This Is My Way Of Saying Goodbye

Oy, this blog is boring! I don't know how you people stand it. I think I am going to change it up a bit. The format, I mean.

I went to Idaho (sadly, there is no photographic evidence of this) and spent a few days with a bunch of people who intellectually bested me and could drink me under the table(s). Idaho is fantastic. It's very pretty and Jenny and Mike are there, which makes it possibly the second best place in the universe.

I had a blast with them, and their excellent writer friends. Oh, and artists who use their real first name but make it into an exclamation for the sake of artsyness. You know, like changing "Teresita" to "Teresita!" and calling that a stage name or pseudonym or whatever art people say. I got bitten by a cannibal hamster (he'd eaten his sister hamster?!), learned speed Scrabble, ate living raw sweet potato pie, successfully (with Jenny) cooked a holiday meal (!), met everyone I've heard of who lives there and influences Jenny and Mike's lives, made up some words, met several more people who are as obsessed with Twin Peaks as Mike is, became embroiled in a debate about "rich people" and certain classic psychology experiments, handily won said debate, drank, drank, drank, then was accused by one of these Writer folk who clearly has a raging boner for my sister, and by extension probably anyone with our last name, of wishing I were married to him rather than my husband. Ahh yes, practically a lifetime worth of fun in a few short days.

I finished reading Wuthering Heights, which I now recommend to everyone reading this. Fuck, that is a good book. I have two more on deck that I probably won't start until this weekend (my friends and I are starting a chapter of the Finer Things Club wherein we sit and drink tea out of precious teacups and read quietly to ourselves. B and I are really into this, and into the idea of reading classics and learning French-- I think we're going to Paris when we graduate--and then there's Krist hen, who keeps trying to force us both to read novels about lonely 30 somethings looking for Mr. Right and finding themselves instead through a series of whimsy-laden happenings).

So the new format I'm going to try is in honor of being around such fantastic writers and intelligences when I was in Idaho. It's intense, you guys. It made me feel very much like my discipline has successfully groomed all the creativity and joie de vivre out of me. So I'm glad I've started reading for pleasure fun the sake of my own interestingness again. I'll get it back. I used to be interesting, I'm pretty sure.

I'm going to stop writing you these insipid little blogs, and instead try to write you insipid little short stories. This is going to be painful for you guys to read, so as they say on flights landing in Seattle when a snowstorm is coming in, "Belts. NOW. SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW."

Why Should I Be Sad?

Fuck. It is really challenging to be as stupid as I have been, and to be this stupid for an extended period of time, say for a whole weekend, or perhaps two entire weeks, or however long it had been since you shot your damned self in the foot without noticing you had done.

There are exactly two applications that I need to be able to use right now that do not involve office. These are a stats program and a video editing program. Neither of these will open on my stupid, stupid computer. It hurts to think about how stupid I am, telling this story. Why won't these programs open? Well, that is what I spent two whole weeks ignoring/not really dealing with/working around in computer labs.

These things don't work with Leopard. And I installed Leopard right before JD left. Apparently, I had not opened either of these apps since then, which I find totally hard to believe, but whatever.

So some heavy-duty internet research and, like, eleven panic attacks later (this is how I spent my weekend and all day Friday), I deduce that my stats thing won't work, and the next two versions of it won't either (there's no point in running out to buy another version). And there's a brand new version that just came out that MIGHT work, but the grad pack isn't available for mac until dec/jan and the full version is many hundreds of $. Not an option. Also not an option: not having the stats program on my laptop. Fuck. I'm traveling a lot in the next couple months; I cannot be in NZ for a month without a stats program. FUCK!

Also bad is this whole video editing dilemma. I have to make movies to show kids for the Big D. I need to have these clips ready to go NOW, but JD has done this for me in the past and I wasn't sure which programs he used to edit them other than stupid, stupid iMovie. So I bought iLife '08 yesterday and that fixed my other problems with iPhoto and iDvd refusing to open, but since I have an old powerbook it won't let me install iMovie at all (and I knew this before I bought it, the guy at the store was helpful). I also bought an external HD.

And this is the week that JD is in Australia for some random other conference, and I hadn't talked to him since Monday last week (until this morning), so that was adding to my Total Meltdown. I just needed to know which programs he'd used, and what video exporting settings, and blah and blah.

So this morning he helps a bit and then I go trolling for more internet help. And I think I found the answers, and it all I'm sure is basic mac stuff to mac people, but this is Very Advanced for me and I am kind of feeling like a badass:

JD's old laptop, that we almost gave to his sister but thank fucking god we did not, does not have leopard on it. I use the external HD to put my defunct stats program and EVERY conceivable dataset onto his old laptop. It works, barely, but passably, on his old computer.

I get all fancy pantsy with the external HD and partition it into chunks so that I can clone JD's old laptop in its entirety onto the external drive. I can also clone my laptop in entirety. I also have a ton of room leftover for time machine to do backups in a third volume.

This way, assuming this all works, I can use the external drive to boot up ANY mac I encounter with my OR JD's (old) hard drive. See where I'm going? Once I'm done cloning these sheep I can reboot my own laptop AS JD's old laptop, with the stats program on it. Fuck, that is brilliant.

I am going to punch someone if it doesn't work. I have a meeting tomorrow morning that I MUST have resolved all of this before attending. I doubt I will be sleeping this evening. This whole fucking weekend has been trouble-shooting and pulling my hair out when I am not computer-savvy enough to help my self.

FUCK.

Wonder If He Knows He's On My Radar

This might be the best story you'll ever read on this blog.

I went to the gyno-chiatrist the other day. This, irritatingly, was a follow up visit to having gone a couple months ago, because Dr. Ladyparts thought I was either (a) ovulating stupid out of one side of my bits only or (b) about to die a terrible, gruesome early death from god-knows-what, but probably metastasized cancer (turns out I'm fine- yay wacky ovaries).

So I'm sitting in the cold, clinical room, on the examining table. I've draped my paper "skirt" about my lower half in the most fashionable way I can manage and I am swinging my feet and feeling sorry for myself. I look around the walls, trying not to make eye contact with the cervical torture implements laid out on a little metal tray near my feet.

I notice a painting hanging on the wall in front of me, and I am surprised by it. The rest of the room is totally devoid of personality, and I realize that the painting is there for women who have draped their paper "skirts" about their lower halves as best they can and are waiting, feeling sorry for themselves, to look at. It's right at eye level with the examining table.

The painting is of a little man in a boat.

I Won't Count The Scars Again

Living alone is taking some...adjustment. For example, I am learning how to cook, or at least how to heat food to a reasonable temperature before eating it. Although it's so much easier to just eat raw carrots and pistachios than worry about "putting things in a pan" and "combining ingredients" or "pressing tofu"

Anyway.

I'm not so great in the kitchen. Except in the sense that I can provide you all with descriptions of my ridiculousness. This morning I was attempting oatmeal. In my underpants, right? Because that's how we single living-alone gals roll. and I went to shake the rice milk container, and, like a bad porn, as I shake it the milk sprays out all over me and my face and the cats and the counter. Excellent.

I had two different kinds of leftover pizza in my fridge this weekend. Yes, awesome. Now, however, I have to subsist on whatever's in the pantry until I can get to the actual bank, because my debit card stopped working and they have yet to send me a replacement card. That is a real inconvenience of a bitch, you guys. It's weird to think how often you use a debit card (if you're me) and because the ATM won't even read it, I'm totally broke until the real physical bank opens. That's lame.

I also spent about three hours today confused as to whether it was daylight savings or I had lost my fucking mind. Tivo and computer reset the clocks, but my cell phone hadn't. The checkout guy at trader joe's finally settled it for me: I'm fucking retarded.

Literally everyone I know here is out of town this weekend, which is making me feel crazy and isolated. But I think I'm ok in general. JD started work today (holla!) and he's updating his Kiwi blog with pictures and stuff. Go check it out. He's awesome. Auckland looks rad and I can't wait to go visit, especially now that he didn't die on the flight over (I was tracking his plane and I had a bad moment when I refreshed the tracker and it just said, "cancelled" when he was about halfway there. Cancelled? Really? Cancelled in the middle of the pacific ocean? WTF). Oh and apparently 12 hours isn't that bad when the airline is all nice and good at these kind of flights. So now I'm just excited.

The webcam thing is awesome. Oh what else. I'm enjoying how gawdawful the new Britney album is. My cats don't like classical music. Jyushin is clearly depressed because he only loves JD, and he is heartbroken by this. Mingus is my baby (actually, Mingus is intently watching the Broncos game right now, that's precious) so he could give two shits that JDs not here. Just kidding babes.

My coffeemaker has developed a sense of self, volition, and a moral imperative such that it now decides when I have had enough coffee and refuses to brew more. This is cute for about ten seconds as I marvel to myself how intelligent machines are becoming, but then it sends me into a caffeine-withdrawal-fueled rage and I shake the daylights out of that bitch. Sometimes this tactic works, sometimes it does not. I think I need a new coffeemaker, but again, no debit card = no trips to target.

Ok this is boring even for me so you guys must be dying. I'll try to be interesting next time.