On tonight, of all nights, when many boys and girls travel the galaxy in search of tasty treats. But noooo, here in Webster we had temps in the forties and rain. Thusly did I not see a single cute boy or girl dressed up in some imaginative costume at all. This leads me to have to consume two entire bags of candy myself, which I should think will only take me until next month. OH THE HUMANITY!

 

Other fun was to be had today as I judged the relative cloudiness, wind speed and barometric pressure (no really! ok that was a lie) to allow for the driest point of my grandmother's leaves to be reached, allowing me to gather them up in the normal way and it just started raining as I crossed the bay bridge towards home. Is that timing or what? I also read more then half of The Gathering Storm, which I am liking as much as the other 12 that came before it. You can almost see the last battle from here. 

 

Do I hate leaves more then I hate Windows? From where does all my hatred spring, I wonder. Also, that is now one emmmmpty house. And is that hot water heater really sufficient? It looks kinda small. But what do I know? But anyway, the front is mostly done now, only two trees left to commit leaf suicide, then the back ones to do. My trees are hardly half down, but not to worry, they'll be down before I know it.

 

Another amusing thing was a piece of mail I received Saturday involving a correction slip from my bank in the amount of twenty cents. Let me take you through this now-

 

Bank paid teller to create this slip of paper, for envelope, writing on envelope by employee.

It then paid forty four cents to mail me said paper.

 

This makes no sense to me because they could just as easily given me the twenty cents, and saved themselves the cost of an envelope AND twenty four cents. I know, I know, once a person realized this there could be a conspiracy against banks where millions of people short the bank 40 cents a week which the bank makes up to avoid postage fees. But seriously, you couldn't have forgiven the twenty cent error, Bank?

 

Game went fine saturday, mystery solved, balance of nature restored, hip hip hurray. We started a bit late because Sean was walking the second longest wall in Europe. Glad he's taking the time to... see the sights? He was feeling a bit sickly too, hope he feels better soon.

 

Friday I went to the mortgage place to again impress upon someone there old versions of outlook can't handle more then 2GB of mail (and if you have 2GB of mail, you need an intervention) and to keep his inbox clean. One guy thought his HD died because he was getting a message about an improper startup disk. I asked if he had any flash memory attached to the machine, he said no. Whoops, you do buddy! Your memory card. Of course, it's the worst hardware in the universe that sees a camera memory card, tries to boot from it, and then GIVES UP like, well, sorry, I don't recall that I could also boot from my CD drive or, what's this, a HARD DRIVE??!! It's a problem that goes back to the bad old floppy disk days, because Apple is the only one that actually tries to move the state of the art forward. I mean, come on, an Apple machine can't boot from a device, it TRIES THE NEXT DEVICE. It always has done this, even back to the SE/X (I mean SE/30, sorry) that was oh say 25 years ago? Keep trying, PC.

 

The other for friday was one laptop being totally dead, and another that actually rather impressed me. It was a lenovo that kept BSOD when I booted the XP CD (oh I how I love you windows) and wouldn't boot from the HD. As a last resort I ran the built in system restore, which was actually SANE. It put windows back and left everything else alone. I was shocked to see that machine boot up again, let me tell you. Shocked. One might almost say incredulous. I guess there is some hope for you after all PC. A very tiny, tiny seed of hope.

 

Then went to see Grandma, who again thought it was saturday and kept falling asleep in her chair. Silly grandma. She seemed to be breathing hard too, how much effort does it take to sit in a chair? What is to become of her, I wonder.

 

Good number of appointments earlier in the week, nothing remarkable. One for tomorrow, but three for Tuesday? Couldn't sell Monday to anybody for some reason. Oh well, work is work. Except paperwork, which I get to do again, which is just torture.

 

Finished Sean's gift! It looks pretty sweet if I say so myself. Pictures to be posted... after christmas. Now I just have to wrap the darn thing and keep it in one piece until he can find a place for it. It seems pretty sturdy, but putting it in a box is going to be a challenge. Now on to clay working.

 

So what's coming up? Let's see, dentist appointment in four days. The 19th will be my 8 year anniversary leaving Xerox, and next month is Christmas! Boooo snow! Yay presents!

 

Did I mention I already had a bunch wrapped? Sorry, can't resist.