My E mail seems to be in smaller type than of yore. I click on View and click on Text Size and click on Increase and have to do that twice to get a size that does not give me eyestrain. Also a new glitch: I click on a message and get a screen that says “your log-in has failed” and then it tells me what mailboxes I have access to. I then click on “In-Box” and get my mail as if nothing is wrong. And this will happen several times a session.

I also have to increase text size when I go into MyBloggers and have to keep doing this each time I change to someone else’s blog.

Lately I am getting about 3 to 4 Nigerian prisoner scams a week. Someone with an African or French-sounding name from the Ivory Coast or close by, a princess, even (right) send me their tales of woe and promise me a zillion pounds if I will only help them rescue their money by taking delivery into my bank account, take my number please. One even pretended to represent Nokia (they have a headquarters in Africa and I suppose the scammers thought they would then sound believable). I was to get an astronomical number of English pounds plus a free cell phone. Oh, wow. I copied it and pasted it in to a comment section I found on the Nokia website. One of the most hysterical things about these E mails is the incredibly convoluted use of English. I am amazed that anyone believes them at all.

The fact that these E mails are on the rise indicates to me that some are succeeding. I feel so very badly for people who fall for these schemes and have their accounts emptied and identities stolen.

I get the New York Times on line but, on occasion, when I click on a headline, I first get a public service ad on how to save my children that I don’t have from drug abuse. I suppose these ads do some good but since my computer takes 5 minutes to load anything, I just find them annoying.

Every week I take Fosamax, the pill that prevents osteoporosis. My mornings are highly dependent on that first cup of great coffee but on the Fosamax morning, I have to take the pill with a full glass of water (oh glug – the last thing I need on an empty stomach is a glass of water) and then wait for half an hour before eating or drinking anything else, and also, if I am tired, I am not allowed to lie down again. This was such a morning. Because I didn’t have my coffee right away, I foomfed away time on the computer and then it was too late to walk because of the heat. I rode my bike instead because it is easier to ride than walk. I made a new acquaintance, building a house on one of the canal streets. I made him promise me a tour when it was finished.

Last Friday, Ed and I went to a 4th of July party at a neighbor’s. Dave gives a party every year. People bring food except I rarely do because I am never that organized. I talked to a couple of new people I might like to see again and that is always nice as Dave’s parties haven’t always yielded anyone too bright. Dave also buys lots of fireworks and sets them off at bayside around 9 p.m. That’s when we give Brunswick his medication so we left. But I would have anyway, because fireworks are great if they are not being set off three feet away from the patio you are sitting on by Dave’s buddies who have had too much to drink.

It was nice that Ed went to the party and stuck around even though my b.i.l. was there. Ed has a feud with him that he reinforces in his own mind every few hours as in “I hate Don” coming out of left field while we are watching the arts channel. One year Ed and I walked into Dave’s and when I looked around, Ed was gone, having spotted Don. Didn’t even tell me he was leaving. So this year I said that it was a pity that we had to organize our lives around what Don might do. So I got Ed a plate of food so he wouldn’t have to rub elbows with you-know-who and the evening went well.

My sister, Tu, also showed at the party and that was a rare occasion indeed since her lingering pain from the aftermath of shingles keeps her from doing much of anything.

I was reading a mystery recently and the author describes a guy as wearing a T shirt that says “I have found God … he was hiding behind the couch.”

I just finished reading Olivia Goldsmith’s “The Bestseller”, a work of fiction interlaced with real people from the publishing world and filled with names I worked with or knew of during my years in hard-cover. Her tale of 5 or so interlocking stories, their schemes, trials, tragedies and all the faults of latter-day publishing (fine houses taken over by conglomerates and turned into money machines) made me realize that even if I had had the tenacity and range to write a novel, I would have been eaten alive.

xx, Teal