Spring Has Sprung!
Fri., March 23, 02:49 PM
About twenty years ago, I was the telephone administrator (among other tasks) for the small company where I worked. I operated a large console from which I could not only answer and direct calls, but I also controlled the displays on everybody else's phone.
When the time came, I used the software to change from Standard to Daylight Savings Time. It worked beautifully — on every phone but the console. I just could not fix my own phone.
So I called my instructor at the phone company, and she told me what to do. “You take a bent paper clip… ” Yeah, that's right; state-of-the-art electronics, and you adjust it manually.
Now that Daylight Savings Time is back, I am once again reminded of the state-of-the-art electronics. We bought an “astral” clock last year, one of those that is automatically corrected by a satellite as it passes over your location. We had no problem with it in October, but this spring the time changes earlier. We have tried to fix it a couple of times, but evidently the satellite doesn't know that people have been playing around with the changes. We have two choices: We can turn it onto manual, in which case it will not correct automatically. Or we can wait until next month, remembering that it's an hour slow, and see whether it will fix on its own.
I am just so happy to see signs of spring. I don't need an alarm clock to wake up on time. My basement is slowly getting warmer, and soon I will be able to do laundry without wearing a hat and coat. Good news comes to me in the spring as well.
I had a phone call from our accountant, to say that we won't have to itemize this year (maybe that means he can charge less?) and, in any case, we will get back most of what we paid to the IRS. Nice.
I had another phone call, from my primary doctor. I had gone for another set of blood work, and she had the results. Blood sugar remains stable. I'm still anemic, but no more than before. It seems that “stable” is the word the doctors use to describe me more than anything else. The best news is that my cholesterol levels have gone down. Since Dr. H. was worried about that — and I was just as worried about having to take some sort of statin — that is good news indeed.
U.D., cleaning out some old files, found a picture I thought I had lost. (Actually, I know where it is; I uploaded it to Diaryland when I had a gold membership, and forgot to retrieve it before I let the membership lapse.) I need to put it back into the post I had attached it to.
Here it is, anyhow.
I would date this about 1941, since I am the baby. It was taken with an old box camera; I never could take a picture with that thing. My mother said I was funny-looking, but my dad — holding me here — always said, “but she was lovable”. (So was he!)
Happy spring!
