Dribs and Drabs

Nothing here that’s earth-shattering or worthy of an entire post, but all together?  It’s in my head, so out it comes.

My sister-in-law gave me a 9 ounce can of chocolate covered coffee beans for Christmas.  I still have a third of a can left.  My brother-in-law gave us a tin of homemade toffee, and there’s half of that left, too.  My question is this – what the hell is wrong with me?

One of my new “you’re retired now so you have new things to do” jobs is cleaning out all my old emails.  Wow.  It’s, uh…been a while.  I found some oldies but goodies…

• We first started thinking about where we’d live in retirement in 2009, and I found an old email I sent to a company that makes modular homes (like what we got, but another firm).  I can’t believe I hung on to it, because at the time we said, “we can never afford this.”
• I went through all the emails from the kids that worked with us at the parlor, and I have concluded that “something just came up” = “I forgot this.”
• Don’t worry kids – I deleted ‘em all, so I won’t embarrass you later in life when you ask for a reference.
• It seems that, for a while, I forgot how to bookmark a website page.  Or I thought I found stuff that was really, really, REALLY interesting and didn’t want to forget about it, so I emailed the link to myself.  And then forgot about it, because I found such links in FIVE different folders.  So not only did I forget to go back to the links, I forgot where I was storing them.  To add insult to injury, most of the links are now dead.
• Just kidding kids – I saved ALL OF THEM.  Deleted a ton of other stuff, though.

Something else that slipped through the hands of time – Remembrance Day.  Nope, it’s not on your Hallmark calendar.  This is something we do every New Year’s Eve, though it’s a year-long event.  You’ve seen it on Facebook and elsewhere – every time something exciting/memorable/noteworthy happens, you write the event down on a small piece of paper and stick it in a jar (we use an old cookie jar, since we haven’t been making cookies of late).  When we went to read all of our notes for this year, we felt fond memories rising about 2018 – getting the business sold, getting the new house built (well, the progressive steps along the way).  Then Mona pulled out FINISHED ALPACA SWEATER.  “Wait a minute,” she said.  “That was last year.”  We pulled a few more from 2017 out of the jar and then realized that we never “celebrated” Remembrance Day last year.  Well, it WAS a stinker of a year.

I saw an article saying that paper books were making a comeback (versus eBooks).  Personal observation – I put three of my eBooks into paperback editions back in 2017, and initial response was “meh.”  This year?  MANY more sales, and now paperbacks are about half my total sales, even though only three of the five books are available in that edition.  I may need to rethink this.

Oh, and Mona’s paperback (see at right) got another 5-star review.  So go buy the thing already.  Or go review one of my books (provided you liked it).

Why does this remind me of a Redd Foxx album?

Finally – Am I the only one, or is the “Charmin Toilet Paper Bear Family” getting on your nerves, too?  They are starting to creep me out with all the “clean wipe” references.  Why not just go buy a bidet and be done with it?