tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91689158445629401342024-03-10T12:13:07.932-07:00IngaThis is a collection of my Let Inga Tell You newspaper columns, plus blog posts and favorite publications. You can reach me at inga47@san.rr.com or visit me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ingatellsall.
AND: My book is out! Find it on Amazon, Kindle, Euro Amazon, or Barnes and Noble online:
Inga Tells All: A saga of single parenthood, second marriage, surly fauna, and being mistaken for a Swedish porn starUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger506125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-41488166245058016662024-03-09T14:17:00.000-08:002024-03-09T14:34:09.597-08:00How Many City and SD G&E Employees Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb? <style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>[ Let Inga
Tell You, La Jolla Light, published in 4 segments (March 14, March 21, March
28, April 4) 2024 </i><b>This is a saga of how many people it takes to change
a (street)light bulb in San Diego.</b><i> </i><b>Find out the answer at the
end.</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Get It Done:
The app where city repairs go to die.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">At least that's
been my feeling since posting a repair request over a year ago on San Diego s Get
It Done site when the streetlight in front of our corner house went out. I was
dismayed to find out at the time that the city was backlogged 5900 streetlights
repairs. That number grew to 6,100 two months later. We doubted it would be
fixed in our lifetimes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Unfortunately, the
streetlight fixture (owned by the city) is mounted on a telephone pole owned
and this is important, <i>powered</i> - by San Diego Gas & Electric (SD
G&E). And neither party wants anything to do with it, or each other. In my
efforts to resolve this situation I have spent the last year in an infinite
loop in the seventh circle of infrastructure hell.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">You can only
imagine the "How many people does it take to change a light bulb?" jokes this
situation has inspired. I'll tell you at the end.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">There is a true
paucity of streetlights in my neighborhood, so losing even one makes a big
difference. Our corner, in particular, is heavily trafficked by pedestrians
including restaurant go-ers, dog walkers, people exercising, and us just trying
to find our driveway. We had an electrician come out and add additional outdoor
lighting just so we could find our front gate. But the entire block was pitch
black.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So dark, in
fact, that at night, we could hear the screeching of tires as cars barely made
the turn at our corner. This was not an idle fear on our part. Three times while
we've lived here, cars have crashed through our front fence, one coming to
within six inches of the house.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The irony is
that if it weren't for me, this light would have been out for more than 20
years. I've had to deal with its repair twice before in the decades I've lived
at my quirky address. The first two times the light went out (2002 and 2012),
its repair was complicated by the fact that neither SD G&E nor the city of
San Diego would lay claim to our street light. Eerily, both insisted that
there <i>was</i> no street light in front of our house. (Cue the twilight zone
music here.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It's hard
enough to get a streetlight fixed in this city. Getting a non-existent
streetlight fixed is exponentially harder. I consider the repair of a phantom
streetlight not once but twice and now three times to be among my top life
accomplishments and should be listed in my future obituary.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Previously I
could deal with actual humans. Both times, it took six months of pathological
persistence. But pathological persistence is my middle name. (Well, actually
it s Louise.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now, alas, the
only way to get a streetlight repair is through the city's Get It Done app. No
hope of prevailing upon actual humans as I have done before. I was pleased to
read some months ago that the city was going to hire outside contractors to
catch up with the backlog.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">When I filed
the Get It Done report, I was careful to include three photos including the
exact location of this streetlight, including the street sign below it, and
photos of the fixture itself mounted on the wooden telephone pole. Just try to
say it doesn't exist now, bozos!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV6MFUCh0Sg2mCA81Z0uuWgGVlX7a7PD2vwMXSke9g4AW05E3VuH_DmuO9j6yElwEb6raKY85EpmwOfdta-nkoJwms0enwmXDpFdiPD-NJLb7iIhZoKbpwEZ9GQIcvm5pbyI86NprgrPIvoe1PCpB7YEXrpo_GlL21V2-7YD8ULbDGdvBD7tq6fRzr77r0/s2110/Streetlight-part%201.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2110" data-original-width="1498" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV6MFUCh0Sg2mCA81Z0uuWgGVlX7a7PD2vwMXSke9g4AW05E3VuH_DmuO9j6yElwEb6raKY85EpmwOfdta-nkoJwms0enwmXDpFdiPD-NJLb7iIhZoKbpwEZ9GQIcvm5pbyI86NprgrPIvoe1PCpB7YEXrpo_GlL21V2-7YD8ULbDGdvBD7tq6fRzr77r0/s320/Streetlight-part%201.jpg" width="227" /></a></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">There really is a streetlight fixture on this pole</i></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">So after a mere year, I was thrilled to get an Update
message from Get It Done saying, <i>Thank you for using </i></span><i><a href="https://www.sandiego.gov/get-it-done" style="font-family: times;"><span color="windowtext" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Get It Done</span></a><span style="font-family: times;"> to report non-emergency problems
to the City of San Diego. Your report is now closed. City crews recently
resolved the issue or conducted the necessary repairs as reported in your
inquiry.</span></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Except, no they
didn't. The streetlight was still out. An entire year wasted. Were we back
to the whole "not our streetlight" issue?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Yup! The city
ultimately confirmed what I already feared: <i>The street light on the wooden
pole belongs to SDG&E, follow up would have to go through them. Thank
you</i>. Um, you couldn't have mentioned this in your Update before closing out
the repair request?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Gah!
Summarizing a <i>lot</i> of conversations, it turns out that the Get It Done
guys did come out and replace the actual streetlight bulb in December of 2023.
But because it is mounted on a pole owned by SD G&E, SD G&E has to execute
the power source. That is, <i>plug it in</i>. I would need to file an on-line
repair request with SD G&E (I included photos) on their own version of
Let s Never Get It Done called We Can t Do It Either.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">To do this, information
including the pole number was required. At least now there <i>are</i> pole
numbers posted on the poles (a definite boost to my previous efforts.) But there
was no place to explain the actual problem. I could predict that they would
come back with either it was the city s light fixture (it is) or that their
maps showed no street light in this location (they don t).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Fearing this
report was just going into a black hole (it did), I decided to try calling SD
G&E to see if I could explain this situation to an actual human. (See
pathological persistence above). Let us in no way suggest that one calls SD
G&E and gets quickly connected to a helpful human. No, one gets sucked
into the root structure of their phone tree system where you will languish like
a decaying morel.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But ultimately
I got connected with a Customer Service rep. He was very nice and listened to
my convoluted saga. What needed to be done, I explained, was for SD G&E to
come out and hopefully find this pole number and plug in the city's new light bulb
to a power source which happens to be <i>right there</i>. After consulting
with his supervisor (I wasn't allowed to talk to a supervisor myself), he said
he was going to do an escalation for us and it should be fixed in 10-15
business days.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">My husband
rolled his eyes and said, "like that will happen." He was prescient. Two weeks
later I received an email from SD G&E in response to the repair request I
had submitted on their app:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Good
morning/afternoon, Unfortunately, this streetlight located at your address is
maintained and owned by the City of San Diego, and therefore does not fall
under SDGE's streetlighting department. I went ahead and reported this issue on
your behalf on the City of San Diego Get it Done website: Here is your Report
Tracking Number.</span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It's probably a good thing one can't send photon
torpedoes through email. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, the city's Get It Done app sent me a confirmation of my new service request. I was now in a continuous futile perpetual loop. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I fired off
Gah!-grams to both SD G&E and to Get It Done but didn't hear back (and
didn't expect to). So, I called SD G&E again and finally got an actual
human to discuss my streetlight dilemma. He had all the previous notes
from previous calls and on-line service requests and did concede that this was
a puzzling and frustrating situation. I will say that SD G&E is very
good at note taking. Just not good at resolution.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">I asked: is
there truly no mechanism for a human from SD G&E to talk (as in using
English language) to a human from the city? Answer: Nope, there
isn't! Their communication </span><span style="font-family: times;">apparently can
solely be done by dumping jobs on each other's apps. But he said he would
put in an escalated request to send someone out to turn on our light bulb
which would happen in "10 to 15 business days."</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Three weeks
later, of course, still no light. I called SD G&E back yet again and got
another of their genuinely helpful Customer Care reps who looked at the case
file and said the previous request had been closed because "the work had been
completed." But she was going to put in a <i>new</i> expedited request directly to
the "streetlight department" which should happen within you guessed it "10
to 15 business days."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">You are
probably shocked by now to learn that no one ever showed up. So I called back
yet again and got yet another genuinely helpful Customer Care rep. But this
kid is my hero. After reviewing what was at this point the <i>War and Peace</i>
of case notes (how much money did SD G&E spend <i>not</i> turning on a
light bulb?) and putting me on hold for considerable time, he came back and
reported that he had tried to directly contact the streetlight escalation
person and was puzzled to find that this person is no longer in the employee
database. Doesn't work there anymore. Who knows how long he's been gone? So
all those escalation requests were going into a black hole. He agreed that
this situation had gone on long enough and that he was going to send this
request directly to his own boss. I said, "do we know for a fact that he
actually exists?" OK, I was getting jaded. But the kid laughed and yes, he
knew this person was real and actually worked there.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; line-height: 107%;">The next day, my lawn
maintenance service was outside mowing so I almost missed hearing my doorbell
ring. Deciding to check, I opened the door to see someone leaving my front
gate - an SD G&E guy! I ran out after him and said, Are you here about
the streetlight? And he said he had no idea. He was just told to come to
this address and was assuming it must be some issue inside. He hadn't been
given any information. If I hadn't answered the door, we would have been back
to square one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So you re
probably thinking, problem solved! But you would be wrong. Oh, so wrong.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I will say that
this guy turned out to be Hero #2 (after the Customer Care Rep). I have his
name and if I could find him I'd like to send him and his wife for a really
nice dinner. He went up to my streetlight in the bucket thing on his truck but
when he came down, I wasn't seeing the happy face I hoped for. "I connected
it," he says, "but the problem is that the wiring is bad. They really
shouldn't put aluminum wiring this close to the ocean." So it would all have
to be re-wired with copper wiring to the two nearest poles, each about 90 feet
away. (Copper wiring apparently corrodes too, but not as fast.) He would put
in a repair request.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEPDXtB7FdrRCpVej4RBn5GIlh23zqhOOwwnrI9OAd9545bKMZ4ZAyxsqDhnGwu6THwBCAwMNqrKfBxl5NIph9VgE3wZOLrBDbDnhu4v9czBzmyEEgkpJ3E_BlvlqmbZzWguDbVKnW4YdkxFov76YNVVXkNukB7Cn-q2B5uFD_Er3z0Pz4nMCRFntvJm6E/s1523/Streetlight-part%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1523" data-original-width="1105" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEPDXtB7FdrRCpVej4RBn5GIlh23zqhOOwwnrI9OAd9545bKMZ4ZAyxsqDhnGwu6THwBCAwMNqrKfBxl5NIph9VgE3wZOLrBDbDnhu4v9czBzmyEEgkpJ3E_BlvlqmbZzWguDbVKnW4YdkxFov76YNVVXkNukB7Cn-q2B5uFD_Er3z0Pz4nMCRFntvJm6E/s320/Streetlight-part%202.jpg" width="232" /></a></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>SD G&E shows up to look at streetlight </i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">That's when I
truly thought it was game over. A non-emergency repair request for total
rewiring for a single streetlight? This probably wouldn't be fixed in my <i>children'</i>s
lifetimes. Doing my best not to literally break down sobbing in frustration
(and flat out rage), I explained that this situation had been going on for more
than a year, that I had spent many, many dozens of hours being bounced back
between the city and SD G&E and I feared it would never ever get
done. He said he would try to expedite it. I wasn't hopeful. Been there,
heard that.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I asked if the
city wouldn't have checked the wiring when they put in the new bulb in December,
2023? And he said, Well, they should have. (But clearly didn't.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So, I said, is
it possible that there was nothing wrong with the light fixture itself from the
get-go but has always been a wiring issue? He said that was entirely possible.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">About fifteen
minutes later, I was leaving my house to do some errands and noticed the SD
G&E truck was still there. My Hero gets out and says, "I've arranged for
them to come out today." Was I hallucinating? Oh my gosh, I said. Can I hug
you? He didn't seem comfortable with that but I hugged him anyway.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But at 4:30, no
sign of them. Have I been stood up yet again? At 4:35, however, an SD G&E
crew showed up including two guys to manage traffic on our busy corner. More
heroes. I am so incredibly grateful to them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So now you re
thinking we're really finally done. As I m standing out there with the SD
G&E crews, one them offers that they aren't sure which bulb the city put in
which they need to know for the wiring. I said, well, if it's the wrong one, I
assume you have extra bulbs that you can put in? He says no, the city is very
proprietary about their bulbs and don t share them with SD G&E. But if the
light doesn't come on after they've re-wired, they can put in a request with
the city on Get It Done to come out and change it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Did you ever feel like your head was going to explode?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlPcugOYNwGA71afy8PI8GF0Kx4MuxGNO9dM6pn1-6BdPtfFf1rHYSEYyyo8dc-uipOm8YpaZNOwQLcKD1Uv5_cBm7FR_nYdngbFR0dowkgZsuJSNJRtUDBigzghP_HeC09padpAy1CqVxsPNxZs80p3P__Cb23UEhT_hBG4TX5z4cZkBlLWYyA87CS2zq/s3744/Streetlight-part%203.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3744" data-original-width="2582" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlPcugOYNwGA71afy8PI8GF0Kx4MuxGNO9dM6pn1-6BdPtfFf1rHYSEYyyo8dc-uipOm8YpaZNOwQLcKD1Uv5_cBm7FR_nYdngbFR0dowkgZsuJSNJRtUDBigzghP_HeC09padpAy1CqVxsPNxZs80p3P__Cb23UEhT_hBG4TX5z4cZkBlLWYyA87CS2zq/s320/Streetlight-part%203.jpg" width="221" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>Uh-oh! SD G&E isn't sure the city installed the right lightbulb for the streetlight</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It took over
three hours to disconnect the old aluminum wiring and reconnect the copper
stuff. When the truck and the work lights were working at the other pole, the
two guys directing traffic kept saying, "Geesh, it is <i>so</i> dark out here!
And this traffic is going sooo fast!" They were waving their Stop signs
frantically at approaching cars to keep from being mown down in this pitch
black intersection. Welcome to my world.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But then at 8
p.m., they plug it all in, everybody holds their breath, and there is light!
Yes, my streetlight is back in action! Neighbors, dog walkers, restaurant
walkers, and even us are able to cross the street safely again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I consider this
article a public service. Mine is not the only city-owned streetlight fixture
mounted on an SD G&E wooden telephone pole. There are, in fact, tons of
them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">An SD G&E
person explained that, long ago and far away, SD G&E owned the streetlights
on their poles but that at some point, the city decided to take over
streetlight management. And thus you have the situation that I have now dealt
with three times: one entity owns the streetlight fixture itself while the
other one controls the power to it. So the city will replace the streetlight
bulb, but only SD G&E can come out and actually turn it on.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And yes, this
is completely insane.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Instead, each
of them keeps denying it s their problem and referring the home owner back to
the other via their automated repair apps in an infinite futile loop.
Honestly, you begin to suspect you're dealing with dealing with robots missing
essential wiring.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As I noted
earlier, this is the third time since I've lived in my home that I've had to
fight it out with the city and SD G&E to get that streetlight fixed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So now, for the
third time, against all odds, I have had my non-existent, unacknowledged,
dually-owned streetlight restored to service.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">There are a
number of take aways here:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">When I consider
all the interchanges I had with both the city and SD G&E, I can t even
imagine what fixing this one streetlight cost both of them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But all of it
could have been accomplished if there was any communication between the city
and SD G&E. Apps are great for routine things but only humans are ever
going to sort out issues like this.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I've tried to
add up the hours I've put into this project - filing repair reports, sitting
endlessly on hold, documenting phone calls, exhorting (unsuccessfully) help
from both my city councilman and local TV stations to break this infrastructure
log jam. I will also probably remember that SD G&E pole number (P833485) long after
I've forgotten my Social Security number.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The irony is, I
would have happily paid out of pocket for this repair to be done.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I'm so
incredibly grateful to my three heroes, the SD G&E Customer Service kid who
managed to finally get this request to an actual human who would actually do
something about it, the SD G&E repair guy who prevailed on someone to get a
crew out here to re-wire the corroded cables, and for the crew who came out and
did it. It has made such a <i>huge</i> difference having this streetlight
working again.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I'm definitely
going to leave instructions in my estate documents so that whomever ends up
with this house is aware of what it takes to restore this streetlight to
service the next time it goes out. I would hate to take such critical
information to my grave. And I truly do want it mentioned in my obituary.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">OK, so now you
think this year of infrastructure repair ping pong is truly, finally over. Not
quite.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">About a week
after the light was finally fixed, I suddenly woke up in the middle of the
night with a terrifying thought. In the process of pingponging responsibility
for this streetlight's repair back and forth from the city to SD G&E, SD
G&E had put in a new Get It Done request to the city which was still in
effect. Gah! Noooooo! The last thing we needed was for the city to show up
and start messing with a streetlight that was fixed. If they unplugged the
fixture to check the bulb, SD G&E would have to come plug it in again. Back to square one!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So I looked up
the Get It Done report number and tried to close it but couldn't since we
hadn't originated it. But I sent Get It Done an email saying the problem was
fixed and to please close this report. Step <i>away</i> from the light! It
took five requests. But they finally have.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Could this
really, finally, be done? I almost don t know what I'll do with my free time.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I began some
time back by invoking the "How many people does it take to change a
(street)light bulb" joke. Between the city and SD G&E, my count is 33.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i></i></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZgeir8ahQHiYowQUnQznmhVqzpiY7XlLopT2nvXE851kVSxZefx9bqNdnrBtiLzimv_hux_AHBT-u4kdNq-oAtISYDmfK2ZDY2kJT_T1KWW1l87XIfrXkC4xwmhfTR7_u0uNVaoV2Oa4eRM4QW7BoWZulrTSsVV3P2RvODFpujZ_c0YYVxg81XvpvjnG/s1629/Streetlight-part%204.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1629" data-original-width="1454" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwZgeir8ahQHiYowQUnQznmhVqzpiY7XlLopT2nvXE851kVSxZefx9bqNdnrBtiLzimv_hux_AHBT-u4kdNq-oAtISYDmfK2ZDY2kJT_T1KWW1l87XIfrXkC4xwmhfTR7_u0uNVaoV2Oa4eRM4QW7BoWZulrTSsVV3P2RvODFpujZ_c0YYVxg81XvpvjnG/s320/Streetlight-part%204.jpg" width="286" /></a></i></span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><br /><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Let there (finally) be light!</i></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-83694587984633975942024-02-24T14:03:00.000-08:002024-02-24T14:03:52.215-08:00Waiting It Out<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let
Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published February 26, 2024]</span></i><span> <b>©2024</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I
get that sons need to separate from their mothers. But do they have to be so
mean about it?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I’m
a nice person. So I wasn’t prepared for the fact that as my sons approached their
senior years of high school they would suddenly turn on me.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">My
younger son, especially, became positively surly. My mere existence annoyed
him. I think Henry saw me as the embodiment of all that stood between him and
a future of happy mother-free manhood. His spirit had already left home but
his body had been forced to stay behind. I don’t know who suffered more.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">My
husband, Olof, said that this was all part of the natural order of things.
It’s far less traumatic to let your kids go off to college if you hate them. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But
as they made their bumpy way to self-supporting non-mother-needing maturity,
they were regularly sticking it to Mom. Now, I realize that if you’re looking
for gratitude, parenthood is the wrong business for you. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Still,
when my younger son was a high school senior, he was awarded a prestigious
national honor for which the local media came to interview him. The kids had
always referred to their Dad’s house (my ex) as “the fun house” (it was) and my
house as “the boring house” (it was). I had done every library run
(pre-internet) including schlepping the kids to the downtown San Diego Library
in rush hour traffic, had driven every carpool (even on my ex-husband’s custody
days because he totally screwed it up), used up a year’s vacation time one year
taking one of them to physical therapy after a serious sports injury, managed
countless youth sports teams, and ran multiple Cub Scout dens– all while
working. Every medical appointment and school project was done on my watch.
Multiplication tables? Check. Spanish flash cards? Check. My ex used to tell
the kids not to expect to do homework on his custody nights because he had
really cool things planned for them. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So
the newspaper reporter arrives, and at the end of the interview, he asks Henry:
is there anyone he wants to thank? Yes, he says, his Dad for teaching him how
to have fun. I’m sitting off in the corner waiting for him to add, “But the
person I <i>really</i> want to thank is my mom who has never missed a game and
who has been there for me every step of the way.” Reporter: Anyone else? He
is practically <i>begging</i> Henry to thank me. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Henry
ponders a moment. No, no one that he can think of. (OK, you miserable runt, <i>kill</i>
your mother.) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But
another newspaper sees this story and Henry gets interviewed again. Anyone he
wants to thank? Two people, he says. “My Dad, for teaching me how to have
fun.” I modestly lower my eyes. “And Mr. Litchfield, my English teacher.”
For days afterwards, I had to fight impulses to poison his lunches.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I
was crushed. And more than a little annoyed. I didn’t say anything for a week
as I contemplated the situation. Demanding that someone express thanks is no
thanks at all. But finally one night at dinner, I thought I’d bring it up
casually. “WOULD IT HAVE KILLED YOU TO THANK ME?????” I said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Apparently
yes. But more recently, giving a genuinely touching toast to Olof and me on a
milestone occasion, Henry’s voice actually cracked with emotion as he thanked
us for all we had done for him. But not happening at 17.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Meanwhile,
my older son, Rory, wrote his college abnormal psychology term paper about me,
18 pages worth of Mom-analysis. That one actually had a surprisingly positive
outcome when, after interviewing me at length for the project, Rory concluded
that there were extenuating circumstances as to why I was the worst mother in
the history of the world. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>When
Henry graduated from college and got his first job, he invited Olof and me to
dinner. Historically, that would have been a cheap ploy for a free meal. But
the bill comes, kid goes to get it. I knew money was really tight for him with
all the housing start-up costs so I immediately grabbed it and handed it to
Olof. Olof, to my surprise, whispered “Let him pay.” I did.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">When
we got home, Olof said, “You almost deprived your son of one of the greatest
moments a guy can have – finally being able to take his parents to dinner.
He’s telling you he’s an adult who can take care of himself – and in this case,
us. Sometimes moms just miss this stuff completely.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">How
did Olof know? Y chromosome communication? (Is there, in fact, any?) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So
for all you moms out there with surly high school seniors, remember this:
you’ll like them again some day. They’ll like you too. Sometimes you just
have to live long enough.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-55360773664617263292024-02-17T11:19:00.000-08:002024-02-17T11:35:41.867-08:00The Weather-Averse Life Of The Southern California Dog <style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let Inga Tell You,”
La Jolla Light,, published February 19, 2024]</span></i><span> <b>©2024</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The recent rains
have highlighted the unique habits of a breed of canine known as The Southern
California Dog. Our bichon-poodle mix, Lily, is in this category.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The Southern
California Dog is characterized by a total aversion to getting his or her tiny
paws wet. Forget their actual fur.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“Averse” is
actually too mild a term. Lily, for example, is absolutely <i>offended </i>by
wet grass or pavement. If it is so much as sprinkling, she will walk out to the
end of the front porch, sniff the air, and go back inside with a “Sorry, don’t
need to go that badly” look.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The problem, of
course, is when it gets to the point that she does need to go out that badly. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">With rain in the
forecast, Olof and I study the radar maps with the express mission of
scheduling Lily walks. On more than one occasion, I have gotten up at 5 a.m.
to wake up the dog and haul her fluffy reluctant bum outside for a stroll
around our front yard in advance of a morning storm. In addition to hating
rain, the Southern California Dog does not wish to be woken from slumber.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Lily does have a
doggie raincoat, the mere sight of which causes her to hide under the most
inaccessible place in the house she can find. Extracting her from under there
is a two-person chore, never mind wrassling her resistant self into the
raincoat. If she could use a cell phone, she’d be calling the SPCA to report
us for infliction of sartorial cruelty. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I can’t even
imagine what we’d do if we lived in a climate that might require booties.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">If it’s actually
raining without a break in sight, as happened recently, and it’s clear we are
going to have to take Lily out against her will, I do my best to stick Olof
with this chore. Unlike me, he doesn’t have a coif or wear glasses. I would,
of course, be happy to use an umbrella but both Lily and our previous dog, English
bulldog Winston, had a puzzling but abiding fear of them. Maybe because they
don’t see them that often. I’m guessing the Pacific Northwest Dog overcomes its
fear of umbrellas pretty quickly.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But taking The
Southern California Dog out while you’re holding an umbrella simply results in
the animal pulling away in fear so hard on its leash that you can’t get them to
focus on the task at hand. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>We really do our
best to keep Lily from getting wet. Her bichon-poodle fur seems to be a
non-dryable water-absorbent sponge, especially the fur on her head. Seriously,
if anyone needs to invent a product that will never, ever dry, start with
poodle hair. If we try to blow her dry, she’s not having that either, even
with the hair dryer on the lowest barely-warm setting. To her, there’s a time
and place for everything, and the place to her for a blow dry is at the
groomers. She will let <i>them</i> blow dry her. Must be all in the wrist.</span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">A further
compelling reason to keep Lily from getting wet is that her preferred drying
method is to race around the house at warp speed, stopping for a quick wet-dog-smell-dispensing
roll on every bed, upholstered chair, and sofa, before tucking herself in for a
final dry and nap on Olof’s pillow.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Which brings us to
an important question. Even people who don’t own pets will recognize “wet dog
smell,” a highly distinctive odor that can make the trip back from an excursion
to Fiesta Island with your wet dog in the car seem like several lifetimes.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Inquiring minds
want to know: what exactly makes a wet dog smell so, well, miasmic?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>It turns out that <i>eau
de chien </i></span><i><span style="line-height: 107%;">mouillé</span></i> isn’t actually the fault of the dog at all. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The culprits are microorganisms like yeasts and bacteria that take up residence on your pet, leaving behind "micro excreta" in the form of organic compounds. The signature scent comes from moisture evaporation that carries some of these compounds with it. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The odor of wet dog has been characterized as "a mixture of scents, including almond, fruit, honey, and mushroom, with hints of sulfur and feces." Sounds like a diner lunch special gone waaaay wrong. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Obviously dogs in other climates, which is to say pretty much everywhere in the U.S. except Southern California, have to adapt to weather. Here's my theory as to why The Southern California Dog is so reluctant to do so. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">People move to Southern California with the expectation that it will never be too hot or too cold, that rain will occur at night while they're sleeping and have dried up by the time they awaken, and that climatological elements should not be an inconvenience to their non-weather-afflicted existence. I guess we shouldn't be too surprised that our dogs think so too. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGVpdRhUkfh-d0sAE9pBab7BzqW-xlJAaAIz53oV8QV6q1VYt5HGgnJxP2qb8cNR2pgUPFOisu6myrPv0PdwRiuP2FrM6C9mo0TKNvx1wD3-NlhPQc0vrPkuwTjIZ-M-t4l_dUVDoNhaIDfFSFVp2AO-PXsKwEYiSZrlQ74fGkpryR6adrFdzTuoiG2dJ2/s1632/Lily-Raincoat.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1224" data-original-width="1632" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGVpdRhUkfh-d0sAE9pBab7BzqW-xlJAaAIz53oV8QV6q1VYt5HGgnJxP2qb8cNR2pgUPFOisu6myrPv0PdwRiuP2FrM6C9mo0TKNvx1wD3-NlhPQc0vrPkuwTjIZ-M-t4l_dUVDoNhaIDfFSFVp2AO-PXsKwEYiSZrlQ74fGkpryR6adrFdzTuoiG2dJ2/s320/Lily-Raincoat.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #222223; font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> <i>Lily, absolutely miserable in her raincoat</i></span></p>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-31818657148476729972024-02-10T09:56:00.000-08:002024-02-10T09:56:40.958-08:00Suffering For The Sake Of Beauty<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let Inga Tell You,”
La Jolla Light, published February 12, 2024]</span></i><span> <b>©2024</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As much as I enjoy
the late-19<sup>th</sup> century show <i>The Gilded Age</i>, I can’t help but
be preoccupied by what had to be the sheer discomfort of those corset- and
bustle-afflicted dresses. Taking a deep breath seems like it would be
problematical, using a restroom even more so. In fact, when you think of
bathroom stalls now, you’d need two to even get the whole dress in there, never
mind actually, er, perform.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It was probably
not too surprising, then, that in 1913 when 19-year-old Mary Phelps Jacob
patented the first modern bra (short for <i>brassière</i>) composed of two
handkerchiefs and some ribbon, the idea was an instant success. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Well, not quite
instant. After attempting to manufacture her design in what amounted to a
two-woman sweatshop in Boston, she sold her patent to Warner Brothers Corset
Company who were already manufacturing “comfort corsets” (an oxymoron if there
ever was one). Dr. Lucien Warner, the physician-founder of the company, had
been concerned about the ill effects on a woman’s health of having her internal
organs essentially relocated to parts of her body where they were not
intended. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Warner Brothers
Corset Company apparently made $12.8 million off Mary Phelps Jacob’s patent. (Why
is there not a commemorative coin with Mary’s picture on it?). During the flapper
movement and Jazz Age in the 1920’s, however, women largely lost interest in
both corsets and their partner-in-undergarments, pantaloons. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But ways to
sartorially torture women were simply morphing. The corset was replaced by the
panty girdle, a garment I remember way too well from my teenage years. Girdles
often had garters on which to attach one’s nylon stockings in the pre-pantyhose
era. Panty hose were one of the greatest inventions <i>ever</i>, in my view,
in times when going bare-legged in a dress or skirt was simply not done. Once
there were pantyhose, it was also a great excuse to jettison the girdle too. And
best yet, being bare legged in a dress is now perfectly acceptable, unless
you’re in the British Royal Family. The late Queen apparently had a strict
rule against it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Of course, there
are plenty of “shape wear” brands still out there, often alleging to be
“comfortable” (ha!) while re-distributing one’s unwanted adipose into a more
flattering configuration. I remember shopping for a mother-of-the-groom outfit
for my younger son’s wedding and the sales lady opining, “Of course, you’ll want
shape wear with this.” And I looked at her and said, “Hell no! I plan to
enjoy this event in full comfort!” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">
Right as I was starting college, the other biggest boon to my life besides
pantyhose was just making its debut. We’re talking hot rollers. I had spent
my entire teenage life being crucified nightly on brush rollers, hair curlers
with brush spikes (like a bottle brush) that you rolled up your entire head of
hair in so that it would become curly while you theoretically slept but
actually didn’t because you were in too much pain. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">My voluminous
quantities of hair, alas, if left un-abused by brush rollers, looked like I had
a mattress on my head.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">With hot rollers,
you could actually get a good night’s sleep and then wake up, plug in the set,
roll up your hair, wait ten minutes, and <i>voilà</i>! Seriously, it
revolutionized my college life. And decades thereafter. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I should mention
that there are still salons somewhere out there who do what is called a “wet
set” where they roll your wet hair up with curlers, and fry you under a bonnet
hair dryer for an hour after which your coif is combed out and lacquered into
what is called “helmet hair.” Move your head and your hair moves in a single
unit with it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now, of course,
there’s an even better option avoiding rollers altogether, the “blow out.” I
hope to have seen my last hot (or even cold) hair roller. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">While bras were
intended to be a much more comfortable option to corsets, fashion dictates that
that whatever item of apparel is designed for women has to have a version that
is pure pain. We’re talking push-up bras, stiletto heels, skin-tight jeans,
false eye lashes, and new versions of “shape wear” that probably aren’t any
more comfortable than girdles or corsets. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I don’t know what
it is about aging, but bras just keep getting more and more uncomfortable as
you get older. I was telling a friend that the first thing I do when I get
home is take off my bra. She said she usually takes hers off in the car. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Back when I was in
college, I didn’t mind being tortured by apparel. At this point in my life, I
just want to be comfortable. I feel like I’ve done my time. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Advice columnists
in women’s magazines will implore their older readers not to “let yourself
go.” Sorry, advice lady, but I’m already gone. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-48217195218624548362024-01-27T17:51:00.000-08:002024-01-27T17:51:54.380-08:00Ice(cube) Capades<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[ Let Inga Tell
You, La Jolla Light, published January 29, 2024]</span></i><span> <b> 2024</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">When you find
yourself writing about ice cubes, is it time to hang it up?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I m aware I've
written about appliances a lot lately because, well, failing appliances have
been sucking up an ordinate amount of our time and money in recent months.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Sorry, folks: here
comes another one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">A few months ago,
I chronicled, among our various appliance challenges, the acquisition of a new
refrigerator that had to fit into a very tight space and left us with exactly
two choices. We re talking two choices of <i>any </i>brand in <i>any </i>price
range. Fridges have gotten a lot deeper since the last time we bought one for
our 1999 kitchen remodel.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">We loved our
previous sadly-deceased fridge and were hoping to reincarnate it. The fridge we
ended up with was the same brand and exactly the same exterior dimensions as
its predecessor, with, oddly, <i>a lot</i> less interior space. We can only
assume its walls now have five inches of eco-excessive insulation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The replacement, while
hardly an inexpensive appliance, is a far (far) inferior version in every
possible way. Even the door shelves on the refrigerator side are a thin,
flimsy plastic. (Are they even actually plastic or something created by a
hobby-level 3D printer?) It's like the designers sat down and said, How we
can re-design this interior space to make it smaller, darker, chintzier, and
guaranteed to annoy the s--t out of the owner? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">One of the
features that we didn't want but were forced to buy was a door ice dispenser. To
us, it just screamed repair.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As it turns out,
it s screaming a lot of other things too. And so are we.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">This door
dispenser takes up almost all the interior door real estate of our freezer so
we have half as much freezer storage as we had before. Personally, we'd prefer
to use our freezer for, say, freezing stuff.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But worse, it s
really hard to get just the number of ice cubes you want from the door
dispenser. Of course, with our old refrigerator, we just opened the freezer
door and stuck our little hands into the heavy-duty ice bin and took as many as
we needed. Theoretically, the door dispensers are more environmentally
friendly because you are opening your freezer door less often. We aren't
convinced.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Having never had a
freezer door ice dispenser before, we've found there s a definite learning
curve. Lesson one: It s all in the wrist.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">You press your beverage
glass against the sensor and ice starts to come out. You pull back quickly
before too many come out. But you don't have quite enough so you press your
glass against the sensor hoping for another two cubes. Next thing you know,
there's ice cubes all over the floor. These are usually accompanied by bad
words.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It's become a predictable script: ice can be heard
filling a glass. Then: Wait! Stop! No! Fuck! (Sound of ice cubes hitting the
floor).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So we've tried to
make a friendly competition of the new ice dispenser as to who can dispense ice
with the least number of cubes on the floor. Score is being kept. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">When you get to
our age, fun is where you find it. It also means your kids will roll their
eyes and insist, "you guys need a life."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">We have a life.
It just happens to involve ice cube wars. So far, the ice cube dispenser is
winning. And it knows it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">At Christmas, I
tried to fill up a Ziplock bag with ice cubes to transport some perishable food
on our trip to L.A. I held the open bag under the door spout and pressed, just
as I would with a drinking glass. A few cubes came out but then stopped. I
kept pressing. Was it jammed? I finally opened the freezer door to check and
was greeted with a veritable avalanche of ice cubes which skittered all over
the kitchen floor. Why this shouldn't have worked, I don t know. But note to
self: next time fill the Ziplock bag with single glassfuls of ice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Alternatively, one
could remove the entire ice bin from the freezer to access ice to fill the
Ziplock bag but its thin cheap plastic-esque material resists sliding out or
back in. Best to let sleeping ice bins lie.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Maybe other ice
dispensers work better than this one. But now I keep a separate glass in our
tiny useless freezer filled with ice cubes from which I can then take as many
as I need. Sometimes you just have to admit defeat.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Of course, we're
slowly getting better with practice. But a day without a single ice cube on
our floor would be a rare day indeed. The dog knows better than to stand
anywhere near the fridge as ice is being dispensed lest she be in the line of
fire. When even the dog has it figured out, pay attention.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSaXUKexvZdiN-JY-UrjPnKRzgbSqS_Cf1W1Ac0NNcrG_C5zErsNuy0mAXtKNthzBvEtB4wNJQIENWZghgBerDT0ecwTkA6DqXwah4r3X6w1M4WV_DaxX2W1K3foAXPAB3oS31FTxkTg5ohUErGxXd0JZ5eCwBj7jPErFEW1nlcD6UxTgO3QvmgsKAIiqB/s2016/Icebin-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSaXUKexvZdiN-JY-UrjPnKRzgbSqS_Cf1W1Ac0NNcrG_C5zErsNuy0mAXtKNthzBvEtB4wNJQIENWZghgBerDT0ecwTkA6DqXwah4r3X6w1M4WV_DaxX2W1K3foAXPAB3oS31FTxkTg5ohUErGxXd0JZ5eCwBj7jPErFEW1nlcD6UxTgO3QvmgsKAIiqB/s320/Icebin-2.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><p></p>
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</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-15303769665119912452024-01-20T13:58:00.000-08:002024-01-20T13:58:01.658-08:00Uber For The Elderly<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let
Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published January 22, 2024]</span></i><span> </span><b><span>©2024</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Rideshares
</span><span>have
enjoyed mixed reputations in recent years but compared to the olden days when
the only other options were taxis, they’ve been a huge boon to the elderly. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I
can’t even count the number of rides home I gave over the years to seniors who
were relegated to a folding chair in front of a supermarket, a cart full of
melting groceries next to them, waiting for a taxi that never came. These were
women who would normally never get in a car with a stranger but after an hour
in a folding chair in a grocery store parking lot, being murdered didn’t sound
too bad.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now
a senior myself, I’ve been thinking about all the other applications ride
shares might be used for with the elderly. On your 65<sup>th</sup> birthday –
as soon as that Medicare card is laminated and tucked into your wallet, the
dementia anxiety attacks – and jokes – begin. We laugh, of course, to hide the
fact that we’re completely terrified. Watching the 11 o’clock news about the
elderly person who has wandered off from her facility truly puts fear in your
heart. You can’t help but super-impose your face on the screen. And you just
know your hair would look like hell.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I
read an article a while back that said if you can’t find your car keys, that’s
getting older. If you don’t remember you have a car, it’s dementia. Every time
I’m searching in my mind for a word for a column or crossword, I find myself
muttering a refrain in the background, “I have a car, I have a car.” Probably
if I stopped doing that, I’d remember the word a lot sooner.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It
didn’t help that soon after my 65<sup>th</sup> birthday, my older son, the
perpetual prankster Rory, saw an ad on TV for a placement service for the
severely memory-impaired. Several days later, a very sympathetic woman called
and asked for my husband Olof, and when told he was at work, was dismayed to
learn that I had been left unattended. She seemed to have a great deal of
information about me and when I adamantly insisted “I do not need institutional
care!” soothed, “You seem to be having one of your<i> good</i> days, dear.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But
back to Uber. I think ride shares have huge possibilities for the senility set.
There could be a special app that pops up as soon as you pick up your phone
showing a photo of your house with your address underneath and the words “You
live here.” If you still couldn’t find your house, you’d just press the icon’s
Save Me! option and a ride share would show up and take you home. That, of
course, is assuming you can remember to push the button but that seems
inherently easier than remembering your address – especially here.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Addresses
in La Jolla are basically permutations of the same ten Spanish words. </span><span>You could be
forgiven even before you’re senile for not remembering whether you live on Vista
Playa Bonita or Playa Bonita Vista.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I
had some even better ideas after my younger son told me that over the holidays
one year, they sent a ride share to their house for the chocolate soufflé
they’d inadvertently left home. The sitter handed off the soufflé to the Uber
driver, who delivered it to the dinner party. (For the record, the soufflé
rated the driver very highly.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So,
I’m thinking, if soufflés, why not Mom?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Letting
my ever-overamped imagination run wild, I was thinking that Uber could develop
an application called “Find My Mother.” Mom wanders away from The Home and son
is alerted by the Escape Alarm on his phone that she is no longer tied to her
bed. Son presses his new GoGetHer app which immediately gives a GPS location on
Mom who presumably has her phone in a little velvet carry bag around her neck.
(OK, you may have to microchip her.) The Uber driver swoops in, puts mom in the
car (hopefully she goes quietly) and returns me, er, her to The Facility,
courtesy of the “If found, please return to” app on Mom’s phone. Avoids that
whole embarrassing evening news thing. Never mind that son didn’t even have to
blink during his office Power Point presentation.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now,
as a senior, I think these Uber applications should go both ways. Don’t like
the nursing home your kids have stashed you in? Before you make a break for it,
you install an override app on your phone with special instructions to the rideshare
driver: <i>DON’T TAKE ME BACK TO THAT PLACE! LEAVE ME AT THE DOWNTOWN TRAIN
STATION AND CHARGE A ONE-WAY TICKET TO SAN FRANCISCO ON MY CREDIT CARD</i>.
THEN THROW THE PHONE IN THE BAY. Like, we have rights too.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now
that I’m on Medicare, issues of aging occupy a lot of my brain cells. Olof
thinks they would probably be better spent on memory exercises. The important
thing is, I’m pretty sure I have a car.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-41231458792297121212024-01-06T11:47:00.000-08:002024-01-06T11:48:28.478-08:00When Christmas Is A Parallel Universe<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>["Let Inga Tell
You," La Jolla Light, published January 8, 2024]</span></i><span> <b> 2024</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It becomes
increasingly worrisome to me that I couldn't identify half of the Christmas
gifts that were exchanged Christmas morning, even ones that I gave.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Fortunately, I didn't
have to know what they were. This is what Christmas lists are for. The
grandchild or other relative wants this thing? OK, I'm game.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What does it do?
I'd ask with genuine interest (and a nagging fear that the world has passed me
by) as they oohed and aahed over it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But then, I am a
person who doesn't want any gift that comes with instructions. As I have often
chronicled, I have enough trouble operating my iPhone. In fact, a regular
source of entertainment at family Christmas gatherings is passing around my
phone and laughing at the directions taped to the back. But at least I don't
have to worry about someone picking up my phone by mistake.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Christmas is
always my favorite holiday of the year, made even more special in that it
includes a good-sized group of relatives both from our side plus my
daughter-in-law's. A genuinely congenial group.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Fortunately,
during gift opening, I was seated next to my daughter-in-law's mother, a truly
kindred soul. As a gift was opened, I'd lean over and whisper, Do you know
what that is? And she'd whisper back, "Not a clue."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">One such item was
a gift I gave my 14-year-old granddaughter from her wish list which was
described as a Luxury Intensive Skin Treatment Candle. So, was this some
kind of skin treatment, or a candle? Turns out it was both. As the fine print,
which I hadn't bothered to read in my haste to get my Christmas shopping done,
noted: "Nourishing cocoa butter is blended with soybean oil and almond oil to
leave the skin smooth and silky, whilst delivering therapeutic benefits for the
mind and body. After blowing out the candle, the wax reaches the perfect
temperature for application on to skin."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It is also "100%
natural, ethically sourced and finely crafted from sustainable origins with
absolutely no artificial ingredients." Which, along with using the word "whilst", explains why it is $46. But it made her happy so it made me happy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">One gift that
totally stymied me was a bunch of colorful reels of something. Turns out they
are printer "food" for a hobbyist-level 3D printer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I'm still trying
to get my head around a desktop robot pet my nine-year-old grandson desperately
coveted. Apparently these things are hugely popular and come in all forms and
prices. Thinking this was going to be an easy purchase, I was dismayed to go on
Amazon and find the little critters priced from $29 to $500. (I went on the
lower end.) According to the description, these robots are "the perfect
companion for both kids and adults who love pets, with abundant emotions, idle
animations, and interactive features." No idea what any of that actually
means. Should I mention that my grandchildren have actual real pets? With,
presumably, emotions (they're dogs)? But my grandson was elated to now be able
to share the emotional life of an inanimate object.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I didn't buy this
next one, but one of the uber-health-conscious family members received a Smart
Ring, an actual fashion accessory ring loaded on its inside with teeny weeny
electronics that you wear on your finger 24/7 and tracks, well, pretty much
everything. Waterproof, it monitors sleep quality, stress index, heart health,
skin temperature, body movement etc. which is then presumably sent to your
equally-smart phone? It s apparently way better than those clunky passé smart
watches. The Smart Ring alleges to track every movement you make which in my
case, would be tracking all the moves I <i>wasn't </i>making. I don't need a
Smart Ring (or watch) to abuse me about my weight. I have a primary care
doctor for that, and she doesn't need re-charging.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Another grandchild
received an easy-to-operate drone. My son and his wife, who host Christmas,
moved several months ago to a house with lots of outdoor space which their
previous home was woefully lacking. Anyway, when out taking a walk shortly
after the move, they noticed the next-door neighbor leaving his home and said
to each other, "Um, is that ...?" Turns out a very famous but now elderly movie
star lives next door. When the drone gift was opened, my daughter-in-law's
mother leaned in and whispered, "Not sure how the neighbor is going to feel
about drones circling over his house. Or about letting kids come over and
retrieve it after it crashes into his patio." This may be a gift that only gets
used at the local public park.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I confess that
every time someone opened a present that I could actually name, I felt a huge
sense of relief. It was starting to feel like I was in a sci fi movie in a
parallel universe but which fortunately still served the same totally
recognizable and utterly fabulous Christmas dinner. When I can no longer
identify what we re eating, I'm calling it quits.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUcNe-nG_ZTcuUMOOM4wPV4sy6-a54cswBwTz0gW-8MhJZXYAfj8XkgmAIojvERKLH788F6P0HoGPysV9nzAXSdMJsph2bG9smVVUbwDBKqGyq6BUv6RM3E0RxnoV4sqx0_id5F8YK5AfdiJSKsZNDhiOFwoDHVGVHBh3SkkzCFobmyGEc6kO1Hfo95csd/s2188/PrinterFood-3D.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2188" data-original-width="1514" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUcNe-nG_ZTcuUMOOM4wPV4sy6-a54cswBwTz0gW-8MhJZXYAfj8XkgmAIojvERKLH788F6P0HoGPysV9nzAXSdMJsph2bG9smVVUbwDBKqGyq6BUv6RM3E0RxnoV4sqx0_id5F8YK5AfdiJSKsZNDhiOFwoDHVGVHBh3SkkzCFobmyGEc6kO1Hfo95csd/s320/PrinterFood-3D.jpg" width="221" /></a></div><i> <span style="font-family: times;"> </span><span style="font-family: times;">These reels are "food" for a 3D printer</span></i><br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span><p></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-25474266281041826842023-12-10T14:44:00.000-08:002023-12-10T14:44:18.010-08:00The Great Refrigerator Delivery Water Valve Scam<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[ "Let Inga Tell
You," La Jolla Light, published December 11, 2023] </span></i><b><span> 2023</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I recently wrote
about how much poorer the quality of kitchen appliances has become, the
compensation being a lot of useless features that many people (that would be
me) don't even want. This column inspired surprising numbers of emails from
readers, some volunteering that their washers or dryers actually play annoying
little ditties when the load is done. Frankly, I would probably have destroyed
the thing with a sledge hammer the first week. I will <i>not</i> be sung to by
appliances.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But one topic I
didn't get to address in that column was the Great Refrigerator Delivery Water
Valve Scam. AARP definitely needs to add this one to their list.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Refrigerator
deliveries in my home have, alas, always been fraught with peril. When my first
husband and I bought our 1947 home in the 1970s, the kitchen still featured the
original ugly Formica-afflicted 1947 kitchen except for the appliances.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It never occurred
to us that refrigerators back in 1947 might be smaller than those made in the
1970s. Let me assure you that they were.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The delivery guys
managed to wrangle the fridge into our small kitchen only to discover that it
wouldn't fit under the cabinet. So they just plugged it in - the cord was
barely long enough - and abandoned it in the middle of our kitchen floor. After
some pondering, my husband got out a hacksaw and sawed off the bottom of the
cheap pine 1947 cabinet just enough so that we could push the refrigerator
underneath it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And that's how it
stayed until we remodeled the kitchen in 1999. Desperate to see the end of gray
linoleum (the evil twin of gray Formica), we (I was on my second husband by
then) had decided to match the red oak floors from the rest of the house into
the kitchen. They came out beautifully. Sanded, Urethaned, and gleaming, they
were ready for the delivery of our new refrigerator under its custom cabinet
designed to make sure we wouldn't have any height problems again. Not making
that mistake twice!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What we didn't
count on was the appliance delivery guys not having a strong enough dolly, and
hence putting a six-foot-long gouge right across our brand-new floors. The
floors had to be completely re-sanded and finished.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As I described in
my previous column, that refrigerator, the last of the 1999 remodel appliances,
crossed the chill-chest rainbow bridge over Labor Day weekend. Refrigerators
have gotten bigger and deeper since 1999 and finding something that would fit into
our very defined space <i>and </i>be able to make it through our dining area
into the kitchen was problematical at best. We measured our little hearts out
and knew this was going to be a matter of under an inch for it to make it. I
wasn't sure what we were going to do if it didn't.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The appliance guys
showed up, did their own measurements, and declared that we had a full
half-inch to spare. Whew! Home free!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">BUT as the
appliance guys go to move the old fridge from the wall, one of them says, "Hmmm, not going to be able to deliver today, folks. The water valve [for the
ice maker] is frozen and I can't turn it off. You re going to have to call a
plumber and have them replace it."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And, pfft! They
were gone, our new fridge still on the truck. I was beyond annoyed. Did we
truly have such terrible refrigerator karma that three out of three deliveries
failed?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Our plumber
graciously came right over and immediately declared, "This is such a scam. I
see it all the time. This valve turns just fine." He shows me. "They just
wanted to go home early."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I tried to see if
I could get the delivery guys back since our refrigerator was still on their
truck, but they said they had already re-scheduled us for three days - and a
different crew, notably not them - later.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The few days was
a Friday afternoon definitely prime time for wanting to go home early so I
was fully rehearsed and ready to pre-empt any delaying scripts the new crew
might have. I explained the previous delivery situation and emphasized,
politely but firmly, with just a slight homicidal air, that this refrigerator <i>would
be installed today</i>. And it was.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But here s the
interesting part. I mentioned this story to a friend who has multiple rental
properties and she said that both times she had had refrigerators delivered,
she'd gotten the water valve story too. Have to get a plumber, they'd told
her. See ya!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Regaling my
physical therapy guy with this story a day later, he suddenly stopped and said, "We had a new refrigerator delivered last month and they did that to us too!"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So, this my public
service message. If you re getting a refrigerator delivered and it has an ice
maker (which, alas, almost all of them do), try turning that valve yourself
before the miscreants come. The thought of thwarting the miserable buggers
would warm my heart.</span></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-23637171238635486442023-11-27T09:42:00.000-08:002023-11-27T09:42:30.548-08:00Chocolates Are Good But A Hose Caddy Is Forever<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let
Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published November 27, 2023]</span></i><span> </span><b><span>©2023</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">In
December, my birth month, I can’t help but reflect that birthday gifts from
spouses can be fraught with peril. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Not
to speak ill of the dead, but my first husband was notorious for getting me
gifts that he wanted me to have rather than anything I actually wanted. We moved
to Colorado early in our marriage, close to weekend skiing, and he was sure
that if I gave skiing a chance, I’d love it. Because</span><i style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> he</i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> loved it. Given
that I hated both cold weather and heights, loving it was optimistic. But this
didn’t prevent him from buying me a complete set of ski equipment for my
birthday, including skis, poles, and boots. Did I mention it was all on sale,
and non-returnable? And that we were really poor at the time and this was a
really big investment that he knew I couldn’t let go to waste? (OK, now I’m
speaking ill of the dead.) Please, he implored, would I just go five times now
that I owned all this equipment that I never wanted in the first place? And to
my credit, I did. And the next day, it was all listed on a ski re-sale board.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Meanwhile,
several years ago, when my second husband, Olof, asked me what I wanted for my
birthday, I didn’t hesitate to request a top-of-the-line sewer auger.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">Now,
this might suggest that the romance has gone out of the relationship or worse,
could be considered a dismal metaphorical condemnation of our union.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">But
no, I really really wanted my very own sewer auger.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">We
live in a house that was built by the lowest bidder after the war with all
non-square corners and apparently without benefit of building materials that
had become scarce during The Conflict. It is our only explanation for the
shoddy construction. An abundance of pipe-invading trees and shrubs had kept
us on speed dial to our local plumber. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">But
often the problem was our kitchen sink which could be cleared ourselves (that’s
the royal “ourselves”) with a good sewer auger, which just happened to belong
to our neighbors. They were very nice about lending it to us as needed but
after a certain point, I began to fantasize about the luxury of having our own.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">You’d
think Olof (the “ourselves” mentioned above) would have been deliriously happy
with this idea but was instead horrified. He did not feel that a birthday
auger augured well for our marriage. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“Not
a snowball’s chance,” he replied. “Besides, aren’t you the one who complained
that your first husband got you stuff for your birthday that was really for him?”
he said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“Yup,”
I said, “Skis, and box seats to a Chargers games.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“And
what happened?” he continued.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“I’m
now married to you,” I said.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“Exactly.
It is against the Code of Husbands to get a wife a sewer auger for her
birthday,” he maintained. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“But
not if that’s what I want,” I said. “I didn’t ski and I hated football.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> “I
don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “This wife birthday thing is a mine
field. There’s nothing more terrifying to a guy except Valentine’s Day.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“But
I’m serious,” I said. “It would warm my heart the next time the sink backs up
on a Saturday night” – it’s always a Saturday night – “that ‘we’ could just
wheel in our Ferrari-of-sewer-augers and have at it.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“This
is a second marriage for both of us,” Olof reminded me. “I like to think I’ve
learned something. Buying a wife a sewer auger for her birthday would be a
classic rookie husband mistake. I once bought my first wife a really expensive
vacuum cleaner for her birthday.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“And
what happened?” I said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“I’m
now married to you.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“Well,
I’d consider a vacuum cleaner grounds for divorce too.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“OK,”
said Olof, “I’m willing to buy you the sewer auger of your dreams but you can’t
have it within even two months of your birthday. So you’re going to have to
think of something else.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“I
also really want a hose caddy.” I suggested. “The kind that’s mounted on the
house that I can just crank up. The hose in the back is making me crazy.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“Inga,”
he said, exasperated. “I can’t get you a hose caddy for your birthday any more
than I can get you a sewer auger.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“Well,
I really do need a new salad spinner too. “</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“No!
NOTHING PRACTICAL! It’s your birthday! I have no desire to be married a third
time.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“The
hose caddy could be for Christmas,” I suggested. “Remember, it includes
installation.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">“Surely
there is something totally frivolous with no practical value that you want?” he
implored. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">And
that’s how I got a two-pound box of Godiva chocolates for my birthday. And
magically, a deluxe sewer auger, a hose caddy, and a salad spinner appeared
from an anonymous donor a few weeks later. I couldn’t have been happier. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNlTs_e3Wpphf-9Y19qpkR1tMs831f9SH557Bl8FGP8S3rrBSaLA7vkYQVzB-tG0Ni07G0_Lilg3IciS_A9_UySBhu1mIUQqZ_KryamP9lPCb8_6uInGVvCKtjFKiU-mBqWNecWjZH0rGbMdwvckqJP5mDs7AKXvTtVPfZwmGf-PvZnk6S7sQZFoA8lPoc/s2016/HoseCaddy-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNlTs_e3Wpphf-9Y19qpkR1tMs831f9SH557Bl8FGP8S3rrBSaLA7vkYQVzB-tG0Ni07G0_Lilg3IciS_A9_UySBhu1mIUQqZ_KryamP9lPCb8_6uInGVvCKtjFKiU-mBqWNecWjZH0rGbMdwvckqJP5mDs7AKXvTtVPfZwmGf-PvZnk6S7sQZFoA8lPoc/s320/HoseCaddy-5.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /> </span><p></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-91280204002844196172023-11-18T09:50:00.000-08:002023-11-18T09:50:23.949-08:00500th Column: Inga vs. Chatgpt. Will AI Put Me Out Of Business?<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;">["Let Inga Tell
You," La Jolla Light, published November 20, 2023]</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> <b> 2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">For my 500</span><sup style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Let Inga Tell You </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">column (yes, it really is), I had to ask myself:
could I have saved a lot of time if the AI bot Chatgpt had come out sooner?
Inquiring minds (mine) really wanted to know.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">So I thought I'd
give us the same topic - in this case, being the family worrier - and ask
Chatgpt to write 300 words on being the family worrier in the style of </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Let
Inga Tell You</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">. I mean, Chat only had 490+ examples of my style to work
from including one on this exact topic.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So here s Chat's
version of me:</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;"><span face=""Segoe UI",sans-serif">Oh, let me tell you
all about being the family worrier. You see, I was born with the uncanny
ability to take any situation and twist it into a potential catastrophe. It's
not a title I asked for, mind you, but it's one I wear with a certain degree of
pride. You might call me Inga, but around these parts, they</span><span> </span><span face=""Segoe UI",sans-serif">call me the
Worrier-in-Chief.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">From the moment I
wake up to the moment I close my eyes at night, my mind is a whirlwind of
anxious thoughts and fretful pondering.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">My family, bless
their hearts, has learned to take my worrisome tendencies in stride. They've
developed a sort of Worrier-to-English dictionary to decipher my cryptic
statements. When I say, "I heard a strange noise outside," they know
it means, "The apocalypse is imminent, and we should start stockpiling
canned goods." And when I ask, "Do you think the dog looks a little
lethargic today?" they understand that it translates to, "We must
rush Fido to the vet immediately before he contracts a rare and deadly canine
disease."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">In many ways, being
the family worrier is a heavy burden to bear. My sleepless nights and racing
thoughts can be exhausting, and I often feel like a one-woman anxiety factory.
But there's a silver lining in all of this, you know. My penchant for worrying
has made me the most prepared person you'll ever meet. I've got a first-aid kit
that could rival a small hospital, a pantry stocked to survive the next ice
age, and a network of emergency contacts that would put a superhero's rolodex
to shame.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">So, while my family
might roll their eyes and chuckle at my constant state of worry, they also know
that when the chips are down, I'll be the one with a plan, a flashlight, and a
stash of chocolate bars to get us through any crisis. And for that, they're
grateful even if they have to endure my never-ending fretting along the way.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">Here, meanwhile,
is a segment from my June 15, 2023 <i>Let Inga Tell You</i> column entitled "The family worrier":</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">Anxiety disorders
run in my family. That's why I was interested in an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune a while back entitled "Mulling the worst: One therapist's anxiety fix." Her
solution for combating anxiety is to imagine the worst that could happen and
then, she's decided in her inexplicably delusional way, you will realize that
even the worst isn't that bad.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">Um, seriously?</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">I'm sure this
therapist is a very nice lady but I can only assume she s been out of graduate
school for a matter of days. We worriers are world-class catastrophic thinkers.
In all modesty, it's where we excel.</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">For example, she
says, if your kid is anxious about missing the soccer ball during a game, you
should sit down with him and ask, would that so terrible?</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">Hell yes! The
other kids on the team will probably never let him forget it, teasing him about
it in perpetuity. If they lose the game, it will be his fault. His teammates
will nickname him Klutzoid, a moniker that will stick with him into his
octogenarian years. The coach will stop playing him, and any hope he will ever
have at playing up to the next level is permanently shot. Someone will post it
on Facebook where it will be immortalized forever and played at his wedding.
So, not so bad ? Hah! I don t <u>think</u> so!</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;">From time to time my
husband Olof has tried to convince me that the worrying itself was not the
reason an event went well but my thorough planning. But then, what does he
know?</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">OK, there s some
admittedly catchy phrases in Chat s version. But seriously, this is how Chatgpt
thinks I sound? I'm a tad offended. Chat's version seemed a tad bland. Sort of
like, well, a bot wrote it.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And in the 400,000
words of my </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">oeuvre</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> that Chat had to model me from, did I ever </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">once</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
use the word fret ? I do not fret. I whine. There is a</span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> big</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
difference.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So, am I in danger
of being put out of business by Chatgpt? You tell me.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">My own conclusion:
Find your own voice, AI. This one s mine.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-80341385584631821542023-11-11T14:14:00.000-08:002023-11-11T14:14:09.422-08:00They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[ Let Inga Tell
You, La Jolla Light, published November 13, 2023] </span></i><b><span> 2023</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In 1999 we
remodeled our tiny 1947 kitchen. It was a huge boon to have more than a single
100-watt light bulb, to have a dishwasher that you didn't have to roll over to
the sink, and to be forever rid of gray Formica. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What we didn't
realize is that whatever appliances we installed in that space would forever
determine the ones we could replace them with. Now, 24 years later, the last
of those appliances has crumped, and we were once again faced with the reality
that few of the world s now-preferred appliances will fit in our allowable
space. You can't shave a half-inch off a granite counter top.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It has not helped
that the quality of appliances seems to have really tanked in the intervening
years. And in its place, they're loaded with annoying features that we don't
even want.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Our new microwave,
for example, is the exact same manufacturer and size as its predecessor but
weighs only half as much and literally slides around when you push its cheap
little buttons. (We had to anchor it down.) Its flimsy glass plate keeps
falling off the rotation wheels. But worst is its Perpetual Perseveration
feature, tragically common in new appliances, that will beep in perpetuity once
that cup of instant coffee is heated up. It's like it's having a giant snit: "You
made me nuke this and now I'm going to annoy the <i>sh-t </i>out of you until
you come and get it!"</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>I wrote a while
back about our friends dryer that had an auto "wrinkle control" feature that
fluffed up a load of dried clothes every 30 seconds until the door was opened.
The </span><span>friends
went on vacation to Europe having put clothes in the dryer before they left. It
was still fluffing when they returned six weeks later. My new-ish dryer, alas,
does that too.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>And then there s
my three-year-old washing machine which made it into its allotted space in our
small garage-less house by literally an eighth of an inch. Over-zealous sensors
that have proliferated on washing machines are in a category all their own. </span><span>My machine wants
to self-balance (unlike my previous machines whose self-balancer was me) but
if there is anything in there heavier than underwear, it is scientifically
designed to shift everything to one side then sound like it is agitating a
bowling ball. The machine literally flails around like a mechanical bull with
a broken speed control. Unsupervised, the machine could end up in our bedroom. Seriously, the only individual more scared of this machine than the dog is me. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Additionally, if
you wash sheets in it, it has a built-in Self-Tangle feature that knots them up
into a tight poly-cotton rope requiring serious <i>un</i>tangling before you
can move them to the dryer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The dryer,
meanwhile, has its own feature, Auto-Clump, that will wrap every
individually-separated item in a load of bedding into in a large ball inside
the bottom sheet. The bottom sheet itself will be dry but its entire contents
will be completely sodden. I had the same dryer for 44 years and it <i>never
did that once.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>When our kitchen range
failed during the pandemic, we were stuck with the <i>only</i> 30-inch white
slide-in gas range available west of the Mississippi (maybe east of it too). It
had a thousand dollars of features we didn't want and would never use,
including consuming most of the cooktop real estate with a grill that
advertised that it could hold "six grilled cheese sandwiches!" Which is six
more than we'd ever make.</span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Right before Labor
Day weekend, in keeping with the Universal Perversity Postulate that states
that critical appliances only break right before major holiday weekends when
you have guests coming, our 24-year refrigerator, the last of our 1999 remodel
appliances, crossed the chill-chest rainbow bridge. It turned out there were
exactly three choices for a white "counter-depth" refrigerator that would fit
in our very defined space. Mysteriously, the new fridge has only half the
freezer space as its identically-sized predecessor, but only partly because of a
door dispenser that we didn't want but were stuck with. On the fridge side, there
is a single dim light at the very top, which, alas, cannot be upgraded to
something with actual wattage, and which blocks light to everything below it as
soon as you put something on the top shelf. Nobody should need a flashlight to
find the mayo. And did I mention that I have managed to live into my golden
years without a door alarm that won't shut up before you've even put half your
groceries away?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">With every one of
our replacement appliances, you need to close them ever so gently so their
entire tinny selves won't shake. You're afraid the doors will fall off their
chintzy chassis.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So here s the
career that I'd like to see: an appliance person who specializes in disabling
all the stupid features on appliances. Bowling Ball-rebalancing and Malicious
Snits. Forever Fluff and Robo-Beep. Self-Tangle and Auto-Clump. Underwhelming
Wattage and Door Alarm Dingers.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">They wouldn't be
able to keep up with demand. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCBJBdcBNtVBjKUOhfiv5rgGDVbgAgv_Dm79UicSJKtr5_2qTpnAmC_wg3FK6sR0YxwnfUKU8TqqAY5rlRrOc2V-DJkU6-J6aL_7kCp8ggWa5KQA7s_6jM3dTVCsIu__9-muj6yhtY3rf_PJMpCUnZJDVJHSxMIwQpE-gC_VTdh89VviQLcaj9YWhYdDuC/s2014/Clump-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1510" data-original-width="2014" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCBJBdcBNtVBjKUOhfiv5rgGDVbgAgv_Dm79UicSJKtr5_2qTpnAmC_wg3FK6sR0YxwnfUKU8TqqAY5rlRrOc2V-DJkU6-J6aL_7kCp8ggWa5KQA7s_6jM3dTVCsIu__9-muj6yhtY3rf_PJMpCUnZJDVJHSxMIwQpE-gC_VTdh89VviQLcaj9YWhYdDuC/s320/Clump-3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>Our dryer's Auto-Clump feature stuffs an entire load of bedding inside </i></span><i style="font-family: times; font-size: large;">the bottom sheet where it remains wet</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-29339105010972513902023-10-29T11:51:00.000-07:002023-10-29T11:51:35.187-07:00A Trip Down Bank Robbery Memory Lane<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[Let Inga Tell
You, La Jolla Light, published October 30, 2023]</span></i><span> <b> 2023</b></span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The downside of
living in the same house for decades is that you never do the aggressive
culling of your belongings that moving generally requires. But it also gives
you the opportunity to serendipitously stumble across memorabilia like this photo
from 1978 that evoked a lot of memories, most of which had nothing to do with
the subject of the photo itself.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The photo is of a
bank robber who held up State Mutual Savings at gun point on La Jolla Boulevard
in April of 1978. I was the only customer in the bank at the time and have
never been within two feet of a 45-calibre blue steel automatic before or
since. And I am very, very glad for that. The FBI gave me a copy of the
security camera photo as a souvenir noting that it was a good thing the robber
didn't shoot me, as this is not a weapon you want fired at you at close range.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So that's the
first memory, of course. Pure terror. As I was transacting with the single teller,
the robber burst through the bank door and yelled at everyone to get their
heads down as he hurled a bag at the teller to fill with cash. He was
screaming at her to hurry up, and she was begging him not to "hurt anyone".
Seeing this gun in such proximity to my body being held by someone who seemed
so nervous and jittery made me absolutely concur with the teller's entreaties.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In probably a much
shorter time than it seemed, the robber was gone. The doors were locked
awaiting the FBI. One of the two banker managers sitting at their desks had
tripped the alarm. I don't remember how much money the robber got away with.
But I do remember that the teller quit that same day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Of course, one
other memory that this photo immediately evokes for me is the IBM Selectric
typewriter in the background with which the teller would type in your deposit
or withdrawal into your passbook in the pre-online (or even telephone) banking
days. In that era, people used to go to the bank <i>a lot</i> to get cash,
deposit checks, get travelers checks, etc.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And, in fact, that
was what I was there for that day: to get travelers checks for a trip we were
to leave on the next day. For those who don t know what those are, or were,
they were checks issued by banks in specific denominations on which you signed
your name when you bought them, then signed them again when you used them
during your travels. The whole idea was not to have to carry a lot of cash.
Credit cards weren't nearly in as wide usage then as they are now.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Which leads me to
the next memory about that photo. Normally I always had Rory, my then-10-month-old
baby, with me when I went to the bank. If I was sitting, I sometimes let him
play on the floor next to me with a toy if I had a lot of transactions, or if I
were standing, I d be holding him. If he d been with me, he would have crawled
over to the bank robber's pant leg and tried to pull himself up, or if I d been
holding him, would have tried to reach for the nice shiny gun. I was so
incredibly glad he was home with a sitter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Which brings me to
my next memory from this photo. I had the sitter because I was going to meet my
physician husband for a quick (and rare) lunch near his office at one of our
favorite restaurants on Herschel. He had a tight schedule.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Obviously, no cell
phones then. The bank wouldn't let me leave until the FBI had taken my
statement. It became rapidly apparent that I was not going to get to the
restaurant on time and my husband was already waiting for me. I could just
imagine him getting more and more annoyed. He had to be back at his office by
1:00. When the FBI guy was finally done with me, I realized that by the time I
used the bank's phone to have my husband's answering service page him, I could just
get in my car and be at the restaurant in seven minutes. Because here's an
even stronger memory: I d be able to easily park in downtown La Jolla, almost
certainly on the same block as the restaurant. Maybe in front.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Should I say that
again? Park easily in downtown La Jolla? Not have to allow an extra 15-20
minutes to look for a parking place that could well be four blocks away? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Anyway, I rushed
into the restaurant some 40 minutes late, apologizing profusely. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"Where have you <i>been</i>?" he inquired testily.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And I got to
deliver a line both figuratively<i> and</i> literally for the only time in my
life:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">"I was held up."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimkx0CEZxUeGBoat5_5wiUysDrrHK7bqyCDIu6csvkrcYBxn-N5QxSW0lGGNJ8IRJeJB3D5OpXJwn0rvZPtfHqZ3j8xzGWjV06RD-nuwOCdBS8KBB1QEywsY1BdnyyXfHOCEhmQ7XHKYzMlaTbc5RlwAmk-QFMPEwyZWCIIjROxMlEsMjV06OMWaRqvwjF/s1752/BankRobberApril1978.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1752" data-original-width="1437" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimkx0CEZxUeGBoat5_5wiUysDrrHK7bqyCDIu6csvkrcYBxn-N5QxSW0lGGNJ8IRJeJB3D5OpXJwn0rvZPtfHqZ3j8xzGWjV06RD-nuwOCdBS8KBB1QEywsY1BdnyyXfHOCEhmQ7XHKYzMlaTbc5RlwAmk-QFMPEwyZWCIIjROxMlEsMjV06OMWaRqvwjF/s320/BankRobberApril1978.jpg" width="262" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Souvenir bank robber photo from security camera</i></span></div><p></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-36565026874620749762023-10-21T11:02:00.002-07:002023-10-21T11:02:21.321-07:00Making College Essays Fun <style>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let
Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published October 23, 2023]</span></i><span> <b>©2023</b></span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">If
it’s fall, it’s time for pumpkin spice overload, an invasion of spider webs,
lots of soccer games, and if you’re a high school senior, the dread college
application process. Friends whose daughter is in the midst of applying to
schools were bemoaning the process to us, knowing we have lived through it
ourselves. It’s been quite a few years since our sons applied and I was
curious to know if the essay topics had improved in the interim. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In
a word: no.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Colleges
always maintain that they want to know the “real” candidate but then hit them
up with eye-glazing topics that are pretty much guaranteed to produce prose
like "Team sports has taught me self-discipline and how to work with
others" and "My trip to Europe made me realize that we are all
one."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Of
course, the Common Application has streamlined a lot of the work but it’s the
essays that are still the biggest hurdle.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I
remember my younger son, Henry, who applied to a lot of essay-intensive
schools, approaching his step-father, a reactor physics graduate from Cal Tech,
hoping someone of Olof’s erudite background could provide some retrospective
insights into "What do you hope to achieve in your four years of
college?" My husband pondered the question for a moment before offering,
"Grow facial hair and get laid?" Henry perked up immediately at the
prospect. But didn’t dare use it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">If
college admissions officers want to get to know the “real” candidate, they’ve
got to ask the right questions. Topics that kids can really become impassioned
about and which might also give college essay readers a reason to live. Here’s
a few I might suggest:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(1)
Analyze the debris field on your bedroom floor. How does it reveal the real
you?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(2)
Agree or disagree: There is absolutely nothing new anyone can say about <i>The
Great Gatsby</i>. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> (3)
Why texting, tweeting and other electronic communication should be allowed
during class time, especially if the class is like, totally lame.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> (4)
My night in a Tijuana jail: A lesson in economics.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> (5)
What things do you do that drive your parents craziest? Describe how you've
fine-tuned them over the years.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> (6)
Relate an incident where you were blamed for something that was so not your
fault. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(7)
Influences that shaped your life: were there any?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(8)
Describe an evening with your favorite non-porn-star fictional character.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> (9)
The top three excuses parents are likely to believe. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(10)
In 250 words or less, agree or disagree with this statement: people over 40
should <u>not </u>be allowed on social media.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(11)
Curfew: why I am so over it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(12)
How ADHD explains my transcript, and that felony egging incident.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(13)
College: Is it over-rated?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(14)
Despite what they say, my parents really <i>were</i> born yesterday. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(15)
What are the nicknames you and your siblings have for each other when no
grownups are around? Regale us with the symbolism behind them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(16)
How to survive a totally bad hair day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(17)
iPhone apps I’d<i> really</i> like to see.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(18)
Why I will totally be a better parent than mine are. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(19)
Pole dancing as a varsity sport? Make your best case.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(20)
Should watching the movie be an acceptable alternative to reading the assigned
book so long as the ending is kind of the same?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(21)
My favorite pharmaceutical and why. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(22)
Compare and contrast your favorite awards shows.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(23)
Like, whatever.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Olof,
however, points out that like everyone else, college admission folks have to be
careful what they wish for. Because if they ask any of these questions, they
will surely get it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-83805806220086979662023-10-14T10:10:00.000-07:002023-10-14T10:10:01.657-07:00Olof Doing What He Does Best<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[ Let Inga Tell
You, La Jolla Light, published October 16, 2023]</span></i><span> <b> 2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Some years back, I
won a First Place prize in the annual San Diego Press Club Excellence in
Journalism Awards for a column entitled :How an engineer makes cookies." It
chronicled an unprecedented attack of nostalgia by my husband, Olof, who had
never baked anything in his life, deciding he wanted to replicate the family
Christmas cookie recipes and send a selection to assorted relatives around the
country.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">One problem: the
recipes did not indicate a yield. But nothing, my techno hubby concluded, that
couldn't be solved with a simple application of undergraduate quantitative
analysis.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Astonishingly (to
me but not to him), his calculations were spot on. Which I was really glad
about since those calculations had generated a master shopping list that
included 17.5 cups of flour and 13 sticks of butter. We would<i> still</i> be
eating butter if he'd been wrong.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I was utterly
dazzled watching the entire production, titled "2013 Christmas Cookie Plan",
which involved five spreadsheets, multiple flow charts, and headings like "Integration of Components". The nice thing about not having baked before is
that you re not constrained by actual baking terms, like, say "mix". </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Each shipment
included descriptions of the five cookie types produced, revealing a charmingly
whimsical side of my engineer husband I had never seen, never mind even imagined. The cherry-topped cookies, for example, were described as "sweet,
flaky, and surprisingly suggestive".</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But more recently,
Olof decided to venture into pizza dough making as a way to use up the part of
his two custom-developed-over-a-year sour dough starters that he has to pour
off each week when adding new flour. As must be clear, Olof never does
anything half way. In a solemn ritual every Sunday, both jars are removed from
the fridge and precisely 100 grams of starter is removed, replaced with 50
grams each of flour and water. The little yeasty microbes constantly need new
flour to feed off of if they are to produce the dazzling sourdough products
Olof is now renowned for.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But the waste of
perfectly good starter offended him. What is starter for if not to start
something? Sour dough starter, I can assure you, is a lifetime commitment.</span><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">For a while he was
using the weekly sour dough discard to make crackers. But there are only so
many crackers any human (and their neighbors, and total strangers who found
bags of them on their doorsteps) can eat. But a little research determined
that it could also be used for pizza dough.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Olof s friend,
Jim, mentioned he would like to join Olof in making a pizza at our house and
offered a recipe for a 14-inch pizza he had previously used. But since we
didn't have a pizza stone to cook a pizza on, Olof had discovered that a good
substitute was a cast iron pan, which we fortuitously already owned.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now some of us
(that would be moi), would acquire a glob of commercial pizza dough from a
pizza place (some are very accommodating) or even the grocery store, and
stretch it to fit the cast iron pan.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span face=""Tahoma",sans-serif"></span><span>But where's the
fun in that when you could have an opportunity to calculate your little heart
out <i>and </i>use up sour dough starter?</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Hence this email
to Jim:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Jim - <br />
<br />
I've done a little research on our pizza dough making project for next week. <br />
<br />
1. Dough Weight <br />
<br />
I have no clue how much dough you need to make a pizza, so I Googled: "How
much dough for a 12-inch pizza". Not surprisingly I got a LOT of
hits, so I picked twenty values; the largest of which was 340 grams (11 oz) and
the smallest was (227 grams (7.5 oz). The mean was 277 grams (9 oz) and the
standard deviation was 34 grams (1.1 oz). I think we're better off with
too much dough than not enough so statistically 70% of the weight estimates
will be at the mean plus 1 standard deviation or 277 + 34 = 311 grams (~10 oz).
<br />
<br />
2. Scaling <br />
<br />
A. You reckon that the recipe you have is for a 14-inch pizza, so to scale up
the 12-inch weight we need to multiply 311 grams by (14/12) squared. That
result is 422 grams (just under 14 oz). <br />
<br />
B. However, I'd like to try making a small pizza in a cast iron frying
pan. We have one and I measured it to be 11 inches across. So to
scale down from 12 inches, we'd need 311 grams x (11/12) squared, or 262 grams
(8.5 oz)<br />
</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Of course, the
calculations didn't stop there. Subsequent headings under Pizza Dough
Apportionment included a dizzying selection of mathematical formulas involving
V (volume), D (diameter), T (thickness) and appropriately enough, <i>pi</i>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And yes, a pizza
in a cast iron fry pan was indeed produced, and was, in fact, delicious. And
it succeeded in using up the leftover sourdough starter. And illustrated, once
again, why Olof is an engineer and I'm not.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicTkaNobSTUeeQYlOILNAvbjDBl0vSxZrWtPqXBuSreM4SHyYbl02vhIOJO8THleFLWKGZneOJb31UzNVoqcP6FmgwIGbzMyjL6Y2Wwmp9RonKx2I5_bZQ03LJBrIZgWhlposJMIT0xJuCdWJNFqncyFeZ_qKXqNTaku-ZwCcB3S6xivxgziCgL0dElGIG/s2016/PizzaDough-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicTkaNobSTUeeQYlOILNAvbjDBl0vSxZrWtPqXBuSreM4SHyYbl02vhIOJO8THleFLWKGZneOJb31UzNVoqcP6FmgwIGbzMyjL6Y2Wwmp9RonKx2I5_bZQ03LJBrIZgWhlposJMIT0xJuCdWJNFqncyFeZ_qKXqNTaku-ZwCcB3S6xivxgziCgL0dElGIG/s320/PizzaDough-1.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhonffFc_p6dU_YTSPbihPJY2O5PadnYq13r9v5_nMjKBbD-gEuwoiG4Kdns3ASYnCSlag95qLfAfb9ZENicroZ54ro-tdksLWWCgY1xDpqAnDtkOMUiqAsRuoxOYf77_p_PXkBtGanmF2ZDT7UV5ajC5de202I_uBpyCH_4z0vcAFhd0rZEDX8ky0XoNH-/s2016/PizzaDough-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhonffFc_p6dU_YTSPbihPJY2O5PadnYq13r9v5_nMjKBbD-gEuwoiG4Kdns3ASYnCSlag95qLfAfb9ZENicroZ54ro-tdksLWWCgY1xDpqAnDtkOMUiqAsRuoxOYf77_p_PXkBtGanmF2ZDT7UV5ajC5de202I_uBpyCH_4z0vcAFhd0rZEDX8ky0XoNH-/s320/PizzaDough-2.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Weekly ritual: precision feeding of sourdough starter</span></i><br /><span style="font-family: times; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></div><br /><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-8115855998610650062023-09-30T14:09:00.002-07:002023-09-30T14:18:10.364-07:00Floating Away<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[ Let Inga Tell
You, La Jolla Light, published October 2, 2023]</span></i><span> <b> 2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I remember reading
in some long-ago anthropology class that some Eskimo cultures, not wishing to
waste precious food resources on non-productive elders, set them adrift on an
ice floe, and waved bye-bye.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Inquiring minds, particularly retired, aged minds, wanted to know: did this really happen? Did
the oldies actually end up as polar bear brunch? Froze to death? Landed in
Tahiti and started a new life? Regardless, it would have been two more places
at Christmas dinner for the folks back home.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The ice floe thing
obviously worked better in cold climates than, say, the Kalahari Desert, where
the equivalent was probably tying a tying a slab of raw meat around mom and dad
and leaving them on the savannah. Depending on the folks mobility, they didn't
even need the slab of meat.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Those same retired
aged minds are asking: am I in danger?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Well, not of ice
floes specifically which are fortuitously scarce in this area, but certainly
their symbolic version. I'll be genuinely worried if my husband, Olof, goes
first. My sons and daughters-in-law have demanding careers and don't even live
anywhere close to me. Most of the nursing homes I researched for a relative a
few years ago made the whole ice floe thing (or even the slab of meat) sound like
the better deal. Well, maybe not immediately but at least <i>somebody </i>would
be having a good day.</span><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>As it turns out,
the dispensing of what were known as "useless eaters" (i.e., elderly folks who
were no longer able to physically contribute to the economy of a society)
weren't unheard of, especially in times of famine. </span><span lang="EN" style="color: #202122;">The
ancient Keians, for example, attempting to preserve a dwindling food supply,
decided to vote everyone over 60 off the island. One suspects that the people
over 60 didn't get a vote. You can see it now: "All in favor of dispensing with
the sexagenarian set say 'aye'. Oh, look, it s unanimous! See ya, folks!" The
geezers apparently got a hemlock mojito for dinner.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span lang="EN" style="color: #202122;">There
are a worrisome number of terms to describe deleting the oldies from the family
circle: senicide, senilicide, geronticide, senio-euthenasia, and even the
ever-popular modern version, "granny dumping". </span><span>How the "useless eaters" were
dispatched was, of course, largely dependent on the geography involved. In one
alleged method among long-ago Eskimos, the whole village would pick up and move
during the night while the oldies slept. (The origin of "ghosting". )</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Grandpa wakes up
and says, "Hey, where did everybody go? I could swear there was a village here
yesterday." Apparently, this method allowed the abandonee to either find his
way back to the group thus proving his continued value, or succumb back at home
when he realizes they also took his walker. Frankly, this method seems particularly
low to me. You may need the food but you don t have to be mean about it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I guess there's no
nice way to say, "Sorry Mom and dad, but you've had your last meal. In fact,
you're about to be one." And the folks are thinking, "Just as I always feared.
There is <i>no gratitude."</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">While some
societies have traditionally revered their elders (well, at least while there
was plenty of food on the table), recent articles have suggested that modern
societies are questioning the value of the old. This is not news to the old.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In January of 2011, the first Baby Boomers turned 65, and have added another 10,000 per day to these ranks every since. By 2030, at least 18% of the population will be in that group. So this whole ice floe thing is a pretty big topic, at least among those of us in the ice floe demographic. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">(BTW, will global warming reduce the number of available ice floes? Somebody needs to be looking into this. In this <i>one more thing </i>we oldies will have to compete for - the ice floe that doesn't melt underneath you before the polar bear even shows up?) </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> For us boomers, it might not be so much an issue of food insecurity, but care giving shortages. Diapers are much cuter on infants. Having been heavily involved in the final years of a close relative who was both physically and mentally disabled, I can attest that they're not all that fun to be around, not to mention seriously labor-intensive. And did I mention expensive? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: times;">Increasingly, among people I know, it's the oldies looking for the ice floe opportunities themselves rather than waiting for the kids to set them adrift. No one wants to be a burden, financially or otherwise. And maybe those old folks are/were ready to go. </span><span style="font-family: times;">I fantasize them floating off to sea
saying the equivalent of, "Don't tell the kids but we just so sick of trying to
get reliable Wi-fi in the igloo. They couldn't upgrade to a better cable
provider? Hey - is that a polar bear over there?"</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-52850668977616639842023-09-23T17:17:00.002-07:002023-09-23T17:17:16.908-07:00Taking Your Own Advice<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[ Let Inga Tell
You, La Jolla Light, published September 25, 2023] </span></i><b><span> 2023</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I've often
reflected while reading the morning paper that it's a good thing I have my
current gig with the <i>La Jolla Light</i> because I would make an absolutely
terrible advice columnist. My answer to about 95% of the letters would be, all
caps, IS THIS EVEN A QUESTION???</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I'd be fired the
first day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I mean, I like to
think I m a compassionate person (unless we re talking about my former
stepmother, Fang, for whom I wish nothing but the worst possible suffering).
But you have to wonder whether the folks who submit these even read their own
letters because the answer would - should - <i>is</i> often abundantly
obvious. In fact, I've often found it a useful tactic in solving my own
problems. Write yourself a letter.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Alas, a
disproportionate number of letters to syndicated advice columnists seem to be
written by women who are in abysmal relationships. This makes me incredibly
sad.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">A common
denominator in so many of the most despairing epistles is that they are written
by women who seem to have a profound deficit of self-worth. As my friend Jill has
often observed, "If it weren't for women with low self-esteem, there s a lot of
guys who'd never get laid." I couldn t agree more.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Alas, a lack of
economic resources often seems to be playing a role in many a letter writer's
dilemmas as well. Hence, the question they re posing at the end of a truly
depressing tale is not the one you'd hope for, like "help me get out of this
horrible situation" but "how do I get him to marry me?" Gah! More gah! Very
(very) disheartening indeed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Here are some
composites of letters I've saved in recent years and how I would reply to them
were they written to me. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Dear Inga, </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I met a man on
line who, after a week, invited me to move across country to where he lives. I
do believe in love at first sight, and no man has ever made me feel this way
before. At first everything was really cool, but lately he keeps having to go
on these extended business trips for weeks on end, leaving me along at his
rural house to care for his six dogs, five goats, and two donkeys. They are a
lot more work than you might think, especially the donkeys. I am starting to
get suspicious that these business trips might include more than business
although he denies it and maintains that that s why is first six marriages
didn t work, because his wives were these total b----s who always thought the
worst. But he leaves so little money for me when he goes out of town that I
have been reduced to eating dog food which I don't particularly like but is
tastier than the donkey food. I am tempted to give him an ultimatum: either he
marries me the next time he comes home or I'm moving into the barn. Is this
the right plan? Signed, YOLO in Idaho</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Inga replies: <i>Next
time he's out of town, sell the livestock and buy yourself a one-way ticket out
of town leaving no forwarding address. Take the dogs. They deserve better.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Dear Inga, </span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I ve divorced my
husband twice because he cheated on me constantly, and also beat me. Now he
says he has gone to anger management and wants us to get married a third time.
He is currently living with another woman (my 17-year-old sister, actually) but
says he will break up with her and move back in with me if I say yes. I am
concerned that he doesn't have a job and is also very racist. I have always
loved him with all my heart even during the time he was in prison. Should I
remarry him if he promises for sure to quit beating me and stops his
promiscuous behavior? Signed, Love conquers all?</span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Inga replies:<i>
Sweetheart, you need a lobotomy. At minimum. If you are even considering this,
you need to be under conservatorship.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I m thinking the
Dear Abbys and Ask Carolines of the world must need a really stiff drink at
the end of the day. As a fourth-generation feminist, I just can't bear reading
about women making incredibly bad relationship choices. Not, of course, that I
haven t edged up on some questionable choices myself which were delineated in
the post-divorce Dates from Hell section of my book. For example, going out
with the criminal lawyer with a cocaine habit and herpes. Such a learning
curve! He seemed so nice! But was such a creep! Fortunately, he was just one
(really really) bad date, not a long-term life choice.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But that date was
a Dear Inga moment. My future dating choices were faaaar more selective.
Oftentimes the best advice you'll ever get is not from someone else, but the
advice that's already circulating in your own head. Listen to it.</span></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-72416568938521203322023-09-04T13:42:00.004-07:002023-09-04T13:42:41.503-07:00Why Letting Your Kids Suffer The Consequences Is A Really Good Idea<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[ Let Inga Tell
You, La Jolla Light, published September 4, 2023]</span></i><span> <b> 2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I failed in a
hundred ways with my kids. If you asked them what my worst mistakes were,
they d reply, "Alphabetically or chronologically?" But the one thing I feel I
did right a legacy of my own parents was to make them take responsibility
and consequences for their actions.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The felony murder
rule applied in my house: if you were there, you were guilty. No I was there
but I was just watching defense that I heard endlessly the day after Halloween
from kids who I recognized who had vandalized my street. Their parents assured
me that they believed the kid's version of events, and if he wasn't actually
doing anything, (believe me, he was), he was innocent. It still makes me
incredulous.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">For years, I could
count on having to wash the egg off my car (no garage) before going to work (it
really messes with the paint job), sweeping up my dumped-out trash from the
street, and hoping the paint from paint pellet guns would eventually wear off
my siding.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I know: it s just
kids being kids. And I m fine with kids being kids on Halloween if they or
their parents want to come clean it up afterwards. But intrinsic in that
phrase, someone other than the fun-loving kid gets to deal with it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I always felt
really lucky that, unlike other neighbors, my car windows weren't broken, my
brick retaining wall hadn't been pushed over, and nobody had spray-painted
black graffiti on $40,000 worth of custom cabinets recently installed on a
nearby house being remodeled. Such little devils!</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I confess that my
childhood sense of justice was honed on a steady diet of Nancy Drew books. The
whole River Heights Police Department sprang into action when Nancy s
rosebushes were stolen. When she called the authorities, not only did they
quickly apprehend the bad guys, but they locked them up forever. No habeas
corpus, but you can t have everything.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But damage or
theft or outright aggressive behavior from teens seems to be happening not only
daily, but becoming increasingly egregious.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I am finding it
truly dismaying to see kids who are still minors having no consequences for
their actions. On my neighborhood social media, people with Ring cameras post
pictures of kids who have actually broken into homes and aren't even trying to
hide their faces. (Adorable!)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">A recent social
media post showed teens pulling green bins out into the middle of the street at
1:30 in the morning where they could easily be hit by cars. (What fun!)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Then there was the
group of teens who were skateboarding (one of the most grating noises on the planet)
on the garage ramp of a local condo complex at midnight night after night right
under someone s unit and who simply flipped off the residents when asked to
leave. (Those little scamps!)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Another recent
post reported tweens throwing rocks at a homeless person behind Rite Aid.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In the early days
of the pandemic, I was dismayed to witness on several occasions groups of local
teens rushing into my local CVS, grabbing all the alcohol they could carry, and
rushing out again. (Those imps!) People wanted to say that those kids must
have been from out of the area, but unless that area was Rancho Santa Fe, I m
guessing that the late-model Range Rover they climbed into at the curb probably
came from La Jolla.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What dismays me is
that the comments posted under these stories always include way too many
comments along the lines of Oh, stop being such a curmudgeon. It's just kids
being kids.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Even worse, when
clear photos are shown of the kids faces (usually from homeowners wanting the
miscreants to be identified so the kids themselves or their parents can be held
accountable), they ll be a backlash of people insisting that minors should not
be identified on social media.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Um, excuse me.
They were committing a crime. Please identify them. Let there be at least
some hope that their parents will care enough.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">That's the thing.
No one s looking to incarcerate these kids. But before your 18<sup>th</sup>
birthday is a really good time to learn that laws (at least theoretically)
apply to you. Not learning this, as some kids on my block later learned, means
you might do some serious time in an adult penal institution, where kids are
not being kids.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Please, if your
teen gets apprehended for some infraction, don't make your first step be to
call a lawyer. Let them do community service. Hopefully a lot of community
service. It s the biggest gift you can give them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Halloween is
approaching. Fortunately, our neighborhood now has a strong police presence on
that night so the outright destruction is way down. But it still happens. So
if you're going to send me an email insisting it s just kids being kids,
could you include your phone number so my neighbors and I can call you to come
clean up?</span></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-18463071702386573102023-08-26T14:00:00.001-07:002023-08-26T14:00:08.180-07:00Torture By Telephone<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[ Let Inga Tell
You, La Jolla Light, published August 28, 2023]</span></i><span> <b> 2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I would rather get
a root canal <i>and</i> a colonoscopy simultaneously than get a new cell phone.
And no, I am not kidding.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I had genuinely hoped
I would die before my phone did. But the phone decided to force the issue.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">IOS just wasn't
reliably supporting my iPhone 7 anymore. Even upgrading to the latest version
something I only do when the phone pretty much ceases to work wasn't
helping. In fact, it seemed to be making it worse.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I am a person with
genuine talents. But even people who love me would agree I am not just
techno-challenged but deeply, profoundly, techno-disabled. Whatever synapses
were involved in techno skills failed to survive my gestation. It does not
help that I have a frustration tolerance of a gnat.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Was it time for a
Jitterbug the phone heavily advertised in AARP Magazine for techno-inept
oldies? Or did I still have one more iPhone in me?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I went with the
iPhone partly because I really enjoy FaceTiming with the grandkids, but because
I was also under the (extremely false) illusion that I already knew how to use
one.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Unfortunately, the
operation of the iPhone 14 is totally different from the iPhone 7. They're as
alike as cousins twice removed who were adopted at birth. My old phone had a
little Home button at the bottom that was heavily involved in the operation of
the phone. It's <i>gone!</i> (The SE still has a Home button for iPhone
Luddites but it's too small for me.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now you have to
swipe, but just so. It s definitely all in the wrist.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">At the phone
store, I was fobbed off on a nice young commission-oriented kid who was
probably as unenthusiastic about dealing with me as I was with dealing with
him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">We were speaking completely
different languages.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">How many gigs did
I usually use, he inquired. (No idea.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">How much do I use
Apple Pay? (Don't even know what that is.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Do I need a hot
spot? (Not unless he means a jacuzzi.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I really need to
switch to AutoPay if I want a better deal. (Not happening.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Was I <i>sure</i>
my husband wouldn't be willing to get a new phone too? (Nope and stop asking.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The kid was
pushing the iPhone 14 Plus Pro which has three cameras. I could take
cinema-quality movies! (Um, do I look like Steven Spielberg?)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Things were going
downhill fast. Rather than slash my wrists with a plastic screen cover, I gathered
up my stuff, thanked him for his time, and walked out the door.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Fortunately, the
young woman who I had hoped to work with came running after me. She said if I
would return, she would swap her current customers with the young kid since she
was almost finished.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">This young woman
was basically an iPhone therapist, skilled at dealing with the aged
techno-terrified.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So, she says,
soothingly, what is the most important feature to you on a phone?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> That I can use
it, I said.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">How about the
second most important feature?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> Maximum screen
size.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>So it's easier to
read? She queries</span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> Yup, and so I can
post the most directions on the back of it. I showed her the back of my phone.
A brief frown flashed across her brow.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">We determined
fairly quickly that the right phone for me was going to be the iPhone 14Plus
with two cameras (not the cinema-quality Pro variation that the kid was pushing).
And she was confident that with practice, I could learn to swipe. (Sounds
faintly larcenous.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">While not a
natural swiper, I am slowly getting the hang of it, although several times I
have found myself unable to get out of a screen. Even turning the phone off
doesn't help; when you turn it back on, the same annoying screen is still
there. Banging the phone on a granite counter top doesn't help either. (Just
kidding).</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Alas, the new
phone had some immediate glitches when I got it home wouldn't send or receive
calls (major flaws in a phone), and was sending text messages to people's
email. My husband (see frustration tolerance, above) had odds that this
phone was going to end up in the pool.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In lieu of this,
trips back to the store were required.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Guess what fixed
the calling problems? Turning the phone to airplane mode then turning it off
again. How are ordinary humans supposed to figure that out??? When those
Apple people (or my engineer husband) refer to cell phones as intuitive, I
want to smite them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I will concede
that it has one sort of cool feature (I am only willing to concede one.) It
has facial recognition in lieu of typing in your passcode. But then I
fantasized my care givers in the dementia facility being able to hold the phone
up to my face and stealing all my data.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But I definitely
don t have enough emotional bandwidth to ever do this again. And I truly mean <i>ever.</i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSOsea83DJizC29gSQ2nwAY7O1KJM7aACJOipVQ8rghzxYYXsRUS8S0SvP5ejkuOXHEWeFv-jqAXYs9_eBr2hqnym5b7JXuzOfL4_rDQ7eHWz3oD2oUjTiow_41hXdvUlpgrm5HEYVvsZFDmM2OpClRbwYqyE3MR-AlD9pLLkh-Tc7yBjAOEQRhRBgOP7I/s2016/iPhone7-Back-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSOsea83DJizC29gSQ2nwAY7O1KJM7aACJOipVQ8rghzxYYXsRUS8S0SvP5ejkuOXHEWeFv-jqAXYs9_eBr2hqnym5b7JXuzOfL4_rDQ7eHWz3oD2oUjTiow_41hXdvUlpgrm5HEYVvsZFDmM2OpClRbwYqyE3MR-AlD9pLLkh-Tc7yBjAOEQRhRBgOP7I/s320/iPhone7-Back-3.jpg" width="240" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>Maximum screen size important</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>to be able to cram in the most instructions possible</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i>#severelytechnodisabled</i></span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-54135069268486049282023-08-18T09:43:00.002-07:002023-08-18T10:17:26.780-07:00Worst Summer Jobs Ever (Olof wins) <style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[Let Inga Tell You,
La Jolla Light, published August 21, 2023]</span></i><b><span> 2023</span></b><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Both Olof s and my
parents were such proponents of child labor that it is probably a good thing
there were no coal mines within commuting distance to our homes. There was
pretty much no employment they considered beneath us.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> Olof and I used to like to play "Who had the worst summer jobs?" Physically, I'd have to concede that Olof won. A native of Walnut Creek (CA), he spent the summer after his freshman year of college as a roofer in the East Bay's brutal 100-degree summer heat in a perpetual knee-crippling crouch position pounding nails hour after hour. The only shade, he recalls dramatically, was a flying bird.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>So the next
summer, desperate to get out of the blazing sun, and hoping for a pay raise, he
managed to snag a job in the Pittsburgh (California, and yes, there is one) US
Steel Mill. It was a union job as summer relief help for which he was required
to purchase both a hard hat and steel-toed boots even though his actual job was
cleaning the toilets and changing rooms. But hey union wages! </span><i>Huge</i><span>
step up.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It would not be
too surprising that neither of our sons got too much sympathy from Olof about their
summer employment. A summer job cleaning toilets in an un-airconditioned steel
mill in the East Bay pretty much trumps everything.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I definitely can t
compete in the physical labor department, but when my sister and I were seven
and eight, our mother got us our first jobs: stuffing (seven inserts) and
licking 1,000 envelopes for a local agency. At a penny apiece, it was far
faster to lick the envelopes than use a wet sponge. It s amazing we didn t end
up with brain damage from all that glue. I distinctly remember our little
tongues desperately trying to produce saliva after the first hour. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Over the years, I did the standard summer jobs: babysitting, retailing, and waitressing ($.53 an hour before taxes, $.45 after, gold nylon uniform $20).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I spent one summer as a clerk-typist for Scholastic Magazines in their book division in the pre-word processor days typing endless clean copies (with eight carbons) of a book called <i>No Hitter </i>about all the no-hitter baseball games up to that point. (It's on Amazon for $.01, and no, don't send me a copy. I've read it. Eleven times.) Every typo had to be corrected on all eight carbons with White-Out, a toxic substance probably responsible for more brain damage in persons of my generation than glue sniffing.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I hate to start comments with the words "kids today" but truly, kids today have no idea what a boon to humanity the word processor is. Space travel and penicillin have nothing on it. I can say with some conviction that a world without carbon paper is truly a better place. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But my worst summer job by far was proofreading telephone books. And yes, this was a job. People really depended on phone books and got very touchy if their name or address or particularly, phone number was listed incorrectly because it would be a full year before the next phone book was going to come out. So some human - that would be moi - sat there cross-checking the typewritten list with the microscopically-printed galleys line by line. I could only surmise that the people I was replacing had been committed to a home for the numerically insane and were being taught Braille.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I've observed over the years that school guidance counselors don't list 90% of jobs that people actually end up doing. I'm trying to imagine, for example, some perky high school student's yearbook listing: "Future goal: career in the phone book proofreading industry."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Of course, there is no requirement that summer jobs have to be ill-paid and boring even if many of them are. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">For both sets of our parents, summer employment provided cash for the expenses we were expected to pay, but I think they regarded it as character building as well. Not that I was ever inclined to be rude to waiters or sales clerks, but working in those fields gives you a new respect for the job. Forget mandatory military service. Everyone should be required to work retail.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I mention all this because I often her parents say at this time of the year that they don't think it's worth having their kids take a $10 an hour menial job when they could be doing something educational. Both Olof's and my parents would have said that it's all how you define educational.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So, are we better or even different people for our summer job experience? Different, certainly. Both Olof and I would agree that most of our summer jobs were excellent incentives to pursue higher education in the hope of never <i>ever </i>doing any of these jobs again. Just as important as know what you want to do in life is knowing what you really, really don't.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQzH1AEkKOBxP3to7Ori2Ugi4egs6w2L-IiBJhuPpRN2BKR8lJDtTS-SgCX5KQZIMmnijfpa1UbpTBCIfHbtw52mPQRsV4pEvhRy4W5LpQK-WVBsLB6mdyzNfyq3G61u2veNooFXre_FqpD15aCPPZPFTVkwFoRbOLYEhw-gpyIjOBibg6U5taaM2FHvOi/s1319/Summer%20Waitress%20-%20Vito's.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1319" data-original-width="1142" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQzH1AEkKOBxP3to7Ori2Ugi4egs6w2L-IiBJhuPpRN2BKR8lJDtTS-SgCX5KQZIMmnijfpa1UbpTBCIfHbtw52mPQRsV4pEvhRy4W5LpQK-WVBsLB6mdyzNfyq3G61u2veNooFXre_FqpD15aCPPZPFTVkwFoRbOLYEhw-gpyIjOBibg6U5taaM2FHvOi/s320/Summer%20Waitress%20-%20Vito's.jpg" width="277" /></a></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">Waitressing at the Jersey Shore, summer 1966</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;">($.53/hr - $.45 after taxes. Gold nylon uniform: $20)</span></div><p></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-31004991064408078892023-08-06T10:43:00.007-07:002023-08-06T11:03:47.556-07:00The Family Finder/Observer<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let Inga Tell
You,” La Jolla Light, published August 7, 2023]</span></i><span> <b>©2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I recently wrote
about my role as the family worrier, and from the response, I learned that I
have plenty of company. And that the worrier in families is, by my unofficial
data, the wife in 99.9999 percent of cases. I’m sure there must be one guy out
there with this role, but I didn’t hear from him. Or maybe there truly <i>isn’t
</i>a single guy out there who assumes this burden. It could be one of those Y
chromosome mutations that has evolved through the eons. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As a fourth-generation
feminist, I am loathe to make admittedly sexist statements like this, except
for the fact that after two husbands, two sons and three grandsons (does former
dog Winston count?), I have noticed predictable tendencies among individuals of
the male persuasion. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It is well documented that the sexes are doomed not to understand each other. But as one who has lived in a male-centric household her entire adult life, weird behaviors of the male of the species have always been a topic of keen interest, if total bafflement, to me. In some cases, one can only conclude that a wife is cheaper than a conservator. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It has been my perception
that women, besides being the family worrier, also tend to be the family
observer. By observer, I am referring to the woman’s ability to notice things
around the property that require urgent attention that her spouse, despite two
largely-functioning eyes, fails to see. Like, for example, that the Chinese Elm
tree in the back yard has died and is about to fall on the house. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“Olof,” I’ll say, pointing
to the tree, “I’m thinking we need to get a tree service out here asap,”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“How come?” Olof
will respond, looking directly at the tree. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“So, you’re not
noticing anything unusual about it, like it has lost all its leaves and is
listing 40 degrees?” I point out helpfully.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“Oh, yeah,” says
Olof. “I see it now. You should really do something about that.” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Both of my husbands, current and former, have been indelibly afflicted with guy-gene-pool-embedded Passive-Dependent Blindness: you know, where a person of the male persuasion is standing in front of an open refrigerator with the mayonnaise dead center at eye level and says, "Do we have any mayonnaise?" </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And the wife, who has finally sat down to do the crossword with a glass of wine, responds: "Yes, it's on the top shelf in the front, right in the middle."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And the husband replies, "I don't see it."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And the wife reiterates, slightly testily: "TOP SHELF. FRONT. IN. THE. MIDDLE."</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">And the guy still can't find it. Until she gets up and starts walking into the kitchen, upon which the guys says, "Oh, yeah. Found it!"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">It's probably not too surprising that analogous to women tending to be the family observer, they are also the family finder, a.k.a. the patron saint of misplaced objects. If you can't see the mayonnaise, what hope is there of finding your car keys?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">There is a universal male phenomenon describing this that I have dubbed Ineffective Circular Search Behavior. When men lose things, they will look in three places. If they don't find it, they will continue to look in those same three places in an endless, pathetic, futile loop. I can only assume this is something that developed in the cave dwelling era and became hopelessly locked into male genes. The cave wife would watch her guy circling the cave in increasing frustration looking for his club before she would step in and ask the question that became indelibly embedded in ours: "So where did you last see it?" He grumbles, "How would I know? If I knew that, I'd be able to find it!"</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As she suspected, he left it outside the cave after he slew the mastodon. (Can he EVER put anything away after he finishes using it?) She retrieves it. But does she get thanks? Not a chance.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">We recently watched our friend Jeff to the twenty-first century version of this when he was searching for a DVD he wanted to lend us. After his third loop, his wife, Lindsay, went to have what she called "a Lindsay look" and came back with it immediately. Lindsay did a review of the first three places Jeff had looked and found it. A corollary of Ineffective Circular Search Behavior is that just because the husband didn't find it there doesn't mean it wasn't there all along. (See "mayonnaise," above.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In fairness, I'm sure my husband could write his own version of this column about baffling behaviors of wives. In fact, I think I'm going to give him the chance. He's had two wives, two sisters, two nieces. Plenty of data. Stay tuned.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; line-height: 107%;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1yNaSDKCcRECiZ66qISj3IuKXfs67sbbeTKTnfUvhyK0WvqavcTBlatCRaYj4pS-Nc7lST8WKS4ha2jXrKNAuWwts7ieUDX3dcjF_Wm8L33O_xc9LkIJLvQxUnKWPGeeIDry8UrO2JyzOBiQLBFwV3RhVeA53MCs6txjcLhly7bYCT7xNL59ctwv6jMbg/s2016/Mayo%20in%20fridge.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1yNaSDKCcRECiZ66qISj3IuKXfs67sbbeTKTnfUvhyK0WvqavcTBlatCRaYj4pS-Nc7lST8WKS4ha2jXrKNAuWwts7ieUDX3dcjF_Wm8L33O_xc9LkIJLvQxUnKWPGeeIDry8UrO2JyzOBiQLBFwV3RhVeA53MCs6txjcLhly7bYCT7xNL59ctwv6jMbg/s320/Mayo%20in%20fridge.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span><p></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-39596526790672392712023-07-29T11:52:00.000-07:002023-07-29T11:52:01.338-07:00Aging Out<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let Inga Tell
You,” La Jolla Light, published July 31, 2023]</span></i><span> <b>©2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The good news, our
primary care physician informed us, is that we have officially aged out of early-onset afflictions.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As you get older, one
less thing you can die of is good news indeed.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But there are
plenty of other things we can’t decide if we’ve aged out of or not. One of
them is pets, specifically dogs, and birds for our outdoor aviary.
Fortunately, our beloved dog Lily is still with us, but she’s 14 and came
perilously close to dying earlier this year. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Actually, we’d
decided not to get another dog after our beloved English bulldog, Winston, inherited
from our younger son Henry, died suddenly in 2016. Nothing to do with age; we
couldn’t bear losing another dog. Winston was a total pain but we really loved
him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But then a rescue
agency asked us to do a “one week maximum” foster of a dog waiting for her next
forever home. They saw us for the mushballs that we were. Three days into seven-year-old
Lily’s stay, we’d fallen in love. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Our aviary birds
have been a more imminent issue. My older son Rory began breeding cockatiels
when he was nine. He’s now 45 and married to a cat person in Santa Cruz. Like
many sucker parents the world over, we ended up inheriting the cockatiels who
can easily live to be over 20. But we grew fond of the little guys and were sad
when the last of them finally died.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Olof and I agree
that we have definitely aged out of cockatiels. Not, however, of the multitude
of parakeets we also accumulated over the years, often neighbor kids’
ill-considered bird buys supplemented by grandkids’ fondness for pet store
excursions. Somehow we’ve ended up becoming an avian social service agency.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But our parakeet numbers
have been dwindling.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Parakeets have
varying life spans but the ones in our outdoor aviary tend to live up seven
years. Are we good for seven more years of cage cleaning? It’s a really nasty
job and not one you can easily hire someone for. The cage is built into our
back porch so that it is sheltered on two sides from sun and wind. At night, a
pull-down cover keeps the myriad fauna that populate our back yard from
annoying them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Olof, in a heroic
act that earned him about a bazillion husband points, took over aviary
maintenance from me about three years ago. I don’t even want to calculate how
many bird cages that I have cleaned over thirty-three years. I might be a
contender for an Olympic medal in bird poop shoveling. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">To be honest, I’m
over it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Even Olof began
saying that cleaning the aviary was getting a little hard on him physically.
We agreed that as much as we enjoy the birds cheerful chirping, we were
officially declaring ourselves aged out of birds. We don’t like to take on any
pets we can’t expect to outlast, or in this case, whose maintenance we can’t
expect to be able to physically manage.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So it was all
decided. I thought.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Earlier this
spring, we were down to two birds. You can always tell which birds were
acquired - and therefore named – during grandkid pet store excursions (String
Bean (green) and Banana (yellow)) and which were neighbor donations, re-named
by Olof for Tolkien characters. It’s culturally a very mixed group.
Interestingly, they seem to know it.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But then suddenly
we were down to one bird (Banana). Were we going to let her fly around all by
herself until it was time to flit to the great beyond? Or do we bring her
inside to a cage where she can have more interaction with us but be unable to
fly freely? To me it was one or the other.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But apparently not
to Olof.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I came home from
an appointment last week and heard what sounded like very forest-y noises
coming from our back porch. They could not all be Banana. And sure enough,
they weren’t.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Several more
parakeets had joined Banana and were zipping happily around the aviary,
obviously pleased to have been liberated from the cramped confines of PetSmart. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Olof looked
sheepish. “I know you were ready to be done with birds, but I wasn’t,” he
conceded. He got three more so there would be even numbers. Birds, like
kindergarteners, tend to pair up and ignore the odd one out. Gandalf,
Galadriel, and Frodo seem very happy with their new digs, and especially being
in a flight cage. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I told Olof he
better be keeping himself in tiptop bird poop-shoveling shape for at least the
next seven years. He’s got something to live for now.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium; line-height: 107%;">Our friends say that there is an easy answer to all
this: leave any pets to the kids in our will. After thirty years of birds
(inherited from Rory) and one problematic bulldog (inherited from Henry) they
wouldn’t <i>dare</i> say no. (Would they?) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-32870057149286269012023-07-24T09:18:00.006-07:002023-07-24T09:18:52.019-07:00<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let Inga Tell
You, La Jolla Light, published July 24, 2023]</span></i><span> <b>©2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Just when you
think the city parents can’t make any worse decisions (SB 10, anyone?), they
propose a law shifting a backlog of 37,000 sidewalk repairs (and the estimated
$183 million to fix them) onto San Diego property owners. Such a law is called
a “liability ordinance.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">As a property
owner with a corner lot, and therefore a whole lot of sidewalk, this didn’t
strike fear in our hearts. It was abject terror.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Apparently, part
of the motivation for this shift is the millions the city is paying out in trip-and-fall
claims from people injured on damaged sidewalks. This liability would now be
shifted to homeowners unless the city is directly responsible for the sidewalk
defects. How that will be determined seems destined to keep a lot of law firms
in perpetual prosperity.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Some years ago,
pre-Get It Done, I filed a repair quest on what was then the appropriate
reporting vehicle for a root-ruptured sidewalk caused by a city-owned tree.
The sidewalk continued to rise and become more hazardous year by year, especially
in the dark. There were a number of trip-and-falls. I know this because I was
the tripper and fallee.</span> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Seven years later,
a repair crew came out…and repaired a much smaller sidewalk issue on the next
door neighbor’s property. Fortunately, I was able to accost them and get them
to repair my sidewalk as well.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The city parents
propose to soften the blow of shifting sidewalk repairs to property owners by
reducing the permit fee for repairs from $2,200 to $100. Wait. We need a <i>permit</i>?
Before we even <i>do</i> any repairs?</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Forgive me if I’m
not grateful. <i>Or </i>softened. And with all due respect, city parents, have
you applied for a permit to do <i>anything</i> in this city recently? With
pandemic backlogs, it takes <i>years</i>.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Once permitted, we’d
be stuck paying whatever the city sidewalk repair contractor charges (no
competitive bids) which according to a story in the <i>Light</i> on June 29 could
cost as much as $5,000. Which means that actual humans could do it for $500.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">What scares me
even more is that my street corner has become very dark ever since the streetlight
in front of our house went out in February of this year. The backlog of broken
streetlights at the time was 5,900 (now 6,100) but some streetlight repair
requests have been backlogged eight years. I concluded in a <i>La Jolla Light</i>
column (<i>Trying to understand streetlight math, May 4, 2023)</i> that our
streetlight, according to the city's current rate of repair, would not be fixed
in our lifetimes. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Once our street
light went out, even our dog was terrified to step off the front porch into the
suddenly black abyss. So we’ve improvised with solar lights hoping to be able
to find our front gate.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But that has done
nothing to make our large corner safely lit at night. And now, if the
liability for that expanse of sidewalk has shifted to us, I don’t know what we
would do.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Well, my husband
Olof has a few ideas. He says if we’re responsible for injuries on our
sidewalk, then we should charge to walk on it. A little toll gate on either
end. We’d even be willing to learn how to use Venmo.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Alternatively, he
suggests, we could resurface our sidewalk with a layer of synthetic rubber like
they use for high school tracks so that if people fall, they would bounce right
up. Of course, we would have to do this in the dead of night. Increasingly
(see recent <i>La Jolla Light</i> articles), locals have taken it upon
themselves to do city improvements like paint railings at Wind n’ Sea, or
re-landscape tiny Hermosa Park in Bird Rock.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">If this proposal
truly passes (please say it is just a bad joke), a whole cottage industry of
rogue sidewalk repairs will, in my guess, spring up. No way are people getting
sucked into the black hole of city permits and non-bid repairs.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I also can’t help
but observe that some of the trip-and-falls in downtown La Jolla, an area with
lots of foot traffic, were on sidewalks so badly damaged they were practically<i>
begging</i> people to fall on them. Is there no priority system? </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">On the positive
side, an article in the <i>San Diego U-T</i> on July 10 reported that the city
plans to prioritize fixing those 6,100-and-counting broken streetlights. The
plan is to address broken streetlight complaints from “about eight months” (see
“streetlight math,” above) to just three days. It’s a wonderful thought, and I
would love to move to the planet where that is going to happen.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But if we could at
least get the streetlight in front of our house working again, we hope it would
greatly reduce the number of potential sidewalk accidents that the city parents
want to stick us for. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, my
engineer husband is tinkering in the back yard with rolls of spongy synthetics.
If this liability ordinance passes, we’ll be ready.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-46902121733835574212023-07-08T15:40:00.005-07:002023-07-08T15:40:35.616-07:00An Early Education In The Art Of Spin <style>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let
Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published July 10, 2023] </span></i><b><span>©2023</span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now that all the local high schools have
graduated, I can safely tell the saga of a friend’s teenage daughter who has a
serious future in spin. In fact, if I were a political organization, I’d be
signing her up now.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I happened to be visiting her mother when
the daughter arrived home in a panic at five o’clock after a sports practice to
announce that a project she thought was due in “a few months” was in fact due
the next day. The assignment was to make either a diorama or a flat board
depiction of “my ideal life.” But daughter also had a “super important” history
test the next day. Please, Mom, she says, can you help me? Both parties were
clear what “help” meant. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Let me interject here that there is not a
mom in America who has not been put in this position in some form or another,
even if it’s the 10 p.m. announcement that three dozen cookies are required for
the school bake sale the next day. Fortunately, my friend was a pro at school
projects, to the envy (and abject jealousy) of all her friends, including me.
The Plaster of Paris topography map of central Asia was to scale, the science
fair board sparkled in glitter paper wonder, the Christmas diorama sported a
battery-operated fireplace and a yuletide sound track, and the oral report on
Colonial America was delivered via two hand-made museum-quality puppets of
George and Martha Washington. Fortuitously, my friend had a virtual warehouse
of her kids’ former projects carefully stored in the garage. A local gallery
should do a retrospective.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Surveying the arsenal of possibilities,
she asked her daughter a question that in my mind should be immortalized: “So, do
you care what your ideal life looks like?” And daughter says “nope.” Mom
pulls out a board that one of her sons did in the second grade, exact topic no
longer obvious. But it had a bunch of Styrofoam igloos glued to a board with a
lot of white snow around them. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Hard to imagine that a La Jolla
born-and-bred child’s ideal life would include living in an igloo and eating
whale blubber with no Burger Lounge in sight. Daughter has to admit that the
accompanying paragraph – yes! they did actually have to create prose! - was
going to be a tough sell. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So she suggested that Mom could maybe
scrape off the snow in one corner and add some sand for a beach. She ponders
this a bit more and adds brightly, “I could say that I like contrasts! My
ideal life is about contrasts!” As I said, the young lady definitely has a
future in politics.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">While daughter went upstairs to wax one
paragraph’s worth of poetic about contrasts, Mom dutifully set about making
little palm trees out of pipe cleaners and green construction paper to stick
into the sand to make it look appropriately beachy<i>. Et voilà</i>! Or not.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Just in time, Mom notices that in large
block letters on the bottom of the board is the name of her older son and the
notation “Grade 2.” Mom set a land speed record to get a can of black spray
paint at Meanley’s in the ten minutes before they closed. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> I like to think that any teacher worth
her salt would have been a tad suspicious about the remarkable coincidence of
the “second grade” ID on the bottom in combination with the igloos. But then,
this was a teacher who assigned dioramas as a term project for a high school Advanced
English class. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The mere thought of this makes me crazy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">My sons had some terrific and
inspiring English teachers along the way, but also a few who pretty much
abdicated the position. Rory’s eighth grade English teacher never corrected
spelling or grammar on assignments, maintaining the important thing was to “get
your message across.” One day I looked at a paper Rory was about to hand in
and observed, “Unfortunately, the message here is that you’re illiterate.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I tried to convey to both of
my kids that poor grammar, spelling and punctuation totally distract from the
message, never mind undermine your credibility. Unfortunately, by the end of
the year, the teacher was allowing – nay, encouraging - students to do a video
or art project in lieu of writing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Ironically, the project my friend and her
daughter ended up doing would have made an excellent assignment: Take a
previous project and give it an entirely different conclusion. Anymore, we
live in a world of spin. Never too early to develop the skill. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">By the way: grade on the igloo project?
B+. One of the highest grades in the class. The teacher also gave her an
excellent recommendation for college. Where, I’m hoping, the diorama and flat
board projects are in the daughter’s academic past. But if not, there’s a
garage at home just waiting for her.</span></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-40264350385559087612023-07-02T13:35:00.001-07:002023-07-02T13:35:12.208-07:00The Curse of Sensors<div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span>[“Let Inga Tell
You,” La Jolla Light, published July 3, 2023]</span></i><span> <b>©2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>On the bulletin
board next to my desk is a sign that says, “The chief cause of problems is
solutions.” Among those solutions that are frequently the cause of problems
are the proliferation of sensors which theoretically alert you that something
in your home or vehicle is about to go wrong. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But in my
experience, what’s often broken are the sensors themselves. Sensors lie. A
lot. But not before terrifying you when you’re 20 miles from the nearest exit
on the freeway that your engine is imminently out of oil and if you drive even
ten more feet, your engine will freeze into a blocksicle from which it can
never be thawed. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Cars are
especially prone to flaky sensors. There was a lot of exchange on the
neighborhood social media recently about tire pressure sensors that are prone
to flash even when the tire pressure is fine. Which the owner only finds out
when they take time out of a busy life to take it to a service station. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Apparently, it
costs (at least) $60 to have your defective tire sensor light replaced, not to
mention leaving the car there for a half day.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">A local friend
with a very very high-end car whose make I will not mention paid $700 for her
faulty tire pressure sensor light to be fixed. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">While I would
personally covet a sensor that will beep when you’re about to hit the numnut
who walks behind your car as you're backing out of your space at Gelson’s, I
didn’t want to mention to my friend that I have managed to live my whole life
without a dashboard tire pressure sensor. My 2005 Toyota Corolla has a more
manual version of a tire pressure gauge which was activated recently when I
drove over to the nail-prone Tourmaline parking lot to walk on the beach, heard
a sudden loud hiss and felt my car list to starboard. “I think I have lost
tire pressure,” I said to myself. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;">Car
ignition sensors seem to be a source of peril as well. While getting gas one
evening, a friend had her</span><span>
purse stolen including </span><span>house
keys, car ignition sensor, driver’s license, etc. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span> </span>Worse, since the
perps now had the automatic ignition sensor, she had no way to start the car to
get home. The fancy computer-programed ignition sensor was $496 and took a week
to replace. Worse, for the first night, since the thieves had both the ignition
sensor <i>and</i> her address from her driver’s license, they could have stolen
her SUV right out of her driveway. I confess my little Corolla with its
low-tech keys was looking better and better. (And in my case, I would have <i>hoped</i>
they’d steal it.)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span>Over-zealous
sensors that have proliferated on washing machines are in a category all their
own. </span><span>Balance
sensors seems to be a particular problem across many brands (probably not all
that surprising since one repair guy maintained they’re all made in the same
factory in China). My machine wants to “self-balance” (unlike my previous
machines whose balance setter was me) but if there is anything in there heavier
than underwear (God forbid you should want to wash towels), it is
scientifically designed to shift everything to one side then sound like it is
agitating a bowling ball. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The only person
more scared of this machine than the dog is me. I can’t leave the house when
it is running as I have to be prepared to race in and stop a machine that is
literally flailing around like a mechanical bull with a broken speed control.
Unsupervised, the machine could end up in our bedroom. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Multiple calls to
the warranty service people have ended with them suggesting that I “not wash
anything heavy.” These would be the same heavy objects I have been washing in
its predecessors for 40 years. I did finally find one semi-solution which is
to over-ride the auto water level sensor and wash everything on “deep water
wash” thereby obviating all the ecological advantages this useless machine was
supposed to have.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">My tech-loving
engineer husband and I have debated the merits of technology, including
sensors, on many occasions. He maintains that well-designed technology should
be intuitive. You play with it, you figure it out, you don’t need a manual.
Every time Olof mentions the word “intuitive,” I want to smite him.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">From time to time,
we techno-hostile people actually prevail. Olof and I like to sit outside on
summer evenings and read, he on his iPad, and me with a library book.
Occasionally, Olof will have to go in early because the iPad’s low battery
sensor is flashing. I try to look sympathetic but it’s all I can do to stifle a
maniacal cackle. I never have to worry about the battery on my library book
getting too low. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“You don’t have to
look so smug,” my techno-husband will say, heading indoors. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“Oh,” I reply,
“but I really do.”</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFO3CCwLoFZu9zeuLPvUHIOM8_B9t6HbY15tczOJ6tqhKh9k8BHhpfOIQ-bvkNmcwczX3ib1k3Aqb2yElcWZzM5CkkzLd3IHaQe3hpNaMACMJDv7507YXvzA2Qa16uYQpVMT1faper1uhitvKz4ISlEdAfutZSu-q-dDLUNePu2ALDf6NomjlvgRHCbySL/s2016/Washer-1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFO3CCwLoFZu9zeuLPvUHIOM8_B9t6HbY15tczOJ6tqhKh9k8BHhpfOIQ-bvkNmcwczX3ib1k3Aqb2yElcWZzM5CkkzLd3IHaQe3hpNaMACMJDv7507YXvzA2Qa16uYQpVMT1faper1uhitvKz4ISlEdAfutZSu-q-dDLUNePu2ALDf6NomjlvgRHCbySL/s320/Washer-1.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9168915844562940134.post-34048733825683300712023-06-23T11:50:00.003-07:002023-06-23T11:53:43.993-07:00The Over-Amenitized House<style>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><i><span style="color: black;">[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published June 26, 2023]</span></i><span style="color: black;"> <b>©2023</b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">I realize we’re talking La Jolla here, but I’ve concluded it’s
possible for a home to be over-amenitized. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Friends of ours were able to get a great deal on a 4,000 square
foot showplace that had risen out of the proverbial ashes of a former fixer. A
spec house, it boasted “every amenity”.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Sometimes, even in La Jolla, there can be too much of a good
thing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Ironically, our friends were less interested in amenities than in
the great location, the spaciousness of the house, and the proximity to
schools. What they are finding is that there is a fine line between a builder
who installs “every amenity” and one who has had a psychotic break. Our
friends spend pretty much all their time reading amenity manuals.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">When I visited the new digs after they moved in, my friend asked
if I might consult on her refrigerator. Near as I can tell, this refrigerator
would also do her laundry if she asked it to but its built-in digital
thermometer was reading 50 degrees. (My refrigerator thermometer came from the
baking aisle at Gelson’s.) Did I agree, she asked, that this seemed a tad
warm? I did, and the repair service that she called moments later agreed as
well, but alas, it being a Friday, they could not possibly come until Monday
afternoon. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Not to worry, I told her. I was sure I could find enough space in
my own fridge for her perishables over the weekend.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">“You know,” she replied somewhat sheepishly, “that’s incredibly
nice of you. But I think there may actually be some more refrigerators around
here.” </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;"><span style="color: black;">I was stopped dead in my tracks. </span><span>The mere idea that there could be
refrigerators lying around that one didn’t know about put my imagination into
overdrive. I fantasized Olof coming home from a walk to our 1,600 square foot (including
former garage) cottage one night and saying, “So how was your day?” and my
replying, “Well, I was looking for my set of Jane Austen’s and guess what I
found – a refrigerator!”</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Now,
the friends hadn’t lived in their new home very long at the time, but lo and
behold, a brief search turned up a second refrigerator in the pasta cooking
station and even another fridge – with freezer - in the wet bar. There
was a fridgelet tucked into the master bath for those champagne bubble bath
occasions and one on the grill patio. One would certainly be required on the
roof deck. And in a pinch, one could always appropriate the wine fridge.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">So
thanks, she said, but it appeared she had alternate cooling resources. In
fact, probably enough to back up Vons.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The
contractor on this spec-flip (see “psychotic break”, above) had decided that
there should be every possible lighting opportunity. Hence, there are not less
than seven sets of light switch units each with three individual switches in the
very large “great room,” which collectively control the myriad ceiling lights.
To date, they have not succeeded in turning off all the lights in their great room
at the same time, but have put sticky notes next to each switch unit indicating
what combination of lights it seems to control. Their first upgrade, they
note, is to hire an electrician to do a major light switch reduction. Because
it is driving them completely, totally bats--t crazy. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">The
downside of amenities, of course, is that they break – even brand-new allegedly
still under warranty amenities. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before the
garbage disposal in the auxiliary prep sink stopped working as well. My friend
had a repairman out to look at it and he agreed it was under warranty and also
that the same problem was likely to recur. However, he added, it was more
economical for the warrantors to keep fixing it than replacing it. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">Huh?
I said, as my friend related the story. Every disposal I’ve ever had cost
$100. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">No,
she said, turns out that this is the Lamborghini of disposals. According to
the repair guy, it could “do a small dog”. Olof heard this and said if it were
him, he’d upgrade to one that does a medium dog. I’m guessing you could
probably also do a husband if you cut him in dog-sized pieces first. (See
imagination overdrive, above.) </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">In
fact, I was about to suggest to the friend that this house could be the site of
the perfect crime. The industrial-grade mega-hertz central vac system would
easily suck up even the minutest husband fragments and the disposal would make
sure he was thoroughly chummed long before he hit the treatment plant. CSI
wouldn’t stand a chance.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; font-size: medium;">But
then it occurred to me that those husband fragments could be friend fragments.
Note to self: keep mouth shut.</span></p>
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