Vegetarians, Scanners, and my dubious sanity.

I haven’t heard from my sisters in a month. I must be healthy. I assume they are too, or I’d have heard something by now.

We have heard from The Socialist’s artsy aunt and uncle however. They’ll be coming to Philly again in a couple weeks to attend the artisan’s convention. It’s a by-invitation-only gathering for artisans and retail outlets. The crafters set up booths to sell their wares, and the store buyers walk through and place orders. Some private transactions occur as well, mostly between the artists. I managed to sneak into this about three years ago, with passes the aunt and uncle gave us so we could meet them there. If I’m not mistaken, that was the year I ruptured my Plantaris tendon and spent the entire time hobbling about the vast convention center using my father’s old cane.

Then last year we met the aunt and uncle in center city, and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant that someone had scouted out. Of course, last year this time I looked about seventeen months pregnant, and was supposed to cut out as much salt as possible from my diet.

This year they’ve decided to take a train into the suburbs and visit with us at our apartment. This means that I have to get the cat plates that they gave us hung somewhere, repair the glass cat that his aunt gave me (It’s a cute little cat sitting behind a basket with a mouse with it, holding a sign that says “for sale”. The kitten from hell knocked it over and broke the sign off.), take the Christmas tree down (I only promised the Socialist until the end of January for that anyhow, although I’m noting that he’s rather unenthusiastic about helping me take it down now that I’ve acquiesced to his request), and figure out what the heck I’m going to serve a couple of vegetarians for dinner.

The Socialist has already told me I’m worrying too much, but then again his idea of planning in advance is to plan to deal with things later.

I’m still struggling with the scanner that doesn’t scan. I did belatedly notice an error message from my scanner on the bottom toolbar of windows. When I click on it I’m told it’s error #1, “Press go button”. OK guys, I’ll bite. WHAT go button? The scanner has one button on it: on/off. The error message doesn’t have a go button on it, just a close window option. A web search comes up with two hits for this error message, both on Japanese sites.

I gave up. I downloaded the driver from my scanner’s manufacturer. I uninstalled the current driver. I unzipped the driver package. It reports that I’ve unzipped fifty files. It neglects to tell me where it’s sent the unzipped files.

I looked in the old Microtek file. It’s still empty. I looked under “Programs”. Ain’t nothing that looks like “Microtek” or “scanner” there. I did a search for known key words: twain_32, microteck, scanmaker 4. Nadda. Somewhere on my C drive fifty files critical to my sanity reside, and I’ll be damned if I know where they’ve gone or how to find them.

Still no word on what’s going on around here. I’ve had continued hints that my job is going to change drastically, but that and $3.50 will get me a small Starbucks coffee. I’m more than half convinced that all this is a planned assault on my fragile sanity, but as yet can find no proof. If anyone finds me sitting in the corner drooling and talking in nonsense syllables, you’ll at least understand why.