I’ve been writing and writing. It’s hard to write with the house full of people but I’ve been getting it all down on notebook and ink. I’ve got the basic outline for my next run all lined up. My new pen Wade made me is my new exclusive writing implement. I bought a new notebook the day after I got the pen and I’ve already dirtied up the notebook with three different story outlines. One is full length, the other two are shorts or novellas, depending on how much I feel like developing the story arcs.
I should be getting all of these ideas into the puter but I’m taking this time to write this update for the website. There was (still is) a big storm ripping through and we’re out of power. My laptop is running on battery and I can finish writing this al; up before the power comes back on and we get back to the normal chaos of life.
We started out this morning real early. I woke up at 6am and stayed awake from the pain. I’ve had a swollen ear for a couple of weeks and now the headaches won’t go away and the whole right side of my face is numb. I couldn’t sleep so I got up and watched a movie. I was disappointed in the movie but it wasn’t horrible, it just wasn’t what I wanted. So I got a shower and everyone was still asleep. I went back into the den and watched a few episodes of Penn & Teller BS. I love that show. I dozed off in the third or fourth episode and Teresa finally woke up around 10:30 or so. She urged me to go to the Acute Care center to get my ear looked at. I have an appointment at 9am tomorrow but the pain is bad enough that I let her twist my arm. I get over to the doctor’s office and there is a big sign on the desk saying that they don’t accept XYZ medical insurance. I open my wallet to look at my card and sure enough, XYZ Insurance… For the price of a co-pay, this can wait another 24 hours since I’ve gotten used to the pain for the most part.
So I get back to the house and after a nice breakfast (mmmm, scrapple!) we all get in the car and truck on down to the dirt-mall. Other that the in and out trip Teresa and I made last year to pick up something for Jerry last year, I haven’t been to a flea market in years. I immediately remember why. It’s hot, smelly and full of rednecks. If you can get past all of the fat, close-set -eyed rejects, there’s the burly guy wearing the t-shirt that shows the White House flying a rebel flag and the caption reads, “I have a dream” Oh please let another eight years pass before I’m in this place again…
We’re in here because Jerry is looking for an LP. Any LP to test the new USB turntable we bought. I can turn records into MP3s now. We were also looking for a BetaMax player. Jerry brought a box full of Beta tapes he wants me to put on DVD but the Beta player he brought just eats the tapes. I’ve got a bid in on e-Bay for a player and that looks like the best shot for finding one.
So now I’ve got hours and hours of cassette tapes to digitize, hours of Beta tape to digitize, hours of VHS to digitize and as soon as I can find a Hi-8 camera/player I have hours of them to digitize as well. After all of that is done, Jerry is going to deliver hundreds of old-timey 33s and 45s for me to digitize. I really like doing this, I should start a side business doing it or something. Maybe after I get good at it I will…
So while we are at the dirt-mall a strong storm starts up. Lightning was popping al around us. It was pretty bad. Anyone who knows Becca knows that she hates big storms and really gets nervous in them. I tell her not to worry, this really isn’t “Big Storm” type of weather, it’s more like “Tornado” weather. This shakes her up real good and I calm her down by telling her to relax, tornados only hit trailer parks and flea markets. I think she hates me now. I go out to get the car among the lightning strikes and the deluge of rain. I am completely soaked to the bone before I get 20 feet into the parking lot. I stand around and dance left and right looking for the truck. I can’t quite see Teresa and the girls because I left my glasses with Teresa but I see that they are waving me to my left. I dodge the lightning bolts, promising to later thank Thor for allowing me to pass unharmed, and I still can’t find the damned truck. I walk back into the covered area and they are laughing at me. This is the wrong entrance. This is what they were trying to signal to me but even with my glasses I don’t think I would have seen them clear enough to get that through all of the rain. So I finally swim out to the truck and only inside do I realize just HOW wet I am. I was drier at the bottom of the spring while diving last weekend. I lean forward to put the key in the ignition and the rain runs off of my hat and onto the steering wheel. Wet.
The drive home was fun. Dodging all the assholes that run on the highway with their flashers on. I want to destroy every damn one of them. It is illegal and it is also very confusing. If it was one or two people I’d be upset enough to bitch about it but this was more than half of the damn cars on the road this time! I wanted to put them in the wall. Fucking brain-dead morons! Last week I was driving out to Pensacola and the rain hit in a sheet. Dry, dry, dry, WET! This happens all the time in Florida and I’m sure it’s not an unheard of occurrence anywhere else. So the guy in front of me SLAMS on his breaks and goes from 75 to 45 in a matter of feet! I really wanted to run him off the road too. These people better learn how to drive while they’re on MY damn roads…
Speaking of that, while I was bitching about all of the morons using their flashers (in the left lane I might add!) Teresa asked me if I was going to write up something about using flashers in my “Emperor of Earth” page. I realize I haven’t added anything in there in a long time because I bitch about those things every day now. I don’t know what to do with that page. The same with the religion page. I bitch here in the day-to-day section and I don’t really need a special section to rant about special topics. The website should get overhauled soon enough. Wade told me about the blogging software and as soon as I get a chance to sit with him and work on it, we’re going to tear up the site and freshen it up. Another thing that is going away is the music quiz. It was a failed experiment and should be put out of its misery. I haven’t put one up in a month and no one has even asked about it (other than you-know-who) and so it appears that my attempt at creativity was poorly received. I’ll just stick to my standard bitch-mode, it’s all I know how to do I guess. Here’s a peanut, dance for us monkey-boy!
We took another hit during those bad-ass storms today. The router got hit and my computer took a hit to the Ethernet port which is of course, on the motherboard. I’ve brought the DSL modem back to life but it meant resetting our main account password which dumps al of our other e-mail passwords. Teresa is having to move her laptop to a manual plug instead of wireless and I may have to add in a new card to get my puter back on-line if that is the only part of it that got hit.
The really sad thing is that I always unplug my puter from the wall when I’m gone during the week and I also installed a quick-release up by the monitor so I can also disconnect my puter from the network. I ALWAYS unplug it while I’m gone but I didn’t unplug it this weekend. It sucks. I HATE having to troubleshoot my own network. It is always a pain in the ass and I’m always expected to know what the problem is. Big clue here folks, I don’t know shit!
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