I learned several things today. 1. I just found out that you could automatically {07:20 27/11/96} time and date stamp with notepad and wordpad. Cool.

and 2. I can do animations! In spite of what it says down later in this entry. (I'm writing this later, obviously). 'Cause Willa put some fire in her journal yesterday. I gotta learn how to do that. (I did) I got all the stuff to do it with, just lacking the inspiration. (I got that too!) I think that it's the drugs. Yeah, that's it. Codeine always does that to me, and I always forget about it until it happens again. Duh. Good! Now I don't have to feel so worthless.

Not to worry... I'm not going to put an animated graphic on every page... just every little once in a while. Now that I know how to do it, I'll have to devote a whole page to it some day. It is very labor-intensive, though. And brain-taxing. I'm not going to do a bunch of it...

I went to bed at 20:00 last night, got up at 03:00 this morning. Tried to get back to sleep with no luck. I gotta get another five or six hours today or I will be completely shot by tomorrow AM after 16 hours working.

To start off with, I'm gonna make a pot of decafe. I haven't been drinking nearly enough fluids, a couple pots of decafe should help out with that.

A nice little article in the Topeka paper this morning, about a young girl who died of cancer, and how her friends "kept her from thinking about dying". Gee, that's what friends are for, isn't it? Creating diversions, so that we don't think about our own mortality? I'm not trying to make light of this situation... the girl was 14 or so... and it seems like people forget what friendship is about so often. Especially in a situation where someone is dying. I can think of several instances in years gone by where I avoided friends who were dying, just because it made me uncomfortable. How selfish I was! The question was, should I be uncomfortable, or should I try to comfort a friend who was dying? Easy way out... ignore the situation, don't go to the funeral, try to forget the whole thing. Try not to make friends who might die.

Don't get another dog, you might outlive it, and have to have it put to sleep.

This is getting much too deep.

Karen left this morning and stopped to pick up Packy to take him to school. Kim is off today, so Karen was being nice so she could sleep in. Well, she turned off the van and went inside, got Packy and then the van wouldn't start again. This happened several times last year... it doesn't have enough time to warm up before it's turned off and the choke goes out and if it doesn't start with the first turn-over, it floods. So I had to get dressed and take Packy to school and Karen to work. Most likely the van will start up OK in an hour or so, Kim has the keys for it, since it's parked behind her car.

10:49: Time to try to get some sleep. Lisa stayed here last night; she will be going to Iowa with her folks for thanxgiving, then she'll be here permanently (on a temporary basis). Right now, she's making fudge...

More tomorrow...