“You Are Having a Problem With Your Computer”
The man with the West African accent called at noon, explaining that he was a part of my security network and I was having a problem with my computer. My computer was not on. AdventureMan’s computer was not on.
“WHO are you with?” I asked, two or three more times, and he would explain that hackers were trying to get into my computer through my Windows system. I told him I didn’t recognize the name of his security system and he told me I was registered with them, and read off my (correct) name and address.
Anyone can get my name and address. My magazine subscriptions have my name and address, my bills, you can find my name and address by asking the right questions on the internet. I am so not buying into this.
What was interesting to me was that the caller was enjoying the process. He wasn’t stuck on a memorized script; he had a few points memorized and would repeat them now and then, but he would also improvise. He wanted me to get on my computer and he would “fix everything.”
After a few minutes I said “I think this is a scam. I am going to hang up now and call the police.”
He did not protest, nor did he call back.
Psalm 75; A Psalm For Today
After a month like July, with all it’s tragedy, all its self-inflicted injuries, all the blood and the death of innocents, I thank God that he is holding the pillars steady.
Psalm 75
To the leader: Do Not Destroy. A Psalm of Asaph. A Song.
1 We give thanks to you, O God;
we give thanks; your name is near.
People tell of your wondrous deeds.
2 At the set time that I appoint
I will judge with equity.
3 When the earth totters, with all its inhabitants,
it is I who keep its pillars steady.
Selah
4 I say to the boastful, ‘Do not boast’,
and to the wicked, ‘Do not lift up your horn;
5 do not lift up your horn on high,
or speak with insolent neck.’
6 For not from the east or from the west
and not from the wilderness comes lifting up;
7 but it is God who executes judgement,
putting down one and lifting up another.
8 For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup
with foaming wine, well mixed;
he will pour a draught from it,
and all the wicked of the earth
shall drain it down to the dregs.
9 But I will rejoice* for ever;
I will sing praises to the God of Jacob.
10 All the horns of the wicked I will cut off,
but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted.
Al this turmoil over boundaries, people not sharing. All the blood shed, and horrific acts, all so wasteful in the greater scheme of things. Lord God, hold the pillars steady.
Red Robins: We Were So Bad
I told you how I wasted my hamburger and cholesterol calories on the burger at Tin Cow, but the problem was, it didn’t solve the yearning problem. I yearned for a totally tasty burger like . . . Red Robins.
Red Robin and I go way back – back to the dive on Lake Union, a bar that sold great burgers. You could walk to the Red Robin from campus, and the place was always full of hungry, thirsty students from the UW campus. I think the only food they sold was a burger and fries; probably you could have a cheeseburger if you wanted something extra. It wasn’t a restaurant. It was a bar.
Today’s Red Robin is so much more a restaurant, and holy smoke, the selections. At least fifteen kinds of burgers, and then also chicken, veggy burgers and fish. Salads. You can get anything.
But what I wanted was a hamburger. I settled on a new one, the Smoke N’ Pepper. It was as good as my normal favorite the A1 Burger, maybe a little better.
This is what the Red Robin photo online looks like:
This is what mine looked like, and yes, sadly, we also ordered the onion rings – look at those onions! And the batter is crisp and thin! (I only ate two and a half.)
AdventureMan had the Whiskey River Burger, another old favorite, with a delicious BBQ Sauce.
It was SO good. The other good thing is that when we left, we were on total beef overload. We don’t eat a lot of red meat, and it just clogs your system. We still felt full at dinner time, and just had a half sandwich when we were hungry enough. Even the next day, I thought I would never be hungry again; beef takes a long time to digest. But oh, while we were so bad, those hamburgers were so GOOD.
Death and the Expat
After four years, this settling down thing still chafes. As one fellow expat says “it’s like being squeezed into a box that’s too small” and she is talking about returning to her own community after several years abroad.
I think I wasn’t wired for settling down.
Even changing the furniture around, which I start doing after a couple years in one place, doesn’t really satisfy that urge for new challenges, new ways of thinking, a need to be on your toes, to be observant of all around you because nothing is the same as where you came from.
But one thing about settling down is a huge challenge – death.
When you are living in Expat World, death barely touches you. For one thing, you’re in a working environment, which implies you are young enough and healthy enough to be working. If someone dies, you fly back home and grieve the person, then fly back to where you are working and life goes on. That person isn’t missing from your daily life. You are distracted from grieving by the differences; there are not so many things around to remind you that the person is no longer there.
Being settled, it is an entirely different story. You get used to people, and then, often suddenly, that person is no longer around. You’re still going to all the places you used to see that person, but that person is not there, and never will be again. You think “I’ll just call so-and-so” and then you realize she’ll never answer your call again.
This is all new. Sure, expats move away, but there is always that chance you will run into them again – happens all the time in Expat World. You can call and make plans to meet up somewhere, you can gather for kids weddings. In settled-down world, death puts a big stop to that. It’s a screeching, endless dead-end.
I lost a friend this week, a woman who has been kind to me since the day I walked into the church. She made me feel welcome and she made me feel loved, and like I belonged there. It wasn’t just me, she was kind and welcoming to everyone, and a lot of fun to be around. I hugged her the day before she died as we had a quick greeting in the Parish Hall. I adored her, and I admired her, and she leaves a big hole in my heart.
I don’t wish her alive again; she lost her husband just months ago, and I know in my heart that my grief is my own, that she is happy to be with her departed husband. But this death stuff is painful. It makes me want to run get on a plane and go somewhere else, to go away from this infinite feeling of loss. To my chagrin, I also think this is a piece of growing up that I ran away from for a long time, and am learning later in life than most people.
We are still grieving the loss of Pete. He is buried in the butterfly garden, so he is nearby. We second-guess ourselves all the time, going over our choices, regretting having caused him any pain and anguish as he lived his last week. I hear the tinkle of his little name tag and forget it can’t be Pete; my husband steps over where he would lie in the hallway, equidistant between our offices. This death stuff is hard.
Flounders at Pensacola Beach, Revisit
Pensacola Beach gets crazy this time of year – and what is not to love? Days of sunshine, surf temperature in the 80’s, and fine white sand, really white – it’s gorgeous.
If the Blue Angels are flying, or if it’s the 4th of July weekend, we can forget about the beach – the traffic over the bridges to the beach is blocked for miles. When the Blue Angels were flying, we could see the traffic backed up all the way to Cervantes, in central Pensacola. People were gridlocked on the bridge, and just watched from there – there were no more parking spots, none, out on Pensacola Beach.
But the madness has passed, normal times have returned, and I have a yearning for Flounder’s Fish Tacos. Ahhhhh, comfort food, with so much lettuce and tomato and salsa that it SEEMS healthy, even though the fish is undeniably . . . umm . . . . er . . .. fried.
These are listed in the appetizer section. Who on earth could eat this as an appetizer? At my hungriest, I can eat two, and still have one to take with. But so delicious, so perfect for a hot summer day.
AdventureMan has the seafood platter, which he loves, and he, too, has plenty to take home, the portions are so huge.
Life is sweet – we found a parking place close to Flounders and while it was a drizzly day, it didn’t rain on us. Flounders was full of people, but not so packed we had to wait for a table. Service was, as always, fast, fun, efficient and very welcoming – they are so attentive, no matter how busy.
We left happy, and once my fish taco meter starts going up again, we will head back.
The Macaroni Grill in Pensacola, FL
For the most part, AdventureMan and I stay away from national chains. One time in the last couple of years we tried Olive Garden, and, like many of the chains, they had gone to using “pre-formed” meats – how do you think they got all those dishes to look so uniform?
But Macaroni Grill is – or was, it’s all unclear now – a part of the Outback Chain, and Outback will always have a place in my heart because of their open-handed support when I worked for an educational foundation, raising money for scholarships. They were a joy to work with, and so generous to our scholarship recipients.
So we decided to give the Macaroni Grill a try. Here is what the entry at the Cordova Mall looks like.
I had the Caesar Salad, which was very good, fresh, great dressing:
I also had the Chicken Marsala, which had three chicken cutlets, real chicken, not pre-formed, not identical, with angel hair pasta. The Marsala sauce had barely a hint of Marsala, but it was pretty good. I’d prefer a little more Marsala taste. It was plentiful, and I had enough left over for dinner, too.
AdventureMan had the lasagna, which he said was really good! His portion was so huge, he also had enough for dinner and I don’t think he was able to finish it, there was so much.
Service was prompt and efficient. We asked the server if all the food was prepared here, or prepared elsewhere and sent semi-prepared, and she said, with great pride, that all the food was prepared daily, on-site. You could see into the open kitchen, and chefs and assistants were back there busily preparing meals – all a good sign.
We probably won’t go back, just because there are two or three other Italian places in town we like better, but it is a perfectly decent restaurant with above average food, very clean, good service and convenient if you are at the Cordova Mall.
Eid Mubarak 2014
To all my Muslim friends, may your celebration be full of family and all good things with which God may bless you!
“Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor . . . “
Who are we?
I’m listening to a heartbreaking discussion on National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm show about the masses of children heading toward the southern border of the United States.
Anti-immigration is nothing new, not in the United States, not in newer countries. It is shocking to me, however, that people who came from somewhere else are so strongly opposed to allowing these desperate children in. If they are running for our border – and they are – they are desperate. They are desperate to escape violent death, and death by starvation, death of the spirit eeking out a living day to day.
“They come here for a hand-out!” is the most common complaint.
Read your American history. Very few immigrants – your ancestors, American citizens – arrived with money. Most relied on friends, family, the immigrant community, social services – whatever they needed to survive until they could get on their feet.
And get on their feet they did. Immigrants to America come here to work hard, believing that working hard will give them a chance at a better life. Your ancestors and mine – they came and worked hard, scraping together the money to build a business and/or to send their kids to schools. If you’ve ever attended a citizenship ceremony, you will love the jubilation. They don’t want a handout. They want a chance at building a decent life.
So now it’s “I’ve got mine, go back where YOU belong?”
When I grew up, not even in the United States proper, but in a U.S. territory, we sang a wonderful song, from a poem by Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, which is on a plaque on the Statue of Liberty:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
I’ve never forgotten those words we all sang as children. The immigrant flows into America are our life-blood. You can keep your stale traditions and meaningless pomp, she cries, send me those willing to work hard and yearning for freedom.
How can we refuse CHILDREN seeking asylum? Each child we feed, house and educate will have a chance to become contributing citizens. The face of our nation is changing, has already changed greatly and will continue to change, and what we choose today will have a critical effect on what our society will look like tomorrow.
Do we still yearn for liberty for all? Do we want a highly stratified society where some are born to high paying jobs and others relegated to trades (I’ve seen how this works in another country; it’s stultifying.) Restricting access to all that we enjoy will create a wholly different society, a zero-sum-game society, where your loss is my gain, instead of an everyone wins society, where my success lifts you, too. Our country thrives on the creation of wealth; ideas are generated, resources and labor pools are created, they are not finite, they transition. Immigrants fuel the kind of innovation and population flow that keeps the lifeblood of our country flowing.
My family has been in the US a long time. We qualify as daughters-of-just-about-everything. We were immigrants; we were not native-born. The entire United States, other than the First People, are immigrants. We are immigrants, all of us. It makes us strong.
Contemporary Art Bike Racks – Another Reason to Love Pensacola
These are so cool, on every corner south of Garden on Palafox. They are not only handy for our urban riders, they LOOK great, very svelte, minimal. Very cool. Woooo HOOOO on you, Pensacola!
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