Visitor from Florida

Just after 10 o'clock this morning...

I'm up, showered and on the front porch waiting for someone I haven't seen in years.This will be the second time, almost to the day, that someone from my past has just popped up to visit. This time it's Stephanie, one of the few people that I'll speak with from High School. She normally lives in Florida but her father lives here in Portsmouth. She said that she's been up here since Sunday and they're leaving to go back tomorrow so I figured that hanging out with her today would be fun. I'm waiting on the drywall compound from my granddad so that I can repair the hole in the back bedroom wall. He said that he's not been able to find it, but will keep looking.

I've settled on a shade of blue for the office and will probably be buying it in a few days assuming that everything works out. Even when I get the back bedroom painted, it will take me a while to disassemble the furniture in the front and move it. I may go ahead and paint the shelves white since they can be painted and be drying while I'm working / waiting on the other steps to be finished.

Once the back office is finished, I can start to paint the front room and then move all of the bedroom stuff out of the middle room. This, then, will allow me to pull up the carpeting and start moving shelves around. The middle room is going to become something of a media room. The bookshelves are going to be moved into there and I'm thinking that the tv and such as well. The front room just isn't designed to have people comfortably watching television in there - not with the way the fireplace takes up most of the space. So, I'm going to convert it into something of a sitting room with a love seat and a few chairs for when I want to play with the fire or something like that.

The middle room, since it has much more wall space for furniture, will be the place to watch television and such. Once the old carpeting has been pulled up, it will be much easier to have hardwood floors sanded in both rooms and fix things up. I need to make sure that there is cable run to the front room and that they haven't cut it or something. The cable company is sending someone over this Friday to replace the cut cables in the back room.

The smell of rain is on the air. I know we had a storm last night that was more of a shower than anything else but you can still detect the traces of moisture in the trees. I wouldn't be surprised if we'll have another storm or shower this afternoon; probably while we're out at the lake.

I got a hold of Dan last night on Yahoo; he's moved into the house down from Barb & Zak and he and Heather are doing their thing. Dan was telling me how he WALKED home from classes the other day since they now live in town and that he was hitting the net with High Speed. I can't imagine going from what I have now back down to Dial Up; just gives me shivers sometimes even thinking about it. Granted, I also have a weird issue between a Digital life and an Analog one, but that is slowly getting resolved. I sent letters out on Monday and I enjoyed the whole process. I know tht writing letters is not necessarily a 'lost' art, but definitely a tradition or practice that has faded with the rise of the digital age. Most of my students can barely write legibly, but I'm sure that they could probably send you a thirty-word text message before they would even remember how to start a letter.

I figure that with our society going more and more digital, the ways of the Analog Anachronist will become viewed by society as clumsy if not abnormal. Why take the time to write and send a letter when an email is instant? Logically, emails are more efficient means of communication when that's all you're doing.