Foolish (and perhaps incoherent)

Being especially gullible, I'm not a fan of April Fools Day. I spent a moment after swallowing my very first sip of coffee staring at the Gmail sign-in screen. I wanted to check the status of a couple of books and those emails go to my full-name Gmail account rather than the first-name-only account I use for blog-related communication. After puzzling over Custom Time for a moment, I finally recalled last year's paper copies gag.

"Every freaking year," I grumbled. But I'm also easily distracted so I smiled when I realized my books would arrive this afternoon. I finally ordered and obtained a copy of Open Lab 2007 and look forward to reading it. Need a depressing defense story? Check me out! I'm in the first section. And it's probably a good thing I have books. Because - brace yourself - something awful has happened.

"I love the pretty, spinning color wheel!" I cooed to Carrie when looking at her Mac years ago.

"You'll grow to despise the pretty, spinning color wheel," she promised when I got Nick (Nick Mac, my PowerBook). And she's right. I see the damn wheel with greater frequency and I hate it. Stupid, spinning color wheel.

"What are you doing to Nick?" Friend asked several days ago. When I run a couple of demanding processing programs, the fan turns on and Nick hums steadily as he thinks hard about processing data.

"Nothing!" I replied, exasperated with the hot machine on my lap. "I'm sending email. Firefox and Mail are open - nothing else."

"Then why is he working so hard?" she asked, looking confused. So she told me to check a few things, suggested I restart and said something wasn't right. I waved away her concerns, but she's right. Something is dying inside Nick's little body. So, with great concern over what will certainly be a desperate and twitching withdrawal, I made an appointment at the Genius Bar. Then I began to fret. Nick is my means of communicating with the outside world! Writing and reading blogs! Sending email! Keeping track of my to-do lists! Oh, whatever will I do without him?

I belatedly signed up for an online backup service. After four hours, I have 1% of Nick's contents on a server far away. I'm not going to be done by my 9:00 appointment tomorrow morning. I could push it back - make sure all my data is safely stored - but screw it. It's a day for fools and I'm just going to take it in, have them fix whatever's wrong and hope for the best. I can't listen to the fan or deal with the slowness or glare at the wheel as it cries out, "Look at me! I'm spinning and spinning! Oh! Here I am again!"

Like the freaking, spinning color wheel, my illness persists. My sides ache from coughing, though I think the frequency of the harsh episodes is decreasing. I'm done with my antibiotics and my chest doesn't hurt as badly, though my ears still ache a bit. I'm moody as hell. And worried about Friend. It feels like everything in my life is slowly becoming infected with horrible-ness. So as I start frantically and randomly trying to fix stuff, bear with me.

The next few days might be quiet and peaceful (if a laptop from work doesn't have a wireless card) or very difficult indeed.