Playin' back that 45.

Two Sundays ago, I stood in the chancel of my hometown church and told them about my sister Sandy, who died 24 years ago that day. One thing I mentioned, binding her to them, was that she had been married in that very sanctuary.

Which she was, 45 years ago today.

I was seven and the ring bearer. I have no pictures of the ceremony, but I have always saved this portrait of the wedding party, taken, I think, in the very Nassau County park that Nicole started and ended her race in two Sundays ago:


I'm not in that one; I'd been dispatched to Babysitterland before the photo shoot and reception got under way.  My only other talisman of the day was from that reception:



As for the rest of that cast of characters, other than the happy couple, and our other sister Donna on Sandy's right, I have only the vaguest memories of who they were. I think that's a Sheila on the bride side of the party; and tall dude to Jean Pierre's left was Peter, or Pierre?  By the time I began cementing memories in my preteen years, all those assorted friends were out of their lives, as least as far as I knew. Their later Long Island neighborhoods, and their hospital and brokerage workplaces, brought new ones, a few of whom we'd meet again in 1988 and, even, 2007.

They made it 20 years. Not without some conflict, nor some tense moments when you wondered if they would make it, but they had two girls they adored, parents who needed them, by then, as much as they needed our parents, and a home that did endure.

So we remembered two weeks ago, and again today. Two weeks from now, we'll remember Jean-Pierre's passing, which will be five years this next November 7th. For me, the hardest thing about his passing- which followed a life well lived and a cancer fight well fought- was that his second wife completely purged Sandy from all recollections of his life on those days. Not a picture, not a note, not even a freakin' matchbook.  It took us to make sure she was there- and she was. Telling Muriel to go play in traffic:P

Far as we know, she still lives in the house my nieces came of age in. The girls have not been back inside it once in those almost five years, and it pains them greatly to have had those memories stripped from them like so much bad 1970s avocado green wallpaper.  Yet, I tell them, it's just a house. Sandy made it a home, just as she still makes ours, and each of theirs, one that will, also, endure.

Stupid is as stupid does

Several examples of that from just today.

The Bills, for one (for 53 is more like it- a total team suckage effort, that).

Office Depot, for 2.0.  I tried to solve my keyboard male-female problem this morning, and was assured that their $16 PS2/USB adapter would do the trick. It looked wrong, but dude assured me it would work, which of course it didn't. That required a second trip back, where I scored a perfectly serviceable Windows keyboard, also with USB input, for six bucks less than the cost of the adapter.

That, and a wireless mouse, are now in there. Internet remains elusive, but once I've got programs and such updated, I really won't need wifi on there.

Just now, though, I managed to out-stupid even their clueless sales force.  We've laughed on a few occasions around here when Eleanor, now mostly using an Android tablet, checks something out on a Windows laptop and tries to maneuver things by poking at the screen.  I almost beat that miscue just now, after giving up with my troubleshooting for the night and commanding the XP desktop to shut down, I reached for the flatscreen monitor and started to push it to the keyboard. As if it was the lid of a laptop.

Didn't, though, so that's something.

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Speaking of "male-female problem" things: There's this, where an angry young man complained to a British ladypart-product company about its false advertising of how unrealistic their portrayals were of women on bicycles and skydiving and otherwise flipping their cooters to their Aunt Flo. Reality wasn't anything like that once a month, and he was right pissed about it.

The CEO in this answer "ad" is fake, but the message is one bloody brilliant beatdown:

As for me, the only qualm I've ever had was with the guy (and, face it, it probably WAS a guy) who named a line of these products "Always." Okay,  I know "Never, except when it means I'm not pregnant when I don't want to be" might not fit on the tin, but still....