Back to civilization

One of the most annoying things a person can do on the Internet is start a blog and then never update it. But really, I had a very good excuse!

Because two hours after I posted my last (and first!) entry, this happened to my Macbook:

(Note: This is not a picture of my Macbook, but instead one I found online. The particulars are mostly the same, though.)

I won't bore you with the details of just how, exactly, that happened, but let's just say it involved a cat, a piano, and a bowl of Special K Cinnamon Pecan.

So as of yesterday, I have a new Macbook, which I've named Susannah, in honor of Susannah Simon from Meg Cabot's MEDIATOR series. Because whereas Susannah Simon can see dead people, Susannah the Mac can see WiFi hot spots from two blocks away. In fact, when I checked her out in the car on the way home today, she immediately connected to the Internet via some public library . . . while cruising down the interstate.

How cool is that?

I'm also happy to have back Microsoft Word, since I've spent the past four weeks writing longhand in a notebook, which wasn't as productive as I remembered from high school. In fact, the whole experience reminded me of a woman I knew years ago, who actually insisted on writing her first draft entirely by hand. She had made it sound so romantic, like a throwback to the days of Hemingway or Dickens, and I always pictured her sitting quietly on her morning train, jotting things down in a leather Moleskine notebook. It was a nice mental image, but one I never really bought into....

....which is a good thing, because now I know it's all a bunch of crap. Writing by hand isn't sentimental and romantic; it's painful and inefficient.

And it's probably the reason said woman is writing the same first draft today that she was five years ago. Not that's a bad thing. I'm just saying.

Anyway, that's it for tonight. Tomorrow I'm getting back started on the novella I had half-finished before the whole shattered-screen thing happened, and then I get to move onto a full-length project I've had shelved for almost a year.

That is, of course, if I can keep Henry from sleeping on my keyboard.