Mama Sylvia’s Blog

Well, here I am again, still trying to find an eBook reader that will work on my Toshiba e800 running Windows Mobile 2003 SE. I found a humongous list of eBook readers, broken down by OS but not by price/free or if they are still supported or even which version of the OS they run under. I also found several links to .chm readers which I didn’t pursue because I haven’t found any free .chm format books, and Palm eReader. However, the Palm eReader turned out to be the same zip file as the eReader I couldn’t get to work yesterday. I ran all the following installs with the PDA powered on and connected via USB to my PC running Windows 7 Home Premium, and with .txt, .epub, .mobi, .plucker.pdb, and .qioo.jar files in an eBooks subfolder of the My Documents folder on the PDA. I also added the biggest ebook file I had, an almost-2-mb file of Bleak House in .txt, .mobi, and .plucker.pdb formats, to that ebook directory to see how the programs handled very large ebook files.

iSilo says it reads its own format as well as .txt and some .pdb files. I downloaded a .cab file for Pocket PC that said it required an ARM processor, which apparently my e800 has because it installed fine. It started and told me I was on day 1 of a 30-day trial period. However, even when I had it look in my ebooks directory, it did not see any of the text files, only the .plucker file which it couldn’t actually read. So I didn’t need 30 days to decide it wasn’t going to work for me and removed it.

Mobipocket Reader looked very customizable and I know Gutenberg offers many of its titles in their format. I downloaded the “Old Windows Mobile” .cab file for ARM processors and installed it without problems. But it doesn’t customize the items I would like to set. I don’t really care about the colors, which I can set, but I’d like to be able to permanently set which directory to look in and to list all the files in that directory, and I can’t. I have to manually change those choices every time I click on “Library.” It also takes a LONG time to load. The standard version is free, the Pro version is for purchase (I couldn’t find for how much) and includes the capability to scroll or switch to landscape mode. It automatically found the .plucker.pdb files (the “type of file” defaults to .prc) but couldn’t open them (error message was that they were corrupted, all three of them – right). Interestingly, Mobipocket couldn’t open any of the three .mobi files I downloaded from Gutenberg. Mobipocket was able to open the big Bleak House .txt file, but it took several minutes to load and there was another delay when I tried to do anything but simple page-down. But I like being able to read using the scroll button or the down-arrow button (which it treats as a page-down button) so this one stays, at least for the time being.

Tiny eBook Reader ($34.23 but with a free trial version) says it can read books of any size in txt (and zipped), html, and lit formats. I clicked on the .exe file and the information said I could add ebooks to the library by moving them into the My Documents folder or onto the CF card. It installed on my PC but the “finish” screen gave me the option of installing it to my “connected Windows Mobile with touchscreen” which I selected. It showed up on the PDA under “Programs” and started just fine, giving me a choice of folders to look in for ebooks. I clicked on my ebooks folder and it found the .txt files but none of the others. It opened Bleak House with no delay and I was able to move around in it with no problems. It did leave several .tbr files in the ebook folder, though. This one stays to be tested further.

I couldn’t resist a program named Tome Raider although it costs 15 British pounds (I got the free trial version) and appeared from the documentation to only read its own proprietary file format. It installed painlessly from a zip file and opened on the PDA, but I was right about it only reading its own format; it saw no ebooks until I downloaded a “trial” book from the TR website, then it opened the one I had just downloaded but every other page was “please register” so I uninstalled it. Too bad, I still love the name!

uBook ($15 with a free demo) claims to read .txt, .html, .rtf, .pdb, and .prc files as well as zipped files of any of these. Knowing now that I have an ARM processor, I downloaded the .cab file for Pocket PC ARM with Toshiba listed in parentheses. It installed, but gave me an error message that it might not have installed correctly because it was for an earlier version of Windows Mobile. But it opened okay and went directly to a 43-page User Guide. There is a nice clear (if tiny) page number at the top of the screen with forward and back arrows to either side. But there are also arrows pointing in different directions in the corners that are not obvious what they do, the type size is miniscule, and the program defaults to covering up the Start menu button – not a good thing as there is no quick way to exit the program. I finally found an Options section by clicking on the unlabelled buttons at the bottom left, but most of them were disabled, including the type size adjustment, presumably because this was the demo version. I paged down and the program locked up, I had to do a soft reset to get out of it – NOTHING worked. I still wanted to see what files it could read, so after the soft reset I clicked on the program again and found myself directly in the options section again and unable to get out AGAIN – had to do another soft reset and removed the program. It may be a great program, but if I can’t navigate around in it I’ll never know.

Vade Mecum is an open-source free program, although I couldn’t originally tell whether it supports Windows Mobile 2003 – since it hasn’t been updated since 2006, I thought it was worth trying. This is the Windows Mobile program to read Plucker files. The .cab installed but gave me the same “designed for a previous version of Windows Mobile” error message I encountered with uBook. But it not only opened, it found the Plucker files without further prompting and had a nice clear “settings” button at the bottom of the screen to let me adjust items like the directory where the ebooks are stored and what size typeface to use. It also defaulted to full-screen mode but it was easy to find the pull-down screen to turn full-screen off. It opened Bleak House in sections but remained pretty fast when I navigated both within the section and to the next section. It also let me use the scroll button on my Toshiba. I like this program! Even though it apparently *only* reads plucker files and I’ll have to go see which of the books I’ve already downloaded in .txt format are available in plucker format. It did create some small files of its own but they are safely tucked in a VadeMecum folder, not cluttering up my ebooks folder. Definitely on the short list.

Free Zulu Reader can read .epub and .rtf files. The .cab installed fine but didn’t actually run, which wasn’t a big surprise as the wiki listing claimed it would run under Windows Mobile 2003 but the download page didn’t list it. Removed from PDA but this was another one that I couldn’d get the icon out of the Programs folder.

There is still a brisk market on ebay in these older devices, and plenty of people like me who want the convenience of a PDA but can’t justify (or afford) spending hundreds of dollars on the newest one. That is why I’m going into such detail here, because everything I found on Google was several years old – I’m supplying info on what is available *now*.

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I’m still working on getting my new (to me) Toshiba e800 configured to suit me, and one reason I bought it was to be able to always have something to read with me: ebooks. Project Gutenberg has thousands of free ebooks in various formats. Other sites such as Amazon also offer ebooks, but since Gutenberg is free, I started there. However, the e800 did not come with an ebook reader! So the first task was to find an ebook reader, preferably free, that would work with my Windows 2003SE mobile device.

Thanks to Google, I found and downloaded three: Microsoft Reader (which did NOT come already installed), eReader (which is affiliated with Barnes & Noble and of course markets their ebooks, but also has some freebies, and comes in a wide variety of OS flavors), and Freda. (I also picked up a free PocketPC PDF reader from Adobe – don’t know if it will work as an ebook reader, but it will be nice to be able to read pdf files like the user manual on my mobile.) I tried all of them with my PDA on and connected to my computer, and Windows Mobile Device Center running, which (besides keeping calendar/contacts/tasks synced) syncs the PDA with whatever I put in my My Documents\Documents on Sylvia’s PDA folder – very convenient both as a backup of my critical document files and as a way to painlessly get files onto the PDA.

Freda was the easiest to install. It came as a .cab file so I just moved the file to the CF card on my PDA, then clicked on the file from the PDA and it magically did its thing. The only problem was that the program didn’t work. I clicked on Freda on the program list and NOTHING HAPPENED. I found the exe file using File Explorer and clicked on that. Nothing happened. Okay, I thought, maybe it only activates when you click on an ebook file, so I clicked on one in my ebook directory. It opened fine – with Pocket Word. Still no Freda. I went back online to read the manual, and apparently Freda is supposed to go to a “main menu” when it is started. So apparently it doesn’t work with Windows 2003SE after all and I deleted it from my PDA (which was a minor pain and I had to find and use Remove Program). So much for Freda.

The next on the list was Microsoft’s Reader. It was an .exe file so I just clicked on it, on my main computer, in Windows Explorer. It ran an install program and although it wanted me to let it install in the default directory, when I clicked “no” it let me choose between regular memory, the flash ROM, or the CF card. I decided to put it on the CF card with my ebooks. When it finished, it told me to check my PDA to see if additional steps were necessary, which I thought was smart. But the message on the PDA was to “reset your device according to the device manufacturer’s documentation.” Huh? The user guide PDF says nothing about resetting after installing a program, and I don’t know if the instructions mean a soft or hard reset. So I did neither and went into Programs to start it up (and was annoyed to find the Freda icon still there). It started fine but told me the program was “not yet activated.” Huh? What do I need to do to activate it? I was able to open the help file that came with it, but it took me a minute to figure out that the page number was the number between the “3″ and “4″ at the bottom of the screen. Maybe this was one of the fonts that the PDA needed to be reset to use properly? So I tried a soft reset. Sure enough, after restarting the program, the page number at the bottom is now bracketed by left and right arrows instead of 3 and 4. The program has adjustable type size, which was nice, and the capability to add bookmarks, which is necessary. But I still couldn’t get it to see any other ebooks, so I started wandering through the help file and discovered it was looking in the My Documents folders. So I moved my eBooks folder into the My Documents folder. I also accidentally found out how to “activate” Reader, and it requires logging on with a Passport ID (using Internet Explorer, it told me Firefox doesn’t support activation), but the help file says any Hotmail, MSN, or Passport account will do. Of course, I don’t have ANY of those. This is turning into a major pain. (Gee, what a surprise with a Microsoft product.) However, the login page also said I could use a Windows Live ID, and I had to get one of those a few days ago to download Windows Mobile Device Center, and fortunately I long ago set up a “login” folder and filed the confirmation email for my Windows Live account in that folder so I can actually find it now! So I login and now I get ANOTHER error message. “You must install the Activation ActiveX control before you can activate.” And I can’t go any further without allowing Microsoft to install ANOTHER program on my computer. Reader is looking less and less attractive now. Before giving up completely, I checked to see if Reader would recognize and read any of my free Gutenberg .txt files. No matter where I put them in the My Documents folder, they failed to appear in the Library. I also tried a book in epub, Plucker, QiOO mobile, and Mobipocket formats, moving them all to the Personal folder to make sure it was somewhere Reader could find it. It didn’t recognize any of them. Does anyone actually jump through all of Microsoft’s hoops in order to use their “free” reader?

eReader was the last one I tried because it came in a zip file and I hate dealing with zip files. But Microsoft has made it too hard to use Reader so I guess I’ll try eReader now. I right-clicked on the zip file, told it to “extract all,” had to wade down through two levels of folders to get to the extracted files, and clicked on BookInstaller.exe – at least they made the title obvious. Install was not so obvious. There are three choices on the screen and none of them are to install a reader. I selected “install books” and it prompted me to tell it where to look for the books to install. It didn’t find any of my .txt books so I moved all the odd-format files (that I tried with Reader) into the ebooks folder and it recognized one of them. Wish I knew which one, but I guess it doesn’t matter because I got the dreaded “this program may not have installed correctly” message and there is no new reader in Programs. (Turned out to have been the Plucker file, I found it on my CF card later.)

So my choices are: (a) buy an ebook reader (which may just saddle me with another program that doesn’t work); (b) let Microsoft install another program on my computer and see what other ridiculous hoops it makes me jump through to get Reader to work; (c) keep using Pocket Word as my ebook reader, which doesn’t let me insert bookmarks on txt files; or (d) give up on reading ebooks on my PDA (which is a major reason I bought it in the first place). But I’ve had enough trauma for one day. Tomorrow is another day.

Oh, and the Freda icon is STILL in the Programs folder. Guess it’s time for a hard reset after all.

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Tired of dragging multiple pieces of paper wherever I go, I decided I was overdue for another PDA. (My previous PDA, a Phillips Velo 1, worked great but I couldn’t sync it using anything newer than Win95.) I’m running Win7 64-bit on my laptop (which is my main computer) and just bought an e800 with Windows2003SE to use as a PDA since the Windows 7 compatibility page said it is compatible without additional software. That was untrue, when I tried I got a message something like Windows was unable to install my device.

There are several links to sites on old messages (around 2005) but unsurprisingly, most of them were no longer valid. The link to the manual on PocketPCAddict did work, thank heavens. I also found a UK Toshiba link still active (select Archived Files as product type and PocketPC as family) and it steered me to the Microsoft site that told me I needed to use Mobile Device Center rather than ActiveSync. However, when I went back to see if it had any other useful files, when I tried to search all I could get was an error message that “Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.” I tried with several different OSs and they all got the same error message, so I don’t know how I got useful info from the site earlier. I went looking for ActiveSync and found a message that for Win7 64-bit I had to download Mobile Device Center 6.1 drvupdate-amd64.exe and before I could get the file I had to download and install a couple of programs to establish I had a legal copy of Windows 7 (like I would have it installed if it hadn’t come with the laptop!), but the site walked me through installing them with no problem. I installed Mobile Device Center and that worked well for communicating between laptop and PDA, but it said Outlook was not installed. Outlook2000 *is* installed, but I had to update to Office2007 before Mobile Device Center recognized it and synced with the e800. But I now have my appointments and tasks on my PDA! Hooray! I also copied a game .cab file onto the PDA and got it running – very straightforward, I just clicked on the .cab file and Windows Mobile 2003 SE installed it.

The hard-reset button is neat (kills everything except what is in FlashROM). It’s unlabelled and hidden on the bottom by the WiFi on/off switch, but it completely shuts off all power to the device and let me do a hard reset quick and easy when I first locked it up by not knowing what I was doing.

I found all kinds of info by working my way through the manual. The device on/off switch is terribly anti-intuitive. It’s at the top of the PDA and labelled with the usual icon, but you can either press-and-hold or press-quickly to turn the PDA on, but you can only press-quickly to turn it off! Sheesh! The transcriber works surprisingly well, I used it to add a task and it correctly read my handwriting first try.

I also like that if the e800 is on and connected to the laptop, when I make a change in Outlook on either, it immediately syncs with the other. That will be a huge help to me, as often I have to leave the house with a minute’s warning, and I won’t have to worry about not having a shopping list or phone # with me. It will even keep a directory on my laptop synced with a directory on the PDA, although it wouldn’t let me decide which directories to sync, I had to move all my current & active files into the directory it would sync with, and the directory on the PDA is volatile, not the flashROM or the CF disk. Still, it’s pretty unlikely that both my laptop and PDA would crash at the same time, and I can still do manual backups onto a more stable storage device.

I’m posting my trials here so anyone else looking for e800 info will find something more recent than 2005 and hopefully have information and other links to share!

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Here in Wyoming, the growing season is about three days long, so I’ve been trying to grow vegetables inside (without success) for several years. My latest attempt, the Patio Garden sold for growing tomatoes upside-down, has actually been moderately successful. I bought some Buttercrunch lettuce starts at Wal-Mart a few weeks ago and planted them in the top of the Patio Garden, and they have grown enough that I was able to cut leaves yesterday to make a nice Caesar salad!

Meanwhile, the upside-down tomato saga continues. Of the two heirloom plants I put in last month, one died and one is thriving, still trying to grow UP. No flowers yet, though. Yesterday, I transplanted another tomato plant into the empty hole where the other plant died, so I’ll see how that one does.

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Have you seen any of the variations on this? The theory is that you don’t have to stake the tomato plant because the growing weight of the fruit will simply hang down. It looks intriguing, but does it actually work?

I asked some garden people. They agreed it looked interesting but they hadn’t tried it. They did, however, urge me to tell them how it went if I tried it.

Then I went to a “localfoods” seminar earlier this week, in Laramie WY. Great, I thought, here is my chance to ask some experts. So I did. None of them had tried it, but they too wanted me to let them know how it went if I tried it! One audience member said she had a friend who had tried it, but the tomato plant grew upright anyway. Well, if you think about it, that makes sense. Plants *do* try to grow upwards. But as the plant set fruit, the weight should have gradually pulled it down. Naturally, this didn’t occur to me until later, so I don’t know if the friend gave up the experiment or if something else happened.

Being a perpetual optimist when it comes to gardening (in spite of the historical record of my black thumb – I have actually killed a mint plant), I decided I would be the one to try it. With no place to hang a planter, but with both kitchen and living room windows having a great southeast exposure, I bought the upside-down patio garden at good ol’ Wal-Mart. This gives me a little over a square foot of conventional growing area on the top of the patio garden, as well as two holes on  the bottom to set tomato plants through.

So I set to work. First challenge was to get a couple of tomato plants ready to transplant upside down. I have a tomato plant growing from seed, but it really isn’t ready to transplant. Someone at the localfoods seminar was giving away unlabelled heirloom tomato plants, and I took two. But I managed to knock them over travelling home, and although I carefully replanted them ASAP, only one looks like it’s going to recover. What the heck, I decided to plant both of them and see what happened.

Next challenge was to keep the plant and dirt from falling out of the holes! This is in my living room, and I can guarantee my DH will not be happy if I leave dirt around there. So, while the plant was still upright, I took a half-sheet of damp paper towel, folded it in half, tore a little hole and pushed the tomato plant through, then carefully pushed the leafy part of the plant through the garden hole. The damp paper towel should keep dirt and roots up in the garden for a while, and hopefully by the time it decomposes, the dirt will be packed enough to not fall out and the roots will have spread to keep the plant from falling out. I thought about using pieces of cardboard, but I couldn’t find anything suitable around the house and I didn’t want to wait any longer. I wouldn’t use anything non-compostable, though, otherwise as the tomato stem grows thicker it might get choked.

So they are both planted. The healthy plant started trying to grow upright almost immediately (less than 10 minutes after planting). The other poor plant is just lying there. I have lettuce and spinach starts that I bought and really need to get planted, so they will go in the top part. (Does anyone besides me buy too much in the gardening department?) Watch this space for future developments!

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I like Outback restaurants. They have great steaks, overall good food, and are a pleasant place to spend restaurant dollars. The Australia theme – well, it’s their gimmick, and it doesn’t make the food taste any less good.

So I was surprised, last night, when my waiter was obviously using an Aussie accent. I finally asked him if he was really from Oz or was he trying to win a bet by sounding like it. He assured me he was really from Australia, and I asked him some questions about his country. I can’t remember when I didn’t want to visit Australia, and he seemed happy to talk about his homeland. And he agreed that an Aussie working at an Aussie-themed restaurant in the U.S. was a nice irony. (Like he was going to disagree with a customer …)

But can’t you just picture the manager’s face when this guy with an Aussie accent and passport came in to apply for a job?

First, I’d like to make it clear I did not start Freecycle. I just heard about it, thought “what a great idea!” and jumped on the bandwagon by joining CheyenneFreecycle http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CheyenneFreecycle/ in 2004, as part of Freecycle.org. When the group owner left town a few months later, she asked me to take it over, and I have run CheyenneFreecycle ever since. Somewhere around January 2006, Freecycle.org established New Group Approvers (NGAs) in each state, and I took on that job, screening potential group owners for time and Internet access, willingness to commit the energy to run a group, and then helped them through setting up a Yahoogroup and official policies according to Freecycle.org requirements. Those requirements became fussier every year, and I’m not sure why. But I gamely struggled along until a few months ago.

When I came under attack by the Freecycle.org organization, I went hunting on the Internet for other dissatisfied or unaffiliated groups. I was astonished at what I learned. The three board members required to establish a nonprofit foundation are founder Deron Beal, his wife, and a close family friend (although on http://www.freecycle.org/about/board, they committed no later than 2007 to expand the number of board members “in the coming year”). The only outside financial reporting is that their annual Form 990 is available on their website at http://www.freecycle.org/about/funds. There is no way for ordinary members to have input into official policies. While I will always admire Deron for the brilliant idea that is Freecycle, I certainly don’t respect someone who runs what is supposed to be a nonprofit organization as a private fief.

The idea remains brilliant. Keep usable stuff out of the landfills and help your neighbors save money. I’ve given away a ton of stuff and picked up many items I needed, even including an electric scooter chair that literally makes the difference to me between being housebound and being able to go places like the library. (The giver said the batteries were bad and she didn’t want to sell it enough to get it into sellable condition.) It is an outstanding way to pick up and pass on items that don’t get worn out before they get outgrown, such as children’s clothes and toys.

Just remember, not all the freecycle groups are listed on the official website. The best way to find your local freecycle group is to search Yahoogroups for freecycle (yourtown) (yourstate) and see what comes up.

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Picture this: You are a woman who has chosen to stay home with your baby and toddler.  After a bad day of whiny children, telemarketers, and dropping a container of eggs on the floor, your husband walks in the door. Immediately aware of your stress, his handsome eyes crinkle in concern, he drops his briefcase, picks up a child in each arm, and tells you to go relax; in face, he suggests a long hot bath and a glass of your favorite white wine (which he happened to pick up on the way home).

Or picture this: you are a woman who is balancing both children and a career. Your husband drops the little ones off at a good daycare in the morning, and you pick them up on the way home.  Late one afternoon, your office phone rings. You’ve been bawled out by your boss and found out your favorite co-worker is leaving, so when Caller ID shows your husband, you wonder what is up. As soon as you say hello, he asks what is wrong; you tell him. He admits he was calling to say he had a late meeting, but you are more important. He’ll cancel the meeting, pick up the kids and the babysitter (who will be available on no notice – this IS a fantasy, after all) and then take you out to a nice relaxing dinner. You know you will be the envy of every woman at the restaurant, with such a gorgeous, attentive husband.

Ever had something like this happen to you? Me neither. Yet this is the “hero” of hundreds of books every year in the most popular genre in bookselling: romance novels.

Frankly, I blame them (partially) for the spiraling divorce rate. When a woman has spent a few hours with an incredibly handsome man watching for her every whim (and, in imagination, she is utterly beautiful as well), and comes back to an average-looking man who wants his dinner and is eager to complain about HIS day, it’s a shock. If he has the bad taste to complain about the kids as well as fail to notice her stress, you have a recipe for disaster.

But few husbands are mind-readers. I happen to have chosen a pretty good one. He likes to come home to his family, proudly introduces me as his wife (and I’m no raving beauty either), brags on our children but takes on his share of the work. He believes in fidelity, trusts as well as remains trustworthy. I had a shopping list of characteristics I HAD to have in a husband, and he had all of them. But he can be totally oblivious of my feelings. Once he did something on a trip that left me fuming, but he didn’t hear my anger in a long 10-minute phone call. My father happened to call a few minutes later, and as soon as I said hello he asked what was wrong.

The answer, of course, is communication. Both partners need to discuss their feelings and desires, and not just in bed. But women who have absorbed the idea of the man who mysteriously detects their feelings are offended by a real man who is focused on his own.

My daughter is almost 20 and has never dated, and I’m glad. We agree that dating is to find your potential husband, and she is not even interested in marriage at this point in her life. Meanwhile, I’ve tried to point out her father as an example of a good husband, and discussed the unreality of romance novels. (She seems to prefer fantasy, anyway.) She’s sensible, and I hope when she starts to think about marriage, she’ll remember not the handsome, hunky hero of a romantic fairy tale, but a real man who took care of me when I was sick and remembered to buy my third-favorite chocolate truffles for Valentine’s Day. (My favorite chocolates are Teuscher, $60/box. My second favorite are Godiva, still too expensive for our budget. My third favorite are Lindt, about $3.50 at Wal-Mart so I can enjoy them with a clear conscience.) And I hope she’ll find as devoted a husband as I have been blessed with. And I hope she’ll appreciate him, while less sensible women wistfully remember dashing, mind-reading men who never existed.

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For years, I’ve looked askance at people wearing earplugs in their ears. While it is certainly more considerate than boomboxes playing at full volume, I didn’t understand the attraction. It didn’t help that when I bought an MP3 player, I chose one with lots of features (4 gig, voice dictation, raw data storage capability, uses a standard AAA battery so I could use rechargeables) so it was more of a challenge to use, and an absolutely unintelligible manual. (It’s a Sly SL034G, if anyone cares.)

Now that I’ve figured it out, I’m a fanatic too. It’s WONDERFUL, and I’m so glad I bought the model with the most storage. I can listen to the type of music I like. Or I can listen to a book or two, great during long waits. If something occurs to me, I can dictate a quick note to myself. And I still have plenty of room on it to backup the working directories of my laptop so if worst came to worst, I wouldn’t be without my data.

All this in a package about the size of two of my fingers held together, that easily fits into a little zippered camera case (player, USB cable, ear buds, manual, and spare AAA batteries – and it holds my place when I need to change batteries). This is technology at its best: enjoyable, flexible, and enabling me to make the most of my time. I *am* glad I waited until there were models with larger storage, however.

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My DH (H is Husband, D is sometimes Dear and sometimes something else) is a major pizza fanatic. Eat-in, takeout, grocery store, or homemade, he loves it all. What none of us likes is cleaning off the fixings that always seem to burn onto the pan. Yuck!

So for Christmas, I got him a silicone pizza baking sheet. It’s really pretty weird, there is some kind of rigid wire running around the edge to keep it flat but the silicone itself is quite soft and flexible. He insisted that you can’t put plastic in the oven, and I had difficulty persuading him that this plastic was MEANT to go in the oven.

He finally tried it, confident that we would have melted plastic stuck all over the oven and he could say “I told you so.” Of course, any of you who have baked with silicone know what happened. The pizza cooked perfectly and slid off the (intact) pizza sheet,  not leaving any burned bits behind.

DH is now a silicone fan and uses his pizza sheets to bake anything that will fit, including biscuits. But he still gives them a leery look whenever he realizes (again) that he is baking with plastic.

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I’ve been reading Is There a Problem, Officer? by Steve Pomper, who wrote:

“It is a collision, not an accident … I can’t recall one offhand that was a true accident – where neither party was guilty of having done something wrong. In the vast majority of cases, one party or the other (or both) has done something wrong, whether intentionally or inadvertently, to cause the collision. Bottom line: They just weren’t careful enough.” (page 193)

Hooray! I have said that for YEARS. Our avoid-responsibility-at-any-cost society cherishes the term. “Of course you didn’t do anything wrong, honey – it was just an accident.” Never mind that he was talking on his cell phone, she hadn’t gotten around to having the brakes fixed, he cut across three lanes of traffic to make his exit, she was applying makeup or reaching around to adjust her kid’s carseat when the collision occurred; the blessed term “accident” means it wasn’t their fault. It just happened.

That is so dangerous for responsible drivers that it terrifies me, and I raised my kids to never call it an “accident.” I used the term “wreck” but Officer Pomper’s term “collision” is much more precise, and I hereby happily adopt it. (Thank you, Officer.) When you get behind the wheel of a vehicle, you are responsible for what it does. The car doesn’t have a mind of its own. When my new-driver son had a collision, it was because he didn’t turn his head to check before changing lanes. (Even after my years of drumming in to ALWAYS, ALWAYS turn your head to check, and telling both kids that saves me from about 2-3 collisions per year.) When my husband suffered a collision early in our marriage, he was minding his own business waiting to make a left turn, while someone not paying attention barrelled down on him — but he wasn’t watching his rear-view mirror and he had his wheels already turned, which meant when the idiot hit him, he was pushed across oncoming traffic and the collision became much worse. (The car was totaled, he was knocked out and had to stay overnight in the hospital.) And don’t even get me started on the drivers who think that because they are in a vehicle with 4-wheel drive, they can fly along snowy/icy roads at normal speed. There is nothing accidental about them ending up on the side of the road, upside down and/or facing the wrong way.

So whatever it is when inattention or carelessness or anger results in damage to a motor vehicle (and possibly people as well), it’s not an accident.

BTW, the book is worth reading. Check out my “book reviews” page in the left-hand column to see my review of it.

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Earlier this week, my son officially joined the Wyoming Army National Guard. The months leading up to his enlistment have had me thinking about the relationship we civilians have with the military.

I was a teenager during Viet Nam. I saw my male friends suffering the anxiety of waiting for the lottery to reveal their likelihood of being drafted. I had friends who were veterans of Nam, and in the 70’s I could always tell who had been there within minutes of meeting: there was a certain look in their eyes.

What I thought was most unfair was the attitude of the peaceniks towards the soldiers, taunting and tormenting them. At best, they felt they were serving their country; at worst, they were draftees and given no choice as to where they were sent. Yet the peaceniks ganged up on victims who weren’t allowed to retaliate. Didn’t look particularly courageous to me.

Now we are once again in an unpopular war, but this time, no one is blaming the soldiers. I think this is a huge improvement and much more just. If you want to criticize the war, criticize the politicians who ordered it; if you want to justify the war, again, the politicians are the proper target. The men and women who lay their lives on the line deserve only our support.

I’ve been very proud of our armed forces since the Clinton maladministration. In nearly every other country in the world, if someone managed to get elected who the military didn’t like, presto! Military coup and the elected leader is gone or dead. Clinton was a lying hornswoggler, but he was the elected President and our military fulfilled their oath to support and defend him as their Commander-in-Chief. That can’t have been easy, but we civilians rest easier knowing our military abides by their rules.

Now, I’m just relieved that my son won’t have to face the hatred my friends did.

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Is it love to make a child dependent on you? I don’t think so.

I’ve been reading The Good, the Bad, and the Mad by E. Randall Floyd. It’s definitely an interesting collection of short biographies of unusual people, but the entry on Robert E. Howard horrified me. He was an SF writer in the early 1900’s who committed suicide when his mother died. Supposedly, his mother had encouraged an exclusive attachment after his father died.

DH and I have always agreed that our purpose as parents was to produce independent adults who could live their own lives and make their own decisions. To ensure they developed self-confidence, we provided a solid wall of love and support – either child could have cuddling for the asking so they didn’t have to misbehave to get parental attention. As they got older, I asked if they wanted me in the room for dentist and doctor visits and other scary situations. When they were ready, they tackled each new situation solo. DD is still pretty shy but can handle what she wants to, and 17-year-old DS thinks he is already an adult and very indignant that legally we still control him.

I miss my sweet, loving babies. But I would consider myself a failure as a mother if either of them gave up on life when I pass on.

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It started last week, when my teenaged son told me to go to hell. So I told him that for his birthday present, I’d give him life without a mother. And I’ve not gotten in his way since.

And he has apparently been delighted, going around doing his thing, apparently not missing a mother at all. Of course, that meant I couldn’t be around when he opened his Christmas presents — more of a hardship to me than to him, obviously.

What I hadn’t expected was that my husband and daughter, who I thought did love me and want to be around me, enjoyed opening presents without me just fine. Just because I couldn’t join Daniel without violating my word didn’t mean they had to. Why on earth should my son decide he wants Mama in his life? His father and sister are around to keep him entertained and do things for him. Each laugh and happy comment was like a stab directly into my heart. And in a few minutes, they’ll eat the dinner I cooked — without me. Why did I want a family, if this is the way they treat me on the most family-centered holiday?

Peter did insist I come to a short Christmas Eve service at his church last night. I guess that means once he’s had a token Christmas time with me, he can ignore me to spend the rest of Christmas with our son with a clear conscience.

I try to be an intelligent, reasonable consumer. I know no business is there for the sheer joy of giving me stuff. They are all out to make a buck, and the great strength of our country is that unless the business offers items I want at a price I consider reasonable, I can simply take my business elsewhere.

But that assumes that there is somewhere else that DOES have the items I want at a price I consider reasonable, and that they will take my money and provide the item. This is not necessarily true.

Our official Cheyenne farmer’s market has refused local business in favor of out-of-state resellers for a number of years. So a group of Cheyenne residents started another farmer’s market with the express purpose of giving local people an outlet to sell local goods. Unfortunately, it has apparently turned into just a different clique than the official market, as I discovered when I asked about selling my wonderful handmade candles there. They “juried” my candles and informed me that they weren’t going to bring in my candles. (They do have other vendors selling non-grown and non-food items, so either one of the “committee” is selling candles and doesn’t want the competition, or it’s just another “you’re not in our clique” rejection.)

Netflix has jumped on the “how poor service can we get away with?” bandwagon also. I received an Email that they will not have different “profiles” on the same account after August. Profiles were a wonderful way for us to let different family members create their own queues and decide what they wanted to watch at any given time. To combine them into a single list and decide who can set the movie at the top of the list next would be a nightmare, and there is no way I’ll bother trying; I’ll just cancel my Netflix account. (I know, of course, what they are trying to do; they expect each profile to become a separate account to increase their revenue.
Hopefully enough people will decide they can do without Netflix to hurt them financially unless they reverse the decision and continue to allow individual profiles.)

This attitude just baffles me. I have a small online store, and know that unless my products, prices, and service are all outstanding, my customers can find dozens of other places on the Web to buy scented candles and quilting supplies. So I make the effort, and nearly always get pleased comments from customers. But apparently it’s a secret that good service makes happy customers, to judge by what other businesses are doing.

We have the greatest Armed Forces in the world.

Our all-volunteer military consists of men and women who must accomplish goals set by others, sometimes at the cost of their lives. In many places around the world, the military is run by greedy officers to further their own ends. Elected officials have been routinely overthrown by military juntas for centuries. But our military has followed the orders of its Commander-in-Chief even when most of its members disliked or distrusted the President, such as when Bill Clinton held office.

And, mostly, it has comprised members who had ethics and tried to live by them. George Washington refused to allow himself to be named King of the new country. Robert E. Lee was not the only Southerner who resigned from the U.S. Army when he felt his primary duty was to his home state rather than the federal government. The occasional glaring exception to the high standard of conduct, such as My Lai and torture of Iraqi prisoners, has been punished. (Our free press takes some of the credit, of course, but let’s commend the military for their tolerance of this essential element of our democracy.)

Our citizen-soldiers take their can-do attitude into military service. The Normandy invasion during WWII is probably the shining example of the difference between rigid and free societies. On D-Day, no one in the German war machine had the authority to get the reserved Panzers into action (which experts agree could have turned D-Day into the worst Allied defeat) and Hitler’s personal staff refused to wake him up. But when Allied tanks were halted by enormous hedgerows, American ingenuity quickly developed several ways to enable them to advance, including the famous “rhinoceros” that cut through the hedgerows.

My father is a vet of WWII and Korea. I grew up during Viet Nam, and thought at the time that the antiwar activists were wrong to blame and abuse the participants. I’m glad today that even those who oppose our involvement in Iraq recognize the military deserve our commendation and support. My 16-year-old son is planning on serving in the Army after college. Although I naturally hope nothing happens to him, I’m proud that he has this goal.

There are (well-deserved) tributes to those who died or suffered injuries in the cause of freedom. But we need to also remember those who served, came home, and lived the rest of their lives as productive members of society, sometimes with haunting emotional scars. Thank you, all of you, for the freedom we take for granted.

I love Wyoming, I really do.

I drove DD and all her stuff home from college yesterday. It was wonderful to see her, of course, but I decided to tease her a little. Spring is the snowy season in Wyoming, and all semester, whenever it snowed she griped about it snowing AGAIN. So I told her that she probably wouldn’t have any more snow to complain about until fall.

She responded, “you never know.”

So, naturally, it’s snowing today. Not just a few light flakes, but hard enough that sometimes I can’t even see the next house below us. In mid-May.

It’s just never safe to say that winter is over!

I’m a Writer’s Digest addict. I admit it. My local library carries it, and I always get great ideas from reading it. The problem is that I don’t carry through with those ideas.

I think in some ways I’d rather read about writing than actually write. Like many people, I have enough ideas to fill my time as long as I can use a keyboard. (Some of them are even pretty good.) But at actually making myself sit down at the keyboard on a regular basis, I have failed miserably.

That doesn’t mean I don’t write. I enjoy writing the product descriptions for my online store. I pop off chatty Emails at the drop of a hat. I review and revise the files for CheyenneFreecycle regularly, to keep them useful to the members. But writing that I actually might be able to sell — always seems like too much work, somehow.

Up at the top of this page as I write is an image of our two cats.  Several years ago, I gave in to the pleadings of our kids and let each of them adopt a kitten. I stressed that how they were raised would largely determine their personalities, and both kids needed to spend lots of time petting and playing with them. They happily agreed and both did a good job. Unfortunately, one cat didn’t come back after a trip outdoors, but the owner picked out a duplicate from the animal shelter who liked people attention even more.

Fast-forward a few years. Older child is off at college, living in a dorm where animals are not allowed.  Cat is left at home, with no human slave dedicated to petting her. Cat does NOT like this. So, in between long naps to recover from hours of doing nothing, she saunters out of her human’s room looking for petting.

I am not the favorite petting source, but right now no one else is home.  So she has condescended to jump up on my recliner, purr for a while, and then settled down to sleep with her chin on my laptop.  (Cats are only comfortable when they are in the way. They are a lot like toddlers.) When I pet her, she may stretch in her sleep, or meow complainingly, or start trying to lick my hand. When she wakes up, she may glare at me like I’m from another planet, or race the length of the house making as much noise as possible (her “thundering herd of elephants” game), or amble off like I am not worth noticing.

The one she is really dedicated to eliciting attention from is my dog, a border collie mix who has decided the two house cats are her herding charge. To see the two of them together, the cat rubbing against the dog trying to make friends while the dog looks horrified because this is NOT the proper distance to keep the animals one is herding, is hysterical.

I don’t remember the last time I turned on the TV. Our own unscripted sitcom is way funnier than anything coming over the airwaves.

We need brownies.

This doesn’t sound like much of a problem. Just mix some up and bake them, right?

Not exactly. The mixer arm to my Oster Kitchen Center hasn’t reappeared since we moved over a year ago. I bought a replacement on ebay which my son dropped a spoon into. Clue: OKC mixer arms aren’t designed to stand up to having a spoon dropped into the beaters while running. I bought another replacement on ebay. It doesn’t work. So, while the OKC works very well for its other functions (blender, chopper, salad shooter, even ice cream maker) it is useless to mix up brownie batter.

It’s not that the house falls apart when we don’t have brownies. It’s probably been months since anyone made brownies (partially because we don’t have a mixer, see above). But right now, we need brownies. (Okay, I need brownies. But when Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.)

DH keeps saying he can mix up batter by hand. But he has disappeared into his office and hasn’t responded to my announcement that we need brownies.

So there are no brownies in the Steiger house. <sigh>