Loosen Up, Lady

Sorry to promise posts my petals, only to immediately not be able to do so.  I was all set to post before I left for our ride, but the minute I turned to my laptop to get it done my server failed. No mail, no blog… just lots of time on with support calls and at some point I had to go ride my bike and just let it be broken until I wasn’t riding a bike anymore – which I’m not now, and here we are, fixed.  (I also have some new cloud thing that I had to buy to keep this all going, and I don’t know about you but it takes me a little while to get my head around buying things I don’t understand. Where is this cloud? What cloud? Is it all the same cloud? I thought I had a disk? Is the cloud really some warehouse of big machines in Ohio? China? Everywhere?) Anyway, that cloud does backups and those are good so- I suppose it’s all for the best.

I was really quite upset that I couldn’t post, and that surprised me, because if there’s anything I think we should all know how to handle at this point in the pandemic, it’s not having any idea how things are going to turn out, or what’s going to be possible, so you’d think that almost a year and a half into this complete turd pile of a circumstance I’d just shrug when the server broke and think “maybe it has Delta. Oh well. I wonder when it will work again” and promptly sit down with my knitting and continue to let… whatever flow over me like I am a rock in the river.

That is the approach I managed to take with the Rally – such as it was. I accepted very early that I wasn’t going to be able to have what I wanted (everything back to normal right now thank you) and moreover, that I didn’t even know what I was going to get. Even as Ken and I set out to Montreal on Friday there were a million unknowns, and I had to focus on the things that I knew would be good – like getting so much time with Ken. We’ve been distanced from each other for a year now, so a weekend with him was a real treat, and I certainly know how to enjoy that. It was also going to be the first time I’ve ridden bikes with Cam in a year, and I do like that, and most of all, I had to remember that the whole point to this thing is that it changes the lives of other people. Anything I get out of it is a bonus, and that makes it easy to lean in.

Good thing too- because the weekend had a lot in store for me that I wasn’t expecting.  I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow, for now I have to figure the way that I use this cloud that lets me put pictures on here, and tell you that I am as ever- incredibly grateful you’re all on my side, because you’re a nearly frightening force for good.

 

 

 

36 thoughts on “Loosen Up, Lady

  1. Please don’t forget to show us how to put in a heal on the “tube.” I have a tube with a swatch of contrast yarn waiting to become a sock.

    • If you are impatient and want to look it up, is It is generally known as an ‘afterthought’ heel, or occasionally (and more accurately) a ‘forethought’ heel.

      It’s great fun, and if you don’t like turning a heel a good trick to know!

  2. Unfortunately we’re all in a trough where nothing at all works like it should. I never dreamed that after a year and a half we’d still be here. I live in hope that some day we get back to where most things work like they should. In the meantime I’m knitting a blanket kit I ordered. I plan to hide under it this winter. Onward!

  3. Love you all, family.
    My mum asked me on the phone what I was doing today, (we’re under lockdown again), and I didn’t even know what day it is.
    The blogs I read mean so much in this crazy world, even when they’re mundane, so never disappear completely, promise?

  4. Oh, the cloud. Blessings on my somewhat techie daughter and my very techie son. I hope you are similarly blessed. Looking forward to some more posts! Pictures are good, but words are just fine!

  5. Glad you are back. Have no fear we are all in this Covid coma, it feels like it’s own “cloud”. So glad you are back, whenever it is possible.
    I love following your blog. Smiles through the clouds.

  6. I’m having just a teensy bit of fun imagining how it would be if we *weren’t* on your side.

    As in — you post and every comment is harsh and critical, but you continue to post? or you put up a link for Rally donations and we find a way to donate negative dollars?

    Or (and just stay with me on this one) you start a massive fleece-to-sweater project for Joe and don’t finish it for absolutely logical reasons, but people keep reminding you of it?

    • As soon as that last option hit, I scrolled back up to make sure, already laughing—Presbytera, you never let us down!!!! 😉

    • When I first discovered YH many years ago I was so entranced that I went back to the beginning and read all the posts. I remember the Joe sweater.
      Last year during lockdown #2 (111 days) I decided to reread them, thinking that I had missed the sweater completion or forgotten it, nope, appeared to be in limbo.
      We are now in lockdown #6, a total of 201 days and no end in sight. I am going to go back to the start and see if by the time I have reread 17 years the sweater has surfaced.

  7. It’s a relief to know that one thing has not changed from Ye Olden Blog Dayes: Whenever the blog technology upgrades, the ability to post photos temporarily evaporates.

  8. I just assumed you were going to make it a calendar month and start in September (and grateful for that, too, I was.) But welcome to the I Don’t Get the Cloud club. Still, I’m glad it is thwarting your impulse to feel you must do a grand Catch Up post. Little, frequenter posts are a treat — like bites, and chewing, and swallowing (and opening our gaping maws for more… Well. That metaphor went west..

  9. A little off the knitting topic, but it may be good to note that The Cloud is a pleasant, calming term for software/hardware that stores private data in a format & location that is much more accessible to many more people & is easier to hack.

  10. Look at cloud this way: it’s a drive that you access through the internet instead of it being physically at your house. Therefore, if you lose your computer (and have been responsible), your backups are in the cloud and you have not lost anything.

  11. I enjoyed your post. Sorry you had to go thru troubled waters but glad you can at least touch the bottom … hoping the rest will come sooner rather than later. Have to go let my dog in, pour some wine and work on some knitting …..

  12. My DSL provider had problems for a couple of days earlier this summer. I called them, they told me that, and I thanked the guy who answered. (Being nice to them makes *their* day better.)

  13. You are a storming success!

    You activated the Blog, raised the money, & then you rode the ride!

    You’ve weathered an internet storm and all the while I bet your’re being an active grandmother and supportive mother and mother-in-law to a family grieving a second heartbreaking loss.

    You rock. Take care of you.

  14. Hey Steph. Thank you for all your honesty about how tough and weird life is these days, and for the small (but incredibly real and important) joys you find along the way.

    The Cloud: yup, computer machines hosted somewhere else. Your data, their hardware.

    The What: The exact location depends on where your Cloud provider has built their datacenter, most of them will have a large collection of data centres spread across the globe, so you can chose based on, e.g. proximity to you/users, regulations about which country you may store data in, whimsy. Access is normally via the internet, and you should have stacks of control over who can access your resources and how.

    The Why: Stop guessing what size of storage you’ll need in two years, just pay for what you’re using at the time and scale up as and when required. Insane economies of scale lead to huge price discounts compared to going solo. They also allow for far better security protocols than us little folk could otherwise access, e.g. fire defence, security guards. Cloud providers can and do get independent compliance auditors for dozens of global and regional protocols to inspect their kit and confirm that it’s safe and secure. You should have the option to replicate your data if the service don’t include it as default, i.e. backups on other hardware at another address, so even if a meteor wipes out your chosen datacenter your data is safe.

    The Summary: cloud providers’ size and expertise allows for bigger, cheaper and more secure computing and data storage than we can do for ourselves, leaving us more time and money to focus on knitting and look after each other.

  15. The cloud? I, too, am confused about the cloud. For one of my free e-mail addresses, I think the cloud is actually an underground storage cave in Lenexa, Kansas. Been struggling with the Kitchener stitch, so I looked up Horacio Herbert Kitchener, to discover that the very popular British war hero was born in Ireland. Has anyone ever written a biography of Kitchener? The former town of Berlin, Ontario, was re-named after Kitchener. Was he a closet knitter?

  16. If your cloud is an Amazon cloud, it very well may be a big warehouse thing in Ohio. In fact, it may be in one of the 5 warehouse-like buildings Amazon built right outside my development. Lovely buildings 🙁 with a lot of high-tension electric lines running to.

  17. Hi Steph
    I do not pay for the cloud, I just switch it off, I bought an external drive to backup.
    Your family is really beautiful

  18. In suika game, players aim to achieve a high score by dropping fruits into a container without causing an overflow. Points are earned by combining two identical fruits, which results in a new fruit in the game’s cycle. The game features an online leaderboard where players can compare their scores with others.

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