A Day in the Life

A Day in the Life

“I read the news today, oh boy…”

Well howdy, folks. This is just a brief little ditty about a day in my life. I live such an interesting life. I don’t want any of you to feel that you need to keep up with me. Some of you reading this may feel your life pales in comparison to mine so I’m going to give you but a few hours of a day in my life so as not to make you feel too bad about yourselves.

Today, I woke up around 6:30 and made coffee. I have a Bunn. I don’t have one of the Keurig pod deals. I want a coffee pot, not a robot.

And if you don’t know what a Bunn is – never mind. Anyway, a Bunn makes coffee in 3 minutes so while I was making coffee, I headed to the bathroom to do something. When I came back, I was disappointed that the coffee was not done. I should take more time in the bathroom, I guess. So, I fiddled around in the kitchen, killed a couple of ants, and looked in the refrigerator for nothing in particular.

Three minutes of my day were already in the can (no pun intended) and the coffee was done. Now, I’m not one of those namby-pamby guys who drink fluffy coffee, cappuccino, macaroon latte, or other such millennials-inspired garbage. I don’t have earrings and I don’t drink lady’s coffee – not being a sexist, just being honest. I drink black, full-bodied, strong coffee made with an extra scoop of ground coffee. And no, I don’t buy $15 cans of Starbucks’ coffee in cans in the gourmet aisle of the grocery store. I’m lucky I can spell gourmet. I buy whatever’s on sale, for instance, Hogan’s IGA brand.

I always drink a cup of coffee before I brush my tongue and teeth. My dentist doesn’t think so much of my teeth, but she really loves my tongue. She says I have a great tongue for my age. She says that I have the tongue of a 30-year-old. I don’t know why – I never did much for it.

My dentist: She’s a card!

Anyway, there’s a couple of reasons that I brush my teeth and tongue before I have coffee. One is that it makes no sense to brush your tongue and teeth and then drink coffee. Coffee does a really good job of covering up morning-breath – so a good tongue and teeth cleaning isn’t necessary at that hour.

My cat doesn’t care what my breath smells like – and frankly, at 6:30 AM I don’t either. The second reason is that toothpaste and mouthwash make coffee taste terrible. So, if you’re the kind that brushes your teeth and tongue first thing in the morning then you’re not my cup of tea.

After I finished my first cup of coffee, I did the tongue and teeth thing. And then I went back and grabbed the Bunn and poured a second cup of coffee because I wanted one – and yes, I know what I just wrote; my memory is not that short.

I took my second cup of coffee into the living room where I have my laptop set up on a cheap TV-tray (no, I’m not kidding) and I logged on to my laptop and was immediately angered by yet another stupid Windows Update.

I made a mental note to buy a MacBook.

Then I realized that Windows update restarted my computer and all the things I was working on last night when I went to bed – and there were many – were gone with the Windows. So all the stuff I was working on and didn’t save was wiped out by Microsoft’s goofy endless updates.

So, I started thinking. Microsoft has hundreds of billions of dollars sitting around, why don’t they just hire all the hackers in the world and pay them to sit around and hack Windows BEFORE Windows updates are released?

That would do two things: It would get the criminals off the streets and put an end all these crazy endless Windows updates which are nothing more than patches for security holes that all those overpaid, over-educated Microsoft employees couldn’t find, but some sleazy poverty-stricken, grade-school hacker working in a moldy basement somewhere in Eastern Lower Slobovia using a 1984 Commodore 64 computer found.

I clicked on Control Panel. Wrong place. I laughed. Things that have been in Control Panel since Windows 95, are now Settings. It’s just as well, Control Panel controlled nothing anyway.

In Settings, I set my Windows Updates to remind ME to restart my PC rather than letting Microsoft restart then wake up to find all my work in progress gone with the Windows.

Frankly, I’m tired of Microsoft ruining my work. They do a good enough job of ruining their own.

After I did that, though, I got a notice that there were MORE updates to install. What? Microsoft just installed a bunch of them overnight and then ruined my work by restarting my computer. I lost a lot of work because of this!

I’m not happy – but I go ahead and let the darned MORE updates install. After annoying me for about 45 minutes I got a message that the updates could not be installed. I have no doubt – I have no doubt at all that they couldn’t be installed.  Why? Because Microsoft already installed the same updates during the night. But now they wanted to punish me for switching my Windows update setting to prevent them from restarting my computer in the middle of the night and ruining all my hard work.

After fooling around with Microsoft stuff for about an hour, I gave up and started checking my email. First, there were a few angry and savage emails that I dispatched with my typical sweet replies. Then there were some interesting news items that I briefly scanned. Not too much going on this morning, so I started thinking I’d have some cereal for breakfast.

After cursing Microsoft, sending a few nice sweet emails in reply to nasty ones, scanning a few editorials and news items, my appetite was stoked. I was famished. All that lost work and excitement made me hungry. Strawberry Morning sounded good. It’s a brand of cereal that has lots of little dried up hunks of strawberries that get all puffy in milk. I like that. I also like it when my milk turns pink.

Now really. I meant the milk in the bowl.

I’d go on with this, but you’d all be jealous if I told you what happened after I finished that big bowl of Strawberry Morning. I really don’t want to make your life seem dull and boring compared to mine, so I’ll be nice and stop here.

But I will tell you this…