It's a perfectly gorgeous spring day. Trees are flowering and budding and some are starting to leaf out. And it's starting to look like a state park again. Woodpeckers, muskrats and the feral cats are exploring under bushes on the banks of the lake. I took some sun this morning out front and a woman named Cindy made it a point to introduce herself and make sure I remembered her floor and room number. A high floor. She said I ought to come up tonight and gaze at the view with her. She is a champion bungee jumper. My mother told me to be careful around women like this. I will have my rope and safety harness with me.
When my computer died I took it to a fix-it place. It took them two weeks to tell me they had made a check of my system and it would be folly to put new money into an old box like mine without any guarantees. Whatever was on my hard drive was also unrecoverable so I took the thing home, removed the hard drive and trashed it (there was stuff on there my Mother wouldn’t approve of) and donated the remainder to a worthy cause. I didn't look for a new unit for awhile because I'm personally reluctant to jump in right away and burn up the energy it takes to start a new project. I used the computer at the public library to pay bills and check my e-mail, I missed that. I also found that I didn't like not having the morning news at my fingertips with my first cup of coffee. That got quickly replaced with a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, and the morning paper my neighbor across the hall left for me. There was no news anyway. Libya was in crisis and the congress of the United States would have done more good there than here. I wasn't bored. And I finally got around to getting a new box, a refurbished Dell with a guarantee, and all the attachments including a big flat screen for a little under $200. Now I have to hook it up to the Internet so I can cruise for pipes, tobacco, used CD's (The Doors Light My Fire to be specific) and carry on my international correspondence.
What I missed: My e-mail; morning news from the source; buying the odd thing online (possibly pipes from Germany or Poland...?) Other than that I didn't miss it much. I must spend less time cruising the net than I thought.
Since the computer died I fell on the ice once and got the wind knocked out of me, and a second time at a filling station and broke two ribs while knocking the wind out of me. During that time winter stayed around for awhile, then things warmed up a bit. The Canada geese returned (Big Rats with wings and a lot of noise...).
I think I am Russian Orthodox. I told the girls one night at the evening get-together that I never discussed my religion or my politics as I had found that was the fastest way to get into a good fight. A lot of the women here are highly committed rock-root Baptists and believe you can be saved only in a certain fashion. One wanted to know if I believed in Jesus Christ as my personal savior and I told her 'yes' but didn't tell her who all else I believed in, in case any of them were asleep up there. Then a fellow named Tom (We have a lot of Toms here...) saw the Coptic cross I was wearing around my neck (a present from a fireman buddy in Russia) and said 'I know! You're Orthodox!' 'You never can tell' I told him. The girls think I'm Orthodox and that they have cracked my secret. Most of them don't know what an Orthodox is, but they are convinced that I am one. One or two are waiting and salivating and brushing a shine on their Bibles and knowing they will catch me out some day with The Truth.
Tom Bomb, the inveterate liar and preacher, and my neighbor, was talking about stocks and bonds on his cell phone in front of us the other day --- and the phone rang! We rolled back and forth on the hallway carpet laughing out loud and Tom kept talking. He has so many schemes to try to impress people that he doesn't rmember what they all are.
Kroger's has stopped delivering day-old donuts and specialty bread on Mondays because too many fat women were fighting over them. One gal waddled into the truck before it was even unloaded and started stuffing chocolate items into a Lillian Vernon shopping bag. I'm sorry to see this, it was more free entertainment than a Bob Hope show. The fat girls will have to eat red meat and finishing nails now for breakfast in order to stay fighting fit.
I will be asking some of you for e-mail and U S Mail addresses because some of that, unfortunately, was on the hard drive which got thrown in the trash. Yes, I had all the important stuff backed up on disks but didn't plan for total shutdown so there we are. Now I am going to listen to some more Rammstein. Idon't understand German but they do some very fine hard rock! Ta!
