How Does Your Garden Grow?

I have a lot of association with the word "brown". Obviously of course, it's my last name. Did I ever tell you about the time a phone salesman asked me how I spelled my last name? It took me almost 5 minutes to make him understand it. Really. I don't know what was wrong with the dude. I guess his parents had an aversion to crayons or something when he was growing up.

Anyway....

I also have brown circles around my knuckles. I don't know why. I've scrubbed my hand until it's bled and can't get rid of them (no doubt because it's actually in my skin pigment rather than, you know...dirt or something.) I know...I find it pretty weird myself.

Then I also am blessed with (as Heather affectionately refers to them) the "Brown bags". You need only take one look at my eyes to know if I'm sick or tired or just generally not feeling the groove of life, because they get all puffy and droopy and it's just pitiful. Pitiful, I say...

Unfortunately, I also have a brown thumb. I hate this. For one, it goes against the laws of genetics. My dad could grow anything. His front-of-the-house-alternating-red-and-white impatiens display was so desirable that soon after we moved into our house several copycat red-and-white-impatiens-displays began showing up throughout the neighborhood. Mom also follows suit....there's nice houseplants sitting around, and she raised her own garden last year, and...well, it just disgusting. Not too mention Aunts and Uncles and Grannys who can just look at a plant and it starts to grow. (Well, maybe they're not that powerful, but still...)

I - on the other hand - can kill a plastic plant. Seriously, I have actually done that. By the way, a word of advice...Don't ever sit a plastic plant too close to a significant heating source. I'm just sayin'....

So anyway, I've got this house of my own now so I should have houseplants to make it look all "homey" inside, right? Well, this could be a problem. I have one plant that my aunt gave me a few months back. I don't know what it is because I am also flower-illiterate. I can point out Roses and Dandelions pretty well, but it gets a bit dicey after that. (And don't start with the whole "a dandelion is actually a weed" thing!)

But I'm trying to take care of my little plant as best I can. However, I don't think it's a good thing when the leaves start to turn brown and droop to the ground on it. I also don't think it's a good thing when they curl up into a thin little tube. (I really had no idea that plant leaves would do that.) Mom was over the other day, looked at it and wanted to know what was wrong with it. I think it's kind of obvious that if I knew the answer to that there probably would not be a need to even ask the question....However, I let it go and said "I have no idea, but I think I'm killing it." Then she touched it and said "You're giving it too much water! Can't you tell that by touching the dirt?!" Which also seems to be a question that also would not need to be asked if the answer were truly "yes"...

So, now I've learned I should touch my plant's dirt more often. (Of course, I still don't know when "wet" is "too wet", but....) And I'd already discovered that it is not good when the leaves start rolling up into little tubes. See, I'm getting there....Little by little I'll surely get the hang of this, right?

I just wonder how many flowers I'll lose to that great Garden in the Sky along the way....

The Future at my Fingertips.....

I got a new laptop at work. My former was about 12 years old and weighed 56 pounds. So I'm quite happy about the sleek new 22 ounce machine I now get to transport around. However, there is one slight problem....

Security of course is a huge issue at all organizations these days. Our company is no different. For quite some time if you used a laptop, you were assigned a "key fob" that had numbers on it that change every minute. In order to get into your machine, you had to first key in a "secret" number code that only you knew, then you had to key in the numbers on the fob. There was also a status bar on the fob that told you when it was about time for the numbers to change again. So the big game around the office amongst us laptop users was to try to key in the numbers as fast as possible, hoping to beat the clock. I usually didn't make it. For one thing, I typically would have my fob upside down to start. By the time I figured out the "L" was really supposed to be a "7", it had changed again anyway. Ah, the excitement that fills my days.

But with this fancy new machine comes fancy new technology. Gone are the days of "key fob speed racing".......welcome to the world of biometrics. In other words, swipe your finger please.

There's this little sensor on the laptop that you swipe your finger across. The machine recognizes the grooves and swirls of your fingerprint and realizes you are its one and only true master, and allows you into its electronic world. I thought this would be a great thing because, for one...I typically remember to bring all my fingers with me wherever I go. Not so true with a key fob. Nothing was more annoying than firing up the machine to work at home and realizing the key fob was still hanging out at the office. So, this is a big plus. Secondly, it's a bit more difficult to get my finger upside down like I did the fob. The more simple we can make life, the better.

Plus....it's really cool. You know....you feel all....James Bond-y like.

Because when you see this in the movies, it always is a smooth transaction. The hero just swipes their finger in a daring flair and then they're off to fight the manic terrorists who have infiltrated the Empire State Building or have robbed the National Archives of the Declaration of Independence or.....well, you get the idea.

Turns out this is not so much the case in the real world. I don't know if someone comes into my house at night and secretly sandpapers my fingertips while I sleep or what, but for the last 2 days my laptop has refused to recognize my "biometrics". No matter how hard I beg and plead with it, it refuses to believe that my finger is really my finger. It's actually rather insulting to be told by a machine that your body parts are not valid. Or maybe I'm just overly sensitive...who knows. What I DO know is that it does not put my day off to good start in the least to spend an hour fighting with the thing. No exaggeration...AN HOUR!

So today I drug our IT person down to my desk to try and reconfigure it. Tomorrow we'll see what happens.

Welcome to the future....ugh.