When a package arrived on Friday, I had a feeling it was something for me, so I deliberately didn’t look at the return address, I just set it beside P’s desk and waited. When he got home, he said I could open it if I wanted, because a “pwrincess birfday” (I am not making that up) is too important to be a single-day event, so it would be okay to open one small thing early. I opened it, and I am now the proud owner of a Keytronic board that is no surprise as to model (since it’s the only model I’ve used since…oh, 2000, I think), but is black this time. Maybe not such a big deal to most people, but I must say that I am very happy to have RCtrl and Menu keys that work reliably. On my old one, they’d sometimes work and sometimes not, but that was, after all, the board I rescued after dumping half a bottle of Smirnoff Twisted V Pomegranate Fusion over it (didn’t have a spare…that was my spare). The new one is clicky (I need audio feedback), but pretty quiet now, though that will last only until I’ve had it long enough to pound the bejeezus out of it because old Mrs. Ogden taught me too well how to type. That’s why I buy these boards…they’re tough enough to stand up to my taught-on-a-manual typing style longer than most. One of these days, I’m going to go to a yard sale or the Salvation Army store and hunt down an old full-size Remington manual typewriter because I’d be willing to bet I can still manage to do a three-copy carbon on one. Can you even buy carbon paper anymore? Mrs. Ogden, you may be long dead, but your commanding, “fff, space, jjj, space, ddd, space, kkk….” like a Marine drill sergeant will live on in my memory (and my typing style) forever.
Saturday dawned as it often does, with both me and my hangover waking up in barely enough time to get my eyes open and put some clothes on before going bug hunting. It was cooler than it had been (I actually got to wear jeans again, though I was sorry for it by noon), so I thought I’d probably not have many bugs, but I was wrong because it was a fantastic day for The Bughunter. Lots of leaf-footed bugs and squash bugs (nymph and adult), a couple of Carolina mantises (one L5 nymph, one adult female), a beautiful tan male Chinese mantis, two green stink bug nymphs, the spiky nymph of Euthochtha galeator (helmeted squash bug), three types of assassin bugs (wheel bugs, an adult Zelus and a Sinea nymph), lots of Phymata ambush bugs “in flagrante” (it’s mating season for them…hehe), tussock moth, dagger moth and fall webworm cats (shot them, then collected them for Valerie), a dog-day cicada (just collected that for Valerie)…I couldn’t shoot them as fast as I was finding them. Dumbass that I am, I’d not bothered to recharge my batteries because I didn’t think there would be much around (too cool), so I was getting a low battery warning when I found the patch of late boneset in bloom that had attracted a Painted Lady and a couple of Cabbage Whites. I got the Lady in my sights, took a few shots and crossed my fingers that the battery wouldn’t die, but just as I was getting up good and close to her, the camera started beeping at me; not low battery, but “memory card is full”. Goddamn…forgot I had the 1GB in and not the 2GB because I’d thought I might use the RAW hack script. I never did get the Cabbage White because they disappeared by the time I switched cards. Not that they aren’t common enough, but the fluttery little bastards fly low, don’t land for more than 0.24 nanoseconds, and never on anything like an attractive background. Oh, well…another time.
When we got home, I unloaded the camera and took a quick look through my shots. I thought about logging onto Flickr, but it’s been so goddamned long that I know I’ve got a shit-ton of messages, comments I’ve not answered, and I don’t even want to think about “photos from your contacts”. I really should just get rid of everyone who’s not on my “elite” list; I don’t have the time or inclination to spend hour after hour making comments on photos I probably like, but which aren’t anything really special to me (and neither are the people who shot them). Anyway, I didn’t bother with Flickr, or even go to my fish board (disaster awaits there, too), I just took a nap. Fuck it…it’s my birthday weekend, and I’m gonna do what I want to do. We woke up really late; it was almost beer-thirty when I was still working on coffee and getting my eyes open. After a few drinks, though, it finally occurred to P to tell me that he’d made my “pwrincess birfday” a holiday by taking Monday off work. Bless his heart; he hasn’t done that for the past couple of years because it was already on the weekend, but I really didn’t think he’d remembered, or thought he might be too busy to afford the time off. Again, I was wrong, but this is a good kind of wrong. After a few drinks, he asked me whether I wanted my other present, and even though my birthday isn’t technically until Monday, we’d already made it a four-day event (Fri-Mon), so I thought, “Ah, why not?”
My photos and music are already copied to my lovely new…320GB WD external HDD. Again, bless his heart; he knew I’d wanted a new keyboard because I’d given him one of those “hints” that he likes so much (the kind that come in email format with links to product pages so he doesn’t have to guess about anything), but I hadn’t for that; I’d just mentioned once or twice that I really needed more storage space. I have backups of my photos and music on DVD, of course, but my photos are all irreplaceable, and even though I could probably get at least most of my music again if push came to shove, it’d be an enormous pain in the arse to do, so redundancy is all good. The drive came with nearly half a gig of install crap for Windows and Mac on it, but I installed GParted and got rid of it all, then partitioned it with 100GB to use for stuff XP needs to see, and 220GB for Linux. Jesus, I love Ubuntu software installation. I couldn’t remember whether I had GParted or not, so I opened a terminal and did a whereis. It didn’t find anything, so I apt-cache searched to see whether it was in the repos. It was, and installation was as easy as sudo apt-get install gparted. If that was Windows, I’d have to google the name of the software to find the page/download site, then save the install file, then run it and click “Next” forty-six times, then it would probably make me reboot. I really miss that when I use openSUSE; YaST is much better than it was, but it’s still goddamned slow compared to a terminal. I don’t think there’s anything like urpmi for SUSE, so you’re pretty much stuck with the GUI. Dumbing it down for Win-switchers, I guess. Anyway, I’ve got a new keyboard, more storage space, lots of bugs, and another long weekend, plus P said he’d be Bucket Boy when I have to do water changes tomorrow (fish don’t care whether it’s my birthday). What I have to do right-fucking-now, though, is call Mickey because I promised her I’d let her know when I received the photos she sent (and the money order she stuck in the birthday card…wish she wouldn’t do that), and I keep forgetting to do it until it’s so late that she’d be getting ready for bed, or already in bed. If I don’t do it right now, it’ll be beer-thirty before I know it, and I’ll be stuffing my face with barbeque…whatever P’s got on the menu for tonight. I may not like the summer heat here, but I damn-sure do like having a birthday that’s still in summer. I remember going for a walk one very early morning on my birthday when I still lived on the mountain, and not only were the leaves changing colour, but there was….fucking frost. Gah!
OMG!!! I almost forgot the best part of all! P told me about a house he’d seen that’s all of: not in town (but we think it’ll still be within broadband range), no close neighbours (ours are all white trash, waaaay too loud and too many barking Dobermans/pit bulls), bigger than this house (he estimated nearly twice as large), and on a relatively large piece of property. He said the front porch does need some work, but I’m not allergic to a little home repair, and the fact that it does need some work, and that it’s not in town (and not in the “upscale” part of Walnut Hill) just means it’s more likely to be affordable. It’s not far from Jeff’s place, but it’s not like I’d have to actually hang out with Renae or anything (I wouldn’t), and P doesn’t like Jeff enough that we’d be expected to be more than, “wave and hi” neighbours. I could live with that. I haven’t seen it yet, but he said he’ll show me tomorrow…fingers crossed. This used to be a good neighbourhood, but the trash just keeps moving closer and closer, and it’s time for us to go. A place like that, away from people and outside town…that would be the best birthday present of all!
