10 May 1998: May Flowers

Sunday, 10 May 1998:

May Flowers

I talked to each of my parents on this Mother's Day, and it turns out they're getting April Showers a bit late this year. But we've already got our May Flowers and today Karen and I took advantage of the lovely weather to go to the UW Arboretum to enjoy them. Pretty much everything was in full bloom, from the magnolias to the various little purple flowers growing under the trees. Plus the dandelions, of course, but then I rather like dandelions. Even the ajuga (sp?) was flowering in the grass.

I committed a rather crass faux pas in one conversation with Karen, but she accepted my apology. I have this habit of saying things before I completely think them through, and I've tried to get over it but I simply am not consistently successful. Fortunately, Karen is one of my very few friends who I think realizes that I don't really mean it, and seems able to look past it fairly successfully - which helps me beat myself up less over it. With almost anyone else I know in town I'd be more likely to just go home and shut myself in the room for the rest of the afternoon.

I'm gonna miss her when she finishes her dissertation next year and finds a job elsewhere.

Seems like I didn't do a whole lot the rest of the day, but in fact I mostly did a bunch of little things. I downloaded some software from the net to try out (I'm still using elm under UNIX as my mailer, and I'm always on the lookout for a GUI mailer which supports randomly-chosen signature files; there's got to be a Eudora plug-in that can do that, but I haven't found one). I talked to my folks. I watched two episodes of the Batman cartoon. I did a bunch of laundry. I backed up my hard drive. I continued reading Steven Gould's Helm, which vacillates between compelling and merely entertaining; I'm a little more than half-done.

Oh, and I ordered my new G3 Macintosh from The Apple Store. They say it could be up to 3 weeks before it arrives due to "time for assembly", but seeing as it's a standard model minus the internal modem, I'm betting it will arrive sooner.

Then I get to figure out what to do with my PowerCenter Pro - or at least its parts. Even if I weren't having so much trouble with it, it wouldn't be worth more than about $1000 - less, with the iMac right around the corner. Any suggestions?

Michael Rawdon (Contact)