Enjoying What We Have While We Can

Spring has been slow to arrive where I live. The trees have only started to flower recently. In other years the magnolia in my yard has opened its blossoms in March; this year many of the buds were frost burned. We were still having hard freezes and snow up until mid-April this year.

Spring, when it comes, still comes with a vengeance, and we already have had days with temperatures in the 80s (aka 27 degrees centigrade).

Although I know people who much prefer to exercise indoors, I prefer to walk outside where it is possible to enjoy the wind, the sounds, and the sights. When I lift weights at the local community center, which is located next to the Missouri River, I prefer to stand in front of a window so that I can look outside at the same time.

I don't usually let the weather deter me when I walk. Windy and cold may not be as pleasant, but it still feels good to be outside in the weather, especially for someone who once stood guard outside on a regular basis as I did in Montana and England.

It sometimes surprises me how much my military training has remained with me even though almost fifty years have passed since my enlistment. One thing I learned is to be prepared for the weather, and for that reason, I have been known to carry several coats, of varying weight, in my car, along with gloves, scarves, and hats.

I can start carrying fewer coats now, except for a light jacket for the evenings and a rain jacket.

Maintaining a Clean Computer Desktop

The picture of my two computer screens proves that a clean desktop is important to me. One of the first things I do when I get a new computer is remove the desktop icons. I much prefer having my active programs appear on the taskbar.

Once I started using Windows 8.1, I searched Google for a Start Button and downloaded one so that I can easily access those most recently used programs. When I need to access a program used less frequently, such as Super AntiSpyware, I click on the Desktop toolbar and scroll up to what I want or use the Programs folder available through the Start button. It took much longer to find the utility program that would allow the taskbar to appear on both screens. I recommend downloading ZBar for those people with two screens.

Once when I was having a technician from Microsoft figure out why Microsoft Word was not accessible on my computer after its most recent update, the technician had a problem in negotiating my old laptop at first and had to make the desktop icons visible. On another occasion, when my son, who was studying networking in college at the time, was trying to use my computer, he couldn’t figure out how to find Google Chrome. It’s amusing how people can find my arrangement confusing.

A supervisor of mine used to keep a number of Word documents visible on her desktop. It always amazed me how cluttered she kept her desktop. Her computer had the appearance of a busy person when really all of those files simply got in the way.

I’m an advocate for keeping one’s desktop as clean as possible. I think of my desktop as a kind of gallery, and I usually make one of my recent pictures as the desktop background. While my wife has a number of pictures that make up her background, with the picture changing every few minutes, I prefer to keep the picture on my background stationary.

My Dad was capable of fixing several different things, such as lamps, furniture, watches, TVs, and radios. My handiwork, or tinkering, seems to be limited to computers.

A Grading Fool

It isn’t like me to neglect my blog for so long. I describe myself as an infrequent blogger at Bandcamp and Twitter, where I am known as firstcitybook (LibraryThing and Soundcloud know me as firstcitybook as well). Usually, I am known to post at least once a month if not twice a month.

My life since late January has been devoted to grading essays. I have graded about 120 up to this point in the semester. I got about forty more essays earlier this week, and if no one withdraws from my course before the withdrawal deadline and if the students enrolled remain active, I can expect to grade about 200 essays this semester. My current teaching schedule, nonetheless, is lighter than it used to be. One difference now is my spending more time in bed. I used to survive on four or five hours of sleep a night but can no longer sustain that schedule in my middle 60's.

I am not sure how many essays I have graded in my thirty-two years of teaching. If every section of English that I taught required that I grade 100 essays, and since I have taught, approximately, 219 sections of English in my lifetime, I have graded about 21,900 essays. Some semesters I taught a section of creative writing, so my figures are only rough estimates. A more accurate figure may be less than 19,000 essays because some sections also had less than twenty-five students. Even so, I have spent a lot of time grading essays late into the night.