I am so stupid! How stupid am I? I schedule an appointment at the Apple store Genius Bar at 5pm on a Saturday night at the Apple Store in the Mall of America just weeks before Christmas. Dumb.
On the other hand I spent almot 2.5 hours there and got a lot of help and advice on my computer issues and it was all free. He even backed up my 4 gb of photos onto a dvd for me as my computer was not wanting to burn dvd’s for me. Now, if my computer dies, I will not have lost over 5000 photos, the bulk of which are of Ghengis. I have 10 gb of music, if I lose that I’ll be sad…but you know, whatever. If I lose my Ghengis photos…well, you know.
Anyway, I need to wipe my hard drive completely, reinstall the system and then slowly put my stuff on there. If that doesn’t work then my hard drive is dying and I’ll have to get a new Mac Book Pro. Thank god for the school discount and the interest free loans through payroll deduction! I love my job.
Seriously, now is not the best time for me to be buying a new computer, but, fuckity.
In other news, the dogs are cute, happy and totally rambunctious. I have upwards of 80 1/2 pints worth of food to can next weekend at my mom’s (and that doesn’t include the innumerable 4 ounce jars of mustard I need to make). I will hopefully be making pineapple jam today with the pineapples we bought but didn’t use.
Now we are off to meet Keith so he can take us to Costco to buy the things that will be processed and crammed into jars next weekend.

two recent reads…
1) Iron Council by China Mieville. The third in the Bas-Lag series. An incredibly good book in its own right, but compared to the other two Bas-Lag books, it just doesn’t hold up. Mieville’s writing is engaging and thought provoking, he conjures up entirely new worlds easily and makes them believable. The cities are as gritty and frayed and filthy as the deserts are parched and blinding. You could get lost in his worlds, but you don’t want to because you’d probably get your little ass kicked. Iron Council, unfortunately, strayed a bit from the gritty dark of the previous two novels. The books aren’t a series, the stories are not related at all, there is only the barest crossover of characters or situations, they just all happen to take place in the same world, Bas-Lag and its chief city, New Crobuzon. The first two books, Perdido Street Station and The Scar both felt infinitely unique in their settings and situations. Iron Council felt like a mash up of western, socialist revolution and railroad/gold rush story. The fascinating mosaic of humanoid species such as the cactacae, the anophelii and the garuda are less prominent and just added as an afterthought.
The book itself is an engaging and fascinating read, but compared to his other novels, it’s just not as good. I do hope he has more Bas-Lag novels in the hopper.
2) Olympos by Dan Simmons. The follow up to Illium, this is the book that wraps it all up. Just as fun and engaging as the first book, but still suffers a bit from sequel-itis. When you have a book as amazingly intricate, disparate and complex as Illium, it’s hard to follow up on that and hold the center. I was initially irritated with the Deus ex Machina slathered all over the climax of the book, but when you have a book with little Jovian robots, the principals of The Tempest, a Caliphate that sent robots to the future to kill the Jews (an entirely too heavy handed literary move in my opinion) and the Greek pantheon recreating the Trojan war on Mars you can understand a little Machine of the Gods sweeping in to clean things up.
Today I picked up Dan Simmons’ Hyperion and I’ll give that a spin, as well as the book-on-CD version of Ian McEwan’s Saturday.
I had a burst of energy today and cleaned the kitchen but now I am paying for it. I am going to bed to sleep the sleep of the sick and the dead.

Yesterday at brunch, Owen, Alan and David started talking about tv’s and speakers and remote controls on radio frequencies and something or other. The conversation went something like this:
Owen: Speakers!
Alan: Dolby number point one?
Owen: yes! speaker speaker speaker subwoofer
David: pertinent remark
Owen: remot control
David: walls?
Owen: Radio blaster moonbeam
Alan: space!
Owen: plasma
David: lcd?
Alan: mirrors!
This went on for quite some time. Mostly I just stuffed myself with sweet potato fries and hollandaise sauce.
My only contribution to the conversation:
me: I bought my tv because it was silver and it was on sale.
And that’s the truth, I got my tv because my 30 year old 19 inch Zenith with the fake wood paneling looked shitty in my formal living room and I was consolodating the family room with the living room as my sister was moving in to my house. The extent of my interest in the actual tv was that it look nice and not cost a lot of money.
At some point, when I finally broke down and got a dvd player, I was pretty psyched that it had a 5 disk tray. I could finally live the dream of filling the tray, getting unconscionably stoned and not having to move from the sofa for twelve hours. Sadly, I never managed to hook up that tube from my bladder to the bathtub so the dream was never fully realized. I’m sure the DVD box mentioned something about laser quality or skip protection or SOMETHING…I don’t know, it was cheap and meant I didn’t have to move a lot.

Aw crap. Christmas is coming. My plans to make lots of things for lots of people for Christmas this year sort of went to hell.
The doctors and I have been playing brain pill roulette for weeks now trying to find the right combination of brain pills and sleeping pills. It’s hard to be productive when much of your time is spent wanting to puke, cry, sleep or jump off the Ford bridge. Exacerbating the issue is, of course, the loss of Ghengis. Even in the best of times, losing my special little fella would have made me want to puke, cry, sleep and jump off the Ford bridge.
Suffice to say, it’s been immensely hard to concentrate and that’s been frustrating.
Alex has been making homemade jams and it got me thinking and I might just be motivated to get some canning done. Flipping through my recipes, I’ve settled on some jams, some pickles, mustards and fruit relishes. Between that and pumping out a few scarves, I think maybe I can get some gifts together.
hmmm, maybe I’ll go up to my mom’s for a weekend and she and I can spend a weekend together canning. She’s a billion times more organized than I am! Hey mom! you reading this? Wouldn’t you LOVE to spend an entire weekend with me making a mess of your kitchen? You have a dishwasher, right?

we’re so damned low class we’re drinkin’ our red wine outta white wine glasses!
Also, David ordered new checks tonight and he’s getting “What’s wrong with being Awesome?” printed in the extra line under the address and “From the Orphans’ Christmas Fund…to You” above the signature line. Personally, I think he should have gotten the “Life on the Farm” checks, but what are you gonna do?
Today, Chester went to the dog park for the first time. He was happy enough to see the people, but too scared and nippy around the other dogs. We’ll just have to keep taking him and socializing him. We’ll get him enrolled in obedience classes, too, that will help immensely. it was 15 fucking degrees out. We didn’t stay long.
blah blah blah
(analworld, vaginal plunger, clown car, meatball subs, biggus dickus)