TintiTypes

When Computers Malfunction: The Arg Factor

I am not a computer whiz.  I am pretty versed on navigating and using word processing programs and Microsoft Office.  But when it comes to the computer’s guts and what makes the darned things work, well, there we are getting into a whole new story, and this is where the arg factor of the whole computer thing comes into play.

My troubleshooting computer malfunctions and glitches ability has a very limited repertoire of options.  In fact, it pretty much consists of unplugging and re-plugging devises, and/or shutting down and restarting my computer.  Beyond that I am powerless and clueless.  Please note that I am not the exception to the rule when it comes to computer know-how, but that rather, I am pretty much the rule.  I however, unlike the majority of people who may find themselves in this dilemma, am a very fortunate person because I have a friend who is a computer genius, and when I or my sweetie run into real problems that can’t be solved by an e-mail or phone-guided troubleshooting step-by-step “now do this, and then do this” coaching conversation with this computer genius, he is unbelievably sweet enough to make a house call and help us – a busman’s holiday for him because that is what he does for a living all day at work

So, I have to ask myself, what does the average person who doesn’t have a computer genius for a friend do?  Throw the damned thing out the window? hope that it will get better on its own? or take the computer into a store and hope there is someone who can help them?  I imagine that whatever the answer to that question is, there must, by default, be a lot of cursing involved.

So, I ask myself, why can’t they, or why don’t they make a computer that doesn’t decide to stop functioning properly at random.  Oh yes, it isn’t that the user does anything that causes the malfunction.  I have had countless occasions when I have been happily working along doing something that I have done dozens or hundreds of times before, but for whatever inexplicable reason that particular time it causes my computer to give me a message that goes something like: “YOU HAVE COMMITTED A FATAL ERROR AND NOW THE COMPUTER NEEDS TO SHUT THE PROGRAM DOWN.  WHATEVER WORK IN PROGRESS YOU HAVE BEEN SLAVING OVER FOR THE PAST TWO HOURS IS IRRETRIEVABLY LOST.  YOU ARE SCREWED AND UNLESS YOU ARE A COMPUTER GENIUS YOU MIGHT AS WELL RESIGN YOURSELF TO THE FACT THAT YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIX THIS PROBLEM – EVER.” Ok, perhaps the wording is a bit different, but for all intent and purposes I am not really stretching the point.  This is a terrifying and totally underserved thing to be confronted with on your own computer screen.  I mean, through no fault of your own your computer arbitrarily decides to go on strike and make your life a living hell for an indefinite future.

How do the people that make computers and computer programs get away with this?  How and why do they make a product that is prone to melting down at random?  and why do we, the user, put up with this  and continue to encourage them to sell a product that is obviously still in the experimental stage?  Why do we tolerate and not rebel at the obscure language and gobbledygook that is the computer lingo.  I mean we go along with things like going to the “start” icon or button or whatever it is called, as the go-to place to turn our computer off.  For the love of god! what would be so wrong with calling it the “OFF” button.

The thing is, computers are really still such a mystery to us all that we simply accept that this is the state of affairs.  We, the consumer, pay them (the computer and software manufacturers) to be used as guinea pigs in the experiment in progress that is the modern day computer.  We make the assumption that if a computer malfunctions and we don’t know how to fix the malfunction, that it is not the fault of the company that built the computer or the software that screwed up by making the darned thing impossible to figure out by mere mortals in the first place.  We simply put up with this insane state of affairs and meekly go along with it and blame ourselves for not being more computer savvy.  

What we should really be asking is why they don’t make computers easier for the average computer user to figure out and why they don’t use language in their manuals that is actually understandable.  I mean really… have you ever gone to a manual or to the help button on your computer and tried to figure out what the hell they are talking about?  I mean, really! whenever I’ve tried to look in one of these sources I realize that I don’t even know what the heck the question is.  Let’s be real here, you have to actually know what the problem is before you can ask the question of how to fix the problem, and if you knew what the problem was in the first place you probably wouldn’t have to be asking the question.

SURE SIGNS THAT SPRING IS ON ITS WAY IN MICHIGAN

The robins are back.  But since the ground is still frozen they have to scrounge around for food because they would get beak bleeds if they tried to “dig” for worms.  Therefore, they eat stuff like leftover berries on ornamental fruit trees which have fermented over the winter.  The result of this is that we have a lot of intoxicated robins, which fly in erratic patterns and instead of singing their usual birdie songs they sort of produce a hickupy warble as they fly into walls and windows.

Another sign of spring is that pretty much like clockwork, on the first of March the skunks come out of hibernation.  You know this by the number of skunk carcasses littering the roads.  They are groggy after their hibernation and slower moving than normal.  Plus, not being the brightest of critters they have forgotten the whole “cars on roads” thing and therefore there are a larger number than usual of their dead bodies littering the road and perfuming the air.

Teenagers start wearing shorts and tee-shirts when it hits 40 degrees.  I’m talking teenagers here, so don’t assume heavy brainpower at work or functioning internal temperature gauges.  Teenagers are powered by hormones and what they think is the “cool” thing to do.  Apparently freezing parts of their anatomy is a small price to pay if it means an increase in their perceived coolness factor.  Don’t ask me to understand or explain it.  My mind can’t go there.  I am only reporting what I see.

Grass is again visible after being buried for three straight months.  Well, I call it grass.  It is actually this weird gray and brown stuff that has patches of straw-colored crap that is called winter mold and that apparently, according to my lawn service, I am supposed to rake out of it.  Like I don’t have a life and nothing better to do with my time.

Dry cleaners are busy with the whole Michigan population taking their winter coats to get cleaned before storing them away for the warm weather months.  Of course, we usually get a surprise blizzard sometime in late April and have to drag the darned things out again.  This ritual is a sign that we Michiganders are either slow learners or the eternal optimists.  I’m going with the optimist version.

We all get colds or sinus infections.  The reason for this is simple.  Our bodies have no clue what to do with going from temperatures ranging from 70 to 30 to 40 to 60 to 20 to 15 to 65 degrees – all in the course of one week, and sometimes in one day. When you start out the day in a coat and end up in short sleeves by afternoon and then back to a coat by evening, your immune system sort of goes on strike and says: “Ok, what’s the deal here.  There is just so much I can deal with, so I’m going on strike and you lose.

But don’t get me wrong.  Us Michiganders love our state and we are a strange and hardy lot.  We may grouse about the weather and all the good and bad things that go along with it, and by March we are all sick and tired of the cold and the snow and we look forward to feeling the sun on our faces and not having to pack on five layers of clothing just to walk to our mailboxes.  But if truth be told, we love the change of seasons.  In spring we look forward to warm breezes and sunny days, but by October we are tired of mowing the lawn and the hot weather and feel revitalized when we start getting that chill in the air, and we actually look forward to sweater-weather and the thought cooking a hot batch of chili or a slow cooking roast in the oven. 

The Ghost of Christmas Presents

With all the hustle and bustle that we are all engaged in during this time of year, shopping, wrapping, writing cards, decking the halls and planning menus, I haven’t had time to write anything in this blog over the last couple of weeks. So, I thought that what I would do is to post a couple Christmas stories that I included in Christmas letters several years ago but with a few editorial additions.

The Ghost of Christmas Presents

It was our second Christmas as a married couple, which makes the date 1974 (yes, I know, practically prehistoric times). That year, Larry and I decided that instead of giving each other presents, we would wait until after Christmas and buy something for our apartment that we would both enjoy. As most young couples starting out, our material possessions were extremely limited. One of those limitations was our television set, a black and white, hand-me-down that worked only on odd Tuesdays between 6 to 9 a.m. In those early years we spent the Christmas holidays sliding around Michigan’s snow-covered roads visiting our respective relatives.

After enjoying the color television sets at the homes of our various relations, returning to our “slap the tubes into submission” black and white dinosaur, we had the answer of what we wanted for Christmas – a new color television set. (Now for many of you reading this I know that the concept of a black and white television set is not something you can even wrap your head around, but stay with me on this).

With the enthusiasm and lack of forethought and logic that only the young can exhibit, we headed out to the nearest appliance store. We bought a 27 inch, cherry-wood console, color television set (again, in those days we are talking state of the art and the biggest TV set that was made, so for all you young readers, suspend your disbelief of what I am saying and understand that I am not exaggerating, that really and truly was state of the art stuff). It was beautiful. It was big. It was also very heavy . . . Did I mention that it was very big and very heavy?

Instead of opting for the sensible thing – having the darned thing delivered – we decided to take it home ourselves so that we could enjoy it for the remainder of our holiday vacation. Somehow the sales people managed to stuff the huge wooden crate the TV console was packaged in into the car’s trunk – cars were much bigger in those days. (yes, you read it right, I did say wooden crate, not a large cardboard box with Styrofoam. It really was a giant wooden crate, and cars had huge trunks that a giant wooden crate would actually fit into). Did I mention that the crate was very big and very heavy?

When we got to our apartment building reality set it. All of our fellow apartment dwellers were still away on their holiday visits with their respective relatives. It was late evening and a steady, icy drizzle was falling. The distance between the parking lot and the front door of the building was considerable and our apartment was two flights up. We had a crate-sized problem. I’m still not sure how we lifted the crate out of the trunk. Did I mention that it was very big and very heavy? Time has a merciful way of erasing really unpleasant events from our memory banks. I do know, however, that a lot of huffing and puffing, and a whole lot of cursing was involved in the operation.

Once we got the cursed crate our of the car trunk we slid an old blanket underneath the crate. Now when I say slid, I don’t mean to imply an easy process, but it was relatively speaking an easier feat than lifting that monster out of the trunk.

Between tugging, pulling, and a whole lot of more cursing, we eventually got the crate inside the foyer area of the apartment building. Eyeballing the width of the stairs and girth of the crate, even to two spatially moronic and challenged individuals such and Larry and myself, things were not looking good. If we were going to get the TV up those stairs we would first have to free it from its wooden prison. This was a problem. You see, the tool repertoire of newly-wed, apartment dwellers consists of one (small) hammer; one (small) screw driver; one (small) Phillips screw driver; and maybe, one (again, small) pair of pliers. And what we needed for this job was one LARGE crow bar. But never underestimate the power of desperation. We put our meager collection of small and inadequate tools to the test.

Later, much later, after scrapping our fingers and bending our tools, we freed our beautiful, new, big, and, did I mention heavy, TV set from its wooden cage. This got rid of some of the excess bulk and some of the weight, but we still had a large and heavy TV console to somehow get up two flights of stairs. Painstakingly, one at a time, we struggled up those stairs with our new TV set, which was starting to get older by the minute.

Getting the TV from the car to our living room took many hours. By the time it was over, it was around 2 a.m. Exhausted but eager to try out our new purchase, we searched for a channel that was still broadcasting at that late hour (OK, stop it. Yes, in those almost pre-historic times many TV stations did not broadcast 24 hours a day). We finally succeeded and found an old Errol Flynn movie called “Captain Blood.” We nestled ourselves on our sofa and settled in to enjoy that charming and campy old swashbuckler, a black and white movie, on our brand new color TV set.

In a Pickle over Pickles -- A Christmas Story

My mother’s purchasing prowess has been a major contributor to this country’s past economic well-being.  She has been known to spend hundreds on seemingly frivolous trinkets and justify it with her stock statement of “I’m worth it.”  But there is one, seemingly, insignificant item where she draws the line – sweet gherkin pickles.  I noticed this anomaly many years ago when I discovered a pattern whenever she came over to my home to visit.  Shortly after saying her hello’s she would stick her head inside my refrigerator and not emerge until she had found the jar of sweet gherkin pickles that habitually lived there.  Throughout the course of her visit she would munch on them until they were gone. 

This went on for years until finally, I could no longer resist the mystery, and during one such visit asked her: “mother, what’s with the pickles?" They’re too expensive,” she replied.  “I just won’t pay $2.69 for a small jar of pickles.  But I love them.  I know you always have some, so I have a treat to look forward to whenever I come over to your house.” From anyone else this sort of logic would seem very strange, but from my mother, well, let’s just say that the lady is different, charming, but different.

The Christmas after discovering the answer to the pickle mystery I gave my mother five jars of sweet gherkins as a stocking-stuffer present, meant both as a joke and as a treat I knew she would enjoy.  When she opened the present, my mother, predictably laughed and thanked me profusely for the pickles.  Later on, my grandmother approached my mother and with total indignation said, “I can’t believe your own daughter would give you a present as insulting as jars of pickles for Christmas.  What’s wrong with her?  And how could you carry-on, acting as if you really thought that was a nice present.  You should have told her off . . . to insult her own mother that way.  I can’t believe it, my own granddaughter.”

My mother tried for a long time to explain to my grandmother why this really was a present that met with her approval, and which she thought was not only funny, but also a thoughtful treat.  But try as she might, all explanations were met with a deaf ear, and my grandmother didn’t believe her.  Guess that my grandmother couldn’t believe that a woman known for her spending extravagance wouldn’t spring for a jar of pickles. 

To this day my mother still raids my refrigerator in search for sweet gherkins whenever she comes over.  And I still, some Christmases give her a jar or two of pickles as stocking-stuffer treats.  And every Christmas I still think of my grandmother who went to her grave believing that I had insulted my mother that Christmas with my gift of pickles. 

Ice Escapades: My First Ice Fishing Experience

Before I met the man who was to become my husband, fish, ducks and deer were just names of animals which had no special connotation. I never gave them a second thought. Fish, as far as I was concerned were creatures best left in the water to live out their lives instead of cooked into the non-edible, meat-like substance that my mother felt compelled to serve for dinner from time to time. This view was engendered by my mother's lack of fish culinary know-how. She was a very good cook of many foods. Fish, however, was not among those. She would plaster the fish fillets with a thick coat of breading and fry them until any texture or moistness disappeared. What remained was an amorphous, long, narrow object which she would place on a plate. I was expected to eat the thing.

Likewise, my acquaintance with ducks was limited to pictures in books and running across a few of the domestic, park, pond-variety type. These ducks had spent their entire existence scrounging a living off the bounty of the land. A diet of popcorn and crackers had taken its toll in the form of an extreme case of ducky obesity that rendered them physically incapable of flying. Unlike their lean and fit wild cousins, these citified birds were oblivious to their heritage of free-spirited gypsies that migrate to different climes with the passing seasons.

Deer, were wide-eyed, furtive, furry creatures that lived in the woods and frolicked with all the other woodland inhabitants. My sole source of information on them was a movie Disney made about one of the orphans of the species. Meat on the table in the form of tenderloin steaks and roasts is not what I would have come up with if asked to free associate with the word "deer."

All this, however, was to change after I met my future husband, Larry. Larry was a fisherman and a hunter. One of my first encounters with the great world of outdoor sports was my introduction to ice fishing. For a girl who was raised in the tropics, (Costa Rica) the concept of walking on water is one with strictly biblical connotations. When my, then, still boyfriend, invited me to go ice fishing, all he got back by way of response was a wide-eyed, blank stare. It became immediately apparent to him that he needed to do some explaining, starting with the basics.

The day started out sunny and 36ºF. To my surprise, we were not the only people crazy enough to drive a car or walk over the frozen lake. A couple of miles out into the bay, Saginaw Bay in Lake Huron, to be precice, a village had popped up over night. The bay was littered with fishermen hunched over on their portable chairs. We drove the car about two miles, out to sea, to a spot that, according to Larry, looked fishy. To me the whole lake looked like one white expanse of nothingness. What made this particular place more likely to produce fish than any other spot was a mystery to me. When pestered on this point, Larry went into his, patient, restrained mode, and, as if talking to a mentally dull child, explained, what he thought should have been the obvious. Because people had flocked into this area, that was a sure sign that a school of fish was likely hanging out hereabouts.

I suspect the truth of the matter was that the first person to arrive on the lake that morning got tired of walking and decided he might as well fish there, one spot being as good as the next for catching fish. The next angler to venture out on to the lake spotted the first fisherman and deduced that he, of course, must have a scoop on where the fish were. And so, each successive fisherman made a B-line to this, the obvious hot fishing spot on the lake. And so, a school of fishermen was spawned.

Having selected the appropriate fishing spot, the next step was to make a hole in the ice to get at the perch. Larry produced an ice auger – a four-foot hand drill – and proceeded to drill a hole through the foot-deep ice. That the ice, in fact, turned out to be one-foot deep was most reassuring since we had just driven our car over it. Besides, Larry was already pressing his luck and skating on thin ice, we didn't need to be standing on it too.

Now that we had our fishing hole, we were ready to go after the perch. Larry began to rig our poles. An ice fishing pole consists of a reel attached to a two-and-a-half foot stick with metal eyes to guide the fishing line. A hook is tied to the end of the line, and about a foot over that, a teardrop-shaped lead weight is connected. Next, Larry produced a small plastic container which once housed margarine but was now inhabited by some very nasty looking flesh-colored creatures shaped like small elbow macaroni. I prayed that these snacks were intended for the fish and not for us. Thankfully, my guess proved correct. Larry explained that they were grubs, but more appealingly called "mousies" in fishermen's jargon. Since childhood I have had a special aversion to mice, so the nicety of calling the grubs mousies was lost on me.

Larry impaled a couple of the grubs onto the hook and guided the line down the hole into the ice-cold water. When he felt the weight hit bottom he reeled the line in a foot or two, allowing the hook and bait to float freely. At the point where the line met the water surface he attached a bobber, a plastic red and white ball, about an inch in diameter, that floats. The logic behind all this is: fish sees bait and thinks "yummy, chow time," so, he grabs the grub bait and is snared by the hook. As he bites down on the tasty grub morsel, he feels a sharp pain in his mouth. He's never had a grub bite back before. He realizes there is something fishy about this whole set-up and tries to fishtail it out of there. As he attempts his getaway, the bobber submerges and the alert angler reels the fish to the surface. This, of course, assumes the fisherman is, in fact alert, and not half asleep counting sheep instead of fish. It all sounds pretty feasible. The problem is...remember why we chose to fish in this spot? This whole theory depends on the premise that fish are actually frolicking about in an area close enough to spot the floating food.

Hours of staring at the red and white harlequin bobber went by with neery a nibble from below. The human mind has strong survival instincts. When subjected to prolonged periods without stimulation it takes over, and in self-defense, provides its own stimuli. That's exactly what mine did. Noticing that I had been staring intently at the hole in the ice without moving or saying a word for a long time, Larry interrupted my trance-like state and asked me if I was all right. I told him I was looking at a small flake of ice that had broken free and was floating around in the hole. It bore a remarkable resemblance to Micky Mouse's silhouette, ears and all. I now realized that I was losing it. Had it been a warm summer day I would have taken my present mental condition to be the after effects of a heat stroke. However, at 36ºF, the only possible explanation was that I had been exposed to the elements too long and was suffering from a terminal case of boredom. As the day wore on, we did manage to catch three scrawny perch. They, however would not have made a dent in a hungry cat's appetite.

By early evening, the sun was descending into the bay's horizon, and in its wake, so too was the temperature. The surface of the ice had melted with the warmth of the sun. Now that the temperature had dropped below the freezing point, the melted ice had turned to slush. We were driving a two-seater sports car that was very sleek, hugged the road, and took off at break-neck speeds on dry surfaces. But, as we were about to discover, on slush it behaved as though it were on a treadmill. I now had a better understanding of the meaning of the term "wheel spinning." We were going nowhere, fast, or otherwise.

Pushing a car requires a strong foothold for leverage, no mean feat on an ice surface. Despite the forces of nature and physics working against us, we managed to push the car for the first mile. It was now dark. At least I knew we were pushing in the right direction since I could see the lights on shore. Images of sailors returning home after months of fighting stormy seas, half delirious from hunger and cold, spotting the faint beckoning glimmer of a lighthouse in the distance ran through my mind.

Salvation comes in strange guises. In our case it was in the form of a rusty pickup truck, fenders flying in the wind, and a truck-bed full of urchins with runny noses and red, wind-burned faces. Seeing our obvious predicament – two people in the middle of Saginaw Bay pushing a car in the dark – the driver offered to tow us in. Fortunately, the pick-up truck driver had with him a set of towing chains. Our car had a tow-ring beneath the front bumper. This surprised me because a device with a purely practical purpose seemed out of place with Larry's flashy sports car. They hooked one end of the chain to the tow-ring and the other end to the bumper of the truck. Larry and I climbed into the pick-up truck's bed and the driver eased the truck into gear. The slack of the chain lessened and the first strains of pressure tugged at the tow-ring.

Rip! The chain and tow-ring flew into the air; the car didn't move an inch. Children take a perverse delight in the misfortune of others, not one of their more endearing traits. Tears of laughter streamed down their little red cheeks blending with the liquid dribbling from their runny noses. The tow-ring on the sports car now made sense. Apparently, its designers did not have a practical application in mind at all when they put it there. It was there strictly for style. The second time they took no chances and hooked the chain to the main-frame of the car. This time, the little red sports car, albeit sans tow-ring, obediently followed the pick-up truck to shore.

Lore advises that if you don't have something nice to say it's best to shut-up. It was a quiet ride home. Larry dropped me off at my apartment, a frozen stare from me was his only farewell for the night. Exhausted, hungry, and sore, I hobbled through the door. Incapable of taking another step or peel off the multiple layers of clothing I was wearing, I collapsed on the living-room floor. There I lay until my first attempt to move which, by my best calculations, occurred about seven hours later. By this time, rigor mortis had set in. I was paralyzed. Every muscle in my body ached; even the hair follicles in my head hurt.

I slowly, very slowly, on hands and knees, crawled over to the bathroom. I grabbed onto the edge of the sink and pulled myself up. That's when I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I stared in disbelief at the wind-burned, beat-red face that looked back at me. This was not going to be one of my best days. Painstakingly, I eased out of my clothing and stepped into the shower where I stayed until the hot water ran out. Once dry, I rubbed myself down with Ben Gay. The fumes from the medication stung my nostrils and made my eyes water. The pungent odor confirmed my suspicion, I had, in fact, aged overnight. After all, I smelled just like my grandmother.

My earlier association to the biblical allegory about water walking was correct. Walking on water, even of the frozen variety, was a thing best left to deities, an eleventh commandment to abide by. I had overstepped mortal boundaries and been struck down for treading into divine territory.

By Cynthia Nill

Are Bigger Boats Better?

It's said that the difference between men and boys is the price of their toys. When you marry a sportsman, as I did, the wisdom of this witticism takes on a life of its own. To enjoy the simple pleasures of the great outdoors is, in fact, anything but simple. Every one of the outdoor sportsman’s pastimes require countless costly trinkets.

Along with fishing, for example, comes the added sideline of boating (in my case) on the Great Lakes in pursuit of the mighty salmon and lake trout; a quest akin to searching for the Holy Grail. For starters, boating requires, of course, a boat. In our case it was a twenty-one foot Bayliner. Before a boat is water-ready, however, it must be decked out with oodles of nautical gear – ropes, anchors, life jackets, flares, fire extinguishers, boat hooks, ad nauseam. Then, there are the high-priced ticket items such as ship-to-shore radio; directional (Loran) radio; and a gas-guzzling, four-wheel drive monster SUV to trailer it all. Once the boat itself is rigged-up and ready to slip into the water we get into all the fishing paraphernalia, and here the list becomes endless – state-of-the-art depth and fish finder; down riggers; fish nets; enough poles to make the boat resemble a floating forest; and giant boxes full of fish lures in every size and color with flamboyant names such as Cow Bells, Dipsy Divers, Hot-n-tots, and Dare Devils.

We didn't start out with the twenty-one footer. Our first boat was a sixteen-foot open boat with a twenty-five horsepower outboard motor. Although it was ideal for fishing in small inland lakes, our sixteen-footer was neither adequate nor safe for venturing out into the big water. On the Great Lakes, storms and squalls have a nasty habit of sneaking up when they are least expected.

Boaters call their penchant for trading up in craft size "two foot fever." A friend of ours, infected with this malady, was selling his twenty-one foot Bayliner to buy a larger boat. My husband too, caught the contagious disease, and off we went to inspect the boat his buddy was selling.

We met our friend at the marina and embarked on our maiden voyage aboard the, soon to be renamed, ForCynthia, a name which was anything but. Frodo, our dog, was with us on this boat shopping expedition. Frodo was a Bishon Frisé. Bishons are white, fluffy fur balls, and come in two basic sizes – small and smaller. Frodo was of the smaller variety, nine inches to the shoulder and weighing barely ten pounds. What Frodo lacked in size he more than made up for in spunk. Yet, throughout the duration of our boat ride he nestled himself tightly in my arms and barely moved. I could tell he was tense and less than enthusiastic about his present surroundings.

Puttering around in our sixteen-footer and maneuvering our buddy's three-and-a-half ton, inboard/outboard, deep-hulled boat, was kind of like the difference between riding a bicycle and driving a semi-truck. To further induce us to purchase his boat, our buddy offered to give us a free lesson in the joys and simplicity of piloting. Throughout the day, he demonstrated the operation of the boat's gauges and gadgets and explained their functions. 

It was a clear and calm day. The surface of the water was as smooth as glass and sparkled in thousands of diamond-like points in the bright sun. With all of Lake Huron as a field of fire on which to practice, and the craft gently responding to the slightest turn of the wheel, we were lulled into believing that navigating the twenty-one foot boat was indeed, as previously billed, going to be child's play.

Early evening approached and along with it, so did a mounting breeze. White caps were now visible in the distance. The gentle swaying of the craft was replaced by a jerky motion as waves slammed against the boat. My hubby and his buddy were engrossed in boat talk and oblivious to the drawing dusk and swelling waves. I had, however, had all the joy of boating I could handle for one day, and made my wish to return to stable ground clear. We began our bouncy journey back to the marina. Water sprayed over the sides of the boat as the bow crashed through the oncoming waves. Every time the boat heaved, I could feel a quiver pulsating through Frodo's little body and hear his faint whimpering despite the noise of the roaring engine and slamming surf.

The marina's entrance faced a river. Coming in from the lake, it was necessary to thread through the river's entrance, navigate a short distance up-stream and cut a cross-current, hard left, to enter the marina. The bed of the river's mouth had not felt the scraping of a dredge for many boating seasons. A sand bar had formed allowing for a depth of only four to five feet, that is, in calm waters. The problem was, the wave effect had reduced the depth allowance to, at best, three to four feet. The boat drew about four feet of water when the outdrive mechanism was in its full, down-position. In order to skim over the sand bar we had to raise the outdrive; otherwise, we would have caused serious injury to either the outdrive, the propeller, or both. The down-side of this maneuver, however, is that you're left with very little, if any, control over your craft's course. Steering our way into the marina was going to be like trying to control a car sliding down an icy hill with the brakes locked in. Whoever the patron saint of boating is must have felt sorry for us and come to our aid, since, in spite of the odds against us, we managed to overcome our obstacle course and round-the-corner into the marina.

Animals have the uncanny ability to pick up on cues and sense their master's moods. Frodo was no exception. In this instance, however, his instincts would not have been taxed in doing so. My body language gave me away. As we made the turn into the marina I allowed myself to start breathing again and realized I had been holding Frodo against my body in a death grip. Frodo, however, was a survivor. To his credit, he had managed to somehow breathe through my clutch. When I loosened the iron grip that I had been holding his body in, he tenderly licked my fingers in gratitude.

Unfortunately, my feeling of relief would soon prove premature. Our final hurdle was yet to come. Berthing the boat was not going to be easy. The slips in this marina were very narrow and allowed for only about a foot of leeway on either side of the boat. The channel space between dock rows did not offer a wide margin for error either. To berth our boat, we had to make as wide a turn as possible to position ourselves parallel to the boat slips. The wind had created a current that ran crosswise of our slot. As the boat's bow was a quarter of the way into the slip, the current caught our stern and carried it on a direct collision course with our dock mate's boat.

Luckily, our neighbors were on board their boat. One of them grabbed a boat hook, ran to the stern of his boat and shoved our boat away, saving both vessels from certain disaster. In the meantime, we managed to locate a rope, run into the cuddy-cabin, climb up through the hatch onto our bow, and throw a line to a good Samaritan who was standing on the dock. Our friend killed the engine. Between the man on the dock's pulling, and our neighbor's shoving, the boat was manually brought under control and safely inched into its berth. As docking drills go, however, this one was not going to make it as a textbook example of preferred boat berthing procedures. So much for our buddy's boasting of how he was going to instruct us on the finer points of navigation. After all the commotion and near misses we had just been through, I was almost catatonic, Frodo was catatonic. I knew he was alive because his little body was still warm, I could feel his chest move, and every so often I could see him blink and wiggle his nose.

We had rented a motel room for the weekend. After our long, action-filled day on the water I was looking forward to simple things like stationary floors and chairs that didn't rock. When we arrived at the motel, I placed Frodo on the floor in the middle of our room. I put Frodo's bed, a pillow wrapped in his favorite blanket, next to ours. Normally, he would have walked over to it and snuggled-up for a snooze. I knew something was not right when he simply flopped in place when I let him down, and didn't even flinch whenever we walked over him as we moved around the room.

I knew he must be hungry and thirsty. I filled his food and water dishes and placed them beside his bed – no response. Hoping to coax him to come to me, I splashed the water in his dish around with my finger and called his name. This time my efforts paid-off with a flicker of acknowledgment. He twitched his ears and opened his eyes. Without moving his head, he looked sideways at me, and then quickly closed his eyes again. I decided to let him be, but kept a close watch on him.

Eventually, about half an hour later, thirst won out. Frodo got up and scampered to the opposite edge of the room. Leaning his body against the wall for support, he began a slow journey around the room. Walking under the furniture and wobbling around obstacles like table legs, but not leaving the security of the wall for long. He finally managed to reach his water dish. Standing on unsteady legs, he gulped down half of its contents. Without bothering to even step backwards, he simply flopped right down on the floor again, his nose nuzzling the side of his water dish.

Seeing his plight, I plucked him off the floor, gently placed him in his doggy-bed, and consoled him with a kiss on the top of his head. After witnessing Frodo's bizarre behavior, my hubby came and sat down on the floor next to us. He padded Frodo on the head, concern written all over his face, and asked me what was wrong with our doggy. He's seasick, I announced. I knew this would be distressing news. On our trip up the previous night he had enthusiastically predicted how much fun Frodo and I were going to have cruising around in our new boat for summers to come.

Unless they made Dramamine in doggy doses, Frodo's seafaring days were over. Frodo was a landlubber. Had he been around in Noah's day, he, like the unicorn, would have missed the boat. They say, every dog has his day. Frodo could certainly attest to the accuracy of this adage, only in reverse. He had certainly had one hell of a day. There was no getting around it, the ForCynthia was not for Frodo.

By Cynthia Nill

Of Mice and Men

After conducting an informal survey of my friends I learned that most of them have phobias of one sort of another; and in many cases, about one sort of creature or another. For some, the thought of snakes slithering slowly by sends shivers up their shins. Others say that spiders spinning, silky webs make their sinuses sputter. My particular brand of mental-meltdown causing creatures is of the rodent variety. I’m mouseophobic. I’m not talking mildly mouse dreading. This is the real thing – sweaty palms, blurred vision, hysterical babbling, climb on furniture, move out of the house there is a mouse in it type of lunatic behavior.

This particular mouse saga started quite a few years ago in my old house, the post civil war, 1864-built farm house I used to call home. It was a charming house, but like most old houses, not mouse proof. The master bedroom in that house had a set of French doors that I enjoyed leaving open to let in the warm summer breezes and the accompanying night sounds, frogs, crickets, and unfortunately, also the high pitched sonar sound of the bats flying around my backyard hunting their evening meal of mosquitoes and moths. On the particular night in question, I was talking on the phone in my bedroom when motion caught the corner of my eye. I looked just in time to see a black blob race across my bedroom door in the hallway. I let out a blood curdling scream. The person on the other end of the line was now deaf and a hair away from having a heart attack. “A mouse,” I blurted into the receiver in a feeble attempt to explain my bizarre behavior. After making my apologies and a hurried good-bye, I called my significant other. “I have a mouse in the house.” That cryptic statement was sufficient explanation, since Chuck was well aware of my irrational behavior where mice were concerned. “I’ll be right over,” said the resigned voice on the other end of the line. And over he came, armed with small Styrofoam squares filled with a buttery looking substance and pieces of cardboard. Chuck is a non-violent, scholarly, tree-hugging , kind-hearted type of person. “What are those?” I asked. “They’re mouse traps,” he explained. “The Styrofoam dishes are filled with a sticky substance with food pellets over it. The notion is that the mouse goes to eat the food and gets stuck on the glue; then you just throw out the dish – mouse and all.”

“You mean YOU throw out the dish with the mouse,” I confirmed. He also brought a variation on the butter dish trap theme. These were rectangular pieces of cardboard that folded into a tent. The inside of the bottom of the cardboard had glue, with food stuck on that for bait. This was supposed to trap the unsuspecting mouse when it walked into it to chow-down on the food.

 Chuck strategically placed the traps around the house and assured me that soon my mouse problem would be taken care of. The following morning I found one of the butter-dish traps stuck to the upstairs wrought iron banister scrollwork. Overnight, the mouse had, in fact, attached itself to the baited trap. It had also managed to drag itself and the contraption across the hallway and around the corner to the stairway, work its body through the spaces in the scrollwork by using it as a lever, and unglue itself from the sticky trap. I was in really big trouble. Not only did I have a sticky footed mouse running around my house, I had the world’s only problem-solving rodent sharing the same real estate.

 Later that day, John, a friend of many years, stopped over. John is an outdoorsman, a fisherman, and a hunter, in other words, a professionally trained critter eliminator. I told him about my mouse adventures. After he stopped laughing – I don’t think he quite saw my mouse problem in the same light as I did – he said: “your problem is that you have whimpy traps. What you need are ‘manly’ traps.”

So, off to the store he went and returned with the old-fashioned, crush their skull so hard that their eyes spring out of their sockets, type of traps. He set them in strategic spots around the house, practically side-by-side of the other traps.

I now had two problems on my hands: I was still sharing my house with a sentient mouse, and I had a mousetrap competition between a good friend and my boyfriend – manly traps versus whimpy traps. Days went by with nary a mousus corpus. The Einstein of mice eluded brain and brawn … for a while. One of the traps finally did get the creepy critter. But I’ll never tell which.

By Cynthia Nill

Chinch Bugs and Alien Pods

My first summer in my new-built house was 1999. That year we had an unusually hot and wet summer. It took a while for my builder to get his crew over to set up my landscaping, so it wasn’t until July that the newly formed flowerbeds finally stood in place and ready to house baby bushes and small ornamental trees. In they went, in 90-degree heat – not ideal conditions for the survival of both, the people planting, or the shrubbery struggling to stay alive in the horrid, humid, heat. But both, the people and the plants managed to survive, without respectively, passing out or drying up.

After months of mud, or dust – depending on the rainfall – my yard awaited the big event – HYDROSEEDING! In two weeks, I was told, I would begin to see baby blades of grass start to sprout. And sprout they did. But then, instead of growing healthy and multiplying, my budding lawn started to resemble the head of hair of a middle-aged man – wispy and thin (whoops, sorry middle age male friends).

I was heartbroken. In a panic, I rushed to the phone and called the lawn people to find out what was going on. My lawn was dying before even getting established. The problem plaguing my fledgling lawn turned out to be a mite-sized beetle called a chinch bug. Chinch bugs don’t usually hang around in Michigan; they like it better down South where they eat grass in the comfort of stifling heat and high humidity. But that year’s Michigan summer did the stifling heat with high humidity thing – hence, chinch bugs gnawing on tender grass roots – in particular – my grass’ tender fledgling roots.

Thanks to the ministrations of a professional lawn service, the story has a happy ending. Well, happy for the lawn, the chinch bugs are grass-root chomping in the Elysian Fields’ lawn.

ALIEN PODS

The same hot and humid summer weather that invited chinch bugs to Michigan that year brought another strange life form to my yard – alien pods.

It started out as a perfectly normal sunny, summer, Sunday morning. One of my favorite endeavors to relax is to putts in the yard, pruning plants, weeding, planting plants, etc. And this is what I was doing on that particular Sunday morning.

As I walked around the northeast side of my house I noticed something weird on the mulch in the flowerbed. The something was a roundish mass of . . . “something,” about two feet in diameter, of a nondescript yellow-gray color, that looked sort of like some giant animal had decided to . . . well . . . to vomit in my flower bed.

Not wanting to deal with the “something” at too close a range, I reasoned that the best way to dispose of it would be to hose it down. I armed myself with the hose of destruction and set the nozzle to the jet stream setting. I stood at, what I deemed, a prudent distance away from the “something,” and blasted a stream of water at it.

And puff! The “something” exploded into a huge cloud of red-rust colored dust. I now knew what I was dealing with. The “something” was really an alien pod. Since I had been exposed to the otherworldly dust I probably had taken at least five years off of my expected life span, or, “a la X–Files,” I was going to undergo some sort of transfiguration into some tentacled, bug-eyed alien spawn, or, I would be dropping dead at any minute. Since the damage was already done, I figured that I might as well just keep on blasting the thing until disintegrating all of it. The red-rust colored cloud of alien pod dust billowed heavenward. The cloud’s size grew as I relentlessly blasted the thing into dust. I continued to hose the area down long after the pod had dissipated.

Later that day I ran into my next door neighbor and told him about my mysterious morning experience with the alien pod.

“It’s not an alien pod,” my neighbor said. “I saw the red dust cloud you made by hosing it down this morning. It’s a mold. Harmless, but annoying.”

“A mold? What kind of a mold? I’ve never seen anything like it. Are you sure it’s not an alien pod?”

“I’m sure,” he assured me. “We had some of the stuff in the mulch in our flowerbed. I called my lawn and garden expert person and asked him about it. He said it was a mold that happens in mulch under the right warmth and humidity conditions. It’s commonly known as ‘dog vomit.’ The best way to get rid of it is to get under it with a shovel and very carefully remove it without disturbing it. Otherwise you spread it,” he chortled, knowing that I had done precisely that – spread the revolting mold spores all over the mulch in my flowerbed by hosing it down.

I spent the rest of the summer carefully removing “dog vomit” mold growths from my flowerbed with a shovel. Ahh, the joys of gardening.!

By Cynthia Nill

Where Have All The Hostas Gone?

My previous house was surrounded by over an acre of beautiful tall trees. In summer they offered the gift of their shade and cloaked the house with a canopy of privacy. Besides the mountain of discarded leaves in the fall, the only drawback to this idyllic arboreal setting was that I could only grow shade-loving plants in my yard. Grass is not a shade loving plant. On one of the areas in my yard where the trees were particularly thick and therefore devoid of grass, I decided to plant a shade garden.

I trotted off to the library to research what types of plants thrive in Michigan in the shade. Armed with my checkbook and newfound knowledge, I headed to the nearest nursery. Hardy and attractive, hostas, impatiens, and violets were among the shade-loving perennials that I decided would be an attractive mix to adorn the barren areas under my trees. Much poorer monetarily, but rich with the spirit of getting in touch with nature, I spent the next few days planting and tenderly caring for my new leafy charges. Over the following couple of weeks I lovingly tended to my new garden’s every need. I watered, weeded, fertilized and fussed over my delicate and expensive horticultural Eden. My shade garden was shaping up nicely. Then disaster struck.

One morning, coffee cup in hand, I walked out to my lovely garden to admire my babies. To my horror, what I saw instead of healthy new plants were violet and hosta stumps. All that was left of my colorful impatients were half-inch stems sticking out of the ground. I couldn’t understand what could have caused so much damage. I knew that I had the offspring of about the twentieth generation of resident bunnies frolicking in the yard, but I couldn’t imagine how they could have caused that much damage. Closer inspection and my superior sleuthing abilities soon revealed the culprit. The evidence was clear. There, between the hosta stumps, hoof prints told the story of the sad demise of my lovely shade garden. Overnight, deer had discovered the delectable delight of dining on my hostas.

Almost in tears I ran into the house. I had to somehow save what was left of my shade garden. I searched through my personal phone book and listed the friends and acquaintances I could contact who might have suggestions on how to rid myself of my unwelcome nocturnal dining guests.

The first person I called was a friend who is a deer hunter. After all, who would better know the habits of the hoofed creatures than their predators? “What you need to do,” he said, “is to run some heavy duty extension cords to the area and buy one of those lights that is triggered by motion. Install the light on one of the trees and plug it into the extension cord. When the deer walk into the area the light will go off and startle them.” My friend’s advice sounded beyond my abilities in its complexity, plus I doubted that it would be very effective. First of all, the distance between the nearest electrical outlet and the nibbled plant area would have required about six, 25-foot extension cords. Installing motion sensitive lights in a tree with branches that sway with every breeze was not going to work. The lights would be triggered every time a branch moved. Offering the deer light by which to better see what they were eating was not what I had in mind. I thanked my friend for his advice and dialed the next person on my list.

The next friend I spoke with told me to put nails, bolts and screws in soda cans and string them intermittently on a long cord. Then, I should suspend the can-strewn cord at deer chest-height from the tree branches in a large circle around the garden area. When the deer walked into the garden they would run into the can corded area and the bolts inside the cans would jiggle, making a clanking sound that would scare off the intruders.

It didn’t sound pretty, but it just might work. I raided the house for empty beverage cans, searched the premises for spare nuts and bolts, found some twine, and set out to follow my friend’s instructions. When I was done, my trees had corded can streamers hanging off of them in a vigilant circle. I was right about it not looking pretty. But no matter, it was worth putting up with ugly if it meant saving my babies. It rained that night and all of the following day. Floating nails and nuts don’t make noise, they just sort of soosh around. The only thing the suspended cans were repelling was me, because the trapped water in the cans was serving as an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. The can thing was a bad idea. Meanwhile, with each passing day, my plants showed signs of new nibbles.

I was back to square one. I called the next person on my phone list. “Call the Cooperative Extension Service,” I was told by my learned friend. “They specialize in every conceivable calamity that might befall the weary gardener. I’m sure they can help you.”

“Gosh, why hadn’t I thought of that? Thank you. I will call them right away.” So, I called the Cooperative Extension Service and asked the kind lady who answered the phone, what, short of a high powered rifle, would be an effective deterrent for the hoofed creatures who were using my garden as a Bambi salad bar. The lady was very sympathetic. She promised to research my problem and get back to me with an answer. About an hour later she called me with advise that was touted as a sure fire way of ridding myself of my four-legged foes. “Hang soap bars from tree branches. The more perfumed the better. The deer will smell the perfumed soap and will be immediately repelled by it. They don’t like unnatural odors.” I thanked her, grabbed my purse, and headed for the nearest shopper’s bulk warehouse.

I bought a case of soap and a lot of twine. I spent the rest of the day tying soap bars to long strands of twine and hanging them from every tree branch within reach in my yard. By the end of the day I had a yard full of swaying soap bars. It was a very strange sight. The dangling bars looked like a pagan offering meant to pacify the ire of the gods of cleanliness.

A couple of days later my lawn service people came to cut the grass. At first, the four men who made up the crew went about their business of cutting the lawn, dodging the hanging soap bars as best they could. A little while later, however, I looked out the back window and saw the four men talking in a huddled circle surrounded by the suspended soap bars. It was a strange and almost eerie sight. The men looked like the trapped victims of some odd pagan ritual trying to plot their escape.

Later on, when one of the men came to the door to collect their payment, I noticed that he was somewhat hesitant and looking at me with suspicion. I’m sure he was concerned about how safe it was to approach me unarmed – just in case I was not just nuts, but also violent. I paid him, offering no explanation about my unusual yard decorations. Sometimes it’s easier to leave bad enough alone. This was one such time.

Over the next couple of weeks the puzzlement of the lawn service people was echoed in the reactions I received from friends who came to visit me. They would look at the soap bars, and then silently look at me expecting an answer to their obvious puzzlement. When no explanation was forthcoming, they would finally give in and blurt out, “OK, what’s with the hanging...are those soap bars?” I was really getting very good at giving, what by now was turning into a stock answer... “I like clean plants.”

I left the soap bars up for a few weeks in the hope that they would render my shade garden less appetizing for my midnight raiders. I inspected the area every morning only to find new hoof prints under the soap bars. Besides looking incredibly stupid, the only thing that the hanging soap accomplished was to give me the cleanest plant stubs in the county. After weeks of effort I knew I had been beaten. I collected the soap bars and stopped tending my demolished shade garden for the year. I would let the deer have their way with my hostas and violets.

The following spring, while raking the previous fall’s leftover leaves, I made an unexpected discovery. There, under the cover of last year’s leaves, the unmistakable sprouts of hosta leaves were popping up from the ground. In disbelief, I carefully uncovered the area where I had planted the violets. There too, little shoots were inching out into the warmth of spring. The damage the deer had caused was only surface deep. The roots of my plants were established and the munching deer had only managed to prune the foliage part of the plants.

Although one year later, my shade garden had turned into a success story after all. The deer didn’t come back into my yard after the fiasco of that first year. It’s not that anything I did had any effect in deterring them from their dining pursuits. They had simply probably found better munchies elsewhere in the neighborhood. But, the hosta-eating deer experience had served its purpose. I had learned a great deal about nature and its resilience.

By Cynthia Nill

Not Your Mother's Mashed Potatoes

My first cooking experience was an inedible disaster. Well, sort of. Daddy, bless his hungry soul, ate it. I was fifteen. It was late morning and my folks had gone to Heredia (in Costa Rica), the nearest small city from the coffee plantation where we lived. Mommy (the term I used to refer to my grandmother) called to tell me that they had just learned that one of our distant relatives had died and they were going to go to the funeral service, which was to take place within the hour. Would I help her by making mashed potatoes so that she could then whip up some sort of meat to go with it to help get dinner underway, since they were going to be delayed.

“Sure,” I said. “How do I make them?”

“Easy. Take half a dozen potatoes, peel them, put enough water in the pan to cover the potatoes, boil them until they are cooked, mash them, put some milk, butter, salt and pepper, and they are ready,” she explained.

“Sounds easy enough,” I said in my innocence, and cheerfully proceeded to the kitchen to embark on my first culinary adventure. I had written down her instructions verbatim, so I knew that all would be well. I dove into the task with enthusiasm. I managed to peel the potatoes without adding any skin to the mix, found the pan, filled it with water and followed her instructions to the letter.

The end result of my efforts looked nothing like mommy’s mashed potatoes. I couldn’t understand why my labors had produced such disappointing results. Potato soup, sort of, was the product of my hard work. I was baffled, heartbroken, crushed. I had so wanted my first plunge into the world of food preparation to be an epicurean success. Instead, I had taken a dive into a food flop sinkhole.

When my folks returned home they were met by a scene more depressing than the funeral they had just attended. I was almost tearful, and they were faced with the prospect of ingesting something that was a cross between glue and mush.

“I did exactly what you told me to do,” I told mommy in self defense. “I don’t know what went wrong.”

Looking at the sad concoction in the pot mommy asked, “You didn’t drain the water after you boiled the potatoes?”

“Was I supposed to? You didn’t tell me to,” I protested in self defense.

“Of course you’re supposed to,” she said while looking heavenward. I guess she was looking for guidance from the almighty god in charge of teenagers for a hint as to how to deal with a well meaning, though totally kitchen inept granddaughter.

“Aaaiii!, was her only comment before proceeding to take control of the kitchen, a world she was so at ease in and from which such an array of delicious and nutritious meals emanated from as if by magic.

Daddy, on the other hand, looked at the mixture and, without saying a word, poured some into a bowl, got a spoon out of the drawer and sat down at the kitchen table and tasted the soupy potato concoction. “It’s not that bad,” he said, and proceeded to actually eat the full bowl-worth of potato mush. I don’t know if he was trying to make me feel better, or if he was so hungry that he thought, what the hell, it won’t kill me. I will never know, but I suspect that it was a combination of hunger and his ability to eat pretty much anything. He was the opposite of a picky eater. Pretty much anything was fair game for him.

I’ve come a long way from that first failed attempt at cooking. It’s been a journey with many a bump and an equal amount of lumps. But it’s been a fun and, at times, tasty ride too.

By Cynthia Nill