Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day

It seems one of the great injustices of life that during our childhood, when we are most likely to be greatly impressed by what we are exposed to, we have precious little control over the sorts of things we come into contact with. I, myself, will never say anything but that I had a positively magical childhood through which my two siblings and I waltzed largely unscathed by the sorts of concerns that touch most of the world. We grew up in sand and rock and cactus, limited in both our contact to the wider world and in our exposure to media.

Mainstream media, I can't help but feel retrospectively, makes pernicious use of the impressionability of young minds. When I was a child, I harbored a genuine belief that all human children needed to drink lots and lots of milk from cows simply to stay healthy. This belief came directly from the "Does a body good," milk campaign of the 80's. I can still hear the end notes of the jingle that accompanied a sequences of dancing children and cows ( suddenly bipedal, udders bared to the world), and the way that slogan was spoken in a quiet, cool voice as if as an afterthought. These images and sounds remain in my brain with perfect clarity, often unearthing themselves, unbidden, just because I happen to think about milk. It seems unfair, to say the least, that I should have to carry this inane, inaccurate view of the world with me, always, but that I cannot, in all truth, actually recall specifically the first time I rode a horse. Probably because my mother didn't think to provide me with a theme song and slogan to associate with the event, not knowing the heft that experience would lend to the rest of my life.

But a less pernicious association I can't get rid of also came from media exposure. When I was a kid we read a lot, watched a little TV, and listened to a fair number of stories on tape. In one of these mediums (yes, bizarrely I can't remember which) I encountered the story of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. I loved this story solely because of that word. Blustery. And the way the blustery wind took over everything else simply by virtue of its blusteriness. It was a new word to me, the first time I encountered the story. And a word that has stuck with me, since.

Now, on days like today, when it is chilly and I hear huge gusts of wind battering the outside of the house, that is what I think. Better stay inside, Pooh Bear, it's blustery out there.

When It Rains

The month of September in Iowa came close to setting records, weather-wise. It went weeks without raining.

This, while a fairly common occurrence in, say, Arizona, is next to unheard-of in the Midwest.

I, desert rat that I am, prefer days that aren't rainy to ones that are, and the dry weather came at a particularly convenient time for me, being that my horse has been laid up with a gigantic leg-wound all month. To be able to get through the bandaging stage without sogginess and mud in the picture was a huge help.

But the weather is sort of the only thing that's been cooperating. I can't help but feel I've had my own personal little storm-cloud of metaphorical gloom hanging over my head for months now, and it makes me remember what I said to my sister after my wedding. We were talking about how great it was that I married Brian, and I said something along the lines of, "I can't help but feel a little precarious. Things have been going to so well. It's like I'm waltzing through my own private field of magical flowers. It just doesn't seem like this can last."

I was right. It didn't. While Brian and I are still happily immersed in marital bliss, lately we have been sharing our quarters with a nasty flu bug. The summer has been riddled with bad health news in our families as well.

It's funny, how one takes good health for granted. I have been sick the last few days in a way I haven't been sick in years, and I had completely forgotten what it is like. It makes basic tasks impossible. For instance, I went to the drug store to buy a thermometer, and in wandering the aisles trying to find the thermometer area, I found myself continually having to stop and think, "Now, what am I looking for again?" Like, five times. In just a few minutes. I eventually had to ask someone to show me where they were. It was alarming and humbling, to see how much what I consider my innate level of competence was so thoroughly impaired by simply running a fever.

So, here's to good health. I'll appreciate it more in the future, both in myself and in those I value.

Going Mini

We all know I am something of a computer nerd. I try to keep this aspect of my personality to a minimum, but I find it necessary to own both a laptop and a desktop because, to me, the two types of machines serve very different functions in my daily life. My laptop is my me computer. I like to use it to type, lounging on the sofa or arm-chair in my pajamas. Also, as my business grows, it is necessary for me to be able to stay in touch with my clients and possibly make small changes to their websites when I am away from home.

On the other hand, when I'm actually working seriously on a website, I need to be at my desk. I often sketch out ideas before turning them into their digital manifestations, and I like my good speakers, my large monitor and the easy availability of my external hard-drive, scanner, printer, and my wireless mouse.

Still, part of me craves the simplicity of one computer. I try, on a fairly regularly basis, to find a way to give up one or the other. My most recent attempt was last week. My fairly antiquated HP laptop, which has been on the verge of possible catastrophic failure for months now, broke some important internal part of the jack that connects the power source to the computer, and I find I can no longer unplug the one from the other. This is a problem, for obvious reasons, not the least of which is that the battery is so shot, my computer can only run for a very short period of time whilst un-plugged. And so, the knowledge that the next time I unplug my laptop from its power source will likely mark fifteen minutes before the end of its useful existence drove me to try to answer the "what next" question.

I began to hunt for laptops. Ok, fine, I'll be honest. I've been secretly keeping my eye on what's out there for many weeks, but I didn't really know what I wanted. I cruised over to Lenovo, and nearly got seduced by a sleek, powerful model they've just released. But as I tried to justify spending many hundreds of dollars on a computer I would basically use to type and check email, I knew I'd never talk myself into it. I spent a long while researching docking stations, trying to determine if I could buy a nice laptop that could be the best of both desktop and laptop for me, but I found something unacceptable about every option, so I gave up.

Discouraged, I decided to think in the other direction. Instead of the fastest, most versatile laptop I could get, I wondered what the cheapest, simplest solution might be. Enter the Dell Mini, 10v. It weighs 2.5 pounds, and has a ten inch screen and a nearly full-sized keyboard. I had heard about netbooks, of course, and read some reviews and initially wasn't all that attracted to the idea of a tiny computer with one-eighth of the processing power of my desktop. But, the more I thought about and read about the Mini, the more it interested me. The main selling point, finally, came down to the fact that it has no fan. Since it is so small and so simplified, it can cool itself passively. I've owned probably four laptops in my life now, and in every single case, the fan has degenerated over time from annoying to, in one case, intolerable. No fan seemed like a great idea to me, and since the Mini I decided on is actually twice as powerful as my old, dying HP laptop, I realized it would still feel like an upgrade.

Won over, I settled on the best deal I could find and placed an order, paying less than half of what I payed for my HP when it was new. The Mini arrived yesterday. It's tiny, light, adorable, and so far I find the keyboard totally adequate. And the peaceful silence of its fanless design is going to extend its lifespan by a lot, I think.

At Least It's Not Just Me

It's been a busy summer and blogging seems to have fallen a little by the wayside. So, unless you want to read all the gory details that were involved in my horse's recent injury, I will entertain you with something someone else wrote, but applies to my life as well.

Article: If Architects had to Work Like Web Designers

I thought it was funny, anyway.