I guess today really counts as the first snow because it was snowing at my house as opposed to some random stretch of I495 on the road to somewhere else. Romantic white flakes perk up the frozen day. Nobody complains about how cold it is. Instead they all say "hey look, snow!".
I spent what seemed like the whole morning on the phone with the PC/Mac Connection trying to return the keyboard they sent and get them to deliver the one I ordered. It seemed inconceivable to them that they put the wrong thing in the box. The packing slip showed the right part number and description, their records showed they'd shipped the one i ordered but darn that thing in the box wasn't it. Gnomes must break into the Airborne Express trucks and swap out keyboards. Anyway, they're shipping the right one overnight by Airborne and sending UPS to pick up the wrong one in 3 to 5 business days. They instructed me to make sure that no shipping labels other than the one with the RMA number are on the box. That proved difficult. I spent a good 45 minutes scraping labels off the box. So now it's ready whenver UPS shows up to pick it up.
Then on to therapy where I turned completely inarticulate about the return of Nikki, the anniversary of Kathleen's death, my total inadequacy at the process of grief, my being no closer to knowing what I want to be when I grow up... the usual stuff.
I spent the afternoon until it was time to leave for dinner at Kate's working on my web page. It doesn't show. I spent hours weeding out the obsolete Red Sox links, obsolete MASSCOMP alumni links, and barely got started on doing a new version of the Rhode Island links. I tried to finalize the Russia trip report but there are still some photos I want to add. I want to make this a nice site that reflects my interests but it seems like an awful lot of work. Anyway, I decided to save the RI page for later and finished up by correcting yesterday's entry to say Little Gulls instead of Black-Legged Kittiwakes lest Ripley's Believe It Or Not write me up for seeing a pelagic species on land.
Dinner at Kate's was nice. She has the apartment fixed up all nice and cozy kinda like Mole End. And, now that she's organized her books, I found my copy of The Willows in Winter with the cool picture of Toad in his flying suit on the dust jacket. I am happy to have been reunited with this book. It's a wonderful coincidence too because I just bought (on Sunday) another sequel to Wind in the Willows, entitled Toad Triumphant by William Horwood, the same guy who wrote The Willows in Winter. He does a fine job of continuing Kenneth Grahame's characters and universe. My affection for Mole and Ratty and Toad has only increased from reading these. Toad is totally unreconstructed, just the way I like him.
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