While doing prep research for the trip I found out about a TV series that was aired originally on PBS (Public Broadcasting System) and available through Netflix called “Made in Spain.” It is a combination cooking and travelogue show hosted by Spanish chef Jose Andres. Chef Andres takes the viewer on a mouth-watering culinary excursion of the different regions of Spain and introducing his viewers to tapas, small appetizer-sized finger foods, which are the bedrock of Spanish cookery.

TV and reality, I was to learn, are worlds apart. There is a canyon sixed gap difference between a master chef lovingly arranging each tapa appetizer on a plate like a miniature work of art and the more mundane, and frankly, not all that appealing reality of the tapas bar concept. For starters, tapas in Spain are not arranged in individual plates and brought to a table as Andres presents them in his program. Instead, tapas are piled in platters on the counters of tapas bars. Customers then grab whatever tapas they want and put them on a plate. The tapas bar-tender tallies the total up and you usually stand at the edge of the bar counter and eat the things. There are several things that fall under the heading of unappealing about this set-up. First, the tapas are sitting out in hot temperatures for however long – hours or minutes, no way to tell which – and people grab them with their bare hands, stand around eating near them, which can mean that the tapas are being breathed on, or sneezed on, or coughed on, or exposed to any number of other element besides the heat. Add to this the sad reality that smoking is the national pastime in Spain, which means that the person next to you is also blowing smoke on to the tapas and on to your face while you are standing next to them.

I am not a fan of standing while eating my food, especially after walking for hours sightseeing. I also hate being anywhere near cigarette smoke – it grosses me out more than I can describe. The thought of eating with someone smoking next to me is enough to make me lose any desire to eat. Call me spoiled, and I may be alone in my dislike for the tapas bar experience, but I like to sit, relax, and breathe clean air when I am eating my food. Tapas bars offer no such amenities for the diner.

For the tourist unaccustomed to Spanish hours, adjusting to their very different daily routine and eating hours is a problem. Especially if, like we were, you are traveling on a tour, and you are therefore, still expected to keep ungodly tour hours – be ready, breakfasted and mounted on your tour bus by 8:30 a.m. – even through you probably were not able to even get into bed before midnight because at 10:00 p.m. you are barely done with eating dinner. In Spain restaurants don’t even open for dinner business before 8 or 8:30 p.m. So since you are not on the same schedule as the Spanish people, who are given from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. to indulge in a siesta or other leisurely pursuits, sleep deprivation is visually evident in the travel pictures featuring you smiling at the camera doing an unscripted impersonation of a haggard looking raccoon.

Store hours in Spain are another issue travelers may have difficulty working around. Stores open from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., close for three hours and reopen from 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on weekdays, close Saturday afternoons and all of Sunday. Not sure how the office hours work, but my understanding is that they keep similar hours as stores. That makes for a very long day, but also presents a problem for tourists who might want to get some shopping in. Given the Euro exchange rate I wasn’t that interested in shopping, so in my case the odd store hours just added shopping prevention incentive.

I speak fluent Spanish, so my experience may be different from that of non-Spanish speakers. It is probably true of any country where you may be traveling that if you speak the language people are going to be more comfortable and friendly toward you than if there is a language barrier gumming up the communication avenues. Because I can speak Spanish I met with people who were more than eager to talk to me, tell me stories, and who were open, cordial, and totally friendly. One example was at a lovely pottery shop in Seville called Sevillarte. The lady who helped us turned out to be the owner with whom I struck up a conversation after I admired the lovely and unique pottery she sells. She brought out a binder with photographs of the factory where they make the pottery and explained to me the painstaking process that goes into the making of each piece, from the designing stage to the many painting and baking steps before you have a finished piece. It is a family owned business that, she told me, they have operated for five generations. She was distressed because she feared that they would be the last generation to run the business since neither any of her children or grandchildren had shown any interest in continuing the family tradition. The beauty of their pottery will be a sad loss.

A word of caution and advice to travelers, wherever you may be headed. Always be aware of your belongings. Any big, cosmopolitan city is going to have their share of pickpockets. Our tour guide, Alex, was very emphatic about cautioning us to be careful, especially in Barcelona. Barcelona, he joked was the pickpocket capital of the world. “Pickpockets do a three-year apprenticeship in Rome to learn their craft and then come to Barcelona.” But it is true of any city, at home or abroad, that if you are in a crowded place, pickpockets are probably on the prowl.

Not to sound like a commercial, because I unfortunately don’t get any commission from them, but I highly recommend investing in a Pacsafe purse or their backpacks. I have a crossover Pacsafe purse that I use when I travel and it is ideal because it is in front of me at all times and the construction of the purse makes it difficult for a would-be burglar to do mischief. The purse’s strap has a wire running through it and it has a wire mesh construction on the body of the purse to make it slash resistant. They make a large array of products and I wouldn’t leave on a trip without one.

Finally, a few words about climate. September was the perfect month to go to Spain, since the temperatures in that month had tempered down to a livable level. Summers in Spain are extremely hot. In fact, I was told that the country pretty much shuts down for the month of August, when the locals take time off to hit the beaches and get out of the stifling cities.

Climate change has affected Spain in a big way, making it even hotter and dryer during the summer months. I was told that in the past Seville, which the Spanish call the oven of Spain, used to have temperatures range in the 90ºF during the summer months. In the last few years the average temperatures have increased to range between 100 and 115ºF, a sample of the way in which climate is changing. That is bad news for an already extremely arid country. Much of Spain receives most of its rainfall during their winter and spring months. When I was there in September the lack of rainfall and the scarcity of water was shockingly apparent by the completely dry riverbeds we passed in our travels. Water is now and will become even more or a problem for Spain in the future. Parts of Spain are becoming not just arid, but turning closer and closer to desert conditions, a vivid reminder that climate change is a world-wide problem that is going to impact all of us in different negative ways.

Oh yes, I almost forgot one of the very pleasant discoveries of the trip – sangria. My mother and I ordered a pitcher every evening while on the trip. When I got back home I found a nice recipe for it and made a batch. I am sure that come summer I will be mixing up some batches of it often, as it is a refreshing concoction laden with fruit and lots of ice to be enjoyed on hot summer days to come.

One of the things that struck me about Spain is that monuments, buildings, cathedrals, plazas, castles, stadiums, in general, everything seems to come in one flavor – supersized and grandiose!

I’m sure it started with the discovery of the new world and the amount of riches in the form of gold and other treasure that poured into the country brought there by the conquistadores. The enormity of the cathedrals with their gold plated altars and the over-the-top ornate statuary with their rococo ornamentation speak of the wealth and power the church garnered in those days. Likewise, the Royal Castle in Madrid is a monument to the monarchy’s power and enormous wealth in days of old.

However, modern day Spaniards maintain their love of the colossal and showy. The beautiful but huge buildings and fountains that make up the new City of Arts and Science in Valencia are an example of a modern day version of the Spanish love for the grandiose. Designed by Santiago Calatrava and Féliz Candela, the complex is impressive from any vantage point from which you care to view it. Even the parking structure is a work of modern art. The bridge leading to it is designed to resemble the mast and sail of a gargantuan sailboat. There are two lake-sized reflecting pools around the structures. One of the buildings looks like either a giant alien pod, or a helmet, depending on where your imagination prefers to take you. We only had time to look at the complex from the outside. I’m sure that it would take a couple of days of wandering to do the interior justice. If you want a slide show or video tour of the complex, go to the official site for Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias (Arts and Science City ) in Valencia. It is worth the virtual tour.

Another example of a relatively new mammoth structure is the Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen), built by Franco as a tribute and monument to . . . who else . . . himself. It is an underground basilica carved into a mountain and topped by the tallest stone cross in the world (152.4 meters high) that can be seen for miles, and strategically placed to overlook Madrid (Basilica de la Santa Cruz del Valle de los Caidos). The basilica is directly inside the mountain under this cross.

The plaza in front of the basilica is of such gigantic proportions that you could have an army stand in formation, which I presume is exactly the intended purpose of the thing and accounts for its enormous size. Franco chose the site because you can see Madrid at a relatively short distance below the mountain.

The underground Basilica de la Santa Cruz is much larger than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, but because the Catholic Church has some rule about not wanting St. Peter’s to be outdone, they (the Catholic Church) do not allow for the “hall/nave” in any basilica to be larger than St. Peter’s. So, since this particular basilica’s main nave is actually much larger than St. Peter’s they got around that little difficulty by building a wrought-iron gate “separating” part of it at the entrance and, thus, creating a make-believe foyer, which they did not consecrate – kind of a nifty trick, don’t you think?

If you go to the Wikipedia site for the Valle de los Caidos they have a short history and some good photos of the interior and exterior of the basilica.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that on either side of this underground basilica there are the interred bodies of 40,000 people who died during Franco’s revolution, hence the name “Valley of the Fallen.” And yes, it should come as no surprise that Franco still holds a place of honor at the basilica – his tomb is inside the basilica, center stage. Hey, the Egyptians had the pyramids, Franco has El Valle de los Caidos.

Between my mother and I we took way over a thousand pictures. I am posting a few here as a small taste of some of the sights we enjoyed along the way. If you place your mouse pointer inside the picture it will give you a description of the photo.

Infrastructure: By any other name would be as sweet

My visit to Spain this past September was my first visit to that country, and even though I had done a lot of reading and researching about Spain before the trip there were a lot of things that took me by surprise and some that amazed me. One of my dearest friends who lived in Spain for many years and was back there to visit a couple of years ago gave me tips about food, customs, and a list things she considered were must-do and must-see in our free time from the scheduled tour activities. One of the things she mentioned in passing in one of our many pre-trip conversations, was that Spain had terrific roads. I didn’t pay that close attention to her comment at the time, but I was to learn that she wasn’t just singing Dixie when she said that Spain has a good road system. In truth, that passing comment was a gross understatement. Spain has a truly amazing road and freeway system.

Apparently, one of the advantages of the E.U. (European Union) system is that they make moneys available to countries to update and improve their infrastructure. It’s a “take turns” kind of system. The idea being that once a given country starts to reap the benefits that the improvements bring in terms of commerce and economic growth, then that country gets to pay back by giving moneys to other underdeveloped countries in the union. There is a saying in Spanish: “hoy por mi, mañana por ti,” which translates as “today for me, tomorrow for you.” That is the principle at work here, and now it will be Spain’s turn to contribute money to the next countries on the “to do” list.

Another thing that impressed and amazed me about Spain was the obvious investment they have poured into green energy. Throughout the two weeks of the tour we traveled hundreds of miles of freeway throughout the country and I was totally blown away by the miles upon miles of solar panels and windmills we passed. The last time we, in the United States, poured real moneys into our infrastructure was during the Eisenhower administration, and we are suffering the consequences of that deficit with collapsing bridges and an antiquated electrical grid that shut down the whole East Coast and parts of the Midwest because of some malfunction in Ohio. Every time the present administration has talked about spending money on infrastructure projects the Republican Party goes into apoplexy. And to counter that, the Democratic Party doesn’t have the guts to stand up and do what needs to be done for fear of. . . well, don’t get me started. The whole political infighting and inability to get anything done in this country is proof that the system is broken – when the people who were elected to represent us are owned by corporations, and therefore vote according to the interests of those corporations and not the people they are supposed to represent, then there is no government for the people and by the people. It is a broken system, and I see no hope of change any time soon. But I have veered onto a tangent, so, back to talking about Spain and my impressions of that country.

Green Space

There is much about Spain that was very different than my pre-trip notions about that country. One of the things that was a surprise to me is that the Spanish are, in general, city dwellers. I’m sure that had I driven through some of the more rural country road areas I would have encountered more variety of living arrangements and settings. But at least from the perspective of what I saw, the Spanish seem to be, to a great extent, city people, who dwell in apartments/condos, rather than in houses. I truly didn’t really see that many homes throughout my travels. I believe that it is precisely because of this reason that green space is of such vital importance to the Spanish people. Add to that the social nature of the Spaniards and you have the perfect combination of need and desire, which accounts for the parks and plazas, and tree and flower-lined avenues, the fountains and monuments surrounded by flowers in the roundabouts or scattered throughout all the cities we visited. And it makes sense. If you live in an apartment, green space, parks, plazas, and places to sit, mingle and enjoy the outdoors becomes important, and in fact, probably imperative. In every city we visited it was evident that the Spanish enjoy and use their outdoor communal space. It is also what adds beauty to their cities.

Stay tuned for part two of my impressions of Spain, which I will try and write soon.

This past September I had the good fortune to take a two week tour in Spain. Although my opinion of tours is mixed, it is still the best way to see a lot of whatever place you are visiting in a short amount of time, in the most economical way, and with the added benefit that someone is taking care of you when you are a stranger in a strange land. Having said that, the downside of tours is that, well, they are tours, and therefore, by definition, you are on a grueling schedule imposed by the whole tour set-up, which entails getting up at the break of dawn and being on the move, pretty much all day until you finally fall exhausted into bed at whatever time of night the schedule allows you to turn in. In Spain, that time is usually late, since Spaniards keep odd hours and dinner doesn’t even begin to happen until after 8 or 8:30 p.m. Therefore, since you are still trying to digest your dinner at 11:00 p.m., you end up going to bed very late, yet are still forced to get up very early to make the tour bus punctually at 8:30 a.m. That schedule doesn’t leave much time for rest, so that by the end of the tour you look pretty haggard and beat-up.

The other downside of tours is that you are never in any given place for very long; and on any given tour, there are some places you find yourself wishing you could stay in for several days, and others (places) that you wish and wonder why in the world they were included as part of your itinerary in the first place. On the particular tour I was on I found this to be true on both the plus and negative end of things. Anyone who has ever been on a tour can attest to and relate to the long days, frantic pace and the frustration of being at the mercy of the tour’s itinerary. But as I said before, overlooking the downside, it still is the best way to visit a country or region for the first time because it allows you to at least get an overview of that place in a short amount of time.

Oh yes, the other thing I almost forgot to mention about traveling on a tour is the people factor: your travel companions. In my case, on this tour there were 44 of us traveling together for two weeks. I have now been on three tours and had the good fortune to have had very nice people as fellow travelers. In fact, I am still friends with several of the people I have met on previous tours. Or is it good fortune? Perhaps it is more than coincidence or luck that accounts for the pleasant people who have been my fellow travelers on the various tours. I think it has a lot to do with the type of people who enjoy traveling. Perhaps the very reason they are going on a tour is because they are predisposed to being open to new ideas, new flavors, experiencing new sights, new people, learning about the history and customs of foreign places, and making new friends. After all, if you weren’t open to all of those things, why in the world would you leave the comfort zone of the familiar.

I will be writing more about my trip to Spain in other articles, but thought that a few words and thoughts concerning traveling on a tour might be helpful to some considering traveling on one. I believe that if you are a first time traveler to a given country a tour is a good way to learn about a place and get a taste and feel for the lay of the land. If you truly want to experience a place, you can return to it, but at least you will have some notion of where you would like to spend more time and where you have no interest in revisiting.

In summary, know that by the end of your tour you will be tired, but you will also take back home with you a lot of good memories, lots of interesting facts learned along the way, tons of pictures, and probably some new friends.

A few weekends ago we had a garage sale. I swore the last time I had one of those that I would never have another one again as long as I lived. And so, after a week’s worth of sorting and organizing and pricing and carting and setting-up, here I am again, making the same promissory statement: I hereby promise to myself never to willingly put myself in a position whereby I find it necessary to have a garage sale to get rid of accumulated junk that needs disposing of by any and all possible means.

Let me explain, I am not a pack-rat by nature. However, the same cannot be said for my sweetie, who, if unchecked will accumulate stuff and pile it, pretty much anywhere and everywhere – not a habit I find endearing. So, this garage sale was an act of desperation, a means to an end – the end being to get rid of all the crap that Chuck has been hording for some years now. The end result of this desperate act is that now the storage room is organized and there is actually room to store the things we need, use and want, and all the unneeded, unwanted and never-to-be-used in a thousand years items are gone – huzzah, alleluia, hurrah, yippy, bravo, well done that, fantastic, and tidings of joy.

The traffic flow through our garage was a constant for the two days of the sale because we were but one of the participants in a mega, two-subdivision garage sale event. Which meant that people who take the garage sale thing seriously were out in droves going from garage to garage looking for . . . well, for whatever it is that garage sale bargain hunters look for.

The fun part of the sale was visiting with many of our neighbors who stopped by, mainly, to chat and see how we were weathering the flow of humanity. And what a flow it was. The types of people that showed up to stalk the merchandise was, indeed, a sampling of humanity — crabby people, polite people, biker types, whinny and annoying people, rude people, cordial people, fat types, skinny types, people with well behaved children, and then there was the child from hell. The particular couple with the hell-boy looked like they had the combined brain power of an amoeba, and their devil-spawned offspring inherited his parents’ lack of intelligence or common sense. This kid, who was around eight years of age, attempted to climb a ladder leaning against the garage wall, sit on a rocking chair with no bottom, crawl under the table, and attempt any and all types of antics that anyone, including a normal eight year old, would have known were actions detrimental to life and limb. The parents of this demon child were too stupid to notice or care. I, on the other hand, did not hesitate to yell at the annoying urchin to stop doing whatever idiotic antic he was attempting – liability insurance might not cover death or dismemberment due to stupidity. Although these people were on my property for probably only five minutes, those five minutes were definitely reason enough never to want to have another garage sale for as long as I draw breath.

One of the phenomenon that I find fascinating are the total strangers who will tell you their life history or will share intimate details about themselves that you would definitely prefer they kept to themselves. I’m talking people you’ve never seen before and will (the fates willing) never see again. It is mystifying to me why anyone would confide that much information to a stranger without any prompting or encouragement. But there were several people who fell into that category. It is a weird predicament in which to find yourself. On the one hand you are hostage to the situation — you can’t walk away because you are running the garage sale. So you’re stuck listening to someone’s life-story without an escape option. Your only recourse is to make somewhat appropriate noises from time to time throughout the stranger’s monologue, but not too many because you don’t really want to encourage this person to continue with their narrative. So you grunt from time to time and hope that someone with a question will interrupt and save you from the flow of unwanted information streaming your way.

The star of the event, however, was my clematis, which has now climbed half way across the ached trellis which stands on the path leading from the driveway to the back patio and was in glorious, breath-taking full bloom. I lost count of the number of people who, when they caught sight of it as they approached the garage, would stop dead in their tracks and just stand there admiring it and commenting on how it was the most beautiful clematis they had ever seen. Many people asked if they could walk up to admire it up-close. It truly is a thing of beauty. But like most things in nature, its blooming life is short, in this case, about two weeks. But it is, indeed, an event to enjoy when it graces us with its short-lived radiance.

And so, like the clematis blooms, my garage sale is now a memory. In the case of the clematis, a good one, the garage sale . . . well, let’s just say that it served a very necessary and useful purpose. But man-oh-man, it sure entailed a lot of effort and time.

Note: There are some spoilers in this article. So if you plan on seeing the movie you might not want to read this.

A couple of nights ago my sweetie and I went to see the new Star Trek movie, Star Trek Zero (STZ). This movie did not pass what I call “The Cynthia Butt Test.” Let me explain: if, while watching a movie I start to fidget in my seat and am aware of my butt falling asleep or feeling uncomfortable, it is because the movie is not holding my interest. If I go through a whole movie without being aware of said butt, then I know that the movie is a winner. I started to be aware of my butt 15 minutes into this movie.

Let me start by out by saying that being a teenager in the 60’s, I, like millions of others, fell in love with the series and characters that inhabited The Starship Enterprise. Most of us that enjoy Start Trek have seen all the episodes multiple times and have an understanding of the history of the characters, their personalities, their moral and ethical views, what makes them tick, what their strong points and weaknesses are, the role that their bonds of friendship and loyalties toward each other play in how they relate to each other, and let us not overlook the ever-important role that their mission plays – we were reminded of it at the opening of each and every episode.

So, having established that there is history here, the new STZ takes all of that and throws it out the Enterprise’s window (or porthole). The writers (Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman) show a total lack of integrity and imagination. I say this because a writer with integrity and imagination would have taken the time to do their homework and understand who the characters were, their history and the history of the Star Trek series, and within that framework, have come up with a plot that was faithful to that already established history and character development. Hey, this isn’t a new concept. Many writers take established characters like Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe, and many other such well-known and loved fictional characters and write new stories and adventures that are imaginative, but true to the storyline and respectful of the established history and characterization that the original author has given his creation. STZ does none of that. It uses each and every one of the original characters and trashes them. The characterization in this movie of all the crew of the Starship Enterprise are at best caricatures, and not even good caricatures, or in many cases they are silly and cartoonish and unbelievable (see Doc Apple’s Cultural Corner article on this movie: Star Trek Zero – a Big Zero for Star Trek. In his article he does a great job of pointing out some specifics about plot and character faux pas with which this movie is replete).

I guess the writers must have thought that it was okay to turn Spock into a horny, emotionally, out of control and illogical Vulcan (what the hell is that about?), destroy the planet Vulcan (untrue in the series), turning Uhura into a sex object that both Kirk and Spock have the hots for (again, what the hell is that about?), making Kirk a jerk (guess they thought that just because those two words rhyme it was an okay idea), killing Spock’s mother (so who the hell is the Earth woman who appears in all those episodes as Spock’s mom?), having Chekov not be 5 years old (he was about 17 in the original series when the other characters are in their 30’s), making Scotty appear as a boob instead of the accomplished engineer he is supposed to be, and the list goes on and on and on.

This movie’s writing is so bad it is not even internally consistent. By that I mean that even if you take it as a stand-alone story and disregard your expectation that it should stay true to the original series, the movie isn’t even true to itself. In order for the movie to at least make any sense, the writers should have done what they promised when the old Spock in the movie tells Kirk that he can fix the timeline, and done so. If they had at the end of the movie had the Enterprise return to the beginning of the movie and the birth of Kirk, at least they would have redeemed some of the plot. Instead, they don’t even do that.

There are so many things that are wrong with this movie that it would take a book to point them all out. This movie totally failed The Cynthia Butt Test. What a pity and a missed opportunity. Going back to when these characters were young and starting out could have been such a good story. What a shame that the writers were too lazy and incompetent to do the story and the characters justice.

I love it when I find a movie that is so fun that it is like a little jewel to be treasured. The type of movie I’m talking about is rarely one that made it big in the box office, or even one that most people have ever heard of. They are the type of movie that we trip across, usually by sheer luck.

Cold Comfort Farm
One such movie that I relatively recently discovered is “Cold Comfort Farm.” It is a 1995 BBC film made for TV and has a star studded cast, which includes Kate Beckinsale (too many movies to mention), Joanna Lumley (Absolutely Fabulous), Rufus Sewell (of the present Eleventh Hour, TV series fame), Ian McKellen (Lord of the Rings) and Eileen Atkins.

The movie is hilarious and just plain fun. The hook description on the cover of the movie’s box says “She discovered a new branch of her family tree . . . the one with all the nuts.” And I must say that it is a very apt, succinct and delightful description of this movie. If your local blockbuster doesn’t have it, I hope you belong to Netflix and can put it at the top of your queue because it is a gem of a movie.

Songcatcher
The story takes place in 1907, and the protagonist (Janet McTeer, and also staring Aidan Quinn) is a woman who is a university music professor who is passed up for promotion because she is a woman. Upset, she resigns and goes to live with her sister who lives and teaches in Appalachia. There, she discovers that the locals have a rich tradition of songs that have been passed from one generation to the next and which are in danger of being lost unless they are recorded. This movie has several sub-plots and rich characters that will win your heart. It is a story about love, passion, women’s rights, sexual discrimination, and so much more. It is a movie that you will remember long after the credits have finished rolling. And no, I don’t think it is a “chick flick, since my sweetie also loved it.

• The robins are back. But since the ground is still frozen they have to scrounge around for food because they would get beak bleeds if they tried to “dig” for worms. Therefore, they eat stuff like leftover berries on ornamental fruit trees which have fermented over the winter. The result of this is that we have a lot of intoxicated robins, which fly in erratic patterns and instead of singing their usual birdie songs they sort of produce a hickupy warble as they fly into walls and windows.

• Another sign of spring is that pretty much like clockwork, on the first of March the skunks come out of hibernation. You know this by the number of skunk carcasses littering the roads. They are groggy after their hibernation and slower moving than normal. Plus, not being the brightest of critters they have forgotten the whole “cars on roads” thing and therefore there are a larger number than usual of their dead bodies littering the road and perfuming the air.

• Teenagers start wearing shorts and tee-shirts when it hits 40 degrees. I’m talking teenagers here, so don’t assume heavy brainpower at work or functioning internal temperature gauges. Teenagers are powered by hormones and what they think is the “cool” thing to do. Apparently freezing parts of their anatomy is a small price to pay if it means an increase in their perceived coolness factor. Don’t ask me to understand or explain it. My mind can’t go there. I am only reporting what I see.

• Grass is again visible after being buried for three straight months. Well, I call it grass. It is actually this weird gray and brown stuff that has patches of straw-colored crap that is called winter mold and that apparently, according to my lawn service, I am supposed to rake out of it. Like I don’t have a life and nothing better to do with my time.

• Dry cleaners are busy with the whole Michigan population taking their winter coats to get cleaned before storing them away for the warm weather months. Of course, we usually get a surprise blizzard sometime in late April and have to drag the darned things out again. This ritual is a sign that we Michiganders are either slow learners or the eternal optimists. I’m going with the optimist version.

• We all get colds or sinus infections. The reason for this is simple. Our bodies have no clue what to do with going from temperatures ranging from 70 to 30 to 40 to 60 to 20 to 15 to 65 degrees – all in the course of one week, and sometimes in one day. When you start out the day in a coat and end up in short sleeves by afternoon and then back to a coat by evening, your immune system sort of goes on strike and says: “Ok, what’s the deal here. There is just so much I can deal with, so I’m going on strike and you lose.”

But don’t get me wrong. Us Michiganders love our state and we are a strange and hardy lot. We may grouse about the weather and all the good and bad things that go along with it, and by March we are all sick and tired of the cold and the snow and we look forward to feeling the sun on our faces and not having to pack on five layers of clothing just to walk to our mailboxes. But if truth be told, we love the change of seasons. In spring we look forward to warm breezes and sunny days, but by October we are tired of mowing the lawn and the hot weather and feel revitalized when we start getting that chill in the air, and we actually look forward to sweater-weather and the thought cooking a hot batch of chili or a slow cooking roast in the oven.

I am not a computer whiz. I am pretty versed on navigating and using word processing programs and Microsoft Office. But when it comes to the computer’s guts and what makes the darned things work, well, there we are getting into a whole new story, and this is where the arg factor of the whole computer thing comes into play.

My troubleshooting computer malfunctions and glitches ability has a very limited repertoire of options. In fact, it pretty much consists of unplugging and re-plugging devises, and/or shutting down and restarting my computer. Beyond that I am powerless and clueless. Please note that I am not the exception to the rule when it comes to computer know-how, but that rather, I am pretty much the rule. I however, unlike the majority of people who may find themselves in this dilemma, am a very fortunate person because I have a friend who is a computer genius, and when I or my sweetie run into real problems that can’t be solved by an e-mail or phone-guided troubleshooting step-by-step “now do this, and then do this” coaching conversation with this computer genius, he is unbelievably sweet enough to make a house call and help us – a busman’s holiday for him because that is what he does for a living all day at work.

So, I have to ask myself, what does the average person who doesn’t have a computer genius for a friend do? Throw the damned thing out the window? hope that it will get better on its own? or take the computer into a store and hope there is someone who can help them? I imagine that whatever the answer to that question is, there must, by default, be a lot of cursing involved.

So, I ask myself, why can’t they, or why don’t they make a computer that doesn’t decide to stop functioning properly at random. Oh yes, it isn’t that the user does anything that causes the malfunction. I have had countless occasions when I have been happily working along doing something that I have done dozens or hundreds of times before, but for whatever inexplicable reason that particular time it causes my computer to give me a message that goes something like: “YOU HAVE COMMITTED A FATAL ERROR AND NOW THE COMPUTER NEEDS TO SHUT THE PROGRAM DOWN. WHATEVER WORK IN PROGRESS YOU HAVE BEEN SLAVING OVER FOR THE PAST TWO HOURS IS IRRETRIEVABLY LOST. YOU ARE SCREWED AND UNLESS YOU ARE A COMPUTER GENIUS YOU MIGHT AS WELL RESIGN YOURSELF TO THE FACT THAT YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM – EVER.” Ok, perhaps the wording is a bit different, but for all intent and purposes I am not really stretching the point. This is a terrifying and totally underserved thing to be confronted with on your own computer screen. I mean, through no fault of your own your computer arbitrarily decides to go on strike and make your life a living hell for an indefinite future.

How do the people that make computers and computer programs get away with this? How and why do they make a product that is prone to melting down at random? and why do we, the user, put up with this and continue to encourage them to sell a product that is obviously still in the experimental stage? Why do we tolerate and not rebel at the obscure language and gobbledygook that is the computer lingo. I mean we go along with things like going to the “start” icon or button or whatever it is called, as the go-to place to turn our computer off. For the love of god! what would be so wrong with calling it the “OFF” button.

The thing is, computers are really still such a mystery to us all that we simply accept that this is the state of affairs. We, the consumer, pay them (the computer and software manufacturers) to be used as guinea pigs in the experiment in progress that is the modern day computer. We make the assumption that if a computer malfunctions and we don’t know how to fix the malfunction, that it is not the fault of the company that built the computer or the software that screwed up by making the darned thing impossible to figure out by mere mortals in the first place. We simply put up with this insane state of affairs and meekly go along with it and blame ourselves for not being more computer savvy. What we should really be asking is why they don’t make computers easier for the average computer user to figure out and why they don’t use language in their manuals that is actually understandable. I mean really… have you ever gone to a manual or to the help button on your computer and tried to figure out what the hell they are talking about? I mean, really! whenever I’ve tried to look in one of these sources I realize that I don’t even know what the heck the question is. Let’s be real here, you have to actually know what the problem is before you can ask the question of how to fix the problem, and if you knew what the problem was in the first place you probably wouldn’t have to be asking the question.

Ok, that was exhausting. But I think that by now you get my point. Computers are “a pain in the you know what,” and unfortunately are one of those things that fall into the category of life problems that we are all confronted with, a dilemma of having to live with it because we no longer can live without it.

Happy computing!