A Jaunty Little Blog

Your Monday, My Tuesday

Hey There Monkeys!

I was greeted this morning by a very curt blue screen message relating something about SMART detecting that the hard drive on my work peecee was nearing failure. Um, I knew that when it crashed on Friday, but whatever. The disease was terminal and the patient would need a brain transplant. I turned the Jeep Grand Livingroom towards Fry’s (“deev this!”) and picked up a brand spanking new, only expected to live another thirteen months (one month beyond the warranty), 80 GB laptop hard drive. The boss said that I should go ahead and buy a new one and the company will reimburse me. That scheme is fine at the beginning of the month, but I don’t have a credit card and the fake one I carry also has to pay the bills at a certain alpine chalet. But I need the drive now so I can recover the tools I use every day to get my job done. But the accounts payable department has their own schedule for reimbursement. But the bill payments went into the mailbox today. But I’m not so sure that there will be enough to cover the drive plus the bills plus the gas to get me back and forth to that very chalet plus the little extravagances during the week before the next paycheck comes (like eating and the parts to fix the terrible noise that the Jeep is making at the moment).

Some people have Mondays like this, and then they shoot up the place. Good thing it’s Tuesday, isn’t it?

I may have also mentioned that there’s no local mail delivery in my little slice of unincorporated Riverside County. That’s actually true. We all go to the Post Office to meet, greet, and pick up our mail (who knew?). The Verizon DSL ordering website doesn’t like that though. A delivery address that differs from the installation address is not so good for them. They don’t say why of course, but I presume that it’s because they use FedEx or UPS to deliver the included modem. It’s not so comfortable for those knuckleheads to deliver to their competitor, is it?

On another front, the weekend went surprisingly well despite my little slip-up. It turns out that the secrecy was designed not so much to shock as to limit the period of time my Mom would freak out about a house-load of people inspecting dust, lint, cobwebs, and whatever else she might be worried about. In that regard, I say, you’re going to retire, who cares?

Much to her credit, she didn’t worry about the house too much. We had a fine time, ate out a lot, and enjoyed each other’s company. That’s exactly how it was supposed to be. Mission accomplished.