Alexa

I know you have all seen the Amazon Alexa.  The voice activated app/device that can translate your every command to your phone/iPad/Amazon purchase (while also collecting your every spoken word for future marketing and/or indictments).  Well, my mother has fallen in love with hers.  It’s like the daughter she always wanted.  

Mom uses Alexa for exactly one thing:  activating her audio books and reading them aloud.  You see, my mother goes through about 20 audiobooks a week – and those things aren’t cheap.  Mother has an audiobook habit that makes me wish she would take up gambling.  It turns out our entire inheritance is going to be Kay Scarpetta mysteries.  I’m going to see if changing Audible to read at half-speed means we could afford all mom’s meds again.    

But she loves them.  And Alexa is her very own bedtime story reader.  She can lay down, tell Alexa to “read my book” and that little electronic marvel comes to life.  But here’s the rub….my mother is EXTREMELY hard of hearing.  So Alexa doesn’t so much read the book as she assaults the entire household with a murder-solving audio cannon.  It plays so loud that when my mother says, “Alexa quit reading”, Alexa Cannot. Hear. Her [so it really is like her daughter].  She more or less has to bend within an inch of it (her?), screaming to be heard over the equally loud 90-decibel book-reading that is going on.  Why I don’t yet have a video of this septuagenarian standoff, I do not know. 

Which is all well and good if you’re not also sharing a house with Alexa and her blockbuster-worthy audio.  As my sister says, “that Alexa sure is a mouthy bitch.”  

It is particularly uncomfortable when mom has selected a somewhat racy book.  So there you are, in another room of the house, listening to your mother, listening to Alexa as “Detective Stern took her in his arms and ……”.  I stayed awake all night rather than risk the dream sequence that emerges from that unholy combination.

The good news is I almost have Alexa trained to subliminally insert the phrase “I would love to do my orthopedic exercises” in between each chapter. 

Spin Cycle

I have never failed at anything as spectacularly as I have failed at the PureRide spinning class in Mississippi.  I have done spinning in the past – but not like this. 

 

First – the bike actually tilts:

 

I feel this is a basic violation of trust.  I mean they are called stationary bikes for a reason.   The bike’s natural tendency is to rock back and forth like that the 25 cent kiddie ride outside the K-mart when you were 4.  It was a treat when you were 4 – punishment at 44.  Keeping it from rocking uncontrollably requires the forceful use of a unique set of muscles.  Muscles that are used for nothing else.  Except maybe bullriding.  That’s what I’m looking for - muscle work for Tuesday morning spin class and bullriding.  IMHO, you should have to pedal or hold the bike steady, not both.  

Second – the class is in Oxford MS.  The people taking spin class in Oxford MS are there to go to school at Ole Miss.  So you are in class with a masochistic bike and a bunch of taut twenty-year-olds.  Bad combination, bad idea.  I am easily a generation older than the rest of the class – and I fear those bitches are trying to kill me.  Look – I’m not the one who started calling you millennials – take it out on your parents, not the old lady in the back of the spin class.  I think they keep turning down the music to make sure I’m still breathing.  And if one more instructor tells me to “go at my own speed”, I’m going to rock this bike, alright.  

But I do think the kids are in awe of my bike shorts.  No one would wear something that unflattering if they weren’t a force to be reckoned with – right?

SaveMeTheCall 2.0

Boy – I had to reset a password or two to get this site up and running again.  Part of the motivation in taking the new job was to create enough time to resume my extremely lucrative blogging career.  And luckily, the job is in Mississippi, thereby creating time and material.  

I’ve tried to write a few posts ahead so we can keep this thing going.  After all, Donald Trump won’t be running for President forever.  [Right?  Promise me.]

There are only a few rules to the new blog:

• No one reads these to my mother, agreed?
• Since Rita has acquired half of this site in the marriage, she is wisely asserting veto approval of all blog posts not dealing with my family (because then they’re about her)
• It’s not plagiarism if I change the names
• I’m still researching the best sarcasm font.  For now, italics will have to do.
• Frequency of posts shall be directly related to how many household chores Rita lets me out of [just sayin’]
• Content expectations must be reduced [even lower] now that I am not flying Southwest each week.  I will try to spend time in the Mississippi Wal-Mart for replacement material, but there is only so much I’m willing to do here, people

We’ve got less than two weeks to the Trump-Clinton presidential debate, so let’s get this thing started, shall we….