Day: September 12, 2019

MJ’s Musings: Early Bird or Night Owl?

I am what is known as an early bird. I get up early. It’s my best time to think because the distractions of the day haven’t yet attacked.

But I often wonder if I am naturally an early bird or was my circadian rhythm warped by my upbringing. When I was a child, even a teenager who often babysat until the wee hours of the morning, my mother made sure I was out of bed by 9AM every morning. People who lingered in bed were lazy and slothful.

Part of this could be my dad having to get up at 4AM to work in a factory every day. So naturally bedtimes at our house were early.  I get that.

But since being an adult and with my children adults, too, when I’m not bound by the alarm for the day job, I do tend to stay up later at night–and to write and write well.  So perhaps my natural cycle is that of a night owl.

Maybe when I retire I’ll find out.

MJ Monday: MJ’s Movies-Plan Nine from Outer Space.

Plan Nine from Outer Space  makes nearly all of the Worst Movies Ever Made lists. It remains my benchmark for the kind of campy monster movies I love.  Written and directed by Edward D. Wood Jr., this movie is both delightful and dreadful.

Bela Lugosi died during the filming of Plan Nine. Wood replaced Lugosi with his wife’s chiropractor (who in no way physically resembled Lugosi) for the remainder of the movie rather than refilm Lugosi’s scenes.

Space aliens, zombies, even a vampire or two populate this  ambitious movie. It is a classic film, but not in the way Wood intended.

 

#UpbeatAuthors: Saying Good Morning

My husband has a pet peeve. If someone can’t be bothered to say, “Good morning,” or otherwise acknowledge you–even a “Hi!” will do–he thinks poorly of that person. If someone always greeted him, he maintains a good impression of that person.

I always try to say good morning to the people with whom I work. I also try to say, “Have a nice night,” when I’m leaving.

Being friendly doesn’t take a lot of effort.

Laptop Keyboards

I recently purchased a new lap top computer because the old one was on the verge of dying. Better safe than sorry. I actually purchased two of them. I returned the first one because it didn’t have enough RAM for its operating system. Go figure. I do like the second one I purchased except for one thing:

The placement of the mouse.

It is off center.  Okay, it’s centered to the “typewriter” portion of the keyboard, but as someone who uses both the letters and the number pad, having the mouse too far to the right is frustrating.

Y-Chromo assured me it was a “learning curve” thing and I would get used to it. Seven months have passed. I have not gotten used to it. I hate it. The position creates all kinds of havoc.

Example: six of the top ten most used letters in the English language are typed with the left hand. The top three letters used in English are left-hand letters on the QWERTY keyboard. Twelve percent of the letters in our alphabet are used 29.12% of the time.  (I used a calculator to do the math.) So my palm hits the mouse more than one fourth of time because I type those three letters! No wonder my cursor never stays where I leave it.

Click and drag? Somehow I’m always on the right side of the mouse.

I am right handed. That means when I use the mouse to navigate my screen, I used my right hand. The left side of the mouse is too far away from my right hand, so I’m always on the right side of the mouse.

When I mentioned how I didn’t like the mouse placement to the clerk at the store where I purchased the computer, he assured me all computer were now designed like this.

I cannot be the only person who finds this design flaw frustrating.

I know of two solutions.

  1. Get an external mouse and plug it in to a USB port (which are on the wrong side of this computer for a mouse). But the point of a lap top is portability. I already have too much stuff to haul around. I’m constantly looking for ways to reduce, not increase.
  2. Teach myself to mouse with my left hand–which I have done. When my “tennis elbow” was so bad, my physical therapist had me move the mouse on my work computer to the left side. I was actually fairly proficient.

Any suggestions?

 

Happy Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day 2018

Yes! It’s National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day again. I’m still addicted, but I have changed my recipe a little since last year.

Instead of using regular butter, I now use Chef Shamy Garlic Butter with Parmesan and Basil. Yes, I order this from Amazon because no store in my area carries it. One of my cousins (God bless my cousins!) posted about this product on Facebook last year. Thank you, Kevin!

Grilled cheese sandwiches with roasted red pepper and tomato soup have became a staple on the dinner table at my house.

How do you like your grilled cheese?