Then I took an introductory psychology course, which is a requirement, and I really enjoyed that class, too. Plus I was loving the grades I was making — A in Mediation, B in Math Analysis, and A in Psych. I was feeling invincible. Then fall semester started, and I was signed up for Intro to Law, Intro to the Court System, and Family Law, all on line classes. Oh, my stars and garters. I am not loving these classes. In fact, I already dropped two of them. I have to take my first exam for Intro to Law tomorrow morning, and even though I have a pretty good grasp of the material, I really should be doing a better job of studying than I am by sitting here making up stuff to put on my blog.

What brought it even more home to me that I was trying to cram a square peg (me) into a round hole (anything but science) was when I went to visit my friend who works for the department I got my Bachelor’s Degree from at the local university. She also teaches a biology class at the junior college where I work — where I once worked as a part-time biology instructor myself. The reason I left had a lot to do with lack of preparation on my part, and some to do with issues involved with caring for my ninety-something year-old father. All that aside, I’ve never really lost the desire to teach again, and I’m thinking of asking the department head if I might be able to have another shot at it. Because it’s obvious I have no future in the legal profession.

And I want to read almost every book that comes out, especially if it’s about science. I know I’ll never get through even half of them, but I want to give it a shot. I never want to stop putting new knowledge into my brain. And I never want to get complacent about what I already know. And so I’ll never turn into my dad.

I know a lot of people who think I’m nuts for wanting to go back to school — for even considering it. That doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me that a lot of people don’t like to read — who think they had to do too much reading when they were in school and they’re done with that. That’s a completely legitimate reason not to do something. That’s how I feel about ironing — that I did enough ironing as a kid in school ironing my uniform blouses, and later in the Air Force ironing everything that wasn’t tied down. Unfortunately, I have to iron some of the shirts I wear to work now because I no longer have a job where I can wear jeans and tee-shirts, darn it. I am working on finding shirts that don’t require as much ironing as some that I have. I would gladly stop completely, so I can relate to anyone who doesn’t want to do something that they find unpleasant.

But I watched my dad slowly lose his mind, and I don’t want that to happen to me. He wanted to live to be 100, and he got pretty damn close. But he thought he could do it just sitting on the couch watching re-runs of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” and claiming he was “too old” for other activities or learning new things.

I will not will not will not let that happen to me. And so I’ve already started back to school — part-time — and I’ve already taken one math class. In summer school. One whole semester in five weeks. I made a “B” dammit! I’ve never made that high a grade in math in my life, and I’m pretty frakking proud of it. And last night at work when a student asked me for some help with one of her algebra problems, I was able to show her a function she could use on her graphing calculator that she didn’t know about. Two months ago I could use a graphing calculator to add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and waste everything else it is capable of. Now I know a few more of those uses. But there are a lot more I have yet to discover.

And I’m just like that calculator.

• It’s never too soon to start planning an event, but it’s possible to start planning too late.
• The volunteer helpers you start with may not be the same ones you finish with.
• If you’re in charge, it may mean you’ll be doing everything.
• People who don’t want the job usually keep their mouths shut about how well you’re doing — or not.
• You will always get way more suggestions for things to do than volunteers to help make it all happen.
• No one will complain that it was over too soon.

I have never thought of myself as a “people person” or a “joiner” or even a little bit outgoing, so taking on a job like this was a bit like volunteering to go roll around in a fire ant mound. One of those “What the HELL was I thinking!?” moments. It has always been my habit, when someone gets upset about something I’ve done, to think that they are mad at me, they blame me, they don’t like me. Me, me, me. But we all learn with age, sometimes even when we try real hard not to, and I’ve discovered that it’s not always about me. Who’d've thunk it?

I don’t mean to give the impression that the event was a failure, or a disaster, or that everyone was mad at me at the end. This is more about the nightmares I was having for the weeks leading up to it than anything that happened on that day. I always imagine the worst. I was expecting nit-picking and criticism every step of the way. I expected to come under fire for a long list of things I “should” have done, but wasn’t able to do because I realized it would be entirely up to me to make it happen, and I just didn’t have the time.

But the long and the short of it is that I will probably volunteer to plan the RDO Day again next year, because I learned a lot, and I had fun. Only this time, I plan to start planning next week.

1. TweetDeck — I used this one before I ditched my Windows and went Linux. You have to download and install it on your computer. It also requires Flash, which you also have to download and install, and I haven’t figured out how to do that on my version of Linux yet, or if I even want to. So, for me, TweetDeck is out. But it was handy, while I had it, to be able to see my Twitter and FaceBook pages side by side and send one update to both at the same time.
2. HootSuite — This one is all online. You just sign in to your dashboard like you do with your FB page, or your blog, or Twitter. Supposedly you can have a bunch of “streams” going at once. I have yet to figure out how to get FB and Twitter open in the same tab. At present I can see one or the other, and I can do that in Firefox. HootSuite lets me post one update to FB and Twitter at the same time, like TweetDeck did, and it has its own URL shortener, and you can also schedule an update to be posted at another time. I tried it yesterday and the update didn’t show up, so I don’t know what I did wrong. That’s what I get for not reading the “how-to” before I try something new. My standard operating procedure doesn’t always work, but hey, sometimes it saves me a lot of time reading instructions when it’s just as easy to figure out how something works by actually using it.
3. Gwibber — This is my Linux-specific version of TweetDeck. I think it’s kind of new. It seems to have “issues.” Some days it works, other days it won’t even open. No rhyme or reason, it just won’t awaken. When I can get it to open and work properly, it shows my Twitter and FB streams merged into one timeline, which I kind of like. It’s kind of like mixing your peas into your gravy and mashed potatoes. You can still clearly see the peas, but the other stuff makes them stick on the fork better. But some people object to that much proximity among things on their dinner plates, and so may not like what Gwibber does. But you can choose to just see one stream at a time on Gwibber. It’s the “home” feature that blends them.

There are others. I don’t even know what their names are. And there are apps for various smart phones, iPad, netbooks, and who knows what all else. Of course, I only use Twitter and FaceBook, but with these things you can add your WordPress blog, Flikr, MySpace, Tumblr, Linkedin, and a whole slew of other social sharing networks. Whatever floats your boat.

I often feel like I’m being left in the techno dust by the younger generations. I know that using all this stuff to its maximum potential is the way of the future way-of-the-future wayofthefuture (obscure movie reference), and I really wish I could get a better grasp on it. It appeals to my creative nature. Even though I always maintain that I really still see my computer as a typewriter on steroids, it’s way more than just a writing tool. It’s a whole Alexandrian library, a Post Office, and a news desk (and at times a massive time waster). I would much rather have all these options and be able to use only a fraction of them at some minimal level, than not have them at all, and miss out on some of the things I’ve discovered in the past several years.

I thought I would start with my music. It was no trouble to download all the albums into the shiny new audio player. None of the titles looked mangled — “Let It Be” downloaded as “Let It Be,” etc. Excellent. I wasn’t sure whether I got the volume controls set up correctly, but figured all I had to do was press “Play” and find out if any sound came out. Woops. Got a pop-up. “You do not have a decoder installed to handle this file. You might need to install the necessary plugins.” Gah. Like suddenly finding myself on the wrong street where I don’t understand much of the language. How the hell do I find out where to get the decoder and the necessary plugins???? (And could it be a decoder ring? Because that would be very cool.)

Okay, this is not the opening of a science fiction story. But it could be. Here’s what happened. I’ve been a non-fan of Windows since Windows was invented. I’ve used it plenty, always on computers “at work” that were hooked to great big servers and had a lot of RAM and everything else necessary to hurl that top-heavy operating system around with a fair amount of speed. At home I had Commodore computers, then Amiga, then Mac. They all had their own issues, but they didn’t need to have frakking Windows installed for me to do what I wanted to do on a computer. Then I got this laptop. I got it used, and it had Windows XP Pro installed on it already. I was planning to take an online course that required use of a Windows computer. Ugh. My frustration reached new heights. Opening a program required the patience of a saint — of which I am not one. It got to the point where I would click to launch Firefox, and then go fix my coffee, or start a load of laundry — and then maybe my browser would be open when I came back.

After about a year and a half of this nonsense, I was about to crack under the strain. I ended up not taking the course, and just kept using this laptop because it was a little newer and a bit faster than my old iBook laptop, but not that much. It seemed like I spent half my time at my computer waiting for it to decide to do something. Going back to using the iBook wouldn’t solve anything, because it is too old to update to the newer Mac OS. Then I remembered Linux.

My second ex-husband was a virtual bigamist the whole time I was with him. His primary relationship was with his computer. But I probably learned more about computers just living in the same air-space as him than I would have taking classes from anyone else. Of course I didn’t learn it in any sort of logical sequence. But Linux. He talked about Linux. An operating system (was my understanding, at any rate) that didn’t belong to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs and would never put money in the pocket of either. I could live with that.

I did some reading on line about Linux, and found out that a lot of applications can be hung on the Linux “kernel” that make it easier to use for the less technically inclined. Great, I thought. Sign me up. I asked a local web design guru, Cody Marx Bailey, for some recommendations, and he said, “first, back up all your files.” And he meant somewhere off my computer. I already have a lot of stuff backed up on flash drives, but I got a two GB storage locker “in the cloud” at a site called Dropbox. Two GB is free, so I figured that should be enough for most of my stuff, especially if I zipped some of the folders. My music folder was another matter. All the music files were piled together with iTunes files and iPod files and whatnot, and rather than try to separate them, I just loaded the whole mess onto another flash drive. It was over seven gigabytes. It would have overloaded my Dropbox like Mr. Creosote.

Long story short, Cody also recommended I look at the Ubuntu distribution of Linux, and after a bit of mucking about, I downloaded a “low over-head” version called Xubuntu and burned it onto a CD. To make sure it was going to work properly, I ran it from the CD the first time and had a look at the desktop and some of the apps that came with it. I had just recently started using Thunderbird to handle all my email accounts, so I was happy to see that Thunderbird was part of the package. And it’s fast. Think Porsche 911 vs. ’64 Volkswagen bus.

However. Apparently the Exaile music player doesn’t line up with iTunes without some kind of additional gadget, which I don’t have or know where to find at the moment. But. I can put one of my music CDs in the drive and it will play just fine.

I am not worried. I like my new home. I may forget in what box I packed my favorite knick-knacks, but soon I’ll have them all around me once again. And Windows can bite me.

There is a new tab on the top navigation bar to link back to the home page. I had to add this because whatever functionality used to tie my logo to the home page went away. You can’t just click on the picture of the dog to go back to the home page. Maybe that will be fixed in the next update. I know it’s possible to add some code to a file to make it work in spite of the update, but these things are a lot more complex than the files I learned to work with way back at the turn of the century when I was learning HTML. I’m such a dinosaur.

WordCamp, in case you’re wondering what it is but aren’t curious enough to go to their site and check it out (the picture is a link, by the way), is a one-day workshop on August 7th, devoted to all things WordPress, which is the software supporting this blog. It is big time computer geekery. It’s like a whole other country. Or species. And I’m going into the middle of it. I have volunteered to help set up the breakfast and lunch so that I’ll be forced to interact with people. Light-years out of my comfort zone.

Well, okay, here’s the deal. I’m serious about my blog. I post a lot of nutty, fluffy, frivolous stuff on here, but I’m still learning and evolving as a writer, and as an artist, and planet maker, jewelry designer, basenji wrangler, and even maybe as a web designer. So I’m thinking that whatever it takes for me to up my game in any of these endeavors is worth a little effort. Even a huge effort in some cases, as may prove to be the case here. Time will tell.

My first quilt -- called Gabbro

I got the idea for this quilt months and months ago. I had all these smallish pieces of fabric, because I have a friend who likes to hang out in fabric stores. Being one of those people who is attracted to bright or shiny things, I invariably ended up buying a handful of “fat quarters” or other pieces less than a yard. They were always in some random kind of pattern or batik that suggested water, or clouds, or sedimentary rocks, or some other bizarre thing. But I didn’t know what I would ever do with them.

Until I saw this picture when I Googled “gabbro” to find out what kind of rock it is. 

Microscope slice of gabbro

I found the picture on a site with other pictures of “Rocks under the microscope.” Gabbro is an igneous rock made up of chunks of different minerals — not always the same ones. It’s a hodge-podge. I like hodge-podges. I like the opportunity to use the word hodge-podge in a sentence, or three.

I thought “Ah ha!” That would make a cool quilt. (Now let me issue a disclaimer, here: I am not a quilter — have never read a book, even though I own one, or taken a class in how to make a quilt. I know how to use a sewing machine. That’s it.) With my typical “Damn the procedure and full steam ahead” mindset, I found a piece of fabric that I could use as the ground matrix — that’s the darker gray stuff — and started planning out how I would assemble the jigsaw puzzle of all the various fabric “minerals.” What held me up for all those months was how was I going to patch together a bunch of odd-shaped pieces and keep them from unraveling around the edges, and then attach them to the back?

Then I discovered a lovely product that you can iron onto a piece of fabric, turn it over and remove the paper backing, and iron the first piece to another. Oh, happy day. I was on my way. Everything else was all done off the cuff, on the fly, by feel, or by guesswork. In other words — standard operating procedure for me — I made it all up. The real miracle is that it all actually worked. Sometimes I amaze even myself! (All right. Maybe I amaze only myself, but as long as someone is amazed, I have accomplished something.)

Something else I recently finished, although I had begun to doubt I ever would, was a correspondence writing course. And this is old school correspondence, using paper and envelopes and going to the post office to have the thing weighed and paying postage. Yeah. And I started back in…well, maybe I don’t want to think about how long it took me. The point is, I sent in my last assignment yesterday, and I did learn a lot from taking the course. Not just about writing. I learned about my own thought processes, and to what lengths I would go to avoid interviewing another human being face-to-face. Gah. Need to get over that. Need to chant my mantra “People don’t bite. People don’t bite…” etc.

So, now that those things are no longer sitting on the back burner simmering down to unrecognizable sludge, I can work on some of the newer things that have spent less time on the back burner. Time to get out the paints.

Aside from not really liking the blue text, which I might be able to change, I think this theme will work out well. I was able to put little button links to my Twitter and Facebook pages up in the right corner without much trouble, and I think I’ll be able to add some pages where I can sell my planets and art work some day.