Mixing it up and using the creation option

I tend to get single minded about things sometimes. While that can be a good thing, there is also a tendency to go overboard, perhaps. The truth of the matter is, too much of anything is not a good thing. So, focusing on variety being the spice of life, I have mixed up things a bit more around more. I do at least two things every day, and which two things can vary. I write, almost every day, in one form or another. Other days, it might a whole list of options that are considered. One that has been at the forefront has been the act of creation.

Something about creating something, whether it is written text or an object of some kind, seems to give me joy. It’s even better when it’s something that gives other people pleasure. This act of creation is a fantastic outlet for me.

So I have been busy with that creation stuff. Like I made a trio of simple skirts for my niece’s oldest, along with matching hair barrettes. I altered the pattern to be more creative and use that creation option too. Several skirts for my granddaughter have come out from under the needle of my machine. I tried my hand at a bit more fussy sewing with a set of mother-daughter aprons (shhhh! She hasn’t gotten them yet, it’s her birthday gift, and I’ll deliver them tomorrow!) and a lined messenger bag with specially sized pockets, also for my daughter’s birthday. The messenger bag was an act of determination, multiplied by dynamic creation, and infused with love too.

I don’t know if I’ll ever sew another apron requiring miles of bias tape. I also don’t know if I will EVER make another lined bag.

Now I know from years of sewing that free patterns, whether from magazines (in the old days) or online (the modern day), does not mean quality patterns. Anybody can post a pattern, and that does not mean it’s a good one.

This wasn’t a particularly good one. The directions gave me headaches, and the finished example used to illustrate the article looked somewhat…sad. I should have known better, right?

Yeah, well maybe I missed the brain train. Lord knows the pain train pulls into my station regularly, I may have been confused that day…

I’ve also had serious computer issues. I use a laptop (long story) and my “new” one took a dump and quit on me about 6 months ago. Without being able to afford a repairman (it’s not a simple issue, it won’t power up at all) it has sat, waiting, after Greg removed the harddrive and cloned it onto another one, which ultimately went into my old laptop, which he had repaired from it’s near-fatal blow from some kind of malware attack I had received via a chat client I used to use. (I don’t anymore, btw.) So, I was happily working away, although regretting the loss of the faster computer with more RAM and thus better able to cope with my continual multi-tasking, and just dealing with the occasional freezing that such a tendency induces in older and underpowered computers.

On Saturday morning, I had a notice on the laptop that it had received a Microsoft update and had restarted. Okay, no big deal, right?

It told me it was personalizing my desktop, and stayed that way. Nothing we did resurrected it—it would not boot up. I was on the verge of a melt down and we’ve not managed to drink our first cup of coffee yet.

Greg’s pretty patient, except when I’m melting down on him, then he’s not a very happy camper either. He managed to pack me off to the office with my sewing machine, and he proceeded to try and solve the issue. I took a nap.

A really long nap.

I guess melt downs wear me out? It also gave him the peace he needed to work on solving the problem. According to the flashing light on the cap lock, it was telling him that the CPU had crashed and burned. That’s not a quick fix either, especially since it’s a laptop, which is really hard to work on. We have no parts, nor do we have diagnostic tools to work on a laptop. With Greg though, there is no such thing as defeat. He also says there is no living with me without a functional computer AND my files, so he had a plan b to work on while I was snoring away.

He dug out his old laptop, which he had finally managed to repair. (It was also damaged, but much more severely, by malware via the same chat client.) It was the same brand as my old one—a Compaq. He popped the harddrive from the laptop I had been using into the new one, added some RAM, and booted it up. There were a few things to tweak, but soon, I was awake and had a computer I could use again.

But it had a really odd looking screen, and that was a clue as to what was coming next. The video card driver on the harddrive was not compatible with the actual video card in the new old machine. Should be an easy fix, right?

Nope

HP’s repair gizmo won’t install. Drivers for the video card don’t seem to exist. Okay, I can live with an oddball looking screen, distorted pictures and all. But that wasn’t the end of the video card driver problems.

The blue screen of death.

Yeah, we’ve all seen it. The trouble was, I was seeing it often, and then the new old computer wouldn’t boot up either. I was starting to feel like some kind of computerized jinx.

I’m testy, and I’m sent back to the office to talk to my sewing machine and play with my Kindle. I start dreaming of embroidery machines and new laptops, but Greg manages to save the day despite my frazzled nerves. He also attaches an external harddrive so I can back up the critical files: documents & pictures. We even worked out a way to get it done easily without me freaking out and getting frustrated over complicated procedures.

Like the Cloud.

He couldn’t understand my objection to using the Cloud for backing up files, but Comcast, in their usual manner, managed to illustrate it in living color.

Our intermittent outage issues had been plaguing us all day on Sunday. Sunday night, however, it’s a total no-internet-at-all situation resulting in a call to Comcast, where he started off the experience with a 30 minute wait to get to a human.

Keep in mind, we’re paying by the minute for this privilege, despite Comcast’s continual offers of telephone service (they can’t get the internet right, how would they get telephone right?) and then he gets “service is out in your area due to an accident. It should be restored by 7 am on Monday morning.”

Now he knows why I do not like my files on the Cloud. I cannot access them when the internet is down. Just like I couldn’t access anything when I had no way to get to my harddrive and the data it contained, only with no cloud access, my computer is working just fine. Sure, the cloud is fine for a general back up, but that’s not where I want my files kept.

He was thrilled. Seriously thrilled. But now, he understood what my objections were and why they were something that I was so adamant about.

But that sent my brain off onto another tangent too.

If a woman could sue McDonald’s for a cup of hot coffee scalding her, can I sue Comcast for frustrating Greg to the point of giving him another heart attack via their crappy customer service?

That’s the kind of thing I start to wonder in the wee hours, as I look at a screen that thinks it’s really a 16” CRT monitor but is really an LCD laptop screen…I think it’s a 17” one? (Heck I can tell you the model number, and have no idea what size the screen is. Sad, huh?) So, now I’m going to mix it up, wander off, and try to take a photo of the lovely messenger bag.

Or not.

I might wait and do it tomorrow, along with the aprons, when I have a model. Actually 2 models. Beautiful Daughter & her Mini Me, the spitting image of her mother, only with better hair.

See that’s another side of me too. I am an official grandmother and I’m every bit as gaga as any grandma could be. Plus, she’s my one and only, so I am seriously gaga about that little girl. I have to keep a firm hand on myself to prevent me spoiling her excessively.

Yep, there is an “excessive” point when you are grandma too.

But she is a darling, most of the time. When I see that less-than-endearing version, I am so disappointed too. After all, as MY granddaughter, she is supposed to be perfect, right?

And since I do have to get up early to go see my darling, I’m going to leave it at that.

So tune in again tomorrow…or listen to me on the radio from 8-10 pm Central at bit.ly/uprn365 Oh, and go buy a book or two at bit.ly/giabooks I’m trying to fund my project development for the next book, and could use some extra sales.

Just don’t forget–I really appreciate everyone who reads my blog posts, and for that, you deserve an atta-boy and a creation bonus point. Create something, even if its something small. It can be food or art or crafts or a really great poem or the best lawn mowing job that has ever hit your neighborhood.

Creation can be many things.

Here’s a cover of one of my books–my daughter and granddaughter were on the cover.