Reading: Lois Lowry

Moving: Nothing yet; it's only 10:15

19 March 2000: Rules

The corollary to my rule about not reading books out of order is that I have to read all the books. I could have stopped at Anastasia Krupnik, but when at the Field branch yesterday I found a slew of the others, I got them. Lots of them, all about Anastasia, all of them except one in the middle. I decided to be brave and break my rules about order, but now I feel compelled to read all of them, even though I'm not enjoying them much. Thank the Climbing Tree, I don't need to know how to solve or just handle a 13-year-old's problems, especially when she's got parents who read and lives in Cambridge and therefore had my ideal childhood. So I'm reading.

Tuesday night in Vancouver someone broke into RDC's rental car and stole his laptop. And his coworker's. They were at dinner and returned to the car. Carolyn was just going to walk to her hotel, two blocks away, but her laptop bag was gone. As was RDC's. His bag contained his laptop, his PalmPilot, and his DayRunner. He asked the police, what about Canada's superior crime rate to the U.S.'s? The constable told him their theft rate is much, much higher, at least in Vancouver, and yes, their violent crime is much, much lower. Theft is so prevalent that people have special insurance policies such that they don't have to report losses to the police, but just to insurance to be compensated. Which means that the theft rate is underreported. Also the constable said that people break into cars--especially those with Washington, U.S. plates--so efficiently that unless they do take something, you might never knew they were there. They'll break into cars that don't have stuff in obvious sight, because the plates or the make-and-model is promising, take what's worth taking, and close up.

RDC's whole head is in his PalmPilot. Was in it. I am his backup brain with basic duties like "Your nephew's birthday is this Friday" (which it is) and "'That '70s Show' is on at 7:00." Business contacts, New York Times headlines, and everything else is in the PalmPilot.

Easy come, easy go, though. Last May RDC walked into a conference, saw a PalmPilot on the table at the front, and realized two things: the seminar was going to give that PalmPilot away that day, and he was going to be the one to get it. Both these things were true.

He's remarkably unshaken. When your house burns to the ground when you're barely 17, your only important question is, "Is my dog okay?" And Warwick was. After that, RDC has had a healthy attitude toward material loss: it's just stuff, and as long as the dog's okay, nothing else matters. He had backed up all the information Monday before he left, so that was okay too: no material loss. He had a scary moment Thursday on the plane coming home, when he couldn't remember if he had his keys in his carry-on (safe in the hotel room) or in the computer bag (gone gone gone). His--our--address was all over the laptop bag and the DayRunner and in the laptop and PalmPilot. Address + keys = badness. But he had his keys.

So Saturday in the mail he got some little freebie 3"x5" notebook from Trip.com. "A new PalmPilot!" he crowed happily. "Do you think it synchronizes automatically?"

Monday the 20th:

It's snowing it's snowing it's snoooooowing again. Hooray! It snowed the 16th too, not quite to the top of my boot. January and February can get really boring, cold and no snow, or worse, not cold and no snow. But March is something like. Snooooow!

Blake doesn't like snow. He certainly doesn't like it offered in handfalls in the house, and watching it fall can be scary too. Here, he tries to hide behind the middle sash.

So not only does the Wicked Witch of the West read me, but some tempestuous son of a witch reads me too. I saw that URL in my logs today and was pleased--the second journaler to read me whom I haven't known first.