Dinner

I was busy with a cat vet visit, grocery-shopping, and getting gas for the car, so dinner was my one meal for the day.  But I think I did it well...

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Fried skin-down chicken thigh (crispy), bi-color corn, 2 shrimp rolls with duck sauce and hot mustard *, tossed salad, and asparagus with light cheese sauce.  Two small glasses of Merlot.  One chocolate-covered cherry for dessert...  I'll have some fresh fruit later, while watching TV.

* I haven't been able to find traditional chinese hot mustard in stores for 2 months, but I found that if I add some vinegar to yellow mustard, I can't really tell the difference.  Start with little vinegar and add to taste.  LOL!

And I use 3 minced 21/25 shrimp for 2 shrimp rolls (with bok choy, scallions, ginger, garlic, and water chestnut).  I had 1 left in the bag, so I just dropped it in the hot chicken grease for a minute.

Is This How Drug Buyer Feels?

I went shopping at the Safeway real  this morning with the other seniors.  Now that's not a term I've used before even though I am an AARP member.  Well, I dont go out for the 4 PM chicken pot pie special at Golden Corral. 

I did get fresh fruits and veggies.  Happy to get home to put them away.

But I took a chance and drove the the local butcher/deli/liquor store that has had an hour long line outside for weeks.  I confess, I absolutely LOVE "Twisted" Brand zinfandel


Medium-bodied with aromas of wild blackberry, plum and a hint of spice. Concentrated ripe stone fruit, dark berry flavors and toasted oak carry through to the palate. Nicely balanced acidity and plush tannins lead to a lingering finish.

And it is as cheap as I am (buy me a drink; I'm yours, LOL!).  $9.99 for a 1.5L bottle

My favorite joke:  And forgive me if this offends, but I just think it is hilarious...  A guy is sitting at a bar and a women sits down next to him wearing the most skin-tight jeans you can possibly imagine.  The guy is an engineer and you know how sexy engineers are ("cough, cough, see ya later buddy").  But he is actually mechanically intrigued and finally asks "maam, how DOES one get into jeans like that"?

And she says "Well, you can start by buying me a drink".  

I'd like to think the drink was a glass of Twisted Old Vine Zinfendel.

It's the only wine I drink.  It doesn't sell worth a tinker's dam around here, but the store I mentioned above NICK'S OF CLINTON special orders it for me 2 cases at a time.  With the covid19, they had lines out the door an hour long.  I fought waiting but I was down to my last bottle, so I decided to go stand in line.

There was no line...    I walked right in and asked the manager if he had my 2 cases of wine.  He said he did and was worried I had died.  Well, he understood that I didn't like to stand in an hour line.  And he would have 2 more cases next Thursday.

But that's not why i mentioned all this.  I scored bread machine yeast!  And at a normal price.  I was down to my last tablespoon!  It is selling online for $50 a 4 oz jar...  I'm good for 9 months.  I can "deliver" my bread needs, LOL!

I'm a good person.  I only bought 1 (they had 3)  But I scored a hit and the cops didn't catch me Bwa-Ha-Ha...  I will use it carefully, interspersed with flat tortilla wraps to hold me over until the lean times are past.   Must make it last, yes my Precioussss, make it last...  Bread once a month, that would be enough right?  Keep the nasty Hobbitses away from my y e a s t i e s.  Or SHE will detect it and takes it away.  So, just a loaf once in the dark of the moon.   Yesss, she won't detect That will she...  I am safe wit hbreadness...

New Mac Computer

Well, the new Mac Mini arrived Wensday, but I was tired.  I had to do errands most on yesterday, but got at it in the late afternoon.  Macs have something called Migration assistant that helps you transfer important files from a Mac to a PC, a PC to a Mac, or a Mac to Mac (from new to old or old to new).

That sounds really great, but unless you have about every cable and/or adaptor in existence, it can be an adventure.  I don't, and it was!

The most direct way of migrating from one Mac to another is too simply have them both up and running with an HDMI cable between them.  Which requires 2 sets of monitors/keyboards/mouses, all of which I actually have!

But Mac Minis have only one HDMI port.  My monitors plug into HDMI ports.  But so does the recommended Mac to Mac. No amount of searching through my box of odd cables and adaptors would make that work. 

I could have gone to a local store and bought the one adaptor I needed, but NOOOOOO, I had to make it work with what I had.  Well, sometimes half the fun in life is the challenge...

And one thing I had was a brand new Western Digital (WD) 4Tb backup drive (my old Seagate 500Gb drive just wasn't able to backup all my files anymore) that I ordered at the same time as the new Mac.

So, I didn't have the right cables to go direct Mac to Mac.  But the Mac Migration Assistant said it was perfectly happy using a Time Machine backup.  So I set up the old Mac to the new WD backup disk and set it to backup the old Mac.  Took 3 hours!  It was an initial backup (copying everything).

I was just finishing a late dinner when the backup completed.  I moved the WD backup and all the other cables to the new Mac and opened Migration Assistant there.  I had to register the new Mac slightly (language, location, User ID, Password, etc.  The user name and password set me back for a while.  In spite of it being a new computer, somewhere, the Mac Universe knows who I am and disagreed with my name.  I finally discovered that my old password on Capital letters and some numbers NOW required a lower case letter also.  Got THAT straightened out, and went through a bunch of stuff about using the Cloud.  Sorry, not yet for that for me. 

They were insistent, so I had to go through a bunch of "Are you SURE?" questions.  But I finally got to the NEW Mac Migration Assistant, and it searched for an external drive.  Found it and started downloading files. 

I was really worried at first.  The progress bar stayed at 1% for 30 minutes.  But then it suddenly progressed faster and only took another hour. 

I amused myself during the wait by changing the water for my 2 Siamese Fighting fish (separate containers of course),  doing a load of laundry, tossing toys to the Mews, and listening to MSNBC commentary in the background.

But even massive file transfers through slow cables do come to an end and the new Mac reported it had completed the file download.  A quick check suggests that all my files are saved, are saved in familiar folders, and my Firefox and Safari browsers have my bookmarks.  I checked iPhoto next for all my photos.

Its not the same.  Nothing I couldn't figure out, but more on THAT soon as there are changes I don't like and may ask questions about to fellow Mac users.

Everything ELSE seems to work pretty much the same, but I checked iPhotos first as it matters more to my blogs than word or spreadsheet programs do.

The important thing is that I am up and running on a Mac with more memory, processing speed and backup.  I understand the programs (generally, given some changes)

It doesn't solve my unhappiness with the transfer of my Verizon email (which I was utterly happy with) to AOL (which seems restrictive, user-unfriendly, and overflowing with ads).  THAT is a problem to solve in a few days.  I can LIVE with AOL for right now, just won't STAY with them for long.  They want to "nickle and dime" me to death for every service to avoid what I don't want them to provide in the first place.  And I have 3 email addresses (for which they charge a monthly fee each).  And I can't simply switch from one to another as I could on Verizon, I have to log out and then back in each time. 

But the migration is complete, my new computer runs faster, and I'm back on line.  For today, that's is enough.