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It
started out to be a commute home from work like any other day. Rush
hour is never a pleasant experience. Everybody wants to get home as
fast as they can, it seems, and they don't really want anything
getting in their way.
Suddenly there was a strange noise like the tail pipe was hitting the
bottom of the car. "Is that our car making that noise?" I
asked.
I'm
not going to say that it is hot in South Georgia. After all, there
were enough other things going on at the newspaper columnists'
conference that you almost didn't notice the heat. However, I should
have known that "Macon" was too close to "bacon"
for comfort.
The first day of the conference was great. We were welcomed by the
mayor, greeted by distinguished guests from the local university, and
met the publisher of the local paper. We had interesting panels and
people who talked about writing, the newspaper business, and other
stuff columnists are interested in.
We
were trying to drive to Macon, Georgia, for a newspaper columnists conference.
Notice how things never seem to go right when you are trying to get somewhere? A
few miles down the road, Honey remembered he forgot something. After we got off
the interstate, he remember that he didn't. We circled the cloverleaf on exit
ramps until I was dizzy.
The
undo button on Microsoft Word is a wonderful thing. Backspace will fix
a little error, like forgetting that the caps lock is locked or typing
fdsjkl;ty when you got on the wrong row of keys. But for really big
errors, you need the "undo" button.
Sooner or later, nearly everyone who uses a computer tries to do
something that doesn't work. You are clicking along and doing the best
you can when something goes terribly awry. You try to fix it only to
find that your page has turned into a crossword puzzle. You don't have
the foggiest idea how to fix this because you don't even know what you
did to cause it.
We
were going to an anniversary party in a nearby town. My aunt and
uncle have been married 70 years. Imagine that! Seventy years of
marriage and they haven't killed each other yet, a rare
occasion.
It was getting close to lunch time. "Should we eat first or
should we find the party place first and then eat?" We
decided it would probably be better to find where we were going
first and then eat real food or fast food depending on how much
time was left.
With modern technology like GPS, it didn't take long to find the
church hall, but we didn't see any restaurants nearby. Once
again, modern technology came to the rescue. My sister pulled
her Android out of her purse and as luck would have it, she
found a barbecue restaurant just down the road.
I
don't know where it all comes from, but it seems that I am carrying out
more trash lately than ever before. I don't think I've suddenly started
using more consumer products, at least not enough to account for my
growing trash collection.
A lot of it comes in the mail. I've found myself throwing away more and
more unopened mail even though I'm on every "do not contact"
list I can find. I get an annoying number of catalogs. I think
businesses could save consumers a lot of money if so much was not spent
on printing colorful advertisements.
I've been
looking at pictures of Lewis Grizzard and his manual typewriter.
I'm pretty sure that it is exactly like my old Royal that I have
retired to the back of a closet. I'm relatively certain my vintage
Royal still works if I could find a ribbon for it. Grizzard wrote
a column about his typewriter in 1983. Unlike Grizzard's
typewriter, my Royal has all the keys -- and will type both an
"e" and "u" -- at least it would the last time
I saw it.
"Open
it." He said, handing me a small box.
It isn't my birthday and it is too early for Christmas. The box had an
apple with a bite out of it on front. Even I knew what that logo meant.
And when I opened it, there it was -- a shiny new black iPhone.
Big
C, little c: What begins with C?
I
couldn't believe it when I heard myself agreeing with my doctor.
"You really need to do this", he said. "How long
has it been? Never? Well, I'm going refer you." He had referred me once before, but I conveniently
forgot to call and set up the appointment.
"It's not a pleasant thing, so people tend to put it
off."
I could easily agree with that.
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