Headlines from a tired guy

I know it's been a long time since I last posted. Things have been way too busy. I finally declared that this morning is devoted to not working even though I have enough work to keep me busy. It's been a month since my last day at home without something work related and I have meetings or events through a week from Friday with a camporee this weekend. This happens every spring, but it seems like a new experience each time. Enough whining, now for the few headlines:

"The Day the Laptop Died": My stalwart electronic companion died last Sunday. It had served me well since I purchased it not long after realizing that the CVC office machines were not acceptable to me and did the job well for three and a half years. It's death was quick and frustrating. After spending a couple of hours on Saturday working on an event on it, I brought it home and went to retrieve the file on Sunday when lo and behold it would not boot. This brought on a long soliloquy alternately punctuated by cursing the machine and cajoing it to return to life. Alas, it chose not to respond. It could have picked a better time to die, thankfully I had recently backed up the important files (music) on it. As it was, I needed a laptop for several upcoming events. Enter the Best Buy card, no interest financing for one year and wa-la, new laptop. It is not what I would have purchased given more time and planning and finances, but it is a solid machine. It's a Toshiba Satellite A105 with a DVD burner and the new Intel Core Solo processor. The only item lacking is an onboard video card, but that would have doubled the price to get a machine with that on it. On the upside, I can upgrade it to 4 gig of DDR2 RAM and will in time do so. I have named it "Gertrude".

"Training Supremo": I had the lovely opportunity to be training chair for my district Boy Scout Training course on just over a week's notice. This was a contributing factor to the whine at the start. I managed to assemble a scratch team and rebuild the syllabus to work and execute it successfully. The toll was that I am still tired despite 11 hours of sleep the night after the course. I have now recruited a new training chair to run it in the fall, amen.

"Road Work": The season has started here with three towns isolated. I knew about the challenge in getting to Cedar Grove, but I did not know that 20 miles of highway were closed on the most direct route to a meeting I had last week. This led to a convoluted tour of Southwest Sheboygan County as Brian and I tried to find a route to where we were going. We made it only fifteen minutes late. The third town, I received warning yesterday, but it will be really incoveinent for those who don't know the back routes. I hate orange.

That's all I've got for now.