Might make a catchy little tune although I’m not sure why anybody would want to sing about an onion. But then y’all can’t hear the cadence my little once-musician brain has cooked up for those words. Anyway, it’s that season again. One of the best perks at my work besides when Broosie exchanges coffee filters for donuts is when Farmer John brings in his harvest. He sets his produce out on a table in the lunchroom with a price list and a paper cup cash register. Honor system. It works where I work. Where many of the old-time employees kind of grew up together, if you know what I mean. I got corn on the cob and green beans and summer squash today. I’m gonna make a veggie melange outta the squash and some stuff I have around here. Me and TBG made bunches of veggie melange type things this weekend plus her luxurious salads and people just loved it. Life-long carnivores were wondering why anyone needed meat. I could use some onion in tonight’s melange. I don’t *think* FJ had onions there today, if he did, I missed them or I didn’t think I needed them or whatever. We’ll live but onions are on my list.

How stoopid is it for an Info Tech professional (aka meeeeeee) to not have a functional spanner scanner in the house? Pretty stoopid. I used to have a cute little cano-scanner. It was extremely light weight and didn’t even have a power supply. I could just plug it in to a USB port on my MacBook Pro (or whatever it was) and it ran off the computer’s power. I fergit whether it was when I bought a new MacBook whatever or upgraded to a new operating system but my loverly little spanner scanner stopped talking to my ‘puter at one point. We have a printer that scans things but getting it to talk to my ‘puter seems waaaayyyy overly complicated. Anyway, it is now a pain in the you-know-what to span scan things and I am in the market for a new spanner scanner that I can easily hook up to my late model MacBook Pro. Which is showing signs of Bad Trackpad Syndrome. Alas…

Spanner? What? The Commander was an Amazon Woman when it came to using computers. I will never forget when I got my first email from her. It was back in about 1998-99 and she was in her late 70s and I almost fell out of my chair. Us kids had been after the ‘rents to get a computer and wanted to “help”. In the end, she did it all on her own. I can imagine her smirking as we replied to her email. Someday I’ll tell you about the motorsickles. Or not…

Actually, as a teacher back in the 1970s when “computers” were first making little inroads into the schools, she approached the administration because she was *interested* in being trained on them. Mr. F. pooh-poohed the idea that a “home-ec” teacher (aka WOMAN!) would need need to learn computing skills.

She may not have convinced that pompous ass poor excuse for a high school administrator that computers would be useful in “home-ec” classes (hello, 620 shop aka school store that mom started) or for a WOMAN!!! Later in her life she learned how to do all kinds of things on all the personal computing devices and peripherals that she owned, including a spanner scanner, and eventually an iPhone.

I can’t say I much miss trying to talk to mom on the phone that last bunch of months when she was at FV. There were many many many complaints about the food and lack of transportation (aka loss of driving privileges). I commiserated with her on both counts but I was also dead tired of those subjects (and dead tired in general). Two things I do miss about The Comm (among others): 1) getting text messages from her — at age 90! — there are people myyyyy age who don’t do text messages and 2) calling her “scanner” a “spanner”. Correct word or not, she still managed to use the device and I’m not sure that *I* haven’t used “spanner” instead of “scanner” at some point. Tolerance please. When people mis-speak, etc., etc.

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