You Say You Want Dragon.....OK, I'll Give You Dragon

I want you to know that I appreciate your suggestions to help me overcome my vision problems, especially in relation to the blog. I'm not going to chastise you for forgetting my very funny blog written about a year ago with the assistance (that's a joke) of the Dragon software.  I would repost it or refer you back to it if I had any idea when it was posted...but, never mind.  We can somehow proceed without it.

Listen you guys, if you haven't learned anything else about me you surely must know that I am a prodigious, fantastic problem solver. Why else would I have been the one out of the whole Information Services Dept. who they  called in the middle of the night to come in and fix computer programs that always broke down when everybody was asleep?   With my convoluted brain and some duct tape I can usually find a way to fix things or develop a useful substitue solution.....well, I said "USUALLY".

When I first heard about the Dragon program I was dancing on the ceiling with optimism. I wish you were not know that's not right…oooops,  Let's try that again. I was sure ........(that's better) that the   Dragon program would be my solution and I spent many, many Mary hours. No that Noto no no no… That should have been and that he on our why. note .........nope, we're still not there. Perhaps I had better give up trying to use Merry and say hilarious hours trying to dicta now the deer te a blog. Oh, dear.  See, the problem is that my vocabulary is a little larger and perhaps more obscene than that of the dragon's.  Also, my diction is not always perfect.  Some words it gets just fine, and others not so good.  But let us stagger on with this experiment. 

The Dragon program is quite remarkable.  You can actually teach it words it doesn't know.  Trouble is, like an Alzheimer's patient, it has very short, short term memory.  It forgets very quickly and you are back to square one.  I think I told you about the time I tried to teach it my favorite expletive…shitpissfuck… And after about 10 tries, by George H gooGod it wilts whoops… I think we are off the track again, all though I think we could use God's help about now,  Maybe right now.  I meant to say "by George, it's got it".  The next day, however, it had forgotten the lesson completely......very disheartening.  The problem is, I can barely see to place the cursor in the right spot to make corrections manually, either of Dragon or of my own errors, so it is a bit of  a struggle.


I do not plan to give up!  I do plan to go back to working with Dragon to see if I can learn how to teach it to remember words I have just taught it.  Hell, I may even spring for th most current version to see if they have improved the program since I bought it.  Meanwhile, pull on your girdles and buckle up your safety belts.......it may be a bumpy ride.


Much love to all of you and happy holidays.  May we all have a   healthy, peaceful, shitpissfuck-free 2014.  (Last sentence written by a human..... with slight Dragon tendencies.)

New Theory About That Light At The End of the Tunnel

 It occured to me just the other day that there is a grave danger (beside an approaching train) to seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.  Lately I have been in a sort of deep hole and while scrabbling aaround and digging away at the bottom hoping to manage to tunnel out to a better place I had  better be damned careful if I see light ahead.......when I emerge I may see nothing but a lot of Chinese looking folks..........digging without checking with a level could be disastrous......A person might even end up in Iran.......horrors.

OK.  The good news first.  After a rather awful month or so battling sciatica and the Blues I think I have finally won the struggle with sciatica.......except for a few twinges now and then my back has healed pretty much........I can even do my back strengthening (?) exercises again.....on those days when I can force myself to do anything that requires any sort of action aside from lifting a fork to my mouth.  I would not call my condition ippsy-pippsy, but it certainly is better and I am accepting that gratefully. I find myself still doing the yoga pretel stretches mostly  because it amuses me that I can.  And it also feels good.  So what's wrong with that?  The fact is that after about 80 years, your body, which has served you faithfully despite your mistreatment of it, does begin to wear out in places.......places that are not renewable or replaceable, so the choice becomes very clear.  Either enlist some help in fastening a plastic baggy around your head or just keep on keeping on, just complaining a lot more and more loudly.  At this point I have chosen the latter, probably because I don't know anyone who isn't too chicken or too disinterested to twist the little twist tie for me.  Where are friends when you need them?

I haven't quite kicked the Blues  because my vision worsens daily and not only frustrates me and enrages me but scares the hell out of me.  I have no solution yet for the time when I can no longer see to fiddle around on the computer which is about the only visual thing I can still do thanks to a tiny window of working tissue in my right retina.  I can tell you one thing unequivicably..........having to read words letter by letter is really shitty, not to mention difficult, exhausting, etc.  Hell, with long words, I often forget what the beginning was by the time I get to the end,  Very bad for any kind of quality cognition, I'll tell you......but I am not complaining.....it is bettter than seeing no letters at all.

Another sad note.........the fabulous finches are on my shitlist right now.  I am calling them the ferocious, dysfunctiuonal family of finches.  I do not know whether it was one of them or 3 of them but they apparently ganged up on the littlest female and murdered, killed, slew her to death.  Sob.  I consulted with the finch expert and he said it happens.....reasons not specific.  I was worried that her fella would waste away and mourn himself into an early grave, but he laughed at me and said he didn't think that would happen and did not even encourage me to get him a replacement ladyfriend.  Since I anthropormorphize more than Joe does I may or may not follow that advice.....I envision Mickey alone in his little nest basket at night, cuddling among the dried lettuce leaves he insists on dragging up there as acceptable nest material.....(hell, maybe it is....what do I know?).  I plan to observe as carefully as possible and take action at the first sight of a wobegone expression.  SPF....critters......can't live with them and (I) can't live without em.  Sigh.

My moans are very subdued today, you may have noticed.......mostly because I read Manzanita's heartbreaking  blog last nite describing a series of disasters topped off by the pipes in her ceilihng ffreezing and bursting leaving her standing in her kitchen in 7 inches of water while my friend in Illinois had her furnace break down over the week end.  OY.   My troubles are misicule in comparison.  My heart goes out to everyone having to cope with that dreadful winter cold.  It may sound odd, but I have never really liked California even after living here for 72 years.........I just have stayed here because of the weather.   As good a reason as any, I guess, especially from the month of November thru the month of March.  
We did not have fur lined snow boots when I was a youngster in Philadelphia winters but, by god, I sure as hell remember what a pain in the ass galoshes were (and what  a failure come to think of it.

Stay warm y'all.

Love, Lo