Meanderings . . .

1. Welcome to new friends -- goldenoak, zombie_dog, shadowravyn and thegoodladyj. How many new friends do you have after interconlarp?

2. *Waves at safirasilv* I got mail from Bellowing Ark Press. Yay!!!!!

3. You know you're Carolingian when . . . Someone tell you they're in King Lear at MIT, you check the site and say, "Oh, yeah, it's in the place we rehearsed Macbeth." (the salon not the classroom).

4. Yes, alethea_eastrid, Piggy Pat's is better than Redbones. I am now telling all my friends who take the Northern route to Pennsic that there's great barbecue 10 minutes off the Turnpike.

5. Parent-teacher conferences Thursday. Can you sense the pulse-pounding excitement?

6. David Ortiz hit two dingers for the Dominicans today.

7. Maybe more later.

Music: Flogging Molly, Dropkicks and Great Big Sea.

Why Staples is my friend . . . .

Oh, I have forgotten my shameless plug for Staples. "Buy stuff at Staples!"

Some of you know my tale of woe, but I never really told it on LJ.

So . . . in October, I buy a Toshiba laptop on sale at Staples in Reading, Mass.

No shit, there we were, Jan. 1, sometime between 2 and 3 a.m., and I was getting ready for bed while visiting at queenbabs house.

I carefully carried "Garibaldi" from the living room to the kitchen and didn't see that the dishwasher door was down. troll_boy said it had been down all day, but I am not a detail guy.

I pitch forward and fall, gently placing "Garibaldi" on the floor.

All would have been fine except that I followed that with my face -- specifically my nose -- slamming in "Garibaldi."

Ever see a cracked screen?

Didja wonder why queenbabs needed a new dishwasher. (Yes, dear, there's another installment on the way ;) )

[Omitting the part about my bloody nose and being rescued by troll_boy and chaotic_angel]

So I wait a while and bring it to Staples. (I had a two-year guarantee from them that included the screen).

They call back a week or so later and say I need to bring it to the Toshiba place because it's still under Toshiba warranty.

The lady at the Toshiba place says, "We'll fix it, but that's not under the warranty."

I take it back to Staples and tell them this.

Friday, as I get ready to leave for Intercon, I get a call.

They want to give me a new HP Pavilion. Slightly bigger screen, same features (and, it turns out, a $50 rebate) because they cannot work things out with Toshiba to fix it, so they are just going to deal with it as damaged goods.

So I have a computer that is less than a week old (well, it's a floor model like the Toshiba), and I have a new, two-year warranty from Staples.

I like being treated really well by a business, and I like to share that.

Sometimes thinsg work out well.

Music: "Ashokan Farewell"

More musings . . . .

1. As you can see by the previous post, "Garibaldi" is dead. I have an idea for a name for the new laptop, but I will take suggestions.

2. Two great lines from Hank Williams Jr.:

• "Lord I have loved some ladies and I have loved Jim Beam and they both tried to kill me in 1973."



• "Just send me to Hell or New York City. It would be ‘bout the same to me."

3. I was talking to a dear friend tonight, and was reminiscing about my old home town -- Westerly, R.I. I was thinking that the day I knew I was old was the day I went back and found that they had paved over Airport Road and put commercial buildings on it. I am sure you had an "Airport Road" in your teen years. Bob Seger talks about "out in the backwoods where the woods got heavy . . ." It's the place you learned to drink and to kiss and to avoid the cops. We also had the end of Castle Hill Road in Pawcatuck, but they completed the neighborhood, and there are now houses where John Fiore, Jimmy McLaughlin and Mike Ligouri used to drink Haffenreffer kingers. I think the big sand pit with the boulder is still untouched, but I don't think you can get back into the quarries any more, either.

4. Yep, those were the days. "Stairway to Heaven" and "Walk This Way." Carlton Fisk. Reading "Ender's Game" in its short form in a Literature textbook.

5. Speaking of Haffenreffer Kingers, even the web site calls it "The Grean Death."

aka Private Stock, P-stock, Heff's, Heffy's, Haffy, Haffen-wrecker, Green Death, Ghetto Torpedo, Green Grenades, Green Lightning, Liquid Crack, Booty Juice, Death in a Bottle, Hava-a - Reefer, Jolly Green Giants . . .

6. How many of *your* friends are already talking about Pennsic?

7. Oh, and oaken_glen: You rock!!!!!

8. I am at skip=160 and still not caught up.

Music: "The Dying Cubs' Fan Last Lament" by Steve Goodman

Shakespeare-y goodness . . .

So someone I met at Intercon mentioned she was going to be in "King Lear" at MIT March 16-18 and 23-25.

Trying to figure out when I might go.

That led me to look up Commonwealth Shakespeare page and found out that this year's free theater on the Boston Common will be "The Taming of the Shrew," and it's up from July 22 to August 13.

I cannot wait!