Jenny got a new Powerbook and I spent a few hours yesterday helping her move files over and set it up. It’s a damn nice machine. I’m impressed by the power brick, prosaic as that may seem–it’s clear that a lot of thought went into the design. The prongs fold out of the way for transport, and can pop off to be replaced by a special extension cord (in case you can’t squeeze the brick onto your outlet strip). It has little tabs that fold out for wrapping up the cord. It’s a small rounded square, sleek and white, like an iBook.

Migrating the files from one machine to the other wasn’t as simple as it should have been, because the old machine kept locking up during the file-transfer process. Very mysterious. We wound up compressing batches of files, uploading them to the net, and then downloading them. Sounds silly, but it works, and wasn’t any slower than doing it over the improvised LAN.

Got my property-tax bill today. Over $5100. I don’t have that much in the bank, or in outstanding invoices. I don’t know how the hell I’ll pay it. I also don’t feel like I’m getting good value for my money, though as Will Rogers once said “it’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.”

Nuts!

One of the consequences of a heavy rainstorm this time of year is a nut-storm. There are three big pecan trees on my property, and this year, they were heavily laden with nuts. Not anymore. They mostly got knocked off by the incredible rainstorm we had last night. My back deck was so covered with nuts this morning that I had to thread my way across it lest I crush several nuts with each step. Just gathering up nuts that were in the way of foot-traffic, I filled half a shopping bag. That’s a lot of nuts.

What’s really weird is the distribution of nuts in the backyard. Have you ever walked by a creek that had risen and then subsided, leaving a line of debris where it was highest? That’s what it was like in my yard: there was a ring with an unbelievably high concentration of nuts around the yard; in the middle of the yard, which is a little lower, not so many nuts. Makes it easier to gather ’em up.

Well. A two-party night. At Opal Divine’s, there was a little get-together (not so little, as it turned out) to congratulate Phil on his 3:28 finish in the NYC Marathon. Pretty darned good, especially considering it was his first marathon.

Then there was a party at Debbie’s. There was fire, but I just wasn’t quite feeling up to spinning fire, so I went as a civilian. That was cool. I still had fun. It was a nice change of pace to go without any expectation of performing.

Was hungry afterwards, so I stopped at the Denny’s on the I-35 feeder. Sat at the counter and waited. And waited. A group of Indian 20-somethings came in, the women lavishly dolled up in very ornate saris, etc. That was kind of neat. After a few minutes, I got impatient at the lack of service, and left. Went to Star Seeds instead, which is a much more suitable venue for late-night noshing.

Spoke with my sister Lissy tonight. She told me that she and a friend of hers both find Donald Rumsfeld to be (and I believe this is an exact quote) “totally hot.”I told her that as a single guy of about her age, I found this news to be less than encouraging, vis a vis my own dating prospects.

Oh yeah. This is my inaugural blog. Let’s see how it goes.