Monday. November 19, 2001

scrabble ornament for sale on ebay

"The wastepaper basket is the writer's best friend."

Isaac B. Singer

So much for trying not to take a decongestant. Is there anything more irritating than blowing your nose? Yes, of course, but still I hate it. So I take a twelve-hour pill and some Echinecea and hope for the best. Sniffle. Blow. I have no sympathy for illness (though I feign it when necessary) and I can't believe it when I actually have an ailment and expect it to instantly go away in the face of my denial.

When I purchased FFP's machine, I got 'Microsoft Office XP Small Business' with it. I think anyway. It doesn't have PowerPoint. He has a Standard Microsoft Office '97 or '95 or something on another machine that has it. So I set him up to produce the few PowerPoints he does there. Now when he gets a PowerPoint attachment he doesn't know what to do. I save it on the machine with the PowerPoint. So, I figure, OK, there is an upgrade to get PowerPoint, having bought this suite. Right? I mean...do I have to pay $300 or more to put PowerPoint on this machine? I try to find information about this dilemma from the Microsoft Page. (Yes, I know. I'm a stupid idiot for trying. I have no luck. Many selections don't even acknowledge this emasculated edition of their product. If you consider PowerPoint masculine and I really don't. It's kind of a girlie tool. I try to ask a question and I get some kind of goofy security problem. I hate Microsoft, I really do.)

I am determined to get the remaining piles of magazines and papers around the house under control. I do this. I can't, of course, just toss them. I have to extract books from the pile and find a random shelf to hold them. I have to look, at least briefly, at any magazine especially any copies of The New Yorker. These might hold some real treasure like a short story by someone I really like or an in-depth article about Paris or something. Something I really need to read or read again.

I'm stopped in my tracks by an article about a guy who built a Lego robot, using only Lego parts including a Web cam. This robot can solve a Rubic's cube in fifteen minutes. I'm not kidding. Is that both cool and useless at the same time? Did I need to know about it?

In a June edition of The New York Times I noticed an article about the skyscraper museum. It's a WEB sit now but I think will be a real museum one day. They ran a picture like this one on the site. Yes, I know June is five months ago. I've been busy! Yep, the papers went back to a time when taco shells made from genetically engineered corn and Timmothy McVeigh's execution seemed important to us. Images of the WTC leaped out of these pages, too. Every time I see one, it is another reminder.

Mom and Dad are going to a meeting that was cancelled the other night due to the storm. They want me to come visit with my sister while they are gone. OK, I haven't been out of the house all day. This normally would bother me but I have become excited about getting my place all in order. (So, of course, this order can become the chaos of a family gathering. But still.)

My dad is watching the war when I get there. I put the TV on BRAVO which is showing Cirque de Soleil and leave it there. I get out the Scrabble game and we play a couple of games. I win handily. I get good tiles but my sister also doesn't play defensively and leaves me openings.

When Mom and Dad come home, I go to the Randall's near there and try to buy things I need for the company. Mom and others are bringing things but I have a few things I'm doing. The list isn't long but I get frustrated trying to find things. I don't usually shop in this store. In fact, I don't usually shop in any store. FFP does. Oh, well. I get most things I need. I want some 7-UP and there is none. The shelf is empty. When I finally find it.

It's 10PM when I get home and I watch a tape FFP made of Third Watch and then watch part of that sappy Pay it Forward which I'm watching in randomly-ordered fifteen minute increments. Then I start watching another movie and pretty soon it is late. But the 12-hour decongestant has made me feel better. Outside the weather has changed to cool, too.

JUST TYPING
Progress.
Diet.
Spending.
Time makes them work.