Out of the red, and back in the blue

Back from my weekend in Florida, the state that time and compassion (except for the unborn and vegetative) and urban planning forgot. One catches glimpses of natural beauty (saw a pelican on the way to the airport--what a hoot!), but there are so many cars, strip malls, and ads for personal injury attorneys, beauty is not the prevailing theme.

Of course, I could just be reeling from all of the "Bush '04" stickers placed with no apparent irony on the bumpers huge SUVs that wheeled past us on the jam-packed highways.

It was a significant other support weekend, as my sweetie's dad died last week and she was in need of a member of her family of choice. No need to explain that, I'm sure. We had gads of things to do, but the task I will remember most is trying to get Linda's mother to pay attention while I walked her through the process of getting e-mail on her new computer.

When a widow wants a new computer, a widow gets a new computer--any questions?

Anyway, the woman is at the retrospective phase of her life, and that makes learning a slow process. For instance, I told her she had to hit the "Enter" key at one point, and that inspired a long tale of the three times in her life when she has had to hit an "Enter" key and all the trouble she had. She was similarly inspired by other instructions, so by the time I left this morning, I think, maybe, she might know how to turn it on.

Maybe.

Oh well, that's something, I guess. Linda will have the rest of the week for tutorials, so if you hear any screams of frustration from the south, it's probably her.