condimentia

I just returned from Palm Springs where I spent 10 days touring neighborhoods. It was 114 on some days. I was stunned how many idiots had perfectly landscaped traditional grass lawns and trimmed hedgerows, completely out of place in the environment. They stood out as eyesores to me, compared to the area-specific landscaping with desert landscaping, succulents, smoke trees, and the like. Those yards were stunning. The grass lawns, which were the only lawns I saw with sprinklers going -- they just didn't belong.

Oh for sure, mine as well. Phil Dunphy replaced Michael Bluth.

I shall print this and put it next to my phone for my weekly phone call with my mother. She has a computer, an iPad and a smart phone, and understands none of them, and needs weekly tutorials. Loves them. Understands nothing. Retains nothing. Next call is "Darling, can you remind how to download and find my pictures? They are gone again." We just use the word "magic" for any process she doesn't understand. Never quits trying, but literally retains nothing. Sometimes I think it's an act to get me to help her, which I patiently do. She has decided the best innovation in the world is the Internet, and the second best is GotoMyPc so that her daughter can log in from 3,000 miles away and download her pictures for her, or update her programs, or close out those scary warnings that pop up and invade her serenity. She has determined that if I used GotoMyPC on my computer, and linked it to her 30 or so senior citizen friends, I'd be a millionaire by taking care of them. She's not wrong, but I'd be in prison for murder before the first check. I read /r/oldpeoplefacebook even when it's painful, just to remind myself I'm not alone in the world, taking care of my mother's online computing needs.

I used to have kick a lot of angry people out of our office. I used to also get quite a few nutters in off the streets looking for a lawyer, when our law office was in a street level office on a busy urban street.

Two of the most memorable requests were for attorneys who could help with 1) proving that all Asians were trying to poison Caucasians and 2) Prove ownership of all the undeveloped portions of the United States because he was a descendent of Abraham Lincoln and had inherited those lands from Abe.

I used to send them to the nearby police station by telling them "there is a special department which handles that specific problem. Go to the officers and ask for directions to Department 5150."

The only critters my PAIR of cats ever brought home:

1. Dead frogs. Completely flattened, presumably from the road.
2. Dead dragonflies. They hated no living thing more than a dragonfly, and would be making epic somersaults and back flips, Matrix style, to catch them in flight, and then bring them in and drop them at my feet. Or pillow.

Never, a mouse. Not one mouse.