Ageing

The wonderful process of living…

AutoCorrect: A View of Your Auditory Future

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AutoCorrect, love it or hate it? This week, the New York Times Magazine had a short feature about it. Me, I mostly love it. I am a lousy, self-taught typist. I went to high school in the “olden days” when men were men and women were girls. Only the students in the secretarial track took typing classes. I wasn’t one of them.

four people holding mobile phones
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I truly love AutoCorrect when I am typing something on a full computer keyboard and it fixes all the common typos for me; “teh” automatically becomes “the”, and “studnet” is transformed into “student” before I realize my mistakes. A god-send! On more complicated choices, some programs flag the suspect word and let me choose the correct spelling. Wow, even better!

But when I am texting, this exuberant love diminishes. I make more mistakes texting because the virtual keyboard is small and my fingers often miss the key, and because I text while distracted — cooking, on line in the grocery store, in the car (but only while stopped). I also use acronyms and texting abbreviations, which aren’t always recognized. Unless I intervene, the correction provided in a pop-up balloon is not a suggestion but the actual replacement. I often miss the opportunity to stop it and touch “Send” too soon. The results varies from helpful, to confusing, to hilarious. Sound familiar?
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The Burden of Sexual Attraction

accidental goddess3 Comments

It is well known that in the bird world males are the flamboyant, colorful characters, sporting bright plumage and singing about their assets to attract the less conspicuous females. I envy those lucky chicks who can hide in the foliage, quietly watching and judging all the song-and-dance routines before making their choice for this season’s nest-mate.


In the human world, we gals don’t have it as easy.  Sexual attraction is our burden, much to the delight and profit of world’s fashion, cosmetic, and perfume industries.  It’s even worse since medical technology joined the party.  If we are no longer satisfied with the effects of putting paints, dyes, bleaches, lotions, and chemicals on our bodies, we have more options; we can enhance our bodies with “cosmetic” procedures, many of them surgical, some of them dangerous.  The list of what women can do — and are really implored to do — to appear sexually attractive is quite long, starting with a little lipstick and ending god-knows-where in the realm of breast augmentation, facelifts, and tummy tucks.  A chirpy song-and-dance routine seems simple by comparison.
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When Blogging is Not Important

accidental goddess5 Comments

April passed in a blur and I only made one blog entry. I had good intentions. First, I was going to write about the tree sperm that descends in a yellow dust storm every spring. I had just discovered that it has health benefits and wanted to share this knowledge (as my nose ran and eyes teared). But then I got too busy with my mom’s trip to NY to celebrate her 90th birthday. I am her primary care-giver and nothing is easy at her age. I was happy to help. She had a wonderful time at her party.

Next, I wanted to elaborate on a recent Facebook post and write about the challenges that working at home poses for an extrovert like me. Judging by the FB comments, there are valid (and comical) opinions both sides. But, this fell in priority when she became ill; coordinating her health care and our return flight was all-consuming. Just when I thought life might return to normal, she went into respiratory failure and was rushed to the hospital.
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