Excuses, Excuses, and More Excuses

It’s been a hectic, if rather non-productive, week here at In a Dark Time. Luckily, there were more good reasons for being busy than negative ones, though it didn’t always feel that way.

We had some glorious weather here in the Pacific Northwest with crisp, yet sunny days. I’ve lived in the rainy northwest far too long to let such days go by without getting out and taking advantage of them. I took some of the longest walks I’ve taken since moving here to Tacoma.

I also got more chances than usual to spend time with kids and grandkids. Dawn had me over for dinner Monday to celebrate Veterans Day, and she came over with Gavin last night and we spent the night making hum bow, a delicious, if time-consuming, treat. Dawn’s pregnant and has been craving them since before Halloween, so it was great to send her home with an extra dozen after dinner.

Not all went quite so well this week, however. I found out why I’ve spent much time telling kids they couldn’t have drinks around my computer keyboard. Turns out that coffee is also a drink. I discovered it’s harmful effects the next day when the computer started doing strange things. At first, I blamed it on the new OS X update, but then I remembered that I had spilled coffee on the keyboard the night before. When the keyboard wouldn’t run at all, no matter what system I was running, I began to suspect it wasn’t the newly updated system. I finally knew it had to be the keyboard when it started typing the number repeatedly until I shut down the whole system.

My first thought was to simply replace the keyboard. After checking prices, I decided that perhaps I would try to fix my old keyboard first. Needless to say, repairs did not go smoothly. After finding and sorting through three different sets of metric and American allen wrench sets, I still was unable to find one small enough to turn the screws on the Apple keyboard. After a trip to Radio Shack, I’m the proud owner of 17 new allen wrenches that I’ll never need again. Still, by the end of long day my keyboard seemed to be working better than ever, and I had also scooped out several month’s accumulation of long, silver hair (either mine or Skye’s) from under the keys.

Finally, I’ve been fighting a flare up with my back. Surprisingly, it turns out that bending over an inverted keyboard half of the day doesn’t really help your back much. As a result, I’ve returned to my back exercises, roughly the equivalent of shutting the barn door. It’s helped, but it, too, has eaten into my time.

I’m sure the long walks would help my back more if Skye didn’t feel like he had to defend me from every dog that appears within two hundred yards. Unfortunately, the sun brought out more walkers than usual and I’ve had to drag him away from more dogs than usual. If the damn mutt wasn’t so loyal and so enthusiastic when I headed out the door I’d leave him home.

Finally, I had some problems writing this week’s environmental article for Open Source Politics which should be posted on Sunday as usual. Of course, I knew when I took on the obligation that it would cut into my writing here, but sometimes your conscience drives you to do things you know you’ll regret. The article was due today and I finally finished my article late in the morning and then, and only then, took off for the day’s walk.

Depending on what’s on TV tonight, and what we’re doing for dinner, I’m hoping to write one or two more entries on Kunitz this weekend.

2 thoughts on “Excuses, Excuses, and More Excuses”

  1. Ouch on keyboard and back, but great on weather and walks. Pics?

    Odd coincidence with your poem this week, but we had a flock of robins come by today. I’m writing on them, and will include reference to your poem. But I also fell in love with Sara Teasdale’s There will come soft rains. Poets.org mentioned that it was a war poem, and my reaction was: which war?

  2. Taking pictures in old growth forests has never been particularly satisfactory to me, so generally I haven’t dragged my camera along.

    Besides that, having a dog constantly pulling on the leash is is more conducive to walking fast than it is to getting calm, reflective pictures.

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