She was tired. She was dazed. Buy our youngest found her in back of the hamper after two days missing. All pets safe and accounted for.

Very difficult day for my wife today. (Which means a difficult evening for me of course).

For my part, I got a stock option grant today. Not much to cheer about. Two years to even get the first actual vesting, and it is much much less than the initial block I got when I hired in. Don't really plan on staying in the job long enough to get any of that vested at this point.

I watched "The King of Masks" Yesterday. Interesting movie about traditions and sexism in China.

The hamster has escaped. And we have a dog in the house. This could get ugly. So far the dog has not shown any signs of hearing or smelling the hamster. We looked for almost an hour before giving up and letting the dog out of his crate. Now I have grave concerns for the hamsters destiny. Will the first sign of the hamster be pathetic little bones emerging from the dog's anus? Or will we notice a bad smell in part of the closet a week or two from now?

I'm still hopeful that she is just sleeping somewhere, curled up safely in a shoe waiting for nightfall to start running around again.

My grandmother, age 93, fell down and broke her hip on Saturday night. She had been living on her own and in pretty good health overall. I flew up there with two other family members on Monday morning to be with her for her surgery. They did not need to replace the hip, just pinned it back together. She came through fine, and will be starting physical therapy very soon.

Grandma, or "Nana" as we all call her, was pretty disoriented after the operation because of the anesthesia. She recognized me right away, and wanted to know what I was doing there, even though I'd seen her for several hours before the surgery. We had to explain to her where she was and what had happened all over again. Then when we went to leave for the night, she wanted to know why she couldn't go home too! "You just had surgery, Nana. You're on oxygen and you have an IV in your arm." It sounded like she was senile, but she's not; it was just the drugs. The next day, she was fully aware of the situation again.

I also saw my cousin, who's turned out to be a very pretty woman. She's having trouble with her husband of 6 years and they may separate. It seems like everyone's marriage sucks who's willing to talk about it. At least I'm not the only one. My wife is out of town on a "retreat" right now. On one of the busiest weeks of the year. She's piled our schedule high with crap, then she takes off.... jeez. The kids and I blew off several scheduled activities today. They did't want to go and I didn't want to take them. So there! We had a good time. If wifey wants to rule our world, she has to be around to do it. I know she means well. She's signed the kids up for so much stuff because it makes her feel like a good mother somehow. I hope she learns other ways to make herself feel better ... soon.

My oldest daughter is 7, turning 8 soon. She's quite attached to her blanket. Just never got around to giving it up, and its a comfort to her so I never forced the issue. Time flew by, and now its getting a little funny that she still has it. Not like she carries it around all day or anthing, but she likes to have it with her when she goes to sleep.

So since 8 is a big birthday for anyone, and she's going to have to let go of that blanket before it literally falls apart, we decided to get her a super nice birthday present. We went to CompUSA today and picked out a nice laptop for her. She needs the extra space on her desk anyway, and the old desktop she had has died and cannot be revived without a new hard drive. So its a good thing to do.

I'm in the "less is more" phase of life so its suits me fine. A laptop is less space, less power, less wires hanging around, and less weight to carry if you need to re-arrange things. It makes the desk space more versatile.

I also made an exception to the personal rule I have about not buying extended warranties. I think this machine is way more likely to be abused and/or destroyed than most, just because it belongs to a wild child.

I've been occupied with a strange fantasy this morning. I want to run away and live in a shipping conatainer. I have many details worked out. I would buy some land in a low tax area. Then dig out a trench and have the container shipped in. Add a septic system. A rainwater collection tank provides running water for washing and flushing, but I would only drink bottled water. Power would be a 12V solar system with an inverter. 4 Panels and an inverter for the AC applications. Lights would be 12V DC similar to RV lighting. Refrigeration would be propane, again using RV technology.

Basically I want the safety of a solid metal structure, but the lifestyle of a parked RV. I might even put wheels on the thing and call it a travel trailer, just to keep the taxes lower. Although you loose your search and siezure protection when you do that, so I'd have to decide how much money I'm willing to pay for that particular constitutional right. Given the current state of affiars, there isn't any assurance that my rights will be protected anyway, so why bother?

So I spent the first hours of the morning thinking about how to do my climate control, and whether to just have an outhouse instead of plumbing. Perhaps the story about Diogenes I read recently is inspiring me too much, but its not the first time I've had thoughts along these lines.

The funny thing is I have a nice house that I love, and a family, and good job, everything I ought to want and need. Why am I obsessed with throwing it all away? Best theory so far is that my own genes have decided to wreck my family to enhance their chances of getting replicated again, since my wife and I don't want to have any more kids together. Maybe a better theory, although not mutually exclusive, is I just want more time alone, or I just want a simpler life than this suburban treadmill. Yeah, I like that theory better. It doesn't make me feel so rotten about myself.

I noticed my mood lifted a few notches after I got my second OS back up and running on the dual-boot machine. Although I not a big MS fan, I really feel better now that its working again. So that raises an interesting question in my mind, which is : Does the state of our hard drive influence our emotional well being, in ways other that the obvious?

Now granted I was a little bummed when Win98 first died on me, but I thought I had long since gotten over it. Re-formatting and re-loading it didn't really get me anywhere except the potential to play different games if I get some time, yet I am irrationally joyful about it. So I wonder if a few hours spent re-organizing my file system might enhance my mood further.

I was just thinking back on a wierd phone call I got about a year ago. Some guy that obviously knew who I was was asking directions to somewhere, I wasn't quite sure where. I couldn't make out a lot of what he was saying, and he was acting pretty strange. I just now clued in it was probably someone I knew from high-school who was drunk as hell and looked me up.

I was a jerk in high school. I guess most nerds are. Must be some side effect of social rejection. (hint: nerdism was not cool in the early 80's.) Strange how I still think about people I knew back them, and they pop up in dreams sometimes. I suppose I'm not the only one who does, judging by the drunken phone call.

Wow, I finally got a MonopolySoft OS running again on my dual-boot desktop machine, hoping to play some computer RPG games for the first time in years. Then the wife comes in and is talking about our kid's teacher and how she must have post-partum depression, and that gets us onto her meltdown of several years ago (which is why I haven't done any serious gaming BTW) and how she just can't understand why being in a loveless marriage is a problem for me. Jeez, now I remember why we stopped talking. I had to use the dog as a teching example on how to effectively express love. Guys, when any chick asks why you don't just get a dog, stop and give it some serious thought.

Artistic image of the day is a cliff climber going sideways across the cliff, his ropes horizontal instead of vertical, gravity parallel to the horizon. Wierd image that came to me in a dream-like state of depression.

What a thread! A great deal to think about for someone like myself who should have been a SF writer, but copped out for a "normal life." Didn't resonate with not liking the matrix sequels. I wanted to reply, but its archived. When I first saw The Matrix, many years after it was out of theaters, I wasn't expecing much. The simulated reality idea was old to me, since Knight of Delusions, which I read as a teenager. Action flicks bore me in general. But something wierd happened when I saw The Matrix. I rewound the tape immediately and watched it again. For years, it stuck in the back of my mind. I looked into it, off and on, and finally found a connection to Jung. That got me turned on to Jung for a while. The sequels made more sense after that.