06/12/2016

 The mood is somewhat better.

 Still not good but I'll take what I can get. I still have this creeping sensation of dread as Monday draws nigh. See that? I used 'nigh' in a sentence. No one talks that way anymore. Or, if they do, they never say 'nigh' to me.

 Or Nee! For that matter. (The right people will get that joke).

 I'm very distracted. Or easily distracted. Or distractable? Is that even a word? If not, then it is today.

 I spent most of the day in my living room, in the dark, with the A/C cranked up..or down...which ever way you want to view that glass. I was playing an online game called Slingo. If you're not familiar with Slingo, you should check it out at Slingo.com.

 It's very addicting, fun, and doesn't require you to keep sending messages to your friends so you can buy a freaking bucket, or a cookie-cutter, or a vowel...or a bowel if you're playing that zombie game.

 I like playing this game because it's nothing but varying sets of patterns. It's basically a combination of Slot Machine and Bingo, hence (hence! I'm all about 'Ye Olde English' today) Slingo. It's good for helping to center myself when centering myself is pretty-much a lost cause.

 Where was I?

 Oh, yeah. Monday...and nigh (See? Used it three times!, how cool is that?). I just have a building sense of dread. Everyone knows what this feels like. When you screwed-up big-time and you know it and you have to apologize. There's still that sense of shame. That's the source of the dread.

 I've known Deb and Joan for a long time, I know they'll forgive me. But it won't make me feel any less guilty and that's another strong emotion that can be crippling sometimes.

 I'll get through it. The dread and the nigh(!).

 So, after spending a productive morning winning fake gold and prizes that generally involve having to complete a few dozen surveys (some usage of the word 'prize' I was previously unfamiliar with), I decided I had to move now or I won't move at all.

 I carefully clipped and shaved my face, showered everything else, brushed my teeth, got dressed, and went to get a haircut. I normally go to Suburban Barberama (yes, that's really the name), but they're closed on Sundays so I went to Supercuts, next to Outback in East York.

 I'd been to this Supercuts several times but not enough to know the people there. Considering the current mood I actually had a good time there. I had a very stimulating conversation with the young woman who cut my hair. I'd guess her age at around 23 or so.

 We talked at length about the changes in writing styles across pretty-much every genre from the literary canon through contemporary fiction. It's been a long, long time since I had this sort of a conversation and I enjoyed it thoroughly. She agreed that paragraph and sentence structure had changed dramatically from two-page long paragraphs to a shorter, more frequently separated structure that delivers information in short bursts without taking the reader out of the narrative.

 She laughed when I said Earnest Hemingway wouldn't be able to get a book published if he was starting out today with the same writing style. No one wants to be subjected to a three hundred word sentence.

 So, that lifted my mood a great deal. I tipped well and thanked her for the conversation.

 Wanted to go by the farm stand on Windsor Road on the way home for some more corn on the cob but I discovered they're closed on weekends. I went to Giant instead. There were very few people on the road and the store wasn't crowded at all so I got through it okay.

 They only had white corn but it looked pretty good so I'll be steaming some later.

 While I was in line, there was a couple and a little girl of about four or five years in front of me. The girl was very insistent about getting a box of some sort of sour, fruit-flavored candy. Daddy kept carefully taking the box and putting it back on the shelf. She wasn't being a brat or anything, just couldn't focus on anything else (sound familiar?)

 The moment daddy would turn toward the cashier or the card terminal she'd go and carefully pick up the same box of candy. The cashier took pity on daddy and offered the little girl an animal sticker. The cashier asked if she'd like a lion, or a zebra, or a monkey...and I piped up “A panda.”

 The little girl agreed with me that a panda was far superior to all other life-forms and she'd finally forgotten about the candy once she had her hands on a panda sticker.

 For the record, I asked for a panda too.

 So I have corn. And cookies to take to work as a peace offering (chocolate, of course), and other cookies I'll be sharing with the guilt (it likes chocolate chip).

 And a panda sticker.

 Sometimes I forget that life is a series of small joys.

 Sometimes sharing a moment with a child is what it takes to remember.

 Thanks for listening  

Tarnation wrote:

So ping us if, tomorrow, (not so old) ladies say "Nee" at will to passing ruffians.

 

Or harmless shrubbers.  
 

It's like the moment just before encountering a three-headed knight.

Thanks CS, I was wondering.

I get feelings like this from time to time just before something horrible happens.  Pretty much useless since it's just a feeling but it's upsetting.

I actually left work early once because it was so bad...about two hours later that story broke about all those children being gunned down at school.

 

Conspiracy Theory wrote:

I received a notice from Amazon telling me I have a 121 dollar credit due to a settlement over e-book prices with Apple.

The e-mail specified the credit is for qualified items but doesn't say what kind of items and I wasn't able to find anything in writing on the website.

Anyone familiar with this?

Hope this helps. Found this today:Apple is returning money to ebook buyers after losing price-fixing lawsuit

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/21/11991526/apple-ebook-price-fixing-refunds-begin-for-consumers

Three years after a court first ruled that Apple was liable for conspiring to fix ebook prices, consumers are finally getting their money back for buying overpriced books. Starting today, booksellers are beginning to refund customers by placing store credit into the accounts they bought the affected ebooks with. Apple will pay out $400 million to impacted consumers.

It still denies wrongdoing with regard to ebook pricing.Apple agreed to a settlement that'll have it refunding some of the cost of ebooks sold by major publishers between April 1st, 2010 through May 21st, 2012.  It'll have to return $6.93 for books sold during that period that were a New York Times bestseller and $1.57 for all other books — in both cases, it's supposed to be twice as much as consumers actually overpaid. Money should automatically be credited into buyers' accounts on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other ebook sellers, including Apple's iTunes.

This essentially wraps up the case against Apple, which started back in 2012. It was accused of colluding with the major book publishers to raise the price of ebooks above the $9.99 that Amazon liked to sell them for. While all the publishers went ahead and settled, Apple took the case to court, where it lost in 2013. It appealed over the next few years, eventually being rejected by the Supreme Court in early 2016. That means it now has to comply with terms of a settlement made years back, which require it to pay out $400 million to consumers and an addition $50 million for litigation fees.


How to get your Amazon credit from Apple's ebook price-fixing settlement

http://www.macworld.com/article/3086930/legal/how-to-get-your-amazon-credit-from-apples-ebook-price-fixing-settlement.html