Diane and Jewel abandoned me today with strict instructions that I stay away from power equipment. So, I cleaned the garage, organizing “things” into piles for throw away, give away, and donate, as I have done many times in the past. This process involves lots of trips up and down the basement stairs in order to take tools down there from the garage, and bring something back up for one of the piles. I made a very concerted effort to not go either direction without carrying something with me. Once, or twice, I kind of lost track, I admit, and just carried the same item up and down the stairs until I figured out where it went. It usually doesn’t take me that long, but I’m tired today after all that weed whacking yesterday.

Once I was done with the garage I went to work on my computer collection with the intention of removing them to the garage to stage them for my next trip to the city dump. They have a section where electronic equipment of all sorts are welcome at no charge. My first trip up was for a 19″ CRT monitor that hasn’t been used in about 16 years and has been collecting dust all that time. I actually have two of them but one belongs to an old Compaq system I bought from Radio Shack (a long time ago) when Windows 98 was the newest operating system on the block. Shortly before moving beyond Win98 I set that computer to OOTB condition. That means out of the box. So, it’s like a brand new Windows 98 computer with nothing on it. How cool is that? It isn’t very useful, but it’s still cool and will stand proud next to my 128 system.

The monitor mentioned previously weighs about 185 lbs and proved difficult to handle. But I managed to get it clutched tightly to my chest with the glass side toward me so if I fell, and it broke, nothing else in the house would be damaged. I would absorb explosion and all the resultant glass fragments. Once in hand, I took my first step and tripped over an old brief case that I used way back in 1965. Yes, it’s been sitting around all that time waiting for this moment. I caught it with my left foot which caused me to fall to my left against a pile of laptops I got from somewhere that were stacked on top of the Panasonic radio/record/tape console that we purchased in 1968 while on Okinawa. It saved me from falling all the way to the floor, and from dropping that extra heavy monitor. My left wrist was slightly damaged in the process, but nothing broke. It was an odd event because just as I started to tip to my left time kind of stopped and gave me a moment to consider all the possibilities associated with this event. Like, “man, if I break something Diane will never forgive me because she wanted to take me the next time I went”, and “if my wrist breaks I’ll still be able to drive to the ER”, and “crap, this is really going to hurt.” But, I maintained my balance, regained a vertical position and got the monitor upstairs to the truck for delivery.

Now, a few hours later, my wrist has a bump at the point of impact and is extremely sore when touched. But I can type just fine so doubt if it’s anything to worry about. So, I won’t. As soon as Diane got home, and we had unloaded her truck from the Costco trip, I told her about my near fatal injury so if it manifests into anything of concern, it’s her fault.

The ringing in my ears has escalated to the point that indicates it’s time for me to go squeegee the sweat off my tired old body and begin preparations for getting prone for the night. It’s only 5:30 pm, but I’ve discovered that it’s never too early to begin getting ready for bed.