Of Macs and Old Age With A Panda Thrown In

I have had a birthday.

This birthday may or may not be the end of my marriage. The cause is sitting on the table in front of my husband.

Let me start at the beginning.

Fifty years ago, on her due date, my sainted mother brought into this world a squalling, squirming 7lb 8oz bundle of baby girl. That was the first problem because, had she not bothered to reproduce, my husband and I would not have been here tonight snapping at each other over my birthday present (see picture above). It was also the last time I was ever on time in my life. But I digress.

I mean, what does one get for one's wife who has everything her heart desires? Obviously!
An imac! Poor woman, for years she has been struggling with a PC. All that blogging and facebooking and occasional schoolwork; she needs a Mac to avoid the viruses, crashes and go slows of the PC world because everybody knows that Macs are perfect. Right?

Of course the flaw in this plan can be summed up in two sentences:
1) We are not all cut out to be teachers.
and
2) You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

The photo above was taken before he tried to teach me to use the thing which is why we are both smiling. Well, I am smiling, that other expression is the closest Himself gets to smiling unless there is sailing involved and even then only if there is winning involved :-D

The first problem was that the imac was too clever for our old wireless router. They couldn't communicate (a familiar problem around these parts). Try as he might, Himself was unable to connect me to the internet without carrying the whole kit and caboodle into the family room and connecting me up to the router via *gasp* a cable!!! This obviously left the 'i' brand a little tarnished since he had spent some time telling me how well everything worked on a Mac. My husband does not do 'tarnished' well. There was a great deal of stamping and swearing and after several days he had to admit that we needed a new router. I call this the 'New Technology Domino Effect'.

So now we were 'airborne' so to speak, and he was able to wax enthusiastically about the benfits of my new system.

• It's fast. Reeeeally fast, especially when compared to my 6 year old PC which of late has taken 10+ minutes to boot up. Everything is onboard!
  

• There are no peripherals except for the external hard drive from which I am importing all my photos. 61.5GB of photos.

• It has iphoto. "You are going to LOVE iphoto".

I do not love iphoto.

For one thing it has no 'save as' command. Instead it has 'export'. I cannot work out how to make albums within albums. It lists folders as 'events'. When I enhance a photo (quick fix) in the editing suite it changes the file size from 1.7MB to 5.4MB unless I tell it otherwise which requires an extra step which I did not need to take on my old dinosaur program.
I do not love iphotos.

Except for the fact that you can load photos directly to facebook. :-D
But not directly to blogger. :-(

A week into my 51st year and my husband and I are finally discussing the subject of the imac civilly.

Here is another attempt after a bit more iphoto practice and a marital 'cooling off' period.


In the photo above you can see the BA thrusting forward the lovely flowers from my lovely mum and dad and me clutching the set of three lovely Stieg Larsson books the lovely BA gave me.
Oh! and Small Boy excelled himself by getting me a present for the first time ever. I am now the proud owner of the DVD 'Australia' so I can sigh over Hugh Jackman in the bush shower any time I like :-)

So what does a girl choose to do for her 50th birthday ten days out from Christmas when most of the world is unavailable due to work 'dos' and Christmas prep?


She spends the day with A Free Man, Boy Z, Not Max, the Baby Angel and A Small Boy on the River Torrens. On a boat. Called Popeye.

Sit down boyz! For Gawd's sake keep away from the edge!!!!!!!


Oh yeah, and we ate 'good food' aka hot chips for the first time since I started my diet in October.


But we did go to the zoo as well where we saw the lovely meer kats,


the sad giraffes (such a small enclosure)


and the new, you beaut, 'not quite sure what all the fuss is about' pandas.


And Boy Z navigated.


And not Max slept.

But not until his lovely Auntie Arizaphale rocked him to sleep in his stroller. Clever Auntie. Ah you learn a lot in 50 years, like: 15 month olds do not eat ham sandwiches and require you to bring a bottle with them on outings. Should have just asked me AFM :-D! Still he did ok on two icecreams and half a pint of tomato sauce eaten out of the container by way of a 'hot chip dip'.
No more sauce for me thanks Not Max.

Seriously though, we had a lovely day. If the next 50 are as good as this...........