This week is going to be a busy one. I’m canceling my internet and cable a week from Monday, so I need to spend time this week getting addresses and locations and this and that to have on hand when it’s gone. Not to mention finishing up some tasks for which I was hired. This isn’t a heads up that I’m quitting the weblog or anything like that. I’ll probably have Burningbird until I die: an old, decrepit, and lecherous weblogger, poking A-List butt and snickering about the sag. However, I won’t be posting with the same regularity I do now.
Posting with the same regularity. This sounds more like one is taking a laxative than writing; feeding the weblog prunes rather than words. Perhaps it’s best that one doesn’t post with ‘any regularity’. Constipation increases the anticipation, makes the heart grow fonder, that sort of thing.
(Not that I’m saying those who don’t post frequently are constipated, and in need of a good enema. But you know, Tom Cruise has said that a good colonic now and again is all you need. Yes indeed, no problem is so severe that you can’t solve it with a bowel movement.)
Sad to say, I did not attend the Harry Potter opening at my local bookstore last night. I thought about it; thought about attending what has become an iconic symbol of our current culture; thought about it as an act of defiance against the rigidly religious. But then I remembered all those little kids…running around…screaming….running around…more screaming and standing in lines for an hour. I will pick up my copy in a sedate, old fuddy duddy manner today by driving down and queuing for a few minutes, paying over the dimes and pennies from my cookie jar, and taking home what probably is the 12,000,013 copy of the book sold.
(Yes I read the Harry Potter books. Of course I read the Harry Potter books. I also follow up to date information about the Loch Ness Monster, too. (This is a particularly good story on Nessie: full of teeth, ripped apart deer, hints of giant fanged eels, mysterious water agents, and so on. I love a good tale.))
Speaking of driving, I took my roommate’s van down to the auto place this week to estimate the damage from the accident we were in on the way to Pridefest earlier this month. The results were what I feared: it is totaled. Oh, it’s still drivable, but the cost to repair the vehicle is more than it’s worth. The insurance company gave Roomie two options: they’ll pay the blue book on the car and he turns it over to the salvage company; or he gets a salvage license and has the vehicle repaired–though they won’t cover the full cost of the repair.
It’s a shame, really. Roomie would rather have donated the vehicle to one of the organizations that fixes them and gives them to charitable organizations. However, state law is rather picky on what happens to vehicles deemed ‘totaled’. You can’t just drive around in them.
So Monday, Old Blue is going to the salvage yard, most likely to be chopped into pieces. And Roomie will now be sharing Golden Girl with me, driving her to and from work, while I reserve my country walks and hikes for after hours and weekends. He’ll then cover 2/3’s of the cost, which helps me, and without him having to plunk the money down on a new car right now, which helps him.
This is actually a very cost effective plan. If I want the car during the week, I’ll give him a lift to and from work and then have it during the day. Otherwise, I’ll take the bus or walk. During the weekend, he can ride his bike (or use the car if I’m not using it). We save on insurance and maintenance and various other costs, and no one really suffers any loss. Considering that I didn’t even have a driver’s license until five years, ago, not having a car 24×7 is not a particular hardship.
In fact, I’m starting a new regime myself this week: walking to the local Starbuck’s for a cup of coffee in the mornings. It’s 1.7 miles each way, which gives me a nice 3.4 mile walk. More importantly, it puts me into a schedule and a routine, and also gets me out of the house and into settings with people. I have started holding conversations with the rabbits, squirrels, and birds in our finch garden. The neighbors are starting to look at me most peculiarly. I really must get out with people more often.
The trip to the auto place was rather interesting. It was very busy and several people were working: all men except for one stunningly beautiful young woman. It was she who looked at my car, and did the estimates of the work. She was charming and helpful and very knowledgeable, as well as drop dead gorgeous. What was rather creepy is that the men in the place totally disregarded both of us. Even when she called out for one guy to check something else with her, he ignored her for the longest time, until finally sauntering over to glance at the back end of the car, mutter a few cryptic words, and then sauntering away again: not once looking at her, not once at me.
We were two women, alone; the Isle of Women, adrift in the Sea of Man. The land that Indy 500 built. And I thought I had it bad in tech.
I appreciated the kind, kind words about the photos in the last post. They meant a lot to me and gave me a boost when I needed it. I can truthfully say that I’ve worked through the anger mentioned in the post, though it wasn’t easy doing so, and I am still working through the cause and writing a post on same. I don’t mind writing angry, but I do mind writing incoherently. Well, more incoherently than usual. There is a difference between being passionate in one’s view, and spitting all over the screen. I’ll leave the latter for the politically inclined.