If I have to blame someone for the lethargy I feel tonight (and as we all know, nothing is ever my fault), I choose the phone company. First they provide me with a line carrying so much static that it's unusable, and then they schedule a repair person to come out on a Sunday morning. And Robert, the friendly phone fixer guy, was unable to get rid of the static, so I still can't use the line. They're sending out the real repair crew Monday. Or it could be Tuesday.

I got up at 7:30 this morning, just as if it were a weekday, because the recorded voice told me that someone over the age of eighteen had to be available between eight and five. The phone (I still have one working line) rang at 7:50. While I was in the shower. I assumed I'd missed the appointment and would have to call them again Monday, but there was no message on the machine, so I figured it was another wrong number. I get a lot of those.

But I was up, if not quite coherent enough to do anything requiring intellect or concentration, so I plopped down on the couch and flipped mindlessly through the channels. Two hundred channels. You'd think I'd land on something worth watching, somewhere along the line, but I guess I just wasn't in the mood.

I pulled out the tape of Dark Angel that I'd been saving and put that in the VCR. Very cool show, even if the dialog track seemed garbled. I understood about half of what was said, but the visuals were excellent.

Around nine I heard some commotion outside. I peeked out and saw the phone company truck parked in my driveway. A while later, Robert knocked on my door to give me the bad news that he couldn't fix the line today.

But there was good news, too. He'd confirmed that the problem was Pacific Bell's responsibility, not mine. We exchanged pleasantries, and he told me he was the one who called before eight. He left, and I still had a whole day ahead of me.

You know what I did the rest of the day. Football, blah blah. Baseball, yadda yadda. Before I knew it, it was Sunday night, closing in on another Monday morning. Several times during the day I almost dozed off, but my body never got the rest it was seeking. And my mind never got quite in gear.

David dropped by this afternoon on his weekend errands. I wasn't one of the errands, just a way station. We watched some of the game together, and then he took off for his next stop.

He'd spent some of his valuable time on his day off studying the candidates and issues on the November 7 ballot. It's his first time voting in a general election, and he's taking it seriously. I respect that attitude, especially when so many people in his age group (and mine, and yours) don't care, or at least don't put much thought into it.

I have to admit I was shamed just a bit. I haven't researched any of the issues yet, and there's barely more than three weeks until the election. I'm assuming I'll be eligible to vote, since I only moved next door. It's not as if I changed congressional districts.

So that's on my agenda for this week. Before the March primary, I put a lotof effort into getting it right. There were some big issues at the time, and my vote came down on the losing side of many of them, but I felt better knowing I'd participated. I want to get that back, and I want to be able to discuss it all with David, since I know he'll bring a fresh perspective and a keen insight to the process.