I’ve been sick. That’s pretty much it. I spent most of Friday and Saturday crashed on the couch watching old movies in between bouts of unconsciousness.

I did get out a little bit despite the circumstances; I supervised an after-hours school field trip with the eldest to see children’s author Graham Salisbury speak at an event sponsored by the Junior League of Richmond on Thursday night. It was a nice, engaging program, and I think the kids got a lot out of it. My kid’s read several of Salisbury’s books, and she really seemed to enjoy them. I found him interesting enough that I’ll be adding a few of his books to my “to be read” pile. Don’t know when I’ll get to them – that pile is quite large.

I got out of the house a bit on Sunday to attend to some responsibilities, but mostly, again, I took it easy, trying to get this mystery crud out of my system, except for spending an hour or two Sunday night working to rebuild the operating system on my laptop, which for some mysterious reason developed a twitchy boot sector. I’m mostly done with that, though for some reason, the touchpad quit working after a seemingly unrelated software update.

I’ll fix that issue this afternoon (shouldn’t be a big deal), though I suspect it is just one more instance of the universe telling me that the machine is seven years old, and that a new one is probably soon in the cards. Sure, it’s only a dual core with 2 gigs of RAM, and battery #2 only holds about fifteen minutes of power when it’s not plugged in, but I really like the form factor, and it still does what I need it to do. I may just spring for battery #3 and openly defy the universe for another year or two.

Otherwise, this week will eventually find me up in DC, but first I have to see the middle child get his Weblos badge tonight. This is a big deal, and I don’t want to miss it.