light makes a question mark

light makes a question mark
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

The home computer is back. It's like being reunited with an old friend - an old friend who had a coconut fall on his head while stranded on a desert island. All the programs and all the data are gone, but, like Gilligan, the computer still knows how to walk and talk and put on its silly little white hat. Argh. So we're slowly loading it back up with stuff like the Canon photo software and, if young M has his way, more games that I'm going to have to buy, because the thought of downloading anything at all fills my heart with fear and, as I keep pointing out, $20 or $25 to buy an actual game is much, much cheaper than $135 to fix the damn computer again. If we were the kind of tidy organized people who keep all their original discs neatly tucked away in the original boxes with those original CD keys on the side, then all this would be simple, but alas, we are the kind of untidy peculiarly organized people who have the original Win 98 discs from a long vanished computer and a copy of Tetris for Win 3.2 on a green floppy and six labeled discs of Christmas pictures from 2003 but not, of course, the original World of Warcraft anything except a half eaten cardboard box with a picture of a wizard on it. That's just how we roll.

Three day weekends are the proverbial bomb because you can toss one day away on a hangover like I did yesterday (S' going away party on Saturday night at Z & H's was truly awesome; please don't put any of that video up, oh god) and still have two full weekend days to get stuff done. So on Saturday I gardened, for what it's worth. Either I had nearly 100% failure germination rate on my seeds or the birds or something else ate them or there's not as much sun as I originally thought in the garden space or my yard is inimical to vegetable life or, well, I have no idea. But the garden thriveth not. Everything I planted from seedlings is more or less fine, if a bit nibbled, but of the many planted seeds, I have like four or five stalks of corn, some scattered basil and six or seven sunflowers. No beans, no zucchini, no lettuce and no pumpkins. Lengthy sigh.

Today I woke up early and took the dogs out to Bent Creek at 9 for a two hour hike. That was totally awesome on several levels and, bonus, because I did all this before coffee, I managed to attain pretty much pure Zen mind, which is where you just sort of blank out and hike. I can't maintain pure zen hiking mind all the time, because my mind has a tendency to go into either zen hypochondriac mind, which is where that weird pain in my left leg is actually a blood clot that's going to kill me, or zen afraid of bears mind which is where that stump is actually a bear cub whose mama is going to kill me, or zen I just got broken up with mind, which is where my brain creates a lengthy metaphor in which I just had gotten on the Last Chance for Love Train and was standing there with a drink in my hand, waving goodbye to Single Station when I got pushed out of the window, hard, and ended up sitting there on my ass next to the tracks, staring as the train rolled down the tracks in a chorus of belittling laughter.

That would be right around when I spotted this question mark, pure light on a trailside rock. It is a Sign, of course, a Portent, an Omen and a Nifty Thing, all rolled into one, posing the Eternal Question. And the answer is that there is no answer, which is neatly zen in and of itself.

Oh and in other news, A and I went to see the new Indiana Jones movie last night. This was a major sacrifice on my part, all for you, because I can now tell you: DO NOT DO THIS. Do not waste your money on this movie; if you must see it, it will be on video soon enough and better to watch it at home with a variety of painkillers on hand, because this is not a movie for the unmedicated. I don't think there are enough adjectives in the English language to describe the terminal, utter, complete and astonishingly pure suckitude of this movie. You have now been warned.