Why Can't I See God?

 We were watching TV and a commercial popped on, supported by some Christian organization, and with kids asking questions like this title. It concluded with the assertion that Jesus welcomes questions. I barely noticed the rest of the details in the ad, as a single one caught my attention.

"Why Can't I See God?"

I'm going to leave aside the question of whether there truly is a God out there somewhere and if so, which theology best conveys what a God is all about. There are too many opinions - yes, opinions - and I'm not picking one. Instead I'm going to ask that child - or any child  - who asks that question a question of my own: What is it you expect to see that you would call "God"?

Are you looking for some aged white-bearded man in flowing robes? Lots of paintings and other art forms do their best to minimalize a God into such forms. If something deserves the title of God, why would it look like us? Do we think we are gods? Getting past the first  question, why would any God look like a hairy old person? If that is what you are looking for, there are all kinds of old, white-haired men all over this planet. Which one would you pick out as God? Why not that other one over there? Or  those dozen? Why a man, and not a white-haired old woman? I assure you there are plenty of us out here as well, with our own founts of wisdom, and some of us are perfectly capable of growing white whiskers as well if that's what your God-image needs.

Let's assume you have seen the art and decided they don't fit the bill for you, then what are you looking for? Maybe it has to be some old guy (I bet you can't get past that depiction yet, right?) with special powers it shows off all the time in order to be noticed. Does it fly? Fade in and out of visibility? Bring a fist down on your enemies of the day, and smite them and all they possess to smithereens? Cure your particular sick person because you asked nicely with the perfect special words?

Perhaps you've grown up a bit and are looking for something more.... special. Unique. Awesome. Scary. Lovable. Reassuring. Magic. If you've gotten past the old geezer in robes, how can you tell then whether what you are seeing is God or not?

Maybe you define God as the Creator. Do you mean create art? Ideas? Life? We people can do all that, and we're not alone in that. This post is an idea, and I'm creating it. I assure you I am not any God, despite being old, white haired, and even very competent at growing whiskers. I've made art by manipulating things, and the quality is nowhere near what I'd call God-like, as much as my ego is vested in making it. And yes, I can create life. I have three times. Each time another tiny cell is required to start the process, and after some months a new life pops out that is separate from me. All animals do it. Plants do it. Microbes do it. Are any of us God? I'm sure not feeling like one. I certainly won't/can't do that kind of creation again.

Many describe God as eternal. First we need to ask whether anything is eternal. We used to define it more or less as time longer then we could comprehend, starting before a beginning and lasting after an ending. As for the "can't comprehend" part, that definition sure fits the bill. Besides, it begs the question of "who/what created God?" Not to mention where the void came from... and so may others. We're figuring out, the more we learn, that we have just no idea.

Our scientists, particularly astronomers, are finding out how much further back in time from now other things existed. We call the most likely process starting that the Big Bang, pegging it around fourteen billions years ago. Is  that God? Galaxies spread out in all directions, bits of energy and mass coming together making stars and planets and nebulae which swing around each other, joining into larger and larger parts that move in patterns to make all the varied pieces of galaxies which make up the observable universe, Galaxies in turn start to eat themselves from the center out, sometimes even eating their neighbors. We call those black holes. Are those gods? What's on the other side of those black holes? Where does everything go and will it come back? Has or will it be a never-ending process? We try to put a before and an after on all that creation and discover our minds can barely grasp the concept, much less all the processes involved. Is the universe God?  However you answer that   question, where did God come from? Or, a bit more worrying, if you can't find or explain God, what did start it all, and even where did God go if there used to be one? 

Is God just a word we came up with to try to explain the incomprehensible? Or just a concept we needed to shift blame from our powerlessness and ignorance when some part of us can't tolerate chaos?

I'm not claiming to have the knowledge to answer those questions. I can only say they exist, and need to be answered before anybody or group can claim to know who or what God is, much less what something we designate as God looks like or wants from us.

Maybe we  can see God and look at God all the time. It does seem to be in our nature to ascribe God to being behind everything we cannot understand. I can see a flower and find it beautiful, watch it feed bees with pollen and nectar, understand how to water one and select seeds or cuttings to grow new ones of the same, or even something slightly different. But I can't "make" one. Each has its own rules for life and I can't change those. I can appreciate. I can also destroy, though only on a limited basis. A flower can wilt, eventually crumbling into pieces of scattered dust. Though changed, all are still in existence. I take that as proof as my not being God. I would so love to eliminate poison ivy!

When I was young, my religion taught me that God was visible in (his) creation. God was visible in the kindness and love of those around me. All those other trappings of formalized religion were added in too, like paying money to the church, obeying the laws as set forth in the book(s) deemed Holy, all of which in my case could be reduced to only recognizing one entity as my God, and behaving well to all around me. Despite contrary messages all around me, both from religious people and society, those were the top two things. 

So for what it's worth from this inexpert source, I see love and kindness as coming from whatever one wishes to believe in as god-like. Even if it isn't seen coming from others, it can come from us. We can choose it. The capability is inside us. It can be seen as a gift from God, or not. We are free to decide our actions in many things. If we were God, we could decide everything. We can be, in a very tiny way, God-like, depending on how we define what we call God. It does not make any of us God.

Second, as I get out and see more of this magnificent planet we live on, I am in awe of whatever forces made it and the unfathomable time scale it took it to be this way. I figure that awe is what most people feel when they label something as being god-like. The more we learn of what this planet is, what we are, what the universe is, the more awesome it all becomes to us. I can't begin to explain it. Words are too little to have enough meaning. I can't even understand it except to acknowledge the crushing enormity of it all, and yes, the humbleness of realizing it's a universe that's still changing and hidden and being partly revealed to those who work to see. It can be crushing, particularly because it is in our nature to find ourselves the center of everything, though we're not. The child first finds the maker(s) of all things possible in their parents, and when things are well-ordered, their world expands and grows to the awesome, uncontrollable, and scary. How we deal with that is the measure of ourselves, not of God.

I still have questions, of course. As far as I know, no human will ever be able to answer them. We're working around them, and calling it knowledge. Or understanding. Or at least progress. Let's go straight to the Big Bang. If everything wasn't here, and somehow exploded out of somewhere else into here something like fourteen billion years ago, and is still spreading out all over here and growing and growing, where did it all come from? Is or was there another universe that was somewhere else  first, and overcrowded it's space somehow, and exploded from some tiny point into this giant enormous "here" from a single point source? What happened to start it? Where did it come from? Where is it going? And why? The realization of the huge unknowable is what prompts us to not only create God as the explanation, but also  to create the definition of God, a cosmic mobius strip.

We will never know the beginning nor the end. We will only know our own, and only if we're paying attention at the time - a challenge for sure. Being able to see God will require clearly seeing ourselves, not because we are what we declare God to be, but because what is within us demands a form of completeness only served by the concept of God. We do our best, despite never being capable of getting there. God is what we invent from need, and define God as unknowable. That is why we can never see God: we've made God that way. If there is something more out there that is seeable, we will have to change.

Wait! You Bombed A Frickin' Girls' School ???

Do I need to say I was shocked at yesterday's news about tRump and Netanyahu bombing Iran? First thought wasn't the alleged build-up of nuclear weaponry capacity. It wasn't true back when Dubbya claimed it was, and tRump is so much more of a liar. Not better, since he's so transparent, just it's a constant stream of what he wants to be true running from glimmer of a thought, likely gained off watching TV, straight through and out of his mouth - or fingers on a keyboard -  without a stop for some coherent reflection, were he even capable most days. The man is demonstrably unwell.

All those thoughts were there of course, but the first one was why the hell do we in the US, any of us, think we have the right to tell another country how to lives their lives and choose their government or - since it's tied in - their own religion?  We have a petty ugly history of it for the most part, and try to glorify it for a lot of wrong reasons. (I hold out WWII as an exception.)

The second  was why now? My immediate thought was it was just another attempt to get us all to quit thinking about what's in the still missing Epstein Files, or of what was in but has been deleted from what has been released, how awful a pedophile tRump is/was (since so many of us forget how publicly he bragged about it), with the aim on his part to possibly raise his ratings here at home. Because they've been way down, and that's what drives him.

My shock was about him combining with Netanyahu first instead of going to the US Congress, which actually holds the authority to declare war, but then was followed quickly by the almost tossed off comment by the TV announcer I first heard that one of the bombs landed on a girls school with a resulting fifty-plus deaths. Students. Girls. Children whose lives are already severely restricted by their religious society who were still trying to better their lives if even minutely, who might have one day become mothers capable of guiding their children in better ways of human interactions than the ones these girls themselves grew up in, now never getting that chance.

I wonder who thought that these girls were a danger to the world? Was it total stupidity or just plain cruelty? I ask that like it could be either-or, when both are obviously true.

I wonder about the soldiers who sent the bombs. Do they have any clue which of their bombs hit that school? Are they proud that they killed girls? Or will it haunt them as they go about their lives, perhaps looking at their own daughters or nieces or random children on a playground back home, or in a school concert, or play, or science fair?

YOU BOMBED A FRICKING GIRLS' SCHOOL !!!!!!

Jellyfish Galaxy?

Boredom leads to fascinating discoveries on occasion. Boredom? Well, the Olympics' two weeks of wall-to-wall coverage is over, regular programming is coming back amid a ton of reruns, so there's some new stuff to watch, but all is mostly indoor activities still, despite the calendar building up with all kinds of medical appointments with more to schedule. There's no heading out to see the newest flower in the yard, or just walk down to the lake to see which birds are back north yet. Some snow has gone, but keeps getting replaced, including by ice, all of which reinforces the "keep indoors" injunction for anybody not willing to risk certain kinds of accidents. Even the garbage goes out to the big cans without one leaving the porch, and the cans don't actually fill often enough to require weekly hauling curbside. And no, spring housecleaning is NOT on the agenda! Yes, the dirt is visible, but the will to push the body right now has gone walkabout - ironic since the body itself can't. Even a pile of tax documents are sitting on a table sneering at me.

So there's lots of time spent online. Some of course is spent writing, including here. Other time is spent reading weird stuff, or at least weird for a lot of people. I got introduced to "Science X Newsletter" over a year ago, and get a new email containing dozens of links in various categories five days a week. Sometimes they build up, sometimes they are promptly devoured. I tend to ignore chemistry, physics, and astronomy, and stick with biology, earth news, medical news, and sometimes pop in to read "other". I might not get to one for a week, as a bunch piles up, but they don't go away until I delete them. Sometimes it's accidentally, though I did fix that glitch a while ago. In the beginning I tried to read everything and not just the teaser first paragraph, but the load grew heavier of unread stuff beckoning.

Suddenly it changed. The folks putting it out decided they either needed my money to keep reading any and everything that caught my interest, or I'd have to wade through ads for every in depth article I read. Screw that! OK, sure, I agree that they're worth it. The service is invaluable. But so are a lot of things online, and my budget isn't that accommodating, especially these last months when I'm not working. Five dollars a month here, and ten there, can build up in a hurry. I can't support them all. Decisions needed to be made. 

Since I still get the very short version of each newsletter, meaning a title and a couple sentences, sometimes a very tiny photo or indecipherable diagram, I can still browse through those. If something is really compelling, I can pull up the full article and fight a system of ads which has a very poor history of letting you clear it off the page after reading/watching it fully, meaning it still covers the article I clicked over to read even after the video ends. The result is it gets quicker and quicker to go through the teaser titles to see what's going on. 

If something looks more interesting, I find myself noting a key word or two and heading elsewhere trying to find more information. Maybe Google. Or Wikipedia even. I've been surprised by how brand new concepts (to me) wind up there, though the opposite is also true, and whatever it was doesn't seem to exist. Today was a good day.

Science X Newsletter had a teaser on jellyfish galaxies. What? Never heard of them. You? The thumbnail photo didn't really give me a clue, so first Google then Wikipedia. Both had information, or at least enough that I now know a bit what they're talking about. I'll even pass on the simple layman's version, since you've read this far.

I presume you are familiar with our own galaxy and its shape as spiral galaxy, more or less two dimensional with arms spinning off in curves along a relatively flat plane, maybe (or most likely?) with a black hole in the center. Got that image? If not, go Google it.... or use whatever search engine you please.

OK, now imagine something huge, like perhaps another spiral galaxy (don't ask me, I'm not sure) rams into it fairly flatly (aka broadside) and knocks a bunch of combined stuff through the "flat" to the other side, and some of that kind of dangles in strings as if still attached to the galaxy but trying to move away.  What's left of the original flattish spiral along with what it gained from whatever rammed into it that couldn't escape (yet?)  now resembles the head of a jellyfish. The tendrils of escaping matter - stars, planets, dust clouds, nebulas - that haven't fully separated (yet)  appear to be hanging below, like those on a jellyfish. (I doubt they move like an ocean jellyfish, but that  would be interesting! Likely very destructive as well.) Scientists describe the cause of this as ramming, so I'd guess there's enough color shift to suggest it's all still in motion. I haven't read the article for the above stated reasons.

I have no idea whether these are supposed to be static in their new confirmation, but I can't imagine they would be, just that the moment in time we observe them shows them that way, just like any constellation in our sky seems permanent. We know things move and that different forces like gravity hold them in a pattern. Observe our solar system, everything moving yet staying much the same. We can observe the evidence left of collisions in the distant past from craters on the moon, or even here on earth. Some of us have seen comets breaking up within our lifetimes, like Shoemaker-Levy 9 falling into Jupiter back in 1994 in 21 pieces.

Now go look up jellyfish galaxies and let your imaginations play, or bring out your crayons and design your own versions. Have fun! It's that or knock yourself flat on your ass with awe and/or fear.

You do you.

When Neither One Works

 Things got weird this last weekend. Going into the weekend, the right arm was somewhat mobile, pain free,  and looking forward to regaining muscles or tendons or whatever means of control it still lacks after 6 weeks of forced immobility. Its hand works perfectly, with great grip strength, but there's a disconnect when it comes to getting it elevated enough, say, to touch my head. It has to be placed in position. PT is the anticipated cure, with appointments scheduled.

When I woke up Sunday, the left arm still had the mobility it had the months before, only now any move forward and to the center is sharply painful. My plan of perhaps fixing that one in late summer just morphed into a plan to ask the surgeon at this week's "final" appointment  how soon we can schedule it, period.

Think of it this way: with both hands working, I could mostly function. The right hand needs something to bring it left and high. Low mostly works just fine, though I haven't explored all options. Even when it needs effort to get in position or stay held in position, mostly it works. If I can brace that elbow on the arm of the chair, the hand can scratch my head when I move the head into place if it itches... which of course it does. That's just life. Braced, it can hold a hairbrush, but not move it to brush the hair, a job designated for the left hand since surgery. Same for the toothbrush. So those get done, when they get done, with sharp pain now.  With both hands working together I can manage to get a wet washcloth across my face, carefully.  Neither arm can replace the shower head back up on its hook. Not yet anyway. I'm considering the cost of a plumber to make some permanent height adjustment on that wall. Or perhaps there's a gadget one can attach without making a hole at risk of puncturing plumbing behind the wall? I'm open for ideas here.

I don't know enough of internal anatomy to understand why the sudden pain when the left shoulder has been the one relied on for so long. I'm sure its use has contributed to whatever suddenly changed. Imagination fills in the gap to suggest some chip of bone, undermined by the arthritis, loosened and relocated in an unknown spot where it grates between other parts of that shoulder joint when they move. But I've never dissected one, nor even seen diagrams, so who knows?

My supply of "normal" painkillers doesn't touch it, though the ache after movement does ease after around an hour. I can assure you I'm not at all tempted to go back to NSIDS since the pancreatitis. After resisting doing so for ages, I'm about to request an interim supply of the heavy stuff. Whatever the cause, it won't be needed much after surgery, based on past experience with the other shoulder. However, once again there'll be however many weeks of the sling before the needed PT to go through to restore function to that arm.

The frustrating part is not the pain. The frustrating part is just when I start thinking I can be independent and capable of doing normal things on my own again and soon, life has its way of laughing, in a way that's both full of irony and bereft of humor. It reminds me of my chronological age, not the twenty-year-old remembered me tucked away inside. She's still there on those mornings when I wake pain-free, read to go and take on the world again, at least until it takes on me.

A Shocking Milestone!

I'm not saying it's a terribly important one, even though it is worth note, just one of those that sneaks up on you and tells you that you're getting old. (Or older, anyway.)

First, I'm back driving again, at least for those things where I won't be medicated or otherwise disqualified from doing so. Hopefully that mostly won't happen again until... late summer? Considering the issues of wearing that contraption they call a sling in the winter, I've been giving thought to scheduling the other shoulder. I see that doc next week, my final check-out, and we'll have that discussion. But I'm hoping for no slippery snowy roads, no multiple layers of heavy clothing to fight with, and no contraption preventing me from wearing my coat outside in winter weather. So I'm going to push for mid July for the second shoulder, pending the surgeon's input. That doesn't even take into consideration how cold the house gets in February when you mostly just sit around for 6 weeks, even under a doubled polar fleece blanket, and can't even tolerate being in your own bed  because you can't/shouldn't roll over so it's still just life in a chair 24 hours a day, or how itchy my dry skin gets in winter, or being unable to pick up our own mail for fear of ice causing extra damage besides a bruise or two.

So that's my starting point on milestones and scheduling, based on too much experience.

My youngest has been very helpful with all kinds of things I/we can't do under these circumstances. I'm getting a chance to return the favor... provided he goes ahead and gets some of his own scheduling done. He's going to need his own driver soon. He'll be needing a routine procedure where he'll be released after waking from anesthetics, in no condition to drive himself. I'll be able to do that for him, even bring a book to read in the meanwhile, or who knows? I might still be working on taxes and bring that paper jungle along just for "fun", though this year will be much simpler than last year because we didn't move and sell a house. 

But this year my baby turns 50! And lucky for him, his doctors inform him he needs to come in for a colonoscopy! Not the box on the doorstep kind, but a full look-see kind. Lucky him he gets to start when they use propofol, aka "milk of amnesia" for sedative. I still have awful memories of stuff that didn't work, no pain relief, no ability to speak ( or scream - I tried), just wide awake paralysis. Oddly enough I just scheduled my next one for next month myself. I'll have Steve drive for me, barring some blizzard. He'll have a book or two to bring, maybe even just sit in the car if it's a nice enough day. March can provide anything. We geezers are used to getting our own medical stuff taken care of, based on symptoms and age. We almost take it for granted that X happens every Y number of years. But that's for us.

But OMG! My baby is old enough to start that cycle! Sure he's grown, responsible, holds a long-term job, switched to an electric hybrid car, pays his mortgage, grows and harvests fruits to make jellies out of, helps us geezers with heavy tasks. 

When did he ever get old too?

Bad Timing

It's been unusually warm after being unusually cold... at least in recent terms. This winter had lots of sub-zero days and piling snow. As a kid this would have been just "Winter", at least for Minnesota.  After many winters in  Arizona, and a mild first winter back north, this winter felt harsh. Add in being trapped inside for multiple health reasons, it added to the subjective harshness.

Then we get a week plus of highs in or near the 50s. Streets of black asphalt clear, despite their sides lined by piled snowbanks. Sidewalks finally lost almost all their ice and are safe even for me to walk on these days. News reports resume mentioning people breaking through the ice and either getting rescued or drowning. Ice houses are still scattered across local lakes while we natives give them the side-eye, wondering which fish house or vehicle - or combination - will be the first to break through and sink, and at what cost. They range from tents and snowmobiles to RVs! Around here cost includes, on top of everything else, fines for polluting the lake with fluids from vehicles or whatever non-native things just got dumped into the lake along with fees for pulling out whatever fell through. One might even be "lucky" enough to have an ambulance fee to top it off.

Aside from lakes, however, it's been great to finally be back behind the wheel, getting out to doctor's appointments on my own, shopping again, and planning that trip to the library to pick up free tax forms for filing in the next couple months. (Oops, holiday: closed! Sigh.) Days are getting longer, sun actually starts to melt snow off roofs and should it peek into the house, can add some actual warmth, a good thing after looking at the latest utility bill, a bit of sticker shock after last year's baseline bills.

I finally could walk safely to the mail center again. We (meaning my son) shoveled our half of the length of the paved walk running between homes to the next street over. The neighbors on the other end who had responsibility for their share went snowbird without making arrangements. Lumpy ice simply wasn't doable. Often mail in our box would pile up for a week until somebody younger and more able bodied could be persuaded to fetch it for us. That path's tail end is visible on its meandering path if one stands on our front porch and looks across back yards. Yesterday the last of its ice left.

Two packages, one catalogue, and one envelope were expected. (We get that service from the post office, often too optimistic, but at least letting us know when not to bother heading over.) After lunch I pulled on my winter coat, with help from Steve because that's still part of my life, and headed over on foot. I could have waited, but after all the warmth, we now have afternoon rain and snow expected. Talk about a safety reset! Clouds are starting to fill back in.

We still have ice over snow in places with a lot of shade, like where the garbage and recycling bins sit until their day curbside. Neither has enough in them to warrant fighting slick ice today. They are big, our refuse supply isn't. I have developed a system where they snug up against the porch. I can stand on the dry porch right outside the front door, reach over with a long grabber stick, lift the lids so they can be filled, and drop the lids back down. No snow, no ice, no stairs. And almost no contents despite clearing out the house this morning. So they'll stay, and I won't be pulling them over wet ice ( since the roof drains right there.) As I inform anybody nosy enough to ask or rude enough to raise an eyebrow, I just mention everything inside is frozen so nothing stinks. 

But the mail was calling, or at least Steve's two packages, promised today, were calling him. He was waiting for a return phone call, so I headed out after getting his assist with the coat. If I take the long path, I had a safe, dry way to get the mail and back. In summer I cut across the grass, but shade still left too much snow and presumably ice in that direction. 

Just before I left our yard's area on that dry path, I noticed a speck of motion. Slow, undulating, motion. Had it all been black on the black paved path, I might not have noticed it, but in the middle was a fuzzy band of orange. It was a woolly bear caterpillar! I hadn't seen one of those for over a dozen years!  Mostly I've seen them in the fall, doing whatever it is they do to get ready for winters. But we'd been spending so many falls, winters, and springs in Arizona, that I'd not even been reminded that they exist. Yet here one was, not warm enough yet to be able to hurry to get wherever it thought it needed to go next. Knowing the forecast, I wondered if it would be given enough time today to make it to its desired destination. The morning forecast suggested another hour in this part of the state before it needed to be wherever it was going, oh so slowly, slowly, in the direction of. 

In February? In Minnesota? Winter returning with an attitude?

Really?

On my return from checking for mail that hadn't arrived yet, I noticed it had made it about another foot across the path. It had maybe 5 inches to grass again, brown and almost thawed in the tips showing perhaps an inch above the ground where snow hadn't totally matted them down. 

Good luck little critter.

Reset

I roam wide and far online. Some places involve conversations. Some "merely" input programming, or some paragraphs of data.  And of course there's shopping, especially the advance grocery orders so we can avoid entering a store. Eventually it starts to catch up with you, particularly when some sites both quote something and for verification, add a link to the source.

I started having trouble loading stuff I wanted to read. I love a quick perusal of a site and lining up several articles to be read in depth along my search bar to pick later, waiting for me before I can forget them from that initial look. I started getting blank pages when I tried opening them.  Add in a few other issues, and it was time to clear out some stuff.

Of course I did it wrong. But my laptop, in the interest of speed, offers me a chance to clear great big everythings at once. After all, how would I know, one by one, what's sitting there months later and not completely cleared, or worse, connected to three dozen other unknown sources - for better or worse. I mean, if it's email, I can clear by category or individual message, quite easily. I just need to remember to check SPAM because sometimes my computer is really stupid on how it assigns things there. If you are a good friend with a long list of people you send good jokes to, it decides on its own that I didn't really want to hear from you. But it's incapable of figuring out that all the messages from a good friend who died three years ago are attempts at corrupting my system. Not only had she died but she is no longer sending photos to anybody... unless I'm really wrong about what happens after cremation! Just to make it a teensy bit more challenging, I also get supposed photos from one of my kids, which still have to be sent to spam unopened. He never takes photos, much less sends them. Those were a surprise the first time, but a totally weird-ass origin tipped me off before I opened what I supposedly needed to in order to view the "photos".

Once my laptop stopped letting me have good access to a favorite few sites, it was time to clear stuff off. My laptop gave me a quick three choices: history, cookies, or cache. You know what happens when you try to call the sure-fire person who could tell me which to delete and which to rethink before doing so, and they don't answer the phone? A couple moments thought later, and I clicked "yes" on all three. 

It worked! 

There was one little catch, however. Places where I needed to log in refused to recognize me. Oops.... was that the Cookies? Cache? Or History? Luckily the financial sites (where I needed to keep regular track of balances) I'd had set to require a full log-in every time. I remembered those from daily use, though some days better than others. But others, less financially sensitive, I relied on to just be there when I clicked. A third category, like various kinds of weather reports, needed no special access, just open and navigate. The whole of one site shows fire smoke for the continent, for one example, and just zoom around. Same with the lightening map. My road map site only asks for a location to display, whether a full state or some building, not caring who I am or why I need to know.

Lucky for me, I've been writing down my log-ins over the years, especially when they change. I'd gotten a bit coy with some of them, like making references to stuff I was sure I'd remember that nobody else could figure out. After ten-plus years and changes in passwords, you know what happens, right? Ever reference "dog's name" and wonder looking back which dog it was at that time? Some of those rescue dogs had fairly short lives, a big reason they were still waiting for homes.  Just note, however, if you try to figure out my passwords, that none of them were ever dogs' names. Just giving an example of how to confuse oneself. Good thing I never tried cat's names, since some of those I can't recall myself despite a clear image of the face/fur patttern, while I'm still pretty good with the dogs many years later. 

Earlier this week I was ordering something online, and was going to use PayPal. Usually when I open the link they send me a notice that they recognize my computer. Oops. Uhhhh..... what was that again? Oh, I got cutsey with that one? Fine, I'll switch directly to one of my cards instead. 

I wanted to add a couple shows to the YouTube TV lineup. We're on a family member's plan. When it got installed, I wrote down everything! All 4 lines of "everything"! Now I have a call in to that person asking which of those four lines I need in order to get back on. I haven't even gotten to BritBox yet, and that's a different person. I'll wait till after the Olympics, I guess.  Besides, Steve handles the cable for the TV. I've gotten as far, on occasion, as pulling out the plug, counting to 5, and replugging.  More than that, it's his problem.