2008 — 10 Mar: Busy Monday, and fingers still crossed!
With luck1 I have a lunch date, a dinner date, and a repair date! And (for some reason) Norman Greenbaum is (once again) belting out the rather fine "Spirit in the Sky". I can remember this from — as it were — its first appearance. I was living in the Astwick Manor apprentice hostel2 at the time, four years before I met Christa. Meanwhile:
Another reminder:
In the wake of my PC crash...
No email from me in the last five days? Want to hear from me again? Then please send me an email (by
clicking on my name here) so I can add you back into my Address Book. Thanks!
I have emailed everybody for whom I still have an email address. So if you haven't heard from me, and you'd like to stay in touch, you know what to do. Unless and until you send me an email, I am currently unable to send you email because I simply no longer have access to your address. Though if Brian's worked his magic, at least I can set about the rest of the system repair when I've got the operating system behaving itself. What a tedious business this is, to be sure. G'night.
Scheisse and Rhein3
The sun is (at 09:56) blazing away, the Oatibix (etc) will shortly be stowed in a handy local Mounce-shaped container, the lunch time plans have firmed up, the email has been checked, the next Waitrose card payment has been initiated, and the initial cuppa is on its way down. The postcard (written almost entirely in the form of titles from the Beach Boys repertoire) from the birth(yester)day girl shows me she is a) in Oakland, b) emulating the oenophiliac action in the film "Sideways", and c) still has yet to learn my postal code. Thanks, Gilly-willy!
Ch-ch-ch-changes
Rain is now (11:01) pouring down. Rather than "Oatibix" I went with the "etc" of well-fired toasted bread for a change. Hearing Julie Covington's "Don't cry for me, Argentina" a few minutes ago evoked a bit of a wobble. (We both loved that music. What is it, doubtless deeply wired into us, that manages this trick I wonder?) It was 24 years to the day, by the way, before I got into the Yaris for my first drive, that I transcribed my vinyl copy of the original Evita album over to cassette tape for safe keeping. How's that for a piece of Temporal trivia?
Don't worry! I soon cheered up by reading this fascinating list of music banned (or at least discouraged) by the BBC at various times for various reasons. Like wars in the South Atlantic, for random example. And, as I said to my son just a couple of days ago:
The garden is stirring into life, which is good actually. You'll see a few films mentioned in the diary. I'm reading a little more, too. I hate being a widower, believe me. I'm sure you miss Christa just as I do, son. But please remember she's no longer in any pain. 33 years together is a lot more than many couples have, or enjoy. And we had 27 with you, too, dear boy. I'm grateful for all of it.
Now here's an interesting conundrum. Should deaf couples be allowed to choose (via IVF) to have children that will also be deaf? The mind boggles.
Lazy afternoon... dept.
Back from La Parisienne in Romsey about an hour ago. (It's now 15:00 and I can't say the radio news is remotely cheery!) Can't say I was over-impressed with the expensive restaurant, either. I had pheasant, partly out of a revenge motive (I admit) for the pecker incident. Last time I had pheasant, over in Verwood, it was a lot tastier. Never mind. Len's company is far more important. I showed him the two recent toys (the iPod and the tiny Linux laptop machine) and he made approving noises. I'm also trying him out on Studio 60 — he likes Amanda Peet at least as much as I do. The weather is now very variable. It was pouring when we set off. Donner und blitzen for some of the time while we were there, too. Right now it's very intermittent sun and loads of heavy clouds, but a hint of sun in one direction. Not weather for walking, though we did see a lady duck waddling around in the car park of the restaurant.
Tonight I'm going over to Brian for a meal and to have a go at the XP repair or re-install. Don't know whether that will work, of course, but the safe offloading of my data is really all that matters. Len assures me4 a Knoppix live CD is even better than Ubuntu for reading and recovering Windows data files if (when?) the inevitable happens the next time. So I'm once again very seriously considering moving over to Linux. I did do so over a year ago for a month, but found it too frustrating and just too damned convenient to use the handful of Windows applications I was so well-used to. I'm equally seriously thinking of moving to a web-based email solution. Data recovery is just such a painful business.
After another phone call from dear Mama (two within a week is unthinkable; two within 48 hours is literally unheard of) I decided to call her younger sister in Devon to dispel the consequent gloom. Worked a treat! Thanks, Aunty Mary. Just about time (17:37) to get the car out of its nest and toddle off to Brian, Knoppix live CD now in hand. (I discovered a very nifty "burn .ISO image to CD" Windows shell extension and added that to the Windows system on the Gateway.) Windows may be a heap of steaming something-or-other but that doesn't mean there aren't some very smart people writing some very smart stuff to run under it or, as in this case, to add a facility that Redmond could have added years ago. Better take one of my toys, too. It's all "go," this retirement lark.