Vacation Pictures

Okay, there is nothing quite like a brand new computer! It still has that new computer smell and jumps around as fast as lightning. But I have to admit that I become really attached to one after I’ve had it for a while. It’s kind of like your favorite shoes or a well-worn baseball glove; a part of the family. But when something goes wrong…I have to stop myself from throwing it out the window! I’m glad I don’t have such a volatile relationship with my family.

The latest near-miss episode involving my virtual best friend happened last night. Granted I had no business even being on the computer given the fact that I had just driven the six hours that officially ended a four day beach vacation. I should have been unpacking or cleaning up the dinner dishes, but what I really wanted to do was scroll through my vacation pictures! Milk it just a few more minutes!

I took the card out of the camera and slipped it in my card reader as I have done a million times before. I scrolled through the thumbnail images and chose several to email some friends we had met there on a fishing trip. I leaned forward slightly for a closer look and the laptop moved just enough to bump the USB connection of the reader with my freshly suntanned leg. The computer made the “new hardware” sound and the images disappeared. When I tried to open them back up...that damn loose USB port! Now it said that the SD card needed formatting! I had well over one hundred pictures that would be wiped out by this function.

I immediately looked online at several SD card repair programs that claimed to be absolutely free, but that was only to look at the pictures. “Oh, you mean you wanted to save them? Well that will be $39.95, you should have said so before you loaded all the software”. Luckily my wife stopped me before I downloaded a direct link to a Russian boiler room. Under direct orders to “leave it alone” I went to bed and promised to visit Office Max the next morning.

Luckily the clerk at Office Max had no idea what I was talking about. “Why don’t you just format the card yourself” was the best she could do. Wow, I never thought of that! Can I just throw my camera in the trash here or do I need to take it home and put it in the recycling? Sorry, the impatience returned there for a second. To make this story simply too long instead of way too long, I’ll finish up here. After a desperate plea, a Facebook friend sent me an article that mentioned a program called PhotoRec. It was absolutely free and it not only retrieved my vacation photos, it brought back about 200 more that I had long since erased from my camera! It runs in a DOS format that I don’t begin to understand, but it can’t be too hard because I saved my pictures! I may just keep that old baseball glove a little longer!

Pompous Grass

When I traded my home and 80 acres in the country for a subdivision inside the city limit, I saw no need to keep my tractor. Of course my wife didn’t think that was the best of ideas, but I was really kind of tired of trying to keep it running anyway. I don’t know the exact acreage of my current yard, but the little push mower I owned seemed to be adequate to preen what little lawn I was now charged with maintaining. I must have forgotten what dragging around a lawnmower in 100 degree heat really feels like!

One of the best ways to combat the pain of outdoor work in this type of heat is to only work early in the morning and late evening. Unless you are retired, or independently wealthy, this leaves the evening as the only option for weekday maintenance. Get off work, eat supper, drink a couple of beers, and see if you can have a heart attack before bedtime! Wait a minute…it sounds like I’m complaining about summertime. I’m better now; I just slapped myself.

I thought of one such summer evening this morning as I read a friend’s Facebook post about a battle waged with a clump of Pampas Grass. It was probably my second season in the new house, and I was doing my best to finish cutting the scorched summer grass with what little daylight remained. The main part of the yard was done and I was trimming the little strip that touches the street. After pushing the mower all the way to my neighbor’s mailbox, I turned to drag the screaming beast in the opposite direction. If the heat was stressing my heart, what I turned to face almost stopped it! Every one of those awful English horror movies I watched as kid had just come true; I was locked in a death gaze with Count Dracula!

Okay, it wasn’t an actual vampire, but my heart was a little slower at figuring this out than my head was. This stoic demon I faced was actually my dark-headed, dark featured Romanian neighbor that I really didn’t know very well. The fact that he was offering the use of his “sit-down” mower calmed my nerves a touch, but I was still shaken as I relayed the evening’s events to my wife and daughter. Of course they thought this was pretty funny, and once I sat down and stopped stripping cloves of the garlic bunch, I enjoyed a pretty good laugh at myself as well. I knew what his real name was, but from that day forward he was referred to (in private of course) as Boris.

Fast-forward a couple of years and I’m sitting on his back deck having a taste of his favorite scotch. His English is not perfect, but after a couple of drinks we seem to understand each other pretty well. But alcohol also has a way of relaxing the tongue and after I slipped the first time and called him Boris (he didn’t notice) I decided to just pack up and go home before I did it again. I walked through the dark mumbling his real name over and over; doing my best to bring the truth to the forefront!

That was a long story to explain my grandmother’s love of pompous grass! But what I do know is that she knew (at some point anyway) what the real name of this plant was. But she had used her pet name for so long I doubt that she remembered anymore. Her name for this plant was so etched in what she knew that I feel sure it sounded funny to say the correct name. If you say, or think… or hate something for a long enough period of time it becomes the truth.

A path

Buried in my list of unpublished blogs are three drafts, written about the same subject, that I just can’t seem to finish. I think I know what I want to say, but each time I begin I end up spiraling in several (often unrelated) directions. How could a subject so simple lead my mind in so many directions? I’ve made an executive decision to just lay it out there and see where everyone else’s mind wants to go.

The subject in question is a small dirt trail carved neatly into the thick green grass of my lawn. This path winds around the side of my house from the garage to the back steps and is as neat and smooth as any made by man or machine. Both of my cats and my current dog use this path on a daily basis and I have even witnessed the propane delivery guy drag his hose around back using the trail as though it was made just for him. At only a few inches wide, I have always been amazed at how permanent this trail has become.

The machine that carved this path was a little 35 pound border collie. Even though he has been gone for almost two years, the trail is as neat and smooth as the last day he used it. As I was cutting the grass last weekend, I have to admit that my heart skipped a little when turned toward this side of the house and noticed the path; he was a good guy and a great companion. But I also understand that he created this trail simply because it was the shortest distance between to places he wanted to be; he wasn’t carving a monument to honor his existence.

But as we go about our day to day lives, how do we know exactly when we are creating something as permanent and lasting as this faint little trail? Maybe we should just assume that we always are. Speak as though someone is listening; act as though everyone is watching. You never know, one of those little trails you are carving may be one that will still be here long after you are gone.

The World is Round And I Can Prove It

The ink on my marriage license was probably still wet when I began looking for a good spot to build a house for my wife and I. Of course I was a rookie husband and didn’t understand (yet) that all I really needed to do was put my wife on the task and it would be solved. Once she was on board we would go from simply looking and wishing (man style), to actually purchasing (woman style). Though this was almost 25 years ago, I can still remember it like it was yesterday; “What do you mean you need to think about it? This is what you said you…we…wanted. Just sign the damn papers!” I did; she was right.

Of course I needed a second push not too long after we moved on to the property. The trailer we were temporarily (this is a relative term…as decisive as kind of or probably) calling home was the complete package; cozy, mine and paid for. I had my pre-planned share of responses to the I-though-you-said-we-were-going-to-build-a-house music that had become the soundtrack of my life, but the one I usually settled on was our lack of money. “What do you mean you need to think about it? You said if you…we…could get the money we would build a house. Just sign the damn papers!” I did; she was right again.

If I sat here and continued to tick off the timeline of my life it would end pretty much with the same few sentences as the previous paragraphs. I have no doubt that most successful relationships are fairly similar even if the roles are reversed; somebody fattens up the hog and the other makes food out of it. I’ve lived long enough to know that the history books left out the part where someone (Mrs. Columbus?) said “You said the world was round and if you had the money you…we…could prove it. Just sign the damn papers! He did; somebody was right, again.

We all need that little push of validation and we rely on it whether we realize it or not. It is so easy to accuse others of back seat driving and second guessing your well-laid plans, when the real problem lies with our ability to have our good ideas perfected. Credit is both fleeting and worthless; too much is harmful. To throw the dart and hit the bullseye on the first try is, and will always be, luck. You can be really good, but you will never be a champion alone.