19 November 2003

Yesterday, I just felt thwarted. I got the printer cleaning stuff: special sheets of paper to run through, plus pointy Q-tips of varying substances. No dice. I got a bunch of black gunk off things, but it wasn't that my pages were coming out gunky. They just weren't coming out with enough legibly applied ink at all. C.J. said he had a spare printer he could lend us, so he brought it over and we did a little song and dance getting drivers going on it and all that. And printed a test page. Umm. Unless we want to do everything in yellow, this printer isn't going to work, either; it died quietly while he was using his newer printer. So. Off I go today to buy a printer, because I really, truly do need one.

Sigh.

I also tried to take soup to our neighbors, because I'd heard they were having a bad week. They were either not home or not answering the door. Which is fine, but, you know. Thwarting.

And some of my e-mail is getting delayed on its way in, so if you know me in person and have something I must know immediately, the phone is the way to go. The delays are in a step we can't do anything about. Bleh. As far as I know, there's been no loss of messages, but that's only as far as I know.

I did get some articles written, and the soup is ready for me to try with this afternoon, and at least we know how to handle the printer situation. It is not the end of the world. And I managed to get the filing done while we tried to get the printer working, so the office is no longer quite so festooned with paperwork. Progress.

And in the category of "not progress at all," according to a Salon commercial, Wolverine is starring in a PBS production of "Oklahoma." They said his actor name, but we all know who he is. I don't know why he doesn't just use his adamantium claws on Pore Judd Fry (is daid). I am much more interested in a mutant version of "Oklahoma."

Certainly not interested enough to make it a story. But still. I am totally obnoxious this way. Any movie I see with Robin Wright Penn in it, anything with Cary Elwes or Wallace Shawn; anything with Patrick Stewart or Harrison Ford or Val Kilmer or Christina Ricci or, heaven help me, Hugo Weaving. If I'm not saying the stuff out loud, you can bet it's going through my head and I'm just trying to be polite in front of you or in a crowded theatre. You know that bit in "Forrest Gump," when Jen-nay was about to jump off the balcony? My brain is going, "And there are four of us, once we find the lady. Hello, lady!" Books are not like this. Books are my friends. I do not cast Miles Vorkosigan as Vlad Taltos and then snicker uncontrollably through the rest of the series. And make-up doesn't matter. I saw Wallace Shawn playing a Ferengi this week. And I still kept mumbling, "Inconceivable!"

This is a biiiig step up from my previous obnoxiousness, though. When I was 13, my cousin and I went on a road trip with my grandparents, to California and back again. And I taught her lots of songs in the car (because I know lots of songs), and at the beginning and end of every single song, we sang, "Pore Judd is daid; pore Judd Fry is daid." Because my grandparents had been generous enough to take me and a friend to see "Oklahoma," and I had found that song quite captivating, at the age of 12. So all the way to L.A. and back: "Pore Judd is daid; pore Judd Fry is daid." I think my grandparents are glad I've grown up.

Incidentally, "Oklahoma?" No exclamation point for you. We snuck out of the ballet sequence to get ice cream cones when we were supposed to be studying it for AcaDec in high school, and I don't regret a moment of it.

I managed to get some scholarly publication somewhere to admit that the subject of one of my article assignments truly exists. Which is definite progress. I didn't want to admit defeat on this one (especially since I only have to do 150 words on it), but it was getting pretty grim. The local library was of no help at all, not even with their lovely online article system. But they've been great for the rest of it, so I can't complain too much. Or I can but shouldn't.

I'm hoping the thwarting will end today, but if we get the new printer and it prints all funky, I will cry.