There are 22 posts tagged clean up (this is page 2 of 4).
I keep a bottle/ container of hand sanitizer on my computer desk. I use it on my hands and every now and then I use it all over my computer mouse. If you look at the crud on the mouse, think of your hand there, creating that crud. Now, doesn’t it seem a good idea to keep both well cleaned?
How does crud build up like that? Has anyone got a really great theory? I expect it is the dust bunnies, as always. They are persistent little things.
I’ve been trying to clean newsletters out of my email inbox. There are far more than I can ever even want to read. I don’t want to try reading any of them at this point. The sad thing is that a few of them I used to read all the time and would still enjoy if I didn’t feel so crowded any time I open my email. I’m glad I stuck with webmail rather than using the email address I have with my domains. At least on the web it is “on the web” and not taking over space on my computer.
I think anyone who suggests starting a newsletter as a good promotional idea is behind the times. Or just so new online that they don’t have a vastly cluttered email inbox, yet. I do get tempted to take a look at newsletters, even still. But, the fact is that there are so many voices in my email inbox now that I can’t hear any one of them. So they are all going to go, slowly and painfully. I don’t see any way to clean out the inbox other than the painful and slow way of going through them individually, unsubscribing and then deleting all the newsletters already sent and never read.
Now and then there are newsletters which will not let you unsubscribe or worse, newsletters which say you are now unsubscribed but they have not done anything or they have subscribed you to other lists/ newsletters which they send out. Spammers will be spammers. If this happens you just black list them using the garbage filter in your email service. Gmail has that set up well and it works! I know from using it quite a lot.
Anyway, when I finally get this mess cleaned up it will be nice to see my friends again. Some newsletters which I know are there I will find again, like connecting with a good friend you’ve been missing. Scribe and Quill is one I am looking forward to getting to know all over again. I am sure the clean up is going to take me a few weeks. There are newsletters which will revisit me like unwanted ghosts. Eventually, I will get all the junk out and my email inbox will be a nice place to visit once again.
Gmail Ninja – Tips for handing your Gmail inbox clutter, from Gmail.
Four Steps to Banish Email Clutter – Think Simple Now
You’ve become famous for your beauty but, in fact, it’s been 20 years since you last looked at yourself. In the morning you have body servants who do everything to prepare you for the day. During the day you have someone who follows along with you for any little touch ups to your hair, make up or wardrobe. Then, when you get home in the evening, there is a whole staff too for the bedtime routines. Once a week you have a spa day where every centimetre of your body is one kind of beauty treatment or another.
It’s been so long since you actually looked at yourself that you realize you’ve begun to forget what you look like. On your way to visit your business manager, the elevator has fancy mirrored doors which open to let you in. So you take a quick peek before they finish opening. How odd, you think. You can’t see yourself at all.
You decline to enter the elevator and tell those waiting to ride up and you will get the next one. You get a few odd looks but, it’s the city and there are all kinds of eccentrics here.
As the doors close behind them, you wait. Another chance to see yourself again and yet… you can’t see yourself. It’s not possible you could have become invisible.
Your daylong beauty checker notices a touch of glow on your face and moves to stand in front of you, fixing it but blocking your view. You can see around her and behind her in the mirror. You can see your arms wearing the dress you know you are wearing. It is only when she finally steps away, satisfied that you are perfect again, that you see the face and the body that go with the dress.
Someone has paid an awful trick on you! A joke! Surely it must be a joke. The woman in the mirror doesn’t look like you! She can’t be you! That face looks like something formed out of wax. It is perfect but it shows no sign of life. Unreal, like a mannequin. That can’t be you! You never looked like that!
As you turn towards your beauty checker, trying not to let out the scream which is racing up inside of you, you notice she is not real, not a real person. She’s mechanical, like a robot.
You look around you, there are other people coming and going, but as you look a bit closer you see they are all robots. No one that you can see is a real person, a human made of flesh, blood and bone. Now the scream rips out of you. You feel it leave your lungs, fly out of your throat and shake through every cell of your body.
But no… you realize. You didn’t really feel anything. You just expected to feel something.
Are you not real? No, you know you’re real. You can remember being real. About 20 years ago when you started being famous, you had a family, you had a cat too. Whatever happened to that cat? Seems you lost track of it and a lot of other things.
Your beauty checker tries to take hold of your arm but you are already off, running in a panic, out the doors, to the outside. If you can just get outside, everything will be right out there.
It’s been a long time since you ran anywhere. A long time since you did anything very physical. But you can still run. It feels good. You feel real again. No doubt this is just what you need. No doubt you can make everything make sense now that you’re not walking around half aware any more.
You catch sight of your face in the glass of the revolving doors… it’s like it’s melting. Slipping down from your hairline slowly like molasses. Underneath… under the waxy looking mask that you thought was your face… there are mechanical parts, wires, metal and circuit boards.
Everything inside of you shudders to a halt. You blow your final circuit, you become empty and frozen in place.
Later, a van pulls up outside. You are not really aware of it. You aren’t really aware when two clean up robots come and take you, place you in a long box and haul you into their van. On the side of the van it says “Acme”, of course.
Have you ever had a day where you get to the end of the day and realize you never actually, really looked at yourself all that whole day? How would it feel to look at yourself then and find a stranger looking back at you?
From Chris Baty, the NaNoWriMo Newsletter:
Write every day. Even if you just knock out 75 words before collapsing into bed, those 75 words will keep you connected you to your story in essential ways, and make diving back into your book much easier.
Between one and a hundred things I have not even started for NaNoWriMo. Yesterday I said I was just giving up on it and I might still do that. But, this morning, when I was still waking up and not quite back into my life yet, I thought that I could still do it. I’d just need to write double the regular words per day. The month isn’t half gone by. It is still a possibility.
So I turned on the computer, waiting for it to load up all the Windows stuff, the Acer stuff and then some update it just had to do for Java. It finally finished loading up a second time after the annoying Java thing… then I was called away. My Mother needed me to get the lawn mower out from the garage where my brother had put it away behind a bunch of lawn furniture he had stored away for the winter last weekend. So I did that. Then she wanted me to do something else, then something else still and then a couple of other things… about two hours later I came back to my computer.
Now I have about 10 minutes before I leave for a birthday party for my niece who will be 5 today and is very excited and especially phoned me last night to make sure I remembered her birthday and to tell me (again) that I am on her invited list.
Knowing the usual at my sister’s house I will be making the dinner, after I clean up her kitchen. Then it seems she bought a cake mix so I am probably going to be making the birthday cake. Then the party itself. Then the running around and pinging off walls while my sister and her husband forget they are parents. I will be getting the girls into the bath and then tucked into bed. Then, by 8:00 or so I will come back downstairs. My sister may want to play cards but these days she is nearing the end of her pregnancy so she may not and just watch TV or go to bed early herself.
I will get home any time from 9:00 to midnight, as I have in the past on babysitting days. I will try to write then when I sit here in front of the computer. But, first I will need to unwind a bit. So I check email, probably put on a computer game and end up going to bed cause my eyes cant’ stay open to do much of anything.
So that will be another day of not writing for NaNoWriMo. But, I did update for my daily post here. That’s a good thing!
It’s very unfair. We have those tiny tomatoes growing in the garden, they are just now all ripening up and are so juicy and warm from the sun, like biting into summer (only the good edible parts). But, each time I have a few of those tomatoes I feel sick, like I’m getting a the flu, that night and the next day. It is very unfair. I love those little tomatoes. I ate almost a dozen of their little red, orange and yellow bodies this afternoon and now I feel yucky, shivery and cold. Bleh. I still don’t think I can give up eating the tomatoes. Let them punish me for it.
Tomorrow I am babysitting again. Did I mention that my sister is due to pop out another baby in November/ December. As much as I like seeing the kids, especially Zack who started high school this year, I am tired of babysitting. Mostly, I am tired of her house. It is a dump and they seem to not even notice it. When I came over last week she told the girls to clean up cause I was there. She had been home all day but didn’t think to clean up because that is what people should do! No, it’s only because I’m queen bitch who will throw away all their toys and stuff. Get real. I told one of the girls that instead of bringing a garbage bag for all their stuff I wish I just had a blow torch instead. Would be much easier to clear a path through all the crap at the front door that way. I really am that fed up with it all. People who can’t train their children to be something more than feral animals should not be having another baby.
I know she has businesses to run. I know she sees herself as a business woman/ career goal minded. But, then, logically you don’t have four children set lose to fend for themselves. Know yourself. If you aren’t Mother material don’t keep popping them out thinking other people will do the job for you.
I do like the children, I’m not completely evil. Just annoyed, mostly just annoyed. I know when I am there tomorrow the floor of the entryway will be covered in coats, boots, books, games, assorted clothing, toys and other mindless debris. Plus the fish dying quietly in the fishtank placed right at the door for some odd reason. Then the kitchen, dishes and food left out all over the counters. The table will be coated in crayons, papers and assorted other remnants of the feral animals who live and eat there.
I’m sick of being the one who has to bitch those kids around into cleaning up after themselves. I don’t even see the point of doing so any more. Each week it is the same. They do not change, they do not learn and they certainly have proven that they do not care. I’m fed up with caring, with being told I’m a bully and being made to feel that is true. I really could cheerfully set fire to the lot of it. Just as the sleeve of my sweater caught fire for a second tonight when I moved the broccoli off the jet on the oven. (I blew it out and there is only a scorch mark on my sweater which was already one of my rag bag sweaters just for wearing around the house when I work, not a great loss).
Anyway, I can at least look forward to taking Zack out shopping for some school supplies tomorrow. Odd you may think that school has been started a few weeks ago and wouldn’t his parents have already checked that he has what he needs. Why, no. My Mother and I bought him most of his school clothes for starting high school. My other sister, the redhead took him shopping downtown and bought some expensive jeans and a shirt. His parents attended the meeting at the school for parents and gave him the money he needed for a student card which the school asked for. That’s about it. I know she loves her children, she just seems to be attending the school of Don’t Bother. The same school my Father attended all my life and likely his own.
Has this been enough of a bitchy whine? I could go on. I’m kind of tired though and I have to get up early to babysit. Goodie goodie.
I wrote this as letter to the editor for our local newspaper. It was a reply/ rebuttal to another letter which talked on and on about the freedom and rights smokers should have. I know it is a long and tired argument but it isn’t often that smokers talk about anyone but themselves when they argue for smoking. I thought it was time someone pointed that out. Maybe it will make a difference, likely not. But it was said. Time will tell, time is a blabberwort that way.
Regarding Steve West’s defense of smokers and their rights… Why is the smoker’s lament always “my rights”, “my choice”, me me me.
Let’s think about other people first for a moment. The downside of smoking related health problems are pretty well documented. Health and health care for smoking related illnesses and those caused by second hand smoke. Also, smoking puts people at risk for other health problems, other kinds of cancers for one. It even affects those not born yet. If we could eliminate smoking as a health problem our economy would benefit too. There could be more money available for research or cures for other illnesses which are not self-inflicted. Governments and other organizations could put their resources into more essential things like daycare, eldercare, etc. There could even be more resources to really help people stop smoking rather than trying to convince them it would be a good idea to try.
Then there is the environment. Smoking causes a visible pollution in the air, it deposits a film of grime on surfaces like car windows and walls inside homes. Smokers choose to flick their cigarette butts on our sidewalks, in public parks, at bus stops, outside of shopping malls and restaurants. That’s called littering yet it is overlooked. If each cigarette butt were a pop can, coffee cup, plastic bag, water bottle or pet poop would it be overlooked then? Do smokers even notice butts piled up in places where children tend to pick things up?
Now lets talk about you. Have you looked at your teeth lately? Have you smelt your breath? Unless you use a pretty strong whitening toothpaste (which isn’t helping the durability of your tooth enamel) your teeth are grungy looking. Kissing you is like kissing an ashtray. Sitting next to you in public place is stinky business. I can smell it on your clothes, in your hair. When you sit next to me I come away smelling like smoke too and it bothers me all day, until I get home and shower. It’s not doing your clothes any favours either is it? Do you have that hacking cough in the morning? My smoking relatives do. Sounds awful, like they are struggling to cough their lungs out so they can breathe again. How much fun is that?
Now lets get to me. I am a non-smoker. I have asthma. I have a physical reaction to your smoking. It makes it hard for me to breathe. I’m not just asking for you to put out your cancer stick because I don’t like it. I don’t like not being able to breathe the air. It’s a habit I’ve grown into. Much like your own habit except I started a lot younger and really do think I should have the right, the freedom and the choice to continue doing so.
I forgot to add about the extra cleansers needed to clean up smoking grime, how those are all extra detergents and chemicals being added to our water, our ecosystem.