I know many of you are daily readers and I thank you. I suppose I've been writing with the hopes of eventually earning a few dollars. I'm not driven enough to pursue opportunities and I doubt anyone is going to beat down my cyber door for my services. So for now I'll just keep pretending my insights are fun and valuable to your day.
And besides, Irving used to say. "Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back."
This has been a real shitty morning.
First things first.
Saturday I got a United States District Court Summons. This isn't the local city court two miles away. It's not the county court twelve miles away. This is in Oakland, a minimum of thirty-two miles from home. When I read the damn thing I told Wanda I wouldn't stress about it until the day before I had to go. I've been upset and stressing about it since Saturday.
People live their entire lives without getting a summons for U.S. District Court. There are eleven counties in the district with a population of just over 4.8 million. What the Hell? This is the second time I've been called. I can't win the f-ing lottery but I win this?
This is what district court requires. I'm "on-call" from January 6 to January 14. I call the night before for assignment. If I get called in and don't get picked for a jury, my service is complete. If I get called in and picked for a jury, well who knows. Wanda will need to drop me off at the BART station here in town. The ride in is fifty-six minutes. I'll need to walk a few blocks to the court building. When I'm done it's another fifty-six minute ride back to Pittsburg with a two mile walk, a bus, or a cab to the house.
I know all about "civic duty" but I'm really dreading this.
By the way, if I get called in I won't be writing a daily blog. But I'll share all my wonderful experiences with you when my jury duty is finished.
Like I said, it's been a real shitty morning.
Our Internet, television and telephone service was out when I got up. I did all the usual reboot things and that didn't help. I was trying to determine if it was us or Comcast. I wasn't able to access the Service Outage help page because we had no service. I packed up and went down to our local coffee shop, Steeltown Coffee & Tea to use its Wi-Fi.
Because I've been too lazy to stop the last five times I've been in the car, I need gas. Its twenty-nine degrees and now I stop. It was close to seventy a few weeks ago. So I pull into a Beacon station a few blocks from Steeltown. Gas is $3.55 a gallon and I figure I'll just get twenty bucks worth. I put my info in, slide my card and waited, and waited and waited. It was probably a minute but at that temperature it felt like an hour.
JUST A MINUTE PLEASE.....JUST A MINUTE PLEASE.....JUST A MINUTE PLEASE
F@#& Me.....Come-on you stupid gas pump. Eventually I pressed cancel transaction. I decided to go up to the service window. Except now I couldn't find my credit card. I forgot where I put my Visa card.
I checked my wallet, I checked each of my four pants pockets and I even checked my sweatshirt front pouch thing. I felt like Santa Claus checking the naughty and nice list. I'm checking it once, I'm checking it twice. Finally after the third pat down I found it wedged under the cell phone in my pocket. And by the way, this would have been a good morning to have a real smart phone.
You may remember I have a Tracfone sort of smart phone. Actually I could have connected through its 3G but I can't stand to watch the minutes disappear.
I got my gas and left for the coffee shop.
I made a latte just before I left the house. When I pulled up in front of Steeltown the drink was still hot and almost full. Now I'm going in to use their Internet and electricity I really should buy something so I chug the latte. Woo whee, I'm feeling pretty darn good now. I ordered a coffee and by the way, Steeltown has the best coffee and whole beans in the county, unpacked my things and sat down to work.
My small Acer is a piece of crap. I could not sign into the blog. I reset my Google password twice. I was able to determine there was a neighborhood outage. "We're working on it" was the message on the Comcast site. After two hours of frustration at the coffee shop I received an all fixed message and came home. So, here I sit trying to finish this blog entry.
The nice thing about starting out the morning like I did is it'll only get better from here, or so I hope.
I have a catch-all or junk drawer right next to where I write. The mail and magazines I think I'll read later go in it. Yesterday I cleaned it out. I never read the mail and I never read the magazines. Among the things I tossed out were four of the same mailers from AARP urging me to "Get additional medical insurance."
I had good intentions. I was going to read up on medical insurance, living trusts and advanced directives. I didn't read a thing.
Yesterday I was feeling pretty overwhelmed by all the things I need to do. I was feeling like life has become too complicated. Everything has a web site and so much information. At times I think I'm ill equipped for disseminating all of it. Yesterday I was cursing computers and smart phones and the information highway.
ENOUGH.....it's too much to absorb; my brain can't handle all of this. I just want to be left alone. I don't want to make any decisions.
Then I woke up this morning to no television, telephone, or Internet and I panicked. I should take this as an omen.
Rather than thinking about all the things I should do and all the information I need to decipher I'll put one foot in front of the other (metaphorically speaking) and do one thing at a time.
Now.....where to start?
I wonder what's on T.V.
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