Adrift

My life is full of little rituals and habits.  I'm probably borderline OCD.

Everyday I listen to songs from the ARIA awards. While listening to a song, I look through pictures of Australia on Flickr.  Then when the song is over, I stop looking at photos.  I check my email and then watch part of one video from ABC news. My rule is I have to watch one minute of the video. If it's interesting to me, I might watch more.

After the video, I get up away from the computer and do something else.  Later I listen to another song, look at more photos—repeat the whole process.

This morning we had a family boat ride planned. I had heard it was to begin at 10:00.  Around 9:30, I started looking at photos of Brisbane while listening to Regurgitator's "Polyester Girl".

When the song was finished, I picked the top Australia-related news video on my ABC iGoogle widget.  But about as soon as I started watching, my mom called out to me.  She said we were leaving whenever we were all ready.  I wasn't even in the process of getting ready. I had just been waiting until 10:00.  But oh well.

I did a quick pee and walked down to the boat with my mom. Everyone was waiting for us.

We got on the boat.

We rode around the lake.

We pointed out a modern art sculpture and wondered what was the point of it.

We saw a lovely house that looked like a plantation.

My dad said if our lake house ever burned down and we had to start over, he'd like a house like that.

We were all chatting away, having a good time.

Then something went wrong and our boat would no longer work.

We couldn't get it started.

The wind carried our boat too close to the plantation and other yards.  We worried we'd cause damage to someone else's property. 

We were adrift.

We had to get ourselves rescued by friends of friends.

It was an adventure.

When we got home, I went back on the computer.  

I decided to finish watching the ABC video.

I was amused to see that it was about the Hong Kong ship adrift in the Coral Sea.  

I hadn't consciously remembered what the article was about before returning to it.  But maybe subconsciously I did. Because when we first got on the boat, I did think about us getting stuck. I thought about Gilligan's Island and stuff like that.  It could be, though, that I ALWAYS think of such things when on the boat. I'm not sure.

When we all get on the boat...music on, kids playing, adults talking, it reminds me of the beginning of a horror or adventure movie.  So my imagination often has fun with that.  


How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-departed to talk to us via the Internet?   


The Dead are Online  a novel by Dina Roberts 



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