a.w.o.l.

For those who might stop by to peek in regularly, I'm here.
Really.
I am.


The day after Thanksgiving I was feeling wretched -- crabby, short-tempered, listless ... you know the drill. Friday night I sneezed a big batch of sneezes in a row and **poof** I was if I'm not already dying I think I'd rather be dead than this SICK.

I've had this funky cold/flu bug for a week now though, and between horking up my lungs and blowing alarming amounts of mucous from my head and the mad dashes to the toilet for more "hugs" and feeling too faint to walk to the kitchen for a nutritious meal I haven't felt particularly inspired to talk much, even in text.

Truth be told I'm also feeling unsettled about all sorts of stuff that has no bearing whatsoever on you, but for me that means I'm absolutely flatlining on the creative front. I haven't taken my camera out of the bag at all, not even once, this entire past week. Which may sound like no big whoop to you, but for me it's not the least bit right; I carry that thing with me EVERYWHERE, it is virtually ALWAYS on my person or within reach. Not using the camera means something. What, I'm not sure exactly, but something.

Oh, and... well, and the hard drive within my lovely little not-completely-reliable but still-dearly-loved old computer has taken another crap and is now stuck in an endless loop of BIOS testing. I'm handy with a computer but it's quite sensible, I think, to admit a certain amount of DIY defeat when one cannot even understand the questions posed by the BIOS screen when one is trying to get out of that endless testing loop.

I'm stealing time online by using my son's computer (oh, how delighted I now am to have purchased it for him a few years ago - I mean, all those leg wrestling matches and the hair pulling we used to have to do for 'online time' when there WAS only one wonky machine at Chez McBeth!). If I thought this single machine could ably sustain us I'd be less of a fretter, but uh, have you seen how much space Adobe Creative Suite takes up on a hard drive lately? Yeesh. And if you knew my son's downloading habits (which I cannot justifiably kvetch about since he has a job and he is paying for his own tunes now) - well, you'd understand how very little hard drive space remains on this, the working machine. Long story short... that ain't gonna work. No way, no how.

The debate within me now is probably not unlike the same tape loop conversations that we all have with ourselves:
- the cheapest way to go is fixing it myself
- I am unable to fix it myself when it's this broken
- I only want to reformat the hard drive to reinstall apps
- I don't know how to do it
- I can call the great fellas at GeekWorld to help me; I like them.
- They cost much more than fixing it myself (which is what I can afford to do at the moment)
- If the hard drive is not fixable or if there is some flaw inside the box it'd make better sense to buy a new hard drive
- I just installed THIS hard drive earlier this year, f*ck if I'm buying ANOTHER!
- I'm not well-versed enough to know if the current hard drive is hosed enough to turn it permanantly into a coaster for my beverages.

I spin around with those basic ideas/themes until I've convinced myself that for as much hassle as my computer has become in its golden years, maybe it'd be better in the bigger picture to just ditch it and get a new one --
-which I cannot afford
-yadda

You probably get the idea by now.


Life isn't all bad though. My son has a date tomorrow night! He showed me a picture that the New Girl gave to him and she looks by all outward appearances as a pretty, somewhat shy, not-waiflike (for some reason I feel the need to feed waifish-figured people; now I can sit back and trust that she has some basic self-care skills), lovely high school senior who has long black hair and glasses and the slightest hint of a gentle smile.

They tried to schedule a date last weekend but between her scheduling conflicts (she was busy with Hmong New Year festivities) and his (I roped J. down to spend the entire Thanksgiving day with the 20 family members, some extendeds, who had travelled to be here with us) that first try didn't work so well.

He's very smitten with this girl and it's awfully sweet to see his planning at work, nearly heartbreaking to help him figure out the best movie to take her to (no chick flicks because, as his friend Lily told him, it's wayyy too early in their relationship for her to feel like an idiot for crying all over him; no blow-em-up/shoot-em-up movies either; that's just poor taste to assume she'd want to see action heroes until she expresses the interest).

I suggested a movie and absolutely anticipated being shot down for being a hokey old hippie weirdo. There was no shoot-down. I know, I can't believe it either! He and S. are going to see 'Happy Feet' tomorrow night. And he's asked to borrow my car so he has 'good reliable transportation'. And he's really trying to be cavalier about this thing -- even more precious to me because, well, he's SO NOT.

Appropos of nothing really, he informed me tonight that only white people eat fried rice (?) so he refused that option on tonight's take-out dinner menu. I reminded him that fried rice was the ONLY thing he used to choose before he became mah-toor, cultured and too cool for his own good. That kind of lighthearted exchange comprises many of our conversations these days, which delights me and seems to entertain him.

KD is staying over at our place tomorrow night because we -meaning she and I- have agreed that we will have so much post-date grilling to do when he arrives home that it only makes sense. Both of us will want to ask the 'did you kiss her??' question but we're still negotiating who it will sound less creepy coming from.

Between lung horking, sinus drainage, a broken computer and a kid on his first real date that's the news from here.