CATCHING UP

So here I am again, after being MIA last week, with my lovely new Macbook Pro. I look different, don't I? Sleek and silver and very fast, virus free and I'm not going to break down when there's a deadline. I've named it Lagoud after my baby brother Dougal, who loved Macs (and even was a Mac technician when he was sober). Dougal was brilliant, sweet, and capable of great mischief, but if he was going to haunt anything he would haunt my Mac and keep it running. So I like to imagine him dancing along the circuits, like a cheerful Tron, keeping things humming smoothly. And if something peculiar but entertaining pops up, I'll know it's him.

And now that I've depressed myself, thinking about him, I will immediately think of ten happy, ridiculous, amusing things to cheer myself up before I get to work.

1. Sherrilyn Kenyon's ridiculous hat at the RWA conference. It's the talk of the internet, with people debating its appropriateness with passion and intensity, wasting far too much time on it. Wearing a dead swan on your head amuses me. What can I say, I'm easily amused.
Here's a confession. I'm a child of the sixties, so of course I smoked marijuana when I was young. I even inhaled (though I actually didn't inhale cigarettes when I smoked them). But of course most of us grow out of that, lose interest in wacky weed and move on with life (I won't say grow up, because I'm determined never to grow up completely).
So I live a clean sober life, but when I started going to RWA conferences I suddenly wanted to smoke weed again. Something about the seriousness of it all brought out the rebel in me.
So if I had a dead swan hat I'd probably wear it too. More likely to the awards ceremony, but you get my drift.
2. This one's obvious. New computers. Preferably Macs, but lovely new laptops with beautiful screens and sweet keyboards and speed. Yum! (I've had close to ten laptops in my time but this is my favorite).
3. Vermont in the summer when it stops raining. The garden is a sea of mud, but it's seventy and the sky is blue and the scent of pine is in the air and it's just freaking gorgeous. There's a reason we put up with winter. This is what I look at when I write:


4. Itunes. You can find anything there, or a couple of other naughty places on the web if you can't find it anywhere else. (I believe in paying for music if at all possible but sometimes there's only one way to find it, particularly if you're talking J-rock).
5. For that matter, J-rock (Japanese rock) with its beautiful boys and its intensity. It's alive the way rock was alive in the US at the end of the 60s/early 70s. Dir en grey, Yoshiki, Hyde, L'arc-en-ciel, Siam shade, Asian Kung-Fu Generation, Gackt the divine. I mean, how can you not love a man who dresses like this:


6. Fabrics, fiber, textiles, wearable art, quilts. Lovely lovely fabrics. And I'm going to Australia and New Zealand in a couple of weeks where I'll find all sorts of unusual stuff (in between speaking at writers' conferences).

7. Harry Potter. 'Nuff said.

8. Johnny Depp. Ditto

9. Nun cocktail napkins. Nun everything -- I think I was a passionate nun in a former life (even though I grew up a staunch Lutheran and am now an easy going UCC member).

10. Life. Ridiculous, amusing, lovely, dark and terrible, joyful, and just plain fun. You just gotta see your way through the bad stuff.

And here's the question of the week. I need games for my Mac. Solitaire and crossword puzzles etc. I like stuff like Slingo and Snoods (I'll put Snoods on my Mac). Anyone got any suggestions?

Oh, brave new world!