Love, As Always, Pete

The Weekly Letters, by A. Pedersen Wood

March 20, 2003

Dear Everyone:

Welcome to the first day of Spring.  Too bad it’s also the first day of Mr. Bush’s Little War.

Ever notice that politicians seem to think they can solve any problem simply by declaring war on it?  Lyndon Johnson declared “War on Poverty”.  Just off the top of your head, who won that war?

Ronald Reagan declared a “War on Drugs”.  Did we see any stockpiles of drugs come running out into the street with their hands in the air crying, “We surrender!”?  Or, decades later, is that “War” still gong on with no end in sight?

OK, rant over.  In other news…

“Jeannie” is up in Oregon for the week, with Mother, “Alice”, and “Alice’s” two girls, “Park” and “Ramsey”.  While “Jeannie” is gone I am both cat-sitting and computer-sitting.

Cat-sitting because Monroe is too old to be left alone in the house for a week.  So she’s staying at my place.  She loves it here.  She doesn’t have to share her cat food or my attention.  My job is to pet her whenever she wants and, specifically, to sit in the living room each evening with a pillow in my lap and a brush in my hand.  Pretty easy job description.  Apart from that, she hangs out either on the futon or my bed, whichever is closest to wherever I am.

And, at night, she prefers the exact geographical center of the bed.  Naturally.

I’m also computer-sitting because “Jeannie’s” PC kept freezing on her, so she took it back to the computer store (again!).  It wasn’t ready for pickup on Saturday, so I volunteered to collect it after work last Monday.  The computer store is just across the street from my “Pleasant Hill” office.  Rather than take it to “Jeannie’s” place to sit while she’s in Oregon, I brought it to my place so I can troubleshoot it while she’s gone.

The only drawback is that I haven’t had a free moment in the evenings to work on it.  (See paragraph six above.)  But there’s still the weekend.  “Jeannie” doesn’t come home until Monday.

Speaking of work, I’m theoretically finished with the telephone operators and back to divvying up Corp “Winks” boxes to other “winks” entities, wherever possible.  As for the Electronic Document Management project, I found out this morning that I’m the Information Management support contact, the “help desk”, if you will.  Questions I can’t answer will be handed off to the technical folks.  I’m also (as of this morning) the “Training Coordinator” for the West Coast.

So I have a vested interest in learning all I can about how the system works, rather than just what’s needed to get by with it.  It should be interesting.

Meanwhile, referring back to our “little” war, at least this time we’re not working in downtown San Francisco like the last time.  An xxx company, even one that had no operations in the Middle East, was too tempting a target for people who liked to express their distaste for war by throwing rocks through $40,000 windows.  Hopefully, this time we won’t have to work behind police barricades.

Still no movies to report on.  “Jeannie’s” computer woes have been taking up a lot of weekend time.  I have seen two of the nominated movies at this Sunday’s Academy Awards.  It will be the first time I’ll be watching the show (assuming it goes on) without “Jeannie” around in quite a few years.

But I’ll have the cat to confer with:  “Can you believe she had the nerve to wear that?”

Love, as always,

 

Pete

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