What I've Been Up To Lately

Well, I'm just packing up leaving another successful house sitting gig. This time it was for two friends of mine who are moving from Oakland to go "back to the land" in rural Oregon. It's sort of exciting to watch them get six hives of bees, etc. as well as some land to do gardening and be caretakers for six months or so. They own a really fine kitty, actually, he probably thinks that he owns them - a hugely perfect sweet jet-black shorthair named "Shakti." We made famous friends and understood each other perfectly, except when he wanted me to wake up this morning at 7:30 and feed him. Was cute though - he plopped himself right down next to my head, purred and made me wonder if his claws were going to go through the sheets to puncture the air bed. Very effective to make me wake up to shoo him away - a smart kitty.

I'm slogging away at completing another edition of the 868-Directory. This time I was able to sort out over computer problems how to do the billing yet again. I can't wait until I can afford to get a "newer" old laptop to consolidate the contents of two ancient computers, but I'll have to wait until people pay their bills to know if I'll have any extra after paying the printer bill. A new version of Ubuntu Linux is coming out that I'm going to do a dual boot on...or maybe I'll do a more "modern" routine where I can run Windows through Linux if I have enough RAM. We'll see how it turns out with the machine I end up getting. I can't wait to not be wondering if my computers are going to crap out when I need them to work the most.

I'm hoping that I haven't set my sights too high to have a car in Hawaii, a newer laptop and enough to do the first and last on a house when I return. Chris thinks I should ship my little car - but at $1300. for shipping, tax and license I could surely find a pretty good car in Hawaii and not be worried about shipping it back if I want to come back. I still haven't bought my air ticket yet; I think I'm going to have to be reduced to using AirTech yet again; even though last year they made me wait almost a whole month until I could get a flight when my departure window was supposed to be three days!

Airfare I guess will just go up, like the price of gas. Who knows which side of the Pacific I'll be on when the shit hits the fan. I'm beginning to realize that I may have to choose at some point and that my lifestyle of coming back and forth to do my work will get to be non-sensical as the prices of air fare go sky high, along with gas prices. 

My sweet friend Janet bought me a really cool book as a present - World Changing. I'll tell you more about it as I read it again.