U, riht now my keyboard is randomly skipping th cursor all around without ay iput from me, resuting in letters eing shunte to teh end of where I’m typing and lttle curls of smoke comign out my ears. It’s a cordless keyboard, and changed the batteries, and it’s silldoing it. This is m NEWCOMPUTER and I am NOT AMUSED. y tIidblnmnegm

Be that ay, bitch. Ill go use my laptop, then.’w

[Upstairs on my laptop, now.] Oh lord. If there is something wrong with my computer–on top of the recent events of Hairgate–I cannot be held responsible for my actions. I’m just sayin’. There’s only so much a person can be expected to withstand before they crack. Let’s just say I may be showing a few stress fractures, already.

Hey! Guess what happened today! GUESS!

If you answered ANYTHING GOOD, you are wrong, wrong, wrong. Silly.

I was working along like the busy little bee that I am, today, when suddenly my internet connection died. Hrm. That seemed bad. I unplugged and replugged and still my cable modem had only this to say to me:

*blink*

Well, no matter. Time check: 12:15. I’d stop for lunch, I’d take care of some offline work, and before I knew it, the connection would be back.

I ate. I made some phone calls. I wrote for a while. I checked the cable modem.

*blink*

I went out into the icy cold, pouring rain for groceries. And a HAT. [Note to retailers: Hi! I don’t particularly wish to look like I’m “in the biz” if you know what I mean, nor do I find “fun fur” an acceptable form of headgear. While I suspect that my Stanford baseball cap may be frowned upon at church on Sunday, you have left me little choice. Which, really, is sad, because I would’ve cheerfully paid any sum of money for appropriate skull camouflage today. Your loss.] After buying a cartful of brown sugar and chocolate chips (“Making cookies?” chirped the cashier… “LOOK AT MY HEAD, WHAT DO YOU THINK?” I shrieked back), I slogged back through the rain, home.

*blink*

I still had plenty of work to do, but it all involved accessing things online. Gah.

I called my cable company. “Thank you for calling the customer service center! Did you know that you can access us online?” Um, if I could access you online, I WOULDN’T BE CALLING. “If you live in YOURAREA, you are experiencing a known outage! There is no reason to remain on the line!” Oh. Well, then.

I wandered around the house for a while. I read a book for a while, before I went to get the kids and take them to their dad’s. I ran another errand on the way back. I walked into the house.

*blink*

Somehow, I managed to stay busy until the kids returned. Among other things, a friend called, and I filled her in on Hairgate. This friend was not buying “a complete and utter hair travesty,” however. She wanted details.

Her: Come on, it can’t be THAT bad.
Me: Why not? I contend that it can be.
Her: Did you SAY something, I mean, while you were there?
Me: I was stunned. I was in denial. I was hoping that when I got home and styled it myself, it would be… longer.
Her: You thought it would be LONGER?
Me: Shut up. I was in SHOCK.
Her: Did you tip her?
Me: Twenty percent. Gah. I’ll get it back when I murder her in her sleep. Oh! AND! I made ANOTHER APPOINTMENT!
Her: WHAT?
Me: I was standing there paying and she started talking about how it gets busy around the holidays and she had the guy schedule me in 5 weeks. In 5 weeks I’m just gonna be looking HUMAN again.
Her: Hahahahaha… she saw THE LOOK… she figured she’d get you on the schedule before you could really process what she DID to you.
Me: Yeah, well, I don’t think I’ll be going back.
Her: Mir, seriously, now. Is it a bad CUT, or is it just shorter than you’d like?
Me: It is a bad cut shorter than any human would like.
Her: No, I mean, did she do a decent job at least, just not what you wanted? Or is it sticking out everywhere?
Me: There is not really enough LEFT for it to stick ANYWHERE.
Her: I bet it’s fine–
Me: –IT IS NOT FINE–
Her: –or at least not as bad as you think.
Me: Oh, I don’t think it’s bad. If I was going for a “60-year-old lesbian” look I’d love it.
Her: I’m sure you don’t look 60.
Me: It’s the lesbianism. It ages me. The love of penis keeps you young, you know.
Her: Ooooooookay, I have to go now….

Thankfully the kids came home shortly thereafter, and then I was busy with them for a while. Once they were tucked into bed, it was back downstairs to the computer.

*blink*

I killed another hour before breaking down and calling the cable company again. I beeped my way through seventy-six automated menus and was finally given a human being. Naturally, she knew nothing. “We are aware of the outage. Our technicians are working on it. No, we do not have an estimated uptime.”

I don’t recall exactly what I said to her, but it was something along the lines of, “I pay a lot of money for this service and I work from home and I have clients depending on me and I have been without internet access for over 8 hours and also my cable is out which means I couldn’t even kill any time watching Oprah and I read an entire book and I still didn’t have access and so I was left to VACUUM and it is a sad sad day when I have to resort to CLEANING so you had best get this connection up and running very soon before I come down there and force you to look at my HAIR.”

A little while ago, my connection came back, but now my computer is acting up. Clearly it is scared of me. Can’t say as I blame it.

But, hey, holy non-sequitors, Batman! Have you been over to Karen‘s today? I love her post–it’s about the things she finds beautiful. It was a much-needed moment of exhalation for me in an otherwise whinetastic day. Or maybe I’m dead inside and was just happy to be able to surf blogs again after a day of withdrawal. Hard to tell.

Hey! Look over there! Something SHINY!