Is Steve Wozniak still single?

I don't even have my new MacBook at home yet (it's still at the Apple store where all my music, pictures, and porn are being transferred on), but already I'm becoming an annoying Mac person. All I do is look up applications and widgets to download once I get it. I have decided that I will need daily sunrise and sunset times for every location in the world, 4 different versions of Freecell, a simulated rollercoaster ride, a demo version of Jeopardy, Passport Photo Studio which will allow me to take and print my own passport photo, 2 jigsaw puzzle games, and the Urban Dictionary word of the day. Will I use any of these things? Probably one of the Freecell games. And maybe I'll give Jeopardy a whirl, but I can definitely see myself giving up after completely bombing on the World History category.

I won't shut up about all the wonderful things iWork can do. But really - how often will I use a Yard Sale template or a keynote presentation? I mean, I could make a slammin' keynote file for Walter about how the kitchen sink is not an appropriate place to urinate blood, but I'm guessing he just won't listen nor appreciate it. I haven't spent the $49 yet on this software, but I'm going to download the free trial and see if I like it. My other option is to download Neo Office, the Mac version of Open Office. And while I'm sure this will more than do the job for standard word and excel type of applications, there's just something about iWork that is calling out to me and begging me to purchase it.

I'd say the thing I'm most excited about with my new Mac is the iMovie feature. I've (clearly) never made a movie. But now that I have some great software that is so user friendly, I think I'm going to make a movie about everything I can. Potential topics: 1) A documentary on the dude who works at the library - Why is he so quiet? Why does he cross his legs like that? Is he 25 or 45? Why does he print out the receipt every time for me when he sees me go outside and immediately throw it in the trash can? 2) A Fight Club montage of Harvey pummelling Walter. (Seriously. You should see these guys wrassle.) 3) A birthday movie for my Mom complete with clips of me perusing JDate.com, using coupons at CVS, calling Nana to say hello, and taking down the picture she hates of her and my Dad where she's not wearing makeup.

Irregardlessly of what I make my movies about, you can be sure that I will (at least try to) embed them in this blog. So get ready. My new MacBook will benefit everyone.

Have I mentioned I'm excited???

Albert Poo Holes

Don’t ask me why, but this morning on my run I started thinking about my family’s IBM Tandy 2000 computer. This was the computer you bought in 1987 if you didn’t want to buy an Apple IIe and get dysentery playing The Oregon Trail…rather, get dysentery in the game The Oregon Trail (I don’t know anyone who has gotten dysentery just by playing the game, but I suppose anything is possible). Anyway, apparently even in the 80’s we weren’t Mac people, so the Tandy 2000 it was.

And now, every summer when I go out to Otis, my parents beg and plead with me to let them throw this monstrosity of a computer away. And every time they ask, they are met with the same response: “What are you, crazy? You can’t get rid of that computer! It was bad enough when you sold our house in Kingston! Now you want to get rid of one of the last relics of the house I spent my childhood in?! Shya right! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be outside watering the roses with my SuperSoaker.”

But really, what are my reasons for keeping anything in that house? There are none! There is no excuse for a 26-year-old woman to harbor 4 Cabbage Patch Kids, a toddler-sized stuffed Elmo, Andrew Keegan, Celebrities’ Brains On Drugs, and New Kids on the Block posters, a Mickey Mouse comforter, a Glo-worm, and 37 troll dolls. I am at that house for a total of about 25 days a year and I can’t remember the last time I played with the Bar Mitzvah troll. So what’s stopping me from getting a huge trash bag and finally cleansing myself of All Things 80’s?

But back to the computer. This morning I wondered what the reason was exactly as to why I prohibited my parents from trashing it. Sure, there are a lot of fun memories attached to it – there’s that one contestant on Family Feud who gives the middle finger when he answers a question wrong, a very robotic-looking Vanna White who claps with her arms perpendicular to the ground and straight as a board, the ever-elusive Carmen Sandiego who somehow always manages to hide the Statue of Liberty in Lisbon or Reykjavík, and of course, all the outrageous team names my dad used to come up with like Bungeeshmungees and Billybonkers.

If I went back and played these games today, none of them would be very fun. After all, when it comes down to it, I’d just be playing a crappy 80’s computer game from a floppy disk. (My dad actually asked me why I couldn’t just transfer the games to my current computer and I had to remind him that the games were stored on a flimsy disk the size of a cd case that has been obsolete since before our deaf dog Annie decided to take a stroll across our very trafficky street.)

And so maybe it IS time. Maybe that first weekend I go back to Otis this July will be the start of a new era for me, one without my treasured, outdated computer. Oh I know I will still shed a tear for every game of Gertrude’s Puzzles I played, for every dot matrix banner/card/sign I made using Print Shop, and for every game of Card Sharks I lost because at the age of 8 I didn’t know how many women out of 100 said they would never cheat on their husbands. But it will be okay. Because I will always have the memories of playing those games. And I suppose that’s all that matters. Well, that and the high scores, but since I could never do better than team Bungeeshmungees, I suppose that’s okay too.

Plus, now maybe there will be extra room for yet even more beds in that house. Because 8 isn’t enough. Seriously. I’m not lying. 8 beds. 1 house. For just my mom and dad. Talk about pack rats.

That’s SIR Fatty McGee to you

I sit across from a fat British man at work. Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m sure that G is a very nice person. But for some reason, he’s a very nice person who has body-sound-A.D.D. The man is always making some sort of noise. He wheezes, he hums, he eats, he slurps, he sighs, he talks to himself, and most of all, he talks to his computer. The man is always moving, too. Today he organized his desk about 4 times. He went to the kitchen for about 7 cups of coffee (or tea perhaps…actually it probably was tea since I’m in the official Land of Tea and Crumpets). He made a deliciously aromatic cinnamon thing around 11 in the morning. And around 4 o’clock he told a co-worker that he had already had ¾ of a gallon of water today and does beer count for that last ¼ he’s supposed to drink to put him at his 1 gallon goal for the day since beer is mostly water anyway? But what makes him ALMOST endearing instead of bordering on homicidally annoying is that he does it all with the most proper of accents. How can I possibly fling my stapler at his bald head when he says, “Yessuh, but isn’t beeruh mostly wahter anyway, isn’t that riught?” (That was possibly the worst alliteration of a British accent ever, but it was the best I could do.)

I also happen to sit next to T. Just so you can picture him, he kind of looks like Ralph Fiennes only with inconsistent facial stubble. T is one of two people who I met today who I thought had a great personality in addition to being Britishly nice and polite. Seeing as how he sits next to me and my only other option was to talk to G about what kind of pie he brought for lunch, I chatted it up with T for most of the day. About four hours after we started talking (not continuously), he mentions something about being from Australia. At this point I mentally punch myself in the face for having JUST spent three months in that country and not being able to recognize the accent once I step foot in another land. Seriously. What is WRONG with me?!?! I can tell if someone is from Philadelphia within 4 seconds of talking to them, but trying to tell an accent from one side of the world from another is like rocket science.

Anyway, T was talking about going to Sydney earlier this decade for the Olympics and he said “…it was fairly special.” How did the word ‘fairly’ become one of those lost in translation words even though it’s the same language? Clearly he meant it was a VERY special thing, but I could have, and given my level of intelligence in the past 3 days alone I’m surprised I didn’t, mistaken him for thinking it was just a ho-hum affair. I’m fairly short. I’m fairly paranoid about alphabetizing my cd collection. I’m fairly in love with Pierce Brosnan.

Okay here’s something that is completely unacceptable. The computer keyboards in this country are f-ed up. They had to go and mess up everything by putting a British Pound sign where the # sign is. That means the keyboard creators had to improvise with where they put that instead. And so you know what they did? They cut the Enter key in half. In HALF I tell you!! Not to mention they cut the Shift key in half to make room for a backslash key. My pinkie fingers will be so strong by the end of my stint here from reaching half an inch further than they normally do. This might seem like I’m being nitpicky, but it’s ruining my world. Oh!! And get this! They put the quotation marks where the @ key is! I have to SHIFT AND USE MY RING FINGER! I’ll bet whosever idea it was to drive on the other side of the road came up with these ideas. (Obviously he was very old when he came up with the keyboard ideas. But old people can have ideas too, albeit terrible ideas right up there with drinking prune juice and then trotting around in Depends.)

Weather report: Rained today. Cloudy tomorrow.