“The only difference between what
you are and what you want to be is
how hard you are willing to work at it.”
September 30, 2000
I think my brain is going to explode! Before I got this computer I actually thought that a mouse was a little animal you caught in a trap; now here I sit - trying to fit years of learning into only two months! Thank goodness for the help of my cousin Russ. He’s a computer expert (works for Intel), and although he can’t actually design the site for me, (employment agreements don’t allow him to create for anyone else), he can spend his evenings telling me how to do it. It’s kind of like a college professor teaching a first grader. He speaks in a “lingo” I don’t understand, and at his level of expertise, it’s difficult for him to even imagine how LITTLE I really know. He thinks he’s starting at the “beginning”; but that’s assuming I know what a “window” is… or a “menu”, which I don’t. I had my computer shipped to me while living on the Indian Reservation in Parker and there was no one to teach me how to use it. I somehow managed to fumble my way through setting everything up (thank goodness for instruction books), but even they used many technical terms that were beyond my understanding. I don’t know why they can’t explain things in plain and simple English?
So, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks filling notebook after notebook with cousin Russ’ instructions and now I’m trying to put it all into practice. I’ve always been a fairly intelligent person but this is way too much for me to absorb in such a short period of time. (Thus, my reference to a “brain explosion”!) I’ve been spending at least 16 hours a day sitting at my computer trying to interpret my notes and put them into application, but I feel so darn stupid! I guess my website will have to be ‘beginner simple’ - but at least it will BE THERE! (If I survive, that is.) Unfortunately, I won’t have enough time to enter ALL my poetry, (I’ve been writing since age 7), but a lot of it will be there and I’ll just have to add more as I go along.
I’m also having “Poetry on the Road.com” painted on the back of Lucky, along with two rainbows. The story behind the rainbows is much too long for a journal entry… but it has to do with the covenant I made with the Lord when I left Gold Beach on this journey. My friend Alan and my two sons have completely repaired the damage from the fire and Alan even paid to have my radiator re-cored. Now I’m even MORE sure that my guardian angel has been working overtime on my behalf. After the fire, when I discovered that my fan hadn’t been working, I thought that was bad enough - but apparently only two of the four cores in my radiator were operational. Gee, that means no fan and HALF a radiator. It’s a wonder I didn’t burst into flames long before it actually happened. Poor Lucky. I don’t know how he kept going as long as he did.
But at least now everything will be in working order. Yes, I’ll be leaving Portland with little or no money again, but I’ll be in hog heaven knowing that for the first time in two years, I’m mechanically sound. My friends from Arizona, (Ray and Judy), picked me up in Sacramento and flew me to their house in Orange, California where Ray and I took care of the incorporation. (Poetry on the Road, Inc., a non-profit public service corporation.) Isn’t it wonderful? Now they’ve invited me to have Thanksgiving dinner with them at their ‘river house’ in Parker, so I’ll leave Portland and head for Arizona (via Sacramento where I’ll have a short visit with my mother). I’m hoping to get out of Oregon early enough in November to beat the winter snow. I’ll be crossing the Siskiyou Summit in Southern Oregon/Northern California and I can’t imagine doing it in the snow. Call me “chicken”, but no thank you! After my Thanksgiving visit to Parker, I plan to spend the rest of the winter in the WARM and SUNNY Southwest… I need some time to figure out what I should do (or where I should go) next.
Wish me luck with the website. Where there’s a WILL – there’s a WAY! That’s my motto…
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My new Poetry on the Road sign, complete with rainbows, on the back of Lucky. Time to hit the road...