Road Apples, #12

It's Sunday Morning
Time for my usual Sunday rituals of cleaning, taking my mother shopping, etc. Like most rituals, I'm afraid the meaning behind most of what I do is long gone, leaving only the basic actions left. That's okay I suppose, as we all need a little order in our lives.

The Warm Up
It looks like thing are actually going to warm up a bit here. The past two morning were brutal for Northeastern Pennsylvania, with my thermometer reading -4 degrees Saturday morning. The day yesterday did warm up quite a bit though, climbing to the upper teens. At the moment it's balmy 20 degrees outside, a veritable heatwave.

Fingers Not Cooperating Fully
I'm having trouble typing this morning, and I'm not sure why. I learned how to type "old school", on manual and electric typewriters, so my fingers are always on the home row keys and I never look at my fingers as I type. As for speed, I can do probably about sixty words a minute when at a decent clip, which doesn't describe this morning by any stretch. Not sure why I'm having the problem. My hands are operating fine...no stillness, not too cold, etc., so I'm thinking that the problem is somewhere in the connection between my fingers and my brain. Sounds heady, does it not?

Off Monday and Tuesday
Our office is closed on Monday in observance of Dr Martin Luther King Day, and I took Tuesday off. I'm hoping to get some massive doses of motivation to get started on the basement re-wiring, even it's only planning what I want to do. What is that? Well, I want to replace all of the existing standard light fixtures with fluorescent tube fixtures, and run two additional switches for lighting in little-used parts of the basement. I also want to wire a new outlet for a soon-to-be purchased new freezer for the basement (we already have a refrigerator/freezer in the basement, but it's grossly inefficient). All of that will be on it's own, dedicated circuit. After that work is done and the basement has better lighting, I'll take out the old fixtures, take out the old wiring, and box the ends where I have something live that needs to remain. Oh, and I'll also consolidate the house cabling into one spot, like I did for the house phone wiring. Currently the cable comes in and snakes over to a power booster and then splits off into different directions. I want to move the booster over to where the phone panel is and re-organize all of the wiring.

All of the above is my idea of "fun". No wonder I have issues with relating to other human beings.

On The Geek Front
I watched the new episode of Battlestar Galactica twice over the past few days: once on Friday night (on our HDTV no less) and once on-line last night. It did not disappoint. There is one scene where a character is acting happy but deep down inside is distraught over recent events and, when she is in her quarters and the last person in there with her leaves, she quickly pulls out a gun and kills herself. Now you need to know something of the plot to understand why she did this, but what's so great about the show is the edginess about it; you simply wouldn't see something like that on most TV shows. What was also remarkable was the amount of sorrow the suicide caused to a few of the main characters. Edward James Olmos, who plays Admiral Adama, is just terrific. He needs to win a Emmy for his work on the series.


Okay, there is snow that needs to be shoveled, cat crap that needs to be removed from litter pans and other assorted things that seemingly require my own unqiue talents (or so I tell myself), so it's time to stop creatively loafing and time to get going.