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Modern Times
Jul. 18th, 2004 11:19 amAh, monsoons. Big storm, power outage, evening by oil lamp...laptopping away on battery power, getting many pages done. My new puter has a cool feature in the power meter: it tells you how much time you have left depending on which programs you have running. Powering down the modem and attendant programs and simply Word-ing gave me all evening while the rain waxed intermittent (3 inches an hour about 10 miles south of here, but we just got .2 inches total) and the lightning blasted all around us. A couple of times I thought the neighbors had got hit, but their place is still intact, so apparently not. It was, indeed, a dark and stormy night.
And that, O best beloved, is why I do the laptop thing, quite apart from the comfort factor of horizontal on sofa versus vertical at desk. Laptopping by candlelight in monsoon season is a particularly Tucsonian pastime.
Once I'd done my 10 pages, I keeled over and slept, with a brief interlude when the lights came on for house shutdown and animal sortage, for over 9 hours. I haven't had that much sleep at one go in months.
Pooka did not get his ride last night because of the storm. I was all set to go, sky was clear, sun was shining, but the south grew very dark very suddenly, and by the time I had the arena clear the lightning was too close for comfort. I ran the saddle back to the shed and simply fed the troops. Good thing. The storm hit before sundown--just about when I would have been mounting up--and the power went out soon after it hit.
This morning is very humid and hot, with thunderheads piling up already. We'll have more storms later. Meanwhile, I'm being lazy and feeling gratuitously guilty--because I cleared the decks for the weekend and there's no reason for guilt. All I have on the agenda today is a bit of laundry and tidying, and of course pages. But guilt's a habit. Surely I'm behind? Surely I'm not doing something I should? What, I'm not? But I should!
And that, O best beloved, is why I do the laptop thing, quite apart from the comfort factor of horizontal on sofa versus vertical at desk. Laptopping by candlelight in monsoon season is a particularly Tucsonian pastime.
Once I'd done my 10 pages, I keeled over and slept, with a brief interlude when the lights came on for house shutdown and animal sortage, for over 9 hours. I haven't had that much sleep at one go in months.
Pooka did not get his ride last night because of the storm. I was all set to go, sky was clear, sun was shining, but the south grew very dark very suddenly, and by the time I had the arena clear the lightning was too close for comfort. I ran the saddle back to the shed and simply fed the troops. Good thing. The storm hit before sundown--just about when I would have been mounting up--and the power went out soon after it hit.
This morning is very humid and hot, with thunderheads piling up already. We'll have more storms later. Meanwhile, I'm being lazy and feeling gratuitously guilty--because I cleared the decks for the weekend and there's no reason for guilt. All I have on the agenda today is a bit of laundry and tidying, and of course pages. But guilt's a habit. Surely I'm behind? Surely I'm not doing something I should? What, I'm not? But I should!
