Blog #192

 

My iPhone got updated.  Stop it!  I don’t want my phone changed.  Which iPhone big-wig can I complain to?  Is there a Mr. Apple, a Mrs. Apple, a Granny Apple?  Whoever you are, stop changing my phone as soon as I get used to the last load of crap you threw in there.  I don’t need it to do anything else.  I can call, text, email or FaceTime anyone in the world.  I can get the weather and the time and Google.  And Siri gives me directions, even though I still get lost.  Plus, I can find my wife.  I have an app that can track Carol’s phone anywhere on the planet, and once I find her phone, she is usually there too.  Hey, I’ve known where she's been for 53 years; I’m not about to lose her now.

 

Message from Shakespeare:  You will always know that you have someone to be with you and help you through anything (Romeo and Juliet).  That’s what Romeo told Juliet, whoever they are, and that’s what my Pops tells me all the time.  I guess that means he loves me.  It’s nice to have a family.

 

Oh, and now Granny Apple wants me to use face recognition.  I presume that means my face, but that’s a problem.  My face changes over the years.  Just look at my wedding pictures.  My face has changed so much, my wife only recognizes me because of the clothes I’m wearing.  I don’t want to use face-recognition anyway because then the only way Carol would be able to use my phone would be to make her face somehow look like mine.  That would be as likely as Heidi Klum making herself look like Big Bird.  I wonder if Big Bird is getting shorter as he gets older.  He’s probably Medium Bird by now.

 

Ok, back to hi-tech stuff.  I have this website that communicates between myself and my doctors.  It tells me all my upcoming appointments (as if I’m too ignorant to write them down in my calendar) and allows me to send questions to my doctors (as if my phone doesn’t work) and sends results from tests.  It’s a great website.  It’s called MyChart.  Obviously, I hate it!  I got an email today telling me to visit MyChart for new test results.  I haven’t had any tests recently, but I was curious to see what they were talking about.  My pacemaker-defibrillator (which I call my device) talks to a little monitor that sits on the floor near my bed.  I don’t know what they talk about, but every three months, the monitor reads the device and sends three months’ worth of my heart activity electronically to Dr. Rhythm.  It’s kind of like those Quarterly Report Cards we got in grade school, except if you flunk this one, they start engraving your name on a marble slab.

 

Anyway, those were the results they were talking about.  The good news is that in the last three months, my heart has been working like a Swiss clock – absolutely perfect.  But there was a line that said: Remaining life – 3.8 years.  I hope they were talking about the battery. 

 

Hi there and welcome back.  I hope you are feeling well and settling in to the reality of a President Biden.  As you have probably noticed, I have made a conscious decision to ignore the political cage-match that consumes our country and to concentrate my energies on more pleasant things.  That could be why my heart has been behaving so politely.  I hope you also noticed that earlier I used the phrase “write them down in my calendar”.  That’s right, I do not use an electronic calendar.  Each year, I buy a magazine-sized calendar.  It has all the months, in the proper order, each month having the correct number of days allotted to it by the Greek Gods or whoever figured that out.  What could be easier?  I write down my doctor appointments, my grandchildren’s soccer games, lunch with friends, meetings with the Pope – everything that intrudes upon my day.  I never miss an event and I am never late.  Why would I even think about changing?

 

One thing that is written in large caps in my calendar is my granddaughter’s Bat Mitzvah which is this Saturday.  Except for a few family members and the Rabbi and the Cantor, the ceremony will be watched on some kind of Zoom feed.

 

Speaking about the Cantor made me wonder about the music at Jewish services.  Music is universally written left to right, but the Hebrew words are written right to left.  How does that work?  I Googled it on my phone which I didn’t need any Apple person to upgrade.  The music goes, of course, left to write and the Hebrew lyrics proceed left to write under the corresponding notes, even though each Hebrew word is spelled right to left.  There has to be a limerick there.

 

Hebrew music is read left to right

With words underneath in plain sight

But Jews write each word

Right to left – how absurd

That’s it – nothing more left to write.

 

Wrong!  I have plenty left to write.  Show me an Apple friggin’ update that can write a limerick.

 

I will be very happy when this whole election thing is over and we can get back to our normal lives – living like agoraphobic toilet-paper hoarders.  An agoraphobic person (Weekly Word) is afraid of leaving home or being in crowded places.  Paul Simon wrote a song called I Am a Rock.  In it are these lyrics -- I am alone.  Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.  I touch no-one and no-one touches me.  It sure feels like that sometimes, doesn’t it?  On the other hand, you have your Bridge online and your Zoom calls with your family and your conference calls with your friends and you have me every week.  And I have you.  Aren’t we lucky!  Let’s do it again next week.  Until then, stay well and count your blessings.  Now I have nothing left to write.  Later!

 

Michael                          Send comments to:  mfox1746@gmail.com