Hello, Sunday

If you’ve been wondering why I haven’t been posting here much lately — and, if the site’s traffic in general is any indication, you probably haven’t — it’s because on Wednesday night, while I was in the middle of watching an episode of New Girl on Netflix, my computer suddenly shut down and starting puffing smoke.

This is not, it maybe goes without saying, normal or optimal behavior for a laptop computer, particularly one that isn’t all that old, quite possibly still under warranty. I pulled the plug and the battery, fretted for a while, and then ultimately decided to fret about it on more fully on Thursday. Of course, before turning in for the night — it was already kind of late — I placed an order for a new laptop at Dell’s website using my iPad.

An order which, apparently, never went through. I received an acknowledgement e-mail, but not the promised follow-up with my confirmation number and estimated delivery date. I spent more time on Thursday than I really wanted to talking with Dell’s very unhelpful customer service — including one gentlemen (presumably in India judging by his accent) who wanted me go step by step with him over the components and specs that I ordered. Forwarding him the acknowledgment e-mail with those specs wasn’t enough, even when I explained that I’d prefer not to re-order over the phone with just his say-so that I was actually ordering the same thing. I just wanted to confirm with him what I’d confirmed already with another Dell rep over chat: that the order had not actually be received, was not being processed, and the computer was not being shipped. (I may have been a little frazzled and impatient with him, but this was while I was at work, where I really couldn’t handle it.)

On Thursday evening, I ordered the new laptop for the second time. And discovered on Friday that that order had not gone through. Dell, apparently, does not want my money. Their customer service Twitter account was equally unhelpful, suggesting I wait until Monday or Tuesday, and then, if I still haven’t received a confirmation of my order, to phone them.

So that’s apparently what I’m doing, though I’m close to looking for alternatives and other brands, and I’m keeping a close eye on my bank account to make sure I’m not charged for these orders that haven’t been processed. I’m managing okay without a computer, with the iPad and iPhone and the work laptop, which is what I’m writing this thing on. I missed not really being able to watch a movie this weekend — I have Lincoln out on Blu-Ray but no Blu-Ray player, no TV to take the place of the computer screen, and watching something on the iPad just isn’t the same. (TV’s okay there; I just watched tonight’s Breaking Bad, for instance, and last night the first very mixed episode of Orange Is the New Black. I’ve also watched some more New Girl, maybe just to spite the dead laptop.) But it’s not all bad, the ways this has disrupted my life. It’s more the hassle of trying to order the thing and not being able to, and then getting no help from customer service. I’m no closer to solving my problem, and meanwhile the date when/if I get the new laptop just continues getting further away.

But anyway, enough of that. Today I went with friends to see Elysium, which was okay, and before that wrote this in my weekly writing group of the same friends:

If he hadn’t lost his way, Peter wouldn’t have needed the map, and then he wouldn’t have phoned Holly, just as she was getting ready to leave, and she wouldn’t have doubled back, gone upstairs to the bedroom and the locked chest at the foot of the bed where Peter had hidden the map, and then the twenty minutes she lost to finally prying the chest open and phoning Peter back wouldn’t have mattered, because she would have already been on the road, or even back at the lab, where the fact that she’d been poisoned wouldn’t have cost her her life, because the lab had plenty of the antidote (and, having themselves created the poison, could synthesize more), and the techs who worked with Holly would have recognized the symptoms that both she and Peter had been unknowingly ignoring for almost a week. Holly wouldn’t have died, and then neither would Peter, when an hour later he called her back and said he needed — this time rather desperately — to consult the map once again. For want of a nail, as the saying sometimes goes.

After Holly overdosed on the mutant formula, the lab techs brought her back to life, although they would have preferred not to do things this way, had anyone asked, and in fact they had a long list of regulations that suggested (quite strongly) that doing this could jeopardize the larger project, the single reason that the lab existed, and that even if it worked it would be no picnic for Holly, who would likely remember the deep physical pain of her death, the suddeneness with which the mutant formula played its final havoc upon the body, and she would definitely remember the terrible pain of ressucitation, which the lab techs could do — and would do, because they liked Holly — only with terrible cost and by using the machine. Only Peter had ever used the machine before, and the rumor was that he was lost somewhere in the wild darkness — which is what his notes had called it — with no way of contacting the outside world. Had only one of them thought to check the outgoing calls on Holly’s cellphone…

When he turned on the machine, Peter would have found it difficult to explain what he’d seen, not so much because it defied description or because he normally lacked for words, but because what he’d seen had seemed so mundane, so very ordinary, and none of those words seemed worth the trouble when he finally turned back to his notes about the map that he’d found…

I’m not really sure about this piece, which was born out three separate dependent clauses as a prompt. I was maybe more interested in it structurally — long run-on sentence, short cap, followed by a long-run on sentence, then a cap — than the plot, which leaves more questions than it answers.

Anyway, that sort of has been the last few days. By and large, I’m liking August considerably less than July. I described it the other day as July, but without the character. Same humidity, same long days, but not half as much fun so far. It was an incredibly slow week, interspersed with panic and frustration, and that isn’t anybody’s idea of a fun time.