Computer-less

So my laptop, she is tired, she is ill, she is unhappy, she is kaput.

After a run which restored to me some of the sanity I was so sorely missing, I went to the Apple Store yesterday and was told by a supremely condescending tech guy that my hard drive was failing. After a year and a half of use! Boo.

So off she goes, the laptop, to get a new hard drive, and to have her memory wiped clean of all those pesky files. Thanks to the tech guys at school, though, I did back up everything (except music files -- forgot, and by the time I got to the Apple Store, my CD drive wasn't working either).

Fortunately, I bought the 3-year warranty when I got the computer last year, so it cost me nothing to get a new hard drive. And you know, I like not having a laptop around. It's like a squarish, white, 5-pound elephant in my room -- and I do enjoy imagining a cartoon elephant squished uncomfortably on my desk -- that silently demands attention all the time: the emails I should be responding to, the passport I should be ordering, the loans I should be consolidating, the notes I should be taking on my reading, blabbity blah blah. With all the computers I have access to in the school, it's not a burden to get access, and I like having my room be just my room, not another place where I should be doing work.

Ooooh, I'm just going to hate having a PDA, aren't I?
------------------------------

So today, I got up late, went for a run, dithered around for a while, and finally got to work around 3 pm. Capital punishment professor, you are on CRACK! 70 pages of reading for Monday and 30 pages for Tuesday? The hk, she weeps, because it is 7 pm, and she still has 30 pages of Supreme Court opinions to go before she sleeps, and she should have gotten this done and gotten a few pages of con law done by now, and really, Tony (Scalia) and Clare (nce Thomas), can't you play nice and stop sniping at the majority in every single g-d case we read? Actually, I'm talking to all of you. Yeah, you guys, in the robes. Just stop it. 20-page opinions and 20-page dissents, with 10 pages devoted to whether the attorneys only had information from two social services reports and whether the lower court knew that the attorneys only had info from two reports -- just freakin' ASK the lower court what it knew! Christ Almighty.

In the good news category, my plea to friends in New York has resulted in some very attractive offers and suggestions for summer housing, and things are happy happy joy joy in that sector.

Tomorrow, I shall really get out of the house by noon, go over to the undergrad library and do lots of productive history research until I go pick up mum at the airport by 4 pm. (Good plan, hk!) (Thanks.)