buggery | I'm back. Sorta.

Long story short, because the long version is just boring:

So, I was sick. Yes, too sick even to get on the computer. Like I do anything by half-measures?

Then, I got sicker. Don't laugh. Or, okay, laugh, but you're laughing with me, right? Sick enough that I was trundled off to mum & step-dad's, the better to be cared for.

So, finally, an unlikely number of medication adjustments later, I get to go home again. There's a truly terrifying amount of fic, gossip, and even (despite my general success in getting people not to send it) email for me to catch up on. Somebody even emailed me her phone number, so I could call and let on I wasn't lying in a ditch or something, but... it was the wrong frelling number. I read a couple of stories, was tired, and took one of those sneaky naps that kidnaps you straight through to the next day.

The next day, the computer began acting funny. So, brilliantly, I closed all the open programs and rebooted. The computer responded by deciding to stop working altogether.

Okay, Jack said to Jackself, I have an emergency fund. I will use it to get a new computer. Jack found a used computer that the emergency fund would cover (hey, it's not the size of the emnergency fund, it's how you use it -- and it's new to me).

The n/ewsed computer arrived, in its good time, and appeared to be working. But of course I had to hook up a zip drive, and a less-annoying mouse, and in general looked fate in the mouth or some other atrociously mismatched metaphor, and... important parts of the recently-arrived computer stopped working. Like, the modem, and the cd-rom drive, without which said computer is really a glorified calculator and general waste of perfectly good deskspace.

And funny thing, when the emergency fund is empty, there's no funds for things like repairs. Admittedly, I'm afraid to even get a quote, cos how does it look if they say 'it'll cost X much' and it takes me a couple of months to come up with that? Plus, they might be like the unscrupulous auto mechanics who won't give your car back until it's fixed but keep tacking on storage fees as if that'll help you pay the bill faster.

Paranoid? Me? Who said that?

At the moment I'm at a public library terminal, which I'm finally well enough to get to. Unfortunately public terminals have all these drawbacks, like not being right there in my flat, and limiting users to 30 or 60 minutes online per day, and the fascist damned Fatherland Security Act giving our 'friends' in the dark suits access to my every keystroke, and I can't access my regular email account. But I figured, okay, I have an hour, I can use it to try to speed-read as much slash and such as my brain can absorb, or... I can let everyone know I haven't been in a ditch.

So... I'll be in and out as I'm able. Believe me when I wail piteously how much I've missed you all. (And that I'm really, really sorry that the abovementioned messes kept me from fulfilling several commitments I've made to different people.)

Meanwhile, hm. I've been watching more TV than I used to, and discovered that Detectives Munch and Tutuola of Law & Order: SVU are so doing it. And The Authority is finally back, which means you should all head to your local purveyor of comic books and ask for [Vol. 2] issue #1, just out this month.

And, again, I miss you all.