Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Technology--or why I'm glad I'm retiring

Technology frustrated me today. Amazon still lists Cooking My Way through Life with Kids and Books as a children's book available for pre-order. It is NOT a children's book, and it's been available for what? Two months? So I asked A&M to deal with that. Then I wanted to post a link to order the book from A&M on my blog, but it's not live yet on the A&M website. Another call down there, wherein my good friend Gayla assured me their new wonderful do-all-things database, called Firebrand (something I will never understand) should be up and running by next week. She was, she said, having a nervous breakdown over the glitches of transition--I urged her not to do that. Transitions to new systems are always hard, I know that. Melinda and Susan are excited about Firebrand; I am simply puzzled.
I printed out directions today for getting my phone set to receive my emails. It once was, but TCU changed the domain or server or something, and now it doesn't get them. Even Jamie couldn't figure it out this weekend, though he kept saying, "I did it before. I don't know why I can't do it now." So I brought the directions home to work with it, but you know what? I haven't had the courage to try, and by now, it's late at night and I'm just going to read. Christian is coming for supper Sunday night--I finally have Jacob's b'day present, so we'll have a belated b'day party for him--and maybe he can program my phone. He's smart about such things.
With apologies to Melinda, I also haven't gotten to the proofs for her book on Texas wineries, but I'm just not going to try tonight. It's late and I wouldn't be bright about proofing.
Had a nice dinner with Betty at the restaurant where we usually order and split the tapas platter--only tonight it was stuffed peppers (I hate peppers) and clams (never eaten them, not sure about them, though I do love shellfish and seafood). We split trout with cream sauce, mashed potatoes, and steamed vegetables. I only ate a tiny bit of the potatoes, and the whole meal came in under my Weight Watchers points--okay, I neglected to tell the computer about the cream sauce because I didn't know how to classify it and besides, it wasn't that much! The restaurant where we went, Sapristi, specializes in mussels, which Charles loves. I have promised to take him soon. The first time I took him there for mussels, he was puzzled by the menu--there was green sauce, white sauce, red sauce, and so on. When the waitress asked what he wanted, he said, "I don't know. They didn't come in colors when I was a kid."
Three more weeks, to the day, until I retire. I'm beginning to get excited about it--and my balance has greatly improved. I think retirement really will be a new adventure--and I won't have to keep learning new technology. As I filed some stuff today, I thought "Who's going to take care of these things when I'm out of here?" but I also felt a sense of relief that it wouldn't be me.

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