Saturday

July 21, 2001

everything takes longer than it should

I sleep hard and don't get up until after 8. It's too hot to walk and no one else is encouraging me. SuRu is ill, I think. It's starting to burn up outside. Things are getting scorched.

I do a few things on the computer and sip a little coffee and get involved in FFP's updating of the Zoot Web page. Then I start a project to rearrange the computers on his desk. There is no way to switch them around without disconnecting everything. This takes an unbelievable amount of time. I try to sort through the mess of cords for phones, hubs, printer, speakers, all that and clean things up a bit. FFP takes both cars for a wash during this episode. He also gets some breakfast tacos and I stop once to eat one. Finally, it is done and things actually boot. But it's about two by then.

I decide I want to go to Altex to see if they have rolls of velcro. We take a circuitous drive to get there and end up stopping for a late lunch at Scholtzsky's on the way. They have various velcro things for cable ties, but not the bulk strap stuff with hooks on one side and loops on the other. I look at other gadgets. We look for a monitor riser for FFP but they don't seem to have these either. We decide we might order one from the Internet. More and more I seem to give up looking for products in stores and searching the Internet. FFP just found typewriter ribbon cartridges on the Internet recently after thinking he might have to give up typing the odd envelope. . Sure enough, I'll later find both the Velcro strap rolls and a variety of monitor risers on the WEB. I'll probably order both this way.

We stop by and see my parents. Dad loans me some pictures of his grandparents on his mother's side so that I can scan them. I help Mom a minute with the computer and remember that I've chosen some books for Dad to read but forgotten to bring them.

We decide to stop by Borders. We look for a while. And buy a DVD of Chaplin for $9.99. We go home and start to watch it. When we get hungry, FFP says he wants some pie. I say that I want some smoked oysters on crackers with whole grain mustard. I'm not really hungry but that sounds good. We go to Randall's and get a few things, mostly junk. I doze on and off through the movie. It's one I like, but I have seen it before.

I decide to redesign my page. I fool around with graphics and various ideas and think how nice some other pages look and get distracted reading them.

visible woman takes on a new look

How one spends one's time seems so arbitrary sometimes. I've spent hundreds of hours on this journal, I guess. Is it worth it? Actually, yes. I think it is.

As far as the redesign goes, it may evolve over the next couple of days. Or weeks. Or months. I thought of ditching the navigation bars at top and bottom or, possibly, making them simple text elements. I'm not necessarily abandoning putting in quotes but I'm not going to necessarily do it every day. And the pictures are going to go first in this column. This area is sort of a 'just typing' area with meta info and ramblings.