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Thursday, April 17, 2003

Fever dreams, fever dreams ... even though I've hauled myself into work for parts of the last two days, I've also spent a huge amount of time sacked out, floating in and out of restless feverish sleep, waking and drifting, with words running endlessly through my mind. I've sketched out at least a dozen LJ entries in my head, and a couple of stories, and have had the usual feverish moments of transcendent and yet utterly passive insight, in which all things seem tranquilly illuminated, with no need to explain or analyze. Despite the physical unpleasantess, I really like the peaceful detached free-floating mental states of fever.

Among these swirling vapors was something I was going to write about Anna's S/X series, the elements I especially love about it, and relate that back to emotional atmospheres she's created in her earlier fiction. That segued at one point into musings on how much I'd still love to lure her into writing due South, and then a whoosh of insight about why that will likely never happen, which was part of a larger insight about Fraser as a character. Then there was some vaporing about teacher-student relationships in slash; this had something to do with Pembleton and Bayliss, and the ways that Pembleton tries to teach Bayliss stuff, and also something to do with Methos and Duncan, and Sylvia Volk's line from The Good Student about how the only enduring Immortal relationship is the teacher-student one. (This isn't--the teacher-student thing--about formally-constituted relationships, or the power dynamic per se, but rather about the particular kind of love that goes with the effort to transmit life wisdom, and the ways that that effort can turn out harsh and painful.)

There was a long and highly embarrassing dream-wake-dream fantasy, a sort of RPS-plus-Marty-Sue hurt-comfort epic, about which I will say no more except dear me.

And one of the story-fantasies that was floating around is in the process of being hacked into prose for the dS flashfiction thing, although god knows if I'll actually finish it, since I'm still not able to sit up for more than a half-hour at a time.

I need a cortex-reader, something I could plug straight into the grey matter and download all these vaporous ideas before they dissipate.

Back to bed now. Drift and dream, drift and dream...

Posted @ 01:05 AM CST [Link]No Comments

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Awake, and feeling ghastly, after a long sweaty restless night of coughing and fever dreams. The only one I remember, actually, is that Maygra and I were at a con together, waiting for an elevator and laughing our heads off. I can't recall what the joke was, but we were laughing so hard we could barely breathe, leaning on the wall and on each other. That was nice. *g*

Got my taxes done and filed in fifteen minutes this morning. This is the compensation for being a financial simpleton, with no investments, no savings or interest to speak of, no itemization. I just have my one W-2, and I arrange to be modestly over-withheld, so that I get a nice little refund (yes, I know how financially foolish that is, P. has explained it to me frequently). Then I use Telefile and the whole thing goes slam-bam. Golly, I love Telefile, apart from the smarmy recorded voice.

I would give a great deal to be able to stay home today and wallow, but I have appointments all day long and not much room in my calendar to reschedule people. Drat. I couldn't have gotten sick a few weeks ago, when I had the *time* for it??

Posted @ 12:26 PM CST [Link]No Comments

Monday, April 14, 2003

(Man, what the hell is up with LJ? It's running almost as sluggish as my brain is tonight... )

So, it hit 90 here today, in mid-April. Hah! Which is actually not nearly as funny as the fact that we're forecast to have snow showers Thursday night. AH HAH HAH HAH!! God, Minnesota -- how could I ever think of leaving this place, eh?

The cold/flu thing is still menacing me, rather like the thuggish sidekick in those crappy movies who, when the evil mastermind flicks a gesture in his direction, starts slowly pulling off his gloves and approaching the tied-in-the-chair hero, ready to beat the crap out of him. (Or do they slowly pull *on* their gloves? God, my brain's like cement.) Anyway, the cold has not really started in pummelling me yet; so far all I've got is the all-over ache and the cement brain and the raw chest. This is actually an OK stage, because my voice drops down into the Tallulah Bankhead/Lauren Bacall register, and I can swan around the house emoting in deep throaty whiskey-and-cigarette tones, and feeling vaguely glamorous. The glamour will stop dead as soon as the phlegm onslaught begins, of course, which I peg for around Wednesday. Just in time for the snow showers.

For some reason, despite the 90-degree weather and the achey body and the cement brain, I decided that this would be the perfect evening to unplug everything connected to my desktop computer, haul it up onto the kitchen table, open it up, and extract the great wads of lint that accumulated in and around it over the course of the winter. As Well-Manicured Man might say, dear god. Or as my mother would say, what a revolting development. To my considerable amazement, I actually managed to get everything plugged back in correctly, despite complete absence of functioning brain.

I am also simmering a bunch of chicken breasts, so I'll have something to eat all week (though it abruptly occurs to me that I'll somehow have to clear some space in the refrigerator to cool them down soon. Oh, hell.) And playing Bursting Bubbles, which is certainly the most soothingly mindless of all the Shockwave games. And feeling the languid summery air waft in through the windows.

Snow showers. HAhahahahahaha.

(Oh my god, and I haven't done my taxes yet. FUCK.)

Posted @ 11:39 PM CST [Link]No Comments

Sunday, April 13, 2003

Agh. I think I'm coming down with a cold; achey, blitzed with fatigue, and raw-throated. This is not the best state in which to be doing massive computer fiddlings, but nonetheless such has been the main order of business at chez Kat this weekend. To the extent that anything actually got accomplished, I owe it to the blessed C., who donated her entire afternoon yesterday to helping me out. A tally of victories and defeats ensues ...

Victories:

1) I am now once again able to capture video onto my desktop PC. I'd figured my problems there were simply due to having forgotten the steps, but C. gave it a shot and got the dread Grey Screen of Nothing Happening. After considerable clicking through menus, hmmmmm'ing, downloading of new drivers, numerous restarts of system, more Grey Screen of N.H., and more clicking through menus, we *finally* located one little twiddly menu option on the lower part of some screen that *finally* made the thing work. Ah, Premiere, you *bitch*...

2) We got the iBook physically connected to the cable modem. This entailed going to CompUSA for a network hub and ethernet cable, and of course any trip to CompUSA also involves a certain amount of wandering around and ogling the shiny toys, so it all took a while, but I am now actually able to access the internet on the laptop, as long as I'm sitting at my desk with the cable plugged in.

Defeats, as of now:

1) I haven't been able to get file-sharing to work between laptop and desktop. This is doubtless due to the fuddleheadedness of impending cold, and lack of basic understanding of the concepts. Not a biggie so far, because I can FTP files back and forth, and will at some point take the time to read slowly and carefully through set-up/configuration guides, following the words with my fingertip and repeating them to myself in a mumble.

2) However, I am also not able to get the Airport wireless connection working, being stymied at the outset by the iBook's refusal to recognize that the Airport card is installed. (Yes, I opened it up and looked; yes, the card sure *looks* like it's in there; yes, I shoved it around to make sure it was seated properly.) It keeps giving me the "Required hardware was not found on this computer" message. Blast.

3) Even more infuriating is that the iBook battery problem continues, and that after consulting the discussion boards on the Apple support site, I find that this appears to be a fairly common issue with iBooks, one that is highly resistant to solution and which Apple has failed to provide any conclusive information regarding (based on a discouraging 98-comment thread here). It looks like it could be a defect in the battery, or possibly an OS X upgrade issue, or something. Apparently, though, simply replacing the battery doesn't help. A couple of people have posted long convoluted voodooish fixes, which I suppose I'll have to try at some point, because having no more than 40 minutes' worth of battery use renders a portable computer not so particularly portable.

And I may just go to bed at this point, despite the fact that it's 4:30 in the afternoon and I owe e-mail, comments, and comment replies to all manner of folks. (And at some point I need to figure out why Greymatter is slowly eroding my right-side links list, starting at the bottom. From beneath you it devours ...)

Posted @ 08:42 PM CST [Link]No Comments