Well, What Have We Here….

It has been quite some time since we did the remodel on the house and re-landscaping of the back yard. We had the banana plant, which had never borne fruit, in this wonderful pot. The woman who did the design and work for the yard (same one we originally used) replanted it into a corner of the side yard. She told us it would bear fruit some day. Quite frankly, it’s been so long, we haven’t even thought about it. So, a couple of days ago when I was coming downstairs, I glanced out the window and therefore saw the banana plant at a different angle. I was startled at what I thought I saw and moved to the window for a closer look. Hubby is always outside, trimming, etc., as we (well, he) tries to keep things under under control with the rapid growth of plants common in this environment. I asked him to come look. He, too, was startled as he realized there was not only a batch of green bananas, but also at least one more “pod” that should soon reveal more.

They are all on a single side of the plant and were obscured by some of the larger leaves.  That and not expecting to see any such thing is why we hadn’t noticed them before. An element of irony though is of fruits I don’t care for, bananas are at the top of the list. I may have mentioned this before – I don’t even like the taste of banana. I have no idea when I came to know this as I must have eaten them as a baby/child – everyone feeds kids bananas. Hubby will enjoy them, but since we have no experience with this, we don’t know what the yield will be like. We may or may not become a banana supplier to some of the neighbors depending on how that works out.

Our first batch of bananas – Sept 2020

Birthdays and Hurricanes…..

We generally don’t make a big deal out of birthdays anymore although they can be an excuse for something like Hubby wants a new piece of dive or camera equipment and it gets claimed as a birthday present. The big Australia trip coincided with our 60th birthdays and 25th anniversary all rolled in together. (Okay, we played a bit with the timing, but they did all occur in a three-month span.) My standard birthday celebration is to dive in the morning, then go next door to Shipwrecks (wonderfully funky place) for lunch and later have a nice dinner at home. As sometimes happens, diving wasn’t feasible yesterday, so we’ll go early next week. That led to having a nice dinner out and in this case we went to Snook’s in Key Largo. They have one of the best sunset views, the food is good and it’s priced no higher than similar places.( If I’d felt like us driving another 30 minutes south we’d have gone to Chef Micheal) Anyway, it was a delicious hogfish meal with a lobster tail added in (we shared that). We also shared a chocolate peanut butter pie.

A fair amount of the day had been spent checking Facebook and a text from one cousin about the status of family and friends in Louisiana as Hurricane Laura slammed in at a Cat 4. It did drop quickly to a 3, but still lots of damage. It was a Cat 2 as it moved north. So far, other than losing power and a lot of lost sleep, everyone seems to be in pretty good shape. Actual damage assessment can start today. We’ll wait for the reports and to see who need what help in recovery. My sister in Houston said it was far enough east not to affect them.

Time for the Tooth Fairy…..

Ah, another of the firsts for granddaughter. Her tooth – bottom one was “all wiggly” and she just “pushed it and it popped out”. Which was better than her dad who used to mess with them from the moment one felt loose. He’d go at it for three or four days sometimes. Anyway, I didn’t do a follow-up to see for sure the tooth fairy visited, but the tooth was cleaned and safely placed into a pouch. I’m also not entirely clear if it was to be transferred to underneath the pillow or the swap made in the pouch. As I posted before, the whole Santa Claus/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy business is part of parenting and without an older sibling to burst the bubble, it can go on for a while.

Oh, and the first real haircut recently occurred too. The lovey curls are still in place; the mass is simply reduced to a more manageable state. This was apparently granddaughter’s request. When I was young I always wanted long hair, but for reasons I never understood – more likely didn’t want to understand –  my mother was absolutely opposed. We finally reached the point of letting my hair grow out with all the attendant messiness of the stages that don’t look so good. Growing up in the era of girls ironing their hair was interesting, but without so much as a hint of curl, that was never an issue for me.Having it long did also get rid of the home permanent.ordeal. With only one bathroom and five people in the house, there were quite a few shampoos accomplished in the kitchen sink. That was also in the days of the bonnet hair dryer. I’m not sure who came up with the first blow dryer, but I hope they weren’t in a company where your inventions belong to the company.

Anyway, back to the topic of first – Kindergarten is coming up soon and even though at least the first few months will be virtual, it will be a new experience.

When Things Are More Difficult Than Expected…

Many of you who follow this blog helped me out last week when “Deadly Doubloons” was up for a vote with Tale Flick, an entertainment company that provides a service of a catalogue where authors can post their books. This company has links with many movie and television producers and they run contests for people to vote on one particular book they would like to see made into a movie or television series. Deadly Doubloons was up against 39 other books last week. The winner received 7,304 votes, four times more than the previous contest winner. Even though I certainly was not in that league, Deadly Doubloons is in the catalogue. As I said in the Facebook post when I thanked everyone for their help, some producer may get the idea one day of doing a scuba adventure and there I’ll be for him/her to look at. In the process of vetting the book for the catalogue, one of the analysts compared it to, “The Deep” meets “Lara Croft, Tomb Raider”. Not quite the description I would use, but I’m not a Hollywood type.

Anyway, during some back and forth of Facebook posts, someone asked if the book was available on Audible. This question has been posed before and the sad answer is “No”. Despite what seems to be an explosion of audible books, in reality, it makes up about 20% of “readership”. Considering the millions of books, that’s still a large number. The “sad” part of the answer is the actual cost of converting a book to audible format. It runs about $3,000. If you decide to publish only on audible (as some do), that’s similar to the cost of publishing with a physical copy and e-book. The issue for me of course is I would have to convert. Hubby and I have talked about trying one to see and we still might. At the moment, however, the economic impact of COVID-19 on family, friends, local small businesses, and non-profits we support is having to take priority. We’ll see what the future brings.

And Yet Another Feature……

In the on-going attempts to learn what all the features are on my Escape and how to use them, we did master the Memory Control for the driver’s seat. This is a feature we’ve never had before and it is nice. You can actually set it to remember three different drivers, but since the only other one who will use it is our son and that’s only for a few days each year, we probably won’t program his preference. The setting are for the seat, not the mirrors so those have to be adjusted each time. I accidentally discovered something yesterday that may well bring a chuckle to anyone this applies to. Okay, most Ford vehicles have the gas tank filler on the driver’s side. I realize this, but for some reason I will occasionally forget and either pull up on the wrong side or stop the vehicle before I get to the pump and check. As it turns out, there is a little indicator as one of the dash lights. There is a pump image and the handle for the pump shows it being to the left on the driver’s side. How clever is that? I hadn’t noticed it before and certainly wouldn’t have thought to look for something like that in the thick owner’s manual.

I also noticed while I don’t there are no cup holders in the pockets of the driver and passenger side doors, there is a slight recess that will steady a water bottle. The only drawback to the cup holders in the back seat is they are in the fold down console of the middle seat. Those door pockets also have spots for water bottles, but it does leave out whoever is sitting in the middle seat. We don’t have that very often though so I guess we can mange. It will be interesting to see what I discover next.

Learning To Zoom….

There is actually a short article about this that may or may not get published in the paper (not every article makes it into the limited space per week). As so many of us look to staying in touch without traveling and unable to meet in large groups, the phrases, “Facebook Live”, “Zoom”, “Face Time”, “Whats Up” have been added to “Skype”, “Videoconferencing,” and who knows how many I’m missing. Some of us are old enough to remember the early video-teleconferences with the odd lags between transmissions. While it was “cutting edge” at the time, it was still awkward.

We had Skype for a period of time on our computers and I’m not certain of why that fell out of favor. I didn’t (and don’t) use Facetime that much on the phone, however, I do now have the What’s Up App since that allows me to engage with those who have something other than an I-phone. Zoom is what has become immensely popular and as with other technology, I can manage only a few of the functions available. Part of the popularity is the free version so literally anyone with a computer can participate. Ideal is to have a camera so you can be part of the video piece, but you can be on with only audio as well (an advantage over Skype). Apparently a large number of people can participate at the same time as long as the “host” has the paid service which is reasonably priced. If no one has a paid service I think there’s a maximum of 40 minutes allowed. Anyway, with the on-going prohibition against groups of more than ten gathering for meetings, most of the local organizations have adapted to Zoom. I’ve been hoping we won’t have to do this for Homestead Center for the Arts, but we may have no choice. An issue though is we have quite a few people who either don’t have computers or who are not comfortable with them. There is a chance we can do some sort of hybrid set-up since we usually don’t have more than about ten who attend the regular meetings who are also not comfortable with Zoom. It will be interesting to see how we work this out.

Ah, Another Technology Surprise……

My attempts to actually learn all the gadgets/features of my new Escape continue. On the plus side of what I like, I think I have successfully set the “Memory Seat” function for me. Hubby hasn’t driven it yet, but once he does, we’ll see if we can set the one for him. There are three settings available. The only other person who drives it is Dustin during their annual Dec/Jan visit so I doubt we’ll bother with that for him. Oh, and the middle seat in back is child-approved. Granddaughter should be comfortable in it although she’s had a growth spurt so I think she’s over the height where the special seat is required.

It has taken a bit to become accustomed to the screen mounted on the dash and I am now comfortable with setting the navigation system. The hands-free telephone is nice, too. In fact, there’s a hands-free text function that I’m not entirely sure of yet even though Hubby showed me how it worked on his truck. The text appears on the screen and then the voice asks if you want to respond to the text. If you answer “yes”, it somehow sends it. (I’m not going to try to figure that out).

However, something I didn’t realize and didn’t think to look for is there’s no CD player. The reason is there’s an audio function that allows you to do everything through the phone. I haven’t tackled this yet, because except for long trips I don’t use a CD. Hubby does listen to audio books during his commutes and has it all figured out. Rather than subscribe to one of the services though, he gets his audio books from the library download service. And no, I haven’t the faintest idea of how to do that either. I will tackle it at some point before too long.

The Most Annoying Polls…..

We all know election years bring not only volumes of mailers, but also streams of telephone calls. Some are simply robocalls asking for support, others are of course asking for donations. Polls are divided into two types. One is an actual poll which measures different things and the key to these is length. A few really are brief as promised while others seem to drag on and on. I tend to respond to polls though because I do have a family background (maternal side) of small town politics and polls can be helpful. The ones I dislike – and occasionally terminate before completing them – are the negative campaign disguised as a poll. If you haven’t experienced one of these, here’s the way it works.

It starts off in a normal way with questions about your likelihood to vote, do you approve of X,Y,Z, which issue do you consider to be most important and so forth. Then the very thinly disguised campaigning starts. Are you familiar with Candidate A? What is your opinion? Are you supporting him/her? Are you familiar with Candidate B? What is your opinion? Are you supporting him/her? If you know this about Candidate A, does that make you more or less likely to support him/her? If you know this about Candidate B, does that make you more or less likely to support him/her? By about the second question, it is obvious which candidate the “poll” is pushing and of course the “things” revealed are statements you have no way of knowing the validity of unless you’ve been following the campaign all along. If I haven’t become so annoyed at this stage that I tell them to stop, I go with the standard, “doesn’t have any impact” on my opinion no matter what the “thing” is they mention. After all, the individual calling doesn’t write the script and is probably merely trying to make a salary. This is the only reason I try to continue with them until it’s over. Unfortunately, we have another 4.5 months until election. Sigh!

 

A Dark Version Yet Again……

Okay, I have no problem acknowledging the 1950s/1960s TV series were “old-fashioned” by today’s standards. Things were different then and when, as Hollywood does, in deciding to re-make a series or movie, the choice is to retain as much of the old as possible (which they do infrequently), “modernize” it (sometimes successfully), or create a different take. That’s the approach HBO selected for their series Perry Mason. We recorded the first two episodes and I tried. Now, before I say more, it turns out my first objection was an error on my part. I did read a few of the Perry Mason books, but they were the later ones and I didn’t realize Earl Stanley Gardner wrote them in the 1930s through the 1960s. When I saw the first episode was set in the early 1930s, I thought it was a mistake. Hubby did a quick search and set me straight.

With that said, I’ve told Hubby he can record all the future episodes and watch them whenever he wants to. After all, I generally head to bed between 9:00 and 9:30 so he has plenty of time. I don’t want to spoil anything, however, this is not remotely like the Perry Mason of the original series. There is a Paul Drake, a Della Street, and an uncle Mason who is the lawyer. This Perry is a private detective, damaged from his experience in WW I, and has a very long way to overcome numerous issues/flaws. The warnings prior to the show of sex and graphic violence were accurate if that tells you anything. The period piece is well done and I’m okay with “noir” to a point. For example, HBO’s first “True Detective” short-run series was dark, yet manageable. Season Two was worse and by Season Three it was beyond what either of us cared for. I don’t know how long Hubby will stick with this Perry Mason, and there will no doubt be those who enjoy this type of show.

Genre Reading….

I’m not entirely sure what triggered this thought – probably something posted by one of the writers on Twitter. I think I’ve mentioned before I grew up in a series of small towns in Louisiana and we were a basic middle class, one-income family. Mother worked occasionally, but never anything consistent or for long. Anyway, the library was always important for us and I spent lots of summer time with different reading programs. I had my phases; of course Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Victoria Holt and Norah Lofts for historical fiction. Frank Yerby was in there, too, but in confession mode – his racy take was where I learned all sorts of things that had the librarian ratted me out, I wouldn’t have been allowed to read his books any longer. (Of course, maybe she didn’t really know either) I went through a Western phase too with Louis L’Amour and Zane Gray. In fact the first time we went to the Zane Gray Restaurant in Islamorada, it was a special thrill. Then there was science fiction with Azimov, etc.,. although not Robert Heinlein. Some fantasy as in most of the Dune series, but interestingly nothing by Tolkien. Other classic literature came through school and since I was always taking honors classes in English I had plenty of those to read. French lit later was an entirely different situation.

I mostly alternate now with mysteries, lighthearted reads, some poignant, historical fiction, and the occasional literary fiction. I generally steer clear of that because so many of them seem to feel the need to be depressing. I wouldn’t mind fantasy if I could find an author I really like, however, I haven’t found one since Anne McCaffrey. There are thousands of fantasy books, but all I’ve tried fall flat for me. We did give Martin and Fire and Ice, the first of the Game of Thrones books, a try. Aside from having way too many characters to keep track off, if you think there was graphic violence on the TV series, it was only part of what was portrayed in the books.

Anyway, I do also try to support other indie authors, and have found a few I enjoy.