Funny the World...

NOT EVERY DAY CAN BE EXCITING

April 14, 2000

This is probably going to be short because it’s been a long day and I’ve developed a nice headache. I’ve also only had 3-4 hours of sleep a night for the past four nights and I’m about to go to bed. Some might call that insomnia, but it’s my normal pattern. I seem to work best at 4 a.m., so I frequently get up at 4 to work. I also am a night person, so hate to go to bed before midnight. Basically I resent the amount of time I have to spend sleeping, so I have learned to function on minimal sleep...occasionally it catches up with me, like tonight.

I had my morning conference with Peggy today, which we’d missed for several days due to her computer problems, but we had to cut it short because I was on a tight schedule.

I drove 20 miles to the only telephone repair store I could find in the phone book and tried to get my modem cord fixed. This has been such a frustrating quest. It’s the PCMCIA modem for my laptop and the little plastic doohickey that plugs into the wall broke--the tab that holds it in the wall came off. I figured it would be an easy fix, but try to find someone to do it! I think I mentioned last week that I called Fry’s and the salesperson said they could sell me a $60 new modem but couldn’t sell me a cord and had no repair department. The little hole in the wall place I found today didn’t want to deal with me because I wasn’t a business, but a repair guy took pity on me. For a mere $25, he fixed the thing in about 3 minutes and I should be back in business again.

With that chore finally accomplished, I drove to my mother's house, an hour away. California weather is so bizarre. It was sunny and warm when I left home, the clerk at the repair shop complained about the unseasonable heat and humidity, and before I got to my mother’s I had hit a literal monsoon that was so heavy it obliterated my view of the road for a bit (thank God for those dot bots that kept me from swerving into the lane next to me).

We had a nice relaxed lunch and I showed her how to view photos on my Club Photo site using her Web TV. Then we went to see Return to Me. Fantastic movie. I don’t think I’ve cried as much since I saw Affair to Remember. The nice part of the movie was that there was no profanity, no nudity, no more passionate sex than a simple kiss, and yet it had such terrific romance and such a great story. I could go for David Duchovny if he weren’t so young. He and Minnie Driver were both great, as was the rest of this marvelous ensemble cast movie. Go see it.

It had been a late matinee, so I went home as soon as it was finished, stopping at Costco en route. First I realized that I’d lost my membership card, so I had to stop at the membership desk and get a new photo taken (while it looks as bad as a driver’s license photo, it’s slightly more flattering than the old card, which isn’t saying much). Then I loaded up the cart with $100 worth of stuff and proceeded to the check out stand, only to discover that in the interim between the last time I was there and today, they’d stopped taking all credit cards except American Express--and we don’t have American Express. But with a cart heaped high with "stuff," I had to do something and they did take ATM cards, so I used that and didn’t have to embarrass myself by putting everything back.

When I went to get my ATM card was when I discovered I’d lost my car keys. I was 30 miles from home, there was nobody at home anyway, and I hadn’t a clue what I was going to do. I stopped at the membership desk to ask if I had left them there. She asked if there was anything special about them. I told her there was a bronze disk with "Beverly" on it. They weren’t in the missing keys drawer, so she broadcast it over the loudspeaker, and then disappeared. She came back a bit later with the keys, saying they had been having a laugh about my key chain. The Mustang Ranch was a house of prostitution in Nevada. I once worked for a woman who owned a souvenir store in Sacramento and sold those keychains. That Christmas she gave each of us a personalized keychain. I’ve had it for about 18 years and have forgotten what its original meaning was!

By the time I left the store, most of rush hour traffic had cleared and my drive home was uneventful. Walt called shortly after I returned home, I picked him up, fed the dogs, read the 100 or so e-mails that had accumulated during my day-long absence, and now I’m about to go to bed and see if I can maybe get 6 hours tonight.

Dull entry.

Sorry!

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