Happy Birthday

Today is my 65th birthday. As most of my mail this month has told me, "Welcome to Medicare." Good grief.  Be that as it may, it's still my birthday, and boo-hiss and bah-humbug to anything connected to Medicare.

I asked my husband for an iPad for this momentous birthday, and after carefully researching the options (as is his style) I now have an Apple Mini 4 iPad.  On the first day with the iPad, I was ready to toss it out into the pasture... very frustrating to learn the processes after being so used to my Toshiba laptop. However.... on the second day, the iPad and I became more acquainted with one another and learned each other's qualities and characteristics.

On this, the 4th day with the iPad, whom I have named "Gatsby," we are the best of friends, and I have learned how to move the icons around the pages, put a few unwanted icons into a folder in case I want to use them in the future, and I've deleted some totally ridiculous Apple-installed icons. Not only that, but I have taken photos of Savannah and Sweet Pea and sent them to my cousin F. (Who knew that taking and eMailing pictures could be so easy?)

My husband had suggested that I use the laptop to Google any questions about the iPad processes, and then by using the laptop results as a road-map to the solutions, I could follow the instructions and set up the iPad exactly as I wanted it. Lo and behold.... it was easy to do with Google as a guide.  All of the initial iPad frustrations flew out the window, rather than the iPad itself.

My cousin F and I decided to name our iPads, being that we kept sending eMails back and forth and saying "my iPad this...." and "my iPad that...." --- so F is calling her iPad "Pandora" because as she said, when she opens it up, she gets the good, the bad, and the ugly out of it.  I chose the name "Gatsby" for the simple reason that I miss our cat Gatsby, and he was such a wise and gentlemanly cat.  And needless to say, the iPad is indeed a wise instrument of technology.

I have been using Gatsby so much this morning (now that I really know how to use it) that it is being re-charged at the moment so I'm on the laptop.  Unlike my cousin F, who uses Pandora for everything, I will bounce back and forth between Gatsby and the laptop.  Gatsby has a detachable keyboard, along with the on-screen keyboard, and I have a purple case for it.  On the signature line of my eMails, I changed the setting to read "Sent from Gatsby, my purple iPad." (Rather than simply 'Sent from my iPad.')  After all, Gatsby does deserve some recognition.

Today is a beautiful day, sunny and nearly warm, with temperatures just below 60.  Cousins have called to wish me a happy birthday, and I'm sitting here in amazement that 65 years have gone by since our long-ago pediatrician Dr. Wilson said "It's a girl!"