potentialities

My little brother paid me a rather nice compliment the other day. He said that he hates it when I edit his papers because he looks at whatever changes I made and wishes he had thought of them first.

Today is, of course, Guy Fawkes day. We will celebrate by blowing up City Hall. Or possibly just by burning things. This is the kind of holiday my family can really get behind, raging pyros that they are.

For the record, I really like it when people read my fanfiction and suffer from fits of outrage, especially when they declare that they can never read the source material again. It greatly inflates my sense of self-importance, and is really fucking funny besides. Keep it up! Whilst I cannot reveal what fandoms I'm volunteering to write for yuletide, I will say that there are a few I'm just dying to be asked to write for that whole "your head asplode" effect.

NaNoNonsense:

6,722 / 50,000 (13.4%)

This is so much fun to write, veering sharply as it does between the awesomely awful and the deeply mediocre. It is also teaching me a lot about novel writing; to wit, never write this novel again.

My iPod has a new battery in it now. This is a good thing, because my iPod is two and a half years old now (wait, that means there was a time before I had an iPod. I am confused) and its battery, which was kind of the weakling sibling of the iPod family to begin with its mere eight hour published spec, was now holding about an hour and a half of charge, tops. And that's assuming that you didn't actually do anything with the iPod during that time except press the play button. And even that was pushing it, sometimes.

I did not get this battery from the Apple Store. The people at the Apple Store are pretty nice about most things, like the time I dislodged my H key by pounding on my keyboard in rage when I was unable to copy files off of my brother's corrupted hard drive and I brought it it into the Apple Store and they did not merely stick my H key back on, they replaced my whole damn keyboard FOR FREE, which was a little above and beyond the call. However, batteries are a weak spot with the people at the Apple Store. Batteries die, and some batteries die faster than others, and this is a fact of the universe that Apple does not particularly want to be responsible for, although they seem perfectly happy to accept responsibility for me banging on my own keyboard like the short-tempered idiot that I am, so I think, cosmically, it all balances out. But, in short, batteries from Apple == expensive and mayhap == poor. So.

I bought my particular battery from iPod Juice, whom I at least tentatively endorse, although I have not actually used their product except insasmuch as it did cause my iPod to turn on, and it is charging now, so this is, at least, a good omen. They included a blue plastic poky thing and an instructional sheet, which makes it look SO EASY to separate the two halves of the iPod. Easier than twisting an Oreo, which is not something I ever experienced a great deal of success with, owing to the fact that a.) I am clumsy, b.) my mother never bought Oreos, and c.) Oreos are actually kind of gross, unless you embed them in ice cream, which magically turns them awesome.

These instructions LIE. It is not easy AT ALL.

I enlisted my brother for this task, as he is the Designated Doer of Things That Require Tools in the family. (My father used to be the DDoTTRT, but he doesn't see so well any more, and Danny managed to replace the hard drive in his iBook himself, so he is indeed fully qualified to take over.) This was somewhat difficult, as he only lives in our house in the most technical of senses at this point, but I cornered him last night and he took the blue poky thing to the dead iPod to try to make it see reason.

Nothing happened. Well, at one point, he caused it to make a scary snapping noise, panicked, and then snapped it right back, but this is not what I call progress. Then he claimed that he was tired and that muscles hurt in his fingers that he didn't even know that he had, and he retired for the evening (by which I mean, went and played around on his own computer).

However, this afternoon he came home from school early (they were tired of him, I think) and brought his friend Nathan with him. Nathan is at our house at least as much as Danny is, and possibly more. Sometimes I call Danny's cell phone and Nathan answers, which is slightly disconcerting. Nathan watched as Danny applied the blue poky thing to the iPod and accomplished nothing.

The scene, if you will

"Here, let me try that," Nathan offers, seizing the iPod.

"Did you read the directions?"

"I looked at the pictures." Nathan vigorously plies the poky thing.

"You need to read the directions!" Danny yelps, scandalized. Danny read the directions.

The iPod is already half-open. "Be careful!" Danny admonishes. I occasionally peek through my fingers, moaning.

"Stop, that thing is very fragile!"

"What thing?"

"That ribbon thing! Here, hold that exactly where it is while I look at the directions!"

"I'm taking out the hard drive!"

I moan some more, handing them the new battery at the same time.

"There!"

~~~

It made a violent snapping noise when Nathan put it back together, but nothing seems to be broken, except the bit of plastic at the bottom around the part where you plug the cable in, which is definitely broken but doesn't seem to matter. And now my iPod claims to be charged, so if you don't mind, he and I are going to go spend a little quality time together. Taking long walks on the beach and such. You know.

My ickle brother made me a bracelet out of a fork.

• Wrestled extensively with the idiocy of NYU, and won, more or less
  
• Took finals
  
• Turned in papers
  
• Got myself on Fandom Wank, in the good way, with people proposing to have my babies
  
• Bid farewell to my adorable Pre-K classes, who were very sad to see me go
  
• Made one last trip to the Cloisters with vagabond_sal
  
• Made one last trip to Strand with vagabond_sal
  
• Ate most of vagabond_sal's remaining food
  
• Said goodbye to my beloved TV and my beloved speakers and posted them
  
• Packed everything I owned in a few suitcases and lugged them to the airport
  
• Discovered muscles in my elbows that I didn't know, or want to know, that I had
  
• Did not die in scary thunderstorm over Kansas City as we were landing
  
• Read more books on the airplane than I have otherwise in a month
  
• Revised my little brother's awful no good very bad paper on Tess of the d'Urbervilles, due the next day
  
• Visited my grandparents in South Dakota
  
• Played the Squirrel Game with my three-year-old second cousin, who cheats
  
• Made my extended family very jealous when my one-year-old second cousin liked me best and wanted to sit in my lap
  
• Planted flowers in my grandparents' backyard
  
• Discussed important questions with my grandfather, such as what is the greatest novel ever written and how long does it take to reserve a booking at the Old Course in St. Andrews
  
• Tried to read my flist on dialup through AOL
  
• Failed, miserably
  
• Ordered six imps from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab
  
• Returned home again and settled on swing on the back porch with the wireless internet

Congratulations to everyone who graduated, will graduate, otherwise made it through another semester, is too cool to be in school any more, et cetera. You are all awesome.

We have a houseguest, because my brother's friend's parents are in Germany. So far we have played poker with him, and purchased various games and a copy of The Incredibles with the money his parents sent with him. He has a poster to do for psychology class tomorrow, which had better be about Rousseau's blank slate, because it is empty. We did enjoy the movie, though.

I have taken to stealing my little brother's shirts so that I have something to wear. My suitcase was full of books. He is not a few inches taller than me, but our chests measure about the same. This is convenient, or sad, or both.

LJ ate all my S2 customizations whilst I wasn't looking. Thanks a lot, LJ!

I am now happily ensconced in the bosom of my family, where pizza magically appears whenever I say hmm, pizza sounds good, I have already read five books, watched The Office, and won a game of poker, and generally things are good.

Sadly, my beloved laptop is presently having his optical drive replaced -- under warranty, thank goodness. I honestly don't know whose fault it is, but I stuck a CD-R in to burn some CDs to inflict upon play for my family and it made some funny noises and then went in and didn't mount, or come back out, or anything. I haven't done anything particularly abusive to it lately, and I burned three CDs before I left, so I'm happy to go with the assumption that it was somehow Apple's fault.

Anyway, the point being that I am laptopless, and thus even less available for the time present than I was already counting on, until my beloved is returned to me once more. You will have to take it as read that I love you all.

EDIT: Also! I had a bunch of my hair hacked off, which is supposed to give it a coherent style and make me look older! I do not believe that it makes me look older, but then there's not really much hope for that! Pictures maybe soon if someone takes a decent one of me.