HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX

The Seven books of the Harry Potter series are a wonderful read for children and adults though adults may interpret the story differently and metaphorically. The books are exceptionally well written and give one a magnificent imagery, happily reproduced by the movies. It is a treat to find movies so faithful to the author. The most recent episode is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It is the fifth movie. The last two books have already been released and read by most lovers of the series, leaving two movies to go.


As much as I enjoy the movie versions, I find it a bit strange to keep the chronology in order since I now know how the story ends. I find the experience of watching this last movie a bit like trying to cull out and hear a single instrument in the orchestra. You hear all of them but have to focus your brain on one element. With great effort, I tried to forget what I know about the future to concentrate on the present as it was unfolding on the screen. While I have mixed feelings about this, since I never look at the end of a book before finishing all the preceding pages, I would not wish it otherwise. I relish another exercise for my brain, to keep it in working order.

FIRST YESTERDAY; SECOND TO COME IN A DAY OR SO

Well, living in New England means having to be ready to find places for snow when it drops. Not only is my home a blivet (trying to get 2# doo doo into a 1# bag) but now Nature has decided to wish the same on us in the yard and driveway. Snow is beautiful on a greeting card or ski slope, but not as attractive when it has to be shoveled off cars and parking areas.

This isn't horrible, but imagine what it will look like in two days when the second storm strikes. Imagine also, that when you scrape it off your car, unless you move your car elsewhere (if you can) it will land on the ground and need a second shoveling.

People had to drive many extra hours to get home yesterday as the roads were gridlocked in many places. Cars were running out of gas, skidding, fender benders occured, and all the other things that can happen on the road to people who didn't believe a storm was coming, didn't fill their tanks with gas, and didn't have tires with enough tread to drive safely in the icy conditions helped with road congestion and bumper to bumper driving.

Nursery school teachers had to wait hours for parents to be able to come fetch their toddlers. Older kids were let out early from school and beat their parents home by many hours. I wonder how many Christmas gifts were unwrapped and re-wrapped like my kids used to do. Appointments were missed, loved ones worried, and almost everyone on the road had a cell phone to their ear.

Nature also has its problems. This squirrel had a house full of snow as he looked down from above at what had been a nice warm bed just a few hours ago. With the snow cap concealing it, he might even have been wondering where his home had gone!

I've decided living with someone may not be so bad, after all, when that someone spent hours moving snow so that I could stay indoors and be warm. I'm learning that getting old is not ALL bad!

It is still easy to recall that once I liked cross country skiing. Even much earlier than that, I liked tunneling in the snow and making snow houses! Now I just look forward to watching it while it is pretty for, maybe, five minutes before all the exhaust from cars and buses turns it black. When neighbors walk their pets, the black is intermingled with yellow. It too quickly loses that picture postcard simplicity and beauty... at least in the urban or suburban areas.

I gaze outside and try to forget that all the work that was done will have to be done again in a day or two when the second (and predicted to be worse) storm hits. Perhaps, since it will be a Sunday, people will be forewarned and stay off the roads. Kids will pray for it to be deep so that schools will be closed and parents will pray for the schools to be open so their darlings will be elsewhere than hanging off the chandeliers at home.

Whatever happens, we can welcome the livet puzzle once again as new spots to get rid of snow from the walk paths and driveway are figured out. All of this will shorten the remaining amount of time to prepare for Christmas which probably was not on the calendar for most people.

DOWNLOADING AND GETTING A PROGRAM TO WORK

Four months ago I bought a $50 program to back up my computer. It has an excellent reputation so I decided, after I had downloaded the demo (which was all that was available at first look) that I would pay for the full, legal download. I waited for my registration code to arrive, which didn't for a few days, got very busy, diverted and forgot all about it. A few weeks later, the issue of using that program reared as i thought , "I have no backup!" I searched my computer for a trace of the registration code. Nothing was found. All I could get was that my 15 day trial had expired.

Now comes the fun part. On the site, all I could get to, at first, was not useful until I located the live chat with a robot or service representative. "Anthony" told me, after checking that I had indeed paid for the program, that I should download the full program and 'he' would send my the registration code by email. He did that and, since it landed in my junk mail because it clearly came from a commercial sender, I realized that is what had probably happened the first time it was sent, as well. That explained why I had not received the code in the first place.

Next I searched everywhere as to how to download the full program and all I could get was that my 15 day trial had ended but I could buy the program, should I choose. Since I had already paid, I was tired of chasing my tail and annoyed. Not new to computers, I went to the Control panel (I use MS and XP) and deleted all the versions of my attempted downloads of the demo...of which there were several. Nevertheless, I still could not find how to get a full download since all I could get was a free demo which told me that my 15 days had expired!

Once again, a live chat with 'Anthony' told me I needed to go to 'My Account' (look up program password on the three page of passwords I have) to get the full download. I did this on my clean slate, having deleted the demos, and I now had the download which I registered with the code from the email, after I had installed the program. Bruised and battered, I was beginning to feel I was half way home. However, after the installation, I tried to create a boot disk, in the event that my computer blew and I needed a backup to get my system back. At this point I was asked to enter a command line. I searched as long as my aching head would permit me (it ached from figuratively banging it on the wall) and instructions were contained no where in the help menu or any other place or subjects I searched. A friend with whom I consulted (actually to whom I ranted in frustration) told me he found something in Appendix D of the help manual online). My ADD and simple logic prevents me from going to the Appendices when I can't get beyond Getting Started! I can't read the ending of a book before reading all the chapters first, either,

Here is where I got stuck:
Now, while I am not new to computers, I do not find this 'intuitive' and resent that manuals so frequently forget that many people need explanations that may seem pretty simple to the manual writer.

I can see that I need to tackle that 'Live Chat' once again. I have already spent more than three hours in total on this problem and think that one should not have to waste so much time, when you have paid for a program, trying to learn how to run it.

'TIS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY

Others seem to go through this season being jolly. I really have to work to keep from snapping at them and fantasizing ways to do in everyone who asks if I've finished my shopping (which I have scarcely started at this point). Each Christmas season is like having a baby...you forget the pain or you'd never have another. At the beginning of the month I looked at all the empty spaces in my schedule and filled those hours up with three times what might have fit into them. There is no time for any of those things because I hadn't included everything that has to be done for Christmas.

In a house that is already stuffed everywhere, the only place to put a tree is in a space I have to create. A stack of heavy music books four feet high, the three foot long stack of books that had been on this chest, the 130 DVDs that I had no better place for after I converted them from VHS tapes...all this has to be carried upstairs for the duration. Carried up will be the chest on and in which they were contained. You must visual that finding the place to keep them for three weeks upstairs is like solving those puzzles that have a pile of geometrically shaped pieces that are supposed to fit in a little frame but when taken apart they seem to expand to double the surface area.

All knick-knacks, clocks, plants, vases, and whatevers on other surfaces also have to find new homes for a few weeks. Since teleportation is only in Sci-Fi, these moves can only be manually effected. In the afternoons the window candles must be turned on; before bed, turned off. (I finally decided that the one candle upstairs can be on all night since it is light activated). All the plants have to find new homes for a few weeks from their sunny home in the front window to make way for Santas, a Rosemany Tree and all sort of other reminders of Christmas.

Someone, please, explain this madness to me. What makes us continue this ritualized, masochistic effort at the coldest, darkest time of year. We crowd in greeting cards, letters, gift shopping, wrapping and all the stuff that people complain about yet, silently, through gritted jaws we plod like automatons doing the same things year after year...finally getting things finally put away somewhere between the middle of January and the next Christmas.

What a way to greet the New Year!

NEW ENGLAND WEATHER

The past few days have not been as full of bad weather as provided by Nature in other parts of the country, but not lovely, either. However, power is still intact, even though the ground has a bit of black ice. We can remember back to the Blizzard of 1978.

In the middle of the picture is a three car wide parking space. Just before I took this picture I had looked out and saw only 3 car antennas!

In better weather on the right, you can see where the gray car is parked. You can then gather how high the snow was piled. I guess Nature balances it out in time with all of us.

I can look at Spring pictures and hope it will come back in a few months. I'll be waiting for it through the very changeable NE weather.

CHRISTMAS LETTERS

My husband had established a tradition of Christmas letters since he hated to write or use the telephone. Those became for me, The Dreaded Christmas Letter! Each year more boring details were added about the six children and later the grandchildren until a friend commented to him that he needed a map of the 23 people mentioned. At that point he agreed we no longer should mention all our grown children and everything in their lives and the ages and grades of their children and all their activities. My sigh of relief might have been mistaken for an off season hurricane! We limited the contents to our own generation and activities. I found it hard that people were being honest when they said they loved getting them. I think the only people who really like reading them also liked writing their own.

Once we received a four page letter from a woman whom we scarcely knew and it was, by far, the best letter I have ever received. It could easily have been published as a short story. It was about her recent illness and hospital stay. I also love the letters that include pictures, especially of trips. The family cast of characters is helpful when you want to know the whole system. It is a talent when people can introduce lots of family members and make it interesting reading, which few manage to do.

When my husband passed away, I was ambivalent about continuing the tradition. Somehow it felt disrespectful to his memory, to drop it entirely. My letter, being who I am, was very different and described feelings (Heaven help us!) which his male, engineering self would never have done.

For those of you who have never written a letter but want to, some kind soul gave some very useful tips on dos and don'ts.

LOCAVORE

Are you a locavore? I've decided I am one, perhaps a bit off from the proper definition, (click on title for link) Instead of eating only things indigenous to my geographic locale, I have limited it to eating only food within my sight! That works for me. Since my computer is only a few feet from my kitchen, that opens up some real possibilities. Struggling to find a way to diet with that view is worked out by assuring that nothing fattening gets within view. This, coupled with the desire to put something into my stomach, especially late at night when I am tired and yet not ready for bed, starts making even the woodwork a possibility. So far I have resisted that temptation.

Using coupons is impossible for me. I've noticed that only products that contain all sorts of sickening additives and hydrogenated fats seem to get on the coupon list. The whole idea of local is also a bit confusing. If a tuna fish is caught off the coast, does it mean the mercury in not dangerous whereas it might be if caught elsewhere? Are the products limited to what is grown here? Does the local produce raised over a former dump site take away all danger if the growers didn't know what it once was? Are all organic growing sites tested, and to what depth, and for how many years back?

Restaurant patrons have a greater problem. If the rice wasn't grown in state, it can't be eaten? Vegetables from South America are taboo even though they might be identical to ours in an opposite season? Pacific Coast Salmon is out for me? That would make it pretty easy to join the 'clean plate' club. Well, let's hear it for a new vocabulary word, anyway. Locavore...Mission Impossible?