The Visible Woman...January 13, 2001

The 'save money' resolution (remember the all-encompassing resolutions?) has put the microscope on monetary transactions. If you decide to write down everything you spend, you have to write down EVERYTHING. The fifty cents here, two dollars there is supposed to matter, too. But, of course, in the on-going saga of setting up Mom as a computer nerd, it's her money I'm spending.

The day began with packing up the Dell I got for Mom and a pair of my old speakers They are trying to figure out what happened to hers, alleges a person named Lisa who is my contact at Dell. I wonder if Lisa Thompson really exists...it's not like I would phone her or anything.

SuRu and I put the boxes in the back of her CR/V and went to the parents' house. We hooked things up and I tried to show Mom her way around the machine. She had learned the track point on the ThinkPad but the mouse seemed to baffle her. Doesn't help that we don't have a desk or a comfortable chair for her yet. Office Max wanted to backorder the one we picked out there. Again, for another seven to ten days. So I cancelled that. Dad made SuRu and I breakfast and we fooled around some more. I showed them the world map in Encarta. Dad wasn't impressed when it didn't have the city of Kiev. He got out his atlas and showed SuRu where it was before I could surf the WEB and inundate him with Kiev facts and figures, calculate the distance from Austin to Kiev. When Dad wanted to go to the pet store and buy bird seed, SuRu took it as her chance to exit.

I found the magnifier in the Acessibility Accesories (say that fast ten times with a speech impediment). Win98 has this, too, I discover later. With it started Mom could see things I was doing and the little captions and keep up with where the mouse was. I let her do things. I encouraged her to take trips around the mouse pad and just watch the arrow. She likes the scroll wheel because she hated using scroll bars but she wanted it to roll through the selections when a menu popped up. When you don't know how things work, it's pretty easy to muddle through, but try telling someone else how to do it! And she's right...they should have made the scroll wheel do that!

I suggested we could go look at another desk and a printer. She never turns down shopping. We took the van and her handicapped shield. Good thing, too.

What is it with all the shoppers? You would have thought it was the Saturday before Christmas. I was going to give Best Buy a try. I took a wrong turn because I forgot I wasn't going home and decided since I was on 183, we might as well try Target. Someone said they had some computer carts and desks. There was a bunch of traffic, but I did find one handicapped place. It was misting but we got inside and Mom grabbed a cart. (I understand someone saw how many elderly people used shopping cards for support and invented a wheely walker of some sort.)

We looked at the computer furniture but none appeared workable for her room. I decided to get a surge supressor and just see if they sold printers. On the way, I said, "Here are the toys, but I don't guess we need any."

"We could buy Jack a birthday present!" Mom said. She loves to shop. Dad doesn't. Even though Jack's birthday is over a month away, she wanted to get something. After a few minutes of pressing 'try me' buttons we selected this great centipede thing where all the legs are various colors and have the letters on them and it has three modes...letter name, letter sound and color. We also got a book which was all plastic and talks and sings but also has more for the parent or doting great aunt to read. (Mom said we had to get him one thing from each of us.) We also saw a display of Animal Crackers. So we got a box. I think he will like the 99 cent Animal Crackers best, but it's just a guess.

The selection of printers on display was ratty and disorganized and there wasn't much stock on any of the ones there. We got a surge supressor that fits into the wall and has six outlets and a phone line passthrough. Mom had to pick a birthday card for her secret pal on the way out. She could do this at the grocery store but Dad is, I think, impatient during grocery shopping.

On to Best Buy. Gateway shopping center was overrun with cars. We found a single handicapped spot but had trouble pulling into it (and out again) because of all the pedestrians and traffic. I've noticed that people won't let you out of handicapped places because they can't take the place! Very rude. I'd never use the permit without an old parent along, but both my parents can really use a break on how far they have to park from the store. But make no mistake: the only reason most people will wait for you to back out is to take the place. On the way through a lot getting to Best Buy, I saw a hapless woman backing out between two giant behemoth SUVs, one with windows so darkened that it really was a black monolith. I stopped to just let her come out and noticed that a pickup coming the other way did the same and thought how nice we were to bale out someone driving a normal sedan blind through the land of the giants(since we were both piloting offensive behemoths). As soon as she cleared and pulled away and I started forward, the pickup zoomed in front of me and took the place. I almost hit him. Oh..I thought, he only wanted the place or he would have honked at the hapless sedan and gone on. He held up his hand as he zoomed in front of me as if to stop me hitting him or taking the place with a gesture.

Best Buy was overrun with helpful service people. They actually were some help but they all tried to sell MSN subscriptions. "All this can be free if you get this great Internet provider." We picked an HP printer, based on not much. I should have probably ordered one on-line but I hadn't done so and now that the computer was operating, Mom really wanted a printer. I asked the helpful salesman who was now hawking a service policy on the printer if the printer came with ink cartridges. "Yes, but they are half full." was the answer.

I got a $150 printer. There are cheaper ones. The cartridges, though, will cost around $30, a bit more for the color one. I didn't even look at the price of the 10 foot USB cable and ended up paying $29.99. They should give you a printer if you buy some photo paper, a black and white and color cartridge, a USB cable and some Greeting Card software. Oh, and of course, you have to subscribe to Bill's ISP. Oh, wait. They do that and you can have the other stuff, too. Once we'd selected the printer and some standard paper, the sales people (still helpful) started trying to sell the $29 service policy in earnest, patting the box in my cart and asking if I wanted to pay for it by signing on with BillNet and if I'd considered the service policy.

We looked at computer desks. There was a desk that might have worked, but it was a floor model only. They had none in stock. They might have more on Tuesday.

"We are going to shop the WEB for a desk!" I asserted. Back in the van with our purchases, we were even more convinced...with the traffic and a pouring rain. I set up the printer using the giant, mostly picture poster. The Dell comes with one, too. They've come a long way since I wrote the first manual they shipped with a computer! (They were PCs Limited then. How many readers remember that company?) I did ditch the giant poster for the manual when installing the cartridges. I like to read more words. "You will feel resistance. You will hear a click when it is inserted properly."

Printing went well. First we printed the test page. It was very colorful. (Probably used half the ink in the half full cartridge!) We printed a page of the calling cards I made for them (although we didn't have any card stock). We updated Mom's important info with her new medication. I showed her how she could copy and paste to show it both in the after breakfast and after dinner line-ups. "Wow!" the look in her eyes said Then we printed out a copy for her purse.

We used the bundled Microsoft Street program to look around the neighborhood of Mom's church and see where someone's street was where she was going to a meeting. We printed the map out, too.

It took me all day to get that far, so I left them with it and headed home.

Forrest said he could cook the fish he'd bought at Central Market or we could go to the new hot restaurant, Emilia's. I was up for eating out even if it meant taking a shower. They said they could take two for 7 PM.

Emilia's is at Third and Red River. Those familiar with the city will realize this is in the midst of construction and street closings. It was quite a mess and there was a long line of cars to get valet parked. We saw that the woman getting out of the pickup in front of us had on a long dress. Her companion had on a suit and tie. We wondered if slacks, sweaters and leather jackets would get us in. Turned out to be the dress code, pretty much. But we should have lost about fifty pounds. Lots of long blond hair and thin bodies. Some nearly too thin. Or maybe actually too thin.

Our waiter was familiar. He had served us at Ella's then Aquarelle, now here. The waiters were in dark suits and solid grayish gold ties. Very smart. The restaurant is in an historic building. Large paintings of fruit with light playing on it decorated the old limestone walls in the room where we were.

They served an amuse bouche. It was salmon with cucumber and wasabi mayo and ginger. I could eat a whole meal of tiny, toothsome portions like that. I had a wild game consumé. It had a couple of little ravioli-like things and some pungent herbs floating in it. It was OK, but not great.

Forrest had a scallop and sweetbread appetizer. He said it was stunning.

The wine list was resplendent with many vintages of Silver Oak and Penfold's Grange as well as great Bordeauxs and Burgundies. The waiter offered a tour of the wine cellar when we had 'finished dessert.'

We had chosen a wine in the 'under $75' category. There weren't many. But the 1998 Seghesio Cortina Dry Creek Valley Zin we had was stunning. It had a wonderful fruity nose and tasted of black fruit.

Our entreés were Crispy Duck for FFP and Rabbit Three Ways for me. There were rabbit breast medallions fanned out along the edge, a rabbit leg confit and rabbit sausage. The latter was presented with lentils and greens, cassoulet-style. The waiter informed us that the chef (Will Packwood) had told them that, in French villages, housewifes would bring their cassoulets to the baker and put them in the cooling ovens after the morning's baking and cook them in this way. I never heard that before. It shows that the chef is training the staff about food and its history.

FFP had a dessert of a small pastry with dried fruit and stilton. He said it was great. I had a glass of Bonny Doon Framboise. I was unable to convince the waiter that the nose was just like a just opened can of ripe olives. Then he admitted he'd never opened one. A can of ripe olives, that is. The BDF is always like that. The taste doesn't reflect the smell. Fascinating.

The wine cellar tour was nice. It's a cellar that was already in the historic building. You enter from a patio that opens to mountains of dirt in a closed street and the hulk of what I think is the convention center extension being built on one side and a small carriage house turned into a bar on the other.

We had a nightcap at the Four Seasons. We shared the couch area in front of the fireplace with five girls who grew up in Pampa, Texas and were having a reunion of sorts. None lives in Pampa now. (Old oil town, I think, north of Amarillo. Not a place where you grow up and stay!) Then we were joined by the boyfriend of the piano player and locally-famous financial pundit Carl Stuart and his wife while other friends wandered by.

It was a nice eveninig, going out. Now that we are staying home more, I enjoy going out much more when we do it. I also enjoy staying in and having dinner or lunch, watching TV, enjoying the house. We are actually eating fresh fruit we buy now and FFP is cooking fish and chicken and we are throwing together salads and such. Real domestic, I know. I enjoy washing the dishes even. Yeah. Washing dishes is my specialty.

And it's a good thing if we want to stay on a budget. Because the entreés at Emilia's cost about as much as that overpriced USB cable. In fact, I think one was thirty-seven dollars.

Since so much of this entry is about commerce, I'm going to add a couple of notes on buying things in the 21st century. (I told someone using 21st century in a title was pretentious because they would be dead before it was completed! So...I'm being pretentious, of course). Anyway.

I'm getting a bunch of catalogs I've never gotten before. They are addressed to Linda H. Ball. Not my middle initial. I wish I knew whofirst got my name that way so I would know who sold the list!

FFP bought a new, black topcoat. I might have mentioned that. He bought it for New York, but he wore it to the opera on Friday night. At which time he discovered that it has a Cell Phone Pocket. That's a commentary in and of itself. BUT..it isn't just a cell phone pocket. No, it's a Magne Shield Cell Phone Pocket. To reduce the Hi-Frequency magnetic waves generated from a cell phone.