Friday 5-7-5

Blue phlox in full bloom
Falling over granite ledge
Winter wafts away

I took this photo early today, before reading a post here at the Blood Red Pencil. A little haiku seems like a nice way to finish off the week.

How is spring unveiling itself to you?

Star Trek: My Generation

I was 21 the year my sister, who’d been in Australia for four years prior, married and moved there for good. For over thirty years, we’ve lived in different countries, continents and hemispheres, not to mention time zones, which can be the hardest part somehow.

If you want to know more about this, you can read here, but for this exercise, just know that, depending on our respective countries' daylight savings schedules, we are fourteen, fifteen or sixteen hours behind her. For most of her life there, finagling around time zones has made for challenges in scheduling phone calls. A good hour for her to “ring up,” in her lingo, would be when I was dressing for work, so I’d hop around holding the phone while trying to button a blouse one-handed. There have been more than a few birthdays (hers) where I’ve set my alarm for 5:30 a.m.to make sure to call her before she went to bed.

What was worse is that when she first moved to “Oz” for good, the telephone communication we could coordinate, occurred accompanied by loud static and echoes. We stumbled over each other’s words and usually hung up unsatisfied. In the 90’s, email allowed for more consistent and understandable contact; for years that was our best bet. But then, here in the US, we moved to broadband, and she struggled with unresponsive dial-up service, which made emailing hard for her.

Finally though, my rural-living sister was able to sign up for broadband a few months back. As a result, something wonderful has occurred. We speak face-to-face now, via Skype, which, I’m sure most of you know about, but for those who may be slightly, er, antiquated like me, is a video conferencing product that works over the Internet.

Now, to be clear, I'm not all that behind the times. Video conferencing was a regular event where I used to work and I became accustomed to conducting long-distance employment interviews via a computer monitor. But doing so required scheduling and testing with the support of a lurking help-desk associate, who would stand by to assist on the regular occasions when the screen went black.

Skype is something different altogether. As long as you've got a camera in your computer (and if you don't, I think you can buy one for under $50) download Skype (easy-peasy), make a user name, and request to friend other users. Once your request is accepted, you can contact each other. That whole process took me about five minutes and later that day, I conducted a test call with another sister who lives over an hour away, then a brother, who is only slightly closer. The next day, I had my first video conference with Australia.

Since then, Aussie sister and I have video conferenced a few times. Each time my computer emits that unique blurt that indicates she’s trying to contact me, I jump around unsure of what button to push. Eventually though, we connect and there she is, on the screen, in front of me so clearly that I can see the French press on the counter behind her. For the first time in over thirty years, I can see her face real time, and other then the monthly price of my Internet connection, the whole thing is free.

To someone who remembers when rotary phones were the norm and phone numbers started with tree names (mine was Cedar-7), the fact that with about three clicks I can see my sister’s face even though she is so many thousands of miles away, makes me feel like I am living Star Trek. Yesterday, she rolled out of bed, made herself a cup of coffee and Skyped me, and I chatted away to her while preparing roasted chicken thighs and brown rice for dinner. We talked for an hour as if we were sitting next to each other and would have gone on, if the timer for my broccoli didn’t bing. Back in my childhood, I remember watching Captain James T. Kirk talk to a computer screen, and thinking it was like magic. Now I do it myself.

I am of a mind that anything that can be imagined can be created. So, I’m looking forward to the next phase of communication. I hope that it will be one that also appeared on Start Trek. In the series, characters visited a “holodeck” and participated in "holograms" where, via computer simulation, they interacted with robotically generated, touch and feel real people, in an unreal dimension.

I’m thinking that by entering a holodeck, I could not only see my sister, I could hug her too.

Failing to Plan, Not Planning to Fail

All Saturday and Sunday, I hoped to get ahead of Middle Passages for the week. The schedule will be full and writing a post or two in advance would free up some time. I am aware that some of the reigning masters of the blogosphere, write their weekly posts in one sitting and portion them out day-by-day. I bow down to their planning and, well, their planning. As more of a proverbial, by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal, occasionally I jot ideas down for future posts, but as of now, I’ve used those up. In truth, the vast majority of topics for Middle Passages come to me the day of, or even while I’m writing, and with appointments almost every day this week, it seemed like getting a jump on a post or two would remove some last minute stress from the agenda.

With that in mind, Saturday, while I transplanted Foxgloves and Jacob’s ladder, hacked out the ferns overtaking the day lilies, raked up a million pine cones, turned my arms to jelly trying to scrape green moss from our patio pavers and lugged piles of winter debris to the mulch pile, I thought about what to write for your reading pleasure. Sorry to say folks, I came up with nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. For a brief moment, as I stooped down low to remove dandelions at the roots, a “digging deep” theme hovered, but it floated away like the cotton seed-heads would have in a few weeks, if I had left the yellow weeds alone.

There was still time though. Yesterday, as I grocery shopped, baked gingersnaps for the senior center coffee scheduled for this morning and, I confess, sat in church during a late afternoon service, I thought about what to write. I failed to pray for an idea though; maybe that’s where things went wrong. Even while draining pasta for dinner last night I felt confident that I could still squeak out a post if only I had something to say. Falling asleep on the sofa at 8:00 did not help with this mission.

Here's the thing. In spite of my inability to conjure up a blurb for Middle Passages, it was a good writing weekend. Between Friday night and Monday morning, I wrote six pages of Morning Pages as directed by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way. And, with out planning to (hmm...), in place of Morning Pages on Saturday, (at Simon's suggestion, see below) I wrote a bit of flash fiction based on a daydream I created to put myself to sleep the night before. Try as I might though, I could not come up with a blog post.

So there you have it. A not post. The best I could do. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

How about you? Do you plan your posts in advance?

Contest Alert!
Two of my favorite bloggers, who are both both clever, witty, funny and above all, talented writers are holding contests, if you are so inclined. Simon, over at Constant Revision is holding a contest to celebrate 250 followers, and Carol, over at Carol's Prints is celebrating 300 followers. Stop over for some fun...oh, and prizes too! If you do visit Simon or Carol and decide to follow them, please let them know that I sent you! ;)

Who Holds the Key?

Those who know us might consider husband and me, well, let's say, frugal. This may be why my regular mode of transportation for the last nine years has been a 1996 bare-bones Jeep. As for hubby, since he drives 120 miles a day, we buy him a new car every five years. When he drives it into the ground, we replace it with the same make and model, and he repeats the cycle.

So, to say that our cars are not luxury vehicles would be an understatement. We don’t have GPS’s, we don’t have built-in MP3 docks and here’s a novelty, we lock our cars and start them ourselves. But when we bought a three-year-old car from a dealer recently, we learned how dear the luxury of starting a car can be.

You see, the used car we bought came with only one key—the kind those of you who've been living in the 21st century probably know about—a key with a computer chip that has to be programmed by a dealer in order to start the car. Out of touch with such transportation, um, breakthroughs, we learned that these programmable keys come at a considerable cost. Gone are the days that you could walk down to the local hardware store and order a duplicate a key for $3.00. Multiply that times 100+, if you’d like the indulgence of driving your more recent model.

The day we negotiated the purchase of our new-to-us vehicle, my husband and I stood firm at our ceiling price. We had two working cars, after all. We didn't have to buy a new one. If the dealer couldn't meet our number, we were walking, and trust me, we were dead serious. Consequently, after the salesman sighed repeatedly and took several trips to “speak to his manager” he agreed to our price, before informing us of one exception. The car we wanted to purchase only had the one key. It would cost us to have a replacement programmed.

Before moving forward, I requested that the salesman call the sister new-car-dealer across the parking lot and confirm the key price, which he did, reporting to us that it would be less then he'd originally indicated. Still, frustrated at exceeding our financial cap, my husband and I took a walk around the parking lot, knowing we’d struck a good bargain, but feeling like the keys were being held hostage. In the end, we settled with the salesman to split the cost of the new key. He agreed to adjust the car price as long as we arranged the key purchase ourselves. We picked up our new transportation the next week.

The car had been ours for two days when I drove fifteen miles back to the sister-new-car-dealer to get my new key programmed. As I handed the one key to the service manager, he hemmed and hawed. “This key is grey. It's a valet key. It doesn’t hold a program so it can’t be duplicated. We’ll have to reprogram the car in order to program a key for you. It will take a couple of hours and cost you $X [triple what the salesman quoted us].”

Our daughter, who was with me at the time, told me later that she watched the color mount in my face. I won’t bore you with the details, other than to explain that after some stern and earnest wording on my part, the sister-dealer agreed to the initial cost quoted for the key. Thank goodness my daughter and I both had reading material. Late that morning we left, new key in hand.

Since the topic was current, on the ride home, my daughter and I decided that as a newly licensed driver, she should have her own key to the old jeep, which will be her transportation going forward. Smarting from the morning’s experience, we were relieved that obtaining one would mean doing it the old-fashioned way.

Arriving at the local fix-it shop, we asked to duplicate a key. Darn, if the owner didn’t look at us and hem and haw. “We don’t make many car keys anymore, since they all have to be programmed.” When we assured him that our 14-year-old key would be about as likely to know a computer chip as a potato chip, he searched a diminishing supply of blanks, determining he no longer carried the size necessary to fulfill our request. It took yet another ride to a larger hardware store where, after looking at us uneasily, a clerk scared up the right GM key blank.

Three trips and one massive headache later, we own extra keys to each car now, so we are good to go. But hear this. In the unlikely event that we ever sell one of these autos, I’m holding the keys for ransom.

Anyone care to share their auto purchase headaches?

Two Quotes for Thursday

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong. Joseph Chilton Pearce

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Albert Einstein

Darius Rucker...and Me

Last night a comment on Middle Passages led me to the unexpected. Robin, at Your Daily Dose wrote a tribute post she calls a “Here’s to You Day.” In it she has pasted YouTube videos that remind her of blogs that she reads.

Robin and I have only been “following” each other for a short time, so imagine my surprise when I found a video dedicated to “Liza at Middle Passages,” which relates (quite accurately I might add) to a post I wrote called "Fledglings," that siphoned a little blood out of me last week. One blogger got Seinfeld, another got “The Princess Bride” and I got--well, the hint in the title notwithstanding, you’ll just have to click over to see what she included for me.

To tell the truth, I was churning inside when I wrote “Fledglings,” still am to some degree, and Robin’s video post, well folks, she nailed it. In my mind this is a special and caring honor and as I take my now-licensed girl off for a college campus visit this morning, I’m grateful to Robin for finding another way to quantify my ongoing emotion as our girl reaches for adulthood.

For some fun and intrigue (and in my case, maybe some tears), check out Robin at Your Daily Dose.

Hint: If you do click over, make sure to scroll to the bottom of her blog first. Turn off her music before playing the clips in order to get the full effect.

Renewing and Redoing

I have yet to make it into the garden this year; green fingers poke through the moist ground with no encouragement from me; the saw-toothed foliage unfurled on the rose bushes while I wasn’t looking. Out back, tender sedum leaves emerge, though the bones of last year’s blossoms still scratch the air above them. Hosta plants push up like curled cigar wrappers while the antique tissue of old summer blooms sway above a hydrangea’s new leaves. All around, the gardens host threads of garlic chives that spread unbidden--lanky tresses of untrimmed hair.

It is past time to get out there and snip and rake, yank and prod, to toss last year into the compost pile so it can blend and decay and leach its remaining goodness into the earth. I'm off to clear around this impetuous growth, to remove winter wrappers and catch up with a rebirth.