Some crappy spammer is sending a message that my mailbox doesn't like. It locks up my e-mail. Tonight it happened yet again. I tried to telnet to my mailbox, frustrated that I even had to learn the procedure, and ended up locking up telnet with the bad message. Even though you should be able to delete just one message, it doesn't work. This message is that bad.

It is so darned crappy that something that should be a good thing is just another technological nightmare for me. I cannot find computing peace anywhere.

At this point, I would gladly pay someone to fix this, but considering I've wiped out my e-mail eight times now, I doubt anyone can. I did manage to get the header on the latest message and add it to my block sender list, but since it is already in my mailbox, the problem still exists.

And since looking at the header of this rather pernicious e-mail SPAM locked up telnet and the connection to my account so that even rebooting the machine did not release the pop mail account, I cannot do a darned thing further on this problem.

CRAPPY, CRAPPY, CRAPPY!

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. Sorry about the griping...

I had a pleasant start to my day today...

A few weeks ago, I lost my sunglasses. While they were a Walmart bargain ($3.97), it seems to me that I actually look a bit cool wearing them. And those of you who know me well, know that I have never thought of myself as "cool."

When I lost them, I tried to be prosaic or pragmatic about the whole matter. I tried to not get upset with myself. I dug out my "emergency" sunglasses from the glove compartment in my car and wore them.

Well, this morning, when I opened the door to get into my car, I spotted my beloved, cool sunglasses. They must have fallen to the floorboard without my noticing (instead of being left in a store as I had previously thought). Yesterday, when I arrived home after torturing myself at the gym, I had backed into the parking spot (nearly everyone else does it around here, and I wanted to see if I could), and since the parking lot is slanted, the back of the car was significantly higher than the front of the car. I suppose the sunglasses slid forward as I parked, but I did not see them because it was so dark.

Thus, this morning I had a pleasant surprise: I got my sunglasses back!

I cannot remember if I've mentioned how afraid of the dark Fancy is. Saturday evening, the power went out. Fancy had been sitting on my shoulder and immediately began hissing. She also paced up and down the length of my shoulder. I was trying to find a flash light when she got tangled in my hair and decided to claw her way out. For a small bird she has sharp claws. I finally found the flash light and turned it on. At the first beam of light, Fancy calmed down. I half expected her to be foaming at the mouth. Some sort of Dr. Jeckle/ Mr. Hyde complex she's got.

I wonder, are all cockatiels like this? Or is she just a neurotic bird to go along with my neurotic dog?

P.S. How do you spell Dr. Jeckle?

Friday I was late to work.

I got ready on time and went to the door with my keys and purse when I suddenly realized that I did not know where I worked. I walked out to the car thinking that if I got in and started driving then I would remember. But once I reached the end of the parking lot, I did not know which way to turn.

Back in my apartment, I worked on setting aside my panic while trying to come up with a plan for figuring out where I worked.

On my palm pilot, I have a file that reminds me my name, address, age, and phone number. Unfortunately, I failed to include where I work in my “alternate memory” file.

It was not long before I cried, stomped around the apartment, tried to reach my friend and my mother by phone, cursed my brain cells, and then flopped on the couch to try and calm down. Finally, I remembered to look at my paycheck stubs in my filing cabinet. And there I found the name of my employer. After that, I remembered where I worked and how to get there. I arrived, late and quite bothered.

When, I blurted out to one of the women at work what had happened, she rather blithely replied that I shouldn’t feel bad because she’s forgotten the same at times.

While I KNOW she was trying to help, her comments only helped to spiral me further into my angst over the matter. I’m sure she might have sometime briefly blanked out on the name of our work when someone asked her what it was. I understand people often have a moment of forgetfulness. But an hour? I suspect she’s never spent an hour such as I had that morning.

It is overwhelming and frightening to realize that you have this gaping hole in your memory. To realize that you cannot recall where you’ve worked for over three and a half years. To realize that you cannot even begin to figure out how to retrieve that information. And to realize that the reason you cannot remember is because of a rather insidious disease.

As I have written before, quite often, I cannot remember such things as my name, age, address, phone number, how to spell, how to form letters, or how to dial a phone. I forget what day of the week it is or what I am supposed to be doing at that moment.

At these times, I think I am the loneliest I’ve ever been. It is as if the whole world is on another plane of existence and I am left trying to figure out how to get back to that place where everyone else is. And at these times I long for someone to be there to remind me what I am forgetting. Instead, I am faced with this horrible realization that another memory gap has come and I’ve somehow got to work through it. What I am left with is how well I weathered the latest storm. Did I cry and rant and rave at my life and my faulty brain cells to the point of making the situation worse? Or did I remain calm and run through ideas of how I could retrieve the needed information. I’m afraid the former is more often the case.

On a scale of one to ten, one being the frenetic response and ten being the calm response, I would say Friday morning was a four.

I should think with all the practice I’ve had, I would be better at it.

I ask my writing student to spend ten minutes a day writing in a notebook. This was an entry from this past week that surprised me. I really like Krispy Kreme...but what she wrote was rather disturbing:

Today I went to a Krispy Kreme tour. I know this is hard to believe, but it made me feel like never eating a donut again. Well, I guess it wasn’t that bad, because I ate two afterwards. But I could’ve eaten a lot more had I not been on the tour!

First of all, the smell was overwhelming. Too much sugar! It’s hard to remember exactly the smell, but it was just this incredibly mawkish miasma, which makes you feel giddy and nauseated.

Second, the tour guide walked us right next to this big open vat of glaze. We could’ve sneezed in it, shed hairs in it, or worse without anyone noticing! The floors were a mess of oil and sugar and glaze and dough. The tour guide would pick up a donut from off the conveyor belt with his bare hands to show us and put it put it back! He showed us the flour and yeast by digging his bare hands in the sack, and letting the powder fall through his fingers.

Finally, there were bits of donut and glaze everywhere--on the machinery, walls, floor--and bits of glaze fell from the conveyor belts above our heads. Grace, my two-year-old sister, happened to be under a shower of glaze and got it in her hair. The whole place looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years!

I have graduated to sleeping through the nights now. But I do check and re-check the front door lock at least three times before I can fall asleep. I wish I were not such a wimp.

No telephone crises. No computer crises. No customer service nightmares. And I actually see the top of my desk.

Truly I have nothing to complain of today. How’s that for a change?

Well…I guess I could point out that there were no carrots at the salad bar at Giant when I went to get lunch. A carrot-less salad is very strange to me.


Note: Wendy’s Dave Thomas died today. I admire the work he did for adoption and education as well as his business acumen in building the Wendy’s empire. He was only 69. How strange will Wendy’s commercials be without his quirky presence…

Do you remember me describing the club seats at the FedEx Field? My father and I got to sit in them again yesterday, or at least we had the opportunity to sit in them. Somehow, we couldn't bring ourselves to sit in the driving rain to watch the Redskins play. No problem, right? We could equally enjoy the game ensconced in the leather armchairs since many are conveniently placed in front of flat screen televisions. Right?

Well, apparently Mr. Daniel Snyder is hurting for money because he did not have the heat turned on in the club lounge area. Imagine that! Seats that are thousands of dollars a year and you still need your coat, gloves, scarf, and blanket to watch the game from the lounge. It's hard to wrap your mind around the image, eh?

Dad and I were smart and found our leather armchairs as the game began. Slowly, dripping wet clubseat patrons abandoned their seats to come join us wimps in the lounge. However, those dripping wet clubseat patrons soon started shivering because of the LACK OF HEAT. There was even ice on the bathroom floors (I hope it was ice). And as great as those leather armchairs are, there certainly were not enough to go around. Anytime someone got up from a chair, a dog-eat-dog, casualties-beware mad dash ensued from those dripping wet clubseat patrons. Dad and I thought about taking bids for our armchairs that were not ten feet from a flat screen television.

I know that Mr. Snyder is watching his pennies, but I truly think this NO HEAT thing went a bit far. After all, couldn't there be some sort of liability there with blue-lipped, dripping wet, shivering club seat patrons fighting each other over leather arm chairs?

My friend posted something her sister sent on her blog. It was so darned funny, that I wet my pants at the end of it because I was laughing so hard. Click on the link to her web log and scroll to the entry for Thursday, January 3rd. It is the piece her sister sent to her.

The question is...is this really so funny...or is it funny to me because I'm torturing myself in a gym five/six days a week?

Let me know what you think!

I was not scared last night.

I was too busy arguing with Kashi that he really didn't need to go out at 2:00 AM. After 30 minutes, I lost the argument.

Then, two hours later, I lay writhing with the agony of the feminine moon flux, intensified, I believe, from a bit of an absence.

After consuming great quantities of Motrin, I was able to drag myself into work around noon.

Perhaps tonight will be better?

Friday night I stayed at the gym for 2 and a half hours, spending the last 80 minutes on the treadmill flirting with an asthma attack and giving myself bloody blisters on my feet. However, my efforts to exhaust myself so I could sleep didn’t work. I was up most of the night thinking about the break-in.

Saturday night, I stayed up until 3:30 AM reading…but I still struggled to sleep. Sunday night it was football and then hours of commentary. Monday it was hours of CNN. Still little sleep.

Last night, while I actually got into bed by 11:00 PM, I didn’t fall asleep until after 1:00 AM and then woke every few hours. When I wake, my heart is pounding and I fumble for my glasses. Then I listen, long and hard, to see if I can hear anything. When I don’t, I walk on trembling legs to the door to check the lock. Once I reassure myself that the front door is still locked and Kashi and I are alone (Fancy sleeps in another room), then I try to go back to sleep.

While I understand that fear is only as strong as we feed it, I cannot seem to forget how terribly frightened I was Thursday night. It’s strange, though, because cognitively I know that there is a strong security presence at my apartment and that the person would most likely not try again since the neighbor called the police and the police arrived so quickly. So, really, I have nothing to fear…

Except memories, I suppose.

I guess this proves I’m not exactly made of sterner stuff.