I lost my computer but got a new floor instead.
Wait, let me back up. In April I switched jobs and lost access to the sweet laptop I've had for a few years, which somewhat accounts for my lack of blogging activity lately. Then, this last weekend, the wife and I ripped up the living room carpet so as to put down laminate in its place, only we discovered a worn but beautiful hardwood maple floor underneath it. Now, I live in North Minneapolis, and my house is old. I don't mean 1950s old, or even 1920s old, as so many in the city are; rather, we're talking 1890s or possibly earlier. Like there are still square nails holding parts of the house together. Seriously, square nails. I'm holding out hopes that they were made by an actual blacksmith but I suppose I shouldn't hold my breath. Additionally, my wife Sarah has seen (in some city office, I think) maps of this part of the city from before the City of Minneapolis even annexed it, in the 1880s or 1890s, and the house was already here. Totally alone, probably a farmhouse, but here nonetheless. So, old.
And it's not a cool old, in most cases. With age of course comes endearing quirks, like a bedroom with two doors leading into it from the same hallway, a hell-hole in the basement, and places where instead of insulation we have, say, newspaper clippings from the 1960s about someone murdering someone else with a katana (one of these three things, by the way, is made up). The wiring is also a tangled and malevolent horror to cause any electrician to stumble for the fainting couch; by rights, the place probably should've burned down decades ago. So you can imagine my surprise when we discovered this beautiful hardwood floor under the skanky old living room carpet. All it required was a little tough love from a floor sander, then a few coats of poly. Boom.
What does this have to do with my computer? Simple: after losing Awesome Laptop, I went back to using Okay Laptop (an old iBook). Its usual home is by the power strip next to the living room couch. See where this is going? We had to move the laptop in order to reeducate the living room, and as luck would have it, the place where Okay Laptop ended up happened to be on the kitchen counter, near the door. I did not see it there and promptly knocked it clear off the counter. I would wax poetic about watching it tumble end-over-end in seeming slow motion as I cried, "Nooooooo!" in a slow-motion voice while reaching for it in vain, but the heartbreak is too much. I can't do it. Suffice to say that falling from 4.5-ish feet and landing perfectly, flatly, on the screen side was... something of a no-no. I couldn't bring myself to turn Okay Laptop back on until later, maybe the next day, and needless to say about 75% of the screen was dizzying kaleidoscope of dark rainbow horrors, and the DVD drive made some very unhappy and slightly-alarming noises on booting up. Okay Laptop, you will be sorely missed. I'll have to ftp all my stuff off of your shambling zombie carcass later.
So, on to the other half of my title. This should be shorter and less tragic. Now, I'm not the most astute man, so I'm certain I'm not the first to observe this, but doesn't it seem like the more expensive the car, the less creative its vanity plates? I've seen plates like "MYLEXUS" and such before and hadn't thought much about it except to roll my eyes, but today on the highway I saw a Humvee with license plates reading -- wait for it -- "HUMVEE." I kid you not. In this driver's defense, at least there was a Decepticons sticker on the bumper, but still. Come on, man. At least go for... I don't know, "BUMBLB" or... or something. I admit, I got nothing.
Without a proper study I can't chalk this up to anything more than amusing anecdotes; for all I know, everyone is uncreative but the non-trivial cost of vanity plates in Minnesota means that only the relatively well-to-do can display their squarishness so boldly and proudly. But it's hard for me to get inside the head of someone who just nicknames their car what it already plainly is. The best I can figure is maybe some people are so taken with a particular brand that they can't stop themselves from stamping it on the plates in addition to wherever else it's detailed on the vehicle's backside. Maybe they simply weren't thinking of this from other drivers' points of view, and as such they failed to anticipate the situation in which I, a passing fellow driver, notice their vehicle and think, "Oh, that's a cool car. If only there were some way to know exactly what make and model it was so that I could go look for oh wait, it already says it right there on the goddamn car, right next to the plates, which also say it." I don't know.
That's not to say there are no creative plates out there. I recently saw a car (I don't even remember what kind) with the plates, "OOMKIN." Damn near sprayed soda all over the inside of my windshield when I saw that. For those who don't know, this is a World of Warcraft druid joke. To the driver, if ever you see this: well played, sir. I have respect for the Balance spec, and although I played my druid as a feral, I imagine "HELLOCRITTY" is too long to fit on a license plate. Alas.
Oh, about the actual books and stuff: book two in the Conspirator Saga, Soul-Killer Virangaza, is written and is in the editing process as we speak. I may or may not get much work done on book three in the next month or two while I scout out a new laptop, so I'll probably blog more instead. Huzzah! The most capable computer still in my possession is an old iMac in the basement. Nice machine, even after all these years, but just thinking about the keyboard makes me wake up in a cold sweat some nights. And writing chapter notes on my phone is enough to make me want to punch a kitten, so the time commitment for blogging is about all I can muster. This is for the best. Think of the kittens!
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