But I can't get online... the modem line is out. The box must've gotten wet again. I've complained to the phone people about this before, but they've never done anything. Come to think of it, the access to the 'net was very slow last night after 01:30, it was probably starting to happen then, getting a lot of interference.

Karen and I had a nice evening last night, we went to the dairy queen and got hot fudge sundaes and sat and talked. Kim is supposed to be making a "decision" very soon, we might have the house to ourselves for a short period...

A Short Period? Yeah, Tyler said that he might come up for a while after the middle of July; he didn't come with JD this last time, and I'm looking forward to seeing him. Getting to spend a great part of last summer with him was just great, I'm looking forward to doing that again.

JD has also mentioned relocating up here, and I wish that he could. It would be so nice to see the boys on a more regular basis. I've always been jealous of Karen and her easy access to her kids.

Although I don't really expect that JD or Tyler will be staying here (at the house) for an extended period of time, they've both become independent. Of course, I thought that about Kim, too. <G>

Speaking of whom, she almost got a big su prise a few moments ago... I went up to get coffee, and I thought that I'd see if Karen was up. The bathroom light was on, and so was the radio, and someone was in the shower.

I normally try to sneak up on Karen in the shower... it's the voyager in me... throw back the curtain and give her a kiss and maybe more... but this time I hesitated, and decided that I'd better check our bedroom.

And there Karen was... still in bed with the cat Trouble, thinking about getting up. She was almost awakened by Kim's screams, it was that close....

Kim is a pretty personal person, she doesn't even voluntarily hug people. Catching her naked in the shower (I assume that she takes her showers naked) would have been very traumatic for her, and therefore for me. I don't know why I hesitated this morning...

Karen and I are going to her High School Reunion in Parsons this next weekend, and I'm really looking forward to that. We'll be staying with her best friend Vicky and her husband, and there will be several other grads staying at their house too, so even that part should be interesting. I've been to two of her reunions, and it's been fun both times. We missed the last one, Karen had just had her gall bladder taken out and wasn't feeling as well as she expected to...

So, I have another two-day work week coming up. I like that in a work week... two ten-hour nights is just about right. If I won a million dollars, I would go on a schedule like that.

Speaking of which... that's kinda the answer for this this month's collaboration question.... so you'll have to wait for the full-blown answer until the official date.

A shot of my messy room.

As some of you may have noticed, there was a blurb for Ginkgo in yesterday's entry, and I will repeat it again today and for the next week. This is Ginkgo Week in some parts of the journalling community... most parts. Ginkgo has a very fine site with lots of original grafix and really heart-felt journal entries. She's one of my favorite daily reads, and a bunch of us (I was a johnnie-come-lately) have decided to celebrate her this week. She is a very creative and warmhearted person... go visit her site.

I spent much time online yesterday trying to figger out why my guestbook doesn't work, and why my mail-list doesn't work, and why lots of things on this site don't work. I have decided that I am ignorant, and I will attempt to remedy that situation.

I really seem to have trouble reading instructions on software... I just like to jump in and get started. If something doesn't work, I like to try to get it to work unaided. It must be an ego thing... I can fix anything. And actually, I'm right... it's just that it takes a lot of time, and I'm really selfish that way. I want to have fun all of the time, and reading software instructions... just ain't that much fun. Sometime, though, it's necessary. I've screwed around just about enough with the stuff on nilknarf.net to know when to quit.

I need to develop more follow-through. Many projects I will get 3//4 of the way done and lose interest in them... like cabinetry, which I used to do a lot of. I love working with wood, putting it together in interesting ways. But I hate the final step... the finishing. And I almost always do a sloppy job of it. Same with everything else in my life that isn't work-related.

So that means that I need to go outside and dry the phone box out if I want to get online. OK, I'll do that.

Access! I need ACCESS NOW!

Lacee was still asleep when Kim and Karen left, so they asked me to take her to the sitters' when she woke up. However, she is rather uncommunicative when she wakes up, sometimes for an hour or so. Definitely not a morning person.

So, sometime along in there, her waking-up-time, she decided that she didn't want to go to the sitters' anyway, but stay home and have a "lazy day". Since I was just going to be on this machine all day anyway, I agreed and called Karen and she made arrangements with the babysitter and Kim. So I kinda got to spend the day with Lacee.

We went to the bank, then later she got hungry again (yes, I did feed her breakfast!) and we went to McDonalds. She wanted to play on the playground that they have, of course. During the course of her play, I was sitting outside smoking and she came up to me with a mischevious look in her eye.

"Grampa, what's your favorite store?"

I told her that I didn't have one, and she reminded me that hers was Target, conveniently just right down the street!

I didn't bite on that one, though. It was a sure set-up. So I told her that Grandma was going to have to go to Target tonight anyway, maybe she could go then. And she was all right with that, thankfully.

And I have spent the day trying to do stuff, and I haven't been able to get anything done anyway, but I've learned a lot about servers and CGI. But I'm really getting tired of sitting here, I need to get out and do something!

O'yeah... I still haven't gotten that damned nilky-l notify list to work... sorry, I'm still workin' on it...