Is it breathing? I don't know. Kick it, maybe it'll move.

Dear friends, it is with heavy heart that I report the news of a sad death. My dearest desktop computer, with us for oh these so many years, has given up the ghost.

She came home with me back in oh-three, I think. I only know this from my version of carbon dating. My tax returns from 2003 were found in the carcass during exhumation.

She was a good old girl. She tolerated a lot of abuse. Too many programs installed. Too many photos uploaded. Too many abrupt starts and stops, and who can forget moving her around too damn many times?

Then late last week I put the proverbial straw on the proverbial elderly camel's back.

It was like loading up your ninety-three-year-old grandmother with a heavy backpack (Adobe Illustrator is the heavy backpack in this analogy) and then forcing her to run a sprint. Uphill. In a snowstorm.

She passed out. The mouse died first. Then the keyboard. Now she sits, unplugged and forlorn near the window in my office.

I dragged out our spare desktop. Sickening, isn't it? We're like Hoarders, only with more hoarding. Actually, my hubs and I both bought similar desktops from Costco while we were dating. When we got married and he moved in, we just kept using mine and stashed his upstairs. I hauled it out and have spent the last two days trying to connect the fracking thing to the internet. I've spent a total of three hours on the phone with two separate tech support lovelies from AT&T U-verse. They're stumped. It's not working. It should be working, but it isn't. I guess I'll be calling the Geek Squad soon. Or my neighbors will hear glass crashing as a desktop computer comes hurtling through the front window. Either way.

- H

I have boys

We go to car shows, and play on the rock piles instead.
We hang out with our best friends.

We use weapons to lure bugs into their bug houses. Or crush them, whatever.

We build the bug houses.

Sometimes we think about eating the bugs.

We play on dirt piles.

And we throw dirt.

It's good.


- H

I'm giving today the finger

Today gets the big finger. And not a giant foam finger.

First, I would like to pat the genius folks at the St. Louis airport authority on the back for letting all of the major airlines remove any helpful flights from the schedule, forcing me to fly through O'Hare to simply get to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Good job folks. Hey, I have an idea! Why don't you hire talented sales and public relations people and get your stinking name off the WORST AIRPORTS IN HELL list, huh? Just a thought. I love to get up at 4:30, board a plane at 6:30, change planes in HELL (I am now calling O'Hare HELL if that's ok with you) just to get to Cedar Rapids by lunchtime. Love it. Thanks for that, losers.

I'd also like to give the giant finger to the loser at HELL who told my flight attendant that my connecting gate was B22. We landed at F4. Which is like landing in Chicago and needing to walk to Cedar Rapids, really, if you think about it. So I walked there. In my heely shoes. And when I got there, what did I see on the monitor? Why, it wasn't my flight that was departing there, but another lucky flight. Somewhat confused, I checked the nearest monitor (this also involved walking in heely shoes). They had changed my gate to E3. Which was RIGHT NEXT TO F4. So I walked back to Chicago from Cedar Rapids. In my heely shoes. You, Mr. or Mrs. Change the Gates on Unsuspecting Losers in Heely Shoes at O'Hare HELL, you get the finger today.

You know who else gets the finger? The weird lady who was washing her grapes in the basin of the drinking fountain back at E3. Seriously. I know grapes are totally dangerous what with all their nasty pesticides and chemicals and whatnot. But you know what? I think I just might order a large drink of fountain Napalm before I washed produce in the drinking fountain at HELL. Somehow, I think a few pesticides might actually be good for a person, if the other option is the insides of every mouth that's ever leaned down to take a drink out of that fountain since it was installed because you know they never bleach those things! She deserves the finger, plus every virus she just contracted from her dirty grapes.

Hey, you know why St. Louis' airport has no flights? Because they're all at O'Hare, that's why! What's the deal, Chicago? Greedy much? You like teeming masses, all crisscrossing your ill-marked, endless terminals, fruitlessly hoping to get to their gate on time? Many never do. I believe I may have walked by a few families who took up residence in HELL today. It's sad, really.

Never fear, friends. I will not let my blistery toes or my travel fatigue get me down. I am going to stage an all-out war. I know a certain someone, a talented young woman with a PR background who also makes pretty quilts. I'm going to launch a campaign for the St. Louis airport idiots to hire her out of her house at the rate of many many dollars, for services such as Bringing Better Restaurants [hey, how about a Saint Louis Bread Company you idiots!] to the Airport. And Convincing Southwest to Put More Flights Here. And Hey, American, Up Yours! That last campaign is mine, really, so I won't foist it off on her. I blame American's hostile takeover of TWA for all of my most recent problems except for the belly bloating. I'll keep you posted on my progress. After my blisters heal.



I included a cute picture. For levity.

- H