Laptop Withdrawal

I love my husband. He's such a details nerd.

He's online looking at a road construction plan for a big freeway "to do" that's been going on in our city. He's reading the plans and specs aloud and marveling at how much more efficient it will be. As he has been feeling like death warmed over for the last few days - enough so that he will not be accompanying me to a play tonight and that we had to disinvite friends from a Superbowl get-together tomorrow night - I am satisfied that he is content to geek out over publicly available engineering details.

In the meantime, I have been going through laptop withdrawal. My endearing iBook that I've had for 3 years and some change, suddenly, and without warning, went kaput about a week ago. Thankfully - and amazingly - it was mere moments after I had finished some work for my office and emailed it to myself there. It needs a new harddrive, but right now it's looking like we'll just buy a refurbished (more recent) model. Since we were probably going to buy a whole new one next year, we may as well get one with a few months under the hood this year - especially since the cost of a new harddrive would be half the cost of a refurbished one with a warranty.

All this is to say: this is why I haven't posted, surfed blogs or sent you the delicious bananas foster recipe I promised. (Okay, I've promised none of you any such thing, but it's the comedy rule of three. I needed a punchline.) I've been leeching off of my computer at work to do my personal email, and it's been weird to come home and not go check out the sites I wouldn't dare check at work. (None of them dirty, just ... you know. Not cool for workies to see.)

I leave you with two non-sequitirs:

1) Now that Edwards has dropped out, I'm unsure who to support. Not that I've been bursting at the seams for anyone, really. My gut says Obama, but it's really hard for me to get past his lack of Washington experience. Even Edwards had a solid term under his belt. Nonetheless, I feel he can do a better job of bringing people together than Hillary. As much as I admire her, on many levels, and as popular as she is among the base, the sad truth is, come November, it's not the base that will be voting for her. The electorate will include myriad of people who despise her specifically because she is unapologetic about being a powerful woman. (She shouldn't be, of course, but that's neither here nor there.) There will be myriad voters who despise her for myriad other reasons; many petty, some legitimate. It's hard for me to throw my support behind someone who is essentially a lightning rod; we can't have divisive folks anymore, even if - counter to what Shrub insisted, I fully believe he intended to divide - you go in wanting, with all your heart, to bring two sides together. ... all that, and frankly, I find it hard to support her because I've been watching her since 2000, and until she began her campaign, I don't think she put enough distance between herself and some critical Bush policies. ... so that's what's on my mind as our primary nears.

2) Below is a link to a video of a performance group I love. I think they really challenge us to think about what art is, what performance is, what social experiment is and what the role of the audience is. Enjoy Improv Everywhere's recent "mission." ... oh, and it reminded me of a similar art blog that RocketBoom did a few months ago. (But IE's was cooler!) (PS. It may be sacrosanct in the nerd world, but I like RocketBoom' Joanne Colan a lot better than her predecessor, Amanda Congdon. The former is much more natural than the latter.)

Now, off to see a play!

PS. If anyone can tell me how I embed Youtube/Brightcove/MilkandCookies/etc, etc, videos here, I'd appreciate it. I feel like such a dork just posting links.