Dear Diary:

Weather today -- too early to tell
Mood today -- not awake enough to tell
Fly count for yesterday -- 1
HF Today -- 57%

My apologies to those who attempted to visit these pages yesterday. My ISP was down for the day in order to install some new fibre optics stuff.

Today is my 39th birthday. This day is always difficult for me because my first love died on my 21st birthday. I had a pretty decent crisis about the whole thing last night and I think I've got the age thing and David's death out of my system for another year. At least I hope so. After eighteen years, you would think the pain would have receded somewhat. But last night it was there and as intense as ever. I thought briefly about going to visit his grave today, but it would serve no purpose. Better to try and focus on something positive instead of living in the past.

I've been trying to think of something fun and maybe a little bit off the wall to do for my birthday. Nothing really came to mind, however, and so I decided to give out some presents, however small they may be. So here's the scoop: be one of the first thirty-nine people to send in the form below and you'll receive a special little awards saying you're a member of The Order of the 39. And you'll get a link to your homepage on a page dedicated to the Order. Silly, I know. But hey, wouldn't you like to be one of only 39 people with the award on the entire web? So send this sucker in. If the form isn't working, an email will do. Put Order of the 39 in the subject line and remember to give me all the pertinent info so I can list your site and send you the award graphic.

The page listing the 39 members of The Order of the 39 will be up tomorrow. Good luck!

My son the wheeler dealer. He blows my mind with the bargains he finds sometimes. Last Night he upgraded his computer from a 386 to a Pentium for under $500. This machine started out as an XT... my first computer. I think it was a 12 MHz Compaq, if I remember correctly. He rebuilt it and turned it into a 386, but of course the thrill wore off quickly. During the course of its life with Michael, he's added sound, speakers, super vga, a CD-rom, a printer and all kinds of other gadgets. He has an adult friend who buys old computers and rebuilds them as a hobby, and he's constantly nickel and diming poor Joe to death, trying to get a bargain.

Anyway, he now has a Pentium-100 (which kicks my computer's butt!), a new mouse, new video card, etc. I have to admit that I'm pretty proud of him. Not about the wheeling and dealing part, though I suppose that's admirable in itself, but about the fact that a 12 year old can basically build a decent computer from the ground up. He's had no assistance from anyone, myself included, because I'm hopeless when it comes to hardware.

I got another invoice from Internic. They have apparently lost my $100 payment for my domain registration and are threatening to discontinue the domain if I don't pay them within fifteen days. To say I'm not happy with them is an understatement. And idiot that I am, I paid the original invoice with a money order and then misplaced the receipt. It looks like I'm going to have to fork out another $100 to keep my domain registration. I don't know if I'm more angry at them or at myself.

Rudy is back in school and so our time together is very limited. I'm determined to make the adjustment with as much grace and dignity as possible, though so far that's proving difficult. I feel like I'm not handling *anything* very well right now and I can't pinpoint what the problem is. I keep blaming it on PMS, but I know that isn't the culprit. I think I need to go lie on the beach in Tahiti and drink rum drinks with little umbrellas in them for about three weeks.