I Got A New Thing

I sort of have this mental list of Things That Really Need to Be Replaced, Except I Don't Want to Spend the Money, and for quite a while my laptop had been steadily creeping up towards the top of that list. My mother bought it for me, used, several years ago. It was a bit obsolete, even then, but perfectly adequate for browsing the web, processing the words, and playing the occasional game of Spider Solitaire. But, increasingly, it'd been struggling with even that kind of basic stuff, and I think the last Firefox update was just more than it could gracefully handle. I may have kept on limping along with it, anyway, slow and stuttery as it was, but then, a few days ago, the power button broke.

Actually, it was sort of half-broken for a while, kind of mushy and loose in its socket. But then, finally, I went to turn the computer on, and it just sort of collapsed into the casing, and all my efforts to get it back into place availed me not. You could still power the machine on, but you had to stick a pen or something down into the hole to do it, and that was just... stupid.

So I broke down and bought myself one of these. (Well, almost, anyway. I got the version with the DVD drive.) It's another basic, inexpensive machine, but hopefully it will manage to keep me going at least as long as the last one did. And it has the advantage of not weighing eight pounds. The only annoying thing about it is that it's running Windows 8 -- well, OK, 8.1 -- and it took entirely too much effort for me to get the damn thing to stop behaving like an overgrown smartphone. (I'd do the "Honestly, Microsoft, what the hell were you thinking?!" rant now, but you've probably heard it all before from people no doubt more eloquent on the subject that I am, so I'll forbear.)

Still, yay for shiny new technology!

Science Hilarity!

Still talking about Weird Al -- which, rather marvelously, everyone seems to be doing right now -- I thought I'd share this, too. Because it is currently my very favorite thing on the internet.

Only A Slightly Less Controversial Subject Than The Original

Weird Al has a new album out! I got my copy yesterday, and, as usual, it's great. He's also releasing videos for it. I think there are a couple of prescriptive grammarians of my acquaintance who are likely to appreciate this one:

Happy B-Day To Me

As of today, alas, I am no longer the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Although when I said that to my sister she told me, "I hear 43 is the new 42." So I will attempt to console myself with that.

Keeping Currently

Current clothes: Gray shorts. One of my Rush concert t-shirts. White ankle socks. Brown leather shoes. (Which are badly scuffed up and desperately need a bit of shoe polish, but that's about item number six thousand on my to-do list at the moment.)

Current mood: OK, but I'm having trouble working up much enthusiasm for the stuff I really ought to do today.

Current music: Nothing. I'm still desperately trying to catch up with months (and, in at least one case, years) worth of podcasts, so that's what my ears have been busy doing.

Current annoyance: Weather that's not only hot, but also humid. Which is just wrong in the desert, not to mention a big disadvantage when your A/C relies on evaporative cooling. Also, the fact that my house still hasn't returned to an entirely liveable condition after my surgical downtime.

Current thing: Trying to bring my house back to an entirely liveable condition after my surgical downtime.

Current desktop picture: Still this same bookish picture as last month. As I said last time, I think this one's going to stick around for a while.

Current book: The Dangerous World of Butterflies by Peter Laufer.

Current song in head: "One Headlight" by the Wallflowers, which has been stuck in my head since I heard it on the radio maybe a week ago. This is particularly annoying, since I don't remember most of the lyrics -- indeed, I'm not even sure I've ever been able to properly make out most of the lyrics -- so what's stuck in my head is basically, "Blah blah blah blah blah, da da da da da, da da da da da ONE HEADLIGHT!"

Current refreshment: Diet Pepsi.

Current DVD in player: Nothing at the moment, as I've been doing a lot of streaming lately instead of watching discs. But I just finished season 3 of Arrested Development. You know, when I started watching that, I could not understand what all the fuss was about. Yeah, OK, it was an American sitcom I actually found watchable, which is rare enough... but it took me a while to appreciate just how brilliant it is. Or maybe it took a while to get brilliant. I'm not sure which. But season three is pretty darned brilliant.

Current worry: So, even though the hormone-suppressing drug they gave me should have worn off by now, I'm still getting hot flashes. I asked the doctor about it, and she said give it until November -- that'll be six months after the surgery -- and see if it goes away. If not, I may just have somehow been catapulted into early menopause. "Which would be a shame," she said, "after I went to all that trouble to save your ovaries." No shit, doc. Imagine how I feel! Here's hoping it's just a lingering after-effect of the surgery and/or the drugs.

Current thought: I don't seem to be able to form a coherent thought at the moment. Right, then. Back to the laundry and housecleaning!

I Feel As If I Should Have Run A Betting Pool

For anyone who might be curious as to how many books I managed to finish during my post-surgical recuperation/reading retreat, the final total, from my surgery on May 20 to returning to work on July 10, is thirty.

Unfortunately for any progress I might have made through the TBR shelves, though, I also read a whole bunch of discount book catalogs that came while I was convalescing.

I'm Back, Baby!

Just had my follow-up appointment at the doctor's, and she pronounced herself pleased with my progress. I now have the official go-ahead to resume all my normal activities. And not a moment too soon! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some heavy things that need lifting...

I Got A Matt Smith! I Got A Matt Smith!!!

I was bored. I fell back into an old, dangerous addiction. And... And...



That's right! I won at Doctor Who 2048! I am the rockingest thing that ever rocked!

Exploding Outward

To the Americans among you, a belated Happy 4th of July! I hope everyone survived without singeing any eyebrows or setting anything that wasn't supposed to be on fire on fire.

I actually went out to a get-together with some friends. I didn't stay long -- I think I was home and in bed before the fireworks display finished -- but it was the first time I'd been out of the house for more than an hour or so since the surgery. It's nice, if a bit strange, to feel like I'm easing back into my life again.

More About The State Of Me

It's now exactly six weeks since I had my surgery. Which puts me right about at the point where, although far from 100% healed -- that takes many months, apparently -- one might finally be deemed healed enough not to have to worry about messing up the process any more. That does vary, though, and my doctor's apparently decided to give it another week, because my last follow-up appointment, at which I should get the OK to return to work and various other activities (with or without a few continuing restrictions), isn't until July 7th.

Until then, I'm going to try to continue to take things very easy, and get lots of rest, and give my body everything it needs to keep on doing the repair work it needs to do. Really, I'm very lucky to be able to take this much time off of work without any difficulty, and I should take full advantage of it to get as better as I can get before I have to go back. I gotta admit, though, that I'm starting to go a bit stir-crazy here. Because I'm recovered enough now that that instinctive switch in my brain, the one that makes you not want to do much when you're injured or unwell, that switch got flipped off about a week ago. Now I really, really want to clean my damned house. Partly because my body wants an excuse to get up and move around, and partly because, after a month of neglect, the house has reached the point where you could take pictures of it and use them as illustrations in the entropy section of a physics textbook.

Yeah. I think I might have at last found the limit to just how much lying around and reading I can stand, not because I get tired of reading, but because I get tired of never being able to do much of anything else. But I will continue to be good. For at least one more week.