The new computer came Thursday afternoon, and we've spent practically every waking moment since then trying to get everything up and running. The sound card was set up wrong, for one thing, but Bob finally figured that out at about 2:00 Friday morning. Then on Saturday morning I installed a game demo disk that destroyed some files that another game needed to run, so I spent several hours figuring out what had happened and getting everything restored to its previous status. I'm afraid we're the kind of computer users who know just enough to be dangerous. Now I'm working on making a boot disk for one of Bob's games that needs every last scrap of memory that can be wrung out of the computer. The boot disk program that came with the game didn't work, of course. I don't understand why it has to be so difficult.
I spent Saturday afternoon helping my parents with a garage sale. An elderly aunt of mine moved to a retirement complex a couple of weeks ago, and my folks are trying to get rid of the stuff that she didn't take with her. She had moved from a house to an apartment five years ago, so this is the second time they've had to do this. The retirement complex is really great. She gets a (small) apartment with all utilities paid for less than $500 a month. They have a nice restaurant, bowling alley, gift shop, swimming pool, beauty shop and bank all in the same building she's in. I told her I'd like to live there.
We spent about five hours last night trying to get Bob's real estate communications software working, and I think we finally did it. Then I came to work and spent the morning getting a networked CD set up and working on the department's laptops. It's been sort of a strange and frustrating couple of weeks.
I woke up in the middle of the night and looked at the clock and the numbers were blinking. I laid there for awhile trying to figure out why they would be blinking, then got up and went to the bathroom. When I came back to bed I turned on my flashlight that I keep by the bed to use when recording my dreams, and tried to figure out what was going on with the clock. I guess the light woke Bob up, because he asked, "Are you resetting your clock?" I said yes, it was blinking and it was about an hour slow. He said the electricity had gone off and he didn't want to wake me, so he had set his clock for 6:00 a.m. to wake up and make sure I was up. I thought that was pretty sweet. Then today he told me that he didn't sleep very well last night because he was worried that I would oversleep. I do that too, sleep poorly on nights when he has to get up early to be somewhere. I guess it's all part of taking care of each other.
Bob is playing softball tonight, and although I'd like to watch him play, I decided to stay home and have a little quality time with myself. It's been such a hectic few days, it's nice to relax for awhile. I went to the library and picked up an armload of books, went by the drugstore for some vitamins and shampoo, and then came home. I microwaved some leftover pasta from last night and read Women of Wonder (a book of science fiction stories by women) while I ate. Then I came upstairs to work on my pages awhile.
My pages look different on the new computer--the colors look a lot different, especially. My links, instead of being hot pink like I thought they were, disappear when you click on them. I don't know whether I should change them or not. I know that every browser interprets things differently, and I'm not going to try to make my pages conform to every one available. Still, it's strange. My Halloween page is the worst--text that I formatted to be orange is now red and my creepy green links are now pale blue--not what I intended at all. I wish I had more time to work on this stuff. Most of the time it's all I can do to sit down and knock out a journal entry. I really want to work on my titles, but that will have to wait. And I have some great ideas for a button bar. . .
Last night Bob closed the garage door and one of the springs broke. My first thought was, great, I can call in to work tomorrow and say I can't come in because I can't get the garage door open! No such luck. A repairman came this morning and, $100 later, it's as good as new. Just another in the current string of annoying, frustrating things going wrong. I had a possibly cancerous "thing" taken off my forehead last week. It turned out not to be cancer, thank goodness, but that just makes me think, "Well, I wasted $250 for nothing."
Ah, Friday! The end of the work week, and The X-Files is on! It's "my" show, the only one I try not to miss. Well, also Star Trek: Voyager on Monday nights. But if I miss that it's no big deal. I definitely will not answer the phone from 8:00 to 9:00 Fridays!
I don't have any particular plans this weekend--just the usual--running errands, cleaning desultorily, sleeping late. I generally remember more of my dreams when I sleep later, so I look forward to that. There's a college town about a half hour away from here that has a lot of fun shops, so if the weather is nice I may take a road trip and do some poking around in the shops out there. It's lovely to have a weekend with no plans. I'm basically very solitary and treasure my time alone.
10:00 p.m.; Soundtrack - Acoustic Highway (Craig Chaquico)
I went to the Country Club Plaza today--the local upscale, high class, yuppie, what-have-you shopping area. I drove around for probably twenty minutes trying to find a place to park. There are no street lights, and people just walk right out into the street, so you're constantly on the watch that you don't run over someone. There are also horse-drawn carriages, so driving down there is a nightmare. I used to live down there; the Plaza is great if you can walk to it and avoid driving/parking. I just wanted to go to Barnes & Noble to see if they had a book I have been looking for. They didn't, of course. Then I went to The Nature Store, and there were several things there I would have liked to buy, but I just couldn't justify spending the money. But it was sort of nice to walk around; the weather was lovely. I stopped at Penney's Outlet on the way home and got a blanket and comforter for the new bed, so at least I accomplished one thing. I also got a few pieces of Fiesta Ware--a couple of peach saucers, one black salt (or pepper) shaker, a black cream pitcher and two coffee cups--one navy and one light blue. My collection grows.
There were a lot of catalogs in the mail--'tis the season--including one from Hershey's, who thoughtfully supplied the URL next to a picture of their Chocolate P.C.
I talked to my mom for awhile on the phone tonight, then have spent a couple of hours on the computer, interspersed with running downstairs to check on the laundry, my perpetual weekend job.
Bob was off on Sunday and instead of playing golf like I expected him to, he had decided to spend the day with me. Surprise! We had a really nice day. We had brunch at a Mexican place and then went to see Apollo 13 for the second time.
I made reservations today for our vacation in December. We go to Florida every year with Bob's parents and spend five days at Disney World, then three days in Sarasota on the Gulf coast. Some of the flights were already sold out, though, so we couldn't come home when we wanted, and have to stay an extra day in Sarasota. It's a really beautiful place. Some day we'd like to retire there, although I don't know if I could stand the Florida summers. It'll be nice to have the extra day. Since we only get there once or, at the most, two times a year, we don't always have time to do everything we want to do. There's always shopping I want to do there, but I hate to cut the beach time short. This year we should have time to do everything. It could always be longer, though, no matter how much time we spend there.
One of my best memories from our trip last year is a day I spent alone at the beach while Bob was playing golf. There's a snack bar at the public beach with big concrete umbrella tables. I claimed one as my own for the price of a soft drink and sat there several hours with a book and my journal and had a great time writing and dreaming. I would really love to live by the ocean. Maybe we'll be able to do that some day.
I finally figured out that my pages looked different on the new computer because the colors were set to 256 and needed to be set up to 64K. Of course, some of the stuff we want to run will only run with 256 colors, so we'll have to be switching it back and forth.
10:30 p.m.
Ah, fame! I have been named sucky site o' the day. To read what the sucksters had to say about me, check out suck.
At 4:00 a.m. I was startled awake by a frantic scrabbling, fingernails holding on to the cliff edge type of sound--Doña falling off of something. I think she probably fell through the headboard and landed between the bed and the wall. I turned on the light and got up to see if she needed rescuing and she was sitting very calmly at the side of the bed looking around like, "What?" She's been very restless lately, prowling around at night, climbing over us in the bed and crying. Since we got the new bed she's developed a new habit of walking behind our heads on the pillows, and I imagine that was what she was doing when she fell off. I wish there was some way to keep her awake during the day so she'd sleep at night. I've thought about calling the house during the day, but I don't think she'd hear it--she's too deaf. If she's really asleep you have to touch her to wake her.
Bob was still up (4:00 a.m.!)--I found him in the computer room playing Myst. He was just about to solve it. I haven't played it much; my taste in games runs more to Solitaire and Mah Jongg. I got Shanghai and have played it a little; when you click on a matching pair of tiles they turn into butterflies and fly away or ships and sail away or. . . It's kind of neat. The newness of the multimedia capability of the new computer hasn't worn off yet. I can remember being really excited with my first computer that played sounds.
I've been really miserable for a couple of days with an awful earache. Today I finally called a friend of ours who's a doctor and asked him to send me out some antibiotics, which he did. It's so rare that I'm sick that I don't have an actual G.P. I guess I should find one, but it seems like a waste of money to go to someone for a checkup if there's nothing wrong, but of course when there is something wrong, what do you do?
We spent an hour or so tonight counting and bundling Marlboro coupons to send in for freebies. Bob's getting a pair of cowboy boots and an electric cooler for his coupons. I told him I thought they should offer a discount on medical expenses to cover him when he gets lung cancer. I don't think he thought that was especially funny. Natalie Merchant was on All Things Considered the other night promoting a new album. One of the songs on it was called "My Beloved Wife;" she said it was inspired by her grandparents. They had been married 50 years when her grandmother died. Her grandfather had a heart attack while viewing his wife's body and died himself two days later. I imagined what it would feel like to see Bob dead, and it really got to me. I started crying in the car on the way home and felt really sad for the rest of the evening. It's a hard thing to contemplate.
I was standing in line at the deli at lunch time today and felt something tugging on my skirt. I looked around and it was a little boy in a stroller. I don't know whether he thought I was his mother or whether he was just reaching out for anything in his grasp. He was pretty cute. It was a beautiful day today. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous for several days; we've been really lucky. There won't be too many more days when I can eat lunch outside.
Well, here I am again. . . Bob's playing softball; I'm doing laundry; the garage door is still working; I still can't find a place to park. . . I hate to admit it, but it really did hurt my feelings. I've always felt like I found my own approval within myself, and that it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about me, but of course it really does to a certain extent. It took a lot of courage for me to put up this site, as mundane as it may seem, and I resent someone else trying to ruin that for me. Okay, so now you've made me cry. Are you happy now?
Barb called to see how my surgery went and we had a nice long talk. I miss her. This is turning out to be a really melancholy entry. I think I'll quite while I'm ahead and maybe I'll be more "up" tomorrow.
I don't care. Today my entry is devoted entirely to my cat, Doña! She was driving me crazy last night walking all over the bed and crying at steadily decreasing intervals. When Bob came to bed he called her over to his side to give me a break, but she didn't want to sleep beside him, she wanted to sleep on him. He wouldn't let her, so she continued her annoying ways, lying beside me just until I fell asleep, then crying so I would wake up and pet her. When we woke up at 4:00 a.m. to the sound of retching beside the bed, Bob finally gave up and went to the basement to sleep. Throwing up is a tried and true attention getter that Doña resorts to when she's not getting her way. If we throw her out in the hall and shut the door, she cries like she's dying and scratches the door. (Actually, she runs on the door. If you have a cat you probably know what I'm talking about.) If we put her in the basement, at least we can't hear her crying, but I'm always afraid she'll find a cleverly hidden place to go to the bathroom that we'll never find. Yesterday she expressed her displeasure at one of Bob's friends being in the house by leaving a souvenir in the dining room. It's hard to be too rough on her, though. She is 22 years old, after all.
I ran across a funny article last night on Bryon Sutherland's page. As long as we've had Doña, we've never had to learn How to Bathe a Cat.
Not much of interest happened this weekend. . . I ran errands and went shopping Saturday; bought some gorgeous pieced and quilted placemats and got a great deal on some Fiesta saucers at the outlet store. My sister came over for awhile Saturday night and when I showed her my loot, asked me if I was "nesting." I guess the last couple of weeks I have been mostly buying things for the house. I also bought a new purse this weekend. Changing purses is very traumatic for me, but my shoulder was hurting and I think my purse was too heavy. My solution was to get a smaller one so I can't carry so much stuff. I put a few leftover things (breath mints, hairbrush, coin purse) in the glove compartment of my car. After they languish in there for awhile, I'll move them back into the house or get rid of them, but for now it's my security blanket. Also, I carry an attaché case to work most days with my journal, address book, bills to pay, etc. So I stuck a hairbrush in there, too. I know I carry way too much stuff with me; Bob asked me once if he should hire me a bearer. I have a fear of getting stuck somewhere with nothing to read, so I always carry a book with me. It's a dilemma.
Beautiful sunrise this morning--streaks of orange and pink and white in a teal blue sky. The weather has been gorgeous lately. I wish I had more time to enjoy it.
We went out to dinner last night and had a horrible time. The waitress was awful. She came by and asked us three times if everything was okay while all we had was tortilla chips and salsa, and then completely forgot to bring Bob his entree. I was finished eating by the time he had his dinner. He was going to just let it go and remind her as we were leaving to be sure not to charge him for his dinner which he didn't get. I got sort of upset with him, because I believe in giving people a chance to make things right, rather than just suffering self-righteously and feeling superior.
So eventually the meal from hell was over and we went home. I spent the next couple of hours trying to get the Aces games to work (no music and no joystick). I eventually succeeded in getting the music to work, but still no joystick. Bob ended up taking apart both our old computer and the new one and swapping the dedicated game controller card out and voila! (after another hour of booting, rebooting, configuring. . .) the joystick works! Then we tried to figure out why the music quality had deteriorated--all the moving stuff around had dislodged a speaker wire. So I think everything works now, knock on wood, and I can relax without having that hanging over my head.
I went to yoga class last night after missing last week with my earache (which is now completely gone). Missing even one week seems to make a difference in my flexibility. I wish I had the motivation to do it on my own between classes, but inertia sets in. It's always hard to get up and go to class, too, but I'm usually glad when I go.
USA Today's cover story today was about a planned community being built by Disney. I am of two minds about this. On one hand, it's kind of scary, sort of a Stepford Wives kind of thing. On the other, I really love going to Disney World, and the thing I love about it is that it's contained, and safe. You don't have to worry about anything while you're there (except running out of money); you can leave your hotel and stand outside and a bus will come by and take you wherever you want to go. Lately I've been thinking about this very thing--how I like the idea of a self-contained community like my aunt's retirement village--your apartment, a restaurant, bowling alley, beauty shop, bank, etc., all within one complex of buildings. Pretty much everything you need is there and you don't have to worry about anything. This is very difficult for me to reconcile because, although I follow THE RULES (most of them), I really, really don't like people telling me what to do. For instance, it really annoys me that the homes association in our neighborhood recently formed a group (I can't remember what they called it, but I remember telling Bob that I thought they should have called themselves the Appearance Police) to look around at everyone's property and tell those home owners who aren't conforming to their standards to shape up. So I don't quite know how I feel about this. The Disney thing fascinates me, but I probably really wouldn't want to live there. Maybe it's fine for vacation, but not for real life. I find it interesting, though.
Today it's suddenly Fall. Instead of the temperature rising, it's falling; not a lot, but there's a definite chill in the air. The wind is blowing and the air is full of leaves. There is something neat about Fall, but it always makes me feel sort of melancholy.
Reading about Celebration, Florida yesterday made me remember a book I read years ago by (I think)., Christopher Hyde, about a community similar to the one Disney is proposing. I don't remember it all that well, but I thought it was called Jericho Falls. I went to the library today on my lunch hour, and that's not it. They had Jericho Falls, but it's about a toxic chemical spill that causes the government to wipe the town of Jericho Falls "off the face of the earth." So I'm going to have to go down in to the dreaded basement and look for the paperback that I know is down there somewhere. Actually, the dreaded basement isn't nearly so bad since I spent a whole day down there cleaning it so there would be a place to put the old bed. It still has a lot of junk stacked around, but now at least there are some aisles between the junk. We call it the dreaded basement because Doña [new picture] refuses to go down there. If we carry her down with us, as soon as we put her down she races back up the steps like the demons of hell are after her. Actually, she wants to race up the steps, but they scare her because they're open at the back, so she goes up one step at a time like a little kid. In her mind she's racing.
Last night I was really down for some reason, so I got in the car, put on some Disney music, went to Blockbuster and rented Casper, then went to Taco Bell for dinner. I don't know if it was the caffeine in the Diet Pepsi or what, but my mood improved dramatically.
The geese were out yesterday evening as I left work; I keep expecting them to be gone, flying south, soon. I did a little dance with one of them as we negotiated sidewalk rights, but he (or she) gave in. One of the geese is tagged--he has a six inch wide bright green band around his neck. I always wonder what the other geese think about it (I know, I know, their brains are the size of a chickpea, but still. . .). I always sort of felt sorry for him, but then I decided that he's probably considered King of the Geese and the story is told (honked?) far and wide of the goose who wears the green band of honor. . .
I found the book I was looking for in the dreaded basement last night. I only had to look through two boxes! The title of the book is Crestwood Heights (by Christopher Hyde). A young woman, looking for an excuse to quit her job and move away from New York, inherits a bundle of money and an old movie theater in a planned community (Crestwood Heights) from an unknown uncle. I'm rereading it and haven't gotten very far, but the blurb says, "A perfect paradise; a perfect hell. The town that was too good to be true." Should be fun. It's already mentioned Disney twice--"Main Street was like something out of a Walt Disney movie," and "In five minutes she'd gone from the Nineteenth Century into Tomorrowland."
I'm getting ready to go out to my parents' house for lunch. My mom's sister is visiting this week, so the family is getting together. It will be a houseful--my sister and her two kids, my brother, his wife, and their two kids, my parents, me, and my two aunts. Bob misses out on most of these family things because he almost always works on the weekends (he's a real estate broker). Next week I'm supposed to help my yoga teacher, who's also a musician, prepare promotinoal mailers for his Christmas concert. It's sort of depressing that my next two Saturdays are spoken for.
I spent a couple of hours this morning cleaning up my filthy house--running the vacuum, dusting, cleaning the bathrooms, etc. I got right up to Doña's bed with the vacuum cleaner, and she didn't even flinch. When she was younger she would run screeching from the room if it came near her. She's either completely deaf or too old to care anymore.
10:15 p.m. - Soundtrack - Ottmar Liebert - The Hours Between Night and Day
"Family Time" wasn't too bad this afternoon--just a few too many people for me. It's hard to have a real conversation, although my dad and brother and I did manage to talk a little while my nephew watched Pinocchio, and my mom and I snuck out to the garage under the pretense of getting stuff out of the pantry to talk for a few minutes before lunch. I guess the problem is that we don't see each other often enough. Consequently, there's so much for everyone to say that they all want to talk at once.
My brother teaches at a local college and got a nice compliment this week--one of the young women who was in the running for homecoming queen named him as her favorite professor and asked him to escort her as she was "presented." He was quite honored.
Came home about 5:00 and had a quiet evening at home--ordered pizza, read a little, had a long bath and worked on these pages. The small things mean a lot.
Bob was off today, so we went out to brunch, then ran around and did a few errands. We were going to go to the art gallery, but when we got there it was so crowded we decided to skip it. They're having an exhibition of Andrew Wyeth's paintings and it seems to be very popular. So we just drove around awhile and enjoyed the warm weather, then went back home. Bob watched the rest of the football game and I went to the grocery store. Pretty exciting stuff.
When I went out early this evening to fill the bird feeders, there was a little field mouse sitting inside one of them having a snack. I rushed back inside and called for Bob to come down and look, but by the time we got back out there, he was gone. I'm pretty much of a city, or at least suburban, child, and what little "wildlife" we have around here delights me. We live in a fairly new subdivision, so there are very few mature trees. Even so, last winter we had a very determined squirrel who spent a lot of time at the bird feeders. He was fun to watch. The neighborhood cats love to come to my yard because it's "jungley." I leave water out for them and they can hide in the bushes. It's my own little wildlife preserve.
I had the early evening to myself--Bob played in a golf tournament today and had a dinner tonight--so I did a couple of my favorite things. I had dinner at St. Louis Bread Co., soup and salad, and lingered over a book (Footsteps of the Hawk by Andrew Vacchs). Then I went to Comp USA and spent about a hour looking at EVERYTHING! I browsed through the software and computer books, then spent forever looking at CD's. I'm bored with my CD's and wanted something new, but nothing struck me. I was specifically looking for the new Craig Chaquico album, but it wasn't in New Age, or Jazz, or Rock, or. . . So I didn't buy anything, but I had a lot of fun looking! I carried around a Rhino Christmas album for awhile, but put it back. One of my favorite things is weird Christmas music.
"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction." - St. Exupery
Today is our 19th wedding anniversary. The big one's next year, so we're not doing much this year. We're going out to dinner tonight to our favorite restaurant, and we bought small gifts--I got Bob a new hunting hat and he bought me the Casper movie and a mechanical Frankenstein! (There are some benefits to having your anniversary near Halloween.) We have some friends who were actually married on Halloween (50! years ago). I can't remember if there was a story about why they got married on Halloween or not. On their anniversary they used to go "Trick or Treating" to their friends' houses with a martini glass.
I'm mailing Halloween cards today to my friends and nieces and nephews. My favorite one is going to Barb. On the front it says, "Do you know what the scariest thing about Halloween is?" When you open it, it screams and the inside says, "Only 54 more shopping days until Christmas. Happy Halloween - Ho ho ho."
We had a nice dinner Wednesday night, but it seems like every time we go out anymore the wait staff are all so overworked that it makes for a very tense meal. Our waiter Wednesday night was serving several other tables, one of which was a table of eight. He forgot to get our appetizer and brought it out after the entrees (cold). He never came back after he brought our meals to see if we wanted anything else, and we sat for what seemed like forever in front of dirty plates waiting for him to notice we were finished and bring the check. Bob was getting a cold, too, so he really didn't feel very well. Not the ideal anniversary dinner, but it was fine.
Tomorrow morning (Saturday) I have to get up early and go help my yoga teacher do a mailing. He's also a musician and makes a large part of his income during the Christmas season from doing concerts and selling tapes and CD's. So the mailing is a huge project. I'd much rather sleep in, but I guess I can devote a couple of hours to it.
I went to Wal-Mart last night to pick up a few things, including a new coffeemaker for Bob's office. While I was there the Muzak played True Companion (Marc Cohn) and Wonderful (Adam Ant). (The real versions, not the Muzak ones. Very unusual!) Last week I heard the Muzak version of Walkin' in Memphis at work. It was horrible! How do they do that anyway? Do they pay a licensing fee to the songwriter and they actually let them butcher their songs that way? It would have to pay a lot. One of the guys in the office said he put his teenage son on hold one day and when he came back to the phone his son said the music on hold was playing the Muzak version of Stairway to Heaven. Scary.
Saturday morning I helped do my yoga teacher's Christmas concert mailing for a couple of hours. It's kind of mindless work and you can chat while you're doing it, so it wasn't too bad. I met a woman who was the first person to whom I mentioned my Web page who knew what I was talking about! ((Shhh--she might be visiting.))
Yesterday (Sunday) was a horrible, gloomy day. This time of year is really hard for me. I find the weather totally depressing. Bob, on the other hand, loves it. He went duck hunting and came home and told me what a glorious day it had been--damp, cool, gray and dark (as if those were good qualities). How have he and I ever managed to stay married so long?? It actually was kind of a weird day. Usually on Sundays we sleep in pretty late. Even if Bob's working, he doesn't have to be there on Sundays until noon. But he got up early to go hunting and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I went ahead and got up and worked on the computer for several hours. Then in the afternoon I went out and ran some errands--library, grocery store, etc. I even went to the mall to buy Bob a couple of pairs of slacks. And then, with the time change, it got dark so early. . . So the day seemed strangely long for a Sunday.
Tonight I have to go out and buy more Halloween candy. I bought some Friday, but we managed to eat it all ourselves over the weekend. Those little candy bars are just too tempting. Please check out my Halloween page for some great spooky links.
BOO! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
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