The other day I noticed the husband seemed kind of tired, what with taking naps at twin naptime and going to bed early all the time, so I asked him just what was making him so tired.

His polite reply: “Um, have a full-time job and a part-time job and twins and I’m 57. Does that answer your question?”

Oops, duh. Not to mention his 400-mile round-trip commute between those jobs.

Lately it seems like we are never on the same wavelength or in the same place (too often, literally). We used to be able to read each other’s minds; now we read each other’s notes. I suspect a large part of all this is just having kids and never being able to have a conversation with each other–any kind of conversation. I have stopped trying to say very much when he’s around the twins because he is so tuned into them he doesn’t hear a word I’m saying. It’s irritating, but I try to remember that all that tuning in to the girls is a good thing. They’re only going to be this little once.

Oh yeah, and damn, that Time Traveler’s Wife book is really good. Very well-written, not too fluffy, kind of romantic. I’m about half-way through. I got it through QPB; I recently signed up again because I’m an idiot.

Found a cute little thing in the garage yesterday. Made myself late to a tutoring appointment trying to catch her:

Darcy generously offered up her sippie cup and security blanket to Miss Possum within seconds of meeting her. “Hi possum! Thirsty? Want sippie?” I told her the possum was kind of scared, and she offered her best solution: “Oh. Want sweater?” It was one of those moments you wish you had a video camera on your head and could instantly hit record. Anyway, after a feast of pears and yogurt I took the little darling to the possum rescue people in SLO this morning. They said she’s about three months old, probably.

I would also like to point out for the record that the husband was too scared to touch it.

Geek stuff: I gave up on the D-Link wireless router entirely. I had reservations about it from the beginning, and it quickly became clear I was right, it wasn’t going to work (despite the fact that it has worked flawlessly for both my parents and my sister). I don’t really know for sure what the issue was, but my guess is interference: 2 2.4Ghz phones, baby monitors, and a close neighbor with wireless. I just got sick of fighting with it. It would have been nice to use the laptop in the livingroom, but it was obvious that just wasn’t going to happen, and so what–the laptop isn’t even here every day. It wasn’t even letting my webcam work, and that is SO NOT ACCEPTABLE. So I exchanged it for a new Linksys router, and that’s worked out even better than I would have hoped. It’s the same model as the one I had before, just the new generation. Boy, is it an improvement. The install literally only took 10 minutes, and after that I not only had internet and the connection shared among other computers, but I got my home network back, too. The old Linksys router was not this quick and easy. I noticed they also vastly improved the interface for dealing with settings.

I think my neighbor closed his network recently, so no more mooching. Dammit.

The computer I built is back from the dead with a new motherboard. Everything seems fine, except for one small problem with it not recognizing one of the CD drives. I hope to have that fixed in a few days. I had only had it up and running for about 20 minutes when a guy called and said he was interested in buying a computer for his wife, and he made an appointment to come see the thing the next morning. I was all excited about the prospect of not having to humiliate myself all over again at the local computer shop, even more than the prosepct of having some cash to infuse into my languishing bank account. So I spent the next morning frantically trying to get the last cables plugged in right and few other things put to rights only to have him call 30 minutes before he was supposed to show to say he’d changed his mind (or rather, his wife did). Grrrrr. Bruce said this was an improvement, since normally when people do this to me the bastards don’t even call.

And last week another guy called, saying his machine had gotten fried in a power surge and wanted me to have a look at it. We made an appointment for him to bring it over. He didn’t show, and after couple days I called him and asked what was up. He said he got the restore CD to work and that was basically the end of the conversation. Then a couple of days later he called in a panic–he called about four or five times, the last time at almost 10:30 at night–and said he hadn’t actually made any progress and could I pleeeeeeease look at it. I was already pretty annoyed that he’d flaked on me once, called incessantly and called at weird hours. Whatever. I told him to bring it by the next day. I had another appointment to go to but I told him my husband would be home to take it in, and I got all the paperwork ready for him. As you might have guessed, Bruce stayed home for nothing, because the a-hole flaked again. And there was a spooky element to it too: both times when it was clear my husband was going to be around he didn’t show. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but weird hours the guy kept calling freaked me out. In any case, he still qualifies easily for supreme jerkdom. If he calls again I am simply not going to deal with him.

One Flickr Pro account gone, 1 gift still left!

Links!

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100 Things You Should Do in California (How many have you done?)