Happy Birthday, Sara!

We went to Boston to see our kids and granddaughter, Sara, whose 5th birthday party was on the Saturday of our visit. A&A rented a room with a kitchen and hired a person to help them make cookies from scratch. The slide show is about that.



Here's a video of the cookie-making scene.

Sunday, we had brunch with Lisa and her crew - C, S, L, R, J and J.


Finally, here's a picture of Sara and her grandpa puzzling over Sara's new XO laptop!! (Wake up, Grandpa!!)

"The Race"

...is a novel by Richard North Patterson about a young Republican senator, Corey Grace, in a primary race for the presidency with the Reverend Bob Christy ("Christ-y" is not a stretch!), an evangelical leader of the Christian right, and Senator Rob Marotta of Pennsylvania, a prototypical political sell-out, backed by the whale of communications, Alex Rohr ("Roar"?), a man for whom enough is never enough.

Grace is "our" kind of Republican: a man who does not toe the party line, who tells the truth as he perceives it and who cares more about the country than himself. An intelligent centrist.

Oh, he's divorced and he meets and begins dating a liberal African-American Hollywood actress!

Lots of elements for a good story there! I liked it a lot. We need to find more Corey Graces to run for office and dump the party hacks, the extremists and the ones who sell out to money and power to gain office. Amen!

TV Ads for Prescription Drugs Suck!!

I suppose that big pharma thinks it's a great way to get increased income, but shouldn't they be pitching the drugs to doctors? Or are they saying that docs are no motivated to keep up with new drugs until their patients ask for them??

I hear the list of side effects for some of them and ask, "Why would anyone want to take these?" Heart attacks, vomiting, flu-like symptoms, death... Really!!

New Computer

Not only did we have a great time visiting our kids and grandkid, and a nice time at a B&B in Lenox, MA, but I bought my daughter's old laptop (Dell E1405 with 2GB RAM and a 120 GB HD and Vista Ultimate)!

My neighbors are replacing their old XP (and older machines) with Vista boxes so this comes at a good time for me to upgrade.

So far, Vista has not shown its so-called ugly side. I don't mind the UAC pop-ups; I'm used to them with Zone Alarm. And once I downloaded the drivers for the touchpad so I could disable touching, I'm a happy camper.

Installing a New HD

I replaced my C drive and it wasn't as simple as people said, so I thought I would write down all the steps just in case!!

1) Buy SATA drive plus data cable and power adapter. (My Dell had the correct power connector but just to be safe...)

2) Download the trial version of Acronis True Image

3) Shutdown the computer, open the case, screw on the rails, and slide the HD in place.

4) Connect the data cable to SATA 1 (0 is the existing HD) and connect the power.

5) Power up and boot into "Setup" (BIOS for you old-timers). Enable the new drive. Save and exit.

6) Start Acronis. Select "Disk Utilities" and "Add a New HD". Create one bootable partition.

7) Start the cloning process. Acronis will copy all partitions fro the old HD.

8) Shut down. Swap the SATA data cables.

9) Close the case and power up.

Looks simple!!

Blog as a form of WHAT???

There was a recent article on CNN about how blogging can be a kind of group therapy!! Really? Are you all reading this and nodding "uh-huh, uh-huh, how does that make you feel?" :-)

Frankly I'm not sure why I blog. When I first retired it was a way of consuming some time and also letting my far-away loved ones know what it was like (a) being retired and (b) living in an over-55 community. But as of late, I've had enough to fill my time and I'm also less involved in my community.

I play bridge three times a week, write a monthly column for our newsletter and expand it on our community website (www.4seasonsatmapleton.org/4sam/computercorner), help my friend S with his computer problems/hang out with him, and of course I have my chores.

I've even learned a few things while helping S. E.g., I never knew you could create a shortcut to an oft-used word processor template!!

Cathy is as busy as ever these days, with consulting at TASK, Master Gardenering duties and physical therapy for her shoulder (doing nicely, thank you!), and making super recipes from stuff she gets from the food channels. My favorite is spanikopita burgers from Rachel Ray.

We have a trip to Massachusetts in a week or so. I'm really looking forward to seeing Lisa, Alan & Alisa, and of course Mistress Sara, who turns FIVE this month. I hear that she has been been testing the limits as only a nearly-five-year-old can do, driving A&A up the wall. We'll see.

Saw "Charlie Wilson's War" last evening. (We have a weekly movie in our clubhouse.) Interesting in the light of today's situation in the middle East. My neighbors were visibly (and audibly) uncomfortable with the nudity and the f***ing language, but no one left. I'm surprise. A couple of years ago, we showed "The Banger Sisters" and no one would talk to us for weeks!

We're going to B&D's for the usual Mom's Day Brunch. Cathy has decided that the only presents she wants from here on out are things she can eat or plant, and so she selected a nice shrub as her gift from me. (She told me what kind, but I've forgotten already. <sigh>) Me? I still like gadgets. I got a window cleaning gadget to use on the inside of my car's windshield and used it for the first time yesterday. It was great! It's just a pad with a long handle that I needed because I'm no longer flexible enough to reach all of the steeply-raked WS of my Acura TSX and this worked just fine.

Maybe I'll go to the gym today.