I Am A Second-Class Citizen in My Own House, Technologically Speaking

The laptop that I use, an IBM Thinkpad, will not start and only beeps, rudely, and says it has a "fan error." I tried leaving it alone for a few hours to rest. Matt and I both tried blowing on the fan. I tried swearing a little and then I tried acting like I didn't care. Then I crept back into the room, snuck up on it, and tried to turn it on. That did nothing. Of course the warranty has expired and it will actually have to be taken somewhere to be fixed.

This is really putting a crimp in my blogging.  The only computer in the house now is the one in Matt's office, which he spends most hours of the day entangled with, Borg-style. It is not a family machine.  I'm only able to type this because he's in the bathroom.

There are a couple of large posts forming in my consciousness, but I don't know how they will ever see the light until my computing situation improves. And have I mentioned that Matt is a computer game developer? Something about the cobbler's children comes to mind. Getting him to take the laptop to be fixed will require special pleading. 'Cause get this: he hates computers.  He likes programming, but he has mostly contempt for the actual machines, and anything to do with fixing them, buying them, talking about them. And who suffers? Moi.  Virginia Woolf was totally freaking right. See how the tools of literacy are being withheld from me? It's amazing that I didn't have to finish my dissertation on the backs of envelopes.

Somebody call the wahmbulance.

So I thought I'd tell you what I'm up to lately. What are you up to?

The last two days I've gone over to Pretty Neighbor's house and done the 30 Day Shred workout with her.  We were doing it the week before I went to California and got snowed out of Atlanta and took a giant break.  So I shred and then I come home and make sure to announce to anyone around, "I've already worked out today."

Then I read my daily chapter of Les Misérables.  I've mentioned this on the Twitter but I don't think I told y'all. Somewhere on the internet, around the end of the year, I glampsed the fact that Les Misérables has 365 chapters. Oh ho, thought I.  There are also 365 days in the solar year. A person could read a chapter a day and, through the magic of compounded interest, read the whole novel in the course of 2011.  The idea appealed to me, because it's not something I was otherwise going to read, so I downloaded it to the Kindle app on my phone. The book is basically free on Kindle.  So I've been reading along and I'm 18 chapters in.

Now, is it in fact true that the novel has 365 chapters? I have not verified this. It wasn't like an authoritative source that gave me this information, it was some discussion thread on Metafilter. I could be in for a rude awakening on December 31. But I'm really enjoying reading it, so let us defer this vexing question. The challenge is that when I get to the end of a chapter (they're pretty short) I sometimes really want to go on, but I make myself wait for the next day to read more. My rule is that each day's chapter is sufficient unto itself.

Now Matt's on the phone with his business partner, so I'm still bloggin'. Hee!

I am also, in addition to these pursuits, tending children. We went to the fourth grade musical tonight, the one for which Laura was Sacagawea's understudy, as you may recall.  Well, despite it being cold and flu season, and what I know to be several viruses circulating in the school environment, Sacagawea was able to perform, so Laura was relegated to the corps. In the car afterward I told Laura that I thought she would have been a hundred times better in the role, and Matt was all, "Whoa, now, I don't know if that's how we want to talk about this," because I was not modeling gracious behavior.  Whatever, I model that shit all the time, I was just speaking the truth. I am not a Tiger Mother, I guess.

Good night, friends. My housecleaner Fabienne is coming tomorrow, after a loooong snow-mandated absence, so I need to go half-heartedly pick up stuff off my bedroom floor.

I love you all.