Ink Tea Stone Leaf

There won’t be a significant post this weekend, except for this one. There are a couple of reasons for this, and I’ll start with the one that would seem to be the most important: my computer is in the shop!

Recently I purchased a new computer to replace the one I’ve had since 2011 or so (I honestly can’t remember exactly when I got it, but I know I had it then). The old machine had acquired a few upgrades of RAM, hard drive, graphics, and wireless connectivity over the years, but the feasibility of future upgrades was beginning to grow dim as the hardware crept further towards obsolescence. Say what you will about Microsoft, but I didn’t fancy continuing to use a machine that wasn’t compatible with the newest version of Windows once the old version ceased to be supported.

Luckily, a very good friend sold me most of the parts I needed for a new computer, and helped me assemble a machine that could contend with the modern world. Everything was going just lovely until this week, when something in the box went “pop,” and a puff of smoke billowed lightly before my eyes. Remarkably, the computer was still operational, and none of the parts were visibly damaged or (it seemed to me) functionally impaired. I might have ignored it and carried on, if I were the kind of person who didn’t make not burning my house down a priority. So on good advice I brought it in, and now I await the result of the diagnostic, hoping that the result is not “you need to buy a $500 replacement part.”

But does this mean that I could not make a post this weekend, besides this one? There is a more-than-half complete post in my drafts, which was mostly written on my phone during downtime at work. This post, obviously, was written on my phone as well. If I tried really hard, I could sit down this evening and write a decent poem, thus adding to my online stock of decent poetry. Or I could devote my energy to frantically finishing that post in time for a Sunday morning publication, right here on the mobile app where most of it was composed already.

I could, but I won’t, because I have other things to do today. I took a break from reading Shakespeare’s Richard II to write this; later tonight there’s a baseball game, and on top of that it’s my turn to cook dinner. The post can wait, any further creative effort can wait.

If my computer were here, I’d probably feel compelled to make further revisions to my novel, The Ghost of Canard University. While I wait for literally anybody beside my beloved wife to finish reading the first draft and tell me what’s wrong with it, I’ve got to start making those determinations on my own; last weekend, I made some very significant alterations to the first chapter, having been made aware of rumblings that the readership found the beginning to be lacking in interest in comparison to the middle. This makes sense to me, as the story that I started writing about six chapters in is a lot better than the story I had been writing before. But while I have no problem writing some things on my phone (like this, for instance), I do not like writing novels with one or two fingers on a touch screen. I think I can state that fairly definitively. So I’ll be patient, at least until Monday, when I really ought to have heard back from those computer guys.

And as I said, I have reading to do. Not only am I working my way through the complete works of Shakespeare, but I just added a bunch of used books to my shelf from a local library sale. There’s no sense in buying books if you never even try to read them, and there’s no sense in going through life without a few books around.

Speaking of libraries, on Tuesday we are having a local election here in Salem, in which I have already voted because voting in Oregon is all by mail and no matter what the Republicans in Washington D.C. have in store I consider myself a responsible citizen of a democratic society. At stake in this election is a ballot measure enabling the continued operation and maintenance of the city’s library, public parks, and senior services center, provided voters approve a small levy. You may have gathered that this blogger is pro-book and pro-library, and likewise inferred similar support for the other elements of municipal infrastructure that make cities worth living in. I would like to take this opportunity to make a blanket statement regarding my political priorities:

I always vote “yes” to measures for funding public libraries and public education, without exception, and I think that you are letting your community down if you don’t.

Maybe a little wordy for a bumper sticker; but if you want to print your own with the text of the preceding sentence, you have my consent. I know I’m not a great political communicator because I can’t stomach telling voters that they are still good neighbors whether they condone the degradation of vital public resources or not, but I know one thing for sure: if this city becomes the only American capital without a public library, it won’t be because I failed to vote to save it.

Having concluded this brief political rant, I want to mention two other posts in my drafts. They are a complementary pair, consisting of lists of things that annoy me and things that I enjoy, respectively. I’ve been attempting to channel my tendency to gripe about frivolous bullshit into compiling the first list, while leavening my soul by adding an equal number of items to  the second list. There’s no estimated date of arrival for this pair; I just add to them when something captivates my attention one way or the other, and I try to keep them the same length.

What else is there to talk about? Little else, I suppose. This post goes live on Sunday and I hope you have a good Sunday, dear reader. Ariele and I are going to see a matinee performance of Verdi’s Falstaff at the opera and then see some friends for the evening. It’s shaping up to be a fine weekend indeed.