It is now early Friday evening. I am tapping away at the Port Williams library, in a section of the main reading room that doesn't have anybody else in it. My netbook tells me that I have about 30 minutes before the battery gives out. We both know it won't last that long. Computer batteries are more optimistic than a teen bride.
I took my mother shopping this morning. We left her place around 9, and didn't return to stay until nearly 3:30. She wore me out yet again. After we returned, I mowed her lawn again. Her grass grows very quickly. I'm very grateful that Dad bought a lawn tractor years ago, and that it still works well.
Mom let me buy a new lawn trimmer this afternoon. The existing one is old and gas-powered. It frightens me with its sheer power. This new one is battery operated. As I sit here, the battery is charging for the first time. When I return to Mom's in half an hour or so, I plan to begin using the trimmer. They say it should be good for upwards of 30 minutes before it needs to be recharged. There it goes, those optimistic batteries again. I hope it last as long as it claims it will.
I just spent a moment scanning some of the books on the shelves here. There are more than a few mysteries in this library, and that's fine with me. A disturbing sub genre, though, is cat mystery fiction. These are mysteries whose main character, the protagonist if you will, is a damned cat. Lillian Jackson Braun is the main culprit; she has been writing these stories for several decades. Rita Mae Brown is another. I am sure there are more.
I love Newbie a great deal. He's my buddy. But I don't expect him to be able to solve a murder. He may cause one, if he keeps getting underfoot and I trip over him and topple to my death; but even then, he wouldn't lift a paw to figure out whodunnit. For one thing, he is a cat and cannot speak. For another, even if he could talk, he would just incriminate himself, so it would be better for him to say nothing and let the police handle it. I'd be dead, and he would get away with it. The little bastard.
I'm not sure what my point is here. I suppose it is that these cat mystery novels are written mostly by women mostly for the type of women who are hopelessly single, have at least one cat, and enjoy detective fiction. There is a genre for everybody. I wonder if there are books written for 47 year old bloggers in Nova Scotia who own too many computers, like cats, and have trust issues? I'll troll amazon for a spell and find out.
The battery on the netbook just went to "red", indicating perhaps 20 minutes of time left. Which means 10 minutes, or maybe just 8. These optimistic batteries will be the death of me.
Unless Newbie is.
Little bastard.
Bevboy
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