My Weekend At Home With A Snotty Hacker

June 16, 2015June 16, 2015 / Ally Bean / 24 Comments

Last week Zen-Den got a cold. This is unusual.

He was traveling for work and somewhere along the way, on a plane or at a hotel perhaps, he picked up a nasty head cold that over the weekend morphed into wheezing and chest congestion.

This condition, as you can imagine, lead to lots of nose blowing and loud coughing. I dubbed him a snotty hacker, which I thought was clever.

He didn’t seem to appreciate my sly sense of humor, clearly showing you that he didn’t feel good.

Snotty hacker. That’s funny. Healthy people would laugh.

Whatever.

So this past weekend, when I wasn’t fetching hot tea or a blanket or a box of Kleenex, I goofed off in my own low-key, dear-lord-it’s-hot-and-humid-outside, kind of way.

The following are my three big takeaways from my time spent, more or less, alone.

I finished watching Grace and Frankie which is a wonderful new, not violent or crude, TV show available on Netflix.

The show, which stars Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as two straight women whose husbands have left the women for each other, is smart + authentic + funny.

Just a little bittersweet.

And has the most amazing house porn, the sort of which that is usually reserved for movies.

Go watch it now. I give it 5 stars.

Ever since I heard the whole “Call Me Caitlyn” thing, it has bugged me. Not the idea that a human being has the right to do whatever he or she wants to do within and/or to his or her body.

No, that I get.

What has bothered me, I finally figured out, is that a woman born in 1949 would not be named Caitlyn, a name that showed up in the the 1970s. She’d be called Linda, the 1st most popular girl name that year. Or Mary, the 2nd most popular.

And if by chance her name was “Caitlyn” it wouldn’t be spelled all modern-like. It would be spelled Kate Lynn. Shortened for the 9th most popular girl name, Kathleen + basic middle name, Lynn.

Kathleen Lynn. A perfectly acceptable 1940s name.

Right?

I finished reading A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet: Southern Stories of Faith, Family, and Fifteen Pounds of Bacon by Sophie Hudson.

Sophie is a blogger who took her personal stories to the next level by writing this funny, charming memoir. The book, published in 2013, has been on my list of books to read for years, so I’m not exactly talking about it on a timely basis.

No surprise there. My reading is rarely current.

However, be that as it may, I thought that I’d tell you, my gentle readers, that if I could pick a family to join, I want to be part of Sophie’s family. I know that I could fit right in immediately.

I like bacon. And I adore kindness.

Both of which are in abundance in this delightful memoir. Highly recommended.

Of Slow Cooker Wisdom And Simple Garden Plans

May 5, 2015May 5, 2015 / Ally Bean / 44 Comments

“Knowledge is the process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.”

~ Martin H. Fischer, Physician and Author

• • •

WE SPENT MOST of this past warm and beautiful spring weekend working in the garden.

My goal, influenced by the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook , is to have what I’ve come to call a slow cooker garden.

A space filled with variety, but put together in a way that is simple to understand. Pleasant to look at, but requiring less and less effort each year to maintain.

That is, we’re going to fix it now with perennials, paths and stones; then forget about changing anything out there for the next decade.

• • •

SO WHAT HAVE we got going on? Well, we’ve got:

a plethora of roses + daisies + hostas in planting beds beside stone and/or concrete steps that circle the house;
a landscape island in the front yard near the street filled with grasses and mostly purple flowers;
a newly installed dry faux creek bed under the deck; AND
a lower terrace in the back yard down by the woods that features stone steps, grasses, roses plus the recent addition of difficult-to-find milkweed. *yeah*

• • •

I’M NOT SURE how our garden ended up being so multi-faceted and unique, but over the years, little by little, it did.

My hope is that when it comes time to sell this property, like the HGTV show CURBAPPEAL suggests, the awe-inspiring exterior of the property will be so amazing that this house’s relatively small square footage won’t hinder a sale.

However, be that as it may, in the mean time, I’m not worrying about real estate business-y things like ROI. Instead, I’m going to groove on all that we have going on in our pretty, pretty garden.

• • •

So tell me, gentle readers: how does your garden grow?

A Conversation In Which I Learn Something About E-book Readers, I Guess

April 10, 2015January 9, 2017 / Ally Bean / 37 Comments

Make no assumptions…

IT’S BEEN STORMY here this week. Some days the sky has been as dark at 11:00 a.m. as it is at 11:00 p.m. This weather phenomenon has been the talk wherever I go.

As you would imagine.

ONE THING THAT I’ve learned during these exceptionally dark mid-days is that my Kindle Paperwhite does what it claims that it’ll do. That is, it automatically adjusts to the changing light conditions, making reading an easy pleasant experience.

I’m rather impressed by this.

SO I’M CHIT-CHATTING with two acquaintances, a man and a woman both in their early 50s. And I mention, in passing, as a way of having something topical to say, that I’ve enjoyed my Kindle during these dark days. And both of my acquaintances said: “what’s a Kindle?”

They did not know about e-book readers. Any of them.

I WAS STUNNED, and started trying to explain what a Kindle is– what e-book readers are– how you use them– the different brands of them. Et cetera, et cetera. But while I talked, hoping to inform, these two seemingly normal people just stared at me like I was talking Martian gibberish. Which to them, I was.

Can you even imagine?

# # #

[Hello FTC! Please note: I’m opining here about an object that I bought with my own monies and just happen to like. I received no compensation of any sort for this review, such as it is. I mean really, who would pay me to say this?]

In Which I Grouse About Punctuation & Think Fondly Of Erma Bombeck

March 24, 2015May 6, 2021 / Ally Bean / 18 Comments

I RECEIVED an invitation to attend a talk, at a university, given by an author. Profits from the talk go to support the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, so it’s a good event to attend.

However, I find the invitation to be lacking, in a most disturbing way. A way that displeases me, an English major and blogger extraordinaire.

A way, I have to believe in my educated-by-this-very-university heart of hearts, that would also displease Erma, a newspaper columnist and author.

~ ~ • ~ ~

AND HERE is what I’m talking about. One of my pet peeves is that periods [as in punctuation] are disappearing, inexplicably, from the end of sentences.

Look at most billboards anymore.
Look at tag-lines on advertisements. On the sides of trucks. On the packages which hold the food you eat.
Look at this invitation in which many lines of words are sentences, but WHERE ARE THE PERIODS?!!

~ ~ • ~ ~

HEAVEN KNOWS that I’d have flunked out of this university if I’d indulged in such disregard for punctuation. I’m trying to not take this personally, but the evidence in this invitation shows…

A total lack of concern. For the very thing that I hold dear. Proper punctuation. Used almost frivolously. Stylishly. And without regard for cost.

Which is the only reason that I can fathom for why periods are disappearing from the end of sentences. I have to suspect that in these economically challenging times, the up-charge for adding them to any written communication is so costly that leaving them out helps the bottom line.

That’s the reason, right?