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04/04/2004 Entry: "Lazy Sunday... I hope" We took today off. I didn't end up going to West Virginia like I had planned, CR went with Christine instead in the blue Saturn, because we're still worried about the green Saturn's tires, and he didn't mind packing into the back seat. We got ahold of Fran again, and we're going to send him a care package so he won't have to worry about money for the next few weeks. He's doing very well, and this whole affair, as bad as it was, has really settled some old wounds for Christine and Fran. See, Fran was the youngest next to Christine, which means they were only 11 years apart. He left home when he joined the Navy when Christine was just 6, and he never came back because the family situation was pretty bad back then. Christine idolized her older brother, the only male influence in her immediate family, and when he left, it broke her heart. Christine never knew her dad, since they left him when she was 2, and she only saw him once since then (she was 8). So "making up" with Fran was very important for her. Her and Debbie also got a lot closer during this ordeal, and I got to know Debbie more. I always liked Debbie, the first sister of Christine's I ever met when we were dating, and she's no different now. She's still cool. So I spent most of yesterday re-potting the catnip, and planting seeds for the impatiens and cucumbers. The tomato plants are really getting out of control, because some of them have gotten so big that the roots are growing out of the peat pots and into the peat pots of their neighbors. It really is a miracle, that such hardy and aggressive plants can come from such small seeds. I can't plant them outside, as the recent weather reminded me (it dipped below freezing last night). I also tried to assemble my new table and two new chairs, but the chairs had the wrong parts (fixed) and the table has a problem because one of the legs was drilled wrong, but I am sure I can fix that. I hope. I also did a massive cleanup of my hard drives on all my systems, and got a backup working again. Ha ha... my backup program hadn't run since March of last year! Hoo! Thank you Windows... damn. Good thing I caught that before a virus or hard drive crash or something. It was also a nice trip through memory lane, because now I have financial records and website backups dating back to 1998. It's also weird to see what I have saved after all this time. Snippets of text from the web, notes to myself, and so on. My new Linux box is working pretty well, although, it doesn't seem much faster than my old one, to be truthful. But at least it's quiet. My room doesn't sound like an old exhaust fan in a factory anymore.