Musician's Widow

I had one of those days. One where I considered disposing of all forms of technology and adopting a life of pen and paper and nothing more high tech than a transistor radio.

It all started with my laptop. I have a love/hate relationship with my laptop. I love having it and how it lets me work from anywhere. I hate it because sometimes it seems determined to not let me work at all.

My power cord hasn’t played nice with my laptop in a couple.months, so that’s been an issue. Then it decided to shut off randomly (despite actually be plugged in properly!) on its own without warning. Then it decided not to read CDs. Then it locked up forcing me to hard reboot… three times.

Finally I got it to work, but not before losing hours of work time.

Then my phone failed me.

My husband played the Opry tonight. Since I am out of town for work, I knew I would listen via the Opry Droid App. Worked fantastic last time!

I tuned in about 10 minutes early, getting a little bummed to not be there. My husband’s group took stage and I cranked up the volume. Not even halfway through the first song, my phone peeped low battery and locked up. Music stopped and nothing was bringing it back.

I dashed to my laptop to listen online. I kept clicking “listen live” and nothing happened. Then I noticed I had to choose a player. I didn’t care! Just PLAY. My first player choice didn’t work. The second started, but was so low in volume it wasn’t worth it.

I went back to my phone. Finally it reloaded the app and let me listen… halfway through the second song. I was soooo glad to be listening in again, but I’d missed so much I still wanted to cry.

I heard the last of their set, and as I closed the app, my phone locked up so bad I had to pull the battery out to reboot it!! All while pouting for missing so much of the Opry. It was the last straw.  I am planning to avoid technology for awhile.  Technology hates me today, and, frankly, I hate it right back at the moment. I think we need to take a break for awhile. Don’t call me, I’ll call you kind of thing.

So a break it is…

…for a few hours.

Happy Veteran’s Day!  Is that a proper greeting for this holiday? I have no idea… but its a day we need to take to pause and reflect on our soldiers — past, present and future.

God bless our soldiers. The men and women who protect this country. Who ensure our freedoms and provide us protection.

God bless our vets, who have gone into battle and conflict, paving the way of where we are today.

God bless those who dream of some day defending this country, stepping up and continuing the tradition of greatness.

God bless the families of those men and women who serve — for while they may not be in uniform, they give a lot, too.

Sadly, as we rely on our military to protect us, we consistently turn our backs on them upon their return home. Veteran’s Day is a day set aside to honor them, but what do we do instead? We focus on Christmas sales, and shopping. We go to our jobs and MAYBE make note of an American flag somewhere. We drive by VFW halls and not once pause to consider what “V.F.W.” means.

We live our lives without noticing the many veterans who stand among us, struggling to fit into civilian life. We cruise through Nov. 11th as if it were just some day of the week. We turn our backs on our veterans in hospitals, nursing homes, or even those who end up homeless for various reasons. We ignore them, even as we’ve so heavily relied on them to keep us safe. To let us sleep in peace at night.

Perhaps it could be argued that if we don’t feel the need to pause and take note, it means they’ve done their jobs. It’s like you always experience: no one notices when you do a good job, but they sure as hell notice every time you make a mistake!! But in the case of our military, that’s unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.

You don’t have to be best friends with a veteran. You don’t even have to agree with them on any topic. But you have to respect and thank them for their service to our country. They ensure us the freedom to do as we please, when we please. They even give us the freedom to ignore them, should we so choose.

Though, I, for one, choose to say THANK YOU. How about you?

My parents took me tonight to pick out my birthday present — new clothes! YAY! However, while shopping, it was impossible to ignore all the Christmas music coming through the speakers. It was off-putting to say the least. A friend of mine that works in retail reported last night that in her store, every other song is now Christmas music. By the time December 25th arrives, I fear she might find a way to short-out the sound system in her store.

I can’t say I blame her.

See, I like Thanksgiving. A lot. But with everyone (read: retail) in such a hurry to get to Christmas, it feels like the holiday gets lost. Halloween is huge, then Christmas is huge, but Thanksgiving… well, it’s practically ignored. It’s such an important holiday — it’s a time to take a moment and count your blessings — yet instead, the focus is on buying stuff. Buy, buy, buy! Spend! Spend! spend! Yes, its all about giving gifts to our loved ones, which is not a BAD thing, but I don’t think burying the importance of Thanksgiving is good either.

It wasn’t even Halloween yet, and Target already had half their seasonal section selling Christmas decorations. I wasn’t happy about that, but it was also all to the back of the store and it wasn’t the focus. Tonight, every store we went into had Christmas decorations up, and Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

The sad thing is that I found myself singing along! I felt I should be shot myself for being dragged into that. Grrrr… Evil retail mind washing. I love Christmas music, but not in early November. Let me enjoy Fall and Thanksgiving, please, first.

Thank you.

Every business has its hours of operation, and they exist for a reason. In the service industry, the hours of operation are not necessarily the “work hours” of employees.

I work occasionally at a bar in downtown Nashville. Sometimes, I am serving food. Other times, I bartend. Occasionally, I bar back. Our hours are generally 8 pm to 2:30 am… ish. However, we arrive by 7:30 pm to set up and leave sometimes as late as 5 am.

It baffles me when I work serving food how often people show up around 7:45 and are shocked to find that there isn’t any food cooked. My frier is cold, water to make hot dogs cold, and chili… you guessed it… cold. My cash drawer is being set up. My sign isn’t even out yet. But they want food right now.

It always takes a lot for me to not snap, “Its not ready because we aren’t open yet! Do you go home, open your refrigerator and miraculously a meal appears on your table fully cooked? If it does, I want your house! But my guess is it doesn’t work that way, nor does it work that way here.”

No, instead I smile and ask that they wait. Occasionally, I’ve opted to ignore them until 8 pm and I’m open. Either way, I bite my tongue and keep my rant in my brain.

Okay, and it might make its way to Twitter.

And this blog.

But I don’t name names.

This time.

Nonetheless, people need to realize that for restaurants, stores, etc. to operate, they have a period of prep time and clean-up. This allows them the best chance to serve you properly. It’s important… respect that.

This morning, as my husband and I were on a nice drive through the country, a car started to tailgate us. My husband commented that they needed to back off, and we were frustrated at how they were driving. It’s not like we could do anything on a two lane road with a car in front of us, but still the girl stayed right on our back bumper.

We turned; she turned. We stopped at a stop sign, then went when it was clear. She, however, cruised right through it behind us. We finally opened up to a four-lane and were glad she’d be passing. She didn’t get in any hurry to pass, though. We were slowing down to enter a parking lot when she finally cruised past.

That was when I saw it. Right there in the middle of her back window. A Longhorn sticker.

I have a Former Student sticker for Texas A&M on my back window.

*sigh*

This is not the first time I’ve had a Longhorn tailgate me (which is amusing considering that I’ve never been known to be “slow.”) I’ve had a Longhorn heckle me in bumper to bumper traffic through an open window. When in college, I even had someone try to run me off the road, flashing a horns symbol at me as I tried not to go into the ditch and hit a road sign.

At the heart of it all, these events scare me even more than they anger me.

Seriously, I am the first to say Texas is a good school. I respect the school and the education people get there. The rivalry, for me, generally exists on the field. And as I said in a previous entry, I’ve always viewed that particular rivalry as one that has an undertone of respect (unlike other rivalries).

Sadly, you do have those on both sides that fail to remember that, and therein lies my fear. Its to those people, I plead… no matter what, keep it off the highway. A school rivalry is NOT worth someone’s life — be it you, your rival or an innocent bystander. We all put stickers on our vehicles to personalize them, to show allegiance to our schools, organizations, businesses, politics, etc. They are not there to be used as a target. Don’t tailgate, heckle, cut-off, or try to sideswipe someone because of their school allegiance. That’s dangerous and has potential consequences that are bigger than any rivalry.

So to the young woman who chose to tailgate us on the way home… grow up. We’re not even in Texas. We’re not playing today. I have nothing against you personally. I actually respect your school (just not the actions of people like, well, you.) And, at the end of it all, my vehicle is over twice as big as yours. If you had rear ended us in a sudden stop situation, I would have gotten out of my truck and run over to see if you were okay.

Then (assuming you were) I’d slap you upside the head for hurting my truck. Because, really, that would piss me off. A lot. A lot more than any rivalry. Because seriously… this crap does not belong on the highway. Leave it on the football field. ‘Kay?

Kay.

Thanks.

I was maybe around 10 years old when I was first presented with the following “riddle:”

C D E D B D ducks?
M R not ducks!
O S A R!
C D E D B D wings?
Y I B! M R ducks!

For anyone as confused as I was, the conversation above says:  “See the itty-bitty ducks?” “Them are not ducks!” “Oh yes they are! See the itty-bitty wings?”  “Why, I be! Them are ducks!”

In this day and age, more and more I feel like I did when I was first presented with that riddle. I get text messages or I see Facebook status updates that will take me ten minutes to decipher, because they are filled with short hand.  When I was younger, this type of spelling appeared only in the comic pages or perhaps as a bonus question on a test.

4ward. gr8. u2. 2morrow. 2day.

I have actually reached a point of frustration in which I will ignore some text messages that use too much shorthand. Text me when you remember how to spell correctly.

I know that part of the problem is lack of space to say all you want to say. Twitter limits you to 140 characters. Text messages (generally) limit you to 160 characters. When your message is too long, I recognize the need to fudge words here and there. But when I get a message that says, “R U there?” I get filled with a deep annoyance. Spell out the words. Don’t make me say it out loud to understand what you are trying to say. In the time it takes me to translate the text, I could have responded twice.

I found a wonderful blog post entitled “The decline and corruption of the English language” on Helium.com.

Today, the world’s literacy seems to be taking reverse leaps. Where children were once trained to appreciate language and the diversity of syntax, grammar, consistency and clarity, today’s youth see the push toward speed and stylized text.

Not only have we moved away from standing true to the language and grammatical rules we were taught growing up, many of our youth no longer learn to neatly and clearly write their own names. Where I learned “keyboarding” as a freshman in high school (though I did have some classes in it as early as fifth grade), most children learn typing techniques as early as kindergarten and first grade.

I have at times said that computers and the internet are the most wonderful and the most horrible things to ever happen to our world. Everything we do, we do at lightening speed. It’s resulted in our doing more work in less time, and its also resulted in our no longer having the need to retain anything we learn. We can find what we want in a moments notice, all with a few clicks of a mouse.

We are all tethered to our computers in one way or another. Unfortunately, instead of it elevating our English language, that fact has dumbed it down. I am sure we are a long way from newspapers and books going to full short hand text (though I have seen greeting cards written in it!). And professors still demand research papers be written properly and edited. But every day, I see our short hand of letters joined with numbers showing up in a new location. Often times, its coming from people I would have never expected to use it. Perhaps its simply become habit. Perhaps its an attempt to “fit in.” Whatever the reason, though, it bothers me.  A lot.

Language is obviously one of the first cultures to suffer, art and music are following in kind, and eventually we’ll return to stick figure cave paintings left for the generations to uncover and scratch their heads over, attempting to discern what happened to the renaissance and the so-called intelligent lives we once led. (From The decline and corruption of the English language)