Stop and smell the what?

This week has gone by fast. There is a part of me that is always happy when Friday approaches, yay the weekend! No work!

But the other side of me wants time to slow down. It's moving way too fast and it seems the older I get - the faster it goes. When I was a kid a summer day lasted forever from the time I stepped that first bare foot outdoors, until late in the day when it was approaching darkness and the other kids got called in, and I went home. I never got called in that I recall. The parents of the kids I played with would bellow from their front porches, flash their porch lights, or send a sibling to find a brother or sister. And I always went home when there was no one left to play with. I guess my Mom always knew I'd get there.

Now it seems like the days are over before they begin, kids have grown and are transitioning between being kids and adults when I think I've only recently reconciled with being an adult myself. I'm paying the bills, getting the car fixed, taking the cat with the thyroid disorder and the goopy eye to the vet, and am starting to miss when I don't have any salad fixings or oranges in the house. To me, sugar is a food group so that last bit is strange.

There isn't a way to re-do anything I've done wrong, God knows I have a list. And I've always had trouble living in the moment. It's always been about tomorrow.

But as I sit here thinking about it I realize that tomorrow is here.

And I'm not sure what to do with it.

I will be snug as a bug . . .

It is the eve of one of the most important elections of our time. Many people across this country have voted already, my son being one of them. I will be voting tomorrow. And then I will be going home and watching the election returns into the wee hours of the morning, and I have taken the next day off work to watch it all on TV as well.

What I will not be doing is going downtown to Chicago's Grant Park to get lost in the crowds of Obama supporters. And I wouldn't do it even if I were supporting Obama.

The event has been in the works for the last couple of weeks at least, and the security is supposed to be high. There were invitations emailed out and from what I hear, the people bearing those invitations will need to have a driver's license to identify them as the person the invite was sent to. But they will each be given a "guest" invite as well. Who is going to vouch for them?

Added to the crowds inside the actual event area which will number in the tens of thousands, Mayor Richie Daley has seen fit to encourage everybody to "come on down" and "you don't need a ticket to come out and celebrate!" It's all well and good that he's an ardent Obama supporter, but wouldn't it be a good time for him to recommend a certain amount of caution? I can just imagine the police superintendent cringing when he heard the mayor say that.

I fully understand the gravity of the event and people's desire to be part of history and all, but it seems big crowds celebrate these days by turning over cars and starting things on fire, as evidenced by winning sports teams recently, and the like. Some shop owners near the event will be buttoning up their stores early and heading out of the area "in case anything happens" is how one man put it on the news this morning.

Not liking big crowds anyway, it would be my preference to stay home even if it were my candidate staging an event on such an important evening. And I am hoping that win, lose, or draw (draw? I doubt it) the crowd behaves in a safe and dignified manner. This is a presidential election after all, and not the Super Bowl.

There will be no alcohol served at the event but that does not extend beyond the fences where people may see fit to ward off the chill with a nip or two, or to celebrate with a bottle of something, or three. And I must admit to a bit of trepidation about the whole thing. I sincerely hope that it is a calm and happy crowd and not a rowdy one.

Regardless of my choice of candidates and what I want the outcome to be - I do not want to see anyone get hurt or the evening to be one that is tinged with regret or ugliness on either side. I know there will be gatherings all across the country and after such a long and contentious campaign - I'm kind of hoping people are just too damn tired to party all that hard!

Please be responsible and be safe, everyone.

Spiders, June bugs and memory dumps

So I am up and running again. I did one of those – I’ll wait till later and try to turn it on again, as if waiting 2 hours is going to make a difference. Except it did. Hmmm. My fan has been running loudly and non-stop for a while now. It has been suggested that my laptop is over heating. I guess that’s a possibility.

I vacuumed any vent I could see hoping to suck any dust and or cat hair out of there. Don’t know if that helped or just letting it completely cool down did. The error I’ve gotten twice in the last few days was scary, Windows just shutting down and giving me the blue screen. “Beginning memory dump.” WHAT??? “Memory dump complete.” Argh-h-h. (see Shelagh? Even my computer says it took a dump!!) :)

After that one I did what I would normally do – look the error up on the internet! Found the only real suggestion I could do was a scan disk, essentially, and to load Microsoft’s newest service pack. I was also advised to make sure that anything new I may have installed, is installed properly. Well how am I supposed to know that?

I’ve never seen a program pop up and say “just a friendly note to let you know I’m not installed properly.” No, I get things that say “A disk read error has occurred” Uh huh, what’s that? And when I try ctrl+alt+delete to restart a couple of times, I get another message “No bootable devices – strike F1 … yada yada yada.” And then … No boot device available – internal hard drive ..” It all sounds so bad.

But – it came back up, slowly, told me it had recovered from a serious error which I found absurd but – okay. So I’ve had my computer going down and back up again and giving me strange messages. I had ants in my kitchen today and what I didn’t mention earlier is that I could not get my oven to work and my toaster oven decided to toast only from the bottom now. Yay. How many strikes do you get in one day??

A little while ago I hopped in my car with a raging headache to drop a package at the post office. Leaving the house the wind was starting to gust and I felt a web go across my face as I stepped off the porch. I hate that! You don’t see the spider but you know he’s there. Watching you. Ee-e-w-w. And what was gracing the window next to the door as well as on the screen on the door? Yeah, June bugs. They’re close, it’s getting toward the end of may. They are a lot darker this year for some reason, makes them even creepier.

I may hate the beetles but they make for some good clean fun for Abby, she’d love it if one of them actually got in the house. At least she thinks so. In reality my cats rarely know what to do with a bug other than bat at it till it just gives up and dies and they lose interest. Jake is usually the only one who will actually chase one and eat it.

Click on the picture to better view the bugs. Ick.

Anyway, now I am at my computer – using a chill mat of my son's that he had but had never opened. And really, the bottom of my laptop is much cooler to the touch. So we are alive again, whether or not it is temporary remains to be seen. I’m hoping for a better and more productive day tomorrow without a major headache or computer problems. And ants, I don’t want anymore ants. Blech-h-h.

**Edited to add - Try the daily jigsaw on the right sidebar! I actually have a jigsaw program on my desktop and I find it very relaxing to do one or two now and again, so I had to try this widget when I found it.