Well, it’s something.

It has been almost three weeks since we flew to Washington State to see our family there.  I thought that I had been clever in our scheduling to take an early morning flight out of Jacksonville to Portland  and a red-eye flight out of Portland to return home, because these two flights totalled about seven hours each in actual flying time.  I had failed to consider (I am good at that) the three hour drive to Jacksonville and the couple of hours lag time for security, so when we arrived in Portland about noon, Janet was in her customary state of agony.  I think any more trips west will be by car, driving about four hours a day and loafing in motel pools or watching TV in bed in the interim.  I am not sure how many weeks the 2000 mile trip will take, but Janet’s surgery ridden legs and back cannot cope with airplane seating.  (Maybe I will win the Publisher’s Clearing House Jackpot and be able to try First Class, but I won’t hold my breath.)

For the entire time, until yesterday my computer has slowed to about the speed of a one legged marathoner running backward in deep mud.  I did borrow my wife’s laptop to read some blogs and make a comment or two, but largely, my life, when not out visiting old friends, watching my grandson rehearse for ballroom dance competition, watching both grandsons working on the robot which they will enter (with many of their friends) in regional and national (they hope) robotics competition.  I did get to see my daughter in law in a quite wonderful performance of the play THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE  -REVISED AND CONDENSED-   (or something like that)  It was a well performed hoot.  Most of the rest of the time was profanely talking to my computer.  I used spybot, and everything else I could think of.  Finally I just dug through the registry  and discovered that somewhere along the line I had downloaded (probably linked to something I wanted) Google Chrome, and a selection of other Google tiltled applications.  I love Google, but had never been aware of all this other stuff, so I uninstalled most of the things labeled Google.  I don’t know what, in my computer, really hated all the Google stuff, but now that it is gone the gizmo is almost back to normal.  There are still some applications in there that are fighting each other, but it seems to be minor now.

I had the very pleasant opportunity to judge the SW Washington Regional Finals for  Poetry Out Loud.   In my professional life I have judged play competitios, as well as other perfomance competitions but it was  a real pleasure to watch a well prepared group of ten or twelve talented young people  present rather difficult but excellent poetry from memory.  I was enriched as were they.

We’ll see what other wonderful things are happening here before we return home in mid march.