computerless, but not rudderless

On July 4 my laptop computer (a 2004 iBook, if you really must know) started acting funny after I arrived in North Carolina. It wouldn't start up at first, and then I heard a fan noise, as if the computer was cooling down, even though it'd been turned off for the past seven hours. By the next day I could only see the desktop screen for about three minutes before it went to black, and after that all I heard was the fan noise whenever I tried to turn the computer on.

Since last Monday the computer's been in the Apple Store and Apple depot's hands. I was told it would take five to seven days for the "logic board" to be replaced, and when I called AppleCare on Saturday to see if the repairs had been made, an employee whose first language was probably not English told me that my computer was ready to be picked up at the Apple Store. He said, "I see that it was ready to be picked up on June 1." I told him that I hadn't turned it in for repair until July 9. Then his head exploded.

I'm still waiting to get the computer back. Oh, li'l blog, will you and I ever get the momentum back that we had in April? I hope so. In the meantime, my 3.8 readers, why don't you peruse Part One of the Complete Idiot's Guide to Evan Dando and the Lemonheads over at Jefitoblog? I cowrote it with Ken Sumka of Gaper's Blog and WXRT in Chicago. Part Two will be posted next Tuesday.

Finally, to make up for the time the 3.8 of you have wasted the last few weeks coming to this space and discovering nothing new, here's a nice picture:

On the left is my new niece, Sophie, who was born July 3. On the right is her big sister, Olivia, who's two and a half now. Olivia is all sweetness and light, a little girl who likes to "chase the clouds" in her backyard with her parents, her grandparents, her uncle, and whoever else is around. Whenever I'm down from now on, I think I'll go outside and chase the clouds myself. It certainly puts a smile on Olivia's face.