“Some things never change.”
“Tell me what you want to know,” she said, into the phone, “I’m psychic, too.”
I’m not sure I want to know. If I knew I wasn’t going to be successful, would I keep trying?
And now we return the regular programming.
It’s all about place. Place, a sense of place. A place where a person belongs. It’s like a comfortable hat, you know? Where you feel at home? Or shoes, or, maybe, you don’t like to wear shoes, and you’re barefoot.
I’m about done with this whole “Mercury is backwards in Leo” crap. Been a long, tough road. Weird one, too. Not that I don’t fall for more than my share of the traps, or not that I don’t pay attention to what the stars say, but I’m not buying into some of the events. I can blame the planets, but I’m not sure that I should. But I will.
I’ve had an account with a national (international) service provider for years, always maintaining a back-up e-mail address, net access and so forth. So when they advertised cable modem with no cable bill, I looked into the offer, especially since the phone company just upped my DSL charge but not the speed. DSL is slow these days.
Don’t tell me not to do something electrical when Mercury is RX. I write this stuff, I know. But the deal was good, and I signed up. The various (their) websites bounced me off a few times, so I had to resort to a landline to make the deal. It worked. “The technician will be there at 8 AM.” He rolled in around 10:30. Not that it matters. He clipped one cable, plugged the box in, and I plugged the wireless router in, and it was all online.
He clocked out. I checked the connections. Wireless, up and running. Ethernet to cable box, check. Administrative tools, no “internet” connection. I fussed with wires and settings for a few minutes, and then I realized, instead of wasting time, just call tech support.
(Insert appropriate expletives.)
As I was wending and winding my way through the phone tree, I unplugged everything, plugged it back in, shut it off, turned it back on, rebooted the computer, pinged the network, and I fixed it myself. “Estimated hold time, 3 minutes.”
Done deal.
Cable’s faster, costs less. But I had to fix it myself, no help from the tech or the phone.
Which goes back to, “It’s all about place.” The sturdy pioneer attitude has all but fled portions of Texas. I’m not naming names, but there are places where political corruption and corporate malfeasance rule. However, there are still places where there’s very much that “we’re in this mess together,” attitude. Plus, what I find refreshing, there’s always the “Couldn’t wait, had to do it ourselves. Ain’t purty, but it works.”
Imagine an ugly hole in the side of the trailer with a new cable snaking in from a terminal someplace. The hole is sealed with a dab of ugly gorilla-snot yellow silicone paste. Sealed more to keep out the bugs than the weather. But it’s fixed and running. Faster, even.
There’s a ton of trash, mostly organic debris, floating along the shoreline. Although the water’s muddy, just at the edge of the debris, the fish were nibbling.
Cherchez le poisson:
So it’s not big, but it’s a bass, and I caught him, and it was a valiant fight, and he’s back feeding on the storm’s debris again.
Later that afternoon:
I’m thinking I really need a banner of some kind, like in the first movies, a proper type of segue. I was walking along, and the afternoon warmed up a bit. Warmed up a lot, really. Business call, a frantic client, “Can you look at my star chart, like now?” Sure. After the next appointment, I mean, I was going to fish some more, but duty calls. Or a frantic, disembodied voice on the phone, “Is 7 too late? I’ve got to leave, like, tomorrow.”
“7 is way too early, unless it involves a fishing pole,” I replied. No, it was 7 last night.
And someplace in between:
News item from another news item, and I find it all highly suspicious, especially since this is the second time in a day when I haven’t been able to verify a source, for a link.
“Austin named #1 place for Latinos to live.”
The list? Allegedly from Hispanic Magazine, and the ratings? #7 El Paso, #5 San Antonio, and #1 Austin. Personally? I think they got it backwards.
Unrelated to much of anything:
I’d vote for “Xena”* myself. Woe be unto those who fail to find favor with the name, the swift sword of justice will smote thee.
*I’m not, like any kind of Xena fan – nothing like that. But for a portion of my life, the hotel in El Paso had only 15 cable channels, and when I got around to watching TV, after work, Xena was on three of the channels. Or so it seemed. Chicks with swords, yee-hah!
