Of Macs and Ants

Well… here’s a new twist on “the dog ate my homework!”

Knowing I’d be tired Sunday night from a weekend spent with ten healing colleagues up on Mount Pinos, I wrote my blog offering on Friday morning before heading up the mountain. I wrote it on my brand new baby (month old) “macbook Pro.” 

It was a beautiful weekend, by the way, and snowed a LOT up in Pine Mountain Club! Sun showers created diamond down pours as snow melted off the roof and refracted the sunlight.

While chatting around the table Friday night with my buddies, I wanted to share some photos from the most recent grand-daughter sighting last week - when Miss Devlyn was dressed as a Purple Kitty for Halloween.

I pulled out the Mac and turned it on and waited and waited… I thought, well it’s the altitude. We are at nearly six thousand feet here. Maybe it's cold. We waited some more. Then a file folder shaped icon popped up in the otherwise pale blank screen with a question mark flashing on and off.

The husband of one of the healers, a Disney engineer and computer maven, said, “It looks like a hard drive problem or like it’s looking for a power source.” At that point he forced it off – but the poor macbook kept on chirping, squeaking and tweeting… sort of a cross between a Guinea Pig and an unhappy Canary sound.  Also, the back of the computer was getting really HOT. NOT a usual occurrence... though it did feel warmer to me when I turned it off Friday after I finished writing. I thought nothing of it until this HOT HEAT triggered the memory.

John forced it "Off" again by holding the power button down a little longer. Finally the twittering stopped and the apple logo on the outer case went dark. I haven’t dared to try to re-boot since Friday night. I have an appointment Monday at the Mac Store… maybe I got a rotten apple?

While I remember the topic and some of the choice tid-bits of the piece I wrote about Dunbar’s Number and a cluttered mind, I have no copy of it on this ol’ Dell PC and no way to retrieve the macbook version until tomorrow… IF all goes well and it coughs up the goods. So, Stay tuned for the next installment of mymondaymuse.blogspot.com. No, it wasn’t the dog… it was the APPLE that ate my homework! Honest! 

ALSO… in limbo are all those sweet photos of the Purple Kitty! Darn!

Here’s something yummy from Mary Oliver sent to me by my writing buddy Jaimi Blakeley:

WILD GEESE
by Mary Oliver

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine...

---

---

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

QUOTES:

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind. - Dr. Seuss

"I always knew looking back on the tears would make me laugh, but I never knew looking back on the laughs would make me cry." - Unknown

Have a tearful… in a good way… week, and may you be blessed by the sight of geese flying over but plagued neither by Blue Herons nor Egrets! 

Here's another odd bit of news... that rainstorm, while nourishing our local earth, seems to have displaced some ants (again). They are marching two-by-two into my office and congregating on the earthing pad grounding cord and transformer for one of the computer components. They've brought their eggs with them as if they plan on staying a good long while. I've asked them, in the nicest possible way, to LEAVE at once. I don't see any hint of compliance - in fact, they are climbing the power cords and walking across the desk top, the light fixture, the keys...  hey... I wonder if I've just discovered what's wrong with the Mac?? Maybe it's got ants in its pants??

While typing this, I've been trying to think of the most efficient way to return the ants and their nursery brood to the great out-of-doors with the least amount of death and destruction. I certainly wouldn't want a giant to swoop down and destroy all my work and live babies!! Shall I scoop them all into a jar... like I would a spider? Shall I vacuum them up and take the canister to dump outside? And how shall I plug up the baseboard hole where they're entering? So many possibilities! So little predictability! 

Grateful for these challenges. I'd rather have ants try to homestead on my power source than my having to homestead in the ant's territory! I think I'll help them out NOW.