I got up this morning thinking it was a fine day for writing. Consequently, I haven’t written a thing.

I did make myself file our taxes, though, so at least that’s done. We get a refund–yay!–and it’s bigger than last year’s, which isn’t saying much, since we only got $7 last year. But I think that doing my taxes might have eaten my brain, because although I can think of three or four things off the top of my head that I could do (ranging from things I really ought to do all the way through things I really shouldn’t waste time on but that are usually fun), I have no desire to do anything. Nothing at all. No ambition, no drive. I could just sit here clicking “refresh” on my FaceBook homepage. Wait, that’s what I HAVE been doing for the last half hour.

So I thought as long as I was wasting my own time, I might as well waste yours, too. Generous, aren’t I?

Earlier this week, in the flurry of melodrama surrounding my laptop, I mentioned that I had an update about Bob2. Here it is:

I finally caved and dug out all the little glued-in rocks around Bob2′s base. I did this mostly with a rather long pencil, and even then Bob2 viciously attacked my fingers once or twice. His soil is now open to the air, and I added 1/4 cup of water right away, because he was very dry. I have a feeling that wasn’t enough water, but as we have established, I know nothing.

Anyway, there were a lot of rocks. I’ve kept them, at least for the time being, in case they come in handy for something. Here’s the photo of Bob2, freed of his gluey rocks, and the dish of rocks from which he has been freed. Beneath them is a page I pulled out of the newspaper with muffin recipes I thought looked tasty, and which served to keep my desk more or less un-dirt-ified while the glued-rock excavation took place.

So there you have it. Bob2 is, at least, not dead within his first month.

I’m headed to Nashville next week–any suggestions on activities I shouldn’t miss while I’m there? We’re pretty flexible on schedule.

And now I’m going to go be boring somewhere else, because you fine folks surely have better things to do. Have a good one!

Dear Brain,

Please stop coming up with more ideas for material from Kerris’s POV. We agreed a long time ago that it was important to balance our time in Kerris’s head with time in Devlin’s head, which means that for every three thousand words you add to Kerris’s story, you must also provide 3k more for Devlin. More to the point, it must be relevant and appropriate to tell at this point in the story. I know Kerris is having a very fun adventure while Devlin is still rather gloomy right now, but you need to move past that and give me some good material. When in doubt, add ninjas! Or pirates! Oh, don’t talk to me about not having ninjas and pirates. We have desert raiders–they’re like pirates, only with camels instead of ships! Work with me, here! Maybe if you could manage to spice up Devlin’s exterior conflict a bit nobody would notice that he’s Mister Gloomy-Pants right now.

Right, now that we have that cleared up, back to the creative emitting of ideas. Go, Brain, go!

Love and snuggles,
~bw

I was so preoccupied with catching up on internet-ish things last night that I never blogged about getting my laptop back. Apparently all they had to do was dust out the fan and, while they were in there, they dusted out the whole interior of my laptop casing. The nice guy who left a message said he found a little piece of paper that had gotten sucked into the fan and was making the noise.

So I picked it up yesterday afternoon and things have been fine and just a few minutes ago THE NOISE STARTED AGAIN!

Garrrr!!

This morning, as I was working, my laptop started emitting a loud and rather alarming noise. It was quite clearly produced by the cooling fan, and although I’d heard a slight noise now and again in the last few weeks, this was worse by far. When it didn’t stop after five minutes, I took it out to Matt (who was reading in the next room, which is, conveniently enough, the Vernon C. Grounds Reading Room) and he said his laptop had been making exactly the same noise, and he’d taken it in and they’d given him a new fan.

He assured me that although the noise sounded like my laptop might either lift off of my desk and go flying around the library ALL BY ITSELF or else explode into a thousand tiny bits, neither of these scenarios was likely, since if the machine overheated it would simply shut off. Apparently Apple is smart like that, making their machines power down before exploding. Go figure.

At any rate, I made an appointment with the lovely Geniuses at our local Apple Store (conveniently located between work and home–have I mentioned how much I like living here?) and took it in this evening. They didn’t even make me wait for diagnostics, since they believed me about the fan and the machine is under warranty. But they have taken my poor MacBook into custody for extended diagnostics to be sure the fan is the only problem, and they will allegedly call me in the next 24-48 hours to let me know what needs to be done. Hopefully, if they have a fan in stock and that’s all that’s wrong, they will call me to tell me I can pick up my laptop and go home happy, but we won’t hold our breaths, will we? We will not.

All of this goes to say that if I am online in the next few days, it will be via Matt’s computer. You should not expect to hear from me often. If you have something you need very urgently to tell me, please give me a call. If you don’t have my phone number, I suppose you might send an email to . I’m fairly sure that one’s still set up to check automatically on Matt’s computer, but be aware that you will be addressing my husband, and at times he is less than stellar at passing along correspondence. It really depends on his schedule, and whether I’m nearby when he gets the message. I just want you to have a realistic view of things if you do feel the need to contact me in that fashion. We good? Good.

I even had an update to write about Bob2 and his glued rocks and watering him and I even took a photo. *sigh* Maybe I’ll be able to steal the computer again tomorrow for long enough to make that happen.

So there you have it. I’ll be carrying my AlphaSmart for the next few days and doing other things that don’t need typing or computers. It will be strange, yes, but undoubtedly worthwhile.

I’ll see you on the other side.

I’m feeling almost alarmingly cheerful this morning. Maybe it’s because I think I’m finally catching up on my sleep deficit. Maybe it’s because I made lemon poppyseed muffins for breakfast this morning (YUM!). Maybe it’s because I’m caught up on all the pressing emails and online things I needed to catch up with. Maybe it’s because I fiddled with my GoodReads account so that it’s accurate and up-to-date, and I realized that I’ve read 27 books this year. Maybe it’s because, for the second day in a row, the temperature should rise about 70 today.

Maybe it’s because if my mood didn’t improve, I was going to shrivel up in my favorite fleece blanket and not come out for another two months.

Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve got a paper to edit for Matt, an article to read, and article to write for a newsletter, some critiques to work on, and maybe some crosswords to finish. Dinner tonight should be grand. One of my favorites: pan-fried polenta with veggies. Yum yum.

Just in case you need a laugh today. . .

The kitchen is a mess this morning. This is mostly because we didn’t clean it after any of our meals yesterday. Probably because we were both exhausted–Matt spent 8 hours organizing the annual breakfast burrito fundraiser with the 5th and 6th graders at church, and aside from my usual Sunday morning activities, I took an hour and a half bike ride with a friend. We had fried food and popcorn for dinner. Great way to recoup calories. :)

At any rate, the whole house really is pretty appalling. There’s stuff everywhere… not dirty stuff. Just a jumble of things that haven’t been taken care of or put in their proper place.

And, oddly enough, I’m sort of looking forward to cleaning today. As long as I can keep moving, it shouldn’t take too long, and my iPod has full battery power, so I can get my groove on while I work, too.

The dog seems to think she’s entitled to more excitement than we are currently providing, but that’s just tough cookies for her. She’ll survive. I’m pretty sure she’s been watching the bunnies outside through the window, and wants to go chase them.

It’s supposed to get above 70 this afternoon, so maybe we can head to a dog park and have some fun a bit later.

Have I mentioned that I like Girl Scout Cookies? Well I do. And now I have. I’m sure you feel better knowing that. I know I do.