Weekend Reflection: Much Ado About Nothing

Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. ~ Matthew 6:34

Just for the record - my Yahoo Mail app on the phone is back “on” again this morning! Another lesson learned (over again). If I had just taken “Try Again Later” as “Try Again Tomorrow” I could have spared myself a lot of needless frustration!

Big thanks to the fellow bloggers who responded to my sighs, though. It’s always good to get reassurance that there is someone out there in the world wide web who is listening… ;)

My photo for Weekend Reflections was taken 1½ weeks ago at a cemetery which is also like a huge nature park. It was one of those still days that week when the fog lifted late in the day to let the sun through at last…

Please Try Again Later

  

Three months ago I hardly knew what an “app” was (because my old mobile/ cell phone was just a phone). Today I spent the whole afternoon in an Aargh! state of mind over one. For all I know it might be a temporary problem. The problem is I don’t know!

Isn’t technology just wonderful?!

Yesterday, with some anxiety, I updated the software in my phone (because it kept telling me to). Seemed to be all right. But today when I got notifications (on the phone) of new emails, and tried to read them on the phone, they weren’t there. Luckily, though, when I turned on the computer, there they were; so they were not lost completely. They just weren’t in the phone app, even though it kept sending me notifications of them coming in. Very annoying; in much the same way as when you lose something within your small flat, and you are 100% sure that it cannot really have disappeared, and you turn the whole place upside down to find it, but it’s still missing.

What stopped working is the Yahoo Mail app which until now I’d have given at least four and a half stars. Of course I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it, thinking that this might reset it back to normal. (And yes, I also turned the phone itself off and on again…) The only result is that now it won’t let me in at all. It just keeps saying: “Sorry! We are unable to access your mailbox currently. Please try again later.”

So – obedient as I am – I keep trying (every five minutes or so!) But so far to no avail. I have, however, discovered that I am able access my email from two other applications on the phone. But neither of those combines all the (former) advantages of the one that stopped working. So I’m still in “aargh” mode.

I guess eventually I’ll somehow get on with my life, though… 

 

A Slight Delay

In the mail today I received a big envelope with the municipal authorities’ logo, addressed to me. Inside I found two forwarded envelopes from two different sources. No extra note attached.

One was a letter from the bank re my father’s bank accounts, dated back in early July (i.e. a few weeks after his death). For some odd reason this had been sent to the nursing home where he lived the last year of his life, instead of to me. While he lived, all official mail including bank statements were sent directly to my address. Where’s the logic?? And why the delay??

What puzzled me even more was the other letter, though, because this contained a bill and payment forms for the rent for his flat at the nursing home marked October, November and December. But… but… but…? we emptied that flat before the end of July, and no one had been demanding rent for August and September; so why now??

So I got on the phone to try and sort that out. First person could not sort it out, so she transferred me to someone else. This person too was as confused as I was. She said it was impossible. According to their computers, everything was in order, there was no remaining debt or contract in my father’s name.

Then, suddenly, it dawned on me that the bills I held in my hand were dated 2010, not 2011. They were last year’s bills. That means they were also the reason why last autumn (as I now recalled), I had to phone three months in a row and ask why we had not received a bill/payment form for the rent, and each time they had to send me an extra one. Not until the third time was I informed that their policy was to send three bills at a time. (So it was really only one letter that had got “lost” and not three.)

So. I guess someone in an anonymous office at the service center/nursing home just had a bit of an autumn-cleaning… finally getting to the bottom of that pile on their desk that had been building up for a year! (Sigh!)

 

 

  

    

Booking Through Thursday: Odd

What’s the oddest book you’ve ever read?
Did you like it? Hate it?  Did it make you think?

The questions come from Deb at Booking Through Thursday.

The first answer that popped up in my mind as soon as I read the question was Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, which was first published in nine volumes between 1759-1767.

The full title of the work is:
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.

I read it in my third term of university English, which was close to 30 years ago. So off-hand I can’t really recall more than my general impression. Which was – odd! I did not hate it, though. In fact I think I quite liked it. And it did make me think.

Among the things I remember is that it includes some strange graphics such as black pages, blank pages, hand-drawn lines – and lots of digressions.

In fact, the telling of the story takes precedence over the actual story. And that, I suppose, is more or less the whole point!

I still have it in my bookshelf, so here is an excerpt:

From Tristram Shandy; Volume I, Chapter 22.
In my copy of the book, I have added in my own handwriting:
“Digression on digressions”!

Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine;—they are the  life, the soul of reading;—take them out of this book for instance,—you might as well take the book along with them;—one cold eternal winter would reign in every page of it; restore them to the writer;—he steps  forth like a bridegroom,—bids All hail; brings in variety, and forbids the appetite to fail.
   All the dexterity is in the good cookery and management of them, so as to be not only for the advantage of the reader, but also of the author, whose distress, in this matter, is truly pitiable: For, if he begins a digression,—from that moment, I observe, his whole work stands still;—and if he goes on with his main work,—then there is an end of his digression.
  —–This is vile work.—For which reason, from the beginning of this, you see, I have constructed the main work and the adventitious parts of it with such intersections, and have so complicated and involved the digressive and progressive movements, one wheel within another, that the whole machine, in general, has been kept a-going;—and, what’s more, it shall be kept a-going these forty years, if it pleases the fountain of health to bless me so long with life and good spirits.

Pictures borrowed from a web page by Glasgow University Library.

ABC Wednesday: Letter ‘L’

The days are inevitably getting shorter, and the nights longer. This past weekend I took in my sun lounger kind of chair from the balcony. Besides forecasts in the media about lousy weather further on in the week, we had also been given very specific warnings about local showers where I live:

Good thing they warned us by a leaflet first, or I would certainly have wondered what was going on when I caught sight of this…

… long-shafted, water-spraying brush outside my balcony!

Having been forewarned, though, I knew that it was just a fully legitimate balcony-cleaning going on!

Have to say I’ve never seen it done like this before.

After they did their job on the outside, I also took the opportunity to do a little of the same on the inside. Ouch. It’s a tough enough job even when you don’t have to work upwards!

I put my flower boxes back up because there’s life in them still.

In the flat I keep a light foldable camping chair which I can take out if against the odds there should be another afternoon suitable for “just sitting” for a while. (Later, in mid winter, the sun is so low on the sky that it hardly finds it way to my balcony at all.)

ABC Wednesday – Letter L