Memory Loss

Sometimes, I picture my brain as a primitive machine: clunky, soldered and bent.  Personal memory loss is bad enough but recently I've suffered the added insult of memory chip loss.  I took dozens of photos of Gay Head (Aquinnah, for the politically correct) that never made it to a file on my computer.  I probably formatted over them thinking I'd already transferred the images.  What I don't understand is the oddly selective power of a Sony Memory Chip. Using a recovery program from internet, I was able to restore images from Africa in 2006, and Provence in 2007. But none from Gay Head last week. I used a different program and the same images from Africa and France appeared, but none from last week.  Are the programs making value judgements about what is worthy, or is it the chip itself?

home again, home again, jiggedy jig...

Virginia has many advantages over Martha's Vineyard.  Just don't expect me to enumerate them.  This is the view from our front porch on the Vineyard.  It's my favorite spot to have breakfast, lunch and cocktails. I thank my lucky stars that my parents had the foresight to buy this house in 1953.  (It's now jointly owned by my brothers, their spouses, me and my long-suffering husband.  We rent it out in the summer or we'd never be able to afford its upkeep). The weather was so lovely I was even willing to scrape the Sisyphus stairs and porches but this year's work detail was mostly inside.  I didn't paint a lick of art but did a lot of cooking for a rotating cast of friends and family. 

I've come to share my elder brother Vance's view: there has to be some impetus to leave the Vineyard.  For us, it is the kitchen equipment.  It seems to have a life of its own.  Sometimes it vanishes, sometimes it multiplies.  How else to explain a kitchen with only one cake pan, but four instant read thermometers.  A cuisinart with four identical slicing blades but no shredding blades. I clearly remember buying a mixer recently but the only one there was the sad, vintage Black and Decker with mismatched beaters. I get very cranky cooking in this kitchen.  I know I bought cake pans last year, but one of them did a 'runner'. I had to bake my daughter's cake in pie plates.  Cake does not rise in a pie plate.
   So, if I had to give Virginia the advantage, it would be that my utensils stay put.