All that came about because the security updates were set to automatically notify me of updates, while at the same time the other program updates were not added because I didn't know they were there to be added.  This created a situation whereby the new security updates would not allow the older programs to operate.  

Mike came along and called Apple and spent an hour on the phone with their tech support fellow, who had absolutely no good advice at all.  His solution was to reinstall everything, which meant that any work I had done in the past 3 months would be lost completely.  It would be like when my old pc crashed and I lost the unsaved stuff from the hard drive.

Mike, who spends a lot of time online reading and studying various computer programming/hacking things, remembered one thing he could do to get into the computer in the safe mode in order to install the missing updates.  So he did that, got the updates installed, and that problem was solved.  He also installed some other useful little thingies into my Mac which should allow me to work successfully with the Mac FINALLY.

My son, Shawn, who is not a big fan of Macs yet, told me that his Vista program has been a nightmare from hell recently.  He has pc that he built which will accommodate Vista, and it's such a top heavy system that one must have the best pc available.    He even had the famous Blue Screen of Death, which used to appear on MS constantly back in Windows 95 and 98.  XP had pretty much handled that problem, and now it's back with the Vista.  

Shawn was able to guide me thru a few steps tonite, while Mike commandeered the new items for me to use.  All I had to do was cook dinner and let them do their thing.  HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF.  I think I can successfully navigate some of the areas that were causing problems now.

YAY!

Today is a day that has special meaning to many people in the world. The streets are very quiet outside. The weather is lovely and balmy and I sense more spirituality in the air today than usual.

We always attended Church on Easter...the whole family. It was the one day of the year that my parents would go with us to Church. All 5 of us would be dressed in our Easter outfits, usually matching in some fashion or another. My Mom must have spent hours and hours getting this whole Easter thing together.

There were always the baskets filled to the brim with sweets and chocolates. Colored eggs were hidden in the backyard and we would repeat this activity several times throughout the day until the eggs were cracked and ruined.

The day before would be a flurry of activity, too, as we would boil and color dozens and dozens of eggs. Being the artist in the family, I was always experimenting with different ways to make the eggs look cool and unique. How did my Mom ever manage to do all of this for the holidays that we celebrated?

I always took it for granted that we would have these holiday celebrations. Family members would arrive for dinner or else we would go to one of their homes, and there would be a feast not to be believed. This would be repeated throughout our neighborhood, as nearly all the families in that area were huge. We all went to different Churches, but we all celebrated most of the same holidays.

It was the only time in my life that I can remember wearing frilly hats...little bonnets with flowers and chin ties and ribbons. It was torture for me.  Lace and frills have never had any place in my life, unless under duress. We did not have much money when I was a kid, but somehow someway my Mom got us all the clothing and gifts that you could ever want. I think my Grandmother had a lot to do with that, but it was never discussed.

Best wishes to you on this day.

But that's okay. We found out that Baysidebob had made a digital pink pig video and entered it some months ago. So I have used that to calm Petunia down a bit, while also feeding her chocolates.

So far we are getting lots of entries , so it's looking to be an exciting contest.

I'll tell you what....it was NOT easy using my video camera and my new Mac iMovie program to make this video. Don't believe anyone when they tell you that Macs are user-friendly...they are not! I like the iMovie program as it has so many more features available than my old Windows Movie Maker program, but it took me about 30 minutes to learn how to use WMM. And iMovie is still driving me nuts after hours and hours of watching tutorials and fiddling around. ARGH!

Anyhow...it's more knowledge. And that's a good thing.