June 20, 2006

This evening I made the trek to Syracuse on one of my computer excursions, this time the lucky family member was my mother.

My mom has been cranking along on an old Pentium II running Windows ME with a dial-up connection for a long while. I told her enough is enough and it was time to upgrade, so tonight I installed a respectable refurbished Pentium 4 we had found for her at a great price and it came with Windows XP Professional pre-installed. I’ve been getting it ready for her over the past couple of weeks, installing anti-virus and Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird for web browsing and e-mail. She picked up a Roadrunner DIY high speed connection kit so tonight was pretty easy as far as dabbling in computer land goes. With the right tools, Microsoft Windows XP can be pretty acceptable.

We took the opportunity to go to dinner beforehand with my sister and her boyfriend and his little toddler of a son. It was all good. We went to a restaurant called “Plainville Turkey Farms” where they serve, well, turkey. I ate entirely too much at the buffet, especially since I had worn a pair of my “really skinny” shorts on purpose to keep my food consumption in check. I did manage to make it through the evening without my pants exploding off of me, so I guess I did show a small bit of control.

One of the nice things about living a little bit of a distance away from my relatives is that it makes getting together that much more special. It’s a shame that Earl couldn’t join us tonight because of work obligations. My sister told me that she’s caught up on my blog and that she skips over the parts when I rant about the president, since she already knows how I feel about that subject. See? I have a big mouth in person too.

So now I’m online and I see Mom is logged into several different instant messaging clients. I guess I need to keep my clothes on if I’m going to use the webcam.

As I was crossing the street from my office building to the municipal lot we use, I was formulating an absolutely brilliant blog entry in my head. I was mentally grabbing a clump of ideas, scattered amongst the organized chaos that floats around my gray matter on a minute by minute basic, and I was just putting these clumps together into a dialog that would be witty, spontaneous sounding, engaging and entertaining. I was so impressed with this blog entry that I was actually chuckling to myself, as I often just crack myself up, being zany and all.

Apparently this superb blog entry floated right out of my head because I have absolutely no idea what I was going to write about. No sir, as I sit in front of my PowerBook, I have not one shred of a clue as to what I was going to write about.

Could it be that I was distracted by the construction workers working on the theatre across the street? Did I get sidetracked when I listened to “Fresh Air” on NPR while driving home? Is it because I’m feeling cocky today?

That’s it! I was feeling cocky! When I got to the parking lot, there were two young guys checking out my Acura. I don’t think they were going to steal it or anything; they had that look that guys get when they admire a vehicle. It’s not quite the same as the look straight men get when they look at a well endowed chest, but it’s close. They have an eye for appreciation, just two steps back from salivation, and they are just wishing they can just put their hands on it and call it their own.

Not to be a braggart but “it’s mine, it’s mine, it’s miiiiiiiiiiiine!”

I love my car.

As they saw me walking up to the car, they nodded their head in approval as they walked away. I noticed the older of the two was rather handsome with his beard sans mustache. He had a cocky air about him that I appreciate.

I nodded back with a hint of a smile. I feel cocky today too.