Hungry Ghost's Daily Diet (TM)

Flying cows: In the summer of 1996, I met G, sister of VOIL (remember her? She's doing just fine with little voil and papa VOIL, incidentally). Anyway, I remember G for two reasons - The first is because we met on Rue Rene Levesque and Rue Souvenir one hot and humid July day, and she proceeded to tell me how to make Russian Borscht. With ribs and beets, and a dollop of sour cream. Of course, because we were standing on the street, and I was sweating profusely, I didn't transcribe what G said, so pouf! Gone, the recipe for one of the best bowls of borscht (she had made some the previous week, and I had eaten some). The second - actually there's a third, but let me tell you about the second one first. I also remember G because there's a story about her told by VOIL, wherein a passing seagull in Moscow flew by and defecated on G's hair. And there was naught she could do about it at the time, and so she showed up at home with this mess on her hair, saying quite furiously, "I didn't know that cows could fly!", obviously refering to the size of the mess on her hair.

So where am I going with this? Well. I came home the other evening, got off my bike and noticed what I thought at first was mud on my bike helmet. Then I noticed the white stuff - then I shrieked with rage, because one of those flying cows that G refered to had migrated to Canada, and shat on my helmet. Fecking seagulls. They're squirrels with wings is all they are, and should be exterminated. Why, I think I'll start a society to eradicate them - anyone willing to subscribe?

Anyway, the helmet has now been well-scrubbed, disinfected and is drying in a vapour stream of hot air scented with lavender for that "just-washed" smell. Yesh.


Blue meets blue: The phrase Big Blue used to refer, and could still do for all I know, to IBM. I have a IBM X-31, lovely little machine it is...until the other nasty, home-wrecking, rapacious and generally satanic Big Blue showed up. The Blue Screen of Death. Yesh, dear reader, if you are of sensitive sensibilities, I know many of my readers are sensitive souls, you know who you are, skip ahead - there's no point upsetting yourself unecessarily (so difficult to spell). Anyway, the damn blue screen of death showed up no less than 5 times over the last 3 days or so. I tried everything. Uninstalling software, checking for viruses, rebooting feverishly, tinkering with the ini.sys file, the boot-up sequence, even burning cleansing sage to rid the computer of evil spirits. To no avail.

Yes. I did. I had to. I ran out of options. I formatted my hard drive. GAAAH! Not once, not twice, but three times. Do you know how traumatic this is? Formatting a drive. Those of you who remember the days of MS-DOS, remember the one command that came with so many warnings? Format C:, the mere mention used to send shudders down my back. But there it is, three times, I formatted, and the third time, the system seems to be stable now, and I'm breathing a little bit easier now - lost a bunch of files, but nothing too important - at least nothing I've found to be important just yet....And I think little Solo II may be okay for a little while. I can stop looking at laptops and desktops when I go into electronic stores now. Touch wood.

Actually, there's been a benefit to the formatting - it got rid of a whole bunch of crapola software which I never used, and so boot-up takes less than a minute - compared to almost 3 minutes before. Of course, I'm not even thinking of ever turning this computer off now.....

Deluging: "Deluging" like "cessating" (which WD wanted to use in an abstract) is not ao real word, but it may as well be, and would find very good application at the moment, for we've been drowning in rain since late Thursday night. The rains started when I left Mr. Craig (oooh - what a good opportunity to put a picture of him in this post), and no sooner thought than done - this new version of Opera is very quick in uploading files I must say. So where was I? Oh yes, rain. Yeah, it's been raining and....Mr. Craig does have very blue eyes doesn't he? And yes, rained on Friday all day, but managed a swim - after all was already wet from biking so may as well get all wet, then didn't bother showering, as would only have got wet again on the bike so biked home wet and then showered. Bah. So much water.

Today, more water falling. However, went down to Mel's where MB was waiting with a twitching toe,"You're late! And I was expecting to see a blue coat! You're in a brown coat!", but before an afternoon coffee, we headed off to Priape where I wanted to check out a black sweater - alas, it was too small, and as MB said, running his LTFs over the material, "Not of very high quality!". A quick perusal of the other wares on offer at the store - goodness, who knew there was that much silicon in the world - and we headed back for coffe, then a quick stop at another store to check out more sweaters. There the LTFs seeked out two possible sweaters with an unerring eye for quality and style, but unfortunately, the prices were not to be sanctioned. Then home in the rain.

Tonight - a quick review of the crossword puzzle, decline to pick up my phone to seek advice - not that I'll need it - and then to bed, as Mr. Pepys is wont to say. All those blue screens and formatting - so tiring.