Today.

Today was a really good day - good enough that I started up the motorcycle and rode in to work.

It was a great morning until some arzl on my right put on his signal, looked at me in his mirror and then proceeded to move over into space that I was already occupying.  Loud air horn got me a middle finger sign.

I did not shoot him.  No pistol, and anyhow I know that that isn't a really good educational tool for such behavior, although it does tend to put a stop to it (at least for that one arzl - there are always more....)  I thought a few unkind things things about his putative parentage, moved over, and went on my way - nothing will get my goat today, it is a lovely day, warm, the bike feels good, traffic is flowing and all is right with the world.

That lasted until I got to work and discovered that everything I had set up last week to run over the weekend failed to run.  Crap - now I gotta figure out why that has to be that way..

Along the way, I discovered that our efforts to capitalize on our help desk personnel by borrowing them from sister organizations was somewhat less than satisfactory - apparently sister org teaches them to rigidly follow a procedure and ignore the caller's statements about what is going on. I managed not to become impolite, but I got pretty terse before he agreed to do what I had asked him 15 minutes earlier to do.

Soon, however, I get to go outside on the roof, get my jacket out, put on my gloves and motorcycle home - and I do look forward to it.  Great weather at least for today.  Gotta get those last rides in.  On the weekend I need to get Big Suzi over to Jack to get checked out, and then think about getting her sold.  I really don't want all that badly to ride anything that heavy any more.

The year is winding down - less than 45 days before I start writing checks with the wrong year on them again - or until I would be doing that if I wrote checks any more, which I do not. Along the way, I noted some of my classmates have been married longer than I have (I was a late starter) and some are even older, but still alive.  All too many no longer live - a consequence of the aging process, I know, but the table at the last reunion with deceased's pictures was entirely too full to suit me - some good folks that are no longer have with us.

Tomorrow I gotta get serious about recovering something that has disappeared on me (again) - to see if I can convince it to come back to life.  It seems some stuff about which I had no knowledge depends on the stuff I can no longer pull down from elsewhere, so I gotta reverse-engineer what I can find and get it working again.  Life is never dull.

Things at the home of the newlywed daughter are going ell - Big Ronnie is back to work, Little Ronnie is doing well at school, and Jessica seems to be doing well.  Once in a while things do go better than one has a right to hope.  I'll talk more about that whole circumstance at a later date - but it has been interesting to watch it grow - and I am well pleased at this point.

Once in a while, my dreams take me to strange places - back to Germany, back to an earlier day and an old flame, back to school, etc.  The past week has been full of this - someone's trying to tell me something, but I cannot imagine what it is.  If I figure it out, I guess I'll just have to write about it. Meanwhile, I have phone calls to make to check on a few folks about whom I still care.

Over my lifetime so far, I've missed out on good things because of my own insecurities and perceived limitations, and screwed up in more ways than I could have imagined existed. For all of that, life is a good place, and the regrets I have, while many, are not great enough to make me do more than occasionally wish to hunt someone down an deliver an apology that I believe to be owed. It is always good to call some people that I've not seen in years and catch up - whatever I might happen to be I owe at least part to others that I have met, experiences we have shared, and answers to questions that I would never have been able to make by myself alone.  The most valuable things are often not really mine, but things shared with another.

I think it is time for me to pack it up and to go home. Y'all take care.