It’s never a good sign when you lead off your post with a weather report. Perhaps I am running out of exciting blog post fodder.

But it’s true. Today was a very blustery day around here. Trees blew down. The power went out. When my neighbor and I went out walking at 6:00 this morning the storm was already a-storming. We walked down through the Village, past the Starbucks umbrella that had blown into the street, stepping over the small and not-so-small branches littering the sidewalk. I tripped on a hubcap. Let’s hope the wind wasn’t responsible for that.

First thing this morning, after braving the storm, I tried to register for the Madrona Fiber Arts Winter Retreat. It did not go well. The registration service’s server spat me out mid-registration twice in a row with a very helpful message telling me that ‘An Error Has Occurred’. Gee, thanks. By my third attempt the registration service was telling me that nearly all the classes were full, a mere 20 minutes after registration for the event had opened. I was… displeased. I wrote what I believe was a clear, concise, profanity-free recitation of my frustrations with the registration process and emailed it off to the nice people in charge of the event.

Whenever I do something like that, namely write a complaint email in the heat of the moment I start feeling bad almost as soon as I hit ’send’. I worry about whether my tone was too sharp, my email too wordy, or even worse, whether I had committed some terrible typo which made me look like a complete idiot.

Much to my surprise less than 2 hours later I had an email from the conference organizer. And, at least this time, I was very glad that I had sent that email. It seems that the registration service had run into some technical difficulties when presented with the hoards of fiber-crazed folks all trying to register for the same event at the same time. (I will refrain from all sarcastic comments here…) Happily, a few hours later they were able to re-open registration and I was actually able to register. This means that in a few months DH will be full-charge single parent for a few days.

Do you think I should start cooking and freezing meals for him now?