Friday odds & ends

• It's the Thanksgiving long weekend, here in Canada!  I am, as always, grateful for so many things -- including this blog, and all of you here.  :)  
• (Speaking of grateful...)  Older Nephew was discharged from the hospital (again) earlier this week -- hopefully for good this time!  (And hopefully if he notices something is awry in the future, he'll get it checked out sooner!)  
• Covid seems to be everywhere again.  :(  Within the last week or so, my childhood best friends' parents (both of them, both around 90), dh's cousin's sister-in-law and several coworkers, two blogging friends and an online book club friend have all tested positive, several of them for the first time. Yikes!  (Even dh, who has been a little lax on the masking front, is willingly wearing his more often again!)  
• Annoying thing:  I'm having problems syncing my Kobo e-reader (an Aura H20, about 5-6 years old) to my account, and downloading books that I've bought to it -- both over wi-fi, and when I hook my e-reader up to my laptop with a USB cable. (I can see the books I've bought, but I'm having trouble downloading them to actually open up and read.)  Once in a while, I get lucky and the sync/download works, but not very often lately. I tried using dh's USB cable instead. Nada.  I'm hoping my parents' wi-fi might do the trick once we get there?? and if not, that maybe my sister (who is something of an expert on all things e-books & e-readers) can help??  
• I had the same issue earlier this year -- and then suddenly, it started working properly again. Here' s hoping the same thing happens again soon...!  
• I thought this e-reader was about 5 years old -- then I dug up the receipt (yes, I tend to keep these things...!) and it turns out it's actually 8!  So maybe I can justify buying a new one, if that's what it comes down to...??  
• I still have my original Kobo reader too. It's not the original-original model (which came out in May 2010 -- so Wikipedia tells me!), but probably the second model they made & sold.  I bought one each for me & dh for Christmas 2010 (12+ years ago). That one actually malfunctioned fairly soon after I bought it, and the store replaced it. So the one I'm using right now is actually my third reader.   
• More annoying/unnerving technical stuff: A while back -- at least a year ago -- I'd noticed, when I tried to log in to the airline website with my frequent flyer number, a strange email address popped up as part of my personal information. Also a strange phone number (a southwestern Ontario area code). 
• Happily, I was still able to book, simply by exiting out of the account and booking without one, adding in my personal information later (instead of having it pre-populated) -- but I made a mental note that I needed to check this out further & get my information corrected. 
• (Obviously, I should have done something as soon as I noticed something was amiss...! -- but, out of sight, out of mind...)  
• I was looking at the airline app yesterday, for the first time in quite a while, checking out my personal info -- and there was that strange email and phone number again, associated with my name & frequent flyer number in my profile. (!) I went into my profile and tried to change it -- and got a message that they'd sent a code to my email to verify my identity. 
• Of course they were sending it to the WRONG ( = that other!) email!!  
• I started panicking, got on the phone, and (of course) got bogged down in automated menus and voice response systems.  
• I FINALLY managed to get into a queue to speak to a real live person. I was prepared for a long wait -- and was pleasantly surprised when I actually got through within just a few minutes' subjugation to horrible muzak (lol). I wound up speaking to two different reps (both very pleasant), explained the situation (more or less coherently, I think -- by then, I was in quite a panic...! -- especially after being scammed so recently!) -- got my personal information corrected and updated, a call centre PIN set up and a new frequent flyer program card ordered (mine is so old, the number on it is typewritten!), and was reassured that this would NOT screw up my upcoming travel booking. (Later, I also changed my password.) 
• I apologized to the one woman for being a bit freaked out -- especially when I kept running into one unhelpful automated system after another, when all I really wanted was to speak to a real live person for help (knowing that getting this mess straightened out was more than likely going to require human intervention). "I'm not even THAT OLD!"  I said, and she chuckled and said she understood totally (sounded like she was probably of a similar age...!).  
• It's not often I'm inclined to say this about an airline lately (lol), but it wound up being a mostly good customer service experience. :)  
• I'm still not sure how this happened (which is somewhat disconcerting -- and I don't suppose I'll ever know), but now I feel like I can breathe again...!
• Mrs. Spit is saying goodbye to her blog, after 15 years (!) of beautiful writing and wonderful insights. Go thank her for her contributions to the conversation about childlessness after loss.  :) 
• A wonderful article from the Globe & Mail about a special camp for grieving families. (Gift link.)   
• Podcast listening:  Irina Vodar was Christine Erickson's guest on New Legacy Radio on Oct. 3rd, talking about her new documentary film, "Anything You Lose."  More details on the film and how you can attend the Los Angeles premiere on Oct. 7th, on Pamela's Silent Sorority blog. 
• After listening in live,  I went back and listened to an earlier episode I'd missed, from Sept. 5th:  "How Pronatalism is Weaponizing Fertility Decline & Childlessness" with Nandita Bajaj, Executive Director of Population Balance, and Therese Shechter, director of the documentary "My So-Called Selfish Life" and founder of Trixie Films. Their eye-opening discussion covers "the immediate and long term implications of pronatalist extremism for our community... the ways pronatalist propaganda has weaponized fertility decline, in an effort to control reproductive choice and healthcare, and how the childless community specifically, is being targeted in the pronatalist agenda." Well worth a listen!