Down the Hall on Your Left

This site is a blog about what has been coasting through my consciousness lately. The things I post will be reflections that I see of the world around me. You may not agree with me or like what I say. In either case – you’ll get over it and I can live with it if it makes you unhappy. Please feel free to leave comments if you wish . All postings are: copyright 2014 – 2021

Archive for the category “Amazon”

I Am Being Productive…Honest.

WELL, HERE WE GO AGAIN. It is 6:30 AM. I have my coffee in front of me and my pen is in my hand…and I haven’t the foggiest idea of what comes next. I know that I should have glowing prose spilling from my brain onto the page. But, as I stare at the empty paper in front of me all I can think of is, “I’d rather be back in bed.”

It took me only five minutes to turn on my phone and check my overnight mail. Most of it was junk. There was one very nice note from a new reader praising a post from last week. That’s always a nice way to start the day. It is certainly better than having some disgruntled insomniac telling me how wrong I am about everything and that my writing style sucks like a ten year old Hoover.

Take a number and get in line. Our Complaint Dept. opens at 9 AM – after my coffee and meds.

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Old Dog … New Tricks

JUST BECAUSE I’m retired doesn’t mean that my brain is sitting on a shelf in a dusty glass jar labeled “Abnormal.” Far from it! I am always looking to add new skills – new arrows in my quiver if you will.

It has been almost eight months since some pesky virus I’ve been reading about began throwing monkey wrenches into everyone’s daily lives.

This stop at the Malfunction Junction in our lives has given me the opportunity to discover and master a new skill. It may be that a new avenue could be opening up before me because this Old Dog has learned a New Trick.

The reality is that we are all doing less out in the world and are relying on having the world shipped to us. We are getting groceries, clothing, books, cosmetics, medications, and some things that are none of your business, delivered right to our front door. Everything comes securely shipped in sturdy cardboard boxes.

I love unpacking all of our deliveries. It’s almost like Christmas Morning without the electric trains and the pine needles. I take the scissors and neatly cut the sealing tape, open up the flaps, and lift out our goodies. After that I set the empty cardboard boxes to the side, out of the way.

Aha!

It was on a day like that when the handsome young UPS guy stopped by our house so often that we considered adoption that we were faced with a pile of empty boxes. I spent a couple hours struggling with those boxes to get them crammed into our recycling bin. That was not a good solution to the growing population of boxes that were filling up the downstairs bathroom. They were coming in faster than I could get them out. This problem was going to require some thought.

I sat in the kitchen with a large box. There was not enough room for the both of us. One of us had to go. Finally, I saw the solution in front of me. I began to tear the blasted box to pieces. I was stronger

than the box and in less than a minute I had that humungous container reduced to a neat little stack of cardboard pieces no bigger than the crock pot. I was deliriously happy. I knew how Einstein must have felt when he realized the “E” did, in fact, equal “MC².”

It didn’t take me very long to get into a destructive groove and those boxes were disappearing faster than taxis in a thunderstorm. I was disassembling the boxes like a tornado going through a trailer park. That Recycling bin in the back yard was taking all I could give it with room to spare.

I am living proof that “Old Dogs Can Learn New Tricks.”

I can already roll over, heel, stay, and sit up and beg. Now I can add “Knows how to destroy cardboard boxes.”

It may not be much, but it’s better than nothing.

Isn’t it?

I Don’t Need It. The Chickens Don’t Need It

TODAY IS OUR LAST FULL DAY FOOTLOOSE IN IRELAND. Tomorrow we turn in the car and spend the night in a hotel near the Dublin airport. On Sunday morning we climb into the big silver bird and fly back across the ocean. It is also the day when the Christmas shopping madness begins. I don’t think the two are really connected, but you never know. At just the time all of those online bargains appear I am quickly closing in on flat broke, busted, disgusted. My wallet can’t be trusted.

It’s a good thing I had no plans on buying anything more costly than a cheeseburger. No fries.

I am getting inundated with the ads, online and on TV, for all of those wonderful things I have no intention of buying. Sure, I’d like a big and fancy new computer, but I don’t need one. My computer is working just fine and does what I ask it to do. It has been doing so for close to ten years now and as long as it does my simple chores I will not tinker with my financial status quo.

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Pull The Plug!

 

IT’S A GOOD THING I’M NOT AFRAID OF SNAKES or I would be exiled from the world of modern electronics and Social Media. Not that our little “Pied a Terre Haute” (that’s French for “My feet hurt.”) is the home to 45 rattlesnakes like that dude in Texas had in his home. No – I’m talking about all of the cords and cables that seem to be everywhere charging and connecting all of our phones, Kindles, and computers.

No matter where I turn I am constantly getting tangled up in those skinny little cords. One end is plugged into a wall socket or power strip and the other end is stuck into one of our electronic gizmos. Those little snakes have tripped me up as they lie in wait ready to pounce as I shuffle by. Ambushed I was!

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Fiction Saturday – “Fortune’s Kiss – A Fable” Part Two

Fiction Saturday – Fortune’s Kiss”

They met in the Mayor’s office at the Town Hall, and as the Mayor sat at the old piano he’d gotten as a wedding gift from his Mother, idly playing a song from his youth, they hatched a plan to solve their problem and solidify their power.

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Fiction Saturday – “Fortune’s Kiss – a Fable” Part One

Fiction Saturday – “Fortune’s Kiss”

Fortune House 3

Part One

Some time ago, in a small town situated in a remote part of the country, there lived a woman. She wasn’t rich, but she was “comfortable.”  She was a rather successful merchant. She ran a brothel.

Her’s was the largest home in the town. It sat, surrounded by rose bushes, on a small bluff overlooking the central square. The only paved street in the town led up the hill to her home. She’d had it paved at her own expense.

The woman was the most admired person in the town, and also the most hated. She was admired by those people who understood and appreciated hard work and a good heart.

She was hated by those citizens who saw themselves as the Elite, the High Society, and the Guardians of the Public Good. She was hated by those people who wished that they were as prosperous, as successful, and as smart as she was.

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Watch The Water

 

I JUST GOT A NEW WRISTWATCH. I know that such a revelation is not earth-shaking, Shake and Baking, or Shake, Rattle, and Rolling.  It’s not any kind of shaking. It is just a wristwatch.

I like wristwatches. Scattered about my corner of Terre Haute (That’s French for “What time is it?”) I must have 25 or 30 wristwatches. Most of them came from E-bay which means that very few of them cost me more than ten bucks. My newest purchase came from Amazon. It ran me about $30, shipping included. Read more…

The Play’s The Thing Wherein I’ll Catch The Conscience Of The King

SOMETIMES I AM MY OWN SANTA CLAUS! I hadn’t planned on it. It just happened as a byproduct of finally doing something I should have done ages ago.

My desk usually looks like Dresden after World War Two. Calling it a pile of rubble is generous. It had reached the point where I didn’t know what was stacked up there. Anyway – the other day I was looking for a small pocket knife that I know had been on my desk at some time in the past. I was rooting around when I saw something that was held together with a rubber band. It looked like a bundle of plastic cards. I gave up on the knife. It will work its way to the surface at some point, but the plastic cards had my attention for the moment.

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I Need Protection

I CAN’T HELP IT. Deep down in the core of my being I am a nerd. I know that on my surface – what the world sees – I am this Super Cool, Hip, Macho, and Stylish Dude, but… You’re not buying this are you?

The only part of those words listed above that are true are that I am a nerd. I, unfortunately, have documentation to prove it.

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Alexa: The Singing Hockey Puck 

 

THERE’S A STRANGER IN OUR HOME. Her name is Alexa. She is not very big – maybe about the size of a hockey puck. And she never shuts up.

I do admit that Alexa only speaks if you address her by name, but once she starts she likes to hear the sound of her own voice, synthetic though it may be.

Alexa is an “A.I.” – an Artificial Intelligence persona created by Amazon that verbally connects you to the Internet. I’m not yet completely convinced that this is a good idea. Why? Because…

Alexa is a “Know-it-All.”

And we all know how much fun those people can be to have around, Artificial or not.

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The Benefits Of Travel

1I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A GYPSY AT HEART. All the clichés are true when it comes to me. “The lure of the open road,” “The grass is always greener…yada, yada, yada,” “On the Road Again.” There must be a hundred or more that call out about the sound of the train whistle in the night and the hum of the tires on the pavement. A gypsy, a nomad, and wanderer, even terms that carry a negative aura – hobo and drifter. All of them pick at the deep seated strings of my being

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It’s “Lime Green Wednesday”

LEOPARD-AND-DIKDIKI PICKED “LIME GREEN WEDNESDAY” for no particular reason. If Black Friday can have a color, so can this super-duper sale day. If you want to call it something else, go ahead – I won’t object.

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