Thank You, Mr. Jobs

In 1985, I was at THAT Super Bowl. I WON tickets to it on a local West Palm Beach radio station. I saw the Ridley Scott Apple commercial at that Super Bowl and I still have my Apple seat cushion.

In 1987, two years later, I owned my first Mac, an SE. It still boots up and greets me today! I published three magazines on that little Macintosh and never ever looked at an ordinary, boring PC.

Since 1987, I’ve earned my living as a graphic designer, writer, and publisher on Steve Jobs' products. Through the years, Apple has kept me young and thirsty for the next world-transforming objet d technologie, the next new operating system, and the next ground-breaking software. Finally, I had an Apple Store in my backyard.

I've owned a Performa, 8100, G3, G4, and G5, an iPod, several iPhones, two MacBook Airs, and Apple TV. This original message was emailed wirelessly in 2011 from my almost one-year-old MacBook Pro 17, the one I'm editing this six-year-old message on. Apple products were not only intuitive to use and master, they were works of art while being state-of-the-art.

I wrote this tribute on Oct. 6, 2011. Steve Jobs died in Palo Alto on October 5, 2011, after battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a decade. He was 56 years old.

Thank you, Steve, for your vision, your uncanny ability to read the future, and change the world. You impacted my life and, in the process, you became one of the best friends I never met.

You prospered, but did not live long enough. You should have had a very long life. The Universe must have decided It needed a Master Imaginator to translate Its secrets.

As Buzz Lightyear said, "To Infinity and Beyond." The world will miss your light.

Godspeed!

Write I AM worthy and begin –

Write I AM worthy. And begin. Again. This is The Truth of the Truth.
Thank you, Dele Slaughter. You inspire me just sitting on my page.
Why is this so hard? Voice in my head: "If it was easy, everyone would do it."
Why can't I be present for the people in my head
who have lived there long enough and are eager to start their lives?
Have I kept them close too long? Are they prisoners in my mind?
Will I ever let them go?
That's a question without an answer. But my mind wants to get on with it.
Here it is February again. I started this project in February 2010.
It has been eight long years.
There are 46 stories of all kinds here.
Still, I am not really working hard to get those people out of my head.
I'm stuck. I'm in limbo ... Cue the joke: I'm stuck in The Gumbo Limbo!
I've made a promise that I will do better. I will begin, again!          © 2018

Happy Birthday, Stella! March 17, 2016

My Corgi mix, Stella, just had a milestone birthday. She is sixteen-years-old and still as beautiful as ever! We estimated that she was born on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, in 2000. She was a tiny ball of tri-colored fur and I fell in love with her at second-sight, as soon as I discovered her brother, Riley, was taken. Her two aunts, Stacey and Adele (Stella is a combination of their names) had found Riley and Stella, two give-aways at a feed store, and brought them home. They knew I would take her and Stacey's son, Chase was already madly in love with Riley. I had lost my second Corgi, the twin brother of my first Corgi mix recently and was feeling very sad.

I wasn't really that excited, and tried hard to be practical, knowing I would soon have major surgery due to a recurrence of breast cancer. I wasn't sure that caring for a puppy and dealing with a second mastectomy was a great mix.

I was told by the Stella's aunties that this was a very special nurse Corgi, and she would take care of me and guard me while I was recovering. I spent two hours driving home to Jupiter from Ocala figuring out what to tell Dan. I arrived home with a pretty good story. Stella would be staying with us because she needed to go to the vet's and be wormed and checked over and the aunties didn't have enough money between them to get Riley and Stella an exam. My story was true. I was doing them a favor and would bring Stella back up to Ocala for our annual SEDRA awards banquet the following month. Once a year, our regional riding organization dressed up, went somewhere nice for a dinner and gave out a boatload of awards for a long distance riding competition season. It was always a blast!

So Dan breathed easily for three weeks, playing with the puppy and getting to know her. Shortly before I left to go back for the banquet, he said a little tentatively, "You are sure you are taking her back up with you?"

Yes, I told him. I was taking her back to Ocala. What I didn't tell him was that she was coming back home with me because, of course, I'd fallen in love with her, and she was my new Corgi mix, nurse puppy. She was the best! Dan seemed a little sad when he asked me that question.

And that is how Stella came to live with us!