Cordelia's Mom, Still

Waiting for the Final Gasp

Posted on January 28, 2019 by cordeliasmom2012

Wouldn’t you know it – I just finished paying off my furniture, thereby eliminating one monthly payment from my budget, and now my computer has decided it’s going to die real soon.

The silly machine has been exhibiting signs of extreme illness for months. One by one the USB ports have failed, it’s become slower and slower to boot up and shut off, and it’s constantly freezing in the middle of whatever I’m trying to do. I was hoping to manage with it for as long as possible, despite the annoyances.

But tonight when I tried to boot up, I got a message: “Error in loading operating system.” Twice. The third time, it did boot up but only after I unplugged the external hard drive.

All those lights stopped working a long time ago.

Now, I’m in no way a geeky person, but I gotta assume that “Error in loading operating system” is not a good thing. I still remember the time a computer gave me a message that it was “unable to find operating system“, and I remember the tech support guy saying, “Well, that’s not good.” I imagine my current computer will soon have that same message.

Thus, I’ve gone online and ordered a new computer. (Thank heavens they have interest-free financing!) It will be at the store tomorrow, but we’re expecting one to two feet of snow with blizzard-like conditions and sub-zero temperatures so I don’t think I’ll be going shopping any time soon.

The reason I’m telling you all this is so you aren’t concerned if you don’t hear from me for a few days. I suspect that once I turn this computer off tonight, it will be done for good.

If I’m absent for awhile and you really miss me, don’t forget you can always read some of my older posts. Just click on the links on the right sidebar.

And please enjoy this week’s photographic offerings:

It’s Not All Black and White (sometimes there’s a little gray)

The Tower at UB South Campus, Buffalo, NY, USA (View 1)

The Tower at UB South Campus, Buffalo, NY, USA (View 2)

And now I must spend the rest of this evening frantically copying files to the external hard drive (if the computer will recognize it).

‘Night, all.

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com

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Images by Cordelia’s Mom

Posted in Household Items, Photography, That's Life | Tagged budget, computer, electronics, finances, money | 30 Comments

Winter Day Time Out

Posted on January 24, 2019 by cordeliasmom2012

Aren’t bloggers wonderful?

Because I’m a perfectionist, at least with respect to my fledgling artistic talents, I’ve been bemoaning the fact that my photographs haven’t been … well, picture perfect … right from the get-go. When my little point-and-click Olympus seemed to be taking blurry photos, I coughed up the cash to buy an advanced point-and-click Nikon Coolpix B700 because it seemed to have all the features I’d like, an extraordinary zoom capacity, and I wouldn’t have to carry around all those extra lenses and filters (read that story, here).

I suppose I expected the newer, more expensive camera to take professional, award-winning photos despite the lack of experience of its user. Surely, the owner’s manual would tell me how to use all those features, and if not, there are always photography-for-dummies books in the library.

But guess what – those books are confusing! It takes years to develop photography skills, and it takes a certain amount of talent. Needless to say, some people have more raw talent than others. But I’m working at it, and each photo seems to be just a wee bit better than the last one, at least in my view.

In any event, every time I’ve expressed any doubts about my photographic skills, other bloggers have jumped in to reassure me.

Especially Amy Rose. Amy seems to have made it her personal goal to boost me up every time I slide down emotionally, even to the point of taking time out of her very. very busy schedule to write a detailed comment explaining camera functions like lighting and aperture.

And then there is Marilyn Armstrong, who commented about editing a photo’s tilt. That aspect had never even occurred to me; I always just assumed that if I hadn’t held the camera perfectly straight, there was no way to fix that picture. At my age, holding anything straight is a challenge!

Today’s two photos are for Amy and Marilyn. There maybe would have been more, but hey, it was cold out there!

Thank you to Amy, Marilyn, and all the other bloggers who have provided much-appreciated technical and emotional support for both my writing and my photos. You are all awesome!

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com

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Images by Cordelia’s Mom

Posted in Photography, Relationships, That's Life | Tagged Amy Rose, bloggers, cameras, Marilyn Armstrong, snow, suburbs, winter | 27 Comments

So Much for the Five-Day Weekend

Posted on January 21, 2019 by cordeliasmom2012

Looks ok, but don’t try sitting on it!

I had such plans for my long weekend.

It started off fine. Knowing a major snowstorm was predicted for the weekend, I did all my normal errands on Thursday. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were pretty much non-days, spent sitting around waiting for that major snowstorm.

Which never came.

Yes, we got snow, but not the high winds that were predicted. The snow, at least in my area, only accumulated a foot or so. Definitely not enough to keep most Buffalonians in.

The cold was another story, however. Sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures caused pre-emptive closings, and judging from the lack of traffic, most people hunkered down in nice warm homes.

Which brings me to today.

I was so looking forward to the extra day all by myself, as my office was closed for Martin Luther King Day, but my husband had to work. Or so I thought.

Hubby was under the weather and called off. So much for any plans I might have had.

Which was just as well, though, because when I tried to turn on the kitchen faucet at 7:30 am, there was no hot water. The line was frozen. At 7:30 am, the outside temperature was 8 below zero (Fahrenheit), which means it had warmed up from whatever ungodly temperature it was overnight. This was the line to the new sink we had installed just this year, and it’s one of those plastic lines, so we called the plumber.

Who, of course, had an inordinate amount of emergency calls due to the weather. It would be mid-afternoon before the plumber could get to us. Fortunately, all the other water lines in the house were ok so waiting wasn’t too terrible.

Still, it was frustrating. In a pique of annoyance, I plopped myself into my desk chair to surf the web and perhaps do a little blogging.

Apparently, I plopped too dramatically. The chair broke. The little thingy that controls the chair’s tilt apparently fractured. Hubby and I futzed around with it for some time and determined it was unfixable.

Well, we had to wait for the plumber anyway, so I dragged my sorry butt to Office Depot and bought a new chair. Which won’t be available until the end of the week because I opted to have it assembled at the store (I asked the store personnel how much assembly was needed, and it seemed a little more complicated than I cared to deal with).

Fortunately, I had some Home Depot coupons which came in the mail, so I was able to save 35% off the purchase price. That brightened my day a little.

For now, I’m making do with a 50-year-old non-adjustable wooden chair that originally came from my mom’s house. Still, better than standing, right?

As cold as it was, even Puppy Cody refused to stay out any longer than absolutely necessary to do her business. I’m still trying (and failing) to take decent winter photos with the new camera, so the best I could do is edit the pictures into black-and-white:

Can you see the snow on the poor pup’s face? Brrrr.

The good news is, the plumber finally arrived, fixed the line, and didn’t charge anything since the sink is under warranty and the fix only took a few minutes.

I hope your day was better than mine. Tomorrow it’s back to work. This week, I have a whole two days to get through! Hopefully, I can handle that.

Keep on keeping on, folks. See you in a few.

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com

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Images by Cordelia’s Mom

Posted in Holidays, Household Items, That's Life | Tagged Buffalo NY, Cody, cold weather, freezing, plumbing, Puppy Cody, snow, sub-zero, winter | 32 Comments

Because I’m Bored

Posted on January 13, 2019 by cordeliasmom2012

A Single Candle to Light the Night

Being “under the weather” on a weekend sucks, doesn’t it?

I had plans for today – shopping, maybe a little outside photography (despite the cold weather). But I’m just not up to it today. Perhaps I did too much that last couple of days, who knows?

In any event, my photography was limited to inside my own house. Flickr’s theme of the week is “Flames” – thus, the photo at the top of this post. Not what I intended to do – I had ambitiously thought I would put together something with ice cream and a candle (Fire and Ice[Cream)]), but didn’t know where my nice glass bowl is, didn’t have a white votive candle, and saw when I went onto Flickr that someone else had already beat me to a very similar shot, although they used snow instead of ice cream. I think my idea is better.

Anyway.

Since I was fooling around with the editing software, I decided to see what black-and-white would do for the photo. I think it came out quite well:

Kind of looks like the moon behind the flame in both photos, doesn’t it? I’m not telling how I got that in there (mostly because I don’t know myself).

If anyone with more imagination than me wishes to use either photo as the basis for a story, feel free. Just link back here so I get that special feeling we all enjoy.