A productive weekend
This past weekend was fast and furious.

Jeff, my son who lives in Lula, GA, and who last December had given me 1625 sq feet of carpeting for my home, rented a U-Haul truck on Thursday and delivered that carpet to me here in Knoxville. He arrived at about 11 PM and, because it had been so long since we had had time together, he and I stayed up until 3 AM just talking. I was up the next morning at 7:45 AM, not so much because I had to be (I had taken Friday off from work), but because at my age I can't sleep late any more. Once I wake up, I'm awake and may as well get up.

I woke Jeff at 9:15 AM so that we could begin cleaning out the garage in order to store the carpet until I can get someone to install it. By noon when Mike, my other son, came by from work on his lunch hour to help us unload the carpeting, we had successfully removed almost everything from the garage, cleaned it out and neatly re-order it so that we could place the carpet in there. I was impressed with how much we had gotten done.

After lunch, Jeff ran a few errands and visited Mike's house to see how much progress Mike and I had made on finishing his basement. He (Mike) and I had spent spare moments during the last several weeks hanging sheet rock in the basement. At around 6:45 PM, Jeff and I left for his home in Lula. He had rented the truck as a one-way rental and was planning to rent a car for the drive back. I had insisted that I drive him back instead. We arrived in Lula around 10:30 PM, and I collapsed into bed, exhausted.

The next day I was up at 6:30 AM to start the day.

Jeff's home computer for the family, an eMachines computer with Windows XP and a NetZero dial-up connection, was absolutely unusable because it had accumulated so much spyware. I tried removing things via the control panel so that I could get to web sites to download some protective programs like SpyBot Search and Destroy and AdAware, but I was making no progress at all. So I decided to reinstall Windows altogether. For the next four hours, I reinstalled XP, thus wiping out all the files he had on his computer, and then reinstalled other things like printer drivers. Afterwards I visited Microsoft's Windows Update site and downloaded the necessary updates (using a dial up connection, remember), and after all that I was finally able to get the Spybot and AdAware programs. Since I had already received Windows XP SP2 on disk from Microsoft, I left that with him and left him instructions to install it on Saturday afternoon. Before I left for home on Saturday at 2:00 PM, his computer was back to functioning as it should.

Sunday was a day of rest for me. It was welcomed and needed. This morning it is back to work again.

If I got as much done every day as Jeff and I did over the weekend, I'd be much more productive than I am ... but I fear I would burn out quickly if I tried to live at that pace.

- posted by Perry @ 5:55 AM