One thing and another…

I may never get used to blogging from the library, but I’ve decided to give it my best shot and not just leave a series of superficial updates on our computer problems.

A question has been bumping about in my brain:

How many added generations of jihad, over and above what we had already been destined or doomed to endure, must we now experience because of the messianic fantasies that Barbara Bush held for her son and the son’s neurotic need to excel his father and show the old man up for a wimp and a wannabe?

If and when I do get a computer at home, there will be at least one profusely illustrated photo blog with all the shots I haven’t been able to post — I might even soon be impelled to drag out the complicated and fussy Fuji camera when I run out of memory in the point-and-shoot Kodak.  I might even finally learn how to use the damn Fuji.  That would be a nice little turd to fish out of this punchbowl.  Er… I think I might have confused a metaphor or something there.  I meant it would be a silver lining to this cloud, or a rose for the thorns or something like that.  How do I know what I mean?

Something on my mind keeps popping up when I least expect it.  It’s a spot of hope, tinged by more than a shade of performance anxiety.  I entered a writing contest.  Joni, who used to be known around here as pink and has been reincarnated with angel wings, told me during the winter just past about a contest being run by Glamour magazine, for true life stories.  I managed to get my entry in before the deadline, even though I spent an awful long time trying to decide which story to send.  I settled on the “crab boat to Kodiak” story, and subsequently second-guessed myself numerous times, wishing I’d sent them some other story or a different one.   If I win, there’s a money prize and an appointment with an author’s agent that could lead to my memoirs being published.  Wouldn’t that be nice?

Well, I’m hungry and Greyfox promised me lunch when I get to his place.  He’s waiting for a shipment of knives I have in my car for him.  I’m in Willow now, and he said he’d reserve one of the Wasilla library computers for each of us for 5 PM, so I’ll get back onto Xanga again then.  Now, I’m off… well, actually I’m a bit off at any given time, but what I meant is that it’s time to get back on the road.  Seeya.

UPDATE:  Answer to spinksy’s question, yes the crab boat to Kodiak story is linked in the memoir section of my left module as — get this! — “crab boat to Kodiak.”

Pam, maybe library blogging with a friend would be fun.  I’ll never know.  Greyfox is no friend, and so far all the blogging I’ve done at the library has been mostly frustration because of the distractions (whatever happened to librarians who enforced quiet?), the time limits and the odd table arrangements. 

On that last issue, the arrangement, the machine I drew this time is a Dell with the monitor affixed unmovably to the top of a box that rests on a normal library table so that to sit on this hard straight wooden chair and focus on it through my bifocals I have to elevate my chin uncomfortably. 

The keyboard sits beside the box on the table and if I were to try and use it that way, my spine would be twisted in order to be on the chair, looking at the monitor and reaching for the keyboard.  I solved that by moving my chair back and turning it about 45 degrees to face the monitor, then moving the keyboard into my lap.  I suppose it could be worse.  In Willow (this is Wasilla), they have the cables tied up so that I can’t move the keyboard into my lap, so I sit with my elbows elevated to shoulder height to type.  C’mon, laugh… visualize it, and laugh. 

Oh, and the delete key is non-functional, too.  Where the hell did I leave those ruby slippers?  I wanna go home.

At the library… again

I see that Greyfox passed along the sad news about the bashed and broken computer.  Yesterday was all-day stress for me, calling around, getting the instructions from the post office on what to do, setting up the meet later today with the tech in Wasilla (We’re going to stop going to the previous computer medic who replaced three hard drives for us, all before their warranty had run out, so that “all” we had to pay was his labor.) to get a diagnosis and repair/replacement estimate, and talking to both rosabelle and her techie roommate who had built the new machine and sent it to us. 

For so long, the telephone line has been used more by our modem than by me.  I’ve been so accustomed to doing business online that I’m only gradually getting back into writing checks to pay bills and phoning to make changes in the car insurance, newspaper subscriptions, etc.  I think I may be losing some flexibility with age, in my mind as well as the body.

I reactivated my Yahoo mail account (kathylynn_douglass, in case anyone wants to email me) so I could send rosabelle a message about the insurance red tape.  It was Doug who reminded me that I could use web-based mail from the public computers.  Duh!  Is this what Alzheimers is like, I wonder?  A couple of days ago, I let the dog in off his chain twice, each time having no memory of putting him out there in the first place.  I must have done it.  Nobody else was around who could have let him out. 

I’m not sleepwalking all the time, just in little occasional spells, and my mind isn’t blank, just full of holes.  All those years that I smoked weed that was my excuse for the lapses.  Maybe that’s how Alzheimer’s slipped up without my noticing.

Doug’s next fanfic writing tournament starts June 10.  Apparently, he’ll have to opt out of this one.

We have a scary, tough choice to make.  I can tell the techs who do the diagnosis and estimate to go ahead and fix the machine or build us a replacement and put it on my credit card and hope and pray that we actually get an insurance settlement to reimburse us, or I can wait until the claim goes through before getting the thing fixed or replaced.  Option A holds some risks, especially if the weather continues as wet as it has been and Greyfox continues to be unable to open his roadside stand and do business.  Option B is the “living within my means” solution to which I was trained in childhood, but it means I’ll be back online later if ever.  Some of us never outgrow that desire for instant gratification, y’know?  Can you tell that I trust insurance companies about as much as I trust advertisers and the government?

I took more pictures yesterday.  The muskeg is still flooded but not overflowing onto the road.  The swamp grass hasn’t yet grown enough to break the water’s surface up at our place, but here farther down the valley where the thaw came earlier there is the green of grass showing above the water in many places.  Yesterday while Doug and I were standing out in the yard (without the camera) two pairs of snow geese flew over, each pair on its own course and the two courses converging over the muskeg just across the road from us.  Their wings were so slient that we wouldn’t have seen them in flight if one of them hadn’t honked a few times in an apparent greeting.  There are fewer mosquito larvae in the water now, the submersible beetles have grown bigger, and I saw a few tadpoles yesterday.  I saw one big beetle eat a tadpole.  Dammit!  There was a mosquito larvae only about an inch away, but the beetle was indiscriminate, or else the tadpole was tastier.

I’m off to Wasilla now, to take the comp to the techs, and hit the library there for some more episodes of  I Claudius, which we hadn’t seen since Doug was a toddler.  He remembered the intro but nothing else.  The thing that struck me on viewing the first episode was how slow it was.  Video cuts have become much faster, shorter, in the last 20-some years.  We had gotten the idea of checking out the Claudius videos from the librarian here in Willow when we checked out some Brother Cafael DVDs last week.  We were talking about how much we liked Derek Jacobi, and she got on her computer and discovered that the Wasilla library had the whole series checked in at the time.  All the libraries in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley are on one system.  It’s great.

Later on this evening, Greyfox and I will go to the Tuesday Space Cadets NA meeting.   Yesterday was our second NA birthday.  It’s not such a big deal for me.  I’ve got several “birthdays”, having quit the IV drugs thirty-some years ago and having last been drunk in 1992 and quitting sugar (the BIG one) in 2002.  Greyfox’s accomplishment two years ago was momentous.  He quit alcohol, tobacco and marijuana (and started cutting down on sugar) all at once.  Of  course, the whole thing is totally meaningless to us (though it means a lot to our NA friends) because we’re both still addicted to caffeine and often need to use other herbal stimulants such as guarana and ephedra to have the energy to attend NA meetings.  It is, they say, a “program of complete abstinence from all drugs,” except (we say) those they approve of or can’t kick (such as tobacco).  But as they say in AA, at least we’re not drinking.

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. Cultural Creative 88% Idealist 88% Existentialist 75% Postmodernist 63% Modernist 25% Materialist 19% Romanticist 19% Fundamentalist 13% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Well, Rats!

Greyfox here, bearing the bad news.  The computer arrived all beat to shit, for want of a more precise term.  The cooling fan had broken off, the faceplate was badly damaged, the software dics were rattling around loose and one was missing a piece that had broken off.  Kathy is wrestling with the insurance issue (I feel her pain there–as a rule, when I get damaged merchadise in the mial, I just eat it if the wholesaler won’t replace it–dealing with the USPS insurance red tape is hell), waiting to here from Roseabelle (sp?) the good samaritan who sent it in the first place.

Kathy needed to contact her, but neglected to keep her phone number.  So she gave me the number of another Xangan in Chicago–I called her land line on my cell phone, gave her the message to pass along to Roseabelle (in California) via email.  Ain’t modern communication great?  Shit, I miss the old  days, when I could call my neighbor by picking up the phone and dialling 333.  Oh well. . . .

 Meanwhile, Doug has been in tears of frustration and despondency–anticipating a free computer, he spent most of his money on an expensive monitor.  Now he is evidently  fucked, for want of a more precise term.  Between the stress and recent physical activity, Kathy has been getting angina pains.

Stay tuned for further updates.

It’s here!  It’s HERE!

We picked up the new computer at the post office a few minutes ago.  We’re on our way to town (Wasilla — the post office is in Willow, halfway there from home) for the NA barbecue, so we won’t get the box open until we get home tonight and probably won’t have it installed before tomorrow.  I am so jazzed, pumped, excited.  Wow!

I’m in the public library now, of course.  This may be my last message to you from here.  I’d be perfectly content never to have to use these library computers again.  It will be so good to be able to send email again and for Doug to do his IRC chat.  That’s where his life is, and all his friends.  The friends he had in high school have either gone off to military service or are around here getting drunk and loaded and into trouble.  He doesn’t hang with them.  I’m glad of that. 

Perhaps it would be better to have some local real life friends, but not necessarily when there’s not much of a population to choose from, the way there is here.  He misses his friends.  He’d been hoping to get onto IRC at the net cafe a couple of days ago, but even though the kid working there said he could download and install MIRC, their firewall wouldn’t permit it.

Later, all.  I’m off to Wasilla with a watermelon, a huge salad, and a big pot of buffalo meat in barbecue sauce.  Everything I’m taking to the potluck is okay for my diet, so even if nobody else brings anything I can eat, I’ll  have a balanced meal.

I’m so high…

…and so glad I’m not loaded.

You twelve-step members among my readers will know what I mean.  I’ve got the high that comes only from an excellent meeting.  I’ve never been at a bad meeting, but some are better than others.  Tonight, the topic was taken from the daily meditation in Just for Today, and was on the tenth step, keeping in touch with ourselves and with Spirit and staying on track for getting better and better from day to day.

Those who shared at the meeting ran the gamut from newcomers either struggling with the first step or reveling on the pink cloud of the recovery high, to the full spectrum of old timers who demonstrated that there are as many ways to do this program as there are addicts to do it.

I had dropped Doug at the local net cafe before I picked up my vanload (and it was a full load tonight, twelve of us, all the van will seat and almost more than the old Ford will haul uphill) at the rehab center.  That’s where I am now — the cafe.  Just had to take advantage of this last half hour before the cafe closes, to BLOG.  Blogging was my life once upon a time, and I intend for it to be a bigger part of this life once again when I have a machine at home to blog on.  I might get in here Saturday, because our NA group is having a barbecue and I MUST come back in for it because one of the members who has to work that day gave me a ten-pound buffalo roast that I’m committed to cook and bring in for the crowd.  I’m also going to prepare a big salad as my contribution to the potluck.

Dingus6 (I guess little Dingus5 is growing up, eh?) asks those innocent questions and I can’t tell if he is being disingenuous or genuinely seeking answers.  I’m constitutionally unable to pass up a rhetorical question, anyway, so I’ll tell the world, whether it wants to know or not, that when Greyfox is there BBS stands for bigger and better bullshit, but I think it originally meant bulletin board service.  Feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken.  When I got online, I used to post on boards and to email newsgroups, but that was before I discovered the glory of blogging, without a mod to delete my posts and slap my virtual wrist for going off-topic or straying from the party line.  Here I can state my opinions and even contradict myself, and if it angers anyone I can choose whether to engage in an argument or block the dissident.  What power!  That’s the part that’s addictive about blogging.

Seriously, I miss Xanga more than can be accounted for by addictive withdrawal.  Self-expression is a valid human need, I am convinced.  It is no fun trying to express myself to Doug or Koji or the cats.  Koji is the only one of them who cares, and they all read my mind anyway so what’s the use and where’s the fun in working to articulate what they already know.

I think we’re going to be taking another kitten home tonight, one of the new orange guys, if on second look it still appears to be female.  She’ll have a better chance of fitting in with the two old spayed queens and little Hilary the climber than a tom would, and she won’t be spraying the bookshelves and bedspread when she grows up.  She might have a bit of a rough time at first, getting used to being goosed by a dog snoot once in a while, and learning her place in the feline social system, but Hilary adjusted just fine, so I’m not too worried about that.  My only anxiety is the economic insecurity issue of the vet bill to get her spayed, and I’m trying to transcend my insecurity.  I guess I need those challenges… I dunno.

I have less than five minutes left before closing time, and I don’t suppose I have much more that I can actually get said in that much time, so I won’t start a new ‘graph.  Maybe I’ll visit a few of you.  That would be fun.  It’s been too long.

Coming to you from the public library again….

We still don’t have a computer at home yet.  We also have not been able to make use of this downtime to get the roof fixed.  Either it was wet weather or physical fatigue or one thing or another keeping us off the roof.  We have, however, put together three big jigsaw puzzles, read uncounted books and watched a few good DVDs from the library.  Best of the DVDs were some Brother Cadfael mysteries with Derek Jacobi, and Bowling for Columbine.  Greyfox laughed at my reaction to seeing how frail and how utterly LAME and shallow Charlton Heston is.  He’s always been so impressive, carrying those tablets down off the mountain and standing there with his fist in the air at the podium, growling, “…from my cold dead hands!”  The Old Fart pointed out that he’s an actor.  Indeed.

It’s not my week to drive the van, but Jennifer, the alternate driver, has something to attend tonight at her daughter’s school so I’m driving for her.  I saw it as an opportunity to get to town again, as if I have to have a valid excuse to drive to Wasilla.  Is that Virgo, or what?

Thanks for all the validation on my choice of the LCD monitor.  Since Doug will be paying for it, I didn’t have the ultimate clout to make the decision, but your combined voices helped me overcome his indecision/mild opposition.  The LCD does cost a bit more, but I think it’s a better value.  Doug can probably figure out a way to tilt the screen so it is visible from his seat in Couch Potato Heaven.  To correct the misstatement the Old Fart made about the Kid’s motives, it’s not pure laziness.  He sometimes plays the PS2 while “working” at the computer, for example when there’s something going on in a chat that he wants to follow, or when he’s looking up cheats online for a game he’s playing.  That’s what those long cables on keyboards are for, right?  There’s also a long cord on the PS2 controller, but why sit in the ergonomic office chair when you can recline in Couch Potato Heaven?

fibermom asked why I’d want to get detective fiction out of my system.  I’d been reading it addictively, to the exclusion of any other genre, for weeks.  It had begun to invade my dreams.  Two or three murder dreams were enough to make me want something a little different for a change.  When I’m done here, I’ll browse the library shelves.  Greyfox mentioned a new book in the Dune series that’s less egregious than the preceding prequels by the son who’s cashing in on his father’s genius.  I think he said the title is Battle of Corinn.  He also mentioned a new James Lee Burke novel in the supernatural-tinged series about the former Texas ranger and his dead-but-not-gone former partner.  Forgot that title… had to look it up with Xangazon search.  According to Amazon, it won’t be released until next month.  Amazon also says that there’s a new Burke book in the Dave Robichaux series due in July.  Can’t wait for that!

I guess I’m one of the good guys, according to Scriveling, anyway– I think I can still use a slide rule.  Isn’t that sorta like riding a bike or having sex, something you don’t forget how to do?  I still have one, anyway, among my relics.

 Cinnamongirl78 left me a virtual hug in comments.  This has motivated me to try and express how I feel about you guys.  (((Xanga)))  I really miss you.  It will be so great to get home access to Xanga and Google and such again, and to get around and catch up on the lives of some of my favorite people. 

Greyfox blogged about my reaction to the insecticide release in my neighborhood, and got some of the story askew, as usual.  I have no idea how widespread the spraying was.  It might have been just a neighbor spraying his own yard.  It blew in on the wind as I sat by an open window listening to the birdsong and frog chirps.  I smelled insecticide briefly before my sense of smell shut down completely.  Then my arms and legs started twitching.  Within minutes I had a headache and blurred vision.   Then I noticed that the only sound outside was the drone of mosquitoes.  That’s when I started crying.  When will the imbeciles learn that they’ve already made most insects resistant to their poisons?  I’ve lived in this valley for 22 years.  One reason I prefer being up here is that I have multiple chemical sensitivities.  I am very selective about the household chemicals and toiletries I use, use no cosmetics, and can get serious reactions just walking through the detergent aisle at the supermarket.  We use mosquito nets over our beds in summer rather than poison, both for environmental reasons and for personal health.  I’m still having a little more shortness of breath than usual, following that experience.

Spring is here, truly and fully, finally.  It’s not full dark at midnight and soon won’t get dark at all.  No more dirty snow piled up in shady places… green trees… fireweed shoots coming up everywhere, and the flowers are almost open on my pigsqueak plants.  I got pics of the flooded muskeg the day after the comp crash, and this week I took a few of Doug down at the spring on a water run.  I’ll post them when I can.  I have the camera with me and Greyfox wants me to take shots of him with his new minivan at the stand so he can post them on those BBS sites where he spends most of his online time.

There’s a chance I’ll get back on here later today from the comp at the Wasilla library, if I have enough time.  We’re going shopping… I brought Doug along.  He needs new shoes and we’ll get the monitor today, and he’s going to check Waldenbooks for a book on Red Hat Linux, which is what we’ll be running on the new machine when it gets here.

Doug just walked up and laid his chin on my shoulder, his usual signal that in his opinion I’ve been at the keyboard too long.  He had enough time to finish reading one of the library books he had picked out.  Now he has talked me into checking it out to read at home.  I’m also going to see what’s of interest on the shelves before I head on down the road.  Later, luvs.

From the Library–

It’s my Thursday to drive the rehab van, and I’ve stopped in Willow on my way to Wasilla.  If all went well for rosabelle and her roomie, our new computer is in the mail.  Much of the message she left me here was news to me today because I hadn’t been to town since I did my last post here and Greyfox never relays a complete message.  I can see from the little posts he leaves here in my absence that he often omits or distorts the outgoing messages, too.  Ah, well… when we get the new computer he can go back to posting on his own site and I’ll take care of mine.

I hope rosabelle wasn’t too shocked by the cost of sending it “cheap” by U.S. surface mail.  From CA to AK by Parcel Post is almost as costly as, and in some cases costlier than Priority Mail because of the parcel post zones.  We’re in the Twilight Zone as far as the Post Office is concerned.  Transit time varies, too, because all surface mail (Parcel Post, bulk mail, etc.) travels by barge.  Containers wait at the dock in Seattle until they accumulate a barge full, and then it gets hauled up here.  What I’m trying to say here is that we don’t know when we’ll have the computer.  I’ll be shopping for a new monitor today.

Just to clarify the issue for a few people who seemed confused, it’s a hardware problem, not software.  Over the past couple of years four hard drives have failed, and all three of the replacements for the original have failed within warranty.  I suppose we’re getting used to doing without.  It’s not hurting as bad doing without the computer as it did in January and February, the last time our hard drive puked.  I’ve even managed to stay off the PS2.  I may also be getting the detective fiction out of my system.  I’m currently reading Falls the Shadow, a Mediaeval historical novel by Sharon Kay Penman, the middle book in a trilogy about English, Welsh and French wars and royal intrigues.  It’s okay, readable, but not even close to the quality of Jack Whyte’s work, for example.  Before that, I read Two O’Clock, Eastern Wartime, a book by John Dunning about radio at the start of WWII. He is one of my favorite authors.  The last time I was at the library, I checked out his latest Cliff Janeway mystery, The Bookman’s Promise.  It’s definitely worth reading.  I love the premise of a cop-turned-bookseller who continues to solve crimes. 

The other book I got on that visit to the library was Robert A. Heinlein’s For Us, the Living.  It was his first novel, unpublished until after his death.  The introduction by Spider Robinson describes it as a series of lectures rather than a novel, and I agree.  I don’t think many readers unfamiliar with Heinlein’s work would appreciate it.  Greyfox said he started it and lost interest.  Doug and I both loved it, but we’re Heinlein fans.  The book introduces his future history, many of the socio-economic concepts that appeared in later stories, and at least one character: Nehemiah Scudder, the asshole whose religious repression led to the revolution that finally got the Church out of U.S. politics.  As I read this book, I realized how influential Heinlein’s work from the forties through the eighties had been on my philosophy.  I was also led to reflect on not only how prophetic much of his work was but just how totally OFF a lot of his “prophecies” were.  Writing in 1938, he saw the U.S. staying out of Europe’s war and breaking off our trade relations with them.  He accurately predicted that Hitler would die of a self-inflicted gunshot, but missed when he predicted that Mussolini would come out better.

If I’d had the computer working over the last couple of weeks you would have seen a lot of pictures of spring coming to our neighborhood.  There are still a few piles of dirty snow in shady places, but elsewhere the mud has hardened and trees are showing some leaves.  The muskeg is no longer flooded over the edge of the road, but is still full and frogs are still singing for their mates out there.  There are GAZILLIONS of mosquito larvae visible around the edges of the flooded part.  Doug and I spent a pleasant sunny interval yesterday watching submersible beetles preying on mosquito larvae while tiny water striders made chevron-shape wakes on the surface and a pair of violet-green swallows swooped to catch something from the water.  In recent days I have heard and seen loons, trumpeter swans and whooping cranes.  A pair of swans flew by just as I was coming out of the house this morning, and shortly before that I had heard but not seen an eagle.

I know that there have been a thousand thoughts cross my mind that I would have blogged about if I could have.  I have made a few notes of things I want to explore once I get the computer back, as well as some memoir topics that came to mind.  For now, I’m going to browse here for some books to take home, and then get on the road and head on down the valley before I starve.  Breakfast was scant and hours ago.

It’s me, not Greyfox.  I’m at the library.  Miss my comfortable ergonomic chair, but am really enjoying the high-speed connection.  That’s something I never experienced before.  Wow!

Doug and I have left a message for Rosabelle, telling her thanks for the offer of help replacing our computer.  Now I suppose we’ll just wait.  Doug is at another computer here now, looking over a PDF file on how to recover data off a defective hard drive.  If possible, we’re not going to call upon professional help.  What’s at stake, mostly, is my photo files on the old drive.  I was such an idiot not to back it all up as soon as we got the thing back last time.  At least Doug did back up his fiction files.  I was spending most of my time working on my unfinished cataloguing project on old entries here.  Too many top priorities all at once.  **rueful grin**

Still in the camera’s memory are pics I took last Friday, of the spring floods in the neighborhood.  Recently, I posted a shot of a little puddle in the middle of the icy/snowy muskeg.  Then it rained some more, then the sun came out.  The thaw progressed so fast that the muskeg flooded right up to the edge of the road and over it in a few places.  It’ll be old news by the time we get the new machine and get back online at home, but I’ll probably post the pics then, anyway.

The frogs over there in the swamp are noisy now.  Their chirps (little arctic wood frogs that spend the winters buried in the frozen mud) dominate all the other sounds for a week or two during breakup, while they’re mating.  Mating is on other wild minds around here, too.  The whooping cranes have been whooping and swooping over the muskeg, and the day I took the flood pics there was an American robin singing in the top of a tree near the one where I got the eagle pic last week.  Doug heard a duck in the muskeg a few nights ago, and inferred from the sounds that it was eating frogs.

Here in Willow, 23 miles down the Valley from home, there’s a spring green haze of new leaves in the birch forest.  At home, the birches and poplars have flower catkins but no leaves yet, and down in Wasilla, another 20-some miles away from home, summer is a lot closer still.  At home, most of the snow is gone from open areas but the shady spots in the woods and near the buildings still have deep snow.

I’m still taking my vitamins and other supplements like a good little girl, but I’m not enjoying it.  That first flush of energy and well-being brought on by the ephedra, NADH, etc., has passed.  True to form, I grabbed the energetic rush and ran with it, right into the wall.  Then Greyfox reminded me I need to pace myself.  That’s where I am now, having learned (once again) that just because it feels like a remission, it may not last more than a day, or a few hours.

Was it screaminginmyhead  who asked where I got the ephedra?  I’ll bet some of you remember — I blogged about Greyfox’s stash when I found it while cleaning house.  When it was getting close to the beginning of the ban, he started buying up all he could find.  We’ve a hoard, enough to last us the rest of our lives, maybe, unless he gets money hungry and starts selling it off.  There has been some news suggesting it’s going to be available again, a court decision overruling the FDA’s ban.  How the holy hell, I wanna know, can they allow free, unrestricted access to SUGAR, and even let people buy it with food stamps, while outlawing medicinal herbs?

I still haven’t decided which direction to go when I leave the library.  I could go down the valley and visit Greyfox or back home, “pace myself” and read yet another book.  I’ve been consuming high quality fiction at the rate of about a book a day.  Each trip to the library nets less of what I consider high-quality.  One part of me dreads when I finally run out of the recreational reading.  Another, more virtuous part says it will be good for me, forcing me to get into some non-fiction for a change. 

I might even drag out the old laptop, see if it will still boot up and let me use notepad to get some writing done.  I might do it if I run out of reading material, but I’m far too self-indulgent to simply start writing for the fun of it, unless that wild urge happens to hit me out of the blue.  Stranger things have happened.  I’m determined and committed, anyhow, not to reawaken the PlayStation addiction.  Not that one waste of time is any more virtuous than another, but at least while I’m reading books there’s no repetitive stress injury. 

If Doug and I both start feeling energetic and virtuous at the same time, and the weather cooperates, we will get some work done on the roof, fershure.  We agree that now, while we have no computer, is the best time to do that.  So far, our wake/sleep patterns, the weather, and our respective physical conditions have not coincided to get anything done.

So, that’s what’s up with me, for now.  I’ve no idea when I’ll get to the library again, but when I do you’ll be the first to know.