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Lo tech. Hi marks.
Feb. 4th, 2009 06:48 pmEleanor sent a copy of a goofy video to our next-door neighbor earlier this week. Yeah, this one:
Not long after that, Sally emailed her back to tell her that she didn't quite "get" the point of the thing, since her current computer doesn't have speakers.
Ya think?
I shot right over with a set of external speakers left over from my Frankenputer days and got her back into the full audio spectrum of all the Stupid Shit on the Internet™. I also turned her firewall back on, began a download of an XP Service Pack that's probably been sitting there for a month, and yet for all of my Mad Puter Skillz, wound up feeling like a dunce because, for the 15th straight February, I managed to forget about her birthday.
It should be easy enough to remember, dude. It's the first of the month, as are most of the significant ones in her family. Still, she doesn't have a blog, so LJ doesn't send one of those Birthday Reminders for Dummies™ emails of theirs; and there isn't a cluster of them around hers as there is with other friends and family of mine in late July, and early September, and around my own November odometer-turn; and so I forget.
Until now.
----
Sally thinks she burdens us with asking us for help with her technology, and her animals, and her occasional home and family issues.
All due respect, neighbor, but if you feel that way, you are selling yourself, and your heart, and your generous spirit wayyyy short.
From the weekend we moved in here, Sally was family. Even before the boxes were unloaded, she invited us to meet her whole brood, including her then 7-year-old granddaughter (she's now 21) and their just-adopted Dalmatian puppy (who became our dog Tasha's only beloved friend until he died seven long winters ago). She's always been the "emergency contact" on Emily's school forms, from Moppet Room to Eleventh Grade, and has never hesitated to help in any way we've ever asked her to. When Eleanor came up lame three weeks ago, it was Sally who came by with two home-cooked meals while we were struggling with what might have been wrong. When her own daughter turned on her oldest granddaughter, she opened her heart and home to Erin to make a place for her that endures, all these years later, rescuing the education and spirit of one of the most deserving young women I've ever met. She's mended those fences over the years with her own daughter since then, while maintaining a (relative) level of sanity with her other kid and with the assorted domestic animals they continue to leave at her house on a regular basis. These include a neurotic beagle-Pit mix and a (no shit- they checked) 25-pound tabby who, really, is not fat, just big-something'd.
I know you're reading this (or you will be when the damn Windows update finishes), so I offer these words, thicker and heavier than a single year deserves, to make up for these past fifteen Februaries of forgetfulness. Happy belated, Sally ::hugs::
And enjoy this, too, now that you have sound:
Not long after that, Sally emailed her back to tell her that she didn't quite "get" the point of the thing, since her current computer doesn't have speakers.
Ya think?
I shot right over with a set of external speakers left over from my Frankenputer days and got her back into the full audio spectrum of all the Stupid Shit on the Internet™. I also turned her firewall back on, began a download of an XP Service Pack that's probably been sitting there for a month, and yet for all of my Mad Puter Skillz, wound up feeling like a dunce because, for the 15th straight February, I managed to forget about her birthday.
It should be easy enough to remember, dude. It's the first of the month, as are most of the significant ones in her family. Still, she doesn't have a blog, so LJ doesn't send one of those Birthday Reminders for Dummies™ emails of theirs; and there isn't a cluster of them around hers as there is with other friends and family of mine in late July, and early September, and around my own November odometer-turn; and so I forget.
Until now.
----
Sally thinks she burdens us with asking us for help with her technology, and her animals, and her occasional home and family issues.
All due respect, neighbor, but if you feel that way, you are selling yourself, and your heart, and your generous spirit wayyyy short.
From the weekend we moved in here, Sally was family. Even before the boxes were unloaded, she invited us to meet her whole brood, including her then 7-year-old granddaughter (she's now 21) and their just-adopted Dalmatian puppy (who became our dog Tasha's only beloved friend until he died seven long winters ago). She's always been the "emergency contact" on Emily's school forms, from Moppet Room to Eleventh Grade, and has never hesitated to help in any way we've ever asked her to. When Eleanor came up lame three weeks ago, it was Sally who came by with two home-cooked meals while we were struggling with what might have been wrong. When her own daughter turned on her oldest granddaughter, she opened her heart and home to Erin to make a place for her that endures, all these years later, rescuing the education and spirit of one of the most deserving young women I've ever met. She's mended those fences over the years with her own daughter since then, while maintaining a (relative) level of sanity with her other kid and with the assorted domestic animals they continue to leave at her house on a regular basis. These include a neurotic beagle-Pit mix and a (no shit- they checked) 25-pound tabby who, really, is not fat, just big-something'd.
I know you're reading this (or you will be when the damn Windows update finishes), so I offer these words, thicker and heavier than a single year deserves, to make up for these past fifteen Februaries of forgetfulness. Happy belated, Sally ::hugs::
And enjoy this, too, now that you have sound:
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