...And I Quote: Stink, Stank, Stunk!

I haven't updated in a week or so, and the short reason for this is that I've been very unusually busy with outside projects, especially for the MIT Mystery Hunt. But the real answer is a little more detailed, and here it is:

The good news is that I've got a chance to live rent-free until the end of April! (Two friends of mine are going out of town, need a house-sitter, and their dates happen to bookend perfectly). I needed an excuse to get out of my current horrible place, and this couldn't have happened at a more perfect time. It's so perfect, in fact, that I'm tempted to think of it as divine providence. (But then I think, "Why would God give a shit about me having cheap housing and not do anything about the massacres in Darfur?" So I just think it's a really nice thing that has happened, and I'm glad I have friends with vacation time.)

This means, of course, that I'll have to really start traveling light: everything unnecessary must go! I'm hurling out extra clothes (anything that doesn't fit into a portable wardrobe), extra books (I'm down to three-fifths of a single bookshelf, when I used to own six of them), and any box that I haven't opened since the last time I moved.

Since this may be my only opportunity under my present circumstances to actually save money (which would be essential for moving into a new place), I'm being very tight-fisted: making rice and beans for lunch, not going out much, etc. My hope was to be able to afford...I don't know, something a little bigger than normal. Maybe my first ever trip off the continent. Maybe Europe? I have a week of vacation still, and a passport that's never been used.

And then two stupid things happened. First, my main computer, my desktop, stopped connecting to the Internet. I'm not sure why it's acting this way, but the reasons seem to run deep: no conventional troubleshooting has been able to figure it out. So it would take a lot of time (and possibly part of a day off) to get to the bottom of it.

Second, last night, my laptop died. It was bound to happen. I inherited it, for free, from my wonderful brother about five years ago, and it's always had a tinge of insanity to it: not starting up, starting up but not finding the mouse, failing to recognize the zip drive, etc. It also runs Windows 98, which means that it doesn't understand simple things like wi-fi or thumb drives. Only last week, a passerby actually stopped to look at me. "I can't believe how big that thing is," he said. "It's like a cube." But for my purposes it's been perfect. I bring it into a coffee shop, I write, I go home. I don't need anything more fancy than that.

Only now I guess I do. Neither of my computers is working, and I need to be more mobile anyway, so this may be my opportunity to upgrade to some new laptop--maybe even (dare I dream?) a Mac! But it'll have to be cheap, so it'll have to be used. I'm looking.

Anyway, the point of all this is: THAT is why I haven't been updating the site. I only have an hour or so of access every day (at work, which always makes me feel guilty) and I spend it mostly writing emails. I promise I'll update regularly again as soon as it becomes feasible. But in the meantime, if anyone's got a laptop they're not using--maybe with Windows 2000 or later?--talk to me fast, because for the next day or so I'm going to be Craisglist's bitch.