1. Feather-leaf lavender now grows in my herb garden. I had never heard of it or seen it before. Yep, planted it in January and yeppers, I used a gopher cage in the ground.
2. Life without sugar – ugh. I relearned that this is hard, unpleasant, and without benefits. After 3 weeks, I decided why bother. (“Does dark chocolate count? 72% is barely sweet,” she whined.) 
3. In order to do my Wilsonia book, I bought inDesign. It would not work with my new laptop, so I continued to use it on my old one. Now it won’t work on my old laptop either. You can’t buy InDesign anymore—you have to subscribe for $21/month, which is $252/year!!! Enough to make a preacher cuss, I say.
4. Labor isn’t taxed in California UNLESS it is working on gold. What?? Yeppers. Got my wedding ring resized, and paid tax on the labor. Yes, I quizzed them about that. (Sure is shiny now!)
5. I’m not as smart as I need to be. Every time I format a book (that means putting all the information into a computer program so that it is perfect-looking, so that it can become a real book), it feels as if I have never seen the program before. Adobe InDesign is designed for people who spend all day, every day, tapping on a keyboard and staring at a screen. It is not designed for people who format about one book per year.
6. I learned that if I delete photos on my phone, they disappear off my computer. This is highly inconvenient. I don’t want 30,000 pictures on my phone – that is a nuisance. Because I didn’t understand the connection, I have lost records of completed paintings – only 1 of those many Sawtooths remain in my photo files, and who knows how many others are vamoosed. 
7. I learned that on my phone, I can go to Albums, Recently Deleted, and then select and recover photos. The hard part about this is that some of my paintings look like photos and it is difficult to tell what I am seeking when it is the size of a postage stamp.
8. I FOUND A NEW WEB DESIGNER! She is right here in Three Rivers! I have worked with and enjoyed her for years but didn’t know that she could do the techie things that I need done. 
9. For my subscribers who aren’t getting photos in the email notifications of my blog posts, you need to unsubscribe and then resubscribe using this link.   When you get the email confirmation, click on it, and then you should start seeing the photos again. 
10. Finally, I learned that it is actually possible for me to run out of things to post to my blog. First time since April 15, 2008. I wonder what caused my brain to empty?

You can see that this month was dominated by tech. The month wasn’t all bad—my friend and I recently resumed walking together after a severe collapse of discipline, beginning with the fire in September.