remembering St Patrick Hernandez

I ran the Defragmenter on the Win98SE laptop overnight. I've learned to only do that from Safe Mode, because otherwise it restarts and restarts and restarts and restarts .. you get the idea. I think it's now respectable again, ready to be borrowed as needed. Heck, I'm entering this blog post from it. The Lithium Ion battery won't hold a charge more than 3 minutes, so it must be tethered to a wall socket all the time. Else, I might use it myself.

It's supposed to be 85F and windy today; I should go butcher prune some of the bushes along the driveway, but only after a leisurely trip to Virgin Megastore to use my free CD coupon. Yesterday was Saint Patty's Day, but you'd never know it around here. I guess there aren't too many Latino-Irish celebrations yet.

Tomorrow is the monthly Bulk Trash Day; Thursday was the first day we could legally put stuff at the curb. Even so, lots of people can't count to 2 (must be lots of blondes here) so there's been trash piled for the past ten days. Lately, the scavengers have been more obvious than prior years .. I've spotted quite a few pickups prowling the streets, slowing down whenever they approach a pile. I think there's a Dallas ordinance prohibiting this, but I'll have to look it up.

Deep Thought: is it okay to pepper spray a homeless guy who wants my old refrigerator to live in?

Soon after moving to Dallas, the water heater failed (in the house we were leasing) and The Repair Guy said we should just leave the old one at the curb. Within a few hours, there was a knock at the door:

"Yew want that water heater? It'd make a damn fine smoker!"

said the Texan. Not knowing what a smoker was at the time (hint: it's what Dallas Cowboy fans do before a game), I agreed. Heck, one less water heater sitting on the curb, and if he wanted to make moonshine with it, I'd have been fine with that, too.