I wonder if there's something in the air? I'm feeling crappy and tired and unhappy. I need some more photographs for the journal, but that's not what's causing it. They've been feeding me more blood thinners lately and maybe I'm bleeding again and that's what's been making me tired. Shit. What am I saying? I had a pretty good day. I'm going to sleep like a rock and have a pretty good day tomorrow. If I am bleeding I'll get a test and find out. What's all the bawling about?

Ah, yes, the ISP tech sees no sign of me coming over the wire. No little blips on the two or three ISDN numbers he was able to give me to test and call. This is not looking good. Call the phone company. They have some sort of priority service. I now have a ticket number. I have a phone number just in case it doesn't work out.

I have Dilbert playing on the TV right now after having missed the first two episodes. As a geek I should be liking this so I'll watch while I wait for the phone company to call.

As a geek I'm going to give Dilbert another chance.

The ISDN line works. I clicked on the icon, it dialed, I connected. I suspect someone at the phone company took a look at whatever they take a look at and said "oh, shit" and turned it back on. Somebody didn't pay their bill and they turned that number off, but they made a mistake and turned mine off instead. Yeah. Well, I'm a computer techie and not a very good one at that so what do I know about troubleshooting phones?

But the ISDN line works and I'm discovering that other people are feeling crappy as well. Rien's feeling good, but Pamie's had a fight with her old man and Viv's had a fight with her old man and Beth's been shooting at anyone who moves. I'm not even going to look at Scoop (Actually, I just did and Scoop is doing fine, thank you. Maybe it's an American thing: The moon, the electro-mechanical phosphorescence of the sun. But I have no doubt it's coming, you poor bastards, like the culture, we spread it around.) Scoop, by the way, has been running some really slick photographs which puts a hair up my ass and makes me want to do some of my own. Summer in Australia, isn't it? That's the reason. Better light. Right.

I've been thinking in the bath about this journal business. Dilbert did his thinking in the bath too, come to think of it, in tonight's episode so maybe I liked it better than I thought. One of the few ways I know to make progress with the writing is to write a lot against a deadline so that eventually you get very crazy and the little voices start to echo in your ears and pretty quick your writing takes on additional flavors, moves up another step, lurches in fact, like some half dead climber fingering and finding another foothold.

I say these things with confidence, but I don't have a clue.