Raindrops on roses, and iPods that listen....

Technology and I are rarely on the same page.

I have lived many years and can and do freely admit it, technology and I are not fast friends. We are acquaintances at most. Introduced by friends of friends. We chit chat and talk story every once in a while, but lawd knows, as sure as the tax documents I'm trying to round up, we NEVER EVER try to rely on one another.

8 hours.

That's how long I was in a car this weekend. That's how long I was going to have to knit and maybe listen to a few more chapters of The Jane Austen Book Club, or, and I am so very psyched, Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan. READ BY THE AUTHOR! But did you read that silly little word in the second sentence? WAS. As in: did-not; as in: because-my-iPod-mini-decided-to-choke; as in: kill-everything it was attached to minutes-before-we-were-supposed-to-be-on-the-road! Yes. To make the cycle complete, it took down my little powerbook with it. Nothing for it but to cut the power and wait until today to deal. Fun on a stick.

I need a new computer.

As soon as the taxes are filed, and I know how many "fun tickets" get to go to oncle sam, I am plunking down some cash for something new (but shhhh, don't tell my powerbook, he gets really really sensitive). I spent HOURS trying to figure out why oh why, when he deems me worthy of having sound, STATIC shoots out of the speakers. Loud, popping, cruel static. Stuff that makes your ears bury themselves in your shoulders. So the mute button is on, cuz I just gave up. I'm learning that as much as I'd like to multi-task, such is no longer a possibility with little Lappy here.

I think that's what made my iPod go ballistic on Saturday morning. It wanted very badly to update itself and I asked it not to, but I don't think it listened to me. So me, without knowing something else was going on, I tried loading some Amy Tan onto my mini, only for it to choke and freeze and make bad things happen all around. By the time I'd gotten Lappy to start up again, it said some "thing" that it could not recognize was attached to it, get it away RIGHT NOW or it threatened to REFORMAT it. Sigh... I did mention I'm a credentialed English Teacher currently playing Librarian, yes? Right. I don't like to play when I'm being threatened with evil sounding words like "reformat." It gives me chills.

My favorite things...

I was helping Andy's sister remember the lyrics this weekend. I sang it in choir in high school. I think more modern lyrics need to help it along. Cuz as cute as whiskers on kittens are, and as evil as bee stings can be, and dog bites for that matter, I can far too easily substitute things like:

Music that downloads and pictures that upload,
blogs that get published late into the night,
These are a few of my favorite things....

When the call drops, when the disk crashes, when I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things, and then I don't feel so bad....

Look, I never said I wasn't a big ol' dorkasaurous.

10 o'clock tick tock

Now that it's 10PM, my Lappy is finally running again, my iPod is once again an iPod, and my Lappy is not trying to actively hurt it, and there's even some Amy Tan as well as a good selection of music ready for my use tomorrow, which happens to also be my very last day at the Tahoe City Library. Then I'm back to just Kings Beach until the end of the month. Then...the moving process begins full swing. By this time in March I might actually know where in the Greater Seattle area I'll be living next!