Since my computer is still in “busted” status, I’ve taken the liberty of hijacking my roommate’s computer while she’s away visiting her aunt in Abilene. Hey, what can a girl do.

Last night the boyfriend and I went to our friend Shelly’s for her housewarming party. “Friend” is a strong word, I suppose; she’s really more of an acquaintance. Anyways, as soon as we stepped inside the house, I felt really uncomfortable - that sort of feeling you get when you’re at a place where everyone knows everyone else, except for you. I suppose this is really racist and un-progressive, but I’ll admit it - I was also hyper-conscious of the fact that everyone there was white. I’m not sure why. I’m a banana girl. I have mostly white friends and I live in Lawrence, a town that’s not exactly a beacon of racial diversity. Shelly herself was there, and she’s also Vietnamese. Maybe it’s because we (the boyfriend and I) were clearly different somehow, and I didn’t know how, so I had to attribute it to the most obvious thing - race.

For whatever reason, though, I felt awkward and tense the whole time (the boyfriend admitted afterwards that he felt the same way, though he at least recognized some people). The good thing is, though, that we ran into another couple who also looked kind of awkward and uncomfortable. We talked to them for most of the time, so it wasn’t all bad. Still - it just struck me how hard it is to start relationships with people. It didn’t seem like it was always this way.

There were twenty-six people that went on the alternative spring break to New Mexico. The last night, all of us gathered around the fireplace of the main cabin, just as we did every night. We drank hot chocolate and said our benedictions - recapping all the funny shit that had happened that day. Then the laughter died down, and we got serious. We swore until we were blue that we would keep New Mexico, Ghost Ranch, the connection between all of us alive and strong. Well…out of all of these people, I’ve kept into contact with two of them - one being my boyfriend, and the other one just by virtue of the fact that he lives in the same building as my boyfriend. I guess it was really easy to think at the time that a bond existed, when twenty-five other people were telling you, each other, and themselves that it did.

The only thing that’s really survived from the trip, for me, was the feeling of silence - the way the air held so still out in the desert - no sound, nothing for miles. Even the redness of the sand, which struck me at the time as the most vivid natural thing I’d seen - even that is fading. What about the stars that night we slept on top of the mesa? They were dying, already dead when I saw them. If I can’t even remember nature, which changes over long periods of time, how am I expected to remember people, who are constantly on the move?

I hardly ever feel like leaving the house anymore, in case I happen to meet someone and have to go through the whole rigmarole of introductions again. How do people get to the point at which they forget about appearances, and start to talk for real? I must have known at some point, since I’ve done it, but I don’t know how to do it anymore. It’s so difficult. Better to stay at home and take care of my own problems, before I deal with other people’s baggage, anyways.

I’ll admit it; I brought a lot of this on myself, and have no one else to blame for my woes. I also know that I have a lot to be thankful for - that I’m alive, the day is bright and sunny, I’m not living in Western Sudan, etc. But I’ve been having a bad streak of luck today, and dammit, I want to whine about it. What else should a blog be used for?

As a student, procrastination is my way of life, so I stayed up until 1:30 last night to finish the paper that was due in class today. Not terribly bad - I’ve pulled many all-nighters before - but I was tired enough that an all-nighter would not have been possible. I finished it, slapping a badly-worded regurtitation of the introduction at the end, and went to sleep. I woke up early this morning, thought of a brilliant (well, okay, adequate) conclusion, meticulously spell-checked and edited all nine pages, hit save, and clicked the print button. On cue, the blue screen of death materialized, its cold, indifferent DOS letters blinking at me in stale blues and grays. “Great,” I thought, grumbling. “I’ll have to re-type my conclusion.” I restarted the computer, only to find another error message:

“SMART failure detected…blah blah blah…please replace your hard drive and back up any important data. Press F1 to continue.”

Sweet; even my computer thinks I’m dumb. I hit F1, to find that all hell has broken loose - GoBack uninstalled itself, the operating system vanished, and the tower clucked at me in an admonishing tone, as if to say “you should have saved your data, punk.” At this point I went crazy from sheer helplessness and Beth had to calm me down enough to call and get it fixed. Turns out they may be able to recover the data, but definitely not by tomorrow, unless I have an extra $120 (which I don’t). This means I will have to type my paper over again, as the prof. takes off a letter grade each day it’s late. Sympathetic people have suggested I talk to the professor and explain my situation, but it’s no good - he’s told us, numerous times, that he won’t accept computer-related excuses for late papers. He tells us to back up our data and keep printing draft copies. I did continually save my essay - on my hard drive that is. I should have saved it on a disk, but really, nobody expects their hard drive to implode. And nobody prints draft copies, either - at least no one I know who is either environmentally-conscious or a cheap bastard (that encompasses just about everyone). My faith in computers and my reluctance to waste paper has come back to bite me in the ass. Much like a pissed-off West Nile mosquito.

After some time, I stopped being crazy, and I borrowed my roommate’s computer to check my email and my account balance. I’m not great about balancing my checkbook (are you kidding me? I can barely balance myself, while walking). I did expect that I was getting low in funds - I did not, however, expect that I had less than fifty dollars in the bank. Which is okay, a little low, but would be fine - except I wrote a check this morning for my roommate for forty dollars, and she cashed it at the bank; plus I went to the grocery store yesterday, and spent $15 dollars there. I’m no good at math, but that means if the checks both clear today, that equals two bounced checks and yet another headache for karenology. asdfhskdlfjkl;sf!!@$

Now I’m at work, alone because Jodie’s on funeral leave - her father-in-law passed away last night, sadly. He was going in for bypass surgery; I’m not sure if he died on the operating table or before. Anyways, the IT people at our school were scheduled to deliver 40 computers today to put in the computer lab. Guess who doesn’t have access to the lab. Yep, that’s right - the only one here at work today. Luckily I was able to call Facilities and Operations to have them come and open the lab. You can’t just leave 40 computers sitting in the hallway, and the IT people didn’t look too happy at the prospect of hauling them back across campus.

And all this because I got up today. Really. If I had just shut the alarm off and kept snoozing, I would be in much the same situation - paper not turned in, checks not clearing, computers sitting in the hallway - but I would be so much happier. How wonderful it would be.