Monday, October 29, 2012

I am irritated by the dates being a day behind. My American colleagues joke about it being "tomorrow" where I am, but I would like to know if anyone in Australia knows how to make the dates accurate. That funeral service was on Saturday 27 October, and I am writing this blog at 10pm on Monday 29 October.

OK, that's the end of my grump.

About Two Drums
 At midday, my daughter, The Boyfriend and I drove to one of those shopping centres you can get lost in, all to recover the sim card which was stuck in the back of my new Samsung. I am still without mobile phone as I need a new sim card from my internet provider. My daughter paid for the repair work as it was she who separated the micro sim card from its frame in the first place and didn't say so. Me, next day, clueless, pushing it into the pocket and unable to retrieve it, thinking I'm the fruit cake!

While waiting for repairs to be completed, we lunched, having checked three Directory screens for "Food Court". If only we'd known it has a name: The Drum. Who'd think of that? I needn't have worried about sleeping in this morning and missing my daily walk; I'm sure we made up for it just looking for the food court. We also had enough time for me to buy hands-free equipment for when my phone really is operational. I am being dragged into the world of scrolling and zig-zag text and  "attractive plans" ie fixed and low monthly payments for large amounts of phone calls. 

This makes me sound very savvy. However, I didn't feel it 5 seconds after sailing through boom gates at the entrance to the car park without collecting a ticket. In other words, distracted - by what? a thought? a comment from the back seat? - I tailgated the car in front of me! When Daughter and The Bf pointed this out I freaked: how would I get OUT of the place without a ticket? (Never mind, as they succinctly pointed out, that I could have had two brain-dead passengers if the boom gate had fallen faster.) We found a Concierge on Level 1 who calmly directed me to the Auto Pay station, advising me to press the Help button. This apparently placed a call to a young woman (we think) whose mouth was full of socks or chocolates (we guessed). We could not understand a single word but judged by the tone of voice that we were to press the green button and a replacement ticket would emerge. We did and it did. It felt a little strange thanking an alien for the assistance. However, we also realised that even at my age I am in the normal range for human stupidity.

Apart from visiting a fellow-chorister in hospital, we also dropped into Harvey Norman in Sunshine.  My home office printer/fax is informing me "Drum End Soon". I needed some illuminating conversation about the meaning of this cryptic message. All was revealed, including a few facts about the effect of printing 12,000 sheets (black and white) without realising the drum would suffer. A new one will arrive this week. "Is it easy to instal?" I asked in my best Little Old Lady style. "Oh yes," says the nice young man. "Don't worry!" (a pity he couldn't add "your pretty little head about it" so I could smirk at my daughter). But then, he's moving back to Sydney in two days and others will have to deal with my ineptitude, if it shows up.

In four days I'll be able to write poems to prompts. I feel a foreboding that out will come limericks and ridiculous sestinas about electronics, machines, head sets and printers that go silent into that good night. I wish myself luck!!

3 comments:

  1. Go to Settings and find where to set your time to Melbourne time. It's under Formatting, then look for Time Zone.

    When creating a post, you can look to the right and find Schedule. That will allow you to schedule a post to whenever you want it to appear. You can also change the dates of posts after the event. The Schedule spot will now be called Published on, but you go in the same way and change it.

    Are you going to post new poems here or on the other blog?

    xxxx

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    Replies
    1. PS If you set the time zone, it will be automatic. You won't have to schedule new posts unless you want them to appear on a different date from when written.

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  2. As always, Rosemary, you take the time to teach. Thank you. And I am thinking of writing the poems in Jaywig's Jotter and sharing them here if there's a story with them.

    ReplyDelete