Saturday, August 1, 2009

Saturday, August 1, 2009
It is a bit cloudy and cool this morning, but I am hoping it will clear and warm up as it did yesterday. NWS is saying it is to be warm and a zero chance of rain, but then they don’t actually have a weather station at my location. Their forecasts are predicated on data gathered in Great Falls, so I take it with a grain of salt and hope they are in the ballpark.
My day started off poorly as I had a lousy nights sleep, tossing and turning with leg pains and a general sense of not being able to relax. After about an hour of that, an Alka-Seltzer and walk around the cabin, and I was able to get some sleep.
After getting up, I made my coffee and turned on my modem to sit down and read my emails and do my usually morning routine. Good plan, but it wasn’t going to happen. Everything on the computer was taking forever and some things, like my mail program, never opened at all. I double checked all my connections and settings and decided to restart the computer after I emptied my cache and trash.
When I restarted the computer, it didn’t recognize my wireless Airport, so I reset it and restarted the modem again. It didn’t help, so I took my laptop to the modem, which is in my dining area, and connected it directly using the cable. I still had no internet connection. I reset and restarted everything and when that didn’t help, I switched to my old Airport. Nothing I did seemed to help, so I shut everything off and had breakfast.
After playtime with Zack and a general picking up of papers and moving them from one place to another, I turned the modem and computer on to see if I could get a connection. When all was up and running, the light on my Airport wireless was blinking orange, not a steady green as it should be. I was able to open Firefox, but loading a simple 1:02 video took 8 minutes. At first I blamed the weather, but then thought to check my FAP setting. Sure enough, it was amber, not green. A check of the site showed I had exceeded my download limits, but I knew I hadn’t as I couldn’t even get online. It was also amber instead of the usual red for exceeding FAP limits.
The whole thing pissed me off so I decided that rather than fight with it; I would just spend my time doing other things. I shut everything off and began cleaning. I started to clear a few papers from my dining table, which is where paid bills, receipts, and important papers get laid until I can properly file them. Well, as you know, one thing leads to another and I ended up spending the majority of the day filing and going through files, throwing useless (which are few as I keep everything) papers away.
This task, plus taking breaks to play with Zack and moving around to keep from getting too stiff, took up the entire afternoon. At 7 PM, I played one last time with Zack and then fed him and Zoey their dinner. I took a shower and then roasted a game hen for dinner.
My evening went pretty much as usual until at 10:30 PM, a large truck slowly drove by the cabin, coming from the Dog Creek area. Usually people travel in the opposite direction because not many know how to get to the old logging bridge over Dog Creek. It stopped, just out of sight, behind my garage, so I turned Zack loose to let him bark, letting who ever it was know that someone was home and watching. With just the sunroom lamp on, and the reflection of television, they may have thought no one was home.
After Zack barked a few times they moved on. It was too dark to get a description of the truck or any occupants, but before they were out of ear shot, I fired a gun a couple of times to let them, and anyone else know, they would be up against an armed individual if they tried something.
I am usually not paranoid about occasional vehicles coming by, but that late at night and stopping near my garage, made me think that they may have been up to no good, so a couple of shots might make them think twice.
I finished watching a pre-recorded television program, the one I mentioned before - The Colony, and then went to bed.