A Christmas card from Powers Trace.

I received the following in the mail this afternoon. It was addressed to all of you who have spent a few hours with the folks in Powers Trace. I’ll let them say what I also feel at this time of the year.

“A few of us are gathered around the dispatch desk here in the station, thinking of you, our loyal friends. The town is glowing, all dressed up for the season. Sophie, Bev, Millie, and Tracy took charge of the towns decoration this year doing a super job hanging the big snowflakes from the lanterns along Main Street and stretching garland between the lamp posts in front of all of the stores. Vern set up the light show in front of Town Hall with the many changing colors and wired the lights on the big tree on the front lawn. Scotty had to bring in the big ladder truck so Rufe could put the huge Angel on top of the tall spruce. Rocky and Bull, the twins, spent the last three months building the manger for the nativity scene that Alf Bjorn filled with hay. Deke and Pete brought in a few goats,two mules, and some baby pigs while Mary Beth played Mary and Gil was Joseph. For some reason no one volunteered a live child to be baby Jesus. Partly Wright, Cory, and Stretch were the three wise men dressed in flowing robes donated by Mandy.

The Sisters served as hostesses for Brad, who was Santa Clause while Phil, being short, danced around as an elf. Ms. Penny kept passing around her flask to ward off the chill.

It’s two days before Christmas and the town is quiet. Tomorrow evening we will all gather again at the big tree on the lawn to sing carols, eat a feast provided by Fred, and share in the warmth of small town friendship. Each of us wish each of you the very best Christmas ever and a New Year full of fulfilled dreams.”

God bless you everyone.

Lew.

Gadget Man

Sorry about the lag in getting back to you. I finally got fed up with the BlackBerry and went for the new iPhone. Why? I bought two different add-on programs, testing to get something that would clean up the headers in E-Mail, so that it could be read without slogging through garbage. Nothing seemed to work. I tried iPhone last week, and the e-mail on that one is clear, no addresses unless you want them, no line after line of forwarded names etc. Just the facts. Beautiful. Since I seem to have gathered a number of folks who don’t know much about mail, they tend to forward messages with every name that has had access to the topic back to the beginning of the internet, leaving line after line of stuff with no interest to me or anyone else, followed  by a mail message of one picture or two lines of text.

It’s taken a few days to figure out how to work with iPhone so if you get something off-the-wall from me it’s because of my fumble fingered typing proficiency.

Everything I had on the MAC laptop transferred over with SYNC along with some I didn’t intend to move. 214 songs to music, 400 plus photos, half of which I didn’t want sent. Oh well, the little thing accepted it all and I still have mostly free space to work with.

Is the BlackBerry bad. No. I bought it before RIM caught up with Apple and added the touch screen system. I looked at the new BB but iPhone beat it, hands down, for what I wanted. Anyway, I’m happy now, spending way too much time thumbing around with all sorts of new things. Once a “Gadget Man” always a sucker for new gadgets.

For those who didn’t get the new phone number try this one.

                         (478) 396-2166

I carry the iPhone with me most of the time and calling this number will avoid getting busy signals on our home phone. The “E” likes to talk on the phone, and anywhere else someone will listen.   

The result.

Sidewicki works but I don’t know when or where I could use it. The little blurb I wrote earlier, previous post, went as advertised so I now have a new toy to confuse myself.

In the “I can’t win” category I submit the following.

        I have turned into the Couch Potato that I’ve been dreading but it’s all my own fault. Background: I spent over three decades as a skinny person. As a youngster I was into all sports and stayed active as I aged. I played high school ball at 175 pounds and when I retired from the Air Force 25 years later I weighed 185 pounds. Last weekend I screwed up enough courage to waddle up to the scales after the Thanksgiving binge and looked down at 240 pounds. The most I have ever weighed. I accept my fate, months of starvation, denying myself the pint of Rocky Road, the pain and suffering of actually exercising the body.

Yesterday I hit the Super market and brought home apples, oranges, cauliflower something’s, watery tea, and a big twelve can carton of “Slim Fast” to curb the hunger. I ate nothing yesterday. Today I had a Slim Fast for breakfast, and another when I got hungry around noon. Now, the irony of my destiny.

As I was playing with the Sidewicki thingy the “E” comes in, sits down at her computer, and checks CNN for news. The first thing she sees is the 10,000 can recall of Slim Fast by Unilever because of a bacteria something or other. Their advice: “If you have it at home throw it out and call in for a rebate”. My first vision was of a slow, painful death from some alien organism. My second vision was of all that strawberry and cream gurgling down the drain. What do I have left? Starvation is near, cauliflower and apples by candle light? Life ain’t fair!

Sidewicki

I use iGoogle as my home page and the Google folks just sent me this, SIDEWICKI.

OK. I clicked on the button and I'm adding something. I have no idea what it's all about or what I am actually accomplishing here. It says it's going to tattle on me and send this to my blog. I'll go there next and see.

in reference to: iGoogle (view on Google Sidewiki)