my life in bullet points
- News the biggest: I have ordered a laptop! Thanks to all of you who weighed in with advice. I ended up choosing a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with Windows XP, because I don't really need to get new programs - I want to run what I've got. I opted for the 14" widescreen, after some thought, because I have an aux screen I use at my desk, and I wanted better battery life and lighter weight for hauling it around. (It's still a higher resolution than my 15" 4:3 laptop, about equivalent to the 17" aux screen.) I bought from the Lenovo site because they're having a 25% off sale (a brief comparison using Epinions and NexTag showed that they were the cheapest site for various possibilities I was interested in) plus, NotebookReview had a coupon code for another 10% off, plus that way I could build a custom system with exactly what I wanted. So I ended up spending less than $1000 and OMG, people! 2 GB memory is twice what my old Tosh has. 160GB hard drive is more than FIVE times. Intel Core 2 Duo at 2.4GHz is, like, a KAJILLION times faster than my old processor. Whee!
- Yesterday the high temperature was 73°. Today it was cold, windy, and it even snowed briefly (and as is typical of snow showers around here, the sun was not behind the snow cloud, so it was simultaneously sunny and snowing). WTF, weather? It's supposed to get nice again on Sunday, though.
- The bad news is that I seem to have re-injured my back. I'm not sure why this happened; possibly because I wasn't exercising (other than walking) due to my injured heel, my abs weakened and things weren't held in place properly. I was riding my mountain bike, and oddly I was fine going up a long, steep dirt/gravel hill - but then I went up a short and not very steep at all bump, and OWW. I'm really bummed. I'm so used to being able to do outdoorsy fun stuff that I hate it when I can't. Especially now, just as the season's getting underway! I'm seriously scared I'm going to have to have surgery. At least I have better insurance now, but it's still going to cost several thousand dollars. Not to mention, there goes my summer. Waah.
- I don't think I have mentioned it here, but I'm in a production in our community theatre (I'm Amy Lee in Laundry and Bourbon), and tomorrow night is our press preview. For which we are totally not ready. Opening night is in one week. Yikes.
- I'm writing. Yay? It's going like molasses.
- Last night I dreamed that I commented on the bandom/bandslash/rockfic nomenclature kerfuffle with something profound and wise. WTF, brain? I'm not even in (any of that) fandom(s)! On the other hand, it occurred to me that the situation is kind of like the news I read yesterday about the people who live on the island of Lesbos wanting lesbians to stop calling themselves lesbians. Because they are the only true lesbians! At least on lj (where this debate is taking place), "bandom" is understood by most to mean the fandom around a certain set of bands, and even though, yeah, it would make a lot more sense to apply it to generalized band fandom (and maybe some people use it that way) it's too late! It's already been appropriated and is in people's brains to mean something else! So if you're a guy from the island of Lesbos, good luck insisting you're a lesbian.
- Some pointery pointy things:
- idlerat is participating in the Out of the Darkness Overnight walk, which is a benefit for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Please consider sponsoring her; I am.
- smallfandomfest is taking prompts.
- ds_northernnews is running a Spring Thaw challenge. I have an idea for a comic based on #40 but my art-fu is pretty poor, so if anyone wants to collaborate, let me know.
- amothea is looking for help with an ebook fanfiction archive.
Okay! That's all I got! Now I'm going to bed to read more Donald Westlake. (Seekrit message to starfishchick: it's your fault that out of the whole shelf of new-to-me Westlakes at the library, I chose Put a Lid on It!) [And for those of you who aren't starfishchick: that's a YouTube link to the Squirrel Nut Zippers performing on Sesame Street.]