Today’s a big-time SPF day … so ASAP pick yourself a pair of protective sunglasses (or cheap sunglasses if you’re a ZZ Top fan), a floppy straw hat and slather on some sunscreen with a high SPF or sun protection factor. Hey, maybe even dab some zinc on the tip of the old schnoz. I usually wear long-sleeved shirts and pants while working in the yard or walking, and despite all the miles I’ve logged so far this year I’m still my same old pasty-looking self. I fried my skin enough when I was a teenager with sunlamps, artful positioning of aluminum foil to reflect on my face or just laying out in the sun for an all-body glow. Well, I can’t undo any damage I did as a carefree teen, but I can be careful going forward. Nowadays, I always slick on some 30 SPF lip protection because I can’t be having chapped lips – I enjoy the gift of gab way too much and besides how will I whistle back at the birds?

What’s with all the acronyms in the world anyway? I’ll admit the words “sun protection factor” have too many letters to fit on the side of a tube of lip gloss. While brevity is the soul of wit, shortcuts for words and phrases are OK most of the time, but sometimes acronyms can leave you scratching your head; e.g. – if you Google an acronym and that combo of letters has multiple meanings. OMG, now there’s a dilemma – what do you do now?

Acronyms are often the preferred way to communicate with people if you text a lot. I’m such a dinosaur about texting that I’ve never gotten into that fad. I have a load-as-you-go cell phone just for emergencies and I rarely, if ever, use my phone, let alone use it to send text messages. Very occasionally, I will text to a few friends or my boss when his Blackberry e-mail is down, but this is done from my computer. In order to whittle down my message to a mere 140 characters, I type the message into a Word document, click to determine character count, then decide what I need to remove (usually most of it) – LOL. It takes me forever to shorten up what’s on my mind using what pitiful few abbreviations I know. I’ve not memorized the gazillion acronyms or text message abbreviations that are out there.

This website has more than a few of them: http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp

Likewise I’ve not taken to Twitter either. I spend the bulk of my day in front of a computer screen between work, catching up on e-mail or social media sites and now there’s writing and posting blogs. Enough already! I hop onto Facebook maybe three times a day but don’t camp out there. I follow various news media sites for breaking news events and enjoy National Geographic, Old Farmer’s Almanac and some beautiful photo sites but that is about all. Twice I’ve hooked up with “Downriver Things That Aren’t There Anymore” then left the group as I was overwhelmed by so many posts. Alas, this ol’ gal is not wedded to social media, but I still feel like a new millennium woman because I am a virtual secretary. I work from home as a legal secretary and remote into my desktop 13 miles away. I love this arrangement!! I did volunteer to forward my work phone to home, but my boss said clients and colleagues are more apt to connect via e-mail these days if they are in crisis mode or hook up with him on his cell phone first. People rarely even send faxes anymore. Robb is a labor attorney for the management side so crises are often the order of the day. I am able to perform all secretarial duties except answer the door, post the mail and make coffee – unfortunately the “long arm of the law” does not extend that far. I can even tell my boss when to change the toner in the xerox machine or if the paper trays need to be filled up. (Smarty pants!!)

SYL (A/K/A “See you later”)