A to Z Survivor Reflections

It's almost shameful to post this unique badge on my page. I say so because it was easy for me to make 26 alphabetical posts during April. I kept it simple not wanting to stress about it. Even if my original intention was to write more, it turned out that I merely made a presence on the blog each day. If nothing else, I consider it a success just because it's possible the downward slide in number of annual posts might creep back up the other direction. We shall see. Thanks A to Z for making it easy to stick with the challenge and thanks to all who happened on this blog.

Z is for ZZZZZs

Continuing the education tidbit from yesterday, here's another new one ZETTABYTE
1 ZB = 1000000000000000000000bytes = 1000⁷bytes = 10²¹bytes = 1000exabytes  





and so the "bit" goes on.

Perhaps it is the wishes of certain family members to see the end of this A to Z challenge.

• Big Brother might have been a bit ZEALOUS in suggesting I skip to ZEST-FUL about 20 letters back.
• Little J comments with a Scooby Doo  ZOINK.
• I'm pretty sure hubby would choose ZAFTIG for discussion.

Interesting enough, the Webster Reference Dictionary on my desk contains only of these Z words. Merriam-Webster on my iPhone scores three out of five.

Next year I'm looking for a new dictionary.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Y is for YOTTABYTE

My alphabet words are too mundane. Not enough character. With only two days left I figured I should take the opportunity to learn something new. So here it is. YOTTABYTE according to Wikipedia:
 1 YB = 1000000000000000000000000bytes = 1000⁸bytes = 10²⁴bytes = 1000zettabytes.

Witt Bits is a mere drop in the big scheme of bytes or bits or whatever you want to call them. Nibble on that one for a while.

X is for Christ as in XMAS

Way back in the year 2004 I posted a couple of Christmas rants. Warning - This could be offensive to some - but its all fun addresses the issue of taking color out of Christmas. The topic is obvious in Who Took the Carols out of Christmas.

Now what about XMAS?  It didn't used to bother me but as I get older I find myself almost feeling guilty using the shortened version. I profess to being far from the perfect Christian as I struggle with a weekly dose of Sunday faith but somehow it just doesn't seem right to write XMAS anymore.

Enough said.  Got to get a letter off to my son, Xopher.

W is for WIT

Years ago at the beginning of this blog, I chose the Dorothy Parker quote as part of my header, partially because I am a huge fan. Thinking perhaps it might be time for an update I searched for some more WIT quotes. There were more than 100 quotes about WIT on BrainyQuotes and Dorothy Parker was not in the mix. Looking back at the length of most of my posts, perhaps this one better describes my blog:

 

BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT

William Shakespeare

 





I'm staying with Dorothy... for now.

V is for VOLUMPTUOUS

Ya dat is tha weigh U spel it. It must be tha way U spel it cuz datz tha way hubby sez it and I'm stickin wit it.  Do I stil git kredit for da V word?

voluMptuous

 

U is for UNPLUGGED

We had another CATastrophe at our house last night while I was out line dancing. Came home to find my TV face down on the bedroom floor. Which one looks the guiltiest? And how long do you think I'll stay mad? Long enough to save up for the 2nd TV I must purchase within one year. The last one plummeted to the floor when the closet door hinge broke off. Guess I should have bought that insurance.

Maybe there's a message in this. Time to get UNPLUGGED? 

 Oh well, time to...

read

walk

write

clean house

bake cookies

do laundry

shop

feed the cats

check out some A to Z blogs

T is for TEMPTATION

It seems there has been a lot of TEMPTATION lately.

It may have begun with the bottle of wine I chose to take to a recent birthday party. I hadn't purchased wine in years since I gave it up long ago and I'll not know by my own experience if it was any good. I merely liked the label. Check out Alexander Valley Vineyards . Had I thought about it sooner I might have used these other labels for the previous two letters Sin Zin and Redemption.

If your preference is beer, you might try this Temptation at Russian River Brewing Company.

Lest someone think I'm risking sobriety, I'll move on to other temptations.

I haven't found any of these Cadbury Temptations yet. Looks like an easy way to add a few unwanted pounds.

I'm thinking about seeing the movie. Anyone seen it and care to comment?




There's plenty more... just Google it... if you can't resist.

What would reference to TEMPTATION be without a Bible quote? How about this one...
Mat 26:41 (NIV) "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."

S is for SUCCEED

It seems many challengers have themes for their A to Z.  My strategy does nothing to incorporate any particular theme, just the same as my blog. That's OK. For me it's just another daily exercise in an effort to spark some semblance of writing. Good or bad, it matters not. Kind of like my three of four Nanowrimo novels, I never expect this to go anywhere (but of course no one knows). I'm really only doing this so I can say I did it. And to bore my family and friends. Did I SUCCEED yet?

Look at the bright side. There are only seven letters left and then you get to see what I'll bore you with next!

R is for REPRODUCTION

With spring comes time for REPRODUCTION and early morning tweets and twitters. A few days ago I watched out the kitchen window as mama bird pulled cat fur out of the old scratching post. The babies seem peaceful in the nest. Just hope they fly fast and far before the cats get even!

Q is for QUEEN

It's good to be QUEEN.  Sign up here for fun, friends and frivolity.

P is for PATIENCE

it's homework time and Grandma has run out of PATIENCE. Note to Big Brother... Yes my plate is too full. That's why I whine so much.

O is for ONION

What's that smell coming from next door? We kind of wonder about it for days thinking our neighbors might be boiling old socks or something. Maybe they're getting even with us for our hillside of weeds bordering their garden. 

 

The rains are over and we really need to tackle those weeds. The first thwack of the weed eater summons a nasal burning whiff of... wild 

ONIONS. 

 

We back off a bit. Survey the hillside. Hubby picks a sample and tastes it. "Stop," I yell thinking maybe it's poisonous. With a little Internet research we find out:

 

Survivalists eat them.

Mowing will not kill them.

Herbicides will not control them.

Crows Poison plants resemble them and are poisonous.

They can be used like chives.

There's a whole bunch of Wild Onion restaurants and pubs.

 

It appears we have tenfold what was up there last year. The neighbors are going to be mad. Thinking perhaps we should start our own Wild Onion Brewery (except the name has already been taken.)

 

Maybe make wild onion necklaces to ward off vampires... oops that would be garlic.

 

 

N is for Nintendo

We had great fun at the NINTENDO WII U party last Friday. Here's the evidence. Note even old ladies can enjoy these video games!

M is for Motivation... and a few other things

I thought the A to Z challenge would be easy. Afterall I did just complete the #rethinkchurch Lent challenge to post a prompted photo each day for 40 days. Somehow that seemed easier. Perhaps it's because I wasn't tied to one particular "venue" and I chose to scatter the posts across Twitter, Facebook and "Random Bits of Gratitude." Whatever the problem, MOTIVATION is on the edge.

Yesterday I had today's word all planned out. It would be MORNING Has Broken since we sang the song in church. It has always been one of my favorites and turns out it MADE the top ten list of requests from the congregation. I enjoy that in our church we have a traditional service with traditional MUSIC and now we get to vote for our favorite hymns.

This afternoon I wondered if I should change the word to MARATHON in light of the day's events. But that is too sad to consider so I'll leave that up to the MEDIA.

Tonight I sit in front of the computer and find only a lack of MOTIVATION so I'm sticking to it. If things don't change, there may not be a N word.  But wait... MAYBE MY MUSE will find ME.

L is for LOQUACITY

LOQUACITY as in what needs to happen around here. Once again I'm tired, stumped and at a lost of anything worthwhile to say. This time I'm blaming it all on taxes.

I used to file my tax returns by February 1st. I used to get a refund. Knowing it would be different this year I procrastinated. I knew it was bad because a couple of months ago I  threw a bunch of estimated numbers into TurboTax and didn't like the outcome.  A month later I fired up TurboTax and entered some real numbers. Tax due doubled, jury duty came along, and in the busyness of it all I conveniently forgot to finish the return. Suddenly I realized Monday is April 15th. No problem, I thought thinking it was merely a matter of pushing a couple of buttons and draining the checkbook. Wrong. It seems I didn't save the last file with the real numbers so I had to start all over again. I should know better. Maybe that's why I sold my tax business a dozen years ago.

Have you finished yours?

K is for KINDLE

OK it's been a long day, it's way past my bedtime and I almost managed to hit the pillow without the daily word. A full day with a bit of overtime followed by a fun evening WII U party just about did me in. All the way home my weary mind could not come up with a suitable"K" word. Killing, too violent. Kittens, too much trouble. Kitchens, too much work. I resorted to looking into those very few pages of the dictionary between J and L and there it was. How could I have not considered KINDLE as the word? Not KINDLE as in fire; KINDLE as in E-readers which is not in that old dictionary that I own.

It's my favorite techy device, next to the iPhone. I read on it daily. Not so sure how I managed without the KINDLE. The original reluctance to giving up holding a real book in my hands has long ago vanished. No more lost places when I fall asleep with the book. No stacks of books on my nightstand. No more traveling to the bookstore. Well, I kind of miss that one. Once in a while I still head to Barnes and Nobles just to touch and feel. Last week I even bought a couple of books there for Little J. The clerk was not amused when I brought out the Amazon Mastercard to pay for them.

Oh, one little brag before I doze off. For the first time ever I won a trivia contest at the WII U party. What year and month was the first Nintendo system released? I got it right on the mark; the first time anyone ever got it right exactly (or so they said). October 1985!

.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

J is for JURY

Perhaps this will be a bit informative for those facing JURY duty. If not, then it's just a place holder for me to come back to next time I get that dreaded notice in the mail. A reminder of sorts. A sharing of experience. So here it goes. How I survived 8 extremely long days.

I didn't count the first day. The county doesn't count it either as I see by the check that I received last week that barely covered my fast food lunches. Maybe it would have only been half a day if I had breezed through the 19 pages of questions and been the first one out the door. Not me. I had to go through each and every one of them and try to figure out which response would be the one for a convenient early dismissal. Even though the judge insisted there were no correct responses and we would not be able to second guess their motivation behind these questions. I figured I'd get a phone call kindly asking me not to return. NOT.

A month later there are eighty of us gathered outside the courtroom. We glimpse over our newspapers, iPads and Kindles at the competition. I had everyone figured out by the time we filed into the room. I knew exactly which ones would be picked. NOT. So much for the face reading seminar I attended the weekend before. At first I was shocked that anyone else in the courtroom could have a better reason than I could to get out of it. Then reality sunk in. Everyone has a story. For the first day it was almost interesting enough to stay awake. My neighbor only had to jab me awake once. Apparently I wasn't alone. The bailiff muttered something about adding a squirt gun to his already loaded up toolbelt, indicating the vacant spot next to his tazer. Yikes, I thought, what if he grabs the wrong tool.

I'll skip the rest of the drama and go straight to the JURY duty survival tips:

• Always silence the cell phone. Don't even let it vibrate. The judge will hear it.
• Skip the zippered, metal button jacket or jeans and underwired bra to avoid the wand at the door.
• Arrive early before the parking lot fills up... I never managed to do this one but the long walk balances out fast food lunches.
• Bring more to read than the Kindle or iPad. Your batteries will die.
• Wear layers... not just because of hot flashes.
• Don't try to hide in the back row. There's lots more leg space and air in the front.
• Find a lunch bunch and add one more person each day to keep it interesting.
• Wear your walking shoes. Lunch is almost always 1 1/2 hours plus there are 20 minute breaks morning and afternoon. Take the stairs, not the elevator.
• Keep your sense of humor... even the judge cracks a joke once in a while, if you're lucky.
• Always come back... we heard the judge issue a $10,000 warrant for one who didn't return.

I is for INDEPENDENT

In hopes for success of one last ditch effort to appeal it's demolition, I encourange anyone interested in INDEPENDENT films to join the Facebook group Save Independent Film and the CinéArts Dome in Pleasant Hill . Certain officials argue that this is not an issue about INDEPENDENT films as they assure the public that there will be another venue available across the freeway. While that may be true, it's just not the same as seeing these films in the huge Dome arena. My kids grew up going to the Dome and I still visit the theatre regularly as I have for forty some years.

If you happen to be free Saturday come join the Save the Dome Rally. Here's the info from Facebook:
That's right! You read it right! We are going to have another rally this weekend at the Dome!

Come support this cause!

After the special visit from the "Alien" guy, we are encouraging everybody to come out in the best Hollywood character costume!

Food will be provided!

Make a "Save the Dome" t-shirt!

We want to fill the lot! Last weekend, news channels 2 and 5 came out! Channel 5 visited twice!!

The Dome is expected to be closed before the months end and destroyed not much longer after!

 ...

Look forward to seeing you there!

H is for HAPPY Birthday

Perhaps this is conceited or self indulgent but today happens to be my birthday so I'm giving myself a birthday present with this tiny A to Z post. All this so I can have a HAPPY Birthday.  See you tomorrow.

G is for GOOD GRIEF

GOOD GRIEF it's day six of jury duty. We had last week off for spring break which gave me an opportunity to catch up a some of my work. Not an easy task when you work two jobs. But this is meaningless drivel for anyone who stumbles in here and for that I apologize. I confess. It's been a long day and I'm only writing this to maintain my A to Z commitment.

So what prompted the use of the GOOD GRIEF expression? The judge uses it in those moments of befuddlement and you know how that kind of thing is hard to leave alone. I'm bad. Someone should excuse me. I'm befuddled.

And the F Word Is...

FENTON'S, of course. Didn't you pay attention yesterday?  So here it is in all it's ice creamy goodness. Well, actually this is the one I had a couple of years ago and it is slightly melted. Since I neglected to take a snapshot today, I dug this out from the archives. Still the same version of oooey gooey Vanilla Ice Cream with Caramel and Chocolate Sauce topped off with whipped cream, almonds and a cherry. Hungry yet?

And to think I indulged in this vegetarian sandwich first:

Green Grocer

A unique combination of Swiss and pepper jack

cheeses, onions, cucumber, lettuce, tomato, avocado

and sprouts. Served chilled on whole grain bread with

a dill pickle. Not grilled.
I'm bad... tipping the scales a bit too far to the right.

Got to check out the other F word, FITBIT. The "One" monitors every step leaving no room for argument, only an opportunity to explore some lifestyle changes.

E is for Exhausted Energy

EXHAUSTED: exactly how I feel after a week trying to catch up from jury duty. Didn't help to work 2 1/2 hours overtime today. Oh well, overtime can be a good thing when the check finally comes through.

ENERGY: that's what I'm expecting tomorrow. I'm actually taking the day off to do nothing but go with the whims... after I do the laundry, clean the kitchen and bathrooms, vacuum the house, go grocery shopping, buzz Little J's hair and anything else that lurks between my computer and the back door. Treat on the agenda already scheduled.. Fenton's Creamery  I'll take a black and tan please. Make that a regular size.

THE BLACK & TAN

Fentons Favorite! Toasted Almond and creamy

Vanilla ice cream layered with our handmade

Caramel and Chocolate Fudge, topped with toasted

almonds, whipped cream and cherry.

Make it a Junior...9.25

D is for DELETE

The word is DELETE. As in DELETE anonymous comments. I have no choice but to to do since it seems there are anonymous spammers out there as well as those who leave comments with links to products and things that are beyond the PG rating of this blog. At least I think this blog is rated PG. 

Anyway, I have changed my settings and will now only take comments from those who are registered users. I'm sorry if anyone clicked on one of those anonymous links that were left in my comments and hope I have cleared them out. I'm even sorrier that this makes it more difficult for other A to Z participants to leave a word or two behind. It's just another example of the way the world is these days.

C is for CONFLICT and...

I don't know what other word to use except CONFLICT. It's the best word to describe the most frustrating day I have had a work in a long time. Actually it's been a couple of frustrating days but today tops it. I'm not going to mention the software involved. I'm not going to mention the source of the problem except that it was an outside payroll service from somewhere in the middle of the country. As much as I'd love to expose the names, it's probably not in the best interest until the problems are resolved. But if  things continue to go unresolved, I'll find it hard not to speak up.

Meanwhile work piles up and jury duty looms on Monday. I'm torn all directions and wondering if this means the word of the day should have been CANCEL my A to Z commitment. Just give me this last day of whining to think about what comes next.

Hey, at least I didn't write about my CATS.

B is for BOOM

Since I have no theme for the A to Z Challenge (and in fact no theme for Witt Bits either), I'll just keep plugging along with whatever word pops up during the day. Today's word happens to be BOOM only because I wanted to find the theme before noon and spotted this on the way to work.

A couple of days ago while waiting outside the courtroom for jury duty (yes you will probably see a lot of remarks made in here about that since the judge insists we will all be sitting in her courtroom until the end of the month while she picks over us one by one) I happened to notice one of the other captives was reading our local newspaper. "They should never let that BOOM rest over the main street at night you know," he began while pointing out a front page article. He went on to tell me how he works in big construction, as in hospitals and such, and they don't even need BOOMS like that.  And, they would never leave them parked at night hanging over a busy thoroughfare. He told me he intended to go to the city planning meeting that evening and let the officials know. Why would we need one here in a city with ordinances that no building can be over three stories high? Anyway, the next evening I noticed the BOOM was resting over the apartments behind it rather than the street. I'm so relieved to know now that if I were to drive down that main street after work hours, I would now be safe from... what? I'm still not sure. But just in case, I'm not visiting anyone who lives in that apartment complex. And, much to Little J's frustration, we won't be visiting Micky D's across the street either while the BOOM is swinging.

APRIL Showers & Fools

APRIL SHOWERS arrived well before the strike of midnight. Not just showers, but a torrent of disturbance for most of the night. In my sleepless daze, I thought I saw specks of sunshine on my way to work this morning. I may have been dreaming.

But this is not only about the stuff that falls from the sky. This is about the old cliche, "when it rains it pours." I shouldn't have whined yesterday about all those obligations that might prevent me from completing this A to Z Challenge. I should have kept my mouth shut. Turns out there was still the slightest little bit of space left on my plate. One midmorning phone call demanded my appearance at an unexpected mandatory three hour meeting now squeezed in between work and jury duty.Well aware that today is APRIL FOOLS day, I waited for the punch line. No such luck.

And so...I am not an APRIL FOOL. Unless you count the fake spider that just five minutes ago appeared on my shoulder when I was about to click on Publish. At least I hope it was fake.

A to Z, The Day Before

I'm having reservations about signing up for A to Z.

First, I'm not so sure how much I can fit in between jury duty, work, grandparenting and life. I'm old enough. I should know better than to sign up for yet another challenge. But, I did manage to complete the #rethinkchurch challenge. Not every entry made it into my Random Bits of Gratitude Blog but I really did finish. Most of the pictures were "tweeted" and I got too lazy (or tired) to resend them to the blog.

Second, I'm afraid this might get boring for anyone who stumbles in here. Well, it's only 100 words or so each day. Bear with me. I'll try to find some sarcasm or humor. Just enough to keep things interesting. I hope.  I'll find some to to visit other challengers. Somehow.

See you tomorrow... sometime.

A to Z

Coming up... The April Challenge

Perhaps this will wake me up???? We shall see. Look here for #rethinkchurch project