It’s earth day today. I’d be happier if the trees were not having sex in my nose.

I worked from home yesterday and took an amazing amount of antihistamines. The green building where I work is bad enough. I sort of sneezed my way through Monday. Besides I had a bunch of headbanging changes to make in a help file, mostly search and replace, that I could easily do from home, so I did.

Around 6:15 I left for the JOFcon meeting at the Doubletree. Traffic was terrible. And most wuz dumber than me, and worse drivers too. Some of you suburbanites really oughta take the bus!

One of my harddrives was filling up, so I bought a bigger one. Yesterday, a beautiful day in High Hay Fever Season, or spring as some of you call it, I decided to switch out one of the smaller drives for the big new one. Of course, I didn’t know which drive was the one I wanted to switch, so I started at the bottom and worked my way up the three cages with three drives each. This involves unplugging the cables from the back and taking both sides off the case. While I was doing it, I brought up the air compressor from the basement and blew off the cages and the fans and heat sinks in the case. I wrote down the order and serial numbers of the drives and took pictures of them (in case I can’t read my writing, dontchaknow). Of course, the drive I wanted to switch out was in the last cage, but I found it and performed the switch. One more of the power supply SATA connector decided it really didn’t want to hold on to the plastic sheath, which I had wondered what it was as I blew out the case and it drifted in the clouds of dust. The power supply has a gazillion cables, most of which are coiled in the bottom of the case because I don’t need them (it’s called too cheap to buy modular power supplies), so I just dug out one more Molex to SATA connector and plugged it in, only to notice a Molex to two SATA connector that I already had in the case.

By the time I was done, the dust in the room was thick, so I ran around with the vacuum cleaner, ran the air compressor back to the basement, and showered. By the time I was done, besides feeling like I’d been sitting on the floor for too long, the clouds had started to come in and the day to cool.

Today, Sunday, it’s cloudy and raining off and one. It started raining last night, and it looks like a cool week. The scilla are blooming, along with a few surviving crocus and the hyacinths. The scilla have taken over much of the back yard, and a few isolated bulbs in the front, which I wish they’d spread. I looked up to see if you can buy scilla seed, but could not find it. I did find that they’re considered invasive, which I considered surprising. We don’t have that many early spring flowers that I know of, and their season of glory is quite short.

Second brekkies today was spun duck. It has to spin early to turn into pho by tonight. With boiled watercress, which is quite cheap at the Asian stores, and taters. The watercress has a bitter taste, packed with nutrients, and makes a great spring veggie.

For brekkies. Roast duck, gulf shrimp from the Shrimp Truck, rice noodles, green onion, grated scotch bonnet pepper, NaCl. Picture’s still on my camera.

Would B&K like the Castles of Burgundy? It’s on sale today. (I think it fits into my “Too Many Parts” game list.)

I can see too many link icons! Originally, there wuz none. Now there’s too many.

I first heard this song from Ann Mayo Muir on And So Will We Yet

Past Caring
Henry Lawson

Well, up and down the sidling brown the great black crows are flyin’
And just below the spur I know another milker’s dyin’.
The crops have withered from the ground, the tank’s clay bed is glarin’
Yet from my heart no tear or sound for I have grown past carin’.

Through death and trouble, turn about, through hopeless desolation,
Through flood and fever, fire and drought, through slavery and starvation,
Through childbirth, sickness, hurt and blight, through loneliness and scarin,
From being left alone at night I have grown to be past carin’.

Our first child took in days like these a cruel week in dyin’,
All day upon her father’s knees or on my breast a-lyin’.
The tears we shed, the prayers we said were awful, wild, despairin’
I’ve pulled three through and buried two since then, and I am past carin’.

‘Twas ten years first, then came the worst, all for a barren clearin’,
I thought, I thought my heart would burst when first my man went shearin’.
He’s drovin’ in the great North West; I don’t know how he’s farin’,
And I, the girl who loved him best, have grown to be past carin’.

My eyes are dry, I cannot cry, I have no heart for breakin’,
Where it was in days gone by is empty dull and achin’.
My last boy ran away from me; I know my temper’s wearin’,
But now I only wish to be beyond all signs of carin’.
Past bothering, past carin’, past feeling and despairin’,
And now I only wish to be beyond all signs of carin’.

Martyn Wyndham-Read sings Past Carin’
music Steve Ashley / Phyl Lobl

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