I took the day off from work yesterday to clean out my to-do list. It started with getting my driver’s license renewed. I showed up at the DPS office about 20 minutes before it opened. Six or seven people were there ahead of me, and as many more arrived before the doors opened at 8:00. A uniformed officer unlocked the door, came out and said, “The computers are all down.” Getting no reaction he continued, “There’s a huge storm on the way.” More silence. “It’s raining right now.” Still no reaction. Finally he said, “Okay, I guess you all are serious about being here. Come on in.”
Although I got everything on my list accomplished, I expected to get more done with my day. More writing, I mean. I finished up my Storytellers Unplugged essay for Saturday and recorded the podcast, got a rejected short story back into submission, but that was it. Between errands, I watched a couple of episodes of Banacek—the one about the stolen cross and the one about the million dollars that disappeared from the casino floor.
I had a strange e-mail during the day, though, from someone working in the building where the company I work for used to be located, up until we moved into new quarters in 2001. A parcel had arrived there addressed to me. That was odd, as was the fact that the woman somehow tracked me down and was able to leave me with both voice and e-mail. It turns out that e-Bay at some point recently reset my contact information to this seven year old mailing address. I have no way of knowing for sure how this happened, but I am guessing that when I updated my credit card expiration date last month, something else got reset and I didn’t notice. I’m really glad they didn’t decide to just bounce the parcel back to the sender—I was able to drop in and pick it up. Since I have two other items coming to the same wrong address, I can sleep better knowing that they probably won’t be returned, either, though I hate to inconvenience the folks at the other company.
House was really good this week. I got the necklace hint right away, though I didn’t know exactly what it meant and won’t until the conclusion next week. I like the way they have found different ways to bring the old minions back into the picture, like having Chase know how to hypnotize House.
I also liked NCIS this week, because Palmer is Everyman—the guy like me who witnesses something and can’t remember things in enough detail to be of much use to a police sketch artist. (However, I did remember more of the name in the passport from the quick glimpse when he found it—I caught the entire first name and part of the last, but not the country of origin.) Gibbs is so cool in the way he plays the expected role of supervisor, yelling at Palmer for doing what he did and at the same time lowering his voice to show that it’s just part of the game and that he has real affection for and consideration of his actions.
Scribner sent me a copy of John Connelly’s next book, The Reapers, due out next week, so I think I’ll read that one next. I finished the Wambaugh book and was underwhelmed by the “resolution” of the story of the Azizes. The cops really didn’t have much to do with it, except for the one guy who ended up being a pawn. And it was a cop out (pun intended) to have Fate wrap things up as neatly as it did.
