Stunned

I've been on a Terry Pratchett kick lately as far as audio book listening. A few years ago I read a few of the more "outlandish" ones -- Carpe Jugulum, which concentrates on the vampires; Hogfather (probably my favorite of all the ones I've read), which deals with the disappearance of the Hogfather (Discworld's version of Santa Claus) and Death's decision to take his place; Soul Music, which talks about a new kind of music, "music with rocks in."

I had never read (or listened to) any of the Watch-specific books in the Discworld series. The Watch is the Discworld police force, and from what little I knew, I thought those books would be mostly humorous, mostly "Keystone Cops" kind of thing, so oI hadn't taken any notice of them. Then I decided to start listening to some of the more recent books, and started with Going Postal, about the revitalization of the Ankh-Morpork post office, which was wonderful, and The Truth, about the origins of the Ankh-Morpork Times newspaper, both of which were more or less "stand-alone" novels about Discworld without many of the more familiar characters, except in peripheral roles.

And then I was basically out of the ones that I thought would be interesting, but tried The Fifth Elephant, which was about Sam Vimes of the City Watch, and it wasn't like I had expected it to be at all. I loved it. It was darker, more like a detective novel then the comedy I had expected, and when I finished it, I wasn't ready to be finished with Sam Vimes, so I bought Night Watch, which I'm listening to now. Night Watch is very dark, and it involves time travel (I've noticed that almost all of the books I consider my favorites involve time travel), and it's wonderful. I'm very much looking forward to the next Discworld book, Thud, which is also about the Watch and Vimes.

I don't really know how to talk about the disaster in New Orleans, and I'm not sure I should even try. It's just too big, and it's not simple. It's so hard to imagine what it would be like to suddenly lose absolutely everything in your life--your home, your job, your possessions, even your family. To go from living a normal life to suddenly becoming a refugee in your own country with nothing but the scraps of clothing that you were wearing, completely dependent on others for shelter, food, everything.

As I read more and more, though, I see that there is more going on than what we see on the nightly news, the crises that are unfolding in the stadiums where most of the refugees were originally located. There are employers who are trying to locate their employees to reassure them that they will continue to be paid, if only they can find them and figure out how to get the money to them. There are numbers to call to start to arrange for unemployment benefits--if only the phones worked, I suppose. There will be insurance, in many cases, although I doubt if most people living in flood-prone New Orleans have flood insurance, but I heard someone say flood insurance is federal, so maybe. I don't know anything about it.

All I know is that as bad as it is, there is hope.

And that no matter what, there will always be people who take advantage of a bad situation. In New Orleans, just like anywhere else that this kind of disaster could happen, there are people who are taking advantage of the absence of societial pressures, and even presence, and taking whatever they can. Breaking into stores not for the things that they need to survive, like food and water and medicine and clothing, but television sets and stereo equipment. Breaking into banks--although in my experience banks don't exactly just leave money lying around, and you can't generally break into a vault with a wooden club--I guess maybe you could steal a computer or two, but it would be a long walk through the water to find someplace where you could plug it in.

One of the worst things I've heard said is that some people feel that anyone who lives in a place like New Orleans deserves what they get, that they should realize the danger and move. It just isn't that simple. I'm sure that the majority of the people who found themselves still in New Orleans when the hurricane hit didn't choose to stay there. They didn't leave because they either had no car, no money, or no place to go. They didn't choose to stay. They had no choice. When you're working in a low-paying job, or probably, more than one job, you don't just pick up and move somewhere else, somewhere away from your family, somewhere away from where you've lived all your life. It just isn't that simple.

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Widgets

I've sat down several times to write a journal entry, but it seems like every time I get interrupted, or just can't think of anything to say. I've been incredibly busy at work, working until about 7:30 or later every night this week, and by the time I get home, I'm too worn out to do much more than eat something, check my email, and go to bed.

Last night Bob was gone -- today was the first day of dove season, so he spent the night at John's and they got up early and went hunting this morning. (He called and said all the little doves of peace were safe from them today, though, thank goodness. I hate to be glad when he has a bad day hunting, but I really am.) I find it easier to work late when I know he's not at home waiting for me, so I worked until 7:30, and got home about 8:00.

He had made me a double baked potato for my dinner, with bacon and green onions and cheese (actually, he made me two, and I brought one to work for my lunch today), so I stuck that in the oven, and then started installing Mac OS Tiger. I had installed it earlier in the evening at work, and while it was installing I knit a couple of inches on my sweater sleeve. It went pretty easily, the only problem I had was I didn't realize I needed to accept the username it gave me, and I tried to give myself a new one and ended up not being associated with any of my bookmarks, mail, etc., and had to create a new username that was the same as my old one, then delete the other one. It was a panicky few minutes when I didn't have any of my email, but I solved it easily enough.

Also, I couldn't get on the Airport, and I thought maybe the password had been changed and I hadn't been told, but all was fine this morning, so who knows?

I was glad I had installed it first at work, so it wasn't quite as scary doing it at home. Upgrading the OS always makes me nervous, but I've never had a problem with Macs. Upgrading Windows OS was always terrifying, and I can remember having a LOT of problems with that. I guess those feelings will probably never go away.

The only thing that's really different are the "Widgets," and I haven't really had time to explore that yet, although I'm sure I will soon.

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Cheap date

After getting up early on Saturday, I really made up for it on Monday. I haven't been sleeping very well lately for a variety of reasons, from late-night thunderstorms to cats walking on me, but mostly because I tend to have "restless legs," which I've had my whole life. Sometimes it's worse than others, but lately it's been kind of bad, and also one night last week I had one of those horrible leg cramps that require you to jump out of bed and hop around on it, scaring the cats and generally making a fool of youself, but it hurts so bad you don't care.

And this one hurt so bad that now, even three or four days later, the muscle still hurts. So in order to get a good night's sleep Saturday night, I took a pill. Not even a real sleeping pill, but Elavil, which my doctor prescribed to help me sleep on the nights when my legs are bothering me. I think it's actually an anti-anxiety drug, but he said they don't prescribe it much for that because it tends to make you sleepy, and boy, I can attest to that.

I stayed up way too late on Saturday, and by the time I went to bed it was nearly 2:00 a.m. I took the pill about 1:00, went to bed, and didn't surface until nearly noon on Sunday. And even then I could have stayed in bed, but I hated to sleep away the entire day and forced myself to get up. I was groggy for most of the afternoon. I suppose one of the reasons that things like that hit me so hard is that I so seldom take them. Drinking's the same way -- if I have one drink, I'm likely to go home and fall asleep. I'm an extremely cheap date.

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Saturday

The older I get, the more elusive sleep becomes. I can remember when I was living in my first apartment, I would sleep all day on the weekends. I can vividly remember waking up, turning over, and going back to sleep multiple times, and sleeping past noon.

Now it seems if I wake up early in the morning, it's almost impossible for me to go back to sleep. Sometimes I can accomplish it, but less and less. This morning Bob got up early to get ready to go play in a golf tournament, and I dozed while he was showering and dressing, and I tried to go back to sleep after he left, but I just couldn't. What I probably should have done was take a book up to bed with me last night; if I had been able to grab a book off my nightstand and read for a half hour or so in bed, I might have been able to go back to sleep.

It doesn't matter, really, but it just seems like a shame to me to get up at 7:00 on a Saturday, just like I do during the week. Oh well.

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Cloudburst

It started raining hard last night as I was driving home--one minute it was just sprinkling, and the next there was thunder and lightning and rain so heavy that I thought I was going to have to pull off the highway and wait it out, except that it was raining so hard that I was afraid to try to change lanes. It was coming down so fast that it didn't have time to go anywhere, so I was also driving through huge puddles, afraid that I'd hydroplane, or that the water would get up into the engine and flood the car.

But nothing happened, and I got home safely. I went out again to pick up Chinese food, and the sky looked like this:

It's been raining pretty much non-stop today, too. It was sunny in the morning, but by the time I decided to leave the house, around noon, it had clouded up and started sprinkling. I stopped at Panera Bread for something to eat, and while I was in there it started raining about as hard as it had last night, so hard that if I had walked outside to get to the car, I would have been drenched. I got a cookie and another cup of tea and waited it out, then dashed to the car when there was a short break in the rain.

The next stop was the bookstore, and I ended up staying in there longer than I had intended, too, because the clouds opened up again and I didn't feel like splashing my way to the car, although this time I did take the umbrella in.

So I really didn't get much done, but I didn't have much on my list anyway, so it worked out okay.

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