As I was getting ready for bed last night I mentally mapped out what I wanted to accomplish today. I realized as I was snuggling in, that my Sunday (and most of my Sundays) start about the same. Wake up. Read until the Sunday Morning Show comes on. Get up, make coffee and breakfast. Watch Sunday Morning Show. Adventure. Read dooce and other blogs. Write in my own.
I've been holding this tradition for at least four years, without a single thought. I love my Sundays.
Today, as I was partaking in my normal habit, my Internet connection went funny. I was receiving "server errors" and "page cannot load" messages. I checked my connection and it was amazingly slow 1.0 Mbps, where I normally have 11. No amount of refresh could make it pop back to normal, so I removed my wireless card.
When I put it back in it was blinking. Typically it blinks back and forth between the two lights as it's registering and achieving the hallowed connection. After connection is achieved Status stays on and Activity flickers. This was just a steady on-off. I double clicked on the icon and it gave me the search for a connection screen. Another odd thing. After searching it produced the 1.0 Mbps connection. But here I noticed the name was off. It was a series of numbers and letters whereas my "connection name" is Stacey.
Somehow during the course of dooce, I lost my wireless signal and my computer found and connected to another network in the neighborhood. I hope for the sake of the person who owns this connection that the distance between my computer and their house made it so slow.
We have had such beautiful, warm weather lately. Above zero, low of mid-20. Even a high of 45. Of course, being Wisconsin there's this little voice in everyone's heads telling us not to get too used to it. There's still plenty of winter to be had. But it's just so nice to see my clean roof. To drive up a clear driveway. And, and!!! To see grass. It's dead grass. But hell, it's a different color than white, gray or a mix of white, gray and dirty-snow-brown.
The trade off last week was we didn't have much sun. No one complained because it was warm, overcast, grey weather. And to herald in the transition of the seasons, and to battle the winter grey-blahs, I changed my computer wallpaper. And I stocked up. I had a beautiful night scene of a park in New York City. Lots of explosion of color, plus some snow and a bridge over a frozen pond.
But having a winter scene tells the universe that I'm okay it's still winter. Just like having snowmen decorations and I love snow plaques on display conveys the message we want more. Go ahead, snow, we don't mind. Hence the taking down of all that relates to the white stuff.
Mom and I have that tradition every year. One of us declares it time for spring to start to think about coming. And these decorations discourage that, so we must remove them. Promptly. And without bias.
Okay, a little off track and back to the wallpaper. I needed to replace it. At first I went for the spring pictures, but then stopped because it's a little depressing because it is still winter. So I went for color instead. To combat the grey, I went for blue. Right now I have blue roses. They are somewhat gaudy and irredesent, but it makes me feel better to see the color. I have a couple more "blue" photos stocked to change when I don't feel like the blue roses any more.
I did something similar on my laptop a couple of months ago. At the end of fall when it was bleak--the trees let go all their leaves, there was no snow yet so the world outside was just brown, dead and ugly. I don't remember what I searched for but I got this photo of soap stacked at the market in Provence from webshots. It did the trick. Visually interesting and bursting with color. I had a hard time replacing it. i knew I wanted something with a lot of color.
I finally settled on this one. It's a photo of a Dale Chihuly instillation. From the description this one is on the ceiling. The album tags indicate it is from a Chihuly exhibit in the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. It would have been cool to see. Though I was happy with what was there when we went in 2005. I had seen some of Chihuly's work (other than in the Weidner Center) at the Children's Museum in Indianappolis.
Here's to warmer weather, the impending spring and the good things the week will bring.
No comments:
Post a Comment