Getting On with It, or, I Postpone Setting Up My New Computer

Consider as made the usual apology for not posting for a long while.  I am not living in my car or under a bridge--yet-- but in my house at home.  As the Beatles sang a few (!) years ago, "I get by with a little help from my friends."  And my family.  And a little freelancing here and there.  And with the help of a part time job working at what I discreetly call The Big Blue Box Store, so as not to violate any company policies should I ever want to do a gripe-and-moan about my experiences there.  Started as a seasonal employee late last March, but was promoted to permanent part time a couple weeks ago.  No raise in pay, but if I take advantage of the medical benefits it offers, it should keep me clear of any awkwardness when the Obamacare ax falls in October.

And as of the 27th of this month, all this might be augmented by the pay I'd get teaching a couple sections of English at our county community college.  My friend Frieda* tipped me off they were hiring adjunct professors, I went on the website and applied, and the head of the Liberal Arts department liked what he saw.  English Literature, and Writing, it would be, and since due to the same Obamacare the college took forever determining their hiring needs, I'll have less than a week to check out the curriculum and draw up lesson plans and evaluation procedures.

Scary.

But the really scary thing was the behavior of my computer, the very one I'm composing this post on, the HP Pavilion Slimline s7600y I purchased in January 2007.  As a teacher on the college level (my past integration into Oxford ways makes me very reluctant to call myself a "professor" of any kind), I'll have to have a computer that works.  There will be student work to pull up, grades to be submitted, emails to be answered and written, and, heaven help us, possible instances of plagiarism to investigate.  I can't be spending a literal hour and a half doing fifteen minutes worth of work, because the stupid system is taking so jolly long to load.

And that's what it was doing every lousy day, up to two weeks ago.  I've gone to sleep on the floor of my study wrapped up in an old blanket with the dog more than once, waiting for a download to complete. Frustrating isn't half the word for it.  And with everything I have to complete and do, especially with the public schools restarting in a week or so and substitute teacher calls resuming soon thereafter, I don't have time for the nonsense.

So two weeks ago I went online to see if HP or any other brand had any slimline towers I could afford.  (Call me a stick-in-the-mud for going for a PC again.  I have my reasons, which I won't detail here.  And it has to be a slimline, for space reasons.)  And lo!  Best Buy had one, an HP 400 Slimline, very highly rated, on sale for $369.99.  Excellent price, especially as Amazon.com was offering the same machine for $599.99.

Now, I have no money.  Everybody knows that.  But as I said before, as a community college teacher I can't be limping along with a computer I constantly have to hard-reboot to make it function.  So after church two Sundays ago I travelled over to the nearest Best Buy that had the HP 400 in stock and bought the silly thing.

Of course, it wasn't a matter of plunking down the $369.99-plus-tax and walking out with it.  Oh, no.  This puppy runs Windows 8, and as the song says, "Suddenly, nothing, nothing, nothing is the same."  Windows 8 doesn't play nice with older software.  Me, I have a lot of what I believe are called "legacy" programs running on my current machine's XP-Pro operating system. Like, um, WordPerfect 6.1, which I like just fine.  And Quicken 2009.  And Lotus Organizer 5.0.  I have no desire to upgrade or change to different software, and even if I did, I don't have the hundreds of dollars that would run me.  This being the case, I had to throw down another goodish chunk of change for the "Win Pro Pack 8" that's supposed to let me run my old software on Windows 8, once I create a virtual partition for them.  And in the wisdom of the geniuses in Redmond, Washington, Win8 won't run any Windows Office versions before Office 2013.  Thanks, guys.  So there's another charge for the "Home and Student 2013" version of that, because, WordPerfect lover that I am, most church secretaries prefer to converse in Word.  Throw in a 32GB flashdrive to create the operating system backup, and we're talking a real investment.

But as I said, the way the old s7600y was dragging along, it was necessary.

So why am I still working on the old computer?

Well, part of it is the fact that I wanted/needed to clear the decks before I set up the new computer.  I literally had not entered anything into my financial software since before tax time last April, and my study was awash in receipts, statements, file folders, and other accounting flotsam and jetsam.  There was no room to put the new system together.

And what if I can't get the virtual partition to work?  I wanted to get my Quicken accounts all entered and balanced before I cut myself off myself off from the use of the software, because it's mentally wearing to not really know where I am financially.  Now, I know good and well I'll still have the use of the old computer, once I get a second monitor.  It's not like it's totally given up the ghost.  Really, what I wanted to do was to clear out my mind as I cleared the paperwork out of my study.  I didn't feel I could enjoy the new computer until I had.

I haven't had many hours in the day to spare for this task these past two weeks.  Bt at last it's done, everything is balanced (well, mostly everything), and as of two nights ago the paperwork is filed and put away.  And as of this afternoon, I've finished entering my checking account transactions into my physical checkbook register, which I hadn't done since last February, for goodness sakes.

So why does the new machine still sit unopened in its box over here on the floor?  Why haven't I run to break it open and explore its wonders?

Maybe because I know it's going to take hours and hours to set up, and I don't feel like investing that right now.

Maybe because I'm afraid, as I said above, that I won't be able to get the virtual partition to work.  Or that if I can, it's going to take forever and I'll be cut off from virtual civilization (i.e., the software programs I depend on) until I can get it all to behave.

It's not that I'm afraid of Windows 8, not in itself, apart from what it'll mean for my accustomed programs. Clerk at the Best Buy let me fool with it a little, and I'm sure I can deal with it, even though it seems a little silly.  I mean, don't we all have enough problems with "Ooooo, shiny!" tendencies these days without graphic tiles sitting on our desktops tempting us to open Facebook and Hulu and Netflix when we should be working?

Maybe I'm so addicted to having a computer (that is, the Internet) running that I don't want to shut the old one down long enough to set the new one up.  (When I was doing up the s7600y I had a laptop open next to it.)

Which leads me to maybe the biggest reason I haven't set the 400 up yet.  Because, gosh darn it, for the last week or more my old PC has gone back to functioning.  It has hardly frozen up at all.  No problem opening anything.  Videos and audio files have been playing just fine.  You'd think it'd gotten wind I was planning on replacing it and wanted me to change my mind.  Maybe it will keep it up.  So why should I stop using it?

Besides, I got a call the other day from the Liberal Arts department secretary at the community college and she said that due to low pre-enrollment, there's a good chance the classes I was supposed to teach will be cancelled or rolled into the schedules of full-time faculty.  They won't know for sure until final enrollment the end of this coming week.  So maybe the need that job posed will disappear.

Maybe.

And maybe this old machine will go contrary on me again.  And maybe I'd like to use the drafting software I downloaded awhile back, that I can never seem to get open, let alone draw with.  Maybe there will be enough students for those English sections, and I'll be stuck after the 27th with an old computer that won't work and a new one sitting in the box with no time to install it.

So I guess I'd better woman up and at least begin.  Besides, I'll be moving the old one down to the dining room.  It'll still be there when I need it, I just won't be asking it to do quite so much.

And maybe with a newer, faster computer, I might post here more often.

Or maybe not.

Chicken

It may have been noticed that I haven't posted since last August.  Some of that is busyness, some of it is laziness, a lot of it is childishness, but most of it has been cowardice.

Yes, cowardice.  This past autumn I interviewed for a half-time position as an interim pastor with a parish in my presbytery.  During the interview, I mentioned that they could see a sampling of my sermon style on my preaching blog.  Makes sense, right?

What I forgot was that the sermon blog was linked to this one.  And one of the committee members clicked through, found this blog, and, as she wrote me in an email, was deeply disturbed by what she read here.  Seems I was too open with my revelations about how things had gone in my previous parishes, and although I had disguised church and presbytery names well enough, it bothered her.

We talked on the phone about it, and she professed herself reassured about my history and my explanation of it, and said she'd only mention it to the other committee members if she felt she should.  But I didn't feel easy about it.  Up to that time I was pretty sure I'd be offered this job.  After this, I felt my past and my big mouth had come back to bite me again.

It's very like me to write and reveal and not expect what I've written to have any effect in the real world.  Hey, I think in imaginary conversations where I work out how I would explain things to other people; isn't a blog just more of the same?

No.  I guess it's not.  You know the term "chilling effect"?  That's what this had on me.  I felt literally cold inside. I took the link to here off the sermon blog.  And for months I've written nothing.  I was afraid to write anything.  Not here, at least.  Too paralyzed thinking about how what I say can be misconstrued or used against me.

Chicken, chicken, chicken.

As it turned out, after observing certain things while guest preaching in that parish, I decided the position was not for me.  It would have been impossible to do all that was wanted and needed on a mere half-time basis.  But for whatever reason I didn't ring them up and say so.  Maybe I wanted to be convinced otherwise, since I really need the work.  Eventually I heard from the search committee chairman himself: they were going on with other candidates.  I bit the bullet and asked what had eliminated me.  The answers weren't totally convincing, I thought.  Had the one committee member told them about this blog, and he didn't want to say so?  Better not to ask.  And as I said, by that time I'd tacitly withdrawn myself.

That's been almost four months ago, and I hope and expect they're beyond caring what I say here.  But I guess it's a lesson.  I have to be willing to stand up and take the heat for what I publish, or shut the dickens up.

Zombie Wars

I've often wondered why people have such an instinctual dread of cancer. It can't be simply because up till recent times it was pretty much always fatal. Tuberculosis, for instance, was just as much a death sentence and people didn't go around talking about it in whispers. My grandfather's first wife died in her 20s of consumption and from their letters I know they both knew she was doomed even before they got engaged. Everyone around her knew she had TB. Everyone was open about it; it was a fact of her life until she had no life left.

And I don't think cancer's basic horror is that it involves your own body turning traitor on you. Auto-immune diseases do that, too. So do infections. I remember a line from a Bill Cosby routine where he's recreating the scene when his mother took him to the doctor to see about getting his tonsils taken out. Doc says something like, "Kid, your tonsils are like sentries that're supposed to keep the bad stuff out. But in your case, they're fighting for the other side."

True, there is a mystery to cancer in that its cause is often so hard to trace. Otherwise perfectly healthy people (like me!) can pop up with it. It's not like you catch it from Aunt Martha at the family reunion-- in all due respect to an old lady I heard of, who kept the photo of a family member who'd died of melanoma securely wrapped in plastic, "Because it might be contagious."

But still, I don't think that's the font of the primal fear of cancer. I think it has to do with our dread and loathing of zombies.

Yes, zombies. Ever notice how our society's sick fascination with those monsters has grown along with our rising cancer statistics?

Anyway, I'm no expert on the Undead, but cancer cells and zombies have a lot in common. Both are mindless. Both have no "purpose" but to devour and assimilate the living. Both replicate themselves in fast and horrendous ways. Neither contribute to the good of the body (politic), but rather, feed on it and destroy it. And worst of all, both zombies and cancer cells are frighteningly difficult to kill.

Speaking seriously on cancer, I read someplace recently that that's what makes cancer, cancer. Ordinary helpful healthy body cells do their jobs then die off and are replaced. Cancer cells have mutated so they don't know it's time for them to die. They're so biologically brain dead, they don't even know they're damaging the body they infest from the word Go.

The idea of something mindless and destructive and horrendously hard to kill growing in you and taking over your system is inherently creepy. No wonder people have traditionally feared cancer and not wanted to mention its name. You don't want it to be true, and at the same time, you don't dare ignore it, unless you want your innards to be the physiological equivalent of those popular zombie-apocalypse films.

We are told on Very Good Authority (Wikipedia, right?) that the only way to destroy a zombie is by going after its brains before it goes after yours. Fighting cancer, we have a few more weapons, which is good, because this battle is real.

And I, tomorrow I'm engaging in front number two in my own zombie wars. We had the cutting-out campaign in late April; in the morning we begin the chemical warfare. I expect to be a bit battered before it's over this September: you have to expect to take a few hits when you're combatting the Undead. But fight I shall, and by God and St. George*, I expect to win.
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*You'd think I'd invoke St. David, wouldn't you, if I'm going to invoke a saint at all. But St. David isn't known for his military prowess, and St. George is. Besides (should my fellow-Reformed object), I'm being more literary than religious. 'k?

Where I Was Yesterday

I planned to write this post yesterday, but got busy doing other things. Which is good.

Friday, after I got the word about my extremely-possible ovarian cancer, I was strangely free of sensations of fear. No unseen hand viciously squeezing my gut, no leaden weight at the heart, no noose at the throat. I was full of nervous energy, yes, but I channelled that into thinking and planning and letting people know.

Friday night, I actually slept pretty well. But yesterday morning I didn't feel like lying in the way I usually do, and got up at 7:00. This is good-- I can't afford to be a slugabed. What wasn't good was that shortly after I got up, even when I was just greeting my animals and going about my morning routine, it hit.

No, not dire thoughts of fear and panic. No, no wild feelings of Oh My God, O My God! No, I was hit with a sensation of oppression in my upper arms, an annoying, distracting pain that all day tried to keep me from doing what needed to be done.

Weird, really. I know it's hormonal; adrenalin, probably. But it usually takes me in the gut. Why the arms?

I don't know. All I know is that I was tempted to do the flight-avoidance thing. To go back to bed or find some computer card games online to play (I've deleted them from both my computers). But that would be silly!! The thing I most resent about facing my mortality is that I may-- I say, may!-- not have the time to do all the things I've planned and want to. And am I now going to waste a perfectly good day on absurdities? I'll save that for when I'm feeling really grotty and have no choice.

More later, but it's time for me to head to church. Blessings to all!

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Nine

Wednesday, 14 December, 1988
Toulouse to Carcassonne and back again

Made the 9:06 train for Carcassonne this morning. It got in around 10:10. I bought a couple rolls for breakfast at a briocherie in the lower town then walked across the Pont Neuf over the Aude to the old city.

Reminded me somewhat of the village below the abbey at Mont-St.-Michel but with the cloudy weather the effect wasn’t the same. It wanted more people.

Went and saw the church of St. Nazaire first off, since I tripped over it. Romanesque nave and Gothic choir and transepts, almost all glass. Viollet-le-Duc hard at work restoring the vitrame, but at least that meant there was light coming through most of them. They had some rather nice large scale figure sculpture, too.

There were a man and three children in there hammering together the Christmas crèche. For that matter, all of Carcassonne, the Upper and Lower towns both, was decorated for Christmas.

They allow cars and trucks in the Cité. Rather anachronistic.

A great many of the of the shops were closed for the season but there were still an adequate number of tacky souvenir stands open. The forte here is hammered copper (or some facsimile thereof). I contented myself with a few post cards and a guidebook.

Took pictures of all the older-looking houses I could find, going on what I knew from Margaret Wood and that Wooden Houses book Eric* gave me. It was awfully cold and windy, though, and with no sun anyway I decided to take an earlier train than planned back to Toulouse.

But first I would make a circuit of the lists between the two walls. Went partway round before the cold north wind drove me back in to the shelter of the houses. But then the sun started trying to come out so I went back outside and walked along the outer fortifications, and looked at the countryside to the east, opposite from the city. Vineyards and hills, off into the distance.

Popped in and out as I saw a likely-looking gate. There were a few people around, mostly couples. Nearly saw an accident at the Tour St. Nazaire as two cars approached it from opposite directions at once. I could hear the car coming in through the single-lane gate and pointed it out to the driver of the exiting car and he stopped just in time. I can’t believe how closely the other one scraped by, though. Very French.

Back out into the lists, continuing clockwise around the citadel. It occurred to me how isolated it was through there and I mused that it would not be particularly romantic to "fall beneath the walls of Carcassonne," since for me at this time it certainly would not be in pursuit of some knightly deed.

Funny I should think of such a thing just then . . . funny-peculiar. Just about the time I passed this semi-circular cut in the earth (a drain of some sort?) just past the Tour de Cahuzac and the Tour du Grand Canisson I noticed a man, middle-aged, stocky and dressed like a workman in blue trousers and zipper jacket, standing looking over the battlements towards the lower town. From whatever conceit I decided to give him a wide berth. But as I passed him, he turned, came towards me, and demanded, "Donnez-moi votre main!"

Well, as far as I know this is not standard etiquette and I was having none of it. I said, "Non!" and drew away, but the creature tried to grab for my hand anyway! Over and over he babbled, "Donnez-moi votre main! Donnez-moi votre main!" Again I pulled away and began walking fast, whereupon the horrid person sped up, passed me-- and waited for me just inside the arch of the Tour Carrée de l’Evêque. The whole thing was unbelievably absurd and became even more so when, as I came opposite him within the tower, he again came at me and not only tried to grab my hand but also my rear end! I evaded contact and kept on going, while he started saying some other things that it’s just as well I couldn’t understand-- I wouldn’t want them rattling around in my mind.

I got out to the approach to the Tour de l’Inquisition, the creep still at my heels. I wasn’t scared, exactly, because the whole thing was so pointless. For what it was worth, I said sharply, "Laissez-moi tranquille!" as advised by one of the books I’d read on travelling in France. But he just grinned, kept babbling, and inside le Tour de l’Inquisition tried to grab me again.

No, I’m sorry. He did grab my hand. And began to pull it towards his crotch.

Well, that was enough. I was not being over dramatic, this was real and quite dangerous, especially considering the constriction of the lists just ahead between the Inquisition Tower and the Tour du Petit Canisson. Seeing it gave a whole new meaning to the expression "to be in a tight place" and I didn’t like it one bit. I snatched back my hand, gave out a shriek to show him I meant business and would really scream if his aggression continued, and took to my heels. I hoped my being younger would avail me if he came after; I couldn’t hear him following but I wasn’t taking any chances.

The lousy part was up the incline towards the Porte d’Aude. It’s rather demoralizing-- not to mention potentially petrifying-- to realize you can’t run like Thomas Magnum. I mean, if my accoster had really been trying I could’ve been lost right there.

Fortunately I knew exactly where I was, having entered through this gate in the first place. I doubled to the left and back into the cité to where the open shops and restaurants were. I have no idea if he meant me serious harm or if he’s just the kind of slime who likes scaring girls, but I wasn’t sticking around to find out.

My intention was to find a gendarme, or maybe report the guy at the post office. But the post office was closed for lunch and no policemen were to be seen. And my French isn’t good enough to make a random passerby understand what the problem was and help me do anything about it. So I decided to make myself scarce. I still didn’t feel safe-- what if he had followed me in? I didn’t want to hang around. So I found some other people, a couple, and began to follow in their wake. Fortunately they were going in the same direction as I’d decided to take-- towards the Porte Narbonnaise, opposite the side where the creep was hanging out. The carpark is there, and other people, and traffic. So I emerged there and circled round outside the citadel to where I found the way back over the river to the lower town. So help me, if I’d seen that jerk again you could have heard me all the way to Oxford.

Back towards la gare, bought some pizzas for lunch-- by which you may deduce that I was not terminally frightened. But I was impressed by the presence of evil in this world-- and moreover of the utter purposelessness of so much of it.

But it was "while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us" . . . And He knew about all this crap ahead of time!

Back to Toulouse by the 1:29 train. The sun actually decided to stay out so after resting at the hotel a little I took the camera and headed back to St. Sernin to see what I could see.

Much better than yesterday. I do seem to be having better luck with my Romanesque churches than with my Gothic. And today somebody went up and began practicing the organ! Maybe it was the composer chosen--Vierne or Messien or the like, but the playing didn’t seem as fluid and composed as that at Bourges. Still, it was a good thing to hear it. And it was audible out in the place at the west front, too.

Made a Decision and walked over to the rue Alsace-Lorraine and bought Marian*† a cloisonné box shaped like a quail, for Christmas. Around $13 US.

Got some orange juice and a chocolate bar at the Monoprix and came back to the hotel. Consumed much of that and the third 5" pizza from Carcassonne while playing with train schedules for the next week. Spent entirely too much time on that and didn’t get around to washing my silk blouse till after 10:00. Had it in the sink when I noticed the rules and regs notice saying that doing laundry in the room is "interdit." Oops! Well, tant pis, and if it’s not dry by morning I’ll hang it in the closet and no one’s harmed by the enterprise.

Wrote Mom and Janie*‡ postcards. I told them the gray weather is depressing but I didn’t admit I’m homesick-- for England. Kept singing the Simon & Garfunkel song "Homeward Bound" in my head today . . . Wish certain parts of it fit more than they do . . . and certain parts, less.
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†My younger sister
‡The friend who was subleasing my apartment back in the States

It Would Be Good For Me . . .

A couple posts ago I listed my Impossible Dreams for 2009. Such lovely habits! Such ideal accomplishments! How good it would be to incorporate them all into my life-- if only I were a wholly different sort of person born in a whole different universe.

But now, if I am to make one serious resolution for 2009, I see it would be good for me to resolve to stand against cowardice and fear and instead think and act in courage and fortitude.

Never mind all the specific things I do or refrain from doing out of fear. I'm sure if you examine your own heart you'll discover many of them for yourself, in yourself. But God helping, I resolve to stand against . . .

. . . the fear of disappointment.

. . . the fear of not being liked by other people.

. . . the fear of bothering other people.

. . . the fear of having to take the time and trouble to do something properly.

. . . the fear of not performing up to other people's expectations.

. . . the even greater fear of not performing up to my own expectations.

. . . the fear of making a choice in a given situation because it automatically eliminates my freedom to choose.

. . . the fear of loss of freedom.

. . . the fear of loss of autonomy.

. . . and all those other crabby, craven cowardices that seize me in the gut and whine, "I doan wanna. I'm not gonna. It scares me. Leave me alone!"

So what can I put up against this? How can I take heart and strength in the new year?

By means of perfect love.

John the Apostle in his first letter writes, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love."

Whose perfect love is this? Mine? Don't be ridiculous. I can't love perfectly, any more than I can be perfectly brave, courageous, and bold.

No, John is referring to the perfect love of God. He says, "We love, because he first loved us." That perfect love is shown in Jesus Christ the Son of God as he willingly died to turn away the condemnation that I and every human being deserved for our rebellion against God. So since God loved me so much as to do that for me, and since there is now no condemnation for someone like me who belongs to Christ Jesus, what do I have on earth to be afraid of? Really, ultimately, God himself is the only one we really need to fear, and in Christ, he's taken that fear of punishment totally away!

This doesn't mean that when fear marks my first reaction to being asked to do something, I'll automatically tackle it or pick it up and run with it to prove how courageous and God-trusting I am. Maybe the best response in a given situation might be for me to decide that whatever it is isn't worth doing! But let me make that decision clearly and honorably out of logic and love, not as a by-product of my endocrine system! To conduct myself like that would be very good for me . . . and, most likely, very good for others as well.