So the whole day today is being spent doing a reformat on my computer. I'm still waiting for completion on that little trick. That's OK. During the whole process (which I have played little to no part in), I have spent my idle, non-computer, time, planting peppers into pots to go on my deck, experimenting with a new keylime pie recipe, and happily avoiding anything resembling housework by reading a few new chapters in that mystery novel I keep on my nightstand. And now,I'm doing a quick blog on my husband's computer. Apparently, my computer had contracted a virus sometime late last summer or fall. I'm going to blame this virus on one of my children...either my son, who has escaped back to Arizona...or my youngest daughter whose greatest dream is to join the circus. They always used to bring home various and sundrie illnesses from school to share with the family. Why should anyone think that this would be any different? Anyway, the long (I repeat LONG) and short of it is that my computer is being wiped clean and is going to be recreated from scratch. I don't have the expertise to do any of this and am thankful to be married to my own tech support.

Cliche of the Day

You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks. Old people or people with long experience in a task find it difficult to learn new ways. I wonder if it's really true about the dog. Probably an old dog that has been learning tricks all his life could keep right on in old age. The same with people. Still, the perception of the oldster as unable or unwilling to change is prevalent enough for versions of today's cliche to be very old. In 1523, John Fitzherbert told the readers of his Newe Tracte of Treatyse Moost Profytable for Husbande Men: "The dogge must lerne when he is a whelpe, or els it wyl not be; for it is harde to make an olde dogge to stoupe." In 1670, John Ray recorded this version in his collection of proverbs: "An old dog will learn no tricks. It's all one to physick the dead, as to instruct old men."