11/7/99

"Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself"

Samuel Johnson

swithering

It's a term my friend Mags uses. It means you can't figure out what to do. It's her word anyway and I like it. My online dictionary just admits a noun:

swither n : agitation resulting from active worry; "don't get in a stew"; "he's in a sweat about exams" [syn: fret, stew, sweat, lather] Source: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton University

What I'm looking for is a format for my journal that is pleasing to the eye and yet easy for me to maintain. Maybe there is software out there that specifically helps with this kind of thing.

Looking at other people's journals/diaries has almost completely stiffled my desire to do one. While reading a 'year ago' entry at Mighty Kymm I found Rick McGinnis of Toronto. His page is so smart and professional. I finally find a typo but it doesn't help my feeling of inadequacy. The typo is in a beautiful piece about his desk.

So I'm redoing the journal and this is the format you get. Until I start to hate it, too. The old entries will get relinked and reformatted at some point. And I'll fix typos and spelling errors and rewrite history, too.

So, that's out of the way. What kind of Sunday was it, after all?

Early rising Sunday. I woke up and felt like getting up. Coffee, a bit of the paper and an old Shirley Temple movie and then drifting around in cyberspace until my EDW (extreme dog walking) partner (SuRu) called. EDW is our invention. We use fifteen-foot retractable leads and invent names for the moves and disasters that walking Chloe (also known as Chalow since that's the way it's pronounced) and Zoey bring. Today was even more exciting than usual as we took along Toby who had a sleepover with Zoey. Fortunately, we also convinced Forrest to join us giving us one dog per human.

We parked at West Enfield Park (or Westenfield Park according to the city sign creator). We walked down the Johnson Creek trail and over to Sixth Street and left SuRu in front of the (now closed) Coffee Exchange with the dogs while we got drinks and snacks at Sweetish Hill.

Forrest didn't carry Chloe, but she was quite tired by the end of it so I thought I'd plug in this picture where he pretends to be doing that.

Worked on a letter to my sister today with the subject 1957. I'm taking her through the years of my childhood via pictures of collectibles. I would publish the results on the WEB but it would involve a lot of picture optimization that, for printing on my Epson Stylus Photo EX, are unnecessary. As usual, I collect the photos from things people are selling on ebay.

Ah, yes, ebay. Still one of my favorite addictions on the WEB is virtual shopping on ebay. Of late, I've been shopping for table decorations for a French Cafe theme party we are giving in the spring. Using keywords such as pastis and absinthe, I've come up with pastis pitchers to buy and a number of other interesting things just to browse. I noticed that something called match strikes were very also very collectible. These are ceramic holders with some advertising around the bottom and a ribbed cylinder for striking the matches. These things go for a hundred dollars or more. I don't want one but I'm glad that I know about them and that some people value them. Yes, ebay has given me a new appreciation for things that I don't want but that, apparently, someone else does want. (This is something I enjoy when looking in stores or catalogs as well. Seeing all the things I've no use for.)