I. Am going. To lose. My mind

And if you’re guessing that I’m going to bitch about dial up…you get a gold star!!! Well, actually, no I’m not. I’m not going to bitch about dial up because bitching about dial up just doesn’t ever seem to do anything but make me madder. It certainly doesn’t seem to keep me from getting kicked off any less. Although tonight it’s being weirder than ever, if that’s possible. It’s not kicking me off, but it’s giving me that madness-inducing "Page not found!" message every couple of minutes. I’m still ON, I’m not kicked off, but it can’t find anything. I’ve twice disconnected myself and tried reconnecting. And it works! For, oh, two minutes or so. Then – page not found!

What I AM going to do is apologize for leaving no notes, since apparently I can’t do that – can’t find server! – and I’ll write an entry instead. And tomorrow perhaps I’ll go somewhere with a wireless connection, since I’m oh so savvy now. Baker B is supposed to be checking out prices for DSL and cable and figuring out what we need to do to GET RID OF DIAL UP, but he hasn’t made much progress. For some reason he doesn’t have quite the problem I do, on his dinosaur computer. He gets kicked off, but not every three minutes. I have no idea why. Either that, or it doesn’t make him as it makes me. Oh, and he has time to get on the internet occasionally at work, unlike SOME of us who don’t generally have time to take a breath at work.

Oh, look – Link to Earthlink Failed! Wow, imagine that.

And Kim just GAVE us a wireless router thingy, even more incentive for getting a better connection. It doesn’t work with dial up. It jeers at you if you’re a loser who still has dial up. She’s had it in the box she bought it in for nearly a year. She’s never even tried to hook it up. And she is a worse techoidiot than even I am, because when I was spending the night at her house Wednesday, I wanted to try out the new battery I bought – a whole OTHER story – and I was telling her about finding the wireless card and how easy it is to use once you realize how the card works. I demonstrated – and discovered she had a wireless connection right there in her livingroom. She said, "Is THAT what that is?? Every time I turn on the computer, this thing pops up and says ‘Wireless connection detected’ – but I thought it meant I needed to hook up that thing I bought!"

No, it means she’s able to access somebody else’s wireless thing from her livingroom! And then she gave us her unused wireless router thing for our birthdays. So I hope whoever she’s picking it up from doesn’ t move or I’ll feel terrible.

Oh, great. Guess what I just did – wrote this big long thing about how AMAZING and WONDERFUL and FANTASTIC the Tom Waits concert was Wednesday, and how it was SO worth the agony of getting tickets, and how my seat was really good and I was even on the end and I sat beside this really nice woman who had gone to see him many times in the 70s and 80s when he played pretty often in New York, and she brought binoculars and kept passing them around to everyone near her the whole show… and I was trying to copy and past over to Word so I don’t lose anything … and what do I do?? Why, I hit something other than "copy" and I lose everything!!!! AAGGGGHHHH!!!!! It’s not like I haven’t done that before, either. I don’t know WHY I don’t just type in Word directly, where there’s an "undo" button.

Oh, and look – my link to Earthlink just failed!!!

But it WAS wonderful. And a really nice mix of people, all ages, all stages of hipness, lots of porkpie hats. Much rabid adoration of Tom Waits. And I just kept finding myself thinking – "OH MY GOD I’M IN THE SAME ROOM AS TOM WAITS!!!!!" It was really fun. And – I took pictures. With my cellphone. Because they were adamant about no cameras, so I left mine in the car. And put my phone in the bottom of an inner zipper pocket in my bag. Then of course by the end of the concert there were people taking cellphone pictures all over the place, AND some with cameras. So I took a few too – and I’m posting them on the internet!

I have no idea why the second picture is so much bigger than the first one, but I’m thinking I won’t get sued since this could just as easily be Brittney Spears, for all you can tell.

And… I even took a picture of the civic center sign, I was so thrilled:

Although I have to say, I expected it to just be this huge TOM WAITS!!!!!!!!!!!! marquee, and was a little peeved to find him sharing billing with AB Tech’s graduation, the antiques fair, George Jones and Lyle Lovett.

Okay, I better try posting this right now, as – not surprisingly – Earthlink has just kicked me off yet again and I’ve reconnected and if I don’t move fast I’m sure I’ll be getting "Page not found!! Looooooser!!!!!!!!!!"

***Edited to say that well, of COURSE that didn’t work, and it wasn’t PAGE NOT FOUND, it was OD logging me out due to inactivity which a) I didn’t think was supposed to even happen anymore, and b) I’m supposedly permanently logged on with the laptop, and c) even when it DID used to log you out it didn’t usually lose what you were doing, but it sure did THIS time – — so thanks, OD!!! Now I’ve got to redo the pictures, which takes years, so if it does that AGAIN the pictures will have to wait.