I tend to just leave my computer on at night. After an hour of no activity, it goes into “hibernate” mode, so there’s not much energy lost in all of it, and when I get up in the morning, I flick the mouse, and everything’s waiting for me—just as it was when I headed off to bed.
At some point during the night—must have been as I was just drifting off to sleep, I heard this rather strange sound; it sounded like Tweetdeck (my Twitter interface on my computer), however since I knew that it hadn’t been opened when I went to bed (the “tweets” are kind of obnoxious, really, and get pretty irritating if you follow a lot of people), I wrote it off as a cricket in the hallway, or something coming from the kids’ rooms, and just crashed.
This morning, I head to my computer, and find that gremlins must have been playing with it during the night. The “task bar” that’s usually on the bottom of my screen was on the side; my browser, Chrome, had been shut down, but somehow (don’t ask me how) Internet Explorer had been opened (I NEVER use IE) AND all of the tabs that I’d had opened on Chrome had been opened in IE; my Google Reader and Google homepage are HUGE, although the rest of the websites I go to look pretty normal; things were opened (or at least in the first stage of openness) that are password protected. I have two theories about the cause of this, but neither of them make much sense since all of the humans in the house were in bed: 1) Gremlins; 2) one of our cats. One of our cats likes to hang out near my computer when I’m at it, and since the screen is a touch screen, her tail has—on occasion—caused some rather strange blips. Still, the number of things that were opened or changed makes that seem like an odd possibility. But if that’s not what caused it, does anyone have any ideas about exterminating Gremlins?
I’ve been cleaning like crazy this weekend—scrubbing carpets, dusting, vacuuming, etc. I hate housework. I really hate it when we’ve let the mess pile up. Yesterday, I worked on some of the piles in my office…found a favorite pen that I was afraid I’d lost, and some papers that I thought I needed to keep from last winter—I decided that since I hadn’t used them in the intervening time, I didn’t need them, and they’ve found their way to the trash. I’ve got a bit more in the office, and then I’ll be working on mopping, I suppose, today.
The reason for my sudden desire for cleanliness: I’ve got a dozen ladies coming over to my house tomorrow. I think I’ve written before about my affinity for some of the more “mature” ladies in our community—those who are 80+. Most of these ladies are pretty active yet, although a few of them—especially the ones who are sneaking up on (or have passed) 90, are starting to slow down physically, although are still sharp mentally, have slowed down a bit. There is one for whom I have special affection, and she and I (along with a couple of other more seasoned citizens) make a point of going to breakfast every Friday morning, and when she’s not feeling up to driving, I will sometimes drive her to doctors’ appointments, or to the grocery store.
Anyway, this friend, last spring, asked me whether I’d be interested in becoming part of the local Literary Guild. The people that belong (there are a dozen of us) are all ladies whose company I enjoy. One of the other members is closer to my age—maybe a few years younger. The way this group works is this: they meet monthly (but not during the summer), take turns traveling from one members’ house to the other, and a different member does a book review each month (usually, that member is the only person who has read the book). During our closing meeting in May, the sheet was passed around for folks to act as “host” and “reviewer” for the different meetings. Usually, members host one month, and then review in another, but I noticed that there were a few who did both in the same month. I decided to do that—with the idea that I’d get it all out of the way at the same time. Tomorrow is my day…. So, as I clean my house and plot my book review (just like grad school—why prepare in advance? I finished reading the book yesterday), I may be scarce around here today.
LLE
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