TGIFriday...Videos

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Who's up for a little escape from reality? You? You. Yes, I see you, waving in the back. Sadly, we at Jungle Red Writers haven't quite gotten the budget to a place where we can afford to fly everybody to Finland (happiest country on Earth 2018) to tool around Helsinki eating kalakukko and sipping cloudberry lakka. To be truthful, our blog budget doesn't stretch to sending one person to Finland, Minnesota for a Fishwich and St. Paulie. But we can all get away for a couple minutes, thanks to our friends at YouTube.

First, in honor of our graduations and weddings theme this week, some wedding bloopers:


...and some amusing graduation words of wisdom.


Ah, 2015. It seemed so long ago. June is the month for Pride Parades...



...and for honoring fathers.


Oh, my God, it's like I'm peeling onions in here after that last one.

I nee to look at some funny Shih Tzu videos as a chaser. I have a Shih Tzu, and they realy do have a weirdly deep voice for a tiny dog. 

Also, evidently most other Shih Tzu owners have wall-to-wall carpeting. In my experience, this is a mistake.  

Not into dogs? How about the totally true science of how cats land on all four legs?


No explanation of why they immediately start grooming themselves afterwards, as if to say, "I meant to do that."  

Getting away to nature is always refreshing. I'm definitely a water person, and can think of nothing better than swimming with penguins...


...but I'm sure some of you would prefer soaring over mountains on eagle's wings. Literally, in the case of this GoPro.


Are you ready for that trip to Finland now?


Kiitos kaikilli! And have a great Friday!

The Internet of Things is Killing Me

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The Smithie was housesitting for friends with two elderly dogs this past weekend, and I stopped in to drop off a few things. "Why are all the family room lights on in the middle of a sunny day?" I asked.

"I don't dare turn them off," she said.

No, she wasn't suffering from some extreme fear of any possible shadow. She was staying at a smart house. Everything was connected, and run from a screen on the kitchen wall that looked more complicated than an air traffic controller's  flight center. The Smithie had turned off the lights the day before and it had taken her forty minutes to get them back on when darkness fell. She wasn't sure how she had done it, so she refused to touch them again.

"Their coffee machine is on my phone now." I looked, and she was right: among her possible internet connections was KEURIG and WATER.

"What does 'water' do?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "I've decided to wait until I get back to my apartment to take a shower, though."

Now, I understand why these friends are super-connected. The husband is a highly-skilled engineer and they're empty nesters, with no kids to suck up their time or mess up their settings. Plus, they're very green, and I'm sure everything is programmed for maximum efficiency and minimum power usage. 

What I'm not sure is how this is going to work for those of us without electrical engineering degrees. I'm not very internet-connected at all, and my devices are still kicking my ass. 

Take my smartphone. I admit, it's not top-of-the-line.  To be precise, it's a $35 burner I got at Wal-Mart because I had broken my last phone and was desperate to get something before leaving for Bouchercon. It works, right? And I can use it on my family plan, and it's not like I need the latest Galaxy 3000 Notebook which will probably burst into flames anyway. It texts, it takes pictures, and I can connect to weather.gov and Google Maps. 

What I can't do is get rid of all the preloaded bloatware that's taking up much of what limited memory the phone has to begin with. (This device is the smartphone equivalent of a foggy minded post-menopausal woman, ie, me.) One of my kids' friends tried to tell me how to "break" the phone. It sounded like the times in Charlie Brown when the adults are speaking: wah wah wah wah. My solution? I delete any app I don't need in the next four days, then download it again when I have to. I've gotten the Target app so many times they probably think I'm a Russian hacker.

At the Very Small Library where I volunteer, we had a wonderful new energy saving system installed last year. A heat pump - heat exchange pump? - it's supposed to save us big bucks by sucking heat out of the air, even when it's cold. Sounds great, right? Free heat! Except when the air temperature falls close to, or below, 0 F. Would you care to guess how many times during a Maine winter the outside temperature falls close to or below 0 F? If your answer is "Often enough to keep the librarian and volunteers huddled around plug-in electric heaters while the patrons browse in parkas," you're correct!

It's very efficient now it's warm outside. Unfortunately, it was programmed by the installer, a big guy who evidently runs hot in the summertime. Since those of us working there have only the most rudimentary understanding of how to reprogram to a temperature somewhere north of "frosty," we've mostly given up in favor of wearing sweaters indoors.

Then there was my recent attempt top be safety conscious by changing my router's (easily guessed) password. Remember? We were all supposed to reboot our routers to prevent the Russians from hacking them? I did my part for a safer America. I changed the password. Then I had to change the password on my laptop, so it could access the router. Then my phone. Then my Kindle. Then the Smithie's phone and laptop. Youngest's phone, laptop and Kindle. When the Sailor came home on leave and the Very Tall Boyfriend dropped in, they had to change the password on their phones.

At this point, I was thinking, "Здравствуйте, Russian friends!" But the worst was yet to come. I could NOT get my Amazon Echo to recognize the new password.

Suddenly, my life was in shambles. No instant-on kitchen timer. No classical music on demand. No weather updates. Worst of all, no podcasts to lighten the time I spent cooking, cleaning, and folding laundry. I was on Episode 43 of "The History of Rome." Caesar was in Gaul, and I needed to know what happened next!

Okay, I know what happened next, having seen the Shakespeare play and watched I, Claudius. Still, I loved that podcast.

I tried rebooting Alexa, my Kindle, the router (again.) I tried to convince Amazon it was a new Echo, so it would let me run a straight start-up. (I didn't fool them.) It wasn't until the Smithie's Very Smart Girlfriend was tooling around with her tablet in the kitchen that we had a break-through. "Hey, your Echo's not working," she said. "Want me to fix it?" Twenty minutes later, I had Caesar and Pompey back.

I have no idea what she did. If the Smithie ever breaks up with her, I'm screwed. I'll have to toss out the old Echo and get a new one if I lose the connection again.

You can see, with my experiences, why I'm a little dubious about the smart home of the future. What if the sprinklers go off as soon as I step onto the grass? What if the alarm sounds every time I open the door to get the mail? What if I can't get in to the refrigerator? Admittedly, that last might have some positive results. My doctor does want me to drop a few pounds. Maybe I could get a smart scale that cheers when I do well and nags me when I don't... or maybe not.

How about you, dear readers? Are you a fan of the Internet of Things? Or do you think your stuff is smart enough as it is?

Back to the Future

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Did you go to your class reunion? What do you remember? I went to my high school's fortieth...and I was ON A MISSION. I had a (simple expensive) black dress, and simple (expensive) jewelry. (Which I borrowed from my mom.)  But. Weirdo me, unpopular me, misfit me, had a secret. Forty years later: I was happy. There is no more important power.

My dear amazingly talented colleague Sandra Block--whose book WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT I just read and am giving a total standing ovation--had a class reunion situation, too. (She's, um, younger than I am. But these things transcend age.)

And I am giving a copy of Sandra's brand new book to one very very lucky commenter.

SANDRA BLOCK: As my twentieth college reunion approached, I was terrified! 

I still hadn’t quite recovered from my my tenth year reunion experience. My roommates and I had decided to stay in the dorms instead of a hotel. You may think you want to go back to the halcyon days of single beds, paper-thin walls and no air-conditioning, but believe me, you do not. Being sleep-deprived and hung over is not the optimal frame of mind for socialization, especially for an introvert. 

I went to Harvard, for what it’s worth, where students become hedge fund managers upon graduation. So it was easy to compare yourself to your old classmates and come up…lacking.

       

     It took me ten years to get over that reunion.

And now I was looking at number twenty. When I got my Red Book, six months before the reunion, I still wasn't sure I was going. 

The Red Book is a reunion stand-by, a book of reflections from your classmates sent out before the big day. Everyone writes a page about themselves. Sometimes it comes off as a resume, sometimes a poetic reverie. The famous people (yeah, I'm looking at you, Matt Damon) never write anything, not even an address to facilitate stalking. 

            Anyway…that year, I had put something different in the Red Book.

Because, I had a secret. I wasn't actually jealous of all of the gagillionaire hege-fund managers out there. No, I wasn’t. 

I was jealous of the authors. The actors, the sit-com writers, the dancers. Those who had followed their dreams. I’m a neurologist – which is respectable, no doubt. I heal people, I think all day, I make enough money. By all accounts, I done good. But, I wasn't what I really wanted to be.

 So this year, I wrote that down in the Red Book. I said I’ve always wanted to write a book, and I was finally going to do it. 

 Putting my dream on paper did something for me. It made me accountable. It made my dream not just a dream, but a dare. And then, I did it. I didn’t have a book deal, or even an agent, but I was still writing that damn book. That year, my room-mates smartly booked a B & B instead of the dorms. And we had – dare I say it – fun.

 Flash forward five years, to my twenty-fifth reunion last year. A lot had changed. This time, I could proudly put doctor and author in the Red Book. I had three books out, and even signed a copy at Logan airport! (Yes, I accosted and strong-armed a stranger into buying it – but hey, a sale is a sale).

Who knows what the next five years will bring. But this time, I know I’ll be there to find out. Before your next reunion comes up, ask yourself: what will you dare yourself to do?

What will you put down in your own Red Book?

HANK: See what I mean? Fabulous. TRUST ME, it's all about that. What will you put, Reds? And remember, you can win WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT!

           

           

Sandra A. Block   graduated from college at Harvard, then returned to her native land of Buffalo, New York for medical training and never left. She is a practicing neurologist and proud Sabres fan, and lives at home with her husband, two children, and impetuous yellow lab. Little Black Lies is her debut, a finalist in the International Thriller Awards, and The Girl Without a Name and The Secret Room are the other books in the Zoe Goldman series. What Happened That Night is her latest novel, and is in fact DEDICATED TO HER ROOMMATES!

Sandra is also a proud author/member of the Tall Poppy Book Club--which you can join here! (Lots of fun, good stuff...and free books!)