Tag: iMac

96 Tears

I thought today’s title was rather appropriate for a Monday morning, don’t you?

Yesterday I got my desktop iMac functional again, which is absolutely lovely. I really need the big screen–laptops work as a last resort–but it feels nice to have it working again, frankly. It still gives me the spinning wheel every once in a while, and at some point I may invest in more RAM (or whatever it is) to make that stop happening. But again–very lovely to have my desktop back, and even lovelier to not have to buy a new one. HUZZAH!

It takes so little to make me happy, really.

Yesterday was nice and relaxing. I got the computer functioning again (I did have to make a call to Apple Support with one question, which resulted in a twenty minute phone call; why is it so hard to simply say “Yes, Greg, you can stop the migration without worry and do it manually”?) and did some cleaning up around here. Paul and I tried to watch a documentary series and gave up during the first episode, then moved on to Hacks (Jean Smart is incredible in this, just as she is in Mare of Easttown, and it’s laugh out loud funny on top of that), and then watched the first episode of Shadow and Bone on Netflix. It didn’t really suck me in, but I am willing to keep going with it; fantasy shows have to get more than one episode in before you can really decide whether or not it’s worthwhile to continue. I do find the Russian influence on it–at least many character names are Russian-sounding, and one of the countries has a Russian-sounding name to it–kind of interesting. Pretty good production values, as well. We also watched a movie which was entertaining enough, but over-all not very good (I won’t name it, because I try not to call out anything as bad unless it’s unwatchably bad), and it was disappointing because it could have been so much better than it was.

The trip to visit my family is in a few days, and it will be the first time I’ve flown since January 2020 and my trip to New York for the MWA Board retreat. While traveling is something I have done less and less over the years–looking back to some heavy travel years, it stuns me that I did so much and went so many places over the course of a few years, given how I have grown to hate traveling–it is still unusual that I’ve traveled so little in the last year and a half. I had planned on going to Bouchercon in Sacramento last year, and various other conferences, and of course there was no board retreat in New York this year nor were there Edgar banquets this year or last to go up there for. I do miss New York; one of the perks of serving on the national board was the several times per year trips to my second favorite city in the United States, and I have so many friends there! Well, perhaps if this pandemic is indeed coming to an end–I personally don’t believe it is, but that’s just my natural cynicism and negativity coming into play, but I do hope that it’s coming to a close–I want to make several trips during the rest of this year and during the next. I have, for example, never been to Left Coast Crime, and I want to rectify this next year–which means needing to save vacation time and fewer three day mental health weekends.

There’s also some more things I need to do before I leave on Thursday morning; I can’t really leave the apartment in the condition it’s currently in–although the shedding of books and beads this past weekend has helped dramatically with cutting back on the living room clutter–but it shouldn’t be terribly difficult to take care of that before Thursday morning. I slept decently last night, which was lovely, and tonight when I get home from work I should be able to get some of this mess around my desk cleaned up, organized, and put away. We’ll probably continue with Shadow and Bone tonight, as well as this week’s Mare of Easttown, and of course I need to get to bed early this evening because tomorrow is another get up before the sunrise morning (every day this week, in fact, until I get to my parents’). I’m getting used to getting up this early–I should be by now, right? It’s been going on since last June or July, and now even on my days off I am opening my eyes around six-ish in the morning, but staying in bed. It’s really more about going to bed early than getting up early, to be honest; I hate cutting my evening short at ten pm.

Whine whine whine.

But it’s supposed to be yet another rainy week here in New Orleans–which is why the dawn light is so gray this morning, I suppose–and I really don’t mind. It’s May, and this is usually when the termites are swarming, but I’ve seen nothing about that anywhere this month and I’ve not seen any–knock on wood–so far this year. This could mean any number of things–there aren’t any swarms this year; there are, but not as bad as usual; or everyone is so used to them now they don’t bother commenting on their appearance. I suspect it’s the latter two, frankly; I can’t believe the scourge of the Formosan termite swarms are a thing of the past, especially given how wet it has been this year.

I still want to write a story that opens with this line: “The termites were swarming.”

And on that note, it’s off to the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, all.

Truth

Friday! I am up ridiculously early on what would ordinarily be a work-at-home day, but I actually have taken a personal day today because I have to take my desktop to the Apple Store in Metairie at nine this morning. Yes, I finally broke down and decided to see if there’s anything that can be done with it. Last week, I had to take Paul out there to buy a cord for his phone (and a remote for the Apple TV, since somehow ours disappeared) and I asked them about loading an operating system into it; the guy said they’d do it for free, so I made the appointment. I don’t entirely trust Apple, though, so I am expecting that it either will cost me money, or they’ll tell me the computer is irreparable or something. Heavy sigh, it’s always something, isn’t it?

I couldn’t sleep last night–par for the course, really, anymore–and so at six this morning I just gave up and got up. I am going to try to swill down enough coffee to make me lucid before having to drive out there. I’m going to also see if I can buy replacement watchbands–I have two watches with broken bands–while I am at the mall, even though the rest of the mall doesn’t open until eleven. I am taking a book with me, and of course will have my phone, as I plan to simply wait there at the mall until my computer is ready. If it’s going to take more than a few hours, I *may* drive home and then go back out there again; I don’t know. I guess I will see what they say when I check the computer in…I know when Wendy and I went to the Apple Store in Tampa during Bouchercon several years ago to get her phone repaired, they said it wouldn’t take more than an hour but we were there for hours, waiting–so these things generally, inevitably, always take longer than they say.

I have other errands I am going to do today; I had two other appointments–doctor and eye doctor–but in an odd weird coincidence, both were cancelled yesterday afternoon…a pain in the ass, to be sure, but what can I do? I was trying to be efficient and do everything I need to do in Metairie on the same day, but it was, alas, not to be.

We got caught up on Mare of Easttown last night, and started watching a documentary about the opioid epidemic on HBO MAX, The Crime of the Century, which was very well done and really horrifying to watch–it’s just another example of how fucked up this country is, and what an enormously flawed system capitalism actually is; when there is no legal accountability for a pharmaceutical company for addicting millions of Americans deliberately, and elected officials and doctors are complicit, what hope does anyone have for justice? Addiction has always terrified me–I have had mental addictions before, but thank God no physical cravings for anything–and it’s one of the many reasons I try to be careful with my alprazolam prescription; I am out and cannot have it refilled again until July–so hold on to your hats as my moods are going to start swinging and my anxiety is going to get out of control again, yippee! But it’s probably best that I go cold turkey on it for a couple of months…anyway, back to the opioids. I never really quite understood the connection between oxycontin and heroin before; why people who became addicted to an opioid would then go to heroin; I knew it happened, but never completely made the connection that, for all intents and purposes, oxycontin was simply a legal, pure form of stronger heroin. I myself have been prescribed oxycontin before–for pain–but I also have always had a high tolerance for pain and so never needed to use every pill prescribed; being able to take a couple to get through the intense pain and then handling it on my own after that without taking anything. I can certainly see how one can become addicted to it–it’s lovely to not have pain, after all, and you also never realize how many aches and pains you deal with on a daily basis (and think nothing of) until you take something that makes all of that go away. For people who have chronic pain, this is the choice they are given: live in pain or become a drug addict, and possibly die from an overdose.

Addiction is yet another big subject I’ve never tackled in my own fiction; I was always very careful to make certain I didn’t give in to the incredibly easy trope of the alcoholic (or hard drinking) private eye–there are very few who manage to do it well, make it fresh, have something new to say about it. J. M. Redmann’s Micky Knight series is one where it works; Micky’s fondness for whiskey (particularly fine Scotch) never really crosses the line into an alcoholism trope; I have written about drinking too much and having a hangover and having to deal with reality while suffering from the after-effects of binge drinking; that is something I am familiar enough with to write about, although I always fear I have gone to that well far too often. I often question myself too much, I think, about my work, and in addition to my frequent imposter syndrome, I always am worried that I am repeating myself in my work; something that becomes all too easy the older I get and the more I have written and the more my memory declines.

As my body continues to break down and decay as it ages, that’s part of the reason I am hopeful my desktop computer can be easily be repaired and made usable again; I need the big screen to view and work on. I have tried, for the longest time, to get used to using the small screen of my laptop and be able to work on it–I really have no choice, but it has made me feel incredibly disconnected from my work and like I am not working the way I should be, and my lack of productivity over the past few years has been directly connected to having to work on this MacBook Air. I have already decided if the computer is irreparable, I am going to probably go ahead and use my tax refund to buy a new desktop; it is a tax deduction, inevitably, even if I don’t want to spend the money, it is a necessary work tool. I don’t fool myself into thinking it will actually solve my productivity issues, by any means, but it will help–and once I’ve spent the money, I think I can make myself do the work if for no other reason than for the fact that I spent all that money.

Sigh. It also just occurred to me that the computer may not even get worked on today; they might just be checking it in and at some point it’ll be ready over the weekend or next week….

On that cheery thought, I need to get in the shower and ready to head for Metairie. May your Friday be lovely and marvelous, Constant Reader.