Serendipity

The new neighbors across  the way and the new neighbor  who coud not build on the "unperkable" property, and instead, put in a dock for 6 his six figure boat with  two 100 HP outboards makes weekends a bit noisier than usual.  I do not begrudge them their  weekends and holidays and perhaps we also were noisier when we first moved  here having visits with the grandchildren, but I am older now and would like a more peaceful neighborhood.  All of our quiet neighbors have left for retirement communities and a younger crowd is moving in.  This crotchety old one is going to have to accept the motocycle, skidoo,  large motoboat noise along with that of weekend lawmowers and leaf blowers, I guess.

It was noisy on the river this Sunday while I was weeding.  I was in my front yard and the noise on the river was muffled and blocked  by the house.  Hubby,  on the other  hand, felt it was time to  mow the lawn!  There were several hours of  THAT noise and then suddenly he was way up by the driveway and I had peace and calm once again.  Amazing how body tension disappates  when all is calm.

I could hear my natural neighbors once again.  I heard a woodpecker making some call.  I heard the song of an unusual bird  and wish I was able to find it.  Birds are migrating and we never know what is coming through this month.  

My face was covered in sweat with sweat drops falling off my nose as I put down the clippers and got  my camera.   I sighed as the quiet  of  the  woods settled  in.  I was on my knees taking a photo of a very small gray tree frog that I had carefully avoided  while weeding earlier.  He was about the size of  my fingernail. Then in the quiet I heard an unusual sound.  

It was a very close whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.  I looked toward the garage wondering if  hubby was in there and had turned on some fan that had trouble starting.   It was an odd quiet sound and I just knew it was mechanical.  Then a shadow  crossed over me and as I looked up a  large bald eagle flew 12 to 15 feet over  my head and was crossing the lawn heading toward our gate and other trees at the front of the yard.  

Yes, I was too much in awe of  his prescence to  turn  the camera on him fast enough.  His flight was so quiet that you would only have heard it when there was no other noise aroundIt reminded me of the very quiet flight of the barred  owl  that we had unintentionally followed down the river on our second canoe  trip  the other day.  These birds of prey are certainly most stealthy.

Life Is Too Damn Complicated

My first advice for the day is to not order expensive European chocolate over the Internet.  I know, you have probably never considered that luxury.  Hershey's Company has made it very difficult to find something not overly sweet but creamy and chocolaty in the USA.  They have been able to manipulate what comes into this country to compete with their overly sweet candy.  But in the time of COVID I decided I needed a fancy reward.  It tasted fine...BUT!!

Several people commented to my last post about their complicated life with passwords.  I decided to take a photo (heavily blurred) of my MANY passwords lists.  I keep them on spreadsheets.  One spreadsheet is titled SHOPPING/BILL PAYING/INVESTMENTS.  Another is titled COMPUTER HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE  (i.e. router, laptop, wifi...)  I also have photography, travel, and subscription spreadsheets with passwords.

This might give you a clue as to why I do not change them very often, but instead, try to make them complicated.

I had to log into a government server the other day for my husband's evaluation of some grant work.  That site required at least one lower case letter, at least one upper case letter, at least one number, and one character.  But it also had to be twelve characters in length!  I really wish we could implement safe biological scans soon.

Here are the many pages of stuff I try to maintain:

I have some sympathy for those who are not as well-organized. People, like my husband, find this technological world a nightmare.  This world is not for the weak of heart or mind! 

Oh, then you also have to remember the passwords to access the spreadsheet files on your computer!!

"A computer hacker is a computer expert who uses their technical knowledge to overcome a problem"...right!

It all begins with just one creep from Russia with too much time and not enough money. Somehow Hubby's email got hacked. The first time in decades, so I guess we should count ourselves lucky. No bank accounts or other emails or friends' emails seemed to be impacted.  Then, being the good person that I am, I went in and changed my two email passwords as a precaution.  (I did not change the password for the email I use for this blog...but I must admit I rarely check it!)  The result of all this careful tying up of loose ends was that I got logged out of everything each day.  Blogger, Facebook, three emails...etc.  I worked my way back by re-entering or in some cases changing those email passwords again, but I am too stupid to make sure the interface I am using keeps me logged in because I check the "keep me logged in" box and I still have to re-enter the next day.  At least a drop-down box asks me to save the passwords...each and every time....drop, drop, drop.

I actually have two personas on my PC.  My hidden one for Blogger privacy and my other one for the real world.  Yes, it is all way too complicated for an elder world.  Thus, it has taken me some days to be brave enough to log in here.

I did not get logged out of bank accounts or doctors' portals which is good!

Because I am a slow elder and cannot really understand the difference between Google and Microsoft and why I need passwords for those, it has taken me days working to try to get this all straightened out once again on my computer and I was not the one hacked!   I am not sure that I have completed my work, but I am here at Blogger once again!  (I have lots of blog reading to do.)

There is a bright side to every storm front and that was we got phone calls from friends we hadn't heard from in decades!!  (How can they be friends if we do not keep in touch you may ask?  Well, when you have lived a long life you leave friends like breadcrumbs as you move around)  Hubby actually had a week full of long phone calls with old pals as we caught up on their lives.  I think his (fake email) call for help had many worried due to the real issues with Corvid19.  It was almost like being able to travel about once again.

I was involved in some of the calls as both of our cell phones and landline could be busy at the same time.  Two of the callers asked if we were Republicans?  I am not sure why they thought this had to do with anything, but I explained that I was not and would not talk politics with them if they felt that was not a good thing.  They dropped the subject and we went on to other issues!

I know so many nice people and some of my FB friends have said the same for them knowing nice people who support Drump.  I am not saying I am dismayed by conservatives...as I am liberal on some issues and conservative on others.  I am dismayed by friends who are The Donald supporters because our current leader is a disease...not an ideology.

I do sometimes wonder if challenges such as computer problems become more important because we are so isolated these days and feel even more so when cannot connect electronically.  

Well, now I need to go write about our long canoe trip the other day on my other blog.