Monday, September 20, 2004

Outta my mind on Monday moanin'

Well, it's been a couple 24-hours since I've been on here, so this will be a classic Moanin' - Good Moanin' posting!

Moanin' - I'm not so sure about this XP Service Pack 2, boys and girls. I've had more (and more vicious) browser hijackings in the last week since I installed it - despite Norton's best defense on my CPU. These sneaky little so-&-so's tore right through my software firewall, and then (of course) the wondrous NAV told me about what it missed, but also failed to automatically remove the offending bit (grrr). Frustrating...

Good moanin' - if there is "safety in numbers," then there were a bunch of us who weren't gonna have to worry about accidentally drinking on Saturday night. Somewhere around 7,000 folks in recovery gathered at the UIC (Univ of Illinois-Chicago) Pavillion for the "All-Chicago Open," celebrating the 65th-anniversary of the first AA meeting in Chicago. The folks from various Hyde Park AA meetings met for a cookout from 3-6 on Saturday, then drove down to the Pavillion for about 90 minutes of meeting-and-greeting with recovering folks from all over Chicagoland. Then two speakers got to share their experience, strength and hope, followed by a "sobriety countdown" - where the eldest of the "old-timers" was 45 years sober, and several folks were in their first day of sobriety. Thank you, God, for the gift of the meeting, the speakers, the fellowship and the reminder of just how good it is for people like me to be sober!

Good moanin' - and it was a beautiful weekend, too. God surely smiled on the Chicagoland area - cool breezes, 60's to mid 70's, dry - just glorious. I felt bad for my friend Natalie, who spent the weekend with her folks painting her parents' house in 90-plus degrees, high humidity and high winds. Yuck. She - and they - deserved better, Lord.

Moanin' - if my high-school American Government teacher, Tom Guitteau, could have told me that 30 years after I graduated high school, foreign nations would be sending independent observers to the United States, to ensure that our elections would be fair and just and un-manipulated, both of us would have laughed. But, as you can see from the story here, it's just not funny any more. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

Moanin' - Ah, technology...you are a fickle mistress. I'd been writing this posting for a while, and wanted to save my text...and instead of "save," I got "delete." So that's the last - hear me? the last - time I am using Blogger's input screen to edit my posts. [Insert growling and snapping noises here.] But it's 12:30 - and way past time for me to be in bed. So I'm going to take the hint this time, and call it a late day. Peace ...

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