Mental clean up on Fridays

Losing Dad today - he'll be snagging a ride down to Portland this afternoon and taking off for home by tomorrow. And good timing, too - he's done almost all the packing there is to do. I've still got kitchen and bathroom and clothes and other last minute things - I'll be sorting through stuff this weekend, but the bulk of it all - the books and tapes are done: 55 boxes of books, and another 4 for the videos. My walls look like they're made of cardboard.

I'm itching for a zip drive on my iMac at work. All we've got wandering around are the SCSI drives, and those won't exactly work. I'm slowly bringing in different music and ripping it to the hard drive, and as a result, I'm more often than not tied to the computer by my headphones - they don't reach far enough to type at the other computer. Oh the pain! I'd really like to be able to write from my work computer.

Laurier's not feeling well - he was being a pukey kitty this morning - couldn't even keep water down. Dad's keeping an eye on him, and if this continues, to the vet he goes. This does make me glad that the main common areas aren't going to be carpetted. Cat puke is so much easier to clean off of wood and linoleum.

I have about half of my new room planned, in that I have a vague idea of where things will go and which bookshelves will work where. The windows, though - they're throwing me off a little. I'm not quite sure what short things will be going where - foldy shelves and the bureau... the cat perches, really. There's going to be this lovely open space in the middle, though - I'm envisioning dancing space or reading on the floor space or just open, lying in the sun space.

I may be buying more furniture come October - another dresser, tv shelves for downstairs, chairs for the dining room... it'll depend alot on what the others bring in, though, so I'll be patient. <drums fingers> Sort of.

Diesel crayons

<sniff> No more Dad - he's taking off in a couple of hours. We had lunch, and marveled at the reappearance of the sun and the glorious blue sky. He talked more about Millenium Fuels, racing fuel, bio-diesel and some other projects that he might be involved in.

Bio-diesel's neat shit - it's made from soybean oil, basically straight from the bottom of a nasty, grungy fryer, and 20% mixed with straight diesel counts as an alternative fuel with the EPA, while just 2% eliminates the need for sulphur as a top-end cushion. (Um, wear and tear on the engine, basically.)

Dad's always talked with me about his business. It's been a constant since he sold the Hotsy dealership, and I was in sixth grade for that! We were watching one of this season's Buffy eps last night - where they found out Joyce had the brain tumor, and Buffy was keeping the whole tumor thing and the Key thing from Dawn, and Dad asked me if he'd ever done that to us, kept something from us to protect us or some nonsense.

And that's the farthest thing from the reality. He and Mom always kept us informed. In grade school, they'd caution us to keep the business information especially to ourselves, but that just made it more special - Dru and I were privy to the family secrets. It's made me a little shy talking about money with anyone not in the immediate family, but there was never a time when Dru or I felt shut out of what was going on. Not then and not now.

Hells, nothing like the Dawn/Buffy thing. I just don't get that (and neither does Dad) - at 13 (or however old Dawn is,) kids may not be emotionally mature, but keeping things from them hurts more than it helps. Not all families are as tight as ours, but the whole non-communication thing is never a good route to take.

Anyway, after lunch, we headed for Office Depot to get an ink cartridge for my printer, and while I was there, I snagged crayons. I've been hankering for some good crayons since June, when Mom & Dad gave G&G Hall 60 for their 60th anniversary. I'm planning on sending Dad a totally cheesy crayoned up thank you card for everything he's done to help me move. Maybe even some 'Hey! I've moved - Again!' notes. It's nice to still have a seven-year old's glee for crayons.