Am I the only person who uses daily affirmations for my passwords? I started this almost a year ago. I take an affirmation and change some of the letters to numbers, add symbols, and, viola, assuming I remember it, I have a new secure password. It has two advantages: extra security and fulfillment of my dreams. I learned from Stuart Smalley that repeating one’s hopes and dreams every day makes them come true. Check back in a few years and I’ll let you know how it’s worked out. I’m hoping that revealing my secret doesn’t undermine the security of my passwords. It’s not like my daily affirmation is that difficult to figure out: “don’t kill Seattle drivers no matter how poorly they drive—it’s not their fault, they were just raised funny.” Okay, so I don’t use that password too often, but, remember, it’s for the children!

My computer’s spacebar is still giving my problems. In my quest to fix it, I removed some of its underlying parts. It seems to be working better without these parts. I’m not sure how long this will last. By better, I should say, I have to concentrate with each press on finding the spacebar’s sweet spot to ensure proper spacage (that really should be a word, pronounced space-ij, not space-age). This is starting to slow down my typing. At first I thought it was rather novel, something else to think about while pounding out the words. Now I see it’s just annoying. This will go in tomorrow. I can’t survive another musing night with this spacebar.

Doolies is off the airport to pick up her parents. That leaves me a few precious minutes to finish up today’s entry. Internet returned to the Castle a few hours ago. There are still people in Seattle and its surrounding areas that are without electricity. As I met people without electricity at work today, I tried to explain to them that while having electricity is all good and everything, it’s really the internet that keeps me warm at night, and not having the internet is worse than not having electricity (ignoring the fact that if you don’t have electricity there’s no way you can have internet). None of these electric-free people were impressed by my observation. If anything, most of them ignored me and continued their sob stories about sleeping in the frigid cold and scrounging food and bringing their cats to work because they looked cold in the house. It’s possible that my story about the internet keeping me warmer than electricity was something that played out in my head while they were telling me their problems. I’m not always sure of what I say and what I think while someone else is speaking. To me it amounts to the same thing. It’s my watermelon philosophy.

My most entertaining exchange about the power outage: “We lost power for two nights. The first night was great. My family sat around and talked the night away. It was our conversations that kept us warm. The second night was not as great because we ran out of things to talk about.” It was funnier how she put it. I should have written it down.

I steamed through the first half of the words. The second half may be more difficult. I just got the call. The second half of this entry will have to wait until I return home. I’m meeting Doolies and her parents at a restaurant for dinner. I have a fun drive ahead of me at the tail end of the rush hour. Wish me luck!

I’m back. The spacebar is still playing games with me. Not a good sign, especially with upcoming weekends away from the Castle where the little computer that could will be used extensively.

I’m reaching now. Returning from my second trip of the day to the eastside hasn’t granted me any insights or energies. I don’t know what I was hoping. I’m toward the end of the writing, so I might as well throw some dialogue up.