Last week a series of events conspired against my posting. Perhaps I should take this as a sign that my writing is trivial. Ha, like a little thing like that would get me to shut up!
I started a yoga class twice a week, on Monday and Wednesday mornings, which takes away from my word-letting first thing in the morning on those days. Also last Tuesday, instead of coming to campus I had to go on a half-day research cruise into Santa Monica Bay. I do this once a month. Those days require that I leave the house at 5:45 a.m. in order to get to the dock in plenty of time. I’m always the first one there, which is far more acceptable to me than being last. We leave the dock at 7:00, motor out to a mooring site that’s nearly due south of Pepperdine, collect water samples for a couple hours, then motor back. I bring our samples back to the lab by 1:00 p.m. or so, then the lab tech and I filter water all afternoon. Afterward I go home and crash from exhaustion, induced by seasick prevention medication. Sometimes we see marine life out there, which makes the trip more enjoyable. Otherwise, if it’s a nice day, it’s not bad to be out there but if it’s cold and bumpy, it’s not much fun at all.
Those are my excuses for Monday through Wednesday last week. The rest of my excuses are good ones too. Wednesday night I came down with the stomach flu. Again. I had it in September. Not fair. I tend to think if I’m ill, I’ve done something wrong. For example, maybe I’m working too hard and need to slow the pace. I don’t think this is the case. I think that if you’re in a place like a university where you accidently contact random people nearly every day, you’re going to catch whatever is going around. Yuck. By Friday afternoon I was better and Saturday, I felt fairly normal.
My final excuse is that our internet service at home is in transition. This has been a nightmare actually. MSN doesn’t offer DSL in our area any more so we switched to Yahoo, per their suggestion. Fine. Except Yahoo requires more memory than our computer has. Fine. We bought a new memory card from Fry’s…only after hours with various unhelpful tech support people did we find out that our computer (Compaq) doesn’t have upgradable memory. So we’re stuck with the RAM they gave us. Even though we installed a 128 MB RAM card, the computer will only recognize 48 MB of it. So no we’re thinking of getting another mother board. I’ve been asking myself whether having internet at home is worth it. I’m not sure.
In any event, I’m limited to posting when I’m here on campus so have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!