What's the biggest time-suck in the world? Learning how to install/fix/operate something new on your computer. It can take forever.
I can only say this: I'm glad I hadn't scheduled anything important for this afternoon, because I would have had that feeling of total panic as the minutes turned into hours turned into the rest of my day, as I struggled to use another Adobe photo editing program.
I had to do it. My computer is several years old and though I knew I would get into trouble sooner or later, I continued to work on photos imported onto its hard drive. How long would it be before I ran out of space? Oh, right about this long.
Please don't be an Ed and tell me to move everything to a backup device. I don't like them, I forget how to use them. I prefer having everything there, on my own screen, at my fingertips daily. And though all good photos are actually in a cloud storage on Flickr, that place is a complete mess. I have 53,843 edited photos (I've been s Flickr member since 2005), all in one chronological photostream. No order, no labeling, no albums, no organization. You try to find anything there. Can't do it? Ha! Neither can I.
So I opened up my cloud based Light Room, which, after all, is included in my Adobe subscription, and I stumbled. And it took me forever to get past step one, despite a valiant effort to google, search youtube, etc etc to get myself out of a frozen space from which I could not exit.
Okay, enough computer jabber. After all, it wasn't a complete waste of time: you learn something when you problem solve your way through an issue, but still -- a whole beautiful afternoon to learn one very trivial little detail. Uff!
Otherwise, the day belonged to the grandkids.
After breakfast of course.
Snowdrop, Sparrow and I cycled through the usual loosely set schedule of activities, but there definitely were some highlights: our nature walk, for example, put us straight into the new orchard, where Ed and I had set up a ladder. It was Snowdrop's first authentic cherry picking experience!
She learned that not all cherries come without bugs! (But most are beautiful and delicious, even though our harvest isn't huge.)
Sparrow wanted to pick as well and I let him do it by hoisting him up close to a cherry candidate, but the truth is, the little guy doesn't like cherries, as it's a FRUIT of all horrors, so he held onto it for a while, wondering if he should be happy or indifferent to the experience.
Eventually, we ate his cherry.
Inside, he wanted to paint, on her side of the easel. For two minutes and then he was done.
Then she wanted to paint, for one minute, before something else caught her eye.
There was a music class and thus far, Snowdrop had been good about going along with it (she is my one grandchild who does not absolutely love to sing), but today, she wanted a more active role in the guitar playing...
... and so of course then he, too, wanted a more active role in the guitar playing.
Still, it was fun and even though Snowdrop doesn't go around humming songs we sometimes sing here, she does remember them. I got reprimanded for skipping a verse from On Top of Spaghetti -- as song I had last sang several years ago. Too, she is by now quite adept at doing a credible rendition of Home on the Range. Sparrow -- well, he likes music, but is still not fully into the performance aspects of it.
And there you have it: a day that flew by at demonic speed. I could not believe it when I glanced at the clock and saw that it was time for dinner.
And what's there for us this evening? Well, I've got all this kale and so I followed the advice of my CSA farmers and sauteed some garlic scapes, potato onions and kale, threw them into a small baking dish, along with a bit of marinara sauce, crumbled feta on top, and cracked a couple of eggs over it all, and put it into the oven to bake.
Late evening. Quiet time again. In the summer, it's especially bewitching to bring the quiet of the outdoors into your home.
Living in the country makes that all too easy.
A stroll, a few minutes with the animals and then it's time to bring out the pop corn and lose yourself in the current fave British crime drama. Completely distracting, delightfully fictional, perfect when watched with with a nice glass of wine and an even bigger glass of fizzy water at the side.
I can only say this: I'm glad I hadn't scheduled anything important for this afternoon, because I would have had that feeling of total panic as the minutes turned into hours turned into the rest of my day, as I struggled to use another Adobe photo editing program.
I had to do it. My computer is several years old and though I knew I would get into trouble sooner or later, I continued to work on photos imported onto its hard drive. How long would it be before I ran out of space? Oh, right about this long.
Please don't be an Ed and tell me to move everything to a backup device. I don't like them, I forget how to use them. I prefer having everything there, on my own screen, at my fingertips daily. And though all good photos are actually in a cloud storage on Flickr, that place is a complete mess. I have 53,843 edited photos (I've been s Flickr member since 2005), all in one chronological photostream. No order, no labeling, no albums, no organization. You try to find anything there. Can't do it? Ha! Neither can I.
So I opened up my cloud based Light Room, which, after all, is included in my Adobe subscription, and I stumbled. And it took me forever to get past step one, despite a valiant effort to google, search youtube, etc etc to get myself out of a frozen space from which I could not exit.
Okay, enough computer jabber. After all, it wasn't a complete waste of time: you learn something when you problem solve your way through an issue, but still -- a whole beautiful afternoon to learn one very trivial little detail. Uff!
Otherwise, the day belonged to the grandkids.
After breakfast of course.
Snowdrop, Sparrow and I cycled through the usual loosely set schedule of activities, but there definitely were some highlights: our nature walk, for example, put us straight into the new orchard, where Ed and I had set up a ladder. It was Snowdrop's first authentic cherry picking experience!
She learned that not all cherries come without bugs! (But most are beautiful and delicious, even though our harvest isn't huge.)
Sparrow wanted to pick as well and I let him do it by hoisting him up close to a cherry candidate, but the truth is, the little guy doesn't like cherries, as it's a FRUIT of all horrors, so he held onto it for a while, wondering if he should be happy or indifferent to the experience.
Eventually, we ate his cherry.
Inside, he wanted to paint, on her side of the easel. For two minutes and then he was done.
Then she wanted to paint, for one minute, before something else caught her eye.
There was a music class and thus far, Snowdrop had been good about going along with it (she is my one grandchild who does not absolutely love to sing), but today, she wanted a more active role in the guitar playing...
... and so of course then he, too, wanted a more active role in the guitar playing.
Still, it was fun and even though Snowdrop doesn't go around humming songs we sometimes sing here, she does remember them. I got reprimanded for skipping a verse from On Top of Spaghetti -- as song I had last sang several years ago. Too, she is by now quite adept at doing a credible rendition of Home on the Range. Sparrow -- well, he likes music, but is still not fully into the performance aspects of it.
And there you have it: a day that flew by at demonic speed. I could not believe it when I glanced at the clock and saw that it was time for dinner.
And what's there for us this evening? Well, I've got all this kale and so I followed the advice of my CSA farmers and sauteed some garlic scapes, potato onions and kale, threw them into a small baking dish, along with a bit of marinara sauce, crumbled feta on top, and cracked a couple of eggs over it all, and put it into the oven to bake.
Late evening. Quiet time again. In the summer, it's especially bewitching to bring the quiet of the outdoors into your home.
Living in the country makes that all too easy.
A stroll, a few minutes with the animals and then it's time to bring out the pop corn and lose yourself in the current fave British crime drama. Completely distracting, delightfully fictional, perfect when watched with with a nice glass of wine and an even bigger glass of fizzy water at the side.
