Recently in The DL Category

So Sheaness took a boat load of honors classes this year, her freshman year in high school.

And finished the year with all A's. And was Cadet of the Year in ROTC. And had the highest GPA of any freshman cadet. And was the color guard commander most of the year. And made a ton of friends. (Who know that if they have a question regarding Spanish, or military history, Sheaness will have the answer.)

We're calling it a success.

I don't know what I did in life to deserve her. But the other day, during one of our ice-cream chats, my 14 1/2 year old daughter looked me in the eye and said, "Mommy you have had a huge impact on my life."

Cried right into my ice cream. Tasted infinitely better with those few salty tears.

In other news, 40 days to Dave in DC. Still dateless. But I am confident Karma is on the clock.

I gave up on the Cupid thing. But kudos to people who have the fortitude to stick it out. Not for me.

Time now to get moving. Much to do today. Birthday to celebrate. Buttons to push. Dave tonight from Bonnaroo.

in the church of the porch of the queen this morning, I'm thankful.

For my incredible Sheaness.
For my beautiful family.
For Dave Matthews.
For vampires.

Sod, plus rain, plus diligence, plus sunshine, plus soulshine equals happy birthday to me.

So I've had on my electronic DL for some time to combine two external hard drives I have.

It was a potentially painstaking task. For the simple reason that my laptop is that of a road warrior.

The USB drives, not high-speed to start with because the laptop is over two years old, only work when they feel like it. And rarely does one work if there is another one plugged in also. The USB ports apparently have some personal space issues.

So if it ever came time to move lots of files, they all went through an intermediate location on my hard drive.

And then one day, yesterday, in fact, I hear a delivery truck out front, and go to the door. The FedEx guy is there with a box.

It's a brand-spanking new 64-bit R400. Which I am to use to test some images. But there isn't anything stopping me from borrowing those two functional USB ports for, oh, 15 minutes. A fraction of the time it would have taken me to get ONE folder moved to the intermediate location on my laptop.

Dear personal laptop: I have never complained about you. Apart from spilling coffee in you twice, I have always taken good care of you and defragged you often, and mostly shut you down when I was supposed to. Except for two weeks ago when I accidently set you in a very small puddle of water, you have ALWAYS done everything I've asked you to do. And really, the puddle? My bad. I don't blame you for the several hour work stoppage.

And due to my sometimes poor electronic media management habits, I know I abuse your USB drives. I don't blame you a bit for your odd little quirks. I know the six or seven times you have slid off something and landed on a plugged in USB drive probably haven't felt good either.

Many of your keys are faded. There are two permanent scars on your space bar from my thumbs. Cause you know I like to type. The oils from my skin have long since worn one of your stickers off, and moved another one into an unnatural position near the left mouse button on the touch pad. Which, sadly, has also quit working.

I still haven't complained. When the external mouse I got quit working due to your USB issues, I taught myself to use the left mouse button above the other left mouse button.

So please, dear laptop, don't be jealous of that, uh, bigger brighter, substantially faster, and highly-unlikely to leave a pile of dust if one tips it over 64-bit machine over there.

It's not even going to get my wireless network key. It means nothing to me. In four minutes when it's done consolidating 30 gigabytes of data, I'm going to leave it some money on the nightstand and forget about it. Okay?

We good?

Cause it's done. I can mark the task off my list.

The forecast said only 20% but scattered thunderstorms were possible. I failed to notice the part where it said 100% humidity. And because I was sitting under my outdoor ceiling fan when I checked the weather I was a bit oblivious.

So I got out the mower and the bag and set off for the front yard. Made about three passes before I started to melt. Fortunately the amount of lawn in my front yard is small. And the city picks up absolutely anything one leaves at the curb, including grass and leaves, so dumping the bag is easy. Actually the whole thing is easy. Thirty minutes, maximum of four trips to dump the grass.

My brother built his wife a new sauna. Push mowing the yard I figure has much the same effect. Plus, despite my melting, I enjoy it.

And as long as the rain holds off, I will continue to enjoy my multitude of yard projects.

Plus, I got up early this morning and got five of my expense reports and my time sheet submitted. I feel like Rocky at the top of the steps when I hit SUBMIT that many times in a row. I don't know why I dread doing them so much when they are as easy as they are.

The sweat has stopped running down my face. For the moment anyway, I've stopped below the ceiling fan on the porch.

As I believe I mentioned on either Twitter or FB, I've got five weeks off starting this Friday. Three of those weeks are compliments of a sabbatical program at work, and two are regular vacation.

There's lots of sweat dripping in my near future.

And rock raking.

Somewhere in the very near future I need to learn enough Italian to get Shea and I around Rome.

We're still only at a third of our arbitrary budget.

Speaking of Sheaness.