Thursday, January 29, 2009

A good week

Yep, it's been a good week. I guess we could start counting back when we met the Funkles for dinner on Friday night. It's been since NYE 2007/2008 that we were all together. We had so much fun, and I absolutely don't want to wait that long again.

I finished Love in the Time of Cholera. Meh. It is beautifully written, but I just never cared about the characters. Some quotes are at the bottom of this post, though.

What else?

Oh, I slayed the email beast this week - knocking out the 177 unread messages that were in my inbox on Monday, along with 38 in my action folder, and almost all the ones that were coming in during the week. As of my leaving work today, there were 13 emails in the action folder and zero in the inbox. Woo hoo!

And finally, only one more day of work before we go on vacation for a full week, and a whole new batch of emails populate my computer. But at least I'm not starting out behind.


From the book:
"He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past."

"She had barely turned the corner into maturity, free at last of illusions, when she began to detect the disillusionment of never having been what she had dreamed of being when she was young."

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Just a Spare

A lovely image greeted me this morning when I let Millie in.



The neighbor's tree missed only one board in that particular section of our fence. The wind and rain combined to uproot the thing and drop it right across our back yard. What's amazing is that it missed the swing entirely (thank goodness), and even the chairs escaped damage. We're also very lucky it was that thin little (though tall) poplar, instead of one of the massive pine trees that surround our house.

Honestly, I'm not even sure when this tree came down, though it must have been last night. We didn't hear a thing, but I can't imagine I would have missed that all day yesterday.




We're also lucky that Millie no longer feels the need to wander about, because she was out for a while this morning. I don't look into the back yard when I put her out - just open the door and let her go. It's usually dark, anyway. But when I went to the back door to let her in, there she was running around the yard - and that's when I spotted the tree.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Goodbye Versatile Video

After 28 years of business, Versatile Video is closing its doors. The owner, Chuck, is retiring. It was a wonderful place to patronize and to work.



Versatile Video was my second "real" job. I started there when I was 16 years old, and worked through high school and even on Christmas, spring break, and summers until I was out of college. It was a fantastic job. An independent video store, we had an amazing array of regular customers. Mr. Jenson comes to mind, mainly. He'd stop by to rent about five movies for the weekend after he'd gotten his peanut butter and 10 loaves of bread to feed the raccoons and possums in his backyard.

VV employees were responsible for my first hangover - because of which I had to call in sick to work. Is that irony?