I’ll see you feline and share a canine (I can go both ways and miss my calico) - this is my Aussie, Bella who is no longer with us…
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Only through upmost strict control do I keep to just one cat.
At one time my daughter and I had 5.
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We were probably working on our dissertations at the same time. My first cat a Siamese decided she would help add some length to the project , because she saw me struggling, I guess, and took it upon herself to remedy the situation. Think back to the earlier days of word processing — WordPerfect, black and white monitor, 286 desktop with a wee hard drive, and my cheat sheet of DOS commands. I’d gotten up from my desk to do something., and suddenly I heard the loud beeping alarms of a computer in distress. I ran back to my desk, and there was my cat, her front paws planted firmly on the keyboard, filling the screen with row after row of characters …. Took quite a bit of work to retrieve my manuscript; II sometimes wondered if I had just let her contribution remain, would my dissertation committee have noticed it?
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Me, too.
And my phone stays in my purse, unless I’m expecting an emergency call (probably medical) which I explain beforehand. Why bother being with people if you’re not fully engaged?
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Unless you’re a liver transplant surgeon or something similar, people shouldn’t be so attached to their phones, like interrupting a meal in a nice restaurant to take a call.
How in the world did Carnegie, etc, all those business leaders conduct business before cell phones? Business got done. I don’t like people talking loudly in the car (sometimes in Asian languages!) while I’m driving in heavy traffic on the freeway.
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Well, even though IT is part of what I do, I like to conduct serious business without devices. Yes I can do Zoom/remote quite proficiently, and even gave a light and separate camera setup, but I’m talking about when you meet person to person. I had a group of advisors at one time - that when we met, and sat down at the conference table the guys would all take out their phones, turn the bell off, and place the phones in their suit jacket chest pockets. Which begs the question, what is a suit jacket, I know. Then we’d all go to lunch, no phones out, either. We got serious stuff done without distractions. As a client, I felt respected. Multitasking didn’t enter into the mix.
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I came back from my research residence in Spain and then in 1985 got one of the first MacIntosh 128K. Started with McWrite since MS word for Macs didn’t yet exist. Rapidly became McF***k when it bombed after 12 pages. Stanford tech folks were able to help me restore it and told me I had to save in small increments (never mentioned in what passed for the McWrite manual) separate files for even portions of one chapter and footnotes. No hard drive. Both the OS and McWrite worked off the single internal disk drive on hard floppy. Later got an external drive that could read DS hard floppies, but still no hard drive, and MS word, which miraculously put the footnotes at the bottom of the page, formatted!. Did the whole two volumes on hard floppies. Backing up after each session. Never lost a thing. I was very careful, and very lucky. I was very fortunate not to have to mess with WordPerfect/DOS commands. I am glad it took me a bit longer because I was right there when the Mac replaced the Kaypros my colleagues who finished earlier had to deal with.
Annie cat didn’t like me staring at the computer instead of her, when she was awake. She decided to get my attention by jumping up on top of the small Mac, which was notorious for overheating. I screamed, she got off, and never tried it again. Instead, she’d jump in my lap. I later purchased a fan that went on top and didn’t provide a level surface for her.
And yes, I do wonder if my dissertation committee actually read much of it (and being art history, there was a third volume of carefully photocopied and annotated illustrations). There were only a few corrections suggested and then I was done. It might have something to do with the fact that my defense just happened to be scheduled the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. Truly, just happened…
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Please take care and know you did just fine. I’ve had holidays work out that way. We all got fed one way or another and lived. Plus, pussums are so comforting.
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To take photos of the food and maybe a candid photo or 2 of them enjoying the dinner 
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. I almost got into a brawl with one of the members of my committee. At any rate, this computer was my 2nd. The first was an IBM PC that took floppy floppies. Thank God there were 2 floppy drives - I didn’t have to load DOS and take the disk out and load WP and take the disk out and then put in my disk to save stuff. I still have my original floppy floppies. Why, I don’t know. But when I got the rough draft of my dissertation back from my director, with instructions to add 125 footnotes, WordPerfect saved my life - footnotes numbered at the bottom. And renumbered if you inserted a new one. Otherwise, I’d still be typing. I use Macs now. WP no longer exists for Macs. The last time I wanted to use it, I had to install in a virtual machine running Windows. I hate Office. But I’m stuck. And I’d rather cook, or knit, or sip some nice wine.
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OMG my mom for reasons unclear to me washes all her dishes before she puts them in the dishwasher. With 11 at her house for many of the weekend meals and 6 sleeping at the house for 4 nights, she appeared to be spending 60% of her waking hours doing dishes, or putting them away. She declined all offers for help, as she has a “system.”
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Thanksgiving dinnerware and cats. #synergy
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Maybe she has a ‘dishrinser’ like we do.
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That is so funny!
Same!
she appeared to be spending 60% of her waking hours doing dishes, or putting them away
@Sasha ; several times a day I asked " how can I help?", only to be told “I’m done!”, but no…
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They come in black, white. And blue.
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It took me many years to realize that the folks who insist on extended kitchen time on holidays are executing an intentional, personal strategy.
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My mother-in-law did not have a dishwasher in her home. She did this exact same thing when she came to visit us but only rinsed, did not wash them completely. Then, quite often, she would put the dirty dishes away in the cupboards without running the DW and I would have to deal with that after she left.
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My laugh for the day, thank you.
