Sneaking Past the Sleeping Tiger

A spiritual center

As 2010 and the year of the Tiger move toward close (February 3, 2011) I find myself tharned.

Tharned:  Describes the act of a person or animal being frozen in terror, e.g. a deer caught in the headlights.

Perhaps originally found in Richard Adams's novel 'Watership Down,' the term was also adopted by Stephen King for use in his novel 'The Stand.' Michael stood tharn while the grizzly bear bore down on him.

It has been a rough year. Some attribute it to the Chinese Year of the Tiger and hold out hope for the much gentler Year of the Rabbit ahead. Others take solace in the fact of how much worse can it get? Lots! But I refuse to go there. I don't even want to give conscious thought to anything bad. Instead over the last week I have immersed myself in four wheeling with my sister and getting acquainted with my Windows 7 and new computer.

Surveying the remains

Four wheeling has been more fun. The weather has been unseasonably warm and the roads clear largely of any mud or snow and we have managed to go where we had not gone before, discovered new churches and new real estate bargains and broad new vistas.

A brighter outlook

I have considered various images to use for an Epiphany card having skipped the "holiday" mood. My card making software does not work on Windows 7 and an attempt to download a newer version was thwarted. It evidently is one of those things I am going to have to order and have mailed to me. But since all my three years of files are either frozen on a non-working external hard drive or lost by the nerd that ruined Charley V (my last desktop) I don't need to stick with that software. In fact cannot even upgrade software I owned because all that registry information went south with the files. If I had $300 I might get the whole Corel Suite but this was a year that had a lot to do with lack of money.

But there were spurts of money that allowed me to replace the computer, Charley V, with Charley VII. Charley VI was a dud but caused enough problems to make me retire that name. I managed to save up for the flat screen TV of my dreams with the blu ray/Internet streaming player. Now to just get technically savvy enough to stream netflixs. And my sister gave me the Nikon D90. I see the closing days of 2010 as a time to start over quietly. I want to tiptoe past the end days of the tiger, hunker down with art, catch up with my new technology, and try to get back up to speed on both as well as my life. I have felt behind the 8 ball for months. Maybe by Chinese New Years I will be ready to hop.

Checking out the wreckage of the past

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