The world played a few unkind jokes on this April fool: a parking ticket near Piedmont Ave., and the state franchise tax board giving our tax refund to some other (unnamed) state agency, probably also related to outstanding parking tickets.
Then the flooding in the basement – especially weird after no rain. No idea if the shower or the washing machine or the water heater something else is leaking but something is, so we’ll need to call a plumber and be paranoid about using water till its fixed.

Did some yoga this morning for the first time in months. What a relief. I nearly cried in downward-facing dog as I felt my calves stretching out of their tight cramp. And in the warrior pose, my shoulders felt like they might crumble and fall off, but something tells me this is just the countervailing effort I need to stabilize those muscles that are aching from all the guitar and ukudelia.

I missed the kickball game this morning (KICK! 2005) … got to follow George’s advice more closely….

Well, the outgoing mail sending problem seems to be located in my client software, Eudora. By process of elimination, I’ve ruled out the DSL connection, the various mail servers, and so on.
This seems to be the final push I need to abandon Eudora, since it appears to be a bug in the software or its settings. I’ve reinstalled the latest version and it’s still not working. In fact, now instead of offering one of several different errors every time I try to send, it simply goes through the process and completes it without sending and without reporting any problems.
Unacceptable!
I downloaded Thunderbird and I’m learning it now. It sends my mail just fine. It did crash when I tried to import my Eudora mail store, which might have something to do with it being ginormous. So the transition may be rocky for a while. I’ve got hundreds if not thousands of email messages over in Eudora that I still plan to reply to eventually, and right now I’m manually copying over the replies from yesterday that got stalled out.
At least I am free to communicate again. For a net.junkie like myself, losing smtp access is like losing a limb.

Nothing much substantial has changed but for some reason I’m the optimism tip this week. I have a feeling something’s about to break big and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Or maybe I’m just getting hyped for south by southwest.
I’m more productive when I’m in this kind of mood, though. I’m working hard on the new Civicspace site for East Bay for Democracy and I’ve been keeping up around the house with vacuuming and dinner prep and whatnot, helping B set up my thinkpad as an alternative workstation in her office, and even dealing with bills and related money woes.
I haven’t had quite as much time to practice the guitar lately, so I’m kind of chomping at the bit to make time for that, but I’ll get to it. Also, I think I finally got the Monkey Vortex Radio Theater podcast working, so that’s cool. Now I just have to finish my Understand, Rubberband? script for said radio theater and I’ll have my writing chops back too.
I need to work on a few articles for Personal Democracy Forum, and I need to download tax software pronto, because I think I’m getting a refund this year.
What else? No word from the documentary TV people I spoke to in New York, so I dropped them a line to say what’s up? Also, another feeler for some information architecture work for a huge global services company working for another huge Fortune 500 company based in Missouri. If that works out I’ll be doing the commute-by-plane thing for a while, but it would sure help with cash flow.

I keep telling myself to do some blogging every day, even if it’s boring- even-to- people-who- know-me journal entries in my persona blog. Why? For selfish reasons. When I’m keeping track of what I’ve been doing I get more done and I feel better about myself. I also notice patterns and figure out why I’m avoiding other things. I could do this all in private but I like the transparency and it’s easy enough to ignore for anyone who isn’t interested.
This weekend I saw Life Aquatic again, on Friday night, this time with the Reverend Bill and B, replaced the wound nylon C string on my tenor ukulele and got a big new bag of kitty litter, and then saw The Aviator on Saturday (liked it much better than I expected to). Sunday I went out for some wine and pancetta and for a copy of Pat Conroy’s cookbook, which took way too much time, and then enjoyed watching the Oscar’s with B and eating the lentil and pancetta soup she made.
Also, I nearly finalized my travel plans for SXSW next month but am tracking down why my listing at the website isn’t complete.
Oh, yeah, paid some bills too.