A month or so ago, someone decided to relieve me of my wireless card. It was very kind of them, as I was certainly stressed out about my writer's block. Certainly, they were just watching out for me. They gave me a whole new level of stress to worry about, i.e., not being connected to the Web, but the writer's block, well, that was broken. Somewhat. I didn't really have a way to post entries.
Well, not quite true. I have an iPhone, but have you ever tried to post a blog entry on an iPhone? My iPhone is convinced that the word "have" should be "gave" and "been" should be "Bern." It automatically "corrects" them every time I use the text. Seriously, how is Bern a more popular word than been? (Not that I wouldn't mind being in Bern. I hear it's lovely and cold and Austin, Texas, in summer, is none of those things. It is hot and humid, with a chance of more hot and humid.)
At any rate, my mother rallied to my defense and handed over to me her new laptop. I should have been suspicious of this. Really, I love my mother, but warning flags should have gone up as soon as she handed her new mini-top to me. It's cute and tiny, half the size of my old Toshiba Satellite and the keyboard is a bit cramped, but I was so excited to be connected back to the Internet. Those are the good things. The bad thing is my little brother -- bless his heart -- had taken it upon himself to dumb down the technology so my mother -- bless her heart -- wouldn't download a virus and kill off mini-top. See, my mother is one those who subscribes to chain letters that involve loads of hearts and love and puppies and kitties and prayers and -- usually tacked on at the end as a disclaimer -- a curse of eternal damnation if you don't pass along the good stuff. These letters usually have viruses hidden away in their sicklingly cute pictures of babies cooing at teddy bears, and my mother is exactly the kind of sucker who loves babies cooing at teddy bears. Unfortunately, I now have this mother-proofed machine in my possession and I'll be danged if I can figure out all the safety protocols my brother has set up. (He, of course, thinks it is dead funny I can't figure them all out, but my fancy college degree was in history and anthropology and I had a habit of crashing my college computers with horribly dense history theses.)
And so here is my disclaimer: I will be posting a few stories I wrote during the Winter of the Summer of My Technological Crisis. These include a couple of football scandals, Project Runway recaps and fashion stories. I apologize for the lateness and also if things go wonky from time-to-time, but I suppose there is a learning curve involved every time you get a new piece of technology. I hope you enjoy them.
