DEFINING MASOCHISM

A few months ago I bought an iPad.  In today's world, anything bought that is manufactured requires a significant learning curve.  Having used PCs since the early I was told it is very intuitive.  I'm apparently missing that gene.

The manual I bought was far too long to be read cover to cover since my boredom reader is far below a few pages of learning things that I am not going to immediately and repetitively use.  But the iPad is just a small portion of the learning curve I'm riding on.  Having a laptop (PC) for a few years that came with Vista on it, i would have left this life cursing the designers who coded that system. 
Aside from being a resource hog, my life was spent saying 'Yes' to the stupid machine, letting it know that it wa okay to download something, okay to change the registry (which has to be changed if you are installing a program and is a given), the okay that you meant the other okays.  I had a new operating system (WIN 7) put on.  Dis early DOS, I was able to move up in operating systems and in a very short time I knew the changes and had been able to digest them all.  WIN 7 is probably a good operating system but it is analogous  to learning a new foreign language.

Today I bought (simply because the mother board decided to go to Heaven) an iMac, 27", with lots of space, an external drive for back up and external CD/DVD drive.  It is a lovely feeling to master any of the commands but there are so many of them!  Of course these are only a few of the things to learn.  A Keurig is easy to use but it has a computer and you must learn how to set that up.  It also requires reading the maintenance instructions.  When it starts barely dribbling coffee out and what used to be a full cup is now a portion, it is time to take the water out of the well, fill it with white cider vinegar, , and make several cups of vinegar in a cup.  This gets rid of  the deposit of minerals on those little tubes in
there.

And so life goes on daily.  I wonder where all that free time I used to squeeze into my life went.  Who am I kidding?  I never had free time.  My masochistic life was only possible by living with constant sleep deprivation.    'Retirement' hasn't changed a thing.  The time is filled with things to be learned and things  be repaired, cleaned, renewed, replaced, carried up or down, sorted, polished, sent, wrapped, and even eaten.  That list barely scratches the surface.

RUDENESS IS UBIQUITOUS THESE DAYS

For whatever reason, too many people seem unaware that they impact (by their behaviors) on other people.  Tonight I was at a live live jazz concert in a restaurant/Inn.  It was to celebrate the 20 years of jazz played here.  I would rant that there is a difference in a public room that serves food and liquor when the music is ambient, everyone is there ready for conversation.  However, when there is a $10 cover charge and most people have come to hear the music because they are fans of the live performers.

As it happened, I was a guest of a couple, friends of mine, who really love jazz and occasionally I am their guest as I was tonight.  The table was set for four but there only the three of us so my hosts  welcomed the evening's singer when she said she had no place to sit.  As the evening progressed she pulled up another chair to the table and invited a friend of hers to sit there, talking through the music by her fellow performers.  That was inconsiderate and rudeness #2, the first being bringing a guest to the table without asking permission from the hosts who had reserved the table.  This finally forced a frustrated host to tell them they could move to another table if they wished to converse because we and all come to hear the music.

On the other side of the room, seated on tall stools at the bar serving drinks, a few people sat.  Clearly three women were friends and their cluster made it clear that they wished to socialize.  They were loud and definitely interfered with those who wished to hear the music.  The bartender also joined in with their loud conversations.

Many drivers seem oblivious to the fact that they are not alone on the road.  People often intrude into one's hearing space as well as physical space, seeming not to realize they are violating boundaries.  Have boundaries disappeared from the list of subjects one tries to teach a child at a reasonably early age?  I seem to be missing something critically different in the current society than I was taught how to behave sensitively of other people's personal and material space..