One cloud is lonely in the sky...

Quote from Richard Adams's classic "Watership Down", which certainly fits my mood...

The day started out good: I got my paycheck today, and deposited some of it in the bank. *AND* I got started on my Halloween shopping, too.

Then my folks and I went to Wingaersheek Beach, up in Gloucester, one of my favorite places in the state... and someone, probably the town park service, had blown out some of the big rocks at one end of the shore. They were these wonderful, lovely outcroppings of New England granite, and they were great for climbing on. I guess some kid must have taken a tumble off them (If people would just *WATCH* their kids when they're out and about...), so the town eliminated that "hazard", the beasts.

he_dreams_awake, I managed to put down some free advertising for truthofthespoon.net: I was writing the URL on the sand in foot-high letters, each URL about a hundred feet apart, above the tide line. We'll see if that gets anyone curious... I'm thinking of making up labels (once I get a better computer/printer) with the URL and sticking them in public places (on payphones, in bathrooms, on walls... sound good?

And to add to my feelings of loss, I just found out that there's evidence that a not very famous fellow I'm very fond of may be someone else's private property, if you get my drift. I'm not allowed to say who, though.

WHY DOES THE REST OF THE WORLD HAVE TO BE MARRIED AND I CAN'T EVEN GET A GUY TO LOOK AT ME TWICE?!

::Checking to make sure her will is in order, considers the options...::

Ogden Nash

Nicked from crowdog66:

When you see this, post your favorite poem in your journal.

The People Upstairs

The people upstairs all practise ballet.
Their living room is a bowling alley.
Their bedroom is full of conducted tours.
Their radio is louder even than yours.
They celebrate weekends all the week.
When they take a shower, your ceilings leak.
They try to get their parties to mix
By supplying their guests with pogo sticks.
And when the orgy at last abates,
They go to the bathroom on roller skates.
I might love the people upstairs wondrous
If instead of above us, they just lived under us.

--Ogden Nash (I memorized this and I like to recite it to myself when I'm depressed: it's so silly!)

She lives....

I've been emotionally numb all day, but at least I'm up and about and taking care of the usual. Sorry if I spooked anyone last night: I just over-reacted to something. I've just had too many negatives/too much bad news/seen too many horrors this year, and it's really starting to get to me.

Let's hope the computer-buying idea works out. So far so good: my folks and I went up to the Apple Store at the Rockingham Mall this evening, just to get a look-see around. I twiddled with one of the iMacs there: I like it already! The taskbar at the top makes me a little nervous, since I'm so used to it being down the bottom of the screen -- and the fact that one of the spyware bugs that killed my comp before was eating the taskbar also has something to do with that reaction. But I *LOVE* all those little icons down the bottom of the screen, and I love the feel of this machine! I haven't made the move to buy it just yet, but I did buy David Pogue's book on OS X Tiger, to help myself learn more about this thing I'm getting into. Hopefully sometime next week or the week after we can get the ball rolling on this. According to one of the techs there, I'll have to up the memory to a gigabyte if I'm gonna run VirtualPC and load the MxO into that... or maybe we can hope the MxO software gets revised for Macs (I *did* buy the PC version of the software, though I suppose I could sell that on Amazon.com if it came to that).

I'm also going to be switching ISPs again, once I get the machine: I'm going to be using CompuServe. It costs more than Juno, but it's less than AOHell, and they gotta be good if they've been in the business for as long as they have. I'll let you all know before the change goes through. I might be offline for a few days while I get used to the new machine, et al. Consider it a vacation from the 'Net: but it might not be easy for me, considering how much my online life means to me right now. Eh, I'll manage, same way I did when the spyware invasion happened and I got knocked offline for the better part of two weeks (three weeks? ::trying to remember:: )