The futile Act of saving things digitally

 The problem with digital is that things change.

 I wrote my first book and many magazine and newspaper articles on a typewriter. Had paper copies done with carbon paper. (If I had kept them, they'd be all smeary today.) Then I wrote on a Commodore 64. There was no digital record saved. Wrote more on various Apple computers, but nothing can read those 5-inch floppy disks anymore, so I tossed them. The next books were recorded on 3-inch disks. Also now in the trash.

 In the late 1990s and early 2000s, my husband told me to stop printing out copies of what I wrote because they were all saved on the computer. Yeah - Right. (not) They were saved , but no way can my 2022 computer read those old versions of AppleWorks and ClarisWorks. 

Now, my latest Apple iMac grabs everything to save on the 'cloud.' Which means I can't access them if I have no internet service. (which is why I now save writing stuff on Dropbox, because I can work on those files even without internet as long as I save them to Dropbox once I reach Internet service again.)

 I imagine that saving digital files of photographs may have gone through the same history -- and that everything saved today will be unreadable in the future.  🙁

Attacks on schools - too many attacks on schools

 Every time there's a mass shooting, parents worry about their own children in school. Many of us have had similar, if not quite the same thing happen.  Too many of us. 

A few years ago I was sitting in my car in the school parking lot along with other parents of high schoolers who lived too far away to be able to walk (and California has no free bus service for schools) when no kids showed up. We waited and waited. 

One of the parents was able to overhear police reports and discovered that several schools, including this one had received bomb threats. So the school was locked down while police searched for the possible bomb. The teens had not been told. At this point, every teen had a cell phone, so we parents were able to text messages to them to keep them from panicking. Eventually the kids were being let go, building by building, so we parents let the kids know. My kid was in building 4, so it was a while before that building was released. 

Did they not tell the kids to keep them from panicking and running? Even though they were sitting quietly, they still were frantic and it was only the ability to text to their parents that kept them relatively calm. 

Why families need two cars

I worked for a few years after college, then retired to have a baby.

Therefore, we gave one of our cars to my newly graduated sister. I did a lot of walking to the (over a mile away) grocery store with her in a baby carriage, using the carriage to get bags of groceries home. 

But when she was one-year-old and got sick, I had to wait until my husband got home (at 9:30 in the evening) before we could take her to the hospital. (had called the Doctor and he order us to the hospital - she had croup and had gotten worse while I waited for my husband to get home) Believe you me - we got a second car after that, so that I could handle emergencies, and eventually went back to work part time. 

Our doctor happened to be the head of pediatrics at the hospital, so we got immediate care. They were going to cut her throat open (a tracheotomy) so she could breathe, but our doctor held them back from doing that and tried other remedies first, which did work. 

Oh the tales I have about that hospital stay. I brought board books for her to look at in her oxygen tent thinking they would be sturdier in that damp environment, but -- she kept thinking the pages were just stuck together, so she kept trying to tear them apart. (All our books at home were regular picture books, not board books.) 

I told the nurses to NOT let her see how her IV tube was attached when they changed the tubing but of course they didn't listen (all children are dumb, don't cha know), so she immediately unattached the tubing and was gleefully spray painting the plastic sheeting of her oxygen tent with the liquid spurting out from the tubing.  🙂 They attached it more securely after that. 

They warned me, but I was still shocked that, when we brought her home after a week's stay at the hospital, she didn't want to associate with us at all.  She was mad at us for abandoning her at that strange place.  (news note, we were there with her most of the time) 

Zoom meeting, Video, and me

I participated in a Zoom meeting this week. For several years I didn't turn the video on in these meetings. Just had a black square with my name on it. Then I figured out how to do it. Don't have a ring light, but I do have a window that would put light on my face. Also a sliding door to the right.

At the meeting this week I logged in and had no video of me. Just an orange square. Couldn't figure out what happened. Halfway through, I realized that I had a posta note over the video camera on my computer. HA! So I removed it.

(forgot about opening the blinds that would put light on my face, so I sat there, sideways, with the light from my sliding door on my back. It worked.

Memories of The Lion King show

 I once went to a showing of the touring company of The Lion King, knowing that I had tickets for me and my granddaughter , and that I had put them in a 'safe place.' And then couldn't find them. So I took her there anyway. Told the ticket booth people my sad tale. Of course she could find my name on any ticket holder -- because someone else had bought a whole group of tickets. Thought of my friend's name. Nope, not on their records. I finally remembered the name of the school. Someone at that school had bought a bunch of group tickets. 

Naturally the ticket booth people didn't know which seat I had tickets for, but I was allowed to go in. So I stood in the aisle (in the balcony) in the general area our group was to sit and waited while all the rest of them filed in. Finally we figured out the two empty seats, which had to be ours. Yes, we very much enjoyed the show. (granddaughter was seven - and it turned out that the song her dance class performed at the dance recital was one of the Lion King songs. (That's MY song! she gleefully whispered)