I feel silly.

Actually, that’s not true. What I feel is down and blah and damned near to emo, whatever the hell that is. Since I don’t want to be in the dumps, however, I’m deliberately turning my mind toward silly things in an effort to perk myself up.

If you believe my previous post, I’ve been giving some thought to things I can do here that people will find entertaining on some level. As I exercise my brain in search of a great idea, I think I have something that’ll do the trick. It’s silly, it plays to my strengths, and I have some experience with the medium already.

I have just over one week to prepare it, however.

…

You thought I was going to tell you what I’m doing in advance? Don’t be silly! Someone could steal my dorky lamebrained silly brilliant idea! Pish-posh! You’ll just have to wait like everyone else. Think on it as an adventure.

Yes, I’m a meanie. (Also: Terribly subtle.)

I approach forty years old. I’ll never again be that silly lad filled with nervous excitement, constantly seeking out new sights and experiences. I understand that, and accept it. C’mon: That kid was annoying, most of the time.

I don’t, however, like how far I’ve come from the days when I could dream, create, reach out and share. What have I done lately? The summer music project was, by almost any measure, a complete bust. My notable accomplishment there was in actually finishing the silly thing, but I couldn’t even continue as I meant to at the beginning, with the voice recording and music beds and clever stuff.

I need to recapture at least some of my former enthusiasm for life. The last few years were rough, but I’d hate to think that a divorce and being unemployed and getting older are enough to flatten my joie de vivre.

I believe that the first part of getting my life back involves sharing and connecting. That gregarious fellow who made good friends hither and yon seems to have disappeared, and I’d like to reclaim some of that lost life and skill. I can only do so much with the schedule I live with, mind you.

Once again, I need to put some priority into keep this silly website updated. There was a time when I posted several times a week, regularly! Can you imagine it? Do you know what else? I used to reply to email messages! I used to write email messages to people out of the blue, just to say hello and ask how they’re doing!

Yeah, I know. I can’t believe it either, anymore.

So. One more time, trying to carry on the fight against winding down. Can I do it, this time?

I’ve stated over the years that I’m something of a dilettante. Among the interests in which I dabble you’ll find the fascinating field of etymology. Words are fun. History is interesting. Therefore, the history of words is an endless joy… to me, anyway. A case in point:

Kyla and The Roomie and I were in the kitchen yesterday morning, eating and fixing breakfast respectively, and my eye chanced upon the cat food bag on a nearby windowsill. One of the featured fish caught my eye: Albacore tuna. For some reason I thought next about the albatross (and refrained from quoting Monty Python, I’ll have you know), at which point I mused aloud about the similarity in naming. “What does the ‘alba’ prefix mean?” I knew that it was going to bother me until I found out.

Late last night I indulged in a few minutes’ research. Turns out that one of the sources of ‘alba-’ is our old dead friend Latin, “albus” for white. Albacore? The “only tuna species which may be marketed as ‘white meat tuna’ in the United States.” Albatross? A mostly-white seagoing bird. (Granted, the etymology is a bit mixed here, being a weird morphing from an Arabic origin having to do with being a “diving bird” to a Latin-influenced final product.)

Thus educated, I could sleep peacefully.

As of today, and for the next three hundred sixty some-odd days, I have a fifteen year old daughter.

It’s been a moderately lousy week month year so far, and at first I woke up this morning feeling grim and glum, but when I realized what day it is today I cheered right up.

Happy Birthday, Erica!

Beep. Wait. Beep. Wait. Beep. Wait. Beep.

This is the pattern of sound in my home right this minute. I’m not there now, but I know that the beeping continues because, it turns out, we don’t have any 9V batteries in stock. I’ll be hitting the store during lunch, indeed, so that when I eventually get home I can do something about the smoke alarm at the top of the upper stairway.

The one that woke me up at about one-thirty and interrupted my sleep many times until my alarm finally went off, that is. (I’d also like to thank the waste management service for the nearby apartment complex for emptying their dumpster at quarter ’til six in the A.M. Rock on with your bad, noisy selves.)

Am I tired? Oh yes, yes I am tired. It’s going to be a long, long day. The only “arrr“s you’ll be hearing from me will be growls of frustration…

I received a text message early this afternoon with the news that the long- (long, long, long) awaited software update to Windows Mobile 6.1 is finally available. So, like the versionitis-afflicted waterfowl that I am, I hurried off to upgrade. There were some difficulties at first, such as the USB connection to the laptop going sour early on in the first attempt, but eventually the update installed and ran.

The upside? Overall, WM6.1 evens out many of the rough edges from the at-release version of the OS on this phone. Among the nifty new items is a built-in feature that you used to have to hack in: The ability to configure the “X” button so that programs actually quit instead of merely hiding in the background. On a device with not nearly enough RAM (is there ever enough?) to run more than a few apps, this is a gift from heaven all by itself.

The downside? Somewhere in the process, my phone’s authentication code with Verizon got wiped out. I can’t send or receive calls or text messages. Even better: In order to fix the phone, I have to call from… another phone! Since I’m not about to try juggling two cellphones, I think I’m going to simply wait until I get to work tomorrow.

Here’s hoping that there aren’t any personal emergencies in the next eleven hours…