Such a delay

Classic, to blog a bunch then stop cold. But my computer broke so hard that after three days I finally had to re-install Windows. It turns out that vmware can break USB keyboards completely, and I had given away my last PS2 keyboard. Then I went on two vacations of three days each. It is all fixed now and I am home for the week. Tomorrow I will put up pictures from my trip to the family ranch.

While I was filling up the car an hour ago (still averaging more than 30 mpg, so nice) a strangely ratty man, wearing a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves and greasy black hair, gray-streaked and tied in a ponytail and pinned up on one side, asked me if I had watched the evening news. He was crestfallen when I said I had been on the road the whole day. After a short pause, he recovered from his disappointment and let me in on the excitement: he had just been released from the hospital where he had been treated for smoke inhalation, after a fire at a local hotel. Of course he was looking to enjoy his brief fame and especially to enjoy again having been interviewed on TV, by finding someone who had seen him. He added that I looked the sort of person to watch news, which might have been flattering except that he was talking about local news and was also clearly in the mood to think everyone he met might be a news-watcher. I could not bear to disappoint him any more, so I asked about the damage (little) and injuries (none) and congratulated him on his escape, which seemed to satisfy him. He went off into the night with renewed optimism; I hope he found a news-watcher soon enough.