Unsubscribe Day on February 8th

Irrelevant pic from last summer bcuz its January

I know from my days of working in IT that you should mostly just ignore spam and robocalls. Tighten up your spam rules, or use a provider that has spam blocking, and then ignore whatever gets through. 

Here's the reason: spammers buy a database of email addresses or phone numbers, and the information may be months or years old. The spammers have no way of knowing which phone numbers/email addresses lead to a real live person, and which ones are dead ends that are a waste of their time.  

So if you answer the phone, or reply to an email, they know they've got a working, functional contact. That immediately moves you to a different list, a list that they can then re-sell to someone else for more money because these are numbers/addresses that actually work. 

You see the problem. I no longer answer the phone unless I recognize the caller ID. If it's someone that legitimately needs to talk to me, they'll leave a message-- and I'd say more than 90% of the time, there's no message, just a hang-up. If I'm going to be home during the day, I even turn off the ringer (we are one of the seven households in the country that still has a landline.)

That has worked pretty well for the phone. Everyone once in awhile we'll get a day or two of frequent robocalls (and of course, during the election season, it was ridiculous), but if we don't answer, the calls tail off and we're good again for a few weeks. 

But over time, my email situation has become ugly. Once, about ten years ago, we contributed a fairly small amount to an acquaintance's political campaign. We immediately started receiving daily emails, and then several a day, and then a dozen. Not just from that candidate, but from his party, and then from various PACs (fundraising organizations) as my address got passed around. I've never contributed another dime to a political campaign. 

But then even weirder-- somehow my address was passed to "the other guys." I guess they figure everyone in Montana wants mail from gun rights groups and conservative PACs. It got way worse. Last spring, after the primaries, I got sick of seeing all the absurdly overblown subject lines (from both sides, honestly), and I thought at least I needed to get rid of the conservative ones. So I went through and unsubscribed.

(aside: by law, every mass email has to include an unsubscribe link. It may be in tiny print down at the bottom, but it has to be there.)

Unsubscribing worked great for a day or two. But before long, I was getting double the number of emails from the Democrats. Not kidding. There's some kind of sharing going on there. And then within a couple of months, I started getting the conservative ones again ("Dear fellow conservative, help me fight the FAR LEFT TAKEOVER OF OUR COUNTRY").

It is a little better since the election-- for whatever reason, I'm down to 3-4 messages from the left and 6-8 from the right. But it's still really IRRITATING. So, that's why I'm having unsubscribe day on Feb 8th. 

Well, that and also I need to unsubscribe from the previously mentioned trial periods I never cancelled. For example-- I kept a list for a couple of years of Kindle Unlimited titles I wanted to read (Kindle Unlimited has hundreds of thousands of titles that are available for "free" if you pay $9.99/month). When I got up to a dozen, I signed up for the free month. The problem is, six months later, I've only read one or two-- and for the $60 I've spent, I could have bought those two plus three or four others. Thus: Unsubscribe day on February 8th. Since I've told you about it, now I have to do it.

I think this qualifies as MORE THAN YOU WANTED TO KNOW. Here's to my dream: Spam- and robocall-free living.

I'm going to start posting once a week, probably on Fridays. Twice a week feels like too much. 

have a great weekend!

Fashion for Seniors

When I was in high school back in the 70s, there were all kinds of fashion trends that were way out of my financial reach--especially designer jeans, which were newly in fashion, even though it was a bit before Brooke Shields famously declared that nothing comes between her and her Calvins in 1980. 

But there were two fashion faux pas that were to be avoided at all costs: your bra strap showing, and highwater pants (pants that were too short to buckle on the tops of your shoes). 

We're so used to people flaunting their undergarments now that it's hard to even remember that feeling of intense embarrassment we had over a wayward bra strap. Ah, a more innocent time.

But the ideal of jeans gently bent on the top of your shoes was so deeply embedded in me that when cropped pants and capris came into style in the 90s, it was several years before I could bring myself to participate. 

Aside: as I'm typing this, I remembered the 60s. When I started elementary school in the midwest in 1966, we weren't allowed to wear shorts to school. We could only wear shorts under a dress or skirt. When we moved to Dallas in 1969--new for me, but a return to Texas for my parents-- our school allowed shorts as long as they were longer than your fingers when your arms were straight down at your side. Same for the length of skirts.

Anyway. Back to pants. Here is an approximation of a conversation I had with my 30-year-old daughter last month.

Me: (holding out my leg with my skinny jeans carefully rolled an inch or two above my shoes): I've noticed that we're rolling our jeans now

(Daughter smiles, holds out her similarly rolled jeans)

Me: But I was surprised to see bare skin showing over booties even when there's six inches of snow

Daughter: Well, we're trying to avoid this (in a tone of voice that indicates a moral travesty has occurred, as she rolls her jeans down to the exact length that I have always considered to be perfect)

Me: (looking confused) what's wrong with that?

Daughter: (as if stating the patently obvious) It just looks so messy

Whaaaat? I have subsequently read in a couple of instagram posts something to the effect of "neatly rolled" or "neatly cuffed" pants, so I guess that is the prevailing wisdom. 

We're gonna dress like it's 1979

It occurs to me that when women our age are wearing something sadly out of date, it's not that we're "still wearing the styles that were in fashion in 1980," as we are sometimes accused. 

It's that we've been through so many different variations of hemlines (mini skirts, maxi skirts, midis, skorts, just below the knee, just above the knee, micro-mini), types of shoes (platforms, earth shoes, flip flops, gladiator, ankle straps, mary janes, ballet flats, block heel, stilettos--remember when 2 1/2" was a "high heel"?), length of shirts (belly shirts, low neck, tunic length), types of pants (bell bottoms, stirrup pants, jeggings, gauchos, flare legs, low rise, mid rise, high rise, and lord knows what else)-- we've been through so many of those, that we just can't be brought to care anymore. 

That's right. We just freaking don't care. Wear what you like. One of the joys of age-- you can ignore the trends, and instead of being horrified, people will just condescendingly assume that you're doddering on into old age. And secretly, we know exactly what we're doing because given the whole wide world of styles to choose from, why not wear what is comfortable and feels good. 

Amen.

7ToF: phew. what a week.

 1. Things I've tried so you don't have to: Native brand deodorant. This gets advertised quite a bit on various podcasts, and the hosts will give you a discount code for ordering it online. But just so you know, you can also buy it at Target and Walmart. It has no aluminum, no parabens, etc etc. So if those things bother you, it's a great choice. It smells great, and it actually works, unlike the last natural deodorant I tried. But it costs twelve dollars for 2.7oz. It would have to be way more amazing than it is for me to switch from my usual deodorant, Old Spice Wolfthorn, which works just fine and costs $4.99 for 3 oz (and is frequently on sale for less than that). It's in the men's section, but it doesn't make you smell like a guy.

2. Trivia that I don't know why I know: anti-perspirant usually has aluminum in it, deodorants usually don't. Aluminum makes me itch, so I've never been able to use anti-perspirants. Deodorants don't bother me, even when they contain parabens or propylene glycol. Just make sure you look at the label-- it will say right on the front whether it is an anti-perspirant or a deodorant. Wolfthorn, the one I use, comes in both an anti-perspirant version and a deodorant version so you have to read the label to make sure you're getting what you want.

3. I'm so tired of everything. Just thought I would tell you that. Politics, paperwork, the driver's license bureau, not going to restaurants, more confusing conversations with friends, and above and beyond everything else, the freaking pandemic. (cue stirring music) Frodo: I wish it need not have happened in my time. Gandalf: so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide.

OK, so maybe that's a tad melodramatic. Whatcha gonna do? It's not even that bad around here, so I'm sure some of you have had much more trouble with it than we have. I'm just whining. Rough week.

4. I may have given the impression in my reading report that we never watch TV, which is not true. Our TV is often on in the evenings (almost never during the day). We watch a lot of sports, and some movies. We are especially bad about re-watching our favorite movies. And recently we have also tried The Mandalorian, Schitt's Creek, and Queen's Gambit. They are all pretty good, but I max out at two episodes per night so other than Queen's Gambit, we're still working our way through.

5. My unpopular opinion for this week: I have never, ever seen an episode of the Bachelor or the Bachelorette. I know that makes me a party pooper and I am missing out on a lot of fun but honestly, the whole concept just horrifies me. I told you, unpopular opinion.

6. Speaking of movies we re-watch, one we did this week was Pirates of the Caribbean. Sometimes when we watch an old favorite, it hasn't survived the passage of time, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I know Johnny Depp is problematic these days, but I'm going with the headline that said his "issues" are recent, and since Pirates came out almost 20 years ago, I'm giving it a pass. 

7. I'm declaring Monday, February 8th Aunt BeaN's Unsubscribe Day. I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I've signed up for three trial periods of services that I no longer use but I'm still paying. Oh, lord, the more I think about it, the more I think maybe it's four, or five. Add to that the one billion political emails I receive for the party that I do not support and have not voted for since 1980. On February 8th, I'm unsubscribing from all of them. I have to work up to it. Join me? More on this topic next week.

Have a great weekend.

Reading Report 2020: part two, book report

At the end of the year, I always have a few books that stand out in my mind as the "best" books I read-- and "best" just means the ones that meant the most to me, or had the most effect on me, or that I was still thinking about days or weeks after I read them. Those books for this year:  

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

Then there is a new-to-me category this year, books that I'm thinking of as "quirky-nerdy" that are my new favorite kind of book. They're smart and layered, but they have a sense of humor and a bit of optimism about the human race. I'm happier than I can tell you that I found books that were both literary and fun this year, although a bunch of them are not recent (which tells me maybe I've just been reading the wrong books).

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia
The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine
Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
    (I know, everyone else has already read it)

And there's always a few Sci-Fi/Fantasy:

The Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers
The Fifth Element by N.K. Jemisin
The Library at Mt. Char by Scott Hawkins
Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames

And then the promised romance novel titles. If you're not familiar with the terminology, m/m is male/male, m/f is male/female. (if you're searching for romance novels, you can use any combination of those to find what you want. Just so you know.)

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJKlune, m/m
Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall, m/m
The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary, m/f
Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, m/m
Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn, m/f
Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert, m/f
The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren, m/f
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, m/m

The re-reads that kept me going through lockdown: a half dozen Georgette Heyers, the first three Murderbot Diaries, and the Earthsea trilogy. And some good mysteries: Attica Locke, Elsa Hart's Li Du series, and I finally read a couple of Vera Stanhope mysteries and loved them. The classics I finally read this year: Mrs Dalloway, Go Tell it on the Mountain, Sister Outsider, This House of Sky.

I'm looking over my big list and realizing I could go on and on. So many good books this year. But that's enough. Check my goodreads page for more (if that link doesn't work, just search for Barb Nelson in Montana on the community page), where I write short reviews of every book I read (usually).

Reading Report 2020, part one: to read, or to watch? that is the question

Reading at the laundromat (RIP dryer)

(This post is about my reading year, a topic that sounds boring to me before I even start, and the next one will be actual book recommendations. You've been warned.)

One good thing about 2020--I read a lot more books than usual. The previous two years I'd been right at a hundred books; in 2020, I read 120. That might sound like a lot, but I've heard plenty from people who read two to three hundred during lockdown. That doesn't include the many that I started and didn't finish (was I the only one who couldn't settle on what I wanted to read? I feel like I bailed on two for every one I finished, but I don't know for sure since I don't usually track DNFs). 

During the spring, Doug was working longer hours than ever. He and the pandemic team at our hospital spent 10-12 hours a day, seven days a week, figuring out how our hospital would respond to COVID-19. Which meant that I was home alone, like a gazillion other people, for weeks on end. So I read.

I'm not sure I can explain why I prefer to read than watch TV. Since it's what I like, of course I think it's "better," but objectively, there's no reason for that. Plenty of people who are way smarter than me have said that the best writing and creative work of the past dozen years have been in television-- more than in movies (taken over by blockbusters and superheroes) or print (because serious literary fiction has become so dense and impenetrable that nobody wants to read it). 

TV feels like too much to me. It might even be a neurological thing. The way my brain is wired, the combination of visual stimuli and music and characters coming to life on the screen feels overwhelming, especially if those characters are being bullied or tortured or oppressed. It feels like I'm handing control of my brain over to someone else, opening the door and inviting in images of devastation and despair. It's too much. Things inside my brain are dark enough without inviting that stuff in.

So I'd rather sit with a book, preferably not one of the dense/miserable/despairing types. And anyway, it seems to me that there's been a movement away from literary despair in the past year or two. I read a handful of books this year that were intelligent, self-aware in literary terms, and fun to read. Ten or fifteen years ago, you couldn't claim to be a serious writer if your book ended in anything other than hopelessness. I think that's starting to change.

Of course, that has never been true of romance novels, and it's one of the reasons romance has been derided as frivolous and negligible. (It's also a typical strategy of the traditional patriarchy-- restrict women to the world of home and relationships, and then define any art that deals with home and relationships as unimportant or silly.) 

I've told you before that I am an ardent defender of people's right to read whatever the hell they want, whether that is a steady diet of romance novels or anything else. But I haven't been entirely forthcoming with my own reading of romance novels, because tbh I haven't read a romance published in the last few years that I liked. Readers of romance get enough criticism without me piling on, and if it's what you like, then it makes no difference what I think. So I just didn't say anything.

It seems to me that the current trends in romance are either to concentrate on the sexual attraction between the two characters almost to the exclusion of anything else (like a plot), or to use a strange type of narrative that irritates me no end-- there will be one line of dialog, then several paragraphs of interior monologue, then another line of dialog and a page and a half of interior monologue, and then another line of dialog.... etc. 

The first time I read one, I thought it was kind of odd, but okay, I can go along with this. But now it seems like every one I pick up is that way, and I am so done with it. Sometimes it feels like you've read a dozen pages for a five-minute conversation. Yawn. Other than the occasional novella that bucks the trend (for example), until recently it had been years since I read a currently published romance novel all the way through. It's really disappointing to me, because it used to be a reliable way to cheer me up-- a fun rom-com about people figuring out their relationship, with a happy ending. What's not to like? 

That seems to be changing, though. I read several romance novels I liked this year, and three that I loved. Two of them were by British authors (is that relevant?) and two of them were LGBTQ romances (is that relevant?). Titles to come. Stay tuned.

7ToF: There and back again

1. Since Doug (see below) and I are both post-covid, we have 2-3 months of immunity. It's the only good thing about the experience. And since our kids both work in hospitals, they were able to get the first dose of the vaccine fairly early. So we decided to take the risk and get together for the week after Christmas. It was wonderful. We drove south to a rental house and did our best to isolate there-- we went for walks and hikes, and there were a couple of rounds of golf (not me), but other than that and trips to the grocery store, we didn't go out. We got take-out or cooked for ourselves, and played games and watched movies (all three extended edition LOTR movies--not kidding--it took all week.)

I feel somewhat bad about this, because there are so many millions of people in the entire world who weren't able to meet with their family or get away for a vacation this year. But not bad enough to not do it. Mea culpa.

2. I was an internet early adopter. My first experience with email, online forums, and bulletin boards was in 1985 when I started a job in Research Triangle Park, NC, with a company that was on ARPAnet. I loved it--I loved the job, I loved the proto-Internet. Within months after being hired as a technical editor, I had moved onto their IT team. 

3. I'm telling you this to explain why I've never been forthcoming with personal info here in this blog. Back in those days, you weren't supposed to reveal your true identity online. I remember being told that you should never reveal your name and your birthdate, because that would pretty much hand your identity to anyone with nefarious intent. So when I finally signed up for Facebook, I used a fake birthdate and insisted that my kids do the same, which eventually caused all kinds of problems with their age restrictions and had to be sorted out by their tech support, back when you could still get to FB's tech support. 

4. Anyway. For the first fifteen years I was online, everybody had screen names and avatars and personas. You lived with the vague fear that a serial murderer was going to figure out where you lived and come after you and your family. All these years later, it's a hard habit to drop. I tried to stop using fake blog names for my family members a few years ago, but it just felt wrong.

But you know, it's 2021. Now it's considered poor form to use a fake persona on social media, because how are people going to trust you if they don't know who you are? And to my surprise, I'm finding that I agree. So, I'm trying again. My husband isn't Dean, he's Doug. And our kids are Melanie (Mel) and Sam-- although now that they are 30 and 23, respectively, they don't show up here all that often anymore.  We really do exist, and we live in Northwest Montana, where we moved in 1992 (still can't quite bring myself to say exactly where, but most of you know anyway). I haven't made as big a deal of hiding my own name, but I'm Barb. Just in case you were wondering.

5. The other thing that has changed since I started blogging (in 2003!!) is--well, blogging. No one does it anymore. Of all the blogs I followed religiously back in the early 2010s, only one is regularly updated anymore, and she has a team of people helping her create content. The others have either quit or moved on to podcasting or Instagram Live or something similar. But I don't want to do 90-second takes on Instagram Live (and lord knows I don't want to have to look at myself on camera), I want to write. So I'm still here, and even though I've (obviously) not been posting much recently, I don't really want to quit. 

6. I did seriously consider quitting, because it feels like I'm just setting myself up for irrelevance, and we've already talked about that. Yup, I'm still blogging, and I use proper punctuation in my texts, and I like my 1980s hairstyle, too. But I still have things I want to write about. I know I took kind of a long break over the past few months, but honestly, I just didn't know what to say. In fact, I had planned on posting earlier this week, but then things kind of went to hell, and it felt wrong to ignore it, but what was I going to say that a million Twitter users hadn't already said? 

7. So I'm considering a lot of things-- like pre-writing a series of posts on a particular topic, or changing up the whole thing with a new name and a new look, and maybe I will do both of those things. But for the time being, nothing is changing. Which begs the question of why exactly I'm going on and on here, but you know, I needed to catch you up after weeks of not posting. 

Hope you had a lovely and renewing holiday season, because good lord, things are already off to a crazy start. See you next week.