rmd | good, more good, and oh hell.

good: woke up at 0630. spent some time nuzzling the girlfriend in between finding clothes and boots and stuff. then head out on the motorcycle towards the cape. leaving boston around 0720, i hit no traffic except maybe half a mile at the rotary itself. once i'm over the canal, i leave route 6 and head over to route 6A and spend the rest of the ride to route 134 tooling along pleasant meandering roads at 35 and 40 mph. take route 134 across to the southern side of the cape and make it to my folks' place by 945 or so.

good: spent most of the day hanging out with my folks -- watching the history channel with my dad [1], doing computer support for my stepmother and helping her write letters in word and search for real estate listings for monthly rental of condos in las vegas. i was prepared to do yard work, but i didn't have to. we went out for breakfast to a nice enough little restaurant called "the sailing cow" right on the bass river, where we sat outside on the shady deck and looked at the river. very nice. and i had a pleasant ride home. no traffic to speak of at all. and the weather was perfect all day.

oh hell: came home to discover that the big bookcase in the computer room here has had several shelves collapse (for no clear reason -- claudia was around but says nothing seems to have explicitly caused it. i'm thinking i may stack things up so nothing bends badly and then see about mounting shelves to the walls in the front room. i'd been thinking about building nice bookcases for it, but that will take a long time and i'd like the extra shelf space fast. so i'll paint the walls in question some nice dark accent color, then pick up some wall-mount straps and mounting brackets and shelves. (i've used these type of brackets and shelves in my house in seattle and in the computer room here (not the shelves that collapsed, the other ones that didn't), and i really like the results as far as sturdy wall shelves.)

the cats are still twitchy after the big collapse.

[1] one of the shows was called "wild west tech", and it was about the technology of very old revolvers. i think the ultimate history channel show would be "wild west tech as used by hitler".