Category humor

We went for a Real ID and ended up with doughuts

Angel Ackerman 3 Comments

Today, my friend Nancy and I embarked on getting her Real ID here in Pennsylvania.

We have prepared for this for weeks. We went online– at least twice– and checked the document requirements. We checked that the federal shut down wouldn’t impact state services. We reviewed the documents ourselves, provided extra ones where we could, and organized them.

Nancy has never had a Real ID, but she has had state-issued photo identification. It expires at the end of the year, and with the nature of life recently and the talk of needing certain forms of identification to enter federal buildings, Nancy thought a Real ID was smart. Nancy is blind, and should she ever have to turn up at the Social Security Office to straighten out any messes, she might need it.

With the rules in general on travel and proving one’s identity, it seems smart indeed.

I went through all the documents. We had an original birth certificate with raised seal, social security card, tax documents, marriage certificate with raised seal, utility bills for proof of address, and who knows what else we had in that envelope.

We could have gone to the local driver’s license center and had them verify our documents. If we passed their inspection, the next step would have been to apply online for the ID. Then, the state would mail a camera card for us to get the photo taken and the final product issued.

I talked Nan into going to the larger center in Whitehall because theoretically they could do everything all at once.

I was optimistic but also pragmatic.

We got there when it opened. There was three regular spaces and two handicapped spaces left open in the parking lot. I chastised Nan for not bringing her parking pass. The center had at least 10 counters open in a space that resembled a small airport terminal. The line extended out the door. We got inside within three minutes, chuckling at the guy behind us who had to answer the guy behind him about what documents he needed to renew his driver’s license.

And then that person loudly proclaimed, “I can’t stand here in line; I have to get to work.”

Then, why did you even show up if you don’t have the documents you need and you don’t have time. I literally cleared my whole day, just in case the wait was long. I had snacks, too.

We progress toward the end of the rug that lines the floor in front of the door. The man in front of us steps off the rug. A security card tersely tells him to get back on the rug.

The first stop is what might be reception desk where you are issued a number based on what you need to do. Nan states her purpose.

The gatekeeper, like a troll guarding a bridge, asked for her state-issued ID.

Boom.

He follows up with a request for her birth certificate.

Boom.

He then asks for social security card.

Boom.

Next, marriage license. Now, if we ace this, we only have proof of address left. I am nervous about the marriage license because all the married and especially divorced women I know have had problems with this step. Nan is nervous about address because she has moved since her state identification was issued.

The gatekeeper unfolds the paper. The one I studied so carefully because it had a raised seal.

“This is just a church certificate,” he said.

“What else would it be?” Nan asked.

As my heart fell, he said what I expected. “It needs to be the marriage license from the county courthouse. You should be able to walk in and pick it up.”

So we didn’t get to proof of address.

And I felt terrible because I knew they were picky, but I don’t know what the county-issued document looks like. I don’t believe they hand those out. I think the officiant files them and you have to request a copy in order to get one.

On the way home, Nan was apologetic and annoyed. I was upset with myself because I knew better.

But then we both got pissed.

Nan got pissed because this feels like another attempt to further impoverish people. If you have a disability or if you have a certain background that makes paper record-keeping difficult, or if you can’t drive or don’t have a car or reliable public transportation, how do you collect these documents and transport them to a formal government office like this? Especially when such places are typically crowded and require patience and waiting; and they are typically open at hours like 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Monday through Thursday when normal people are also working.

I got pissed because look what document tripped us up–

The Marriage License.

Have you ever heard of a man being denied something because of a “discrepancy” with his name? (Actually, yes, I have. Men are much more prone to carry the name of a father or grandfather which can cause problems.)

In this case, Nan was denied a Real ID because we don’t have a county marriage license proving she married and changed her name.

But… Nancy has paid her taxes for 30 years with that name.

She has bank accounts in that name, and you can’t open a bank account without proving you are who you say you are.

Nancy receives her social security disability payments in the name of Nancy Scott.

And you know another thing that ALL THOSE OFFICIAL items have in common? The use her social security number as the factor that connects her to everything.

So what does her marital history have to do with anything? This does NOT have to be part of the process. At first I thought it made sense, because obviously you have to explain the name change. But if you have a track record of DECADES of use of the same name in association with your social security number, I don’t see its necessity.

We went back to her house and she did not have a county-issued document recording her marriage. And trust me, if someone had given Nan such a paper, she would have it.

We could have stopped by the courthouse but we opted to call first and went for a doughnut instead– trying the new shop Bill & Siobhan’s No BS Doughnut Shop.

A visit to Boonton, N.J.

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

Almost two months.

I sat down a few times to write a post and never finished.

In the last two months:

  • I celebrated my 50th birthday.
  • My personal cat of five years died suddenly.
  • My daughter turned 21 years old.
  • I spit out part of a tooth, one that I originally damaged during my big fall 15 years ago.

Even though we have other animals, and even other cats, in the house, the loss of Fog has troubled me. That’s been hard. It creates a special loneliness to have other pets around but none of them are truly mine. Now the bird would beg to differ, she would say that she is the ultimate companion and that I should have no other beasts before her. And perhaps that makes me her pet. For larger birds are even worse than cats for acting like they are the most superior of species.

Yesterday, my dear friend (and Parisian Phoenix art director) Gayle and I went to Boonton, N.J., to see if we could find the remnants of their portion of the Morris Canal.

We failed. And while I was there (specifically somewhere around point 10 on the map), I spent a few minutes studying the map to make our visit more successful, but the summer sun perhaps made it more difficult to interpret the map. I may have to return and try again.

So, Why Boonton?

I wanted to visit Boonton for several reasons. I had been discussing and researching the Morris Canal as part of my work with Maryann Ignatz, the fourth-generation proprietor of Steve’s Café/ Historic Morris House on South Main Street in Phillipsburg, N.J. Her family’s business abutted the Morris Canal and canal workers would stop for food and drink along the way.

Reason 1. I have a fascination with canals and the Industrial Revolution in the United States. The coal regions in Pennsylvania were so instrumental in feeding the cities from Philadelphia to New York. Think of all the petroleum reliance we have today– and in this era as electricity was just coming onto the scene the indsutrial sector used coal to produce steam to provide energy for travel and manufacturing.

Reason 2. I was born in Boonton and some of my family used to live there.

How the visit went

Parking is super easy and plentiful with a $1 fee to park all day. If you use ParkMobile, the fee is $1.30 and gets you exactly 24 hours.

I fell before we got fully out of the parking lot.

(But it was my first fall since April! And it didn’t register on my watch which means it wasn’t a hard fall. The impact was relatively gentle.)

Loved the Van Gogh paint job

The downtown had at least four coffee shops, some art galleries, several gyms/pilates/yooga studios, a record store, an alternative clothing shop, a bookstore (which is only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday), pizza places, convenience stores, a crystal store, a Mexican restaurant in what appears to be a classic diner, and other businesses and restaurants.

We meandered along the Rockaway River and found a couple of the spots listed on the map, but somehow completely missed that we should have explored Plane Street.

After exploring parks and looking for historical markers for about 1.5 miles, we visited Catfight Coffee– chosen for its name of course. It offered Goth-inspired decor and music from the dark end of the 1990s. ‘

The final thing we noticed was The Dog Days of Summer project. Various dog sculptures lined the downtown.

Tying for gold at Lucky Strokes Mini Golf

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Earlier this week, I got a text message from Mr. Accordion.

Mr. Accordion and I were roommates during my tenure at a certain nonprofit that suffered from toxic management. It’s funny though how life leads a person on a meandering path, and we end up gaining things from experiences that hurt us at the time. I have current clients who connected with me because of that job. I ended up at Stitch Fix because of that job. And I published my novel as a distraction when I lost that job. So many of the circumstances that led to the success of Parisian Phoenix Publishing launched from a very stressful and agonizing work environment, where I shared an office with Mr. Accordion.

Mr. Accordion retired, and he has spent the last four years at various part-time jobs and spending time with his family. I have only known him about five years, but in that time he has always had a joke to share, leads on good food, and a genuine care for other people.

And the other day he invited Eva-the-no-longer-a-teenager and I for pizza and mini-golf. And who am I to say no to pizza and mini-golf? The venue in question was Lucky Strokes mini golf and driving range and Isabella’s Pizza.

They had a strange, vintage upholstered chair in the parking lot with a “free” sign and a school bus with a giant target painted on it in the back of the driving range, if I saw correctly at 175 yards.

The no-longer-a-teenager and I arrived and ordered a medium pizza with capicola and artichokes.

And after some conversation with Mr. Accordion, Eva and I hit the golf range. Now, I did set my Apple Watch to “golf” (and Omada gave me credit for “sports”). It took us 37 minutes to play all 18 holes. (In part because the people ahead of us where having some intense discussion about his marriage and how his wife wasn’t taking the couples counseling seriously. At least, that’s what Eva heard. How she heard that without her hearing aids, I don’t know.

It looked to me like the worst first date ever. She looked disinterested with her back turned, sipping her soda. He would not shut up about himself or his wife. And every time you looked at them, he was standing over to the side with his putter over his shoulder and his ball on the other side of the green.

Immediately, Eva noticed two things:

  1. I don’t even remotely line up the putter correctly.
  2. I was swarmed by small harmless bee creatures.

And then while following my little pink ball around I fell up an incline and ended up crawling around the artificial turf on my hands and knees. Speaking of my knees, my knees and legs refused enough to let me get the ball out of the hole at each green.

Instead of keeping traditional score, we kept score of who landed each hole first, and who won each hole. We ended up trying, 8 holes each with two ties. None of which would have been possible without Eva’s golfing lessons. And her tendency to sometimes hit the ball so hard I feared she might have landed it on the next green.

And I think I had a hole in one, but now I don’t remember.

On the way home we stopped at The Spot for ice cream. I haven’t been to The Spot since my Stitch Fix days.

I had a dusty road sundae.

Initial reactions to Omada (and Papa Johns almost made my heart explode)

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I am not a patient person. As I type this, I am listening to an Omada lesson– because of my weight and my health issues, my insurance company has enrolled me in Omada’s weight management system. At least, I think that’s what it is. I’m already annoyed by the ASMR style voice of the narrator for the lesson. And the lesson is audio-based, which is not the best way to get my attention.

Papa Johns Cheeseburger Pizza

They sent me a scale, and the scale automatically sends my weight to my account (including to my coach). Last night, I ordered Papa John’s pizza, and ate more than a should have even past when I was not only full but comfortable. This unnecessary gluttony reinforced what I already know; salt has a huge effect on my health and my heart.

Ten minutes after eating the pizza (that summer special cheeseburger pizza is covered with pickled and tastes like a Big Mac), my heartrate soared to 120 beats per minute resting, for about 20 minutes, until I finally went into the house and took my regularly scheduled beta blocker.

If I don’t eat enough salt, I get orthostatic hypotension, which means I get dizzy and become more at risk to fall when I stand. Which is great as someone who already has a mobility disability.

Omada has set my step goal for 7,500 a day. A good day for me is 6K. An average day is 4K. I know this is part of the problem. My overall goal for this week– according to the app– is to meal track to build awareness. As if I don’t know what I put in my mouth… Their app does not include calories on their meal tracking system, instead it makes you click little stars to rate if it was healthy, or home prepared, and rate how full you feel.

They want you to create habits (and habits are exactly what I need) and awareness. (I am aware I either eat like a vegan health nut or a fast food addict.)

So we’ll see how it goes.

Everyone’s errands ends with a swarm of wasps, right? That’s normal…

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

From the editor’s desk

It’s Friday–

For me, that doesn’t mean a whole lot because I work when I need to work and since I love the editing, reading and publishing that I do and I often forget to stop. I work seven days a week and regularly schedule day trips and small outings to force myself to take a mental break.

That’s really not even here nor there for today’s tale.

I woke a little late today, and rest is always a good thing, so I didn’t make it to my desk until about 8 a.m. Larry Sceurman, author of The Death of Big Butch and Coffee in the Morning from Parisian Phoenix Publishing, had sent me a story and asked for my editorial services. He was stopping by at 9:30 so that I could scan the cartoon he made to accompany the story and then we planned to have a breakfast meeting.

After that, (which included for me eggs benedict as Larry and I continue our tour of local diners– we’ve done Big Papa’s before it closed, then Palmer and now Williams’), I came home and looked at some of the text Ralph Greco sent me on his upcoming article for a major publication, and received an email from Thurston Gill about prepping a Phulasso course catalog and a text from Joseph Swarctz about his upcoming new picture book Sprinkles Did It!

I was feeling sluggish (all those yummy diner fried potatoes?) so I poured myself an iced coffee.

I got a text from Eva-the-no-longer-a-Teenager. I needed to deliver posters to Barnes and Noble for next weekend’s Parisian Phoenix Book Lovers’ Celebration and she needed to pick up come cat food from a client that their cat won’t eat. And she said I could swing by Panera and grab an iced coffee for tomorrow.

Into the car I go.

Phase One: Barnes & Noble

I run into Barnes & Noble as a cool summer rain falls upon the Southmont Shopping Center. The manager is behind the customer service desk and I voice to him my concerns that the posters aren’t the right size.

Now, I don’t know if the designer didn’t resize them when I increased the size or whether the printer we used couldn’t accommodate the size or whether I screwed up somewhere else along the way, but the posters are too small for the standard displays and took big for the table toppers. So if I can find some big sheets of Parisian Phoenix pink poster board I might have to swing by the store and matte them.

Sometimes things just don’t work the way you planned.

If being a small business owner has taught me anything, it’s that when these discombobulations happen, you can’t get angry. You can only roll with it the best you can and develop alternative plans on the fly.

And then…

I hop in the car. We run to Panera and I grab my Sip Club beverage. We drive through lovely developments where a strange number of homes have decorative boulders somewhere along their driveway.

Eva pulls into her client’s driveway and remarks that the truck is not present. She gets out of the car. The car yells because it is still running and she has taken the electronic fob. An email slides into my in box, and I see that it’s my automated response from Substack. I had put together an automated welcome email for “Larry’s Stories” and subscribed my junk address so I could see it. I glanced down at my phone so I could forward it to Larry so he could also see it.

I heard a strange buzz, like there was a bee in the car. But then I heard more buzz. I looked up. There was several wasps in the car. I had the windows cracked, so I thought maybe if I opened the sun roof they would exit, especially since they were gathered around the rearview mirror. (I was in the passenger seat.)

Swarm of wasps

A beautiful collection of colorful flowering shrubs sat outside the car to my right. I opened the sun roof and more wasps entered the car. The wasps were swarming the car!!! I made myself as small as I could in the seat, because the wasps had no interest in me. Obviously they did not see me as a threat and I wanted to keep in that way.

My daughter and the wife of her client, whom she had never met, came out of the house and Eva immediately noticed something was off and there was a weird amount of insects around the car. I hopped out, because I didn’t want anyone to come to close to the car without knowing that the car had a bit of an infestation.

Once I exited the car, the homeowner realized that her husband’s work truck had a wasp nest on it, which he had perhaps knocked down, and in any case, he had driven away. So these wasps were confused and homeless and probably search our car for their missing house.

I carefully slipped into the drivers seat and backed up the car farther down the driveway, with the door open, hoping the wasps would gravitate to the garden and not my Volkswagen. We closed the windows except for a crack in the sunroof and hoped.

When we reentered the car about five minutes later, only about four remained inside the car and as we started to drive away that number dropped to two. And one I accidentally squished in the window.

To make sure none of them followed us home, Eva jumped on the highway to outrun the bastards.

The clients felt terrible and they even texted us a photo of the original wasp nest. I can see why the wasps were confused.

Two weeks in the life of Angel

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I wish I had some exciting reason that it’s been two weeks without a post. The reality is that I’ve been ghostwriting a novel and that every free moment I have has been dedicated to that client who is currently paying my mortgage. Luckily, I love the client, I love the story and I love the whole experience of being a part of the project so it’s not a hardship by any means.

The book publishing entity– Parisian Phoenix Publishing— has been paying the other costs of life. If you follow the blog there and/or read the Substack newsletter, you will see we are always doing something to keep the company and its authors growing. And if you need another reminder of why and where to buy books, check out the shop we’ve curated at Bookshop.org, where you can shop online and designate your favorite independent bookseller to receive the profits from the sale.

So, rather than try to catch you up with every bit of crazy while I’ve been away, let me provide this fine list:

The Initial Joys of Summer

  1. The Teenager only has a few more days of Teenagerdom and she has spent much of the last month renovating our garage into an indoor/outdoor living space. She is hosting her birthday party out there and I can’t wait to show you the final result.

2. I have started using the outdoor patio more as the Internet extends that far and there’s really no excuse.

3. We decided to try the Papa Johns Cheeseburger Pizza and their new Spicy Lemon Pepper Wing Sauce. The boneless wings are terrible, but the sauce is out of this world. And the burger pizza– especially with the $10 promotional price point–might be our new favorite food. The Teenager has proclaimed that all pizza should have pickles.

4. I spent some more time with my cat, Fog. We normally use a “crate and rotate”-style system for all the animals. For the last year, my boy Fog, our old tripod Opie and the cat the rescue gave up on, Canyon, have been in my room. We decided to let them free roam and this meant I got to spend some time during my long work days with my man, Fog.

5. Speaking of cats, our houseguest, Paulie, still loves to bite me, but he has gotten quite forward about being in my business.

6. We pre-gamed the Teenager’s birthday by going to Dave & Buster’s for some arcade time and then visited this strange convenience store with the old style poker video machines, alcohol, vaping supplies, penny candy, ice cream, strange snacks and all the household goods one would expect from a convenience store.

7. I made some new recipes including rhubarb quick bread (think banana bread but with rhubarb) and my own twist on fried pickles. I smeared/shredded cheese on a kosher dill pickle sandwich slice and then pinched it into a piece of Italian meat before breading and frying. Both were amazing.

8. My 2015 Jetta turned over to 71,000 miles. The Teenager has been driving it for work, so it only had 55,000 on it when I got laid off from Stitch Fix in September. But in other exciting news, before the end of the month, the Teenager should pay off her 2012 Nissan Rogue which we’ve had two years when we only planned to keep it for six months. It’s pretty much ready for a demolition derby now, but it was The Teenager’s first car loan and she paid it off six months early.

And lucky number nine….

(The Celts believed 9 was a holy number, because nine was a collection of three sacred threes.)

9. Today, I got to have a lavender matcha latte with my book-making, mixed media, painting artist friend Maryann Riker of Justarip Press. We stopped at Spectacular Coffee at Easton’s Silk Mill after indulging in a green sale (yes there is such a thing!) at Vasari Oil Paint.

Cat tree with a side of sneakers

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I ordered a new cat tree. It was a product Amazon sent me for free in exchange for a review as part of their Amazon Vine program. And it was designed to look like a space rocket so how could I say no.

When the box arrived, The Teenager tore into it. And the first thing she discovered was a pair of ugly sneakers. “Unisex” no-tie, size men’s 5.5 sneakers. So she tried them on.

The 53-inch cat tree had no instructions packed with it, and the hardware wasn’t organized in the box either. So, the resourceful-as-ever Teenager called up a photo on Amazon, because the box had no photos either.

This cat tree was missing all the plastic half-globe pieces for the cats to sleep in. There are supposed to be two. It’s made of particle board and the legs were not equal heights.

The cats have explored it, but if I had spent $90 on this, I would be very unhappy right now. It’s the only one-star review I’ve ever given on Amazon. The random sneakers is what made me have to share this with you. Because once again, my life heads into the ridiculous.

The Unexpected Post Birthday Bliss

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Gayle and I have been friends a long time. So last week, she asked, as friends often do, “What are you doing on your actual birthday?”

My birthday was on Monday and nobody celebrates on Mondays. She offered to take me out, if I wanted to go somewhere and have fun. I texted back, “What is this fun you speak of?”

Enormous TV with the best resolution I have ever seen

I asked her the budget, and she said $50. I thought “arcade.” I have been trying to make it to various small arcades in the region, but as small businesses, they often don’t have hours conducive to my plans. So I looked up Dave & Buster’s, knowing we have one by the Lehigh Valley Mall.

Gayle said, “You want to go to a sports bar?”

And I said, “No…. They have an arcade.”

But further investigation revealed that the have half-price games on Wednesday, so I asked if we could postpone until then to take advantage. Gayle said sure.

She tossed lunch into the deal, so I ordered the Hawaiian chicken sandwich with pineapple, slaw, and sriracha. Gayle ordered a house salad and we agreed to share all the vegetables. I say all the vegetables because I replaced my fries with asparagus, and we got sides of Brussel sprouts and roasted cauliflower.

Surprisingly, the Brussel sprouts were a disappointment. They tasted too crunchy, as if they were fresh and raw. The seasoning was decent, but they didn’t have the decadent, drowning in roasted flavor that parmesan-crusted Brussel sprouts normally have when prepared in a restaurant. The cauflower was great— but the dipping sauces for both were heavily mayonnaise-based. And the asparagus turned out to be thin and perfectly dripping with goodness. As was the sandwich, which surprised me with how thick and hearty the patty was and how sweet and abundant the glaze was. A very messy sandwich, but worth it. 

With the server’s assistance, we purchased a Dave & Buster’s Power Card with something like 200 (or was it 250?) chips on it. At about 2:30, we headed into the arcade and started our exploration. My first game was a mechanical, full-size version of Hungry Hungry Hippos. I will tell you at our Lehigh Valley Dave & Busters, the blue and the green hippos have a disadvantage, the ball popper holes do not function properly. To digest a respectable amount of balls, one must take advantage of the yellow or orange hippo.

I taught Gayle to play Air Hockey, and Centipede, and then I challenged her to Mario Kart (on Easy) and then we did Hot Wheels. And Rampage! We tried axe throwing and tried our skill shooting hoops. We even did some electronic bowling. And we tried the kids’ games— Cut the Rope and Doodle Jump. 

I looked at my watch and it was 4 o’clock and even though we still had forty chips left (and at half-price most games costs 3.4-5 chips per player), Gayle let me have the power card and now I’m plotting a visit with the Teenager. 

At that point, I picked up the Teenager and we headed to Joan the Photographer’s house. Joan wanted to take me to Point Phillips Hotel for dinner, where they have an on-site smokehouse and some of the weirdness seasonal cocktails I have ever seen.

That region has very Pennsylvania Dutch roots— and my grandfather- and grandmother-in-law are buried in that area. At the restaurant, the waitresses’ shirts said, “if you ain’t PA Dutch, you ain’t much” which led to Joan’s partner claiming to be the most PA Dutch person in the room.

To which I made a challenge. The Teenager is 3/4 Pennsylvania Dutch on her father’s side. Darrell’s mother’s side is Pennsylvania Dutch (his grandfather didn’t learn English until he started school at age five back in the one-room schoolhouse days) and his father’s side is 1/2 PA Dutch and 1/2 Welsh.

The food (and cocktails) were delcious and then we spent some time at Joan’s house, where he partner learned, apparently for the first time, that the Teenager is/was a musician. Discussion ensured of her experiences playing low brass and the differences between a euphonium and a baritone. Some old marching band videos were shared, and one thing led to another and suddenly the two of them had a trombone. 

Amidst a near-full moon, the Teenager picked up a musical instrument for the first time in three years and even though she had never played trombone, she attempted to find some notes.

It brought back a lot of memories for both of us.

The Face ID meltdown

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In middle school, I was part of the generation of kids who had introductory computer programming classes mandatory in the curriculum. Everyone had to sit at the IBM computer and learn DOS commands. It was 1989, and we had no idea why we would ever need to do this. Our parents were farmers, mechanics, plumbers and other blue collar workers.

At the same time, we saw our first local farms sold and turned into developments. One summer, school let out and in September, at one farm on my bus route, suddenly 8 kids stood at the end of a road by a field that now had houses all over it. But the real shock was when some of these kids had dads that worked in offices and wore suits and carried briefcases.

My dad went back and forth between an OTR truck driver and a diesel mechanic. Periodically he would buy a truck (twice he bought the same 1965 Kenworth) and when he had driven our family into debt with the cost of massive tires and gasoline, my mom would force him back to work as a diesel mechanic at a local paving company.

In high school, we got ONE computer in the back of the classroom to print the stories for the high school newspaper and literary magazine. Previously, we sent our copy down to the business classes so those students could type it in columns. Whether the business students typed it or we did it on the computer, we cut it out and glued it on blue grids with rubber cement.

By college, we all had email addresses and computer labs and web sites on Geocities.

My college roommate had an IBM computer that ran Windows 95. And after my freshman year, I saved ALL my money, drove two hours and bought a floor display model of a Powerbook 165, which if you do not know, was the first real consumer laptop.

I’ve been a die-hard, fight-to-the-death Mac girl ever since. And if you want to have the Mac vs PC fight, save your breath and remember, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both stole their ideas from Xerox.

My point is, I am not a Luddite.

But I have reached the age– and tomorrow is my birthday– where technology issues can unhinge me. I ate half a bag of flaming hot Cheetos last night because the FaceID on my iPhone 13 suddenly stopped working.

I tried being patient. I tried restarting it. At the behest of The Teenager (who only has one more month of being a teenager) I tried to reset it. That failed. And suddenly I was being asked for the password to my bank account. I was faced (pun intended) with having to TYPE passwords and I, for a moment, wondered if fingerprint ID would work… and then I remembered fingerprint ID went out with FaceID.

I tried again. I could not reset FaceID.

Well, I thought, the sensors that read my face must have died. And then suddenly it worked.

I reset my FaceID. Without the help of a teenager.

It still only works about 50% of the time. But, somehow, I will persevere.

The Jelly Bean Distraction

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Anyone who has ever been in my inner circle knows that I have a jelly bean problem. They are my favorite candy. Come Easter, I shove them in my face like some sort of crazed monster and eventually I forget they exist until Easter again.

In college, for spring semester final exams, I would walk to the Woolworth on Main Street and Bethlehem and buy all the jelly beans at 75% off and stow them in my desk drawer. While the other kids drank coffee to study, I ate jelly beans until my stomach ached.

This year, I did not buy jelly beans… until today. Three full days after Easter I found myself in the Dollar Tree where I could now buy jelly beans for 67 cents a bag. And one of the brands/flavors was Kool-Aid. Now, I turned 10 in 1985. I know the Kool-Aid Man well. I’d say intimately but that’s kind of creepy.

So, in part, this blog post is a review of Kool-Aid jelly beans. The bag is smaller than the others but the jelly beans are larger and a strange size.

The flavors are grape, tropical punch, cherry, kiwi strawberry and orange. They are tasty. The texture is thicker and crunchier on the initial layer than a lot of jelly beans. They don’t remind me of Kool-Aid but the do remind me of artificial fruit flavors. And I like them.

The Sweet Tart Jelly Beans, on the other hand, do remind me of the namesake candy and come in the traditional jelly bean size and texture.

The generic jelly beans are very sweet and bold and crunchy, but some are too chewy. They remind me of the basic lifesaver pack flavor wise. In taste and texture, they do not stand out.