all.

That’s it: they’re both on the loose, terrorizing my old cat upstairs and doing anything that their feline instincts lead them to. I’m defeated. The vet was right about this male Ragdoll and now I’m under their control. Poor old Izzy, whose world was upended a few weeks ago. In just one week, she lost her only friend, Peanut, then was scared into the dungeon below the cottage for days. A few days later, I brought the kittens home, so she lost having me in the bedroom she’d always come into for affection. She spotted the kittens for the first time only two days ago, and spent hours hiding in the bedroom upstairs. Her only comfort in life has been having me, out of guilt, going upstairs to sleep with her every night after the kittens were safely closed in the downstairs bedroom. Now, she’s lost even that.

Now, Trouble, followed by his copycat sister, has claimed the entire cottage as his territory. I’m struggling right now with feeling owned rather than owning these pesky fur balls.

What is the best way to turn defeat into something postive? When have animals or people got the best of you?