WIDE SCREEN

Grandma Moses Day
Harvest Moon
Neither Rain Nor Snow Day
Perigean Spring Tides
Anniversary - Google Founding
Birthday - Buddy Holly (musician)
Independence Day (Brazil)

 

Behold! I have a new computer!

 

And a nice one, at that. It’s a tablet PC, useful for writing in the mysterious scripts I invent in my spare time! It’s got scribble possibilities! It’s shiny! And its name is Bhelliom!

 

There was a serious argument about this. Dad, who likes to be what I will call Part Of The Process of getting a new computer, favored the idea of my writing the usual boring name that describes whose computer and what kind it is. I was damned if I was going to have another computer named amelialt,* and Amelia’s Notebook is taken. I was all for “Grompus,” after a character in Our Mutual Friend,** but Dad objected on the grounds that it was stupid. We finally settled on “Bhelliom,” the name of the all-powerful, somewhat temperamental, and extremely handy sapphire rose in the Elenium and Tamuli trilogies. Dad still doesn’t understand the reason I find it so funny, but he’s happy with anything but Grompus.

 

I have to say, I’m really glad Dad came along to help me pick one. My criteria for a new computer was as follows:

 

1. Will it fit in my backpack?
2. Is there a word processor on it?
3. Is its fan quieter than a lawnmower?
4. Could I load Myst V on it and finally finish the damn series? No, just Myst V? I really don’t want World of Warcraft, though it was nice of you to ask. Yes, I’m sure the Sims is a fabulous game, but really, I don’t … no, I don’t even want Spore, thanks, but I'm glad you spoke up. No, seriously, can I just finish the goddamn Myst series?
5. Do I like the way it looks?
6. Can it store at least as much music as Howard the iPod?
7. Does it tend to suddenly forget what it’s doing and deny that it has a mouse hooked up to it when the damn mouse is right there, and so you have to resort to fancy keyboard gymnastics to close the four documents you were cross-referencing with respect to your story and you might have lost important data on your squid creatures and now you’re going to have to go back and write that scene with the sea serpent again for like the third time? No? I’ll take it.

 

Dad supplied all the technical questions to the computer selling dude, who took this to mean that I had the technological capabilities of a pigeon in a Skinner Box. After he asked if I knew what spyware was, I began to suspect I was being condescended to, and by the time he was asking me if I understood the implications of a wireless mouse,*** I felt I had to assert myself.

 

“Good grief, what do I look like? A GIRL?”

 

But other than that, it was about as painless as you can expect when Dad and I go shopping together. And the setup wasn’t the horrific process I’d been dreading. And now I have this wide-screened computabox with a spiffy stylus pen, and all sorts of blue blinky lights, and even a wireless mouse OMG. Today was good.

 

 

*For “Amelia’s Laptop.”

 

**Mr. Grompus gets maybe three sentences total devoted to him, and he’s simply there to personify the many unsuitors who terrified Miss Podsnap in the book. But by the time he had faded back into the annals of literature, his name was written in great big capital letters in pink Sharpie in my reading notes, which greatly mystified my English teacher when I turned the notes in for inspection at the end of the week. Because the name Grompus is awesome.

 

***As he explained to me helpfully, “It’s a mouse without a wire. You can plug a receiver into a USB port and the mouse is connected to it without a wire!”

Bad Sign Number Six Million And Seven

In other news, according to all the ladies I work with, I have a new superpower.

 

I can use my incredible mutant abilities and natural dexterity to …

 

… dress mannequins.

 

Seriously.

 

They were all gushing, truly dazzled, by the way I could put clothes on a dummy. My technique was flawless, my arrangement breathtaking. I could put together one mean model.

 

Not even, like, pick the things they wear. The Giant Corporation does that. No, what I can do is take the clothes they pick, and I can, using the talent oozing out of my ears, put them on the mannequins. After seeing the first two one manager grew excited and realized that we had untapped genius on our hands, and I was quickly plied with more mannequins. Lots more. I was wrestling stiff, grotty torso frames all day—never sold a thing, but the dummies looked great.

 

“How do you do it?” another manager asked, awed.

 

“All those years of playing with dolls finally paid off,” I shrugged.

 

Remind me to put that on my resume.