With each step, the cat grew larger and larger (or not)

Our cats never go outside. Never. At least not unless they are in a cat carrier. However, we do have visitors. They come several time a night and seem to especially enjoy making the motion sensitive light come on right outside our bedroom window.

We've known there was something odd about those cats.

This morning, as I was trudging through the snow (assuming one can trudge through about 1 cm of the stuff), I looked down to see sure proof that the cat that haunts our yard at night must be very weird indeed. It is the stuff of nightmares--a cat that develops the necessary height for its trail to expand like this. More then that--it is a cat that can do it without any change at all in the size of its paws.

Or not.

Apparently when RW went out for his morning ciggie, there was only one line of paw prints. The second line appeared sometime before I came on the scene. I'm trying to be satisfied with the strangeness of two cats preferring to walk half on and half off of the sidewalk. That will have to do.

If Noodles is 58, how old is Beanie the cat?

I think it's genetic. Nobody in my family seems to be able to keep track of their age. When my brother Jonathan started to obsess about turning 40, I thought he was just in for 13 months of fretting, but no, he thought his fortieth was next up. He even had his friends planning a big party for the event.

At the time, I knew how old I was, and I knew how much younger he was, so I clued him into the fact that he was about to turn 39, not 40. If I remember correctly, he had the party anyway. Our mother never knew her own age, either. When I still knew my own age I was able to pitch in with the correct information.

All of the above is to let you know two things:

1. I once knew how old I was; and
2. I have not totally escaped my genetic inheritance.

Until recently, I had been telling everyone who would listen that I am 58. I believe I started using that number shortly after June 3, 2009, when I actually turned 57.

I discovered the truth when I attempted to figure out the age of my Siamese cat Beanie. Of course, I did not know/remember how old I was when Beanie was born. Initially, I thought I got her two years before I moved to Canada, which would make her 12. Then I came upon a picture of her at my son's high school graduation party. I knew my son was 19 at the time. However, I didn't remember what year he was born, so I couldn't figure out what year he was graduated from high school.

Fortunately, I still knew how old my mother was when I was born and I also knew that I had my first (and only) born a year later than did my mom. That means that I was 22 when my son was born. As I also remembered that I was born in 1952, that meant that my son was born in October 1974. Extrapolating from that, I knew that the grad party must have taken place in June 1994. Beanie looks about three months old in the picture, which means that Beanie recently turned 16.

2010-1994=16
2010-1952=58 (but not until June)

Genetics or bad math skills? You be the judge.

TwoSquare for FourSquare

I live in a great smallish city. It's about twice as large as the city I grew up in, which, when I was a kidlet felt like it was the whole world, and is 95% smaller than the place I spent 30+ years of my adult life. It's officially a nuclear weapons free zone and there is a statue of a freedom loving pig that can't be beat.

It's also a bit off the beaten track, unless you happen to be driving from Calgary to Edmonton and need to go to the bathroom. Still, we're closing in on the 100,000 mark and although it seems to me to have a small town feel, in Central Alberta it's a good sized city.

As an aside, I met RW on-line and in our first phone conversation he talked about his home town, Swift Current, a town of 25,000 in Saskatchewan, in such a way as to make me feel geographically challenged because I had never heard of it. I later learned that all Canadians seem to know a fair amount about any town, in any province, with a population of more than about 3,000.

People know about them, but that doesn't mean they actually go there voluntarily. And they certainly don't bring any kind of technology to any of the places they do go, well, not if the destination is in my neck of the woods.

I found that last bit out when I installed FourSquare on my phone-toy. If you are even less hip than I, you may not know that FourSquare is an app (yes, people actually use that poor excuse for a word) that lets you check in at various locations and tell the world, or your friends, that you are there. I hear that in bigger cities, popular people announce their presence and their minions flock to join them upon receiving the notification. If you hang out in one place more than anyone else, you get a badge identifying you as its mayor.

It appears that I could be the mayor of just about anyplace here. None of the places I go have been established as FourSquare venues, well, not unless you count City Hall, and I only go there to pay parking tickets. I thought to remedy this by making the coffee shop/cafe near my office into a venue, but really, what's the point? I have no minions, after all.

Because I have a bit of pioneer spirit, I carried on. I established said coffee shop as an official FourSquare venue. I then let FourSquare search my GMail contacts for possible minions. Alas, the only possibilities seem to be my friend Howard in Como, Italy or a person I Emailed accidentally about a year ago who lives somewhere North of Toronto.

Oh well, I forgot to stop by the cafe on my way home anyway. Maybe I can become the mayor there later today.

Yet another betrayal of the body

I started wearing glasses when I was about five. It was somewhat a badge of honour in our house to have lousy vision. I remember my dad saying he could hear better with his glasses on, which made no sense at all. At some point, when I was about ten, I realized that it was probably true. It wasn't an ear thing, but when your vision truly sucks the world is confusing on a whole lot of levels.

For about 40 years it was pretty much glasses-shamasses. You got up in the morning, put the damn things on and the world came alive. I quickly figured out that the whole "boys don't make passes at girls who where glasses" was a lie, so as long as I could see, the fact that I did it through prescription lenses was pretty much a non-issue.

I maintained the same cavalier attitude when the eye doctor asked whether I wanted bifocals or the newfangled no line type specs. I could see just fine, so I was fine.

I guess I was in my late 40s when no amount of manipulation of my lenses made it easy to read. I went through a glasses on, glasses off period and did that silly thing where I tried to move my arms back and forth in order to manipulate what I was reading until it was just right. Fortunately, I learned how to zoom in on the computer and figured out how to read in bed with the book positioned correctly so everything more or less worked out.

About a week or so ago I noticed a sudden increase in floaters in my left eye. Initially I thought wayward strands of hair were falling down over the eye, but no, my hair was where it was supposed to be. I puzzled over it for a bit, alternating between being amused by what looked like little critters dancing back and forth across my left eye, and worried that one day there would be so many of the buggers that I couldn't see at all.

Finally, I went to the doctor. She is very young, way too young, but then all the doctors my age have retired or only see patients on sunny Tuesday afternoons in July. She was reassuring, in an appealing coltish way, and told me that the goo in my eye (I guess I no longer look like the kind of person who can comprehend words like vitreous humor) had dried up a bit and that the floaters were the result.

Apparently if they get bad enough there is some sort of laser treatment that will zap them away. At least she said laser. If she had said something like "very bright pointy light" I probably would have popped her one.

Like most getting-older women, I knew that juicy eventually comes to an end. I just didn't know that it came to an end for eyes.

The upper end of the middle, I suppose

I spent an hour or so this weekend trying to guilt my husband into installing a virtual machine on my computer so I could run some legacy software on my Windows 7 box. I failed.

I'm thinking he was getting back at me. A few weeks ago, I did not update his phone when I updated my own. He lost data services and his calls out were mysteriously rerouted to Rogers' customer service where a very nice women in India cheered him on as he installed the update. 24 hours later his service was restored and all was well.

OK, maybe not so well, after all, he was not inclined to help me with the damn VM and I ended up doing it myself.

From my perspective, our marriage license came with a terms of services agreement. RW took responsibility for networking, databases, and installs. I was the go to person for web building, advanced googling, troubleshooting, and all things requiring a word processor.

Times have changed. When we got married ten years ago, RW went to work doing techie business in the big city everyday and I stayed at home doing some web building, but mainly taking care of the home front. These days, I go to the office and RW stays home running a smallish accounting business and worrying about what he will make for dinner. I am in charge of an education program for a non-profit. My job also includes a techie component, including the website and our social networking presence.

The VM debacle represents that change, I suppose. So does the cell phone bit. Our TOS has apparently changed, or at the very least, been modified to include changing technologies.

We're both within hailing distance of 60. Neither one of us seems to have the burning need to embrace new technologies we used to have. If we want to make it sound better, I suppose we could say we have developed a late middle age ennui. If we were being honest, we'd probably call it the march of the noodles.

When rudeness transforms

I've always been somewhat lacking in social skills. I think it dates back to my childhood, when no one listened to me anyway, or if they did, I had to jump right in before they moved on. In any case, I developed a caustic wit and a reputation for being very direct (AKA rude).

Then, about 15 years ago, I had an aha moment. I was riding in the car with a woman I've known my whole life. At the time, she was about 5-6 years older than I am now. In the middle of a conversation about something truly trivial, she told me that at her age she no longer felt like she had to be nice or accommodating or polite. She went on to say that she had earned the right to "say whatever is on her mind."

Now, my experience of this person was that she had always had two distinct personae: one was bitchy and self-involved; the other was sweet, helpful, and, from my perspective, utterly phony and reserved for a small circle of friends and total strangers. I assumed that her proclamation meant that there would now be only one of her, the bitchy self-involved one I had always known.

The aha part came about when I realized that I had somehow inherited the bitchy part of her, and that I didn't want it anymore. I didn't want the false thing she was discarding, but I did want to make a change--a real change.

I then went on a journey, the intent of which was to become a no less honest, no less witty, but infinitely more pleasant person to be around. I think I have succeeded. The people I have met over the past dozen or so years still think of me as being direct, but not in a nasty way. I still have a sense of humour, but it tends toward the self-deprecating rather than the caustic variety. Best of all, it feels real to me, like over the years I was (mostly) able to successfully rid myself of a personal style that wasn't working for me any longer. I'm guessing that it never did.

All that is well and good, however I am beginning to think that it is out of step with developing cultural norms. Reading comments on websites, and interacting with people in the grocery store, it seems that rude is the new default for interacting with each other, at least in situations that are not mediated by actual relationships. Listening to how people talk to and about people they presumably love, it seems to be a big part of those relationships as well.

Oh well, I'm out of step. Again.

Learning new shtuff

I spend a fair amount of time every day reading on-line. I read things related to my work and things that catch my eye for no particular reason at all. I also read about new digital technology, mostly software, apps,--the kind of things I have always called toys.

I'm finding the technology reading a bit daunting these days. Let me give an example.

An hour or so ago I read that Swype, an application that lets you trace words on a virtual keyboard instead of typing in each letter, was now available for my cell phone. Since trading in my HTC Dream for an HTC Magic (long boring story there, boo hiss), I have had to use a virtual keyboard full time, and my typing on it leaves much to be desired. I watched a video, and it looked useful.

I knew how to do the download and install part, but found I had to watch the video again to get it going. I watched a couple of other videos that demonstrated some of the features. Then I watched them again.

I tried the damn thing, and as I came to realize that I was not immediately good at using it, I started to panic. No, not a full blown "I can't breath, I'm gonna die" kind of panic, but I felt this pressure build up as I didn't quite get it. It was like the thinking part of my brain was getting in the way of the doing part of it.

I was alone. No one was watching me. No one was judging me. Still, I was having some sort of weird performance anxiety--just like I do when I have to record a new voice mail message and I find myself having to do it over a dozen times until the eight words (hello this is noodles, leave me a message) sound good enough. Good enough? Is there an outgoing messages god who judges such things?

What is that about? It's not like there was going to be a test that would decide my future. It's not like a job interview. It was just me, sitting at my desk, holding my phone, and trying a new spin on text input. Finally, I started to breathe again and in doing so, it became the insignificant thing it always was, and I had no problem doing it. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but perfection was no longer necessary.

I'm beginning to understand why there are so many technophobes out there in the world. I am beginning to understand why people seem to get stuck in the past and refuse to even try new things.

I don't like it, but at least for now, I am willing to push past the discomfort. Check back with me next year.