Beep-beep

I’ve significantly dropped off the word count in these blips of late, no doubt because now I am integrating into family life once again, it seems a little less important to document it. I’ve also started writing to people again, which I sort of stopped about 20 years ago. I think it was the onset of the Internet that did it, although it may well have been meeting someone who made me want to experience life rather than document it. Blaming Mrs. Ottawacker works for most things….
 
Anyway, I have been emailing people, which I usually hate. The problem was (and is) what constitutes email etiquette? For 20 years, I have been the world’s worst emailer – I rarely answer and when I do, it is a cursory reply. I have always blamed this on the fact that I spend my life in front of a computer screen, so when I want to communicate with people I like, I prefer not to use this medium. Things may finally have changed, however. Since I got back from Spain, I have been communicating with people near and far – and am assiduously responding to emails I get with long, or at least long for email, responses. And about bloody time too.
 
Anyway, once Mrs. Ottawacker and Ottawacker Jr. have gone to bed, out comes the laptop and on goes the music, and the pitter-patter of my typing goes on for a couple of hours. Now I am not isolated in the basement, however, much of my time is spent doing other things: cooking dinner, kicking a ball at Ottawacker Jr., doing tax returns at last, etc. etc. I wish I could find a way to balance it all in together without having to stay up till 1 a.m. to do so.
 
Anyway, one of the recent happy events has been the Ottawacker Jr. discovery of the traffic calming camera on the cross street above us. He’s managed to increase his speed to (he claims) a maximum of 23 km/h – unfortunately that was with Mrs. Ottawacker and not myself, so no pictorial representation exists. Here though, he was tipping the camera at 21. I was stunned when it happened, so I tried myself: the camera failed to register, which I claimed was because I was too fast for it to pick up. I have the feeling Ottawacker Jr. was unconvinced by this argument.