Headaches, insomnia, cantankerous, depressed, "cold unbridled fury"; A walk in the rain and admiring the old library; Car Insurance; Pensive Guys - Christian Bael and Rufus Wainwright; Installing and Running Mozilla Firefox

Sunday evening when I was complaining about having a sea-sick-like headache on Saturday and Sunday, I knew there was a weather change on the way. And indeed there was. Yesterday, it rained and drizzled almost all day. And my headache almost vanished.

However, I didn't go to sleep Sunday morning until around 2; so after lunch I tried a nap but I couldn't go to sleep. Which I bet was a result of the meds I was taking. But it got worse because yesterday morning, I didn't go to sleep until 5:30.

I absolutely hate when this happens since I know I will feel cantankerous, grumpy and depressed all day. And as I anticipated I was in a state that bordered on sheer psychopathic rage all afternoon. I relived every slight and injustice I've ever endured. Most of the anger was aimed at the last motherfuckers I worked for - the arrogant, invincibly ignorant administration at Mississippi Public Broadcasting. The deep-seated, intense anger bordered on that of a cold unbridled fury. At least, I recognized that this would last for several hours and then gradually dissipate.

However, let's move along from that jolly subject.

Around 3, I drove off into the rain to get two prescriptions re-filled at CVS. This was a time when the new credit card came in very handy.

I was in such desperate need of a change that I decided to risk a walk in the rain. There's a vest-pocket-sized walking trail nearby, one that I forget about.

It's behind the old library that was closed because of major foundation problems. One of the eternal problems of this area is caused by something called Yazoo clay which is ubiquitous in central Mississippi. Yazoo clay expands dramatically, as much as 200%, when wet, and contracts when dry. So any structure constructed on the clay should have a significant air space below the bottom floor. And of course, the clay can still impact the columns, pylons or walls on which the structure rests.

The walking trail is short but hilly, only one section is flat. And I very much enjoy looking at the library, build about 20-years ago, which has an outer layer of flat, unridged brick that vary in colour from dark chocolate to deep red. The flat surface of the bricks almost has a sheen to it. There's a topless portico that runs around the perimeter of the building. At the top of the outside of the portico is a three-foot high band of dark brown corrugated metal. On the east side, about 1/3 from the north side is a wedge-shaped triangular cut out covered by curved vaulted clear plastic that forms the entryway. Glass and doors on the south west side; brick on the north side, and open steps on the east. I find something soothing in its austerity.

I made two quick rounds of the path using one of those oversized, multi-coloured umbrellas that has to be angled a certain way to get it in and out of the car. If not properly done, you'll rip the upholstery trying to remove the umbrella. Or dump water into the driver's seat trying to replace it.

I seem to spend more money on taxes and insurance than is necessary. As you'll recall, I just paid the property taxes last week.

And there's no telling what will happen to property insurance rates given last week's ruling on the Gulf Coast concerning hurricane Katrina.

There's been a battle between home owners and insurance companies from day one of the hurricane. Home insurance policies are supposed to pay for wind damage; flood insurance has to be obtained separately. But the insurance companies claimed that if a house was hit by a flood surge, even if it already been destroyed by wind damage, they were under no obligation to pay.

A couple sued indicating that their house had been destroyed by a hurricane-spawned tornado. But the insurance company said the primary damage was from water and therefore would not pay.

The judge made an unusual, in the sense that this is an uncommon practice, decision from the bench in favor of the home owners indicating that the insurance company was unable to prove conclusively that the damage was cause solely by flood surge. He then allowed the jury to determine if punitive damages should be awarded; the jury voted in the affirmative to the amount of $2+ million.

And this was only the initial case in hundreds that have been filed. This money will have to come from somewhere to pay for the insurer's costs, which I'm sure means higher rates.

Which leads up to the fact that when I got my semi-annual property insurance notice several months ago, I knew I would be unable to pay it in full, so I asked if I could pay on a monthly basis and was told I could. Last week, the car insurance notice appeared in the mail, and again I knew I could not make the payment, so again I called the insurance company to see if I could pay that also on a monthly basis. And the very nice rep, Gwen, who has been most helpful, said they could combine the two payments into a single monthly bill. Well, this is ideal for me.

I've saved images of various celebs as I've come across ones that I like. In looking through the, it struck me that Christian Bael would be an ideal candidate for my next project There's a considerable portfolio of shots for him, so there's a lot to chose from..

Then by chance, I noticed a bookmark for Rufus Wainwright; I thought about the fact that I'd only seen a few photos of him. So I opted to do some image searching. If ever there was someone devoted to pensive, brooding pics, it's Rufus. In fact, I only found a couple in which he did not appear reflective, and those were mostly concert shots.

Rufus is very openly gay, and his lyrics indicate such. I first noticed him when I heard "The Art Teacher". It's a beautiful, gender-bending effort full of surprises. I really need to listen so some more of his work

I've been having increasing problems with Netscape 8.1 - degradation of response time. This version allows you to confirm security trust settings for each page from trust, not sure, don't trust or custom settings that let you control pop-up windows, images, Java, Java Script, cookies and allow the site to run programs.

At some point, I think I think I've developed some conflicts between these settings and those of the firewall and possibly the anonymous proxy server I'm using. I've also noticed that Netscape grows and grows as you use it. Which implies that the settings may not be allowing it to release memory as it should. I've read several times of a memory leak in the firewall software which just adds to the problem.

So I figured why not try Firefox. Installing Firefox was so simple, I was certain I'd made a mistake. And it was very easy to import the bookmarks from Netscape. Firefox certainly appears considerably faster. So far, I'm very pleased.

And I've noticed that I've not gotten the dreaded "A script on this page is causing mozilla to run slowly. If it continues to run, your computer may become unresponsive. Do you want to abort the script?" By the way, this is a pop under, so you can't see it. And if you do see the message, indicating that you want to abort the script may or may not work.

PAX!