Karen woke me up this morning to tell me that she was taking the pickup to work... the battery was dead on the Caddy.

We had had a problem yesterday with the radio aerial not extending/retracting properly... I think that it got cold. I thought that I had it fixed, but I guess not. It spent all night in the garage, trying to get that damned aerial to retract enough to shut itself off. It never succeeded in it's mission, but it did run the battery down.

Karen and I went out to Applebee's to eat last night, but mostly to be able to talk without distraction. With the home situation being what it is, our relationship has been degrading, and not prettily, either. Don't get me wrong on this... I love Kim, and I love the kids... I love being able to see them every day.

But I miss being able to spend massive amounts of time alone with Karen... even if she is in front of the TeeVee and I'm in front of this keyboard. Both of us are... edgier, I guess is the word... each of us a lot more likely to misunderstand the other, and to take offence.

Back to practical matters... not that that isn't... but I really don't like the time it takes my splash page to load. But I love the way that it looks. One shouldn't fall in love with one's own creation... just in case it turns out to be a piece of shit.

OK, it was, and now it isn't. Or, if it is, it's not a piece of shit that takes a long time to load. It isn't very pretty, but it is practical, which is what's necessary, I guess.

I think that I'm gonna like the pic-o'-the-day; at least I will be forced to smile once a day! Or maybe not, we'll see...

Right now, I'm just going with straight pix; I will branch out in the near future, as I develop my artistic talents and expertise with PhotoShop...

And now it begins: I need to go to sleep so I can get to work tonight. And I'm not the least bit sleepy. My perennial problem. If I had some whisky, and drank it, I could go to sleep... of course, it would fuck up the rest of my life, so I wouldn't...

Later... I remembered that I forgot to send out a reminder to my reminder list, so I thought I would say some more stuff before I did that...

Kim was sick today and stayed home... got some kinda flu or sinusitis or something. I got up around 08:00 and was working on the computer when I heard some stuff that didn't sound like the cats... I thought it must be a burglar, but it was Kim getting up. Lacee was sick yesterday, sore throat and what looked like to me to be an inflamed right eardrum, but Kim took her in last night and they said that her ears were OK and gave her Motrin, which helped her a lot.

Karen is having to work way too hard. She is almost always grouchy when she comes home anymore. She is now on the phones six out of seven days, and being on the phone at BC/BS in customer service is hell. They have some sort of system to analyse the calls, allowing like three minutes per customer or something ridiculous like that. Beyond that, they get gigged for not making quota. And they also have mandatory overtime, because there is such a backlog of stuff that can't get done. They seem to have cycles... they don't have enough people, too much work... then they hire too many people, not enough work... then they cut hours, people quit... repeat ad infinitum. They just can't get it right.

I did get some sleep this afternoon, about three hours; enough to see me through the night, anyway...

More tomorrow....