November 03, 2005

10:23 p.m.

Before Oswego

Got the call last night, from Dar and Rose at the restaurant. Sounded pretty happy and decadent... lots of noise and clinking. It wasn't her friend Lisa, after all, it was her other friend Sandra, who is also a nurse. That made a lot more sense.

Anyway I went to Rose's today to do laundry. Mike is also out of town, so their friend Randi is taking care of the animals. She arrived shortly after I did, and told me the story of this morning, when both dogs got out through a (new) hole in the (rotting) fence and she spent a great deal of time looking for them all over the neighborhood from the moment she got up, and was late for work. Poor thing. She's a great housesitter with a troubled life, and doesn't deserve inconveniences like that. We found the hole and plugged it up. Monday the fence is being replaced, so we hope this won't happen again, ever!

Also found a 48" spring rod to put across a little storage nook in the living room with a curtain (I LOVE these slanted ceilings and unexpected contours), an outlet cover I needed, some herbal tea, almond oil and shampoo at an overpriced health food store in Rose's town, an inexpensive but serviceable step stool so people can get onto my Reiki table without feeling like they're trying to mount a horse; and finally, on the way home, a little sushi.

My bulk mail software, which goes on the fritz about twice a year, isn't working this month so once again we have to send over 2000 newsletters in tiny batches, through Outlook Express, very slowly so we stay under the radar. This pisses me off, though it's happened enough times that I'm less anxious about it. We need a different software or process for this. The first time it happened I freaked out, but it turned out that I only had to adjust a couple of parameters in the setup. Since then, whenever it's happened, nobody can tell me what's wrong; we call the software company, we do diagnostics, they claim everything is in order. We call the server, they say nothing is wrong on their end. Last time it happened, we did the newsletter in small batches (like Cape Cod potato chips), and the next month it worked as well as ever. Now it's finicky again. Whatever.

I also deeply vacuumed and scrubbed my long kitchen floor. This was overdue. The old linoleum is no longer shiny for the most part; once in a while I put some Mop & Glo on it, but it doesn't last. At least it's clean, though; also vacuumed out dust from the back of the big gas heater.

Such small things to make one so merry. Tomorrow I go to the band's house for rehearsal, and we leave earlyish Saturday for Oswego.