Horst is happy.

I’m still not reading, I just went to the Aardvark to see if my internet connection was working.

Is that a new tie, dad?
No, it’s, it was at the back of the closet and I was looking around and found it just now and thought I’d wear it.
How do you tie a knot like that?
I’ll show you sometime. (Just not right now because I notice it’s my naked lady tie a co-worker got me in Italy, I guess, because it says “100% ACETATO” on a little label the back, and when you fold it open there she is, full-color on a white ACETATO lining, kneeling under a tree in a field somewhere. The naked lady, not my co-worker).

I bought a USB memory stick for Beta and one for myself. Impulse purchase, it was there on the counter at the stationery store, next to the candybars. Only 64 MB but cheap, so I got two. Mine works well on the office PC, which runs XP. Can’t get the fuckers to run on our home PC, though, which still has Windows 98. None of the drivers I download from the company’s website work.

So anyway. I’m moving everything from the diskettes I carry around in my pockets to this little USB stick. Mostly manuscripts of some sort. At least I can tinker with them at work. Only on my lunch break of course.

Eventually I’m going to archive all the files on the home PC on CDs and do something rash. Reinstall the operating system, or something newer. I fear the PC itself is too old for XP.

Anyway, one of these diskettes, the next to last one, has no label, just an X written on it in gold marker. It crashes my work PC whenever I insert it. I tried it ten times just to make sure. Yep, appears to be something to do with this diskette. Don’t even have time to do a virus scan of it or anything. Just, insert that’s it. Not even a blue screen.

Whatever. Technology mystifies me. It’s still a big deal for me when I go into the kitchen in the morning, open the dishwasher and presto, the dishes are all clean! And I distinctly remember loading them the night before, dirty!

I’m on a fast, you see.

It’s part of this thing I’m doing that I oughtn’t talk about to get my creativity flowing. One of my tasks this week: don’t read. Don’t watch TV. Since I don’t have a TV, I’m not listening to the radio neither and not monkeying around on the Internet.

So if you don’t see me in your referrer stats this week, it’s nothing personal. I don’t even re-read what I’m writing here.

Not reading is harder than I thought. I don’t know how many times I caught myself with an International Herald Tribune in my hand this morning.

Tell us a wild story, dad.
I’m tired.
My dad tells the best wild stories of anyone, she tells her friend.
Okay, Gamma. What would you like to hear? A scary story?
Yes!
Okay.

A friend of Gamma’s was sleeping over Saturday night. I told them the story of the eyeball weasel. Maybe your mother told you this one when you were little. My version went like this: when I was your age and my parents got tired of me and sent me to the boarding school…

Kids went blind, eyeballs eaten out of their heads at night. Put to work on stationary bicycles, generating electricity for the boarding school, cause, you know, what else can they do when they’re blind?

Turns out the headmistress’s pet is an eyeball weasel, living in the walls and coming out at night to eat the eyes of children who are not sleeping as they should be. I catch it in a bag, stun it.

Is the weasel still alive?

In a zoo somewhere. Best thing against eyeball weasels is simply to keep your eyes shut at night. Also: oranges. Oranges repel them like garlic vampires.

Gamma’s friend loved the story. Gamma couldn’t get to sleep until she placed an orange over each eye and slept like that.

Sunday, I had to tell her the story of how I taught Mary the Berry Fairy to ride the bicycle to make up for it.

I’ve got a couple Bug strips stuck in the pipeline.
Eating apples sometimes helps, I hear.

It’s like this. I haven’t felt very buglike lately. I haven’t felt like being funny or even entertaining.

What have I felt like instead?
I’ve felt like an old guy.
I’ve felt like getting up early and writing in my notebook before breakfast.
I’ve felt like, what’s so bad about solitary confinement?
I’ve felt stuck again, but on a higher level this time. Like, here, the monsters are faster and meaner, but my gun shoots bigger bullets too.

I don’t know.

Lots of things happening at once. I will find time for the Bug soon. I still like him.

My daughter is going to France. She will be gone for what, six months nearly. I was talking to a German guy yesterday who drives around Europe constantly, servicing and selling harps. He recommended I drive Beta’s harp to France, since renting one would end up being prohibitively expensive.

And when I say prohibitively, that’s not a word I say lightly.

Who would have thought?
That little baby.
That little kid, climbing the ladder up the big slide at the playground in Tokyo with dad behind her, scared to death and ready to catch her but acting nonchalant so she wouldn’t be scared.
As recently as one week ago: a girl. Albeit strong shoulders from rowing, and a good punch, but still. And now: a woman looking out of that face.
Now: packing for half a year in France.

Until right now, until this very moment, I thought, right, France. Have a good time. But now I realize, when she comes back, everything will be different.

Add a dimension or two to a wave pattern et voil