Are we having fun yet?

Just found out we won't be having massages for the next two weeks, our massage therapist is taking off. *SIGH* Right now I could sure use a massage! Oh well, I guess I should save the money right now anyway.

And our database that we rely on for work is completely locked up, has been for going on almost an hour now. Hmm, no technology, no work. Technology is a good thing, but here's a prime example of what happens when we get too reliant on it. Can't make phone calls (can't look up the numbers), can't do letters (can't get addresses), can't log contacts from prior phone calls (can't get into the database to do it). So here I sit, with my thumb up my nose (figuratively speaking).

I've made some phone calls. I hate them. My idea of hell would be having to call people who didn't want to hear from me. Today has been pretty close. Blech.

I've probably got some thoughts rolling around in my head, but right now my brain feels like mush. I'm not sure anything would come out in a sensible fashion even if I tried to write it down.

So I'll take off in a totally different direction, inspired by this post in The Odd Wife's blog. I'm from the South, everyone had at least one ghost story or unexplained experience to talk about when I was a child. So the paranormal is something I have more than a passing fascination with. I thought I'd share a couple of my experiences, just for grins.

Hmm, where to start? I'll share one from my honeymoon. K and I spent part of our honeymoon at The Myrtles in St. Francisville, supposedly the most haunted house in America. We had a light in our room that tended to flicker on and off at odd times, but we figured that was probably due to old wiring. The second night we were there, we turned in early - it's hard work being newly married. LOL We were probably sound asleep by about 7:00 or so. I woke up around midnight to the sound of someone playing the piano in the main entry hall, and playing it very, very badly. I kept hearing the same little bits of Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata played again and again, always stopping in the same place. I've played since I was seven, and could play both of those pieces with ease, and this repetition of the same bits, done rather poorly, was really grating on my nerves and keeping me awake. I thought about getting up and telling them to shut the hell up, but it was January and cold, and I didn't particularly want to get out from under the warm blankets. So it kept on going, and I eventually went back to sleep. I found out later that the two children of one of the plantation owners were poisoned by one of the slaves, and that hearing piano music is one of their more common manifestations. Come to think of it, it *did* sound rather like someone practicing.... For what it's worth, I'd love to go back to The Myrtles someday. I hoped I'd see something out of the ordinary, but never did. Darn the luck. They have some sort of hoop-de-do around Halloween, and I'd LOVE that, but it gets booked up pretty far in advance. Maybe someday I'll get there!

And I have several things that relate to J - so many of his toys have gone off by themselves (and stopped and started on command once they went off) that I've lost count. This story, though, involves my mother, who passed away in 1995. This was around Easter time, 2003. That would have made J what, nine or ten months old? Something like that. Anyway, K's parents and grandmother had come for Easter weekend, so we had a full house. That Saturday morning, I heard J making noise over the monitor around 5:45. I waited a bit to make sure he was really up and that he wouldn't be snoring by the time I got down the hall. While I laid in bed listening, I heard a woman's voice over the monitor saying, "Now what are you doing up?" I figured it was mom or granny, and when I realized J wasn't going back to sleep, I went to get him. I expected that one of them would be in the room with him, but no one was there. I was a bit surprised, but being as how it was the butt crack of dawn, I didn't give it much thought. So we got up and ate and played and so on. Later, I asked granny (who'd been sleeping on the couch, closest to J's room) if she'd gotten up with him - she said she heard him talking, but hadn't gotten up. I asked mom the same question - she said she'd slept right through, hadn't even heard J making noise, and she had been still in bed when we got up. So who did I hear on the monitor? I think it was my mother - the words and the inflection sounded like her, and I like to think she was just stopping to check in on her grandson. :-)

OK, enough for now - I'll write more later, I'd better see if the database is back up. What a pain.