Another year has passed, making it 12 years (!) that Dad has been gone.

Of course I think of him often; in fact it seems as if there are almost daily many reminders of things he said/did, or of things I would be passing along to him.  Case in point: yesterday's "corragio" e-mail from Karen, after she'd requested an update and I'd commented on how slowly time seems to be passing while I wait to get the OK to start walking again.  

I can still "hear" Dad saying "Courage, Camille".  FYI when I finally did see the movie (decades after a childhood of hearing that from him when things would go wrong) I kept an ear out waiting to hear those words - but never did.

 Apparently in Alexander Dumas' 1857 play Camille: The Lady of the Camellias Monsieur Duval does say to her, "Courage, Camille, Courage." and if I ever read the book I'm guessing I would find it in there.

This is the last yartzheit candle I had.  I usually replenished my stash during my trips to Maryland, which of course haven't taken place in quite a while.  Sadly I'll now be lighting two each year.  Alyce tells me she finds hers at Frys, so once I can drive again...

There was a bit of a delay writing today's post, because my laptop started out frozen this morning. 

 According to the time stamp at the bottom, that happened at 12:45 am.  When I was unable to shut it down manually, or by hitting Control/Alt/Delete, I assumed I would need to bother my Tech (AKA as Alex) when it got late enough this morning -  and just deal with his eye-rolling.  

On the other hand...

However, before I needed to bother him it started working on its own.  

At some point yesterday I'd noticed that it needed an update, but when I gave it permission do that (though from the description it sounded like something to sync with smartphone, which of course I won't be using) it told me I didn't have enough memory to do that.  So I figured that was the end of it...

Long story short(er), around 6:30 this morning a window popped up for me to sign in to Microsoft - though it wasn't happy with my password so I needed to choose a new one.  

At least I have had a LOT of practice setting a new one, and VOILA!

Maybe my laptop would only have enough memory when it was "sleeping" at night? 

Bottom line:

In any event, now I can get caught up on yesterday.  

Tom drove me to the library yesterday to pick up four books (three of which were for him) that had come in.  For some reason I have all of a sudden stopped getting e-mail reminders, so mentioned that. 

 Turns out that the library has been hearing that same complaint from other patrons, all with COX e-mail accounts. The good news is that COX has been made aware of the problem and "is working at correcting it."  

I'll just have to keep checking my account periodically until it's resolved.  

Not as convenient...but at least there's nothing I need to do about the issue!

The book that came in for me is the selection for the next Book Club at Cheri's.  I haven't attended in over a year (though there have been some books I've really enjoyed) but there is a chance that I might actually make it to this one, on June 2.  

The book is The Woman Who Smashed Codes - A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies, by Jason Fagone.

"...traces the life of Elizebeth Smith, who met and married groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman and worked with him to discover and expose Nazi spy rings in South America by cracking multiple versions of the Enigma machine."

I've never heard of her, but her story sounds intriguing - and also should be a good follow up to the book about Hedy Lemarr, which I just finished last evening.

My electric toothbrush has been on its last legs for a while -

 

so obviously it was not at all surprising when it finally bit the dust.  

Yesterday it got replaced it with a SoniCare.  Tom really likes his (so he gifted one to both Lily and Alex last year, and they concur) and when I used mine for the first time last night I can see why!

Alex joined us for dinner last night, and we got to share his excitement over his DogeCoin uptick.  He'd bought his shares 'just for fun' a few months ago, because how could he pass up a cryptocurrency 'named for him'? <g>  At the time they were priced at a nickel - but last evening shares sky-rocketed to 35 cents!  

I did a search after he left, and found this recent entry:

Dogecoin has the internet howling yet again.  The cult coin nearly doubled its value in less than a day amid a new wave of investor enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies. It exploded to a new all-time high of about 14.5 cents early Wednesday morning, hours after roaring above the 10-cent mark for the first time.  The digital currency started as a joke inspired by an internet meme featuring a shiba inu dog.