Ah, yes. I am having trouble finding things to say these days. I'm not sure why -- I actually have proto-posts written down in a notebook (an artifact of the time when I was computerless), but a combination of being out of the habit and mood and being preoccupied (make that obsessed) with other things has led me to be relatively silent these days. I also have writing I have done about things which are personal enough that placing them on a public blog (because, after all, the Internet is forever) would not be a good idea.
I find myself writing more on Facebook because, let's face it, FB is mostly brainless. A lot of space on my friend's list is comprised of links people find interesting. A few people actually use it to let others know about their lives, but even then it is a shallow medium at best. Not quite as bad as Twitter, but at roughly 400 characters, not much better. And lately when I am writing here, I find myself writing short odds and ends, rather than longer analytical pieces.
So... things.
Georgia is lovely, shiny and new. She is still clean, mainly because I get annoyed at anyone other than me eating or drinking within five feet of her, and I semi-religiously blow dust off her keyboard. I need to get a cloth to clean her lovely, high graphic screen. The hardest part to get used to is her sensitive trackpad. With Jan, I became used to resting one thumb on the pad while I scrolled with the other, the better to open things with, except with Georgia when I do that it opens a lot of things I do not want, or otherwise acts the way the new fancy trackpads are supposed to act but which I am totally not used to.
Because I can now access iTunes, I can catch up with all the episodes of Criminal Minds that I have missed this year (which is quite a lot, let me tell you). It also means that I can go back and read Elizabeth Bear's quite amusing liveblogs of the episodes. I probably could do an entire post on CM, and how appearances can be deceiving, and that one of the most annoying things about this season is how it seems to be devolving (a good, BAU-type term) into a standard cop show, albeit with more explicit pictures of dismembered bodies.
I have also got all my music back. At last. At lot of things were bought from iTunes during the period before you could get things DRM-free, so when your computer dies, you have to unauthorize and reauthorize everything. This is impossible if you cannot access the iTunes store. And I was very good: I resisted the temptation to rip all the music on the computer I was borrowing (which was a great deal more than mine) onto my backup drive.
For Mother's Day, I got the "betting version" of Trivial Pursuit. It's in many ways a different game, but in many ways a better one, because it still allows for smarty-pantses to show off (not like anyone I know) but also allows other people to be involved in the action rather than leaving them to wander over to the fridge to scope out what types of soda we have. It also can provide incentives for people to throw questions, which makes it all the more amusing.
I have been listening to the Beatles today. I have about ninety songs, including five from the Help! soundtrack I bought off of iTunes last night. The bridge from "Polythene Pam" to "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window" in the song-cycle on Abbey Road is absolutely freaking brilliant, and the end of it is my favorite ten seconds in all of rock and roll. It goes on my list of "better-than-sex music".*
"And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."
Another observation about the Beatles. George Martin is an unspoken hero of the revolution, so to speak, and a large part of the reason they were as awesome as they were. (Compare Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album or Abbey Road, which he produced, to Let It Be, which he did not.) One of his most wonderful creations is Love, which was originally developed for a Cirque du Soleil show, if I remember correctly. It takes Beatles tracks and transforms them into... something even more wonderful than they were before. "Revolution," for example, has fuzzed out guitars, and is even more raw and primal than it was in the first place. My favorite, though, is the heart-achingly beautiful "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," with George Harrison on acoustic guitar, with strings coming later. It includes a verse not found on the Abbey Road version: "I look from the wings at the play that you're staging/ while my guitar gently weeps/ as I'm sitting here doing nothing but aging/ still my guitar gently weeps." Maybe it is the place I am in in my life, but that just resonates.
School is nearly out for the summer. The Not-So-Little Drummer Boy was on the ball after he returned home, and actually has a good summer job before June starts. His first job was as a "sign dancer," one of those people who stand on street corners advertising for, in this case, a Mexican restaurant. For the week he did it, he was extremely good -- he had people honking at him, and several groups of people coming in the restaurant commended him to his manager. In fact, he had been terribly excited about getting the job, not particularly surprising for a kid who told me once that he viewed his entire life as performance art. His stated goal, at least as he told me, was to be such an outrageously good sign dancer that he got onto the local news. He sadly had to relinquish that goal when he got a job that a) paid a dollar more per hour, b) was full rather than part time and c) would actually give him skills he could put on his resume. Nothing in life is perfect.
He also ran at least part of the way in the Bay-to-Breakers. Afterwards, he commented "whenever there is an outdoor event in San Francisco with more than fifty people, at least one of them will be naked." He was exasperated when both his father and I separately asked if he was one of them.
Last weekend was the Pokemon Regional Tournament. I attended, mainly because Railfan was participating and wanted someone there for moral support. The contestants in the Masters division (people over twelve) were 95 percent male (not an exaggeration, I actually counted) and ranged in age from the aforementioned teenagers to men who looked to be close to forty. I can't imagine being that interested in a handheld video game at the age of thirty-five, but then I can't imagine being completely obsessed with Pokemon at any age. Failure of imagination, I suppose.
Summer is here, and I am trying not to be overwhelmed. I have something akin to Seasonal Affective Disorder, only it hits during the summer rather than the winter. Something about all the light, and the lengths of the days, feels disorienting and crushing, rather than exhilarating, as it is for most people. And the kids will be out of school after next week, with all that entails. At least this summer they have set goals for themselves: the NLDB has a job (and, finally, a driver's license so he can get himself to said job), Railfan is looking for one, and the Red-Headed Menace wants to take classes so that he can get in shape for next school year. Not to mention doing summer track, and training for the cross-country team he wants to join in the fall.
In a couple of months, the Rocket Scientist will again leave for the Arctic, and I will spend two-and-a-half weeks obsessing about the weather in Nunavit, and worrying about polar bears. And the statistics for crashes among small planes. And ATV rollovers.
Maybe before than I will find other things to distract me.
Like actually writing.
*Depending upon how good the sex is, of course.
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