T-Minus Fourteen Hours and Counting . . . My UPS guy delivered my new computer this afternoon in a series of large white-with-black-spots boxes. They're now stacked in the livingroom and vaguely resemble a Picasso cow. While dragging them in from the front door, I realized (in sudden, cardiac-spiking terror) I have never started up or put together a new computer in my life. I always had husbands to do that. Like the lawn.

Well, I've overcome my fear of power tools, I've built half the furniture in my house, I've written 38 novels. I can plug together some cables and push some buttons. Okay, okay, around eight am tomorrow morning, if you'll say a prayer for me, it won't hurt.

What I'm looking forward to is the new software I ordered -- the hands-free, talk-and-it-types program. This may save some wear and tear on my hands. Hardware may hate me, but I've never met a program I couldn't master in a few days. Wanting to was always the problem -- this new version every year thing makes me militant. How many word processing programs do I have to learn in one lifetime? Create one and keep it the same, for crying out loud.





  ¶ 5:31 PM

  Side Note to Expose Material: The cats like just-out-of-the-dryer sheets, too.  ¶ 2:52 AM

  Expose Material: Besides the ever-rampant insomnia (yes, still have it, thank you very much) I have another problem -- I am addicted to doing laundry. If it's not bad enough that I'm already the cleanest person everyone knows, I like washing stuff. Wait, that's not true -- I like folding stuff that's just come out of the dryer. I especially like sleeping on warm, clean jersey knit sheets just out of the dryer (sleeping? the author's abused body guffaws.) Well, laying on them, anyway.

I'm not writing tonight, I'm thinking about what I'm going to write next. I'm very excited about Kalen and Raven, they came out beautifully in Jian-Shan's book as secondary characters and Raven really wants her own book. Kalen I haven't delved into too much -- he's such an enigma, like most of my male characters. I like men better when I don't know everything about them, I think the mystery of Kalen intrigues me more than Kalen himself.
Readers will have a chance to figure out why Kalen pursues Shandian with such unrelenting grim determination in Jian-Shan's story, but I'll be surprised if anyone picks it up. I haf ben verra sneekay vis dis von.

I miss writing so hard and so long every day, and then I don't miss it. My hands are a wreck. My computers are all discombobulated. I miss posting on Holly's site and here mainly, I've gotten so accustomed to it. Please, Gods of Gateway, get my new system to me tomorrow!


  ¶ 2:49 AM

 

Computer Goes Ka-Boom, Kills Three Characters

Technology despises me, but never so much as this week. My Internet computer has crashed ten thousand times, and I'm not turning it on again because quite frankly I expect the damn thing to explode. I'm with you now, courtesy of my backup computer, which is six years old and groans for Geritol whenever I turn it on. The internet is not allowed to touch my third (work) computer, so my work in progress stays safely away from viruses. If the old gray mare here takes a dive before the new computer is delivered, I may be incommunicado for some time.

I have never liked becoming dependent on technology, our relationship has always been rocky at best. I am not a tech head. I like having access to the information provided by technology but not the price we have to pay for it. Several friends were hit this week by the worm_badtrans.b virus and two of them had to wipe their drives. I've gotten dozens of frantic e-mails with subject headers like "Don't Open Any E-Mail From Me!" or "I May Have Infected Your Computer, Read This." I realize it's human beings, not hardware or software that create these viruses, but still. My IBM selectric typewriter never destroyed three characters and six hours of work.


  ¶ 5:48 PM

  Now, I want you to imagine how you would deal with the following:

A nine year old boy comes home from school after eating his lunch of pizza and afternoon snack of red kool-aid mixed with (I'll assume) Skittles, M&M's, and dill pickles. I don't know why. He goes into his room, shuts the door, and projectile vomits the entire contents of his stomach on his bed, the center of his beige carpet, and his clarinet. He does not immediately inform his mother of this event, but silently goes to the bathroom and sits there for about twenty minutes, until Mom, who knows silence = trouble, goes to investigate and discovers -- you guessed it -- gastric Armageddon in his bedroom.

If you ever think you might get into a similar situation, I recommend Resolve carpet cleaner, Q-Tips, and patience.


  ¶ 8:26 PM

  Okay, enough vacation. I need to write for an hour or go insane. It's as simple as that.  ¶ 1:28 AM

  Tomorrow, if the Gods are kind, my new computer will arrive and I can set it up to replace this one, which is about ready to take a dive. I've crashed seven times today, severely strained my patience, and muttered plenty of words I don't let the children use. I can log on but I can't get to my e-mail now, for some reason, so if anyone is waiting to hear from me, hang in there.

I have a bag of macadamias, a pot of Irish tea, and a novel waiting (to read, not to write.) *sigh* I like vacations.  ¶ 11:51 PM

  I keep forgetting so many people don't have a sense of humor. It always knocks me off-kilter, I never learn, I never imprint myself with this fact. Humor-deficient people inevitably find me annoying, because if I'm not being sarcastic, I'm working on irreverent. Like that quote from D.H. Lawrence with his forests of the himself and the strange gods that emerge into his clearings. I read something like that, I think, "You've got to be kidding me."

I ticked off someone tonight (again.) I tried to make light of a nasty situation. I got slapped down for it. I am, in case you didn't know, a complete idiot.

I guess I am. The various therapists I've seen say my humor is a self-defense mechanism, and that's probably true. I didn't get to pick my relatives, and they are mostly grim, dysfunctional, unhappy people who tried their best to make me one of them. School was a joke. The military was a game. I fit in with medical people, but the physical hazards of working trauma drove me from the field (I have been splattered, sprayed, and otherwise contaminated with every kind of infected body fluid you can imagine). Personal relationships, well, I did a rant on men already -- I crash and burn every time. I didn't even try to fit in with other writers when I turned pro. What's the use?

But how do I explain this to someone who has no idea of how much laughter has saved me? They're lost and wandering in this dark night of their own making, and I'm starting to think they enjoy it. Is that possible? Life is horrible. It's one tragedy after another. Very little we do changes it. You can wail about that, or you can laugh in its face.



  ¶ 6:36 PM

  Famous Quote for the Day: "I do not like the Miss Blackstones; indeed, I was always determined not to like them, so there is the less merit in it." Jane Austen, 1775-1817

I felt the same way about beets and rutabagas. I mean, just look at them. Ick.

Gloat for the Day: "I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal." Jane Austen, 1775-1817

Amen, Jane. Imagine living in a world of completely agreeable people -- there's a plot for a horror story.
  ¶ 9:56 AM

  In my quest to be a total slug, I sat down tonight and watched two, count 'em, two video tapes. One was of a quartet of friends playing Mozart (home video, a little shaky at times, but ah, the music!) and the other was a Tom Cruise movie, MI-2. I figured intelligent culture and gratuitous violence would make a nice, interesting mix, and they did. I am always drawn to the inexplicable range of contrasts in humanity -- on one end of the spectrum, musical genius, concertoes, instruments that produce such unearthly melodies; on the other, C-4, machines guns, and engineered killer viruses (and let us not forget, Tom Cruise.) The Magic Flute versus Pyrotechnics. Mankind, the dreamer and the butcher, all wrapped up in one.








  ¶ 1:53 AM