Journal of a Sabbatical

April 10, 2001

still older than dirt

National Poetry Month Link(s) of the Day:

2001 National Poetry Month Contest

PoetryPlus - It's National Poetry Month in Canada too!

Today's Reading: A Visit to India, China, and Japan in the Year 1853 by Bayard Taylor

Today's Starting Pitcher: Hideo Nomo

I remain older than dirt. Older than Miss Newburyport too, but not as curmudgeonly. And not as fond of horse blanket smell. When I came to the cat shelter tonight for the Purrfect Companions committee meeting, the cats were having Tuesday night aromatherapy. One of the Tuesday night volunteers discovered that they like the smell of her horse's blanket so she brought it in tonight for their sniffing pleasure. Well, as you can see from the picture, this meant the world to Miss Newburyport who stretched out, rolled over, and just plain totally relaxed on it. I've never seen her so relaxed. It's remarkable. Horse blankets definitely do not have that effect on me.

I had hoped to bring the dusty laptop back to the office tonight but it took me 6 hours of careful deletion just to free up enough disk space to run Eudora or anything else for that matter. My wrist and thumb ache like mad. That little pointing device thing on the laptop is a royal pain and a half. I wish it had a touch pad. Anyway, there is now enough space free on the disk so that what few applications I left on there don't freeze or crash. I still can't seem to get the email though. I emailed the hosting company's support mailbox but I have this sickening feeling that since I obviously emailed them from an address not hosted with them, they'll think I'm a hacker trying to break in to MRFRS' mail or something. Their support form doesn't allow you to enter any other email address so I emailed them directly. I mean if my problem is with the email how am I supposed to email them from their server? Yet more evidence that the Internet is not all it's cracked up to be. As if we needed more evidence.

And you know I'm old when the new governor is younger than I am. Yes, today Massachusetts makes history with our first woman governor, the first pregnant governor (with twins), the youngest governor in our history, and only the third governor from western Massachusetts. Gov. Swift is going to be relying heavily on the Internet when she's home on maternity leave with the twins. No wonder the news commentators are all talking about how Massachusetts is one of only 6 states without a governor's mansion. We never needed one before. It's a small state. Governor's have always lived in or near Boston. But hey, this gives us yet more opportunity for history making. Not only will we have the first governor to give birth to twins in office, but the first governor to telecommute. I suppose if you're the governor you do get priority in getting DSL service. I'd like this idea better if the Internet worked as well as people seem to imagine it does.