Thursday, March 18, 2004
This morning, I have a decent enough hangover. Not the sort that keeps you in bed, but more the sort that makes you wish it were the sort that keeps you in bed. And still, I type.
Lately, I suck at resolutions.
For example, the resolution I made, towards the first of the year, to get in shape. Hasn't happened. And the resolution I made to finish Mason & Dixon. I haven't read a single page. My resolution to eat less refined sugar? I had a Coke for breakfast this morning.
Meanwhile...
About half an hour after my post yesterday, in which I described the bedlam being inflicted upon the old schoolhouse where I currently live, some idiot on the roof cranked up the machine that spews the aforementioned cloud of toxic, liquid plastic insulation and this time managed to entirely coat the back porch, all the foliage, windows, exterior walls, and a cat. Spooky immediately called our superintendent, who was here almost immediately. Now the idiot who sprayed the plastic, and other assorted idiots who work with him, are futiley attempting to sand the plastic away with a wire bristle brush. The cat's okay, I think. We were assured that the stuff is only toxic before it dries. Suuuurrrrre. This whole thing would be funny if I didn't have to live here another eight and a half months. This is a registered historical building, and I know that a lot of that plastic's going to be there for at least the next fifty years.
I won't say much else about yesterday. There was little about it worth mentioning. I talked to Neil briefly, in my quest to track down Brian Eno, because I'm trying to get permission to quote "Spider and I" in Murder of Angels. I think that was the best part of the day. Of course, I wrote.
Changing the subject. I've been absolutely evangelical about Apple since about 1986, when I first used a Mac (an SE II). The first computer I ever bought was a Mac Color Classic, which ran with nary a hitch for the better part of a decade (and it's still running today). I got a Mac iBook in 2001. I have been, overall, a very satisfied customer and whenever faced with one of those Windows-riddled PC things, I tend to recoil in horror and dismay. But, finally, I have a gripe. And as much time as I've spent praising Apple, it would be dishonest of me not to voice the gripe. Several months back, I made the switch from IE5 to Safari. At first, I was nothing but pleased. It's amazing how much faster Safari functions than IE. However, it caches like a frelling pack rat, making it difficult, for example, to use my phorum without constantly reloading the page to be sure I have the most current version. Worse still, it crashes. A lot. Ironically, Safari seems especially prone to crashing when I'm checking my e-mail at mac.com. And pop-ups are a sure way to crash it. I have decided that this must surely be a bug in my machine, because Apple could not possibly have released such a buggy browser. I shall persist in that delusion.
Thanks to Aimee Poynter, for her kind words about Silk, Threshold, and Low Red Moon. And also thanks to Dave Ryan, who was playing googlewhack and got this blog as a result with "Ankylosaurus quanta," and was thoughtful enough to tell me. Twice.
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