The Great Disappearing Act

I have two very good reasons to be absent from blogland this week. They came home Friday for spring break.  If you’ve read here very long, you know that everything goes on automatic back burner when my two favorite coeds come home from college. I like to hoard my time with them.

Today, I’m down to one. The Practical One has left to bask in the sun on Hilton Head Island for a few days so it’s just Mom and The Whimsy, and I hope to take advantage of her considerable talents while holding her hostage. You see, the girl is a computer whiz.

And I’m what you call technologically challenged.

This isn’t a new revelation. I’ve fought it my entire life. In college, I made a (B) in a total crip course called Educational Technology. Apparently, I can diagram a compound complex sentence with a double gerund, but I can not thread the film into a 16mm projector. No matter how hard I tried, it still spit streamers of celluloid all over the table.

Just like that reel to reel tape recorder.

And forget about synchronizing sound. My films always sounded like a bad Japanese movie.

As a young teacher, I meandered to the copy room one day and was greeted by a Xerox machine wearing a sign that said something like this:

Mrs. B-

I am a machine.

I do not respond to begging,

scolding,

or angry whacks with the palm of the hand.

Please do not kick me.

Such a smarty pants I worked for…

Technology may have improved in the past quarter of a century, but my skills have not. Computers are my natural enemy, and I’ve killed about a dozen of them since the dawn of the cyber age.

The Man of the House blames it on my unwillingness to learn. He must be right because I’ve read tutorial after tutorial and I still don’t know the difference between a blinkie and a button and can’t figure out how to center a picture in a header let alone shrink it.

I would ask for advice, but I probably couldn’t figure out how to follow it anyway.

On top of it all, I’m an impatient clicker.
And if one click is good, a double click is all the better.

clickclick…

On a regular basis, my screen becomes demon possessed and fills up with little blog boxes which multiply faster than I can double click a red (X). I usually throw my hands in the air and scream a little before doing the only computer move I know.

Control alternate delete…

I said all that to say this:

I have been trying to change the look of my blog for some time now, but apparently predesigned templates and centered pictures are above my pay grade. I thought I would dink with it while that daughter is home to handle the fall out.

However, because I don’t want to be a cyber spectacle as I tackle changes, I’m making the blog private for a few days while I do it.

Just thought I should mention it a day or so before I lock up.

I’ll be back.
I hope.

But if something happens, and I inexplicably delete myself from blogland,
It’s been really nice knowing you…