Miscellaneous

I am not depressed. I do not get depressed. It is not in my nature, which is to be unreasonably cheerful ALL THE TIME except when I am panicking about something.

In fact I have been unreasonably cheerful, in recent days.

BUT... as my regular readers may have noticed (or may not have) I have not been blogging quite as regularly as I usually do. This is because I am suffering from the mid-semester blues. This has manifested itself in a lack of enthusiasm for writing, this semester. I don't know why. Usually when I am suffering from mid-semester blues I counteract them by writing about what I am feeling shitty about. This semester I have been counteracting them by spending money on things I want but don't really need, like, for example, the Palm Zire 31 WITH WIRELESS KEYBOARD, which will be arriving soon, courtesy of an American friend who has bought it for me and is sending it over (thank you thank you thank you!).

Why are PDAs so rare here? Is it the ubiquitous cellphones? But why can't I even find the keyboards here? I want to WRITE, dammit. Sometimes nothing but writing will do, to cheer me up, and if you're a touch typist like me a cellphone keypad is just plain silly. And anyway, I do not want a cellphone.

One of the guys at work has one of these Palms, and I have been suffering from technology envy ever since I played with it.

Anyway, this is by way of explanation for the lack of blog entries recently. I am suffering from mid-semester blues, even though I don't think we're quite mid-semester yet. However, when my new Palm Zire appears in the mailbox I will be happy. I'm hoping that I will be able to use it to keep class notes, and when I do that, I will pretend to be taking notes when in fact I will be writing blog entries to download to my computer after I get home, and you will be endlessly entertained (or something) by a running commentary of what goes on in my classes.

I may have discovered the perfect way to combine work with play. HA!

Oh, and also, when the new Kate Bush album comes out I will be happy, too. I listened to the new single, and I like it. I like the video, too. Kate has now 47. She is not a beautiful teenager. She is a beautiful middle-aged woman, and she looks her age. (Well, almost.) I like it that she hasn't tried to hide this. She has jowls, and so do I. Jowls happen, along with age. (Unless you're The Man, in which case you look young forever, due to the picture in the attic and the fact that you've sold your soul to the devil, which is too bad for the devil when the soul in question is Buddhist and the devil in question doesn't exist.) In any case, even if I don't like the whole album I'm sure it will make me happy if only because I like music that makes me think and Kate Bush lyrics are always weird enough to make me think.

(Elvis are you out there somewhere, looking like a happy man?)

Other news (now that I've started writing I can't seem to stop) I called my older brother today, since it had been several months since we've been in touch. All my brothers are fine, apparently, and Youngest Brother is going to make me an aunt YET AGAIN in February or March. When will it all end? Hasn't anybody noticed yet that the family genes are in no danger of dying out?

I asked my older brother if he knew I'd been in Europe over the summer, and he said yes, he knew about that.

"Oh, Youngest Brother actually read my email?" I asked, surprised. Youngest brother is the only one with email, but he doesn't actually read it. He just sees that an email from me has arrived and assumes that therefore I'm alive and therefore there is no need to read the email. If I have anything urgent to say I have to compress it into the subject line.

"No, his wife did," said my older brother. "Second Youngest Brother called Youngest Brother to find out if he'd heard from me. Youngest Brother wasn't home but his wife was, and she checked the computer and read the email over the phone. Second Youngest Brother later called again and spoke to Youngest Brother, and told him that you were in Europe, which he hadn't known because he hadn't read your email. Then he called us, so we knew, too."

"Oh," I said.

I wonder when someone in my family WHO ACTUALLY READS will get email?