Delusions under the apple tree

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Delusion

This morning at work I had a run in with another strain of humanity.

I call them Mac people.

Don’t get me wrong. There are people who choose to use Mac computers because they are the best tool for the job they are trying to do. I don’t have any problem with that.

What I do have a problem with is that some people, the Mac people, think that Mac computers are a standard computer and interface with the PC world.

Presentations–with projectors and PowerPoint–these are the bread and butter of my job. And every time a Mac person steps into the conference room saying “This will be compatible” I want to throw them out and barricade the door.

But I am a professional. I usually laugh and say, “We’ll see.” I have never ever seen a Mac-based presentation work easily with conference equipment.

And the Mac people say, “Of course it’s compatible.” And we plug it in or try to open the file.

And the trouble begins. Immediately after the first sign of incompatibility problems, the Mac person will say, “No, it’s compatible.”

WHAT makes these people refuse to pay attention to reality? Do they think that repeating the statement will make it true?

And the next step is to persuade them to do a work-around. Are there printouts of the presentation? Can we make a PDF that will work on a Windows machine?

But, the Mac people will insist that the system is compatible. They will insist that it works, as if the proof of not-working right in front of them will somehow vanish if they just BELIEVE.

It’s not just denial. It’s a delusion. And in this case, the delusion keeps them from facing the facts. When they take their apple-flavored technology into a cold room with the Windows open, they need to be prepared. They need to think ahead.

Yes, the truth is, many things are compatible between the two worlds. Some things are not. If you are bridging the two, learn where the traps are and have a work-around. Macs love adaptors and special file extensions. Know this and have them at the ready.

Remember, it’s your technology, and YOU are responsible to make it work. You are the one from a different planet, and you landed here on mine. It’s not my responsibility to learn your customs. You’re on my turf now. I don’t have every cable and adaptor known to man in my closet. If you need one, bring it.

So, leave the delusion behind. Believing that it’s compatible is not enough. You must also have the tool kit and the knowledge.

Delusions are for de losers.

Don’t be a loser.

Book Review: _Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West_ by Gregory Maguire

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I just finished Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. Remember the Wizard of Oz? And the green Witch with the flying monkeys? Well, this book is supposed to tell her story.

I confess I didn’t really have high expectations for this book when my book club chose it. It was a popular book and had even been made into a Broadway musical—two things that made me dismiss it as intellectually shallow.

I could not have been more wrong. What a page-turner! I couldn’t put it down.

Maguire creates a full and detailed world. At his hands, Oz has climate, people groups, competing religions and mythology. Politics create rifts and alliances.

As for the heroine herself, he begins early with her. He starts with her conception and early life, but she becomes a real person to the reader when she arrives at the university. She is a hotheaded activist and sincerely believes in doing what’s right even at personal cost.

She is a powerful woman. The ties and interpersonal tensions that guide her choices are utterly familiar to modern readers. Her loves and insecurities are poignant and universal.

What exactly about her is wicked? What does wicked mean in her world–or ours?

With the title he has chosen, Maguire is not being subtle. He quotes Tolstoy, Defoe and Frank Baum (the originator of Oz) before the book starts. He wants to analyze wickedness in this book.

The story itself, though, doesn’t seem to address wickedness conceptually. What it does address is the person of the Wicked Witch. If she is taken to embody wickedness, then the filling out of her character and personality in this story makes wickedness extremely ordinary and normal.

She herself seems to live leaning over the edge of despair, feeling herself and the mercy of forces outside her control. With this position, Maguire would imply that evil itself is merely a misunderstanding.

And this makes me understand that I definitely underestimated this book.

I’m going to go find all the other books this guy wrote.

Every woman has a mirror

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Every woman has a magic mirror in her heart. In it, she can see foggy images that others don’t see. She can see her family her friends, and the wider world in that mirror.

She will share her visions with the man in her life. For him, to believe what she sees takes faith.

If he doubts, it infects her and the mirror gets even foggier. And she may need to fight him to find her mirror again.

But if he can find that faith, her vision grows stronger. She can believe and be strong and wise. Both of them will be blessed.

Things I must do this weekend

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* Vaccuum
* get my car’s oil changed
* backup my computer hard drive
* lose 20 pounds

okay, the last one is just being hopeful. There is no way I can lose 20 pounds in one weekend. But if I were to lose 20 pounds, or at least start on it, maybe my list should include:

* spend 4 hours at the gym both saturday and sunday
* clean cupboards of all food and replace with liquid meal replacement supplements

Is that likely to happen? Absolutely not. In fact, maybe I should include another thing

* make a pot of healthy vegetable soup to snack on throughout the week
* buy new sports bras, since the last ones are losing their spring

Let me tell you, sport bras with elasticity of steel are vital for a good workout regimen. I wear two, because I want no bounce whatsoever and the least amount of jiggle I can manage. That takes two very snappy sport bras. Which are hard to find, because the bottom part that goes around the chest is a tourniquet and the part that goes around the actual shelf is not tight enough. You’d think that BRA makers of all people would want to protect my assets. It’s tough.

But actually, which of these will get done? maybe I should be realistic about my list of things to do this weekend. What will I actually do?

* eat bag of salt and pepper potato chips
* watch psych and rockford files on Tivo
* take hot bath
* Stay in bed late and giggle with Chris about silly things

That sounds pretty good. I’m sure I’ll be able to do that.

Maybe if I substitute the potato chips for a bowl of airpopped popcorn, that would be perfect.

Weekends seem to be so full of promise, and yet so little gets accomplished in the end.

old medicine cabinet

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old medicine cabinet, originally uploaded by murphy_h2001.

This is the old medicine cabinet. As of yesterday it is banished from our home altogether.

Note the brown wood trim that matches nothing else in the house. Note the peeled finish on said trim.

It was ugly. It was old. It has needed replacing.

But we didn’t know how to replace it. It might be

HARD

to replace. We didn’t know.

But we finally decided that we would try it anyway. We measured it, and thought we would see how much it cost to replace a medicine cabinet of that size.

We found a medicine cabinet of that size. Well, very close to that size, It was not that expensive, so we bought it to see if it would fit.

I took a box cutter and cut the paint along the edge of the old medicine cabinet. If you do that, sometimes you can prevent strips of the old paint from peeling away when you remove something.

The gaping hole that was left was full of mouse poopies. Yikes! I’m glad we don’t have mice anymore. These were offal of mice long dead.

And I was about to put in the new cabinet when Chris had second thoughts.

Perhaps the new medicine cabinet was not good enough. Wasn’t it a little crooked here and there? Weren’t there gaps in the corners where the edges met?

Didn’t we deserve BETTER?

I glared at him. This medicine cabinet was perfect, considering the price. I mean, come ON.

But he wasn’t satisfied. He thought we should research further medicine cabinet options.

I did not have time for this. There was a gaping hole in the bathroom where a mirror should be.

But Chris wanted nice things for our home. Maybe if we put the old one back while he looked…

But no! That was retrograde progress. We needed to move forward, he said. He would find the right medicine cabnet for us.

I disbelieved him.

He promised.

Fine.

In point of fact, both mirror fronted medicine cabinets lived in our hallway, propped against the wall for that week. The cat spent a lot of time looking at himself in them.

But Chris was diligent. He looked everywhere, and found that I was right. I WAS RIGHT.

However, he was right too. That particular individual medicine cabinet was a tad crooked. He found another one with greater evennesss and we installed THAT one.

Also note, in the above photo, that there is a new shower head in the bathtub. It’s a fancy shower head that replaced the old sputtery one.

That shower head was the original purpose for the visit to Lowe’s to begin with.

Book Club for The Parable of Miriam the Camel Driver

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Tonight was the first time I got to be the visiting author for a book club that read my book.

It was thrilling!

They asked me to have study questions for the book, which I created. We all discussed it. It’s so different to talk about my writing after it’s done! I’m so used to giving it out for critique. But this is in stone now, no editing etc.

Which means, I got to actually talk about the story and explain this and that. You’re NEVER supposed to do that during critique.

and at the end, I asked the ladies, “did you like it?”

And they all sincrely said, “yeah, it was good.”

and they all said, “We want to know what happens next! Are you writing a sequel?”

It was amazing.

Repetition

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Chris has been bugging me for years to go to Yellowstone. In his Chris-fashion, of course. He has a way of subtley talking about it in glowing terms and reminscing about how he enjoyed his trip there when he was a child.

He finds bits of trivia to bring into the conversation. “Did you know that inside Yellowstone is the cone of a volcano? that’s why it has geysers.”

“Did you know that it’s the first national park ever? Ullyses Grant signed it into being a park even before Yosemite.”

And finally, “Would you want to go there this fall? We could take a week and go there after school starts and the kids will not be crowding it.”

The fact is that, while I enjoy nature, I prefer trips to places of deep history. Like…Paris! Old buildings and interesting shopping is my idea of highly enjoyable.

Also, I like to see new things. I don’t want to read the same books again or vacation in the same place twice. The world is so full, and life is so short, I don’t want to retrace my steps.

But I hadn’t been to Yellowstone. And it did sound pretty good. Yes, Chris, I would go.

And we bought the books. And we gathered the maps. Chris handled the hotels, I handled the airfare. We were set.

Yellowstone was unendingly amazing. We saw so many animals and we saw the kind of landscape you can see nowhere else.

Old faithful was great, but the other geysers surpassed it.

The buffalo were majestic. The moose were focussed on their meals. The bears were funny, and the elk were….Well…it’s was mating season for the elk.

We saw antelopes, but they were not playing with any deer. Maybe that’s early in the season.

The coyotes looked so much like dogs, we wished we could give them treats.

Chris wanted to know if I would be willing to come back. I think so. It would not feel like retracing my steps.