Random Ramblings

The knee is almost magically better. Merci beaucoups to whomever has been praying over me. Unfortunately, the mind has taken up the “slacking”, so to speak.

The computer at work has a diabolical prompt that begins nagging several days before it’s time to change the password. Every time I log on, four times every workday on the average, it asks me: “Do you want to change your password *now*?”

No, actually, I do not. I want to wait until the last possible minute, and then I want to change back to the password I used last time, but that is not an option. Most of the time I just click “no” until I’m forced to change it. Monday I was not in the mood for a dozen or more no’s until the inevitable. So I changed my log-on, and I changed a second password. When I went to change the third password that I also use on a frequent basis, suddenly I could not remember my current one for that system. It was like unto that tender gap when you’re seven and have lost a tooth, and you cannot keep your tongue out of the space. My brain kept poking around that vacant spot, to no avail. No tooth. No password.

After almost an hour of rummaging about frantically in my head, I called our IT specialist for a password reset. And she reminded me that she no longer has the authority to do that, but she gave me the toll-free number to the Gurus of Reset. I waded through voicemail hell, armed only with what remained of my wits and the steely determination forged by a decade or so of outwitting teenagers.

Success at last! a human voice!

But wait. She too had insufficient authority to reset my password; however, she referred it to her supervisors, and she gave me a ticket number. I waited. I puttered and I filed the faxes and I answered a thousand and one phone calls. And in between, I prayed the scattered, staccato prayers of a woman whose work-life is defined by the word “interruption”. And miraculously, there it was, floating up into a calm patch in the maelstrom: my password. I typed it in, invented a fresh one, and endured more voicemail hell until I could get through to the Gurus to cancel my ticket.

When I have first logged on every day since then, the password that has popped up in my mind like the hand of a first-grader who knows she knows the answer, was the old one. *Now* I remember it.

But there is good news.

Remember that shot of Louisa Harding Sari Ribbon, months and months ago? I figured out how to tile it on my desktop! So now when I shut down the monitor at night I can blow kisses at pure yarn genius. And I pulled that Easter photo-card of BittyBit from this blog and set it as background on my workstation at the office. Seeing that dear little face makes a good day better and a bad day bearable.

We have been having rain, rain and more rain. I wonder how close we are to breaking this drought? Thus far, knock wood, we've only had one episode of rain being blown under the front door, and that was a week and a half ago, the night I began staining the sofa table. I've been able to keep the windows open all weekend for cross-ventilation while applying the finish coat, which comes with the warning "NOXIOUS FUMES". I just woke up from a four-hour nap and put the second coat on the top shelf. And used the last of the polyacrylic. With one coat left to go.

Which means that a little after midnight [when it is no longer the Sabbath] I will be thoroughly awake, and I will trade jammies for jeans and head out to Wally World. They don't list their paints at the website. So I risk wasting half a gallon of gold-plated gasoline and coming home empty handed. And cranky. And having to stop at the home center on the way home tomorrow night to pick up another small can.

I can understand not selling paints and stains online from a risk management perspective. I had to flash my ID to buy them at the home center, presumably to reassure the salesclerk that I am old enough and smart enough not to do something stupid with said products that would permanently fry my brain or impair future little Sleaves. But would it hurt to post a small list that says "we carry the following brands"? And I also checked the stain manufacturer's website. All sorts of useful information, but nothing that says "the following stores carry our products".

Two companies that are obviously being run by people whose brains are wired far differently than my own.

I bit the bullet and bought rechargeable batteries for my camera. Hrm, this might be a good time to plug in the charger, since I'm obviously going to be up for awhile, and there are photos stuck inside the camera that I can't fish out at the moment.

About an inch and a half of progress on one sock at church today. These will be my first attempt at toe-ups with heel flaps, and I'm almost to that point on both socks.