Gloomy Black Friday

As a matter of fact today I'm glad I don't do any Christmas shopping! The crowds! The stink!

Had to go to store with Dh to get something needed for the car. I avoid doing that as much as possible because i don't handle most stores--- phewy! But I needed to go with him today...

We don't really have black friday here but they tried for the first time this year I was told. Not the stampede here like in the US but all of christmas season is still hectic and crowded and even stinkier
than usual. But what I saw as I dashed along quick as i could was rows of junk and shiney stuff, piles of bright colored bits of things meant to dazzle your eyes. To my eyes all i saw was tons of junk that one could easily do without and frazzled faces pondering what goods to buy this year.

Not my idea of christmas. I used to make Christmas gifts and that I do miss... THAT was MY Christmas!

I had a disappointment this week too. Unless it's still hiding in a box somewhere, which I doubt, my Christmas Village is missing from our move. It was several hand painted buildings each personalized to represent some family member or memory, a few figurines, pine trees, a town Christmas Tree, a couple of LED vintage street lights... We would make a new piece to add each year, the family sitting down a few nights in November or December painting or creating something new to add. Last year I took a bunch of tiny dowels and cut and painted them, bundled together to look like firelogs.

I was inspired by my great grandfather to do this. (and I love miniatures!) Great grandpa was renowned in the family for his sandbox. My mother told me that he had all sorts of things (scenes)
in that sand box and he would keep adding new pieces. Then each time the grandkids would visit they'd go look to see what was new. Perhaps the idea came from the German tradition of giant creche
sets I saw in a National Geographic once? They would set up whole rooms with scenes and would continually add to them. Then each Christmas season they'd go visit the neighbors and look at what they had done that year. Sounded like a neat idea to me!

So my little village has gone missing and I'm so sad. It seems that the unpainted plaster of paris buildings are loosing popularity as they are missing everywhere this year, save for a few and those are terribly expensive. So I guess I'm going to have to forego my little tradition until can figure out an alternative type of building that tickles my fancy--- or find some at some thrift shop somewhere?

When New & Improved Ain't!

So many products today are labeled "NEW and Improved!". Have you ever asked yourself what it is that is supposably improved?

For those of us with chemical sensitivities it often means that they've added something to the once "ok" list of ingredients that now makes it not ok for me! Cleaning products have a new stink. What
they once cleaned nicely now don't work quite as well. Food that tasted fine no longer taste so good. It can get mighty urksome to say the least.

But then there's also new and improved consumer products, like computers. Just about the time you thought you got your computer all sorted out and useable they go and change something which turns
everything you thought you knew upside down! Of course they often do this thinking that you'll just have to have the latest and greatest so you'll buy more. NOT!

For me today it is my new(er) laptop. I loved my old laptop but it bit the dust beyond repair and had to be replaced. Well, I thought, at least I'll have more power, more space and working parts now. And that pleased me. But when I went to shop for the new one I made a discovery that didn't please me so much. All the new latops had keyboards shifted to the left due to having number pads to the right. I had a hunch this might foul up my touch typing habits which, sure enough it has. It's made typing in the dark a bit of a problem! The biggest problem there also has been having to memorize where all the extra keys are located now, and memory can be an issue with me these days, especially in the dark when I can look for them.

However that in no way compares to the larger cause of my major frustration these days. What's with all these hidden touch pad "helps" ? ! It seems every time I'm typing along thinking I'm getting something done, one wrong flick of the fingers and windows are popping up everywhere, or that page of text I just typed disappears, or some other flukey thing takes place! ARGH! I have hunted through configurations and settings looking for all these 'new and improved' helpers so I can turn them off and finally get back to a more sane existence! But some of them either are still lurking out there in my windows setup just waiting to eat my efforts or a ghost lives in my machine. Awwwck!

So now you know why I've been so quiet. I'm not quiet really. The computer ate my homework----


Please! No more 'new and improved' for me!