TRIUMPH!

The PalmPilot lives! Augh, the fighting I did. I spent lots more time in various attempts to fake out the software than I did installing it, and on this slow computer that's saying something. It made me wonder how ordinary people ever get anything done.

Now I will no longer live in fear of double-booking. I notice, though, that I've already put too many constraints on July and August. The Cairo trip will be short, or a little later than I'd been thinking, or else something's gotta move.

My long-suffering golden pothos has a new home

Shortly after I was hired four-plus years ago, I bought a golden pothos for my office. I wanted some green around the place and had heard those were unkillable.

I am happy to say it's absolutely true they're unkillable. When I was laid off in late November, I brought the plant home and left it on the floor of a junk-filled front bedroom. I think I may have watered it since then... once, maybe.

I pulled it out of there and repotted it today. It was severely dehydrated, with dusty soil fused into one dry lightweight lump. It was so root-bound that I almost couldn't get it out of the pot. It had lost quite a few leaves, mostly older ones closer to the soil surface. But it was vibrantly green at the end of its eight-plus-foot stalks, with numerous healthy sturdy leaves on every stem. When I snipped cuttings from the end of each stalk and put those cuttings into a new pot, the whole thing looked green and happy and ready to go.

I'm relieved to have it repotted. I'd been thinking about that for a while. I'm also relieved that my neglect of the past few months didn't kill it.