All hail the very generous and thoughtful gabby hon who helped me set up my original notify list at her domain. She has closed her site now, so I've had to scramble for a new patron. Now hail the mighty Ceej Silverio who let me set up my new notify list at spies.com where this little web ring I run called Archipelago resides as well on her forebearance. She is a goddess. My notify list stays advertisement-free, thanks to her.
On top of that, I am a slave for life to Karin Carter (hail! hail!) for offering to let me purchase Microsoft Word 98 using her employee discount at the MS company store. The employee cost was ten percent of the retail value, so you can see I owe her a lifetime of slavish devotion. After I'm done installing it here I'm going to let my parents make an off-site backup copy, ha ha. Then they will be able to read all the attachments their Windows-using friends send them. I don't know if they'll actually use it as a word processing system, though.
I certainly will. All my stuff that has to be proofread gets done in MS Word: articles for magazines, online submissions, school papers, official letters. I do this diary in SimpleText (the technical equivalent of writing it out longhand on a yellow pad using a #2 pencil) which explains the occasional glaring spelling error and HTML bobble. I really mean to sit down with my manual for either NetObject Fusion or GoLive and learn to actually use an HTML editor.
But possibly not this weekend. It's gorgeous out, and I've been in the garden, such as it is, hacking down invasive tendrils of yet another stupid previous owner's choice for greenery. The person who planted these raised beds must not have actually been a gardener or they would never have put in shrubs and vines with a tendancy to turn into trees. No one in their right mind would deliberately plant a rapid grower in a tiny backyard, would they? Whatever this horrible tree-vine is, it's already strangling the 30 year old magnolia next door. I'm going to set it free of this fiendish invader before June is out.
I'll have time because I'm not going anywhere in June, I guess. I traded in my ex-ticket to Las Vegas for a ticket to take a quick weekend jaunt up to Seattle at the end of next month. I'm fulfilling my promise to myself to get to the Pacific Northwest more often now that I'm back on the west coast. I keep thinking I'll go back to Mercer Island to lay some ghosts to rest, but I can't ever be bothered once I'm up there. There're so many friends to visit, and places to go, and sights to see, and I can't honestly recall much of what was so dreadful about the place anymore. I remember being humiliated and desperate in junior high, angry and desperate in high school, and then it was all over and I was free. My ghosts have already been laid to rest, I think. Now it's just one more Seattle suburb, a jewel in the middle of the glittering lake, and I drive past it on the freeway like everyone else.
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