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Eclipse Chasing 2024 -or- We Flew 1200mi to Texas then Drove Another 400mi to Arkansas -or- The 2017 Eclipse “Brilliant Idea” Put into Effect

April 14, 2024

We left Raleigh-Durham international airport headed for Dallas-Fort Worth airport the morning of Saturday, the 6th of April, 2024. The eclipse was Monday, the 8^th of April, in the afternoon. We were very concerned that our planned ultimate destination, Corsicana, Texas, did not have a good weather forecast. After checking multiple online sources, we knew that our contingency plan was to drive north (and west) because the area toward the Ohio valley was going to have clear skies.

Dallas was crazy town.  At the airport there were one hundred people standing in line to catch the rental car shuttle bus. Many looked like they were eclipse chasers. How bizarre! There may have been even more families because these days could have been school spring break somewhere. When we finally got to the rental car facility, the transaction occurred very efficiently, compared to what we are used to in Fort Lauderdale!

Traffic around Dallas was insane. The highways, the interstates, the on-ramps, off-ramps and merging was a huge mess! It was Saturday afternoon! Why so awful? We finally headed to Corsicana. We arrived around 4 pm. We were starving! We grabbed food at a fast-food place near the hotel.

The hotel was not very welcoming-looking but our room was clean and looked fine. We’re not sure Corsicana is a garden spot – not that we went into downtown or anything.

After getting into the hotel room, we headed to Walmart to buy supplies like poster board, folding chairs, a tarp and PT and TP as well as snacks and lunch food for eclipse day.

We were exhausted after the flight and drive out of the big D (and I’d been sick for 6 days by then), so we plopped in the room. With the less-than-ideal weather forecast for Corsicana and our planned viewing spot, before leaving home we had gambled and made an extra hotel reservation for one night up north in Little Rock, Arkansas, a 5-hour drive away, thus enacting my brilliant plan from 2017, to reserve/use multiple hotel rooms up and down the line.

Sunday, we started our big drive to Little Rock, after a quick breakfast in the hotel. None of the driving was easy – all of it was busy with trucks, rude (usually out-of-state) drivers, high speeds and construction creating narrow lanes. We made it to our hotel in Little Rock, no problem, thankfully – and it was very nice compared to the Corsicana Quality Inn. We plopped our stuff and headed out to check possible viewing sites – on the line about an hour farther north and west.

On Googlemaps I found a church, a livestock auction and a retired Titan II missile silo site that might offer parking, shade trees, and space for husband to set up his gear. First, we headed for the missile site, just because it was on the easy side of the interstate, thinking old government property might be good. Well, no, it had a gate and not much space by the side of the road. However…right in front of the old missile site driveway there was a road that headed to ‘who knows where’ – with not much description on Google maps, other than a large green-symbolized area.

As we headed up the “no outlet” road, off to one side there was a big Arkansas Wildlife sign designating the area as the Ed Gordon Pt Remove Wildlife Management Area. We turned and headed up that good gravel road – at the end of the road there was a large (gravel) parking lot and about 5 creek access ramps and bridges for duck hunters. It was a great spot, with shade trees, plenty of parking, space to set up, and it wasn’t duck-hunting season! We didn’t even bother to check the church or auction locations! This was it!

We drove back to Little Rock, had dinner at Olive Garden, on the other side of a weirdly demolished tiny part of a neighborhood- which husband guessed was tornado damage – and he was right! A little over a year before, end of March 2023 a tornado hit west Little Rock. Really shocking – first time seeing in person how random the distribution of destruction from a tornado can be.

Next morning, after trying to guess how busy or empty the parking lot at the Wildlife Management Area would be, we drove the hour and fifteen minutes. We got there around 10am to get ready for a 1:52pm totality. It was a lovely day, with just a few high wispy clouds and warm, comfortable temperatures. One newish, red pickup truck was there. The owner turned out to be an old fella in overalls fishing. When he finished fishing, we had a little chat with him about what we were doing and how was the fishing. Nice chat. Told us game wardens were there regularly – which we really didn’t believe because it was so isolated. After he left, a few more vehicles came down to our parking lot at the end of the road, but just one stayed.  The little car held two sketchy-looking but very pleasant guys who had driven up from Biloxi, MS – leaving Biloxi leaving there at 1am!

It was nice to have other folks there with us to enjoy the event. We DID get a visit from a Wildlife Officer and a separate Fire Department vehicle but several eclipse chasers just drove in, waved, circled around and headed back out. So it ended up just the Mississippi guys and us.

Husband was all set up in about an hour to hour and a half. The old Eclipse app on our phones seemed a little balky but ended up working perfectly. I put one piece of poster board under a bush and we waited. Linda J. had texted me and her friend Pam’s husband Tom together – so we kept each other up-to-date on happenings. They were in Llano, TX; Linda was home in Sterling, VA; and our closest town was Atkins, AR.

First contact was very cool, viewed through the binoculars with the solar screens.  It showed a little arc subtracted from the lower right of the sun’s disc. Husband had an NSF app running on his phone for a Baily’s Beads research project, I had the camcorder recording to capture environmental, and he had his 35mm on another tripod aimed at the sun. I had my old point and shoot in one pocket and my cell phone in my hand. Husband had created solar shield covers for the binoculars and his camera. We had an hour and twenty minutes before totality so I kept an eye on the posterboard under the bush and husband tried to get his camera and laptop to communicate. We ate a couple of sandwiches and had something to drink.  With 20 minutes or so to go before totality, it started getting cooler. I wish we’d brought a thermometer to know just how cool it got!

With 5 minutes or so to go, the posterboard under the bush really started showing crescents in the shadows. Very nice! With just a couple of minutes to go before totality I saw (and hope I captured video of) the shadowbands on the second piece of posterboard I’d placed out in the parking lot. Husband saw them, too!

All the while, we were putting our eclipse glasses on and off, and looking up, exclaiming to one another how amazing and fantastic it was.

While husband didn’t get his laptop and camera to communicate much, he has a remote that can tell the camera to take photos at set intervals, so his 35mm was beeping and clicking away. I took one of the shields off the binoculars and pressed it up against my phone camera lens and got some good shots at ~50x.

At totality, we removed our personal eclipse glasses and just looked up. Our spot was real close to max line so we got 4 minutes and 15 seconds of totality. It was quite dark, cool, and while the birds had quieted down, the insects got noisier. The darkness in the middle of the day makes you think your eyesight is failing!

We took lots of photos and spent plenty of time looking up.  Spouse’s voice tinged with wonder and amazement during totality demonstrated his joy at being where we were, when we were.

After our mega-four-minutes of totality, we put our eclipse glasses back on. Then we showed the Mississippi guys what the posterboard under the bush was showing.  We started to pack up a bit. I turned off the “environment” camcorder as the sun came back out. Hubby turned off his NSF app. We kept looking up for a few more minutes, but then started taking the cameras and tripods down.

The eclipse was over at 3:11pm – and we were in the Outlander on the road back toward Dallas by then. We had a six-hour drive back to Corsicana and our not-too-awful hotel. The drive was dicey due to a line of thunderstorms and the dark but I drove the first half as fast as I could, then hubby took over as the sun set for real. Luckily, we ended up behind an empty semi-cattle-hauler, who turned on his trailer lights, so he was very visible ahead of us on the very dark roads. And he was moving fast! We didn’t have to endure much of the heavy rain, thankfully, but after dark visibility was pretty low, of course. We were thrilled to get back to the hotel in Corsicana around 9:15pm. Hooray! What a long and great day!

Tuesday started with more thunderstorms around Central and Eastern Texas so we were concerned about flight delays for getting home to North Carolina but the worst weather stayed just south of us. Whew! After breakfast we repacked our bags, in case our flight was canceled, to be sure we had what we needed in our carry-on backpacks. We checked out at 11:00am and headed to the airport. Got there crazy early for our departure time, but that gave us time for a good lunch at TGIFridays near our gate. Right now I’m writing in the plane –  we just left – pretty much ontime, so hallelujah!

Things I would do differently: I would like to have been well. Then we could have eaten at local restaurants but we just couldn’t chance it with my tummy situation. We ate at national chain restaurants the entire time. ☹️  I would bring a thermometer and a colander. I think Mr. Amateur Astronomer would have liked to bring a few more cables and connectors (seriously!) because he ended up not having the USB-USB connector he would have used to get the laptop and camera connected with an extra long cord. I’d bring a roll of tape. I’d get a hotel weeks earlier so we could get a nicer one. If I were all-powerful, I’d move the longest time of eclipse away from Dallas (haha!). I almost wrote that I wish could, “stay closer to the line”, but our hotel WAS close to the line and we had a plan! But then the weather turned against us. At least we got a hotel room for the night-before-eclipse-day, closer to the viewing area, with fantastic weather and we didn’t have to sleep in the SUV like 2017!

Upon arrival we bought diet cokes, Gatorade, bottled water, Styrofoam cooler, apples, bananas, chocolate, twizzlers, ham, cheese, rolls and mayo. We also bought (cheap!) folding chairs, a tarp, posterboard, one paper towel roll, and cheap toilet paper. We didn’t eat much candy or apples, did eat bananas, and ham and cheese sandwiches. And drank diet cokes, Gatorade and water. The young lady at the Quality Inn front desk in Corsicana was happy to take our folding chairs, posterboard, paper towel roll, leftover toilet paper. We left the styrofoam cooler in the room and brought the candy and apples home.

So when’s the next E-clipse, as we say in Arkansas?

It’s Been Awhile – I’m back!

April 14, 2024

I’m back at the blog! I do like my blog. I’ve reviewed one or two of my posts from the beginning, and I’m happy with them.

Several months ago, I remembered blogging about the 2017 Eclipse so I ventured back to wanda-aimless.com to see what we experienced then and any recommendations to “future self” I might have included. My 2017 Eclipse posts turned out to be very helpful – for packing lists, order of events and the “brilliant idea” of getting multiple hotel rooms in different locations for the same night if the weather started looking dicey in our primary spot. Eclipse blogging must be my thing!

Et voila, here we are. I have a 2024 Eclipse blogpost for your enjoyment and my future use! I have no idea if I’m going to be motivated to post again but at least we have today!

Enjoy.

Coping? Happy? Just Surviving? Better Now than A Couple of Months Ago? Worse? Some Ideas for Pandemic-Time Self-Preservation

Did you know sparrows are singing better during the pandemic?  The male birds don’t have to sing as loud as usual to compete with man-made noise like car and truck traffic so they can sing softer with wider range – which sounds better (and sexier) to female sparrows!  During all our struggles, strife, and loss, we should all stay mindful of what has improved in our lives since the pandemic shutdown.  Even if it’s something as commonplace as a birdsong.

October 10, 2020 – Pandemic time is not a good time for a lot of people.  These days are tough for parents, children, frontline healthcare and public safety workers, students, teachers, party people, amateur and pro athletes, and on and on.

Homebodies, introverts, and hermits may not notice a difference in their lives during pandemic time. Extroverts (like me) who enjoy doing activities in a group have not been so lucky.  I’ve been on sports teams and in clubs for so long it’s ingrained in me that one commits to the group and then gets to enjoy the support and synergy of the group, whatever that group might be.  Now I’m isolated from my groups; whether exercise, art class, clubs, volunteer efforts, grass-roots activities, or even neighborhood parties.  I’ve watched and talked to other extroverts and used online and print resources to educate myself about how to get through this tough time of isolation. I’ve found some ways to help myself endure (endure: (verb) “to suffer patiently”).  So, let us be patient and endure. Here’s my list – see if any of my ideas help you to endure. Perhaps this can be a reference for you as we head into the winter of 2020.  

1. Spread out the good things.  Don’t pile all the fun activities you can muster on the same day.  Spread those fun things out across several days or even several weeks.  There aren’t a lot of our usual fun things available to us these days, so don’t pile them up and enjoy them all at once.  This is a long haul.  I’ll say it again:  spread out the fun things across your calendar.  This is related to delayed gratification and it is also part of “something to look forward to” below. 
2. Defeat the “shoulds.”  Those of us who don’t have day jobs, for one reason or another (gig economy, lost jobs, furloughed, retired), may be faced with random attacks of the “shoulds” where we have that mental conversation with ourselves about how we should be learning a new language, we should be cleaning out the expired food in the pantry, we should be organizing the garage, we should be culling the family photos – because we have all this free time.  This was particularly acute a few months ago when we thought we’d be back to normal in a short time so we needed to take advantage of idle time.  Well, we have more idle time than we thought we would, don’t we?  Regardless, the focus of our energy doesn’t have to be our keeping pace with friends or family who report that they’re accomplishing all these wonderful goals.  If you can get some tasks done, hooray.  If you feel like goofing off, and that’s part of your self-preservation scheme, then goof off.  It is mandatory that we eat, maintain personal hygiene, exercise, sleep, look after our elders and our children and each other.  But if we need to do pointless, dumb stuff from time-to-time, that’s fine. Play a video game, watch old re-runs on TV, do a puzzle, take a nap.  The laundry can wait.  Learn Swedish next week or next month or never.  This is the strangest period of time any of us have lived through.  Right now, we just need to get through it.  Give yourself a break and give the “shoulds” a rest.
3. Be in touch, somehow.  If you’re the one who “needs people” as some of my friends have described themselves (me included), sometimes you have to take the initiative and reach out.  It would be great if our loved ones who survive just fine by themselves would know that we need a little conversation but you may need to give them a nudge by initiating the interaction.  Be the inviter.  If they’re nearby, go for a socially-distanced walk.  If they’re geographically separated, set up a zoom, facetime, skype or whatever your platform of choice might be.  Live phonecalls work well, too.  Emails and texts can be a positive but the richness might not be the same as real-time, live, back-and-forth interaction.  Summon up your nerve and put out the invitation.  You’ll feel better.  And, if they love you and know you, maybe they’ll do the inviting next time.
4.  Reach down deeper in your contacts list (what’s a Rolodex?).  A buddy told me that one of the good things to come out of staying at home during the pandemic is the wonderful experience she’s had reconnecting with friends from long ago.  She has a handful of people who were particularly important to her during formative school days, but overtime they have become just occasional Christmas cards-type friends – in the process they have lost touch with what was going on in each other’s lives.  The advent of our new online communications methods, coupled with the boredom of trying to remain safe at home, have helped connect those friends again. I recommend you dig down in your friends list, rack your brain, check your old photos or yearbooks or pull out your Christmas cards list.  You might find that when you reconnect with friends from long ago it’s like no time has passed.  I, myself, received a social media shout-out from a long-lost volleyball friend I hadn’t heard from in over 25 years.  She and one of her teenage daughters were entertaining themselves going through old photos and my face popped up! (I didn’t even know she had daughters!)  It shouldn’t take a pandemic for us to reconnect with our long-lost friends (from school, the volleyball circuit, past neighborhoods or elsewhere), but if a pandemic is the trigger, let’s take advantage.  Reconnecting can reinforce how much those friends meant to us back then and can enrich our lives now during these tough times, and maybe into the future. 
5. Read a new book, watch a new movie, watch a new television series.  Do one of these then be sure to tell a friend because everyone is looking for diversions!  When my zoom conversations with geographically-separated friends run out of conversation topics, we easily shift to what we’ve read or watched lately that we can recommend.  Some suggestions might be too fluffy for your taste, some might be too dark.  I, personally, can’t read stuff that’s too negative or serious (or about viruses) right now.  But others might find some relief in reading apocalyptic stories.  There’s so much available, try for some diversion.  Then pass it along.
6. Keep an accomplishments log.  Journal about your mood and feelings, if it helps.  Jot down some contact-tracing notes every day.  Your Google Maps Timeline may inform you when you went to the drugstore last but it won’t know how many folks you stopped to talk to on your neighborhood walk.  Early on, when I was battling the “shoulds” and not really accomplishing anything, I felt bad.  I started writing down some daily quick entries like, “made a great dinner” or “did zoom exercise” or “talked to Linda on the phone”.  If you think you’re not getting enough done, looking at that nice long list can belie that feeling.  Writing in a journal about my experiences during this time turned too negative and sad for me so I’m just writing my quick one-liners in brightly colored pens on easel paper that I can see from across the room. It brightens my mood.  I also jot down on a paper calendar where we’ve gone out every time we go out, so that we can do responsible tracing, when asked, if/when it ever comes to that.
7. Get a change of scenery.  The simplest thing here is just to get out of the house.  It starts by sitting on your apartment balcony or in your yard.  Go outside for 30 minutes a day, they say. Get outside before winter sets in because winter-time is going to be a lot less conducive to being outside after the weather cools.  I’ve learned for me, going to the grocery store or picking up carryout is not that change of scenery necessary to pick up my spirits.  Too much worry about other people and being safe.  To tell the truth, I also haven’t had success enjoying a drive in the country, either.  Either of those may work for you.  But I’m doing better exploring my immediate neighborhood streets on foot or by bike, or making a quick drive to the beach, or heading to a newly-reopened park nearby.  Nature is good.  Fresh air is good.  Go for a bike ride yourself, maybe.  Or go longer – you may want to…
8. Block time to do something out of your routine – did you get a vacation in 2020?  Do something fun – for several days, even.  If you didn’t get a real vacation during the summer and you have a daytime job, you might have vacation time built up. Take time off from your everyday routine. Set aside a few days to do something out of the ordinary for you. One friend followed the typical aily schedule of our week-long time together at craft school, even to taking a nature walk to start her day and enjoying a musical performance by substituting some of that craft school folk music for her usual music at home. Or perhaps you could cut a deal with an in-house family member to take a time off to swap spa treatments, “I’ll do your mani-pedi and massage if you’ll do mine!”  If the in-person family reunion was canceled this summer, can you recast some of those fun activities in a daily schedule online or within your household?   Perhaps you can turn away from the videoconference screen and rotate between visiting different local parks every day for a few days in a row.  Maybe set yourself up to finish that fun project you started a year ago and never completed.  Take a break from the same old-same old and make it a mini-camp for yourself.
9. Dress up – even if it’s just a little.  You might put on a favorite bright-colored shirt to brighten your mood around the house when you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. Find that nice t-shirt or polo in the back of your closet from a fun trip or sporting event or one that reminds you of a friend. I’ve had a former work friend on a zoom chat tell me that these days she’s wearing the same outfit for an entire week because she’s not going out, she doesn’t garden or do much exercise, so she doesn’t feel the need to change clothes.  Good for the environment, I suppose, less laundry water used, but otherwise, ugh. How about adding a little jewelry?  I’ve been in a couple of zoom chats during which the other participants and I have held up our hands to show we’re not wearing our rings or watches nor earrings or any other jewelry.  I do make an effort to brush my hair, pre-zoom (and I wish my fellow lady zoomers would please put on a brassiere).  But what’s the point of nicer clothing and jewelry, right?  I would like to suggest there is a point.  If you have kids in the house, you still have to set a good example, don’t you?  Without kids to influence, a nice shirt or a pair of pants that fits you well might lighten your mood. Maybe just a couple of days a week. In pre-pandemic days, old-timers like myself would suggest to those of a younger generation that dressing up for an appointment or interview was a sign of respect for the boss or the interviewer. To a lesser extent it’s also a sign of respect to make yourself presentable nowadays to interact with your friends and family, even if it is just two-dimensional, electronic interaction. (Okay, if you’re doing daily 5-minute facetime check-ins with your college student offspring maybe you don’t need to dress up every time.)  Consider upping your game a little bit during your videoconferences out of respect for your fellow participants and also out of respect for yourself.  We’re friends but please – at least put on a bra.
10. Do something you’re good at.  I have found that my mood lightens on those days when I’ve accomplished something (aside from defeating the “shoulds”).  I have also found that my mood lightens almost immediately when I’m doing something I know I do well. Even if it’s something as simple as achieving a difficult yoga pose, baking cupcakes or helping a student with their English homework.  Apply your expertise to a problem, remind yourself that though we’re trapped in a pandemic world right now, there is a better future where you can do even more.  So reach out to…
11. Help someone.  Look around your workplace, among family or friends, or in your neighborhood. If you’re brave enough to volunteer for a food drive or to run errands for someone, do it.  I have volunteered for many years but I’m not pandemic-brave enough yet to mix it up, in-person, with people I don’t know in situations I don’t have any control over, as a volunteer.  If in-person volunteering opportunities aren’t available to you, can you help someone over zoom or facetime?  Or provide a little expertise in your field to a friend on the phone or over the fence?  Perhaps a little distance-tutoring for a student you know?  We all feel better about ourselves and the future when we help others.  The converse of this idea is – if you need help, ask your friends or family to help you.  The helper will feel better for it, too (until the helpee becomes a clingy, needy burden and keeps asking for help over and over again – watch out for that.).  But let me repeat, if you need help, please ask.
12. Buy stuff if you can afford it.  Online. We don’t have the same fun of shopping in person that we had, pre-pandemic – assuming you are someone who used to enjoy shopping (stereotypically, that would be ladies shopping for shoes or makeup and gentlemen shopping for tools or cars – ha!).  I don’t think I was really a mall rat, myself, but every now and then it was fun to go to the big mall and stroll around, people-watching, checking out the window displays, then letting curiosity pull me into one store or another.  Mall wandering has been replaced by roaming virtually through websites and online suggestions from social media platforms.  If you have the means, pull the trigger and buy something.  Pre-pandemic, if life felt out of control, one way of reining in a sense of control was to make a little purchase. This is the simplest psychology out there.  Nowadays, if you feel similarly out-of-control, buy a little doo-dad online.  But maintain control of your buying so you don’t spend up all your spare cash.  Be careful.
13. Hug someone in your bubble.  A lot.  Multiple times each day.  Your body will automatically produce positive hormones that will lighten your mood with just a simple hug.  I like to sigh while I’m hugging but that’s just me.  Kind of like a deep, cleansing breath.
14. Go to the doctor.  Go to the dentist.  It’s scary but they’ll be careful and you will, too.  You have to look after yourself.
15. Educate yourself about your feelings.  There are books and websites that can provide you with some weapons for your resilience arsenal.  In the last 6 months, I’ve read about: happiness, building resilience, getting older, mindfulness, self-care, and getting to calm.  I’m not espousing a cult-like adoption of any ideas you may find, but I’m confident there are nuggets to be gleaned.  Here’s one from the book ‘Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart’ – “The components of happiness are:  something to do, someone to love, something to look forward to.”  What do you think of that?  I’m not sure that’s a perfect fit for me. It certainly simplifies being happy and gives you a lens to examine your own level of happiness, right this minute. Do you have those three components?  And speaking of something to look forward to, of course it can be a trip to the beach or mountains or seeing a friend.  But I also find myself looking forward to ‘hair-washing days’ and ‘cleaning the house days’.  Those are little tasks that help break up the continuity (reference: Groundhog Day movie) a little bit.
16. If you are in the depths of despair and not able to identify why you feel bad, examine your fears.  It took me months of pandemic-time struggle before it dawned on me that I’ve had two basic fears the past seven months since shutdown. My two fears: first, I am afraid of running out of something to do. Second, I am afraid of running out of friends to talk to.  Regarding my first fear of running out of something to do:  there are no art classes, no church, no concerts, no exercise classes at the gym, no nice indoor restaurants, no parties, no safe volunteering activities, all compounded by my moving away from the geographic area I’m familiar with – so no built-in groups of people to talk to, provided by these activities.  Those activities are all “something to do”.  With other people!  Once I identified that fear of running out of something to do, I started to dismantle it. There is really no way I will run out of something to do.  Only by my lack of motivation, I suppose.  I have boxes of my father’s photographs to sort, I can sew masks, I can learn to knit (the beginner kits have been waiting for me to open them and learn for over 10 years), I do artwork, I can cook more elaborate meals that take much more time than my usual 30 minutes. I’m sure you can look around yourself and find many good tasks to do. Therefore, my fear #1 is now dismantled and maybe managed.  On to the second fear of running out of friends. I will now dismantle that.  I will not run out of friends.  Nor will you.  We will dig deeper in our contacts lists, if it comes to that. I have established zoom sessions with several groups of buddies.  I’m sure you’ve noticed there are people who video-teleconference better or more willingly than others.  Identifying those who want to keep in touch this way and scheduling those times can present a challenge.  Appreciating those who love me but aren’t really good at VTC communications is part of the challenge, too. I just have to let them go and figure out another way to stay in touch. My goal is not to overwhelm my friends with my attention! They all know I’m an extrovert stuck in this unprecedented time that favors introverts.  I do wish the ones who join me in zooms would let me know they enjoy our group chats.  I also wish someone else would initiate the communications sometimes.  But if the burden is on me because I’m having the hardest time getting through isolation and these events help me, I will persist as the one doing the inviting. Because it’s worth it! 
17. Find your level of comfortable risk management.  I have a friend who hasn’t been to the grocery store yet.  In seven months, she’s had every bag of groceries delivered to her doorstep.  I, in comparison, never stopped going to the grocery store.  For me, large chain grocery stores present manageable risk.  I try to go when the store is pretty sparsely populated.  I stay away from store employees when they are stocking shelves.  I keep my distance from anyone not wearing a mask properly.  The big grocery store buildings have pretty good ventilation.  I try to get in and out quickly.  I wear a mask and safety glasses.  The glasses keep my fingers out of my eyes and other shoppers from sneezing their germs into my uncovered eyes.  I’ll tell you though, my friend who gets all her groceries delivered decided to make a trip to the hair salon to get a haircut, which she knows is a much riskier behavior than going to the grocery store.  She has shortish hair and she needed a cut, so she went, after requesting maximum safety measures from her hairdresser.  That was her self-determined acceptable risk level.  I have another friend of significantly advanced age who has been going out to restaurants lately – but only if he could eat outdoors.  Frankly, if I thought I was in my twilight years, I might be enjoying myself out in restaurants, too.  But I’m playing what they call the “long game.”  I’m hoping for another couple of decades of going out to nice restaurants, after all this, someday. I love restaurants and miss them terribly. If my friend wants to enjoy life by going out, then he should do it.  For your mental health, if all the folks around you are behaving unsafely in your estimation, try not to be too judgmental.  Also, if all the folks around you are taking too many precautions and are being too careful in your mind, try not to be too judgmental.  As they say, “You do you.”  We all need to measure our own comfort level – and hope that the folks in our bubble have the same risk management level we do.  Try to get everyone in your bubble to agree on the same safety precautions.  However, when establishing your risk level, be smart. Don’t use peer pressure (e.g. no one else at the happy hour was wearing a mask…so I didn’t wear mine) or jealousy (e.g. my friends are going out, I want to go out!) to establish your safety level.  Those aren’t viable rationales. Educate yourself on the current science and set your own level. If you want to continue to wipe off your groceries (knowing that Dr. Fauci doesn’t disinfect his groceries) then continue to wipe down your groceries! If you want to have equally careful friends over for a picnic dinner, then have them over and take precautions.  Just measure your risk-to-reward ratio – make sure the payoff is worth the amount of risk you’re accepting.
18. Do what it takes to feel secure. If you can make your own masks, great. If you want to buy good masks, spend the money and do it.  Just try not to use a bandana (jeez!) unless it’s a last resort.  (Yes, they’re better than nothing. But if you need a good mask, call me, I’ll mail you one.)  If you feel the urge to install a home security system to feel secure, do that.  If you want to buy a freezer (good luck, around here backorders are currently three months), buy a freezer and stock it with whatever food will make you feel comfortable during this pandemic-hoarding-time.  If you want to load up your larder with canned soup and big bags of rice, do it.  There’s a sense of peace that can come with having what you need on hand, in your home.  You may not be faced with food insecurity like some less fortunate Americans but I have to inform you, there’s still no chunky peanut butter in my grocery store.  It’s ridiculous. I need chunky peanut butter!  Load up on paper towels and 409, if that makes you happy.  Just don’t empty out the entire store shelf in one trip.  Leave a little for the next shopper.
19. Acknowledge that you feel sad or angry or impatient or lonely or bored or at your wit’s end.  These are real feelings so don’t tamp them down, push them away, or hide them.  (Unless you need to protect someone who’s more fragile than you, like a child or an elder. Then, off by yourself or with a trusted friend, make sure you acknowledge and feel those feelings.)  Everything is not ‘okay’ for a lot of us. This pandemic lifestyle is awful. So, acknowledge the awfulness, for your own mental health.  But try to not wallow too long.  What are your favorite tools and behaviors to break out of those funks?  Put them to work!  How about this:
20. Play music, sing, play an instrument, watch a favorite concert online or on television.  Stream (or cd or record player or radio) some music when you’re doing chores, cooking dinner, or need to get charged up or calmed down. Music, especially familiar music, is very helpful at reminding us that not all is lost. There’s still beauty out there. Listen to it.
21. Remind yourself that you have it pretty good. I apologize if I’m generalizing here, but I’m making guesses about my average reader.  You, individually, might not have it so good.  I’m sorry.  For most of you, you have a paycheck or a bank account or both.  You have food.  You have a car, a computer, a television, a smartphone and so on.  You can go to the doctor if you get hurt.  If you want to buy a little geegaw to send a friend, you can.  As for me, it hasn’t really helped make me feel better to know that I have it better than others who are suffering more.  As you can see, I end up feeling sorry for them and for me.  But it is worth reminding ourselves that we do have it pretty good when the complaints start to bubble up.
22. Eat healthy but don’t be silly about it.  If you want a cookie, have a cookie.  If you want some ice cream, have some. This is not the time to deny yourself, if a little treat will lighten your mood.  Along with this I must say: monitor your alcohol consumption.  You should know how much you drank pre-pandemic.  Use that as a guide and don’t add much, if any.  Now is not the time to become dependent on any substances.  In the long-term we all know they don’t help us cope.  Excuse me, but I have to go order takeout dinner now – made up entirely of my favorite egg rolls!
23. Daydream.  We’ve learned that having something to look forward to can enhance our happiness.  While not doing any specific planning, there can be joy in thinking about the fun stuff we’ll get to do sometime in the future.  Have a little daydream.  You might find it helpful.  Don’t dwell on what you can’t do right now. Enjoy a little fantasy time.  Just be careful if someone asks you to put down a cash deposit on that fantasy.
24. Get good sleep, no matter how impossible that may sound.  If it helps to have a warm bath or shower before bed, do that.  If you need to exercise to wear yourself out so you can sleep, do that.  Watch your caffeine intake more carefully than usual.  And remember to separate from blue light sources before heading to bed and leave the phone elsewhere and muted or off.  Don’t beat yourself up if it takes a little extra time to fall asleep or if you wake up a little early.  Just do your best to get some rest. 
25. Monitor your news intake. And seriously limit your social media engagement if it brings you down. Educate yourself but be careful. The political climate we’re in has resulted in loads of “made up stuff” on social media. Find real news sources you can trust but watch the number of negative articles and stories you consume from any source.  Unfortunately, and it pains me to say this, also be careful about the number of bonafide scientific articles you read. I love science.  All the data and conclusions are good to know.  Better informed is always better armed to make good decisions for yourself and your loved ones but there’s only so much pandemic-related doom and gloom we can absorb. Educate yourself about pandemic science. Do not trust non-scientists to know science. They don’t, so they tend to make stuff up.  Consider turning yourself away from the bad news (scientific or otherwise) if it gets overwhelming.  If you have questions about the science, ask a scientist or doctor.  I’m happy to oblige, if I can.  I can also recommend sound, well-researched, well-vetted scientific sources online or in print.
26. Exercise.  Do yoga.  We’re sitting around more than ever because we can’t go out easily.  We need to move, we need to stretch, we need to stay strong and fit for the long-term. Getting some exercise might wear you out enough to help you sleep and it will also burn off some of those ice cream, cookie, and eggroll calories.  Yoga will help you stretch those stiff body parts and your yogi’s voice could be a source of calm and reassurance.  If you learn to meditate, you can also help your own mental state significantly.
27. Congratulate yourself for making it this far.  We’ve made it to today (and with a little luck and fortitude, we’ll make it to tomorrow, one day at a time).  We’ve made it through almost seven months, so we can get all the way through, no matter when that will be.  Let us focus on the day-to-day reality.  We’ve put the longer-term future on hold but we’re going to get through this. We will endure!  We’ve already shown we can.  Use this list as a reference for ideas going forward – refer back to it, if you like.
28. Add your own strategies for enduring this unprecedented time.  What techniques are you using to get through?  Maybe one of mine resonates with you.  Maybe one of yours will work for me.  Pass your ideas along!

Cash for Your Precious Family Heirlooms: Silver, China, and Crystal That Has to GO!

March 14, 2020 – Selling Your Family Heirlooms – Silver, China, and Crystal – at Replacements

A few weeks ago a Northern Virginia friend told me about selling her Waterford Crystal to a fine china and crystal dealer in Richmond – she’s been divorced for over ten years and doesn’t want that “stuff” anymore.  She and a friend made the trek to Richmond, visited some family and had a very successful visit with this dealer to turn her crystal into cash and offload some of her stuff.

That got me thinking.  Hubbie and I are preparing for a household move to another state so we are working hard to lighten our load and purge some of our possessions.  Maybe I should consider selling some of our crystal, china, and silver pieces – and maybe we could do better than if we just had a yard sale!

I took a different direction than my friend who used the dealer in Richmond.  I’ve known of Replacements, Ltd. in North Carolina for years.  We’ve driven by and seen it just off Interstate 40, east of Greensboro, North Carolina, many times. They sell old discontinued patterns to help families replace broken dishes.  I figured that must mean they buy all those pieces from somebody…would they buy old stuff from me? Our new house is only about an hour from there perhaps we could make a side visit to Replacements on our next trip to the new house.

I started working on this “selling my old family stuff” project by visiting the Replacements website.  It is very well organized and easy to navigate. It did take a little digging to find how you can sell YOUR stuff to THEM (“Other Services” > “Sell to Us”). It’s much easier to find the parts of their website where they sell THEIR stuff to YOU, of course!

There are two aspects to selling your stuff to Replacements.  The fun starts when you try to identify what you have to sell.  You need to figure out your piece’s manufacturer and pattern name.  Some china manufacturers stamp their name on the back of the dishes, sometimes even including the pattern name. That makes it easy. If the name isn’t stamped on the piece and it’s a piece that you bought, you may still have the receipt with the name on it.  Or perhaps if it was your wedding china, you might have a copy of your registry gathering dust somewhere – that registry should have the pattern names listed on it.  Otherwise there are thousands of photographs on the Replacements page to help you match to your pattern. My memory was jogged for the name of my Pfaltzgraff pattern (“April”) by flipping through all the Pfaltzgraff pattern photos on Replacements’ website.  The photography is good so you have a pretty good chance of finding your pattern just by flipping through the pages. Alternatively, if you can’t find your pattern, Replacements will help you figure it out – more on that later.  

In addition to the Pfaltzgraff everyday pieces I wanted to sell, I also had Royal Albert and Hammersley fine china that I didn’t want any more.  Those manufacturers printed the company name and the pattern name on the back of the pieces.  China will garner you a very wide range of prices for selling, so keep an open mind.  More about pricing coming up.

As to the silver and silverplate flatware that my Mom gave me when she was downsizing in late retirement…well. Silver and silverplate is much harder to identify due to the size of the items. I spent a lot of time with a jeweler’s loupe in my hand staring at the tiny stamped writing on the back of silver spoons that Mom had collected over the years. I think she’d just pick up a teaspoon here and there when she visited thrift stores or yard sales.  My parents were coffee drinkers and, as such, Mom kept a cylindrical crystal spoon holder full of silver and silverplate teaspoons on the kitchen table at all times, so Mom and Dad could stir the cream and sugar into their coffee at breakfast and dinner.  I ended up with ten different spoon patterns!  If the silversmith and pattern is a mystery to you, there are other good websites to help you identify the maker’s marks. Google “identifying silverware patterns” to find them.  Some of the silver makers’ marks are a little obtuse or too generic (like “HH”  – who is that supposed to be?) and some are images (is that a boat? a shield? an anchor?), so you have to do some digging and some comparing with the photos online. If you still can’t figure it out for yourself, Replacements has a “I Don’t Know My Pattern” webpage to get their help on identifying some of my patterns. You provide a photo and the dimensions of the piece through their website. Unfortunately, when I asked, they couldn’t help me much.  They couldn’t identify my oddballs either!

Once you know your manufacturer and pattern, it’s time to ask for an “Offer to Buy” from Replacements via the webpage.  This is the sequence:  you establish a customer number by giving them an email address.  You identify your patterns one-by-one. Then they’ll send you a listing of all the pieces, specific to your pattern, that were ever manufactured – with a price for the pieces they will buy.  This is your “Offer to Buy,” good for 30 days. You can use Offer to Buy to identify which pieces you want to sell.  Then either you visit Replacements or you ship what you want to sell to them within 30 days. If you miss that window, of course, you can ask for another Offer to Buy.  Sometimes I received the Offer to Buy within a few hours, sometimes it took up to their maximum-stated 5 days. 

Now a disclaimer to everything I’ve written above:  sadly, Replacements may not want to buy what you have to sell. Or they may offer you such a low price, you might as well donate to a charity thrift store (and deduct it on your taxes) or try to sell it yourself at a yard sale. For example, my Pfaltzgraff April pattern pieces were priced in reverse to what I thought they would be. I had four everyday little bowls and three large, interesting-shaped serving pieces. They offered me $1 and $2 each for the large serving pieces and they offered me $5 to $7 each for the little bowls! That’s bizarre! But you can figure out that their pricing is all based on supply and demand. That’s why your pattern-specific Offer to Buy is only good for 30 days.  Their prices are constantly being updated by their evaluators, appraisers and inventory technicians.  (Hubby and I couldn’t imagine how the pricing was done before computers, but some old Replacements catalogs gave us the impression that pricing and valuations were done on an annual basis. You could image they would have a large inventory of some patterns and pieces and run out of stock on others by the end of any catalog year, right?)  So with the upside-down prices on my Offer to Buy for Pfaltzfraff April, I decided I’d sell them little bowls and keep the $1 and $2 serving pieces to sell at a yard sale at our house before we move!  Wish me luck!

Replacements was not interested AT ALL in any of the silverplate flatware I wanted to sell. When I was a child, we used silverplate as our everyday knives, forks and spoons.  Just like silver, you don’t want to put the silverplate in the dishwasher, so we had to handwash all the utensils after every meal.  And, of course, they had to be polished from time to time to manage the silver tarnish.  What a pain!  In 2020, I don’t want to use those pieces, then handwash and periodically polish my everyday utensils!  I think the issue was that back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, most stainless steel utensils looked like they came from a school or prison cafeteria.  If you wanted something nice but less expensive than solid silver for everyday, you bought silverplate.

Thinking about why I have all this silver…did I say my Mom liked silver?  I think it was her attempt at hedging against the poverty she experienced growing up during the Great Depression.  Metals like gold, silver and platinum would always have value, so maybe to her thinking if you kept some precious metals around – just in case – you could sell them during the next big economic downturn in order to buy bread and milk.  I guess it worked out better than investing in beanie babies!

As our move date approached, I hustled and identified (or photographed and had Replacements help me identify) over twenty-five patterns!  I wanted to sell silver flatware, silverplate flatware, silver hollowware (sterling silver serving pieces like creamer, sugar, etc.), china and crystal/glass.  As I wrote above, Replacements wasn’t interested in buying ANY of the silverplate.  They also “couldn’t identify” or were “not purchasing” any of the family crystal/glass.  They wanted the Pfaltzgraff dishes but didn’t offer enough cash.  I also had some nice Lenox serving pieces but they weren’t interested in those (why not? they’re pretty!).

The next step depends on whether you are going to ship your items or visit in person.  Since we planned on visiting, I can’t tell you about packing your stuff.  However, we saw hundreds of boxes other folks had shipped to Replacements – just waiting in the warehouse, ready to be appraised.

If you want to visit in person you need an appointment. I called Replacements about 10 days in advance to pick a time to visit on our next trip to central North Carolina.  The appointment scheduler wanted to know exactly how many patterns and how many pieces I would be bringing in order to budget enough time for the evaluator to figure out how much it was all worth. Then they would cut me a check!

At our appointment time, when we arrived at Replacements, we used the special Sellers’ door not the retail entry.  We entered a gigantic metal building with row after row of enormous shelves, huge stacks of cardboard boxes and, in the distance, floor to ceiling (a 50-foot ceiling!) shelves.  So many shelves!  We were greeted and asked to wait a moment while another seller was finishing her appointment. 

For this visit, I expected to sit next to the appraiser-evaluator as they checked out my pieces.  But the person who welcomed us said but that Replacements is not like an Antiques Roadshow kind of scenario where you interact with the appraiser because that would take far too long. Darn!

I filled out a short form, she asked for the copies of my Offers to Buy and my identification, and asked for my cell phone number so that after the appraiser-evaluator was finished someone could call me on my cell phone to return to the sellers’ area of the building. I was very disappointed. I wanted to watch the process so I could learn about the stuff I was parting with. Instead, she took my box of stuff and my pile of papers and told me she would call in an hour or so when the evaluator was finished and then she (the greeter) would tell me how much my stuff was worth. Very disappointing!

At that point we were shown the path to walk from the back of the building, where the sellers’ entrance is, to the retail store at the front of the building. As we followed an orange line on the floor through the warehouse area to the retail store and museum, we saw sky-high shelves of inventory. The scope of this is hard to imagine.  Millions of pieces of china, crystal and collectibles. Think of that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark and you’ll have some comparison. 

We needed to entertain ourselves for over an hour, so we walked around the retail store and museum, helped ourselves to a cup of coffee and went on the official tour of the complex. Thankfully, they do warehouse tours every hour.

We enjoyed the tour.  It included lots and lots of statistics:  history of the place; how many pieces of china, crystal, silver, collectibles; how many of the 408 employees are related to one another, charitable works by the founder, and so on.  And “please don’t pick anything up as we’re walking through the shelves”.  (I only picked up one piece!  Oops!)  

On the tour, we saw all variety of china, silver, crystal and collectibles from Lladro to Mickey Mouse to old Roseville. After the tour, we went back to the retail store and asked about buying a couple of additions to our everyday flatware and china.  We just wanted to see if there were any pieces that we couldn’t resist or that we needed to add to our home Inventory. We decided that we would pick up a couple of teaspoons and another sugar spoon, another big serving fork and a couple of tiny little cocktail forks. Not exactly sure what we’re going to do with the tiny cocktail forks but they’ll be fun to use for parties.  I then got the cell phone call that it was time to go back to the sellers’ area where all of my china and silver was laid out on a workspace counter.  The woman who brought us in and took my box when we arrived walked us through everything that the evaluator had done. That reduced my disappointment a little because I got to learn a little bit more about my pieces.  As I packed the box back at home, I had also thrown in a couple of oddball extras for which I didn’t have Offers to Buy. The evaluator was very considerate about those and offered a little bit of money for each. The greeter lady then cut me a check for the pieces Replacements wanted to buy and a check for a 20% discount off the pieces that we had picked out in the retail store.  You get that 20% discount because you are a seller.  That was a nice perk.

I managed to sell 36 pieces of silver in ten different patterns and seven pieces of china in three patterns. The china was all mine but most of the silver was given to me by my mother – some of those spoons dated back to the early 1800’s (but some also dated to the early 1990’s!).  As my mom got into her nineties, she became a serious “let it go” and thin-out-your-belongings advocate, so I don’t think she’d mind my parting with any of it. Plus, I made a tidy little sum.  

As we try to thin out our belongings for our household move, it was great to get real money for some of the old stuff we’ve never used and don’t want to keep around.  I consider that I got very good prices for the solid silver pieces that I don’t want anymore.  Replacements in Greensboro, NC is just one place that will buy your family heirlooms.  Their reputation for fairness precedes them.  You can ship your stuff to them after you get your “Offer to Buy” or plan a visit.  You can also try ebay or rubylane or other online sources for selling your family heirlooms.  Then you don’t have to worry about your precious family heirlooms ending up melted down or crushed in a landfill.  Someone will certainly come along and love your family treasures again someday.

 Perhaps you’d like to get rid of some stuff, too! 

Adventure at the DMV

(December 12, 2018) – Several weeks ago I received a Virginia Division of Motor Vehicles form in the mail reminding me that my driver’s license would expire on my December birthday and stating that this year I had to appear in person at a DMV office.  That certainly sounded like no fun at all.  To top it off, the form included information on acquiring a “REAL ID” if I wanted to, instead of just a standard driver’s license.  What’s a REAL ID, I asked and you may well ask?  Beginning in October of 2020, the federal government will require an approved form of ID (the REAL ID) to use as identification to fly domestically or to enter certain secure federal facilities like military bases. Most importantly, TSA won’t accept a standard driver’s license with your boarding pass to let you on a plane.  I figured I might as well get the REAL ID now.  Check out the REAL ID Act online for more info.  The only physical difference between a REAL ID and a standard license in Virginia is a star in the upper right corner that indicates it is acceptable for federal purposes.  To get a REAL ID Virginia Driver’s License you have to prove your identity, that you’re here legally, and you have to prove Virginia residence.  You also have to provide proof of your SSN, if you have one. And you have to provide your current license.  I wanted to get the REAL ID done in one trip so I was sure to take more documents to the DMV than I needed. The day before I planned to go I pulled out my passport, last year’s 1099-R (a retirees’W-2),  our mortgage statement (proves residence), two other pieces of mail with home address and postmark (you’d be surprised how many pieces of mail don’t have postmarks anymore) which also prove residence, my birth certificate (faded and kinda crumbly!), and our marriage license and certificate (for name change proof).  To get the list of the required and commonly used documents, go to dmvnow/realid.

Two days ago I made my trip to the DMV office.  Here’s how it went:

 930am – Leave home with documents for “REAL ID” in a pocket folder, driving to the mall where our closest DMV office is located
940 – Arrive at closest entrance to the DMV office, a door into JCPenney.  Penney’s doesn’t open ‘til 1000am, so there is actually a sign on the glass window saying “If you want to go to the DMV before 1000, go to a mall entrance.  We’re not open.”  Nice.  Back to the car for the drive around.  (It’s a big mall.)
947 – Re-park near a mall entrance, walk through the mall the long way, and arrive at DMV office.  I walk through the empty zig-zag “rope-line” to be about 4^th in line inside the door (this will be significant much later in my story), watch the uniformed (but unarmed)security guard show a “No Food or Drink” sign to a young woman a couple of places in front of me.  She then dropped her three-quarters-full Starbucks cup into the trashcan.  How much did THAT cost her?
953 – I make it up to the first counter. I am friendly, smiling, and making a little small talk with the counter lady.  There are two counter ladies at this first spot, both taking customers. My counter lady asks what I want to do at the DMV, I say, “REAL ID”, she asks to see my documents, tells me I did a good job with what I brought (thanks and yay!), she hands me a form to fill out (looks a lot like the form I received in the mail – which I’ve already filled out but apparently didn’t need AT ALL).  She’s highlighted the important sections on the new form.  She also gives me my waiting number.  I am I115.  The “I” and the “1s” are confusing but I think I can handle it.  We’ll see.
954 – I take a seat for what I think is my first of several, successive waits.
958 – I finish filling out the form. When the pair next to me gets called 2 minutes after they sat down, I’m motivated to talk to the man next to me – he’s been here for an hour already with other family members.  Not sure what they’re mission is…and why so many relatives are needed.  Perhaps a show of support for some DMV stressful situation?
1003 – I notice there are eight-ish windows open at the counter.  There are about 32 of us seated in rows, waiting for our turn.  There’s a TV monitor hanging high in the corner of the big waiting room.  The monitor shows who’s being served at which window.  The numbers and letters for who gets called next make no sense (as hubbie informed me before I came today) so you can’t tell if you’re next or 50th in line.  (E250 was followed by A11at the same window.  Wha?)
1009 – I’m still patiently waiting.  I have pessimistically allotted two hours for this entire adventure.  I believe that’s what hubbie endured back in July.  (Plan for the worst, hope for the best?  I do have to get to yoga in three hours!)  Hubbie’s and my licenses both expire this year.  Maybe our license expiration dates synched up when we moved 6 years ago, or maybe it’s our five-year age difference. Anyway, his renewal visit, for a standard license, took two hours at the same DMV office in July.  How long will my experience here take?  While sitting patiently I look around and notice a disproportionate number of my fellow waiting people are on crutches…is this a thing?  Hurt yourself (or have surgery) and go to the DMV to get your driver’s license renewed or register your car???  Or register the new car you had to buy when your car was wrecked in the accident when your leg was injured?  Oops!  Or you’ve got the time because you’re too hurt to go to work but you can make it all the way into the mall office to get DMV administrative stuff done?  None of the crutch-bearing people are near me, so I don’t get the chance to interrogate them.
1015 – Time is ticking by. I don’t know how many lines I will eventually have to wait in.  I keep thinking my wait has really just begun.  Are there separate lines for handing over paperwork?  Then another wait in line for the eye test? Then another wait for the photo? Then a final line to pay?  I might have to wait over and over! I’m finding it hard to play a game on my phone as I’m worried I’ll miss my number being called and be stuck here until closing time.  I know that’s ridiculous because they’ve called A12 six times – even after he made it to his assigned window several minutes ago.  I definitely won’t miss I115 if it’s called six times!  I’ve also brought reading material; however, engaging with my magazine seems like it will take even more of my attention away from listening and watching for my number.  Come on, I115!
1019 – I’m curious.  I want to get up and walk around to look at the different kinds of lines at the windows.  How many will I have to wait in?  Plus, I want to check out the different vanity plate formats displayed on the wall. But I like my chair location with its good view of the TV monitor and good view of the counter windows.  So I’m getting territorial (it’s what I do!), and staying seated right here!  I don’t want to lose my good spot!
1025 – Looking around I notice there are 6″ x 8″ blue and silver metal placards (the colors of a road sign, get it?) riveted to the large, black plastic, kitchen-sized trash cans in the waiting area.  The signs say, “DMV PROPERTY” – as if folks regularly come to the DMV Office to steal the 4-foot tall trashcans…?
1029 – Oh, boy!  I115 is called! Hooray!  I’m up out of my seat like a shot!  My number came up just a about two minutes after I114! How did THAT logical sequence happen?  (Okay, there may have been an R number or a C number in those two minutes but it turns out you should track the numbers that sound like yours! You may be next!)  I walk up, as directed by the disembodied voice, to window #5. Window #5 counter lady looks at me expectantly, so I hand over my license and the filled out new form.  She still is looking at me expectantly so I decide to start with the biggie and hand over my passport for identification.  Then I hand her my 1099-R (as a retiree, I get this instead of a W-2).  Incidentally, it not only has my SSN on it but also my current address, so it also should be a proof of residence – but I then hand over our mortgage statement with my name on it anyway, for proof of residence. I also start to wave my two pieces of postmarked mail, and my USAA insurance documents with address (is insurance a “utility”? Later, at home, I ask hubbie to add my name to the utilities, please).  I also wave my birth certificate and marriage license but counter lady seems satisfied with what she has.  So I’ll say this…I think all I really needed was my passport, my W-2 equivalent (even from last year!), and maybe the mortgage statement.  I’m not even sure I needed that last one.  But I brought a folder-full of documents just to be sure.  No way was I going to do this twice.  Counter lady starts to enter my data.  Then she points to the machine that I haven’t noticed yet, just to my right on the counter in front of me. It’s the eye test machine. “Please read the first line.” It’s twelve (sixteen?) letters, like at the eye doctor.  Thankfully, it’s easy.  She says, “Good.”  She’s still entering information.  She then points to the free-standing camera that’s just a bit off the counter, closer to me, tells me to back up to the side wall on my other side and smile. Wait!  It’s all happening here, at her spot?  I don’t have to go to another line?  Wow!  And whoopee! She gives me a moment to straighten my hair.  I smile, she flashes the camera at me.  I don’t worry a whole lot about how crummy this photo will be because last night I looked at my current, soon-to-be-expired license and the photo is black and white.  When did licenses start using black and white photos?  (Okay, apparently many years ago.) I figure you can only look so good in black and white, shrunk down on a plastic card, so why worry about the photo? It’ll look bad, undoubtedly.  Then she points to a small digitizing signature pad. I ask if this is for the signature on the license, she says yes, so I slow down my usual scrawl so that it’s a little bit more legible.  Then I click “I Agree” several times on a different digital pad for “my info is correct” and some voting stuff.  An interesting thing then happens.  My counter lady switches places with the counter lady next to her (is this a double-check? for REAL ID? Hmmm.), they look at the other’s workstation monitors and do a little typing, then switch back. My counter lady and I chat about retirement while the system processes.  (Incidentally, I heard I116 called after I was with my counter lady for about 4-5 minutes. So not a bad wait time for I116 either.  And somewhat in sequence.)  My counter lady hands me a printed, letter-sized piece of paper, my temporary license, to sign.  She tells me my new REAL ID will come in the mail in 7-10 days.  My current license expires in five days, so I’ll use the temporary license in the interim.
1038 – I’m out of here.  As I walk out, a man’s voice says, “Hey, Amy!”  It’s Ian, who runs the clay supply store.  He is standing outside the DMV door, in the zig-zag ropeline, waiting to see the first two counter ladies to get his number.  There are now about 30 other people waiting in line with him outside the DMV office door (as well as a similar number in chairs in the big room).  I didn’t have to wait out here at all. When I told him how long I’d been at the DMV, the woman behind him jumped in the conversation and said, “But the website said the wait was just 30 minutes!”  I replied, “You haven’t even started to wait yet.  You’re still outside.”  Sorry!  As I walked away, after wishing Ian a Merry Christmas, I remembered my last visit to his store.  His sporty little car was not in the parking lot so I figured he wasn’t there.  Turned out he was there, driving a loaner car because just a couple of days before, in daytime traffic, when a stoplight turned green, a deer tried to jump across cars at a suburban traffic intersection.  The deer landed on his little car, destroying the hood, windshield and roof, pretty much totaling his car. When I saw him at the DMV, I assume he was titling a new car on my driver’s license day.

To wrap up, my odyssey at the DMV turned out to be just a visit, not a real odyssey.   Fifty minutes total, which I consider a triumph.  I chose to go to the DMV on a Monday.  The office opened at 800am, I got there at 947am.  The line was much longer – just to get in – when I was finished and left at 1038.  The night before going to the DMV, I put effort into being prepared.  And while I was there, I tried to use some common sense:  be friendly and patient.  While I stood at window #5, I heard a DMV worker at window #3 telling a customer that Fairfax Station was her (the customer’s) city.  It’s on her mailing address!  How could she not know her own address???  So, no guarantees, but with a little common sense, a little preparation, a little patience, and a strong effort to be friendly – your next visit to the DMV might not be too painful!

Are You Old-Fashioned? Am I?

(May 13, 2018) – I’ve been feeling old-fashioned lately, even as I adopt more and more up-to-date habits.  I feel very 2018 when I pay for ev-er-y-thing with my reward credit card, including piddly little items like a $5 smoothie.  Cash?  Old-fashioned.  I also feel very 2018 when I re-acquaint myself with French – not with an old high school workbook but on a phone app.  Then I go to the grocery store where I use the self-checkout in a very modern way.  But wait, Duolingo launched in 2012 and we’ve been doing self-checkout since before the turn of the millennium (an idea hatched in the mid-1980’s!). Maybe I’m not so 2018. Hubby and I just did our first Airbnb experience last month – Airbnb is new, right? – nope, Airbnb has been around for almost ten years!  Suddenly, I’m not so up-to-date.  I only check one of my three email accounts on my phone and save the other inboxes to read on the desktop computer.  That sounds old fashioned.  Most of my email is junk mail anyway, full of shopping-related spam (from Gap, Wayfair, Hanes and more) which outnumbers my friends’ or business-related important emails.

I’ve done some researching and some thinking about new versus old – about “cool new tech” vs. the “good old way”.  This all started with how I write this blog.  Back in high school, I learned to type on a manual typewriter.  We were taught to use two spaces after each sentence-ending punctuation.  My fingers are still pretty good at touch-typing but they aren’t good at converting to the new, “only one space after a sentence” vogue. That means I’ve been editing all my final drafts for this blog by taking out the extra spaces after a period, exclamation point or question mark.  I feel ridiculous doing it but with modern, variable-width fonts it seems that only one space is the norm now.

Then I came upon this article: “One Space Between Each Sentence, They Said.  Science Just Proved Them Wrong” by Avi Selk, May 4, Washington Post.com (url below).   The article describes past disagreements about one space or two after the end of a sentence.  Then it summarizes the work of three psychology researchers from Skidmore College, “who decided it’s time for modern science to sort this out once and for all.”  They wrote a paper, published a couple of weeks ago in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, which cites dozens of theories and previous research, and ultimately shows that two spaces after the period is better. The conclusion: It makes reading slightly easier.  Control-click the link at the end of this post to see how they came to that decision.

Still, as a human being who’s been around for a few decades and witnessed cultural, natural, and technological changes whipping by, I started to think about other old-fashioned methods I have stubbornly hung on to.

There are some older rituals that seem to be more respectful and honorable, even in their dated-ness. I like sending real paper Thank You notes when I think the level of gratitude calls for it.  I do send bona fide snailmail Sympathy cards when a friend’s loved one dies.  What’s the alternative?  A comment in Facebook?  Though I’ve done it, it doesn’t seem proper to me.

Some folks also live on (even past their expiration date, sometimes, ahem) in my hardback little address book – and many other friends, who are still extant, are found only in that little paper book, having not graduated to my cell phone or email contact list.  Why keep that paper book instead of moving all that information into my contact list? Because that little book won’t ever up and die like my last cell phone did – taking the contact list with it – followed by a painful backup seek-and-find scenario I had to fight through.

Here’s another paper mode I’m stuck on:  my recipe card file is 3×5 cards (or are they 4×6?), in a little box.  My wooden recipe card box sits on a cupboard shelf right next to my Mom’s metal recipe card box.  The more modern version of me branches out to go to the phone for recipe ideas when I’m making something new that won’t be in either box:  just how much Worcestershire sauce do I need for that Remoulade recipe?  Ah, ha!  Found it online!

How about this?  We have picture wall calendars affixed with pushpins right behind the monitor I’m reading this on right now – but I’m not sure they are there for the date reckoning or more for the fabulous pictures of original series Star Trek cast members.

Here’s another true confession:  we also have a full-size paper calendar blotter, 1½ feet by 2 feet with big boxes you can write in easily – sitting on the kitchen counter.  I always check it before committing to a social engagement.  The problem with that paper calendar is this:  it does not jump off the kitchen counter to tell me about an upcoming meeting or doctor’s appointment occurring in just a few minutes, like the fabulous calendar app on my phone does.  I love that calendar app!  I’m still trying to get hubbie to use the calendar on his phone but he hasn’t missed quite enough meetings yet.  He’s getting close, though!

When we go on “important” trips, I take a camera-camera.  It’s in addition to my fabulous up-to-date super smartphone camera.  The little camera, even though it is wi-fi enabled, is still just a camera.  Well, it’s a video camera, too, I suppose I should say.  For all you youngsters, back in the day we had to have one camera for still photos and one “camcorder” for moving images.  Crazy and old-fashioned, huh?  Of course, my phone-camera has higher resolution and does cooler tricks than my camera-camera – like the phone camera can mimic aperture control with variable focus (so cool!).  But I do like having a dedicated machine with its own battery (and an extra!) with which to take photos.  Plus, I really like taking photos. Carrying a real camera means I have a backup plan.  When my previous camera went kerflooey on a trip to Scotland, I could keep shooting with my phone, which worked great, of course…even if every picture was tilted a little to the right!

But that brings up the issue of what to do with those digital photos in this modern age.  Sure, I’ll drop a few into a Facebook entry.  But the most photos I’ve ever posted on Facebook at one time were from our Italy trip a couple of years ago – twenty-seven pictures total in Facebook.  Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?  That was a nice selection but back in film camera days, when I was making real photo albums full of prints, twenty-seven photos would cover six or seven pages of a fifty-page album.  Are these little Facebook albums doing justice to our trips and other important events?  I still have a pile of scrapbook-y stuff from that Italy trip.  And a totebag full of good memorabilia from the Scotland trip, two years before. All that good material isn’t on Facebook, it’s just lying around taking up space. I must dig deep down inside myself to find the motivation to make all that good stuff into organized albums, which will include lots of printed photos.  The joyous aspect of those old-fashioned photo albums is that they don’t require log-ons, passwords, cords or batteries, or potentially provide hackers with personal information!  There will just be memories, reminders and history.

By now, you’re well aware that I don’t write in a paper journal when something comes into my head.  I word-process (type?) for this blog. But as a supervisor (just a couple of years back), I used to hand-write all the first drafts of my employees’ annual performance appraisals on legal-sized pads of yellow paper.  I felt the need to be creative, thorough, and really capture the employee’s performance for the year.  The words came out better via a ballpoint pen than a keyboard. Then, once streamed out onto paper, I would edit while typing it all into Word, followed by one last step to copy-paste it into our personnel system.  That multi-stage system worked for me and I was proud of the job I did writing up fair, complete, thoughtful appraisals.

I don’t keep a daily blog or paper journal or anything like it, unless we’re on a trip. I blog when I feel like it.  I do keep the big blotter calendar pages from past months to look back at, just so I can check when I last had an appointment with that doctor or when we had those friends over for dinner or how many days was that Florida vacation?  Those big pages are easy to flip through and search.  I think my phone calendar app blows away the entries from yesterday and all the previous yesterdays.  Not good for historical searches.  I’ll have to check.

I also do that other thing that boomers are accused of that looks so old-fashioned.  I write SMS texts in full sentences. Subject>verb>object, for the most part, spelled out words and all.  I used to have a fellow that worked for me who used as many abbreviations in his emails as he possibly could, assuming his readers would understand his odd abbreviations.  And I’m not talking about his using USA for United States of America, or PC for personal computer, EOD for End of Day or any other of the normal government abbreviations, of which we had many.  Oh, no, he was former military so he’d abbreviate “nothing further” as nf, meeting to mtg, and on and on.  Those were the easy ones.  I felt like I was deciphering a coded message just reading a run-of-the-mill email.  Phone texts with lots of abbreviations do that to me, too.  If taking away one little space after a period at the end of a sentence has a negative affect on the reader’s comprehension consider the impact of turning “your” into “ur” and “be” into “b.”  Yuck!  Spelling it “ur” means pronouncing it “uhhrrrrr” not “your”.  And “b” is just looking for the rest of its letter-friends to make a word.  Old-fashioned abbreviations like a delta (δ) for delete or, one I learned while temping at IBM in Norfolk: a pi (Π) for negative, or “w/o” for without or “w/” for with – well, I’m down with all of those – but I’m just SMH b/c IDK, but OMG ILY & I’m just a NOOB so I want 2 just say FWIW, it sometimes gets out of control, ICYMI.   DGMW, I’m LOL w/ my silliness but can’t we just take an extra two seconds and write out the real words?  TTFN and THX.  Yeesh.

Back to paper versus digits, I confess to switching back and forth between reading books made of paper and glue and reading books made of digits and plastic on my Kindle.  The Kindle is fantastic – I bought mine for a more-than-a-week trip to Hawaii, where I expected to spend significant time on the beach.  Hauling four or five or more books all the way to Hawaii seemed energy- and space-wasteful, so I purchased a Kindle (way back in 2011 after they had been available for a short four years!  So hip, was I!).  I just can’t get the hang of knowing how far along I am in the “book” with the Kindle.  It tells you how you are doing by measuring the percentage of progress through the digital book.  I like knowing if I’m moving too fast through a good book and should slow down – or if I’m moving too slowly through a crummy book and I might as well give up and set it aside.  Thumbing through the paper pages of a real book, I get instant awareness of my progress.  Even though I think I’m pretty good with percentages, it’s just not the same looking at the progress bar or seeing a numeral on a Kindle.

Here’s another one:  I love my iPod.  I have two, actually.  I wish I could squish more digits into my Nano and my tiny, little old Shuffle.  I use them for different purposes but both are filled to capacity.  To tell the truth, I don’t like the way the music sounds on the iPods very much.  I’m not such a throwback as to prefer the warm, scratchy sound of vinyl but I do like my crisp, clear sound of music on a CD.  Yummy for the ears.

As a research sidenote for context, speaking of long ago, the first commercial release CD rolled off the assembly line on August 17, 1982, at a Philips factory in Langenhagen, Germany. The first title released was ABBA’s “The Visitors”.  In America, the first CD made for commercial release was Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” in 1984.  Almost 35 years ago.

To me, CDs sound much clearer than the iPod.  Perhaps I’m fooling myself and you could tell me my old ears can’t hear the difference but I think they can. Don’t even ask me about my bitrate!!!  For another old vs. new, I KNOW I can tell the difference between an average FM radio connection and the average Sirius-XM reception in my car (note:  XM – founded in 1988, launched in 2001).  Satellite radio has always sounded to me as if it’s coming from underwater – like through clouds, you know?  I suppose that’s because it is!!!   And don’t even ask me about XM compression issues (because I have no clue)!!!   The fabulous list of choices on satellite radio that sound a little warpy and wavy are still better than listening to the same 10 songs on our local FM station over and over!

This zooming by of technology is fun to watch and sometimes fun to be a part of.  Granted, technology doesn’t always work perfectly, as we all know.  I’d say I’m running about 50-50 on getting my boarding pass to go to my phone (depends on the airline).  Thankfully, paper boarding passes still work just fine everywhere.  I’m sure there are many technological advances we’d all like to flush down the drain – like robo-calling and spoofing phone numbers that result in our getting spamcall after spamcall.  The trade-offs are immense – what technological breakthrough would you give up in order to stop the spamcalls?  One-day shipping from Amazon?  Would you give that up?  Laser measuring tape?  Having fun on Facebook/Instagram/Pinterest?  How would we connect with one another? Online blogs? If I were that old-fashioned I’d be writing for the local newspaper!  But hold on – what’s a “newspaper?”

“One Space Between Each Sentence, They Said.  Science Just Proved Them Wrong” by Avi Selk on May 4, Washington Post.com  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/05/04/one-space-between-each-sentence-they-said-science-just-proved-them-wrong-2/?utm_term=.b679f6ccd33c

Some of my list of Old-Fashioned vs. Modern Advances were derived from “11 Things Worth Doing The Old-Fashioned Way, No Matter How Many Fancy Gadgets You Own” by Sadie Trombetta,  Mar 5 2015, bustle.com  https://www.bustle.com/articles/66037-11-things-worth-doing-the-old-fashioned-way-no-matter-how-many-fancy-gadgets-you-own

Wanda’s Words – Ineq vs Iniq, Nobility, and Fun Names to Collect

February 9, 2018 – Some great words this week – I’m not sure they’re particularly useful in everyday life but they’re fabulous anyway!  In honor of a published essay by the best niece ever, the first word is “hegemony”.

Hegemony is “preponderant influence or authority over others; domination; the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group.”  As in “The countries battled for hegemony in Asia.”  Pronounced hi-ˈje-mə-nē , -ˈge- ; ˈhe-jə-ˌmō-nē.  Which means you can say “hi”- not like hi, hello but with a short i sound like in ick or you can say the first syllable “he” like in she and he – and for the second syllable you can say a soft or hard g with a eee sound or the ick i sound, then for the last two syllables you can say “many” or “mony” like Billy Idol sang in Mony, Mony.  It’s a wonder anyone ever says this word at all with all the alternate pronunciations.  Maybe it’s just used in writing!

How about a pair of words that look like the same word?  Those would be inequity and iniquity.  The first is easy to figure out since it has “equity” in it.  Inequity means injustice, unfairness or an instance of injustice or unfairness.  Iniquity is similar but meaner.  Iniquity means gross injustice, wickedness, a wicked act or thing, a sin.  Like I said, it’s meaner!

A couple of fun, rarely used, old words:  poltroon and ducal.  A poltroon is a spiritless coward. You can shout that over the hedge when your neighbor’s dog has befouled your lawn.  Call your neighbor a poltroon. Ducal is an adjective that means of or relating to a duke or dukedom.  Don’t talk about Dukes and Earls much?  Well, if you did it would sound like this: “Explore the estate’s historic orangery and garden before heading inside to learn about the ducal summer residence.”

If you’re curious about where a duke falls in the ranks of British noble peerage the ranks look something like this, from lowest to highest:  baron, viscount, earl, marquess, and duke.  For your information, you pronounce viscount as vi-count with a long i.  Marquess is alternately spelled marquis.  If you spell it the first way, you say mar-kwess.  If you spell it the second way you say, mar-kee.  For your pleasure, m’lord!

The last word for this week is aptonym.  It can also be spelled aptronym.  I like the first one better because it focuses on “apt.”  The definition of aptonym is a name that is aptly suited to its owner or a proper name that aptly describes the occupation or character of the person, especially by coincidence.  Cool, huh?  As in, Dr. Byrd taught ornithology in the biology department at my college for 50 years (he did, really!).  John Beard always had a beard.  Or our friend, Dr. Gary Carver, who is a retired solid-state physicist but sells his wood carvings at art shows (carverscarvings.com)!  Or his colleague, Don Wood, who make pens made of – you guessed it – wood!  Perhaps you know of some of these aptonyms.  They’re kind of fun to collect and consider.  I suppose we should all be happy we’re not burdened with the last names of Klutz, Failure or Disaster!

It’s Your Last Name, Are You Using It Wrong?

January 15, 2018 – Like me, I’m sure you’ve seen it all.  Friends who sign their Christmas cards with funky spellings, or sign themselves up for neighborhood responsibilities oddly, have a welcome mat that doesn’t look right or RSVP for their family with weird punctuation. I did a little survey of the Christmas cards we received this past month.  The vast majority of senders sign with a version of from “Bert, Sue, and little Mikey”.  Simple: no last names, no plurals, no confusion.

It’s the pluralizing that messes folks up.

But those plural goof-ups are easily corrected. I shall attempt to simplify how to pluralize your last name.  Three little tips might help:

Tip #1.  Making a last name plural never involves an apostrophe. The members of the Johnson and Smith families, for instance, are the Johnsons and the Smiths, not the Johnson’s and the Smith’s. Never use an apostrophe to make ANYTHING plural.  Not for a name, a noun, or a pronoun. Apostrophes are for two uses:  possessives and contractions.  Possessive is “Bob’s car is dirty.”  Contraction is “Bob’s going to the store.” (The apostrophe substitutes for the “i” in is.) If there’s a meeting of many men whose name is Bob, and you want to pluralize Bob, then you write, “All the Bobs were gathered in the auditorium.”  No apostrophe for the plural. (Only exception for this is the apostrophe for plural letters like, “I got all A’s and B’s” and “cross your t’s and dot your i’s.”)

Tip #2.  If you’re making that Christmas card and you’re unsure, just say, “The Smith Family” and don’t worry about the plural.  Just keep it singular, like: “Merry Christmas from The Jones Family”.  Ta-da!  Or use your family members’ first names: “Merry Christmas from Sally, Stephen, and Maybelle”.

Tip #3.  So how DO you make your last name plural?  For most names, add an -s to make them plural.  For names that end in ch, s, sh, ss, x, and z, add -es to make them plural.  There is an exception to this rule: if your last name ends in ch but is pronounced with a hard /k/ sound, like the word monarch, add only an -s rather than -es.  With names that end in y, you don’t use ies – like we do with the noun “baby” which becomes “babies”.  Kennedy becomes Kennedys.  Just add the -s.

Just remember:  don’t use an apostrophe!

Some examples of the tough ones:

One Bosch becomes two Bosches, One French becomes a family of Frenches, Baines becomes Baineses, Jones becomes Joneses, Bowers becomes Bowerses, Jacobs becomes Jacobses, Nunes becomes Nuneses, Perez becomes Perezes, Wolowitz becomes Wolowitzes, McCandless becomes McCandlesses, Ronaldo becomes Ronaldos, Bach becomes Bachs (that hard “k” sound), Gray becomes Grays, Fleischman becomes Fleischmans (not Fleischmen), Randalls becomes Randallses, Riggins becomes Rigginses, Strauss becomes Strausses.

Your spell check might disapprove of the correct forms, but spell check is wrong on this one. If you understandably find words like Edwardses (for plural Edwards) a little too awkward, consider rewording to avoid the plural. For instance, the Edwardses can become The Edwards Family or The Edwards Household.

You worked so hard on that Christmas card: you made an appointment to get a professional picture or you searched and searched through your family photos to find the best photo of everyone – with no closed eyes, no crying children and no blurry dog – now you can get your last name right, too!

(Credit for the examples and some of the explanations is owed to numerous websites and books, including english.stackexchange.com and grammarist.com, as well as the Harbrace College Handbook.)

What’s Important

December 16, 2017 –  As we sat on the warm Florida beach, trying in vain to lengthen summer by just a few more days (it didn’t work – it snowed at home while we were away), I read a bunch of novels, as I do when not gazing at the ocean.

Husband and I both do love gazing at the ocean.

Among the novels, there was one in the romance category that had the struggling, overwhelmed, wonderful woman rescued from all her troubles by the ridiculously rich, but also wonderful, guy.  Those ridiculously rich-heart of gold guys are a dime a dozen in romance novels, aren’t they?  (Check me, I had a few left over metaphors from my novel reading.)

It got me to contemplate how we choose our mates.  (I also had Steve Harvey’s “Straight Talk No Chaser – How to Find, Keep and Understand a Man” in my kindle.  The New Yorker magazine described his first between-the-sexes book, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man”, as “useful for fourteen-year-olds”.  Haven’t read that one yet, either.  I am just SO curious.  More later, maybe.)  Anywho…

As usual in these contemplations, I started with myself.  How did I choose my mate?  What did I have in my list of must-haves, all those years ago?  And here’s the kicker:  what if the ridiculously rich guy had come along to rescue me with all his money…which of the things on the list would I have been willing to sacrifice?  Aha!

How about you?  Did you settle?  Did you settle for the rich guy or gal and give up on finding someone who…what?

That list of must-haves starts with physical attraction, I suppose.  Are you willing to date someone who’s yucky-looking, if he or she drives up in the world’s sexiest car, in my opinion, the Audi R8?  (Look it up, it’s under $200k!)  If you believe in traditional gender roles, how about a guy who couldn’t change the oil in his car or change out a light switch?  Or a gal who said she couldn’t cook?  Or couldn’t stand to do laundry? (Substitute your expectations here.)  If you have all the money in the world, you can afford to have someone change your oil, do your simple electrical, be your chef, and do your laundry for you.  So are those things important, really?

What about the stuff on the list that you can’t buy?  Isn’t that where the important items on the list of must-haves really are?  How about that sexiness/attractiveness thing?  How about your potential mate is kind, friendly, helpful, believes or doesn’t believe in God like you do, does or doesn’t want children like you do? They laugh at your jokes, they’re sporty or not as you prefer, they think what’s important (science, for example, in our case), is as important as you do.

Those things can’t be bought.  The millionaire can bring along the bucketloads of bucks but dollars don’t make anyone friendly or helpful, or lead them to share your sense of humor, or be interested in getting on the tennis court or golf course with you.

I can hear what you’re thinking, yes, of course, you can have your own interests!  And you can develop an interest in lots of new areas that your mate introduces you to!  Art, theater, music, monster trucks, astronomy, model trains (not really – just kidding!), maybe religion, maybe volunteer work.  Maybe what you thought was your line of work, turned out not to be.  We pick up and discard interests all through life.  But those foundational traits and similarities are mostly built-in for the long haul.

Yet sometimes tricky things out of our control happen to change some of those traits.  Over time, we change, even if we’re not trying to.  I was very involved in sports until just a handful of years ago.  VERY sporty.  Lots of sports with the husband.  But time ticks by and may take some of those shared athletic traits away from you, if you’re the average aging athlete. I can’t do what I once did – even though I still want to.  Things change.  And no knee replacement or even minor surgery is going to give it back to me.  Yes, I’m ticked off.  But that’s part of the deal, things and people change.

Unfortunate life events may turn a good conservative into a good liberal (my cousin when his son died).  Some folks get older and just don’t laugh like they once did.  And other changes occur that take away some of your kindness and friendliness and have you focusing on the current trials and tribulations of your own life.

We learn what’s important, I hope, before we make our choices for lifelong mates.  And we grow and learn and we overlook our own and their infirmities.  But we hope that the fundamental, original, attractive, important traits persist:  please stay kind, stay friendly, stay helpful.  Stay smart, be good to animals, keep laughing at my jokes, keep surprising me, and learn new stuff as long as you can!

More Wanda’s Words, Stream of Consciousness, and Letters as Nicknames

December 5, 2017 – To prepare my Wanda’s Words blog entry, I tried to categorize my latest little list of words but failed.  They are just some words I’ve come across reading the newspaper (my usual source) or library books I’m reading.  This time I have some “e” words and a “j” word.  “EJ”, I thought, happily, “Can I call my category “EJ” or is it just someone’s nickname?”  Is EJ a name anyone goes by?  Have you ever known an EJ?  Then my mind went racing, my James Joyce word-freak stream of consciousness…I’ve known AJs, BJs (volleyball friend), CJs, DJs (“Deej” from the Roseanne show, you TV watchers), JJs, KJs (from high school days), RJs, TJs (out the wazoo, as they say), and VJs.

Think about this for a second.  Are there that many middle-named men and women: John, James, Jane, and Jean that “J” is the perfect letter with which folks make a combo-initial-nickname?  What other middle names beg to be combined into a combo-initial-nickname?  Have you known an MB for Mary Beth?  I think there are a few…  How about double letters like CC or CeCe – not necessarily for a name akin to Carrie Catherine but more likely a diminutive for Cecelia, right?  Like DD for Deirdre and GG or Gigi for Georgia or Gianna or even Gilbert.  I call my friend Heidi, “Triple H”, because those are her initials.  Does she know I was a fan of the WWE wrestler Triple H back a few years ago?  And that I’m her fan, too?

I once had a coworker who went by “WG” but that was only because his first and middle names were absolutely heinous.  What were his parents thinking?  “WG” has far too many syllables to make a decent nickname but it was better than using Wilberforce as a first name.  Maybe “Wil” would have been okay.  But no, “WG.”  Wilberforce is a name with a great history (Wilberforce University is a HBCU named after William Wilberforce – abolitionist – who was an English politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to stop the slave trade) but darned clunky on the tongue and to the ear.  Just call me “WG”.  Dub-ah-u Gee.

I guess there are “JKs” out there, but I’ve never known any that weren’t car salesmen (get it?) or on the side of moving vans.  There’s DL Hughley but I’ve never heard of another DL or another combo with “L” as the second letter.

As I run through the alphabet in my head, I think, no, I don’t want anyone to have to be called “PP” but there are plenty of “JRs”, aren’t there?  And “JTs”, too!  Calling someone “DT” could be bad – especially if they are an excessive drinker!

I can’t think of any good combos with “S” as in “Hey, BS, how you doin’?”  And let’s not call anyone “PU” okay?  And the only “V” name I can think of is “JV” but that just sounds like you’re still trying to make the varsity team.

Wow, how off track have I run?  Here are the Wanda Words for you:

Elide – to suppress or alter, to strike out (something, such as a written word), to leave out of consideration, to omit

>>Stick with me on the next one…read through the definitions (I just thought you’d like to see the first, in case you think you know everything but feel like you need to be taken down a peg – because I have NO idea what it means!).<<

Elegiac – of, relating to, or consisting of two dactylic hexameter lines the second of which lacks the arsis in the third and sixth feet;  written in or consisting of elegiac couplets; noted for having written poetry in such couplets; of or relating to the period in Greece about the 7^th century b.c. when poetry written in such couplets flourished;  of, relating to, or comprising an elegy (a song or poem expressing sorrow or lamentation especially for one who is dead); expressing sorrow often for something now past or an elegiac lament for departed youth – ‘The sight of an old ruined church or castle can be a pleasantly elegiac experience.’

Juridical – of or relating to the administration of justice or the office of a judge; of or relating to law or jurisprudence, legal.

Until next time…