Stillness, peace, and hope

Ah, Monday. Almost December, but you knew that. No sculpture class this upcoming month (I’ll post pix of my sculpted works here after they’ve been fired and scanned); no tap lessons, either (just wait ’til next year). But I am practicing to sing in Vivaldi’s Gloria with the Church of the Good Shepherd choir (up on Lookout Mountain) on Christmas Eve; scares me to death. Still making plans on where I’ll visit in SanFran. Still working on (or at least thinking about) that latest episode of my music documentary series. Still at Creative Resources. Stillness, measured with some peace, leavened with more understanding, and marred by hope.
Today’s favorite link: http://www.mediafarm.no/forsoksgard/kukaster.asp

I was favorably impressed today by the customer service and organization at the Sears Service Center (Amnicola Hwy). I took my Hi8 camcorder (a gift from King & Gwen a while back) in for repairs — probably something minor, but as long as they can get it to record and play back video I’ll be thrilled. They had preprinted estimate forms, 3-day turn-around, answers to my questions, reasonable rates — amazing combination for an electronics repair service.

UPS, however, is a different story. I got 64MB more RAM for my trusty 7500 from The Chip Merchant, chose 2nd Day Air, and today — almost a week later — I received the memory. Yes, it was the week of Thanksgiving, but seems like they knew that when they guaranteed I’d get it last Friday.

Jes’ for giggles, I checked on the current state o’ the art of high(er) speed access to the Internet from home. BellSouth offers ISDN (evidently around $30/mo for 128K, more stable than analog modem, and yet if I’m paying so much more I’d want it to be so much faster) and ADSL — except evidently I’m a mile or so outside their approved ADSL boundary maps. NextLec hasn’t called back yet about their xDSL (Lite!) offerings. Blue Star only offers xDSL at 144K speeds for ~$100/month. Comcast claims that cable modems will debut in Chattanooga “around February or March” of next year with speeds averaging 1.5Mbps and monthly fee around $40. I reckon I might as well wait on the cable modem (already planning a negative poster campaign to convince others on my neighborhood node that “cable modems are evil” and thus boost my access rates).