Clients, Chills, and Trips

Mozilla's Thunderbird email client is okay. It's not as feature-packed as Outlook, but its somewhat more flexible than Eudora and others that I've tried. It has some of the same perplexities that the others have, certain designs that make me think what in the world were they thinking of when I have to use functions other than the basic ones. Search, for example: is this the best you can do? I know: its free, and if I don't like it, I'm free, too -- free to use another, to pay for one, to write my own (yeah, right!) in pursuit of email excellence. I'll get right to that. While I'm at it, I'll make sure it doesn't do one thing that gripes me -- says that it is downloading and receiving one message when, in fact, there aren't any at all. I think hey, I got a comment on the blog, when, in fact - not. Awww.....

The AC is on, the door to the deck is closed. As it turned to night, the evening air became more humid. This is ironic; after three days when it was actively cold at night -- which I like, but only when I'm cocooned -- we got down the electrical blanket (light but still enough for me; my side rarely gets turned on past Low, while my wife's usually at the Parboil setting). It thereupon turned warm last night, and likely will be again tonight. I need a heat pump blanket, I think. One of our recurring jokes is that we married so that I could keep her warm, and she could keep me cool. For right now, though, the chill whispering through the house is enough.

I just read a review of a book titled Zen and Now, about a fellow -- apparently, the most recent of thousands -- who have traveled the route taken in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance. I really liked that book, and I know many others did, too. He takes the ride for the classic reason - finding himself at middle age, in need of a great quest. Nothing wrong with that, though the concept has been mocked several times (I recall my dentist mentioning that when he had a gazebo built at him home, his son asked why; told that it was a mid-life crisis, the son replied 'How do you know you won't die tomorrow? '), I think its valid. I've never had such a feeling -- gotta do this, climb this mountain, learn to speak Russian. I've never been sure if this makes me a complacent and generally happy person or an underperforming, underdemanding one. Maybe both, hmm?