i only wish my life were a sitcom; we're moving into black comedy

Part A

Dell fought me and fought me, because they totes don't want my money (God, I think I should just start signing off my paychecks to them and amazon already; it would make all our lives easier), but by God, I got a replacement keyboard for my laptop (and wasnt' that hideously expensive) and a new internal hard drive (which ironically cost the same as the keyboard). I don't actually know how that part is going to go; I really want a new laptop, but I hate Vista and I am wary about Windows 7 since people were perky about Vista in self-defense for about six months and then it all went to darkness and tearing their hair out and crying hysterically, so yeah. So the hard drive is larger, faster, and compatible, so that means I'll trnasfer everything to an external, panic, install XP on the new hard drive, and reinstall all my stuff. This might also have a welcome secondary purpose of a clean install of XP--this thing is slowing down more every second.

Part B

I am delaying more Christmas shopping until I need the retail therapy. With work the way it is, I feel I am going to need it soon. Possibly by Friday.

Part C

One day, I am going to stop playing All American Idols (but Mostly Adam Lambert) All the Time, but that's not yet. I really don't know how I feel about the fact that I cannot, for the life of me, stop chanting For Your Entertainment everytime the C2 (conversion) environment at work goes down. I know I have a really questionable relationship with computers and networks, but I'm not sure I want to acknowledge it's become a bdsm scene every time I try to run my tests, and the environment isn't giving me a safe word. Nor do I feel good leaving it--sort of dirty, and not a little used, and not in a good, wholesome way. Computers and I have always played rough, but I'm afraid my limits are being reached.

In other words, another day like today, and I don't care if the windows are shatterproof, my CPU is going through the window at a rate of speed roughly what I can manage in a dark, mindless rage, and let me tell you, that's going to be really really fast.

Part D

You know, I think the preceding section may cover my emotional equilibrium nicely.

Chimera by nymphaea1, AIRPS, Adam/Kris, in progres--this may be the only good thing in my life (aside from the new keyboard). It's a WIP, and read it anyway, because it's fantastic. Magical realism, world-building, show-not-tell, elves, a war that's over but not for those who fought it, and everything I never knew I wanted in a story. And several things that I did.

You could go to the llus-gorn and trade the memory of your first kiss or your ability to feel the sun on your face. The fey were hungry for human experience and would pay heavily for it—though to be fair, the trade went in both directions. But the hottest selling items were the darker ones—the memory of your husband’s last breath as he lay dying in the hospital or the last fading remembrances of flight from a pixie who’d lost his wings. People would go in there, thinking they were ridding themselves of their most jagged pieces, but they forgot that a llus-gorn always kept his word. They took the memories, but not the emotions that accompanied them. It left people lost in a depression they no longer had the context to understand and then had no possibility of healing.

....

“You didn’t have to do that.”

Adam snapped his attention back to Kris, sharp and dangerous. Not human, Kris remembered.

“He’s not touching you.”

That was rich. “But you, you’re totally on the menu, right? That’s--”

“Necessary,” Adam said. He held up a hand. “And that would be true even if I were alone.”

He squeezed Kris’s shoulder. “It’s not anything I’m excited about—but there are ways of dealing with them if you know what you’re doing.”

“Everyone says that.”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “I’m not everyone.”

Run, do not walk. Four parts so far. Warning for violence in parts two and three.

ETA:

Part E: I am not Typhoid Mary for keyboards, svmadelyn. I cannot make it break by the power of yahoo suggestion. Otherwise holy God would I be using that power every day. You know, when I had to. Not for like, petty revenge purposes or anything. For non-petty and epic revenge, of course.