My first day with a Mac

Everything I already had... printer, external speakers, external hard drive... works with the Mac. I'm glad about that. When I first hooked the Mac Mini to the monitor I already had, I thought something was horribly wrong, because the Safari browser only took up half the screen. I downloaded Firefox for Mac, thinking that would be different. Nope, only half the screen. I have ninety days in which I can get support by phone, so I called. Guess what? An American answered!

She told me the very simple solution, which I may have eventually figured out (click and drag the lower right-hand corner till it fills the screen; duh). Hey, at least it saved my daughter from having to come by here after a long day at work!

I'm going to need a word processing program, I can already tell that. I've googled around the Internet and found some free ones for Mac, but without anybody to recommend them, I'm not going to trust them. The wrong download could kill a computer. Amazon.com has IWork cheaper than the Apple store, and with free shipping, no less.

I have my music and pictures moved onto the Mac.

The Mac Mini is so quiet! Of course, I'd gotten used to the gurglings and grindings of a slowly-dying PC. The old Dell was much quieter when it was new, but not this quiet.

I decided to go back to using a regular mouse. Honestly, that's the biggest adjustment for me; I've used a trackball mouse for years. I don't even own a mouse pad, so I guess I'm going to have to buy one.

I haven't yet figured out how to cut, copy and paste with this thing, but I'm working on it.

So that's day one with my Mac.

Somebody asked me how Sadie is doing: You wouldn't know she had ever been sick. And to think that a week ago today I thought she was dying.

Oh, I finally went to the doctor (nurse-practitioner) to discuss the blood pressure pills that made me cough. I was expecting an argument, but when I explained it to her, she smiled and said, "We call that an Ace-cough." Ace inhibitors cause a cough in some people, she said, and gave me a prescription for a different kind of blood pressure med.

The perils of getting older

All my life, my blood pressure has run low, with systolic usually hovering around 110. I guess I got this from my father, whose blood pressure ran pretty much the same until he was in his sixties. My daughter also inherited this trait.

Over the past ten years, though, that pesky systolic of mine has crept ever upward. It's been around 140 for ages. My diastolic number is still super low, usually fifty-something.

I usually make Cliff check his blood pressure once or twice a week. He's on prescriptions that control his numbers quite well, but I like to keep on top of it because of his having had heart surgery. So when I check his B.P., I then check mine.

Mine has been in the 150+ range for a few weeks now, and was as high as 170, once.

Dang it.

I called and made an appointment with the doctor. May as well get checked before January 1, when we get different insurance: higher cost with fewer benefits, of course. Not to mention the deductable.

I sure hate the idea of taking blood pressure medicine, but I suppose at age 64, it shouldn't come as any surprise. And I certainly don't want to end up in the hospital like Cliff did!

I look over what I've just typed here and realize I'm REALLY getting old, talking about my blood pressure numbers to the masses, as if it was interesting stuff. Next thing you know, it'll be my bowels I'm blogging about.

If it comes to that, somebody just shoot me.