I have not been abducted by aliens!

As time goes by is one of my favorite British sitcoms, but in this context I am talking about life and the passage of time. It has become a time, in my life, where I am caring for an ill, and elderly mother.

She complains that the roles are reversed. She loves to instruct and she does not like playing the child to me, the mother. This is a role that is made even more difficult by the fact that she is OC.

It literally, took me sixty years to realize she was OC, because it was a normal state of my growing up. I thought every household balanced like ornaments when hanging them on the tree. Surely every one's mother cut up bits of papers in perfectly straight squares.

I was the weak one, who cannot cut a straight to save her life. Who finds it disturbing to have perfectly balanced anything on the mantle or coffee table. Don't ever look in my corners and expect perfect cleanliness either.

Caring for a mother who is in stage four heart failure and who has a tube in her gallbaldder can be very time consuming. I am fortunate to have a very understanding and supportive husband, who is often more patient than I am.

My mother, who has done more than I could even detail here for me, is worth every minute of that time, but I do miss being able to dedicate my time to my artwork. But, not to marketing it.

I have a website but find I am not updating it. So, I have decided to drop my website and use blogs instead, to both market my book and artwork.

This blog is already entitled my working title, "Moon Tree Brothers." This blog will remain a place to discuss writing and give you hints of my book.

With that said, I do so hope, I can take the time every couple of days to give you snippets of Moon Tree Brothers. Throw in descriptions, drawings, anything that you might find fun, without endangering my publishing possibilities.

So, a happy holidays to everyone from the gang in the Moon tree, who have come from all over the world to fight the Darkness together. My you have peace, joy and love in your hearts for life.

External modems and internal vision

I feel guilty being even the slightest unhappy with my world, when I have water, food, a roof over my head, and medical care (at least until March 31st). But, it is the only way to let you know I have not abandoned my blog, it has just been a bit hard to get to lately.

You would think that you could plug in a new computer and be good to go, alas, NO!

My faithful Gateway tablet gave up its ghost. I am obsessive about back ups and also got a few hours advanced warning that things were not right, so i did not lose my book or anything, however, my new Dell Inspiron 1545 came complete with OUT a modem.

Okay, you look through the list of stuff you are getting and you notice what they are giving you but nowhere did it say, at least in noticeable letters, you do NOT get an internal modem. I then ordered one and got online quite fine until I went to my Master's Daughter for Christmas and enjoyed WiFi, came home and my Internet would not work.

Yes, I am still on AOL dial-up. It stinks, but it is all I have, so i checked the setting and I was indeed trying to go on dial-up, with my external modem and then I spent an hour, on the phone with Dell. We did so much changing that I could not possibly write down each step just in case and sure enough, just in case happened the next time I went to the library on DSL. And, it did.

So, I am currently on a very old Windows XP desktop, on dial up. Some days I can get on, some days I cannot. I am working on the laptop again but my eyes are complicating all of it.

This is also not the month to fight anything having to do with reading as I am having cataract surgery and, while I now have 20/20 vision in my right eye (a new one for me) I am really struggling to read. Believe me, had I known and if this was elective surgery, I would not have done it. I would rather wear glasses and be able to read easily. But, since cataracts have to go, I did not have a choice.

I am sincerely hoping that tomorrow, after the left eye is done, that things will eventually even out or whatever, at the very least I will get reading glasses, and life will be back to normal; well, as normal as my life ever gets, once i get my laptop working on line.

The best laid plans!

Yup! I was in the webpage creation home stretch, when my "Got Viggo Mortensen" bit the dust.

That's the name of my last computer. I do not normally name inanimate objects, but my Master's Daughter got me this neat sticker last year at Christmas, and, since I spend the most time with my laptop, I put the "Got Viggo Mortensen" sticker on the lid. We won't go there!

It was a beloved Hewlett Packard, write on swivel screen with styllis, dream machine. Now it is history, and I am stuck with a few pages to correct and create for my web site, and no way to get there.

Our house has many computers in it, from an ancient first generation laptop with no back up way to reinstall anything, to the three that supposedly work. I keep looking for a donation spot and just discovered that Good Will takes them.

I have three printers and three accesible computers. The newest computer is, of course, a VISTA. Drat!! The reason I am now using it is that no one else wants to and I am the resident computer person. So, now it is do or die to make the blasted thing work.

Out of three printers, one finally installed on it. I was able to put Word on it and then the story gets depressing. I could not install Coffee Cup HTML (which I need to fix the pages of my website that are not loading their pictures). I even spent eight hours on dialup, yesterday, uploading it from their website and it's nowhere to be found this morning. It is really difficult to find where things are on VISTA.

Jasc Paint Shop Pro installed just fine. The older desktop that takes all of these programs, is not wanting to view the graphics in PNG, which is what most of mine are. Other than that, this computer has nothing on it. What a sad waste of money and what frustration as I sit here waiting until the 22nd for my new Dell.

Anyone know where I can get another "Got Viggo Mortensen" sticker?

Less artistic, easier on the eyes!

Every few days I try to complete another text only page for my site, so I was interested in a site I found by Jakob Nielsen, entitled Writing for the Web. His message is that writing for the web is different than writing for print media.

First, computer users scan pages instead of reading word-for-word. I do not know about you, but I know I do this, until I find that it is interesting enough to give it a more careful read. I am on dialup, and those minutes are slow going, so I am not wasting my time on a page that does not have the information I want on it.

He also states that it is 25% slower to read from the computer screen than from a paper. I have to wonder if this is also a case of it being easier to read black letters on white, rather than some of the insane combinations I have seen on the web.

I have literally seen red letters on green and when you have colors like that, itthey just seem to throb at you. It is popular right now to put black letters on white backgrounds. This is probably the hardest, especially for older people or those whose eyesight is not the best, to read.

I have said it before and I will say it again, this is not going to stop anyone from copying your words. All they have to do is copy it and then change the text color. And, there is always PrtSc for anything else, folks, so be kind to your readers and, not so artistic, and make your copy readable.

His other points were to use simple sentence structure, update the page frequently, use bulleted lists --- oppps!! Let's change that to a bulleted list and see how much easier it is to see.

· Simple sentence structure
· Update page frequently
· Use bulleted lists
· Avoid scrolling
· Have a main page and link it to secondary pages for more detail
· Use headlines and captions
· Edit your work.

The only one I disagree with is “avoid cute headlines.” Frankly, a funny catchy headline will slow me down to investigate how well a site is written, now if you are writing for a professional audience, perhaps you want to tone that headline down.

I am off to edit and simplify and write catchy headlines, now.