Indeed

Well, Blogger and/or my e-mail seem to have decided to gang up on me as far as blog comments go. I am suddenly getting four copies of each comment. Then, any comments I have tried to respond to have come back as undeliverable. I even broke down and tried to respond *in* the comments, and when I would go to publish them, ZAP! they disappeared into the ether.

So again, apologies if you have commented recently and I have not responded. I'm not ignoring you, but at least for the moment, it seems that any type of response just isn't working.

To quote The Tim, "Technology is great, except when it isn't." Sigh.

In any case, I am going to try to move on from my annoyance and frustration and enjoy my day with nothing to do but laundry. I went out for a walk earlier, hoping to get out before it got too hot or too smoky. There was a nice breeze, but it was already pretty smoky so it wasn't as long a walk as I may have wanted to take. But I did get outside, so I'm glad for that.

Kim has lately been lamenting the prospect of many visits to the dentist as well as the many dollars such visits will cost. I feel her pain. We have dental insurance - technically - but it pays about $10 in benefits. One of my favorite (not really) things was recently when I needed to get [yet another] crown, and learned that it would pay a very small amount towards a metal crown, but zero towards a ceramic crown, so which did I want? I am vain enough (and now poor enough) to not want a metal crown on a front tooth - I mean, it's not like it was gonna be gold or something. And I'm not a rapper anyway. 😉 I dread the dentist enough without feeling like I'm going into major debt just because I showed up for an appointment. Ugh.

I haven't gotten new glasses yet because I'm too busy paying for my teeth! Fortunately I can still see with my current prescription, but when you are planning to keep the same frames and the lenses still cost hundreds of dollars, it just seems like something in that equation is wrong, you know?

Well, enough complaining. I hope you are getting along better with your e-mail and blog platform providers. And please keep a good thought for Mabel, Vera's sweet kitty who has been missing for a few days. Please come home, baby!

So Much For Holiday Zen

About a week ago, Pip was sitting on my lap, and we were discussing all of the holiday preparations we had to do. At one point, I looked directly at him, and this is what I saw:

And I thought, Yes Pip, let's try to let this Christmastime be one where we have a chance to relax - or in his case, enjoy some zen moments.

I had been doing pretty well with that, and then Blogger decided that it was not on board with such a decision. If you comment on a post, and I have your e-mail address, you may have noticed that sometimes, you get a response from me to several of your comments at once. That's because a lot of times, I'll wait until I have a block of time to respond, so that I can actually take my time. So I'd been doing that, and thinking that it was all working.

Until last week, when a LOT of the responses I'd sent came back as "Undeliverable." So I went to Blogger and decided to see if I could respond *in* the comments (which I generally avoid doing, since frankly I never look at anyone else's blog comments to see if they have responded to me). And I got the error message "You do not have the proper permissions to comment on this platform." Huh?

So I could write the post, read the post, but not comment myself or respond to comments. I contacted Blogger Help, and to their credit (I guess) someone named Jim wrote back and said that "Blogger was currently experiencing some issues with permissions, images, and comments. Please be patient, we expect this to be resolved early in December." 

So if you have commented recently, and I usually do respond to you, please know I'm not ignoring you. And granted, this is not interfering with my holiday "zen" in the sense that it's related to the holidays, it's just something that is annoying and happens to be taking place during this time. 

Hopefully this week, things will be resolved, and I can go back to my attempts to Be Like Pip. 😉

We'll see.

All Wrapped Up!

I was busy over the weekend, but it was all good.  I just wish I had an extra day or two, so that I could have some time to do nothing.  But I wish that every Monday ...

The main thing I was able to do was to finish getting all of the gifts wrapped that need to be mailed to their respective recipients.  

 I have to say that I was especially happy with how the nieces' birthday gifts turned out - just as I had imagined.  

Here is the package that contains Greg's Musselburgh Hat. When he first opens the box, this is what he'll see:

Then, once he moves the tissue paper out of the way, he'll see what it really is. 😄

I'm way more amused by this than I should be.

Now that packages are wrapped, I can concentrate on really enjoying the decorating.  I did a little bit over the weekend, but I never feel like I can really enjoy it until I know that packages are ready to go.  Of course, in a Bridget-centric world, there would be time off granted durong the holidays *specifically* for putting up decorations ...

Let's hope this coming week treats us well.  We all deserve it.

P.S., particularly to Meredith MC who commented yesterday about the yellow-colored print on my blog, and how hard it was to read.  I have to apologize - I had no idea that I had changed the type color in the posts!  Thanks for letting me know.  I have a feeling that when I was changing the header, and the color of the type in the header, I inadvertently made that change to the posts text.  I know I would have discovered it when I went to preview this post, but the sooner it could be fixed, the better, so again, sorry to anyone who thought they were going blind, and thank you so much to Meredith MC for pointing it out right away!

Oy.

In Which I Decide Technology Is Out to Get Me

As you may recall, earlier this year - right when the pandemic and quarantine got underway - my laptop died.  As in it was DECEASED.  No transfer of things from the old hard drive (RIP photos and documents), no saving of anything at all.  Which was excellent, because it was also when Zoom for work meetings and such became a requirement, and when The Tim was laid off, and all of the buckets of money we previously had (OK not even one full bucket) were pretty well dried up.  Timing, I tell you!

Enter our Discover card to save the day.  The Tim and I poked around, and because I trust his knowledge of such topics, we decided on a Chromebook for me, and purchased one.  (He actually enjoys looking into these things, whereas I would rather even go to the dentist.  And I HATE going to the dentist.  Anyway.)  Said Chromebook arrived, and I have been using it since.  My take thus far is that it's just close enough to a Windows machine to make you feel confident.  Until you go to do something where you discover it has NOTHING AT ALL IN COMMON with a Windows machine.  I have decided it was created to keep me humble.  Which as far as techmology is concerned, does not take much - someone should have warned it.

Anyhoo, we have been getting along well enough.  Not a love affair, at least not yet, but a good enough relationship to enjoy a cup of tea together once in a while, if you know what I mean.  And I think we'll become good friends down the road.

Then there's Blogger and e-mail.  Now *those two* are really and truly out to get me.  The latest thing, which has happened a bit on and off, but now seems somewhat regular, has to do with responding to comments.  I get e-mail notifications, as well as having to approve comments.  Mostly because I got tired of dumb spam that needed to be dealt with, and that was not even amusing spam.  In the past couple of weeks, when I have thought I reponded to comments where I had an e-mail address, days later I'll get an e-mail notification that the message couldn't be delivered for various reasons: the person doesn't exist, the mailbox was full, the address didn't exist, I failed to prove I was not a robot - you know, any number of what I now think of as "excuses."  So I actually started to take the time to respond in the comments.  I would write a response, it would accept it ... and then nothing would show up.  Rinse, lather, repeat.

Sigh.  It would be one thing if this happened on a regular, predicatable basis, but no, it just happens without any rhyme or reason.  Which I feel is legitimate proof that technology is out to get me.  Clearly the gods/goddesses/leaders of technology are messing with me and they don't just laugh when I have issues - nope, I'm 99.999999% sure that they guffaw for a minimum of ten minutes.  (I'm also not paranoid, clearly.)

Not to be outdone, I shall continue the best I can to communicate with those who leave comments, but I have to apologize in advance if you seem to hear from me just fine sometimes, and not at all other times.  I do promise that I read and enjoy comments, and when I can, I love to send a response. I'm not ignoring you/blowing you off, just suffering at the hands of the robot overlords and their creators ...

I swear, sometimes I feel like this guy:

So that's it for now.  I need to go and yell at some kids to get off my lawn. 😜