Hey all! Quick note to let you know I made it out to the Big Apple okay. The Anonymous Blogger is a great host so far -- despite what some of his posts might lead you to believe about his attitude, he comes across as a pretty nice guy. He can't compete with the giant mechanized T-Rex in the Manhattan Toys 'R' Us, though. That thing is my new best friend.

Yeah, it's retail, and retail sucks, but I would work in that store forever (well, maybe not that long) just to be close to the T-Rex. All hail the T-Rex.

Ave T-Rex. Ave T-Rex. Ave T-Rex.

Ja for now! 🙂

Ave T-Rex.

Alrighty folks, this is my last message before I shut down the machine. If I can post from NYC, my next post will be from there! If not, I should/hope I'll have access to e-mail, so feel free to drop me a line to check in and whatnot. If I'm not back in a week, something's wrong, so direct all vengeful feelings towards The Anonymous Blogger. Post nasty comments or something. I dunno.

Ja ne, minna-san!

Yep, another for the pile -- this one for my short piece entitled "Mold Country". It's funny how these fiction rejections tend to come back within days of each other, whether I sent them out at the same time or not -- it's like the editors of various rags conspire to make sure I get my rejections right together in order to discourage me from wasting their time with further short story submissions. I fully expect to have that third one in my possession before I leave for NYC. Hell, there's the mailman... maybe it's out there RIGHT NOW! We'll find out in a bit.

Ja for now.

Just got my rejection back from McSweeney's. This is shaping up to be a GREAT day! "GREAT" being extreme sarcasm, in addition to being an acronym for Greet, Recognize, Enthusiastically Assist, and Thank (!!!). I hate today.

In other news, chkdsk tells me that my hard disks are fine, so the problem must lie elsewhere, assuming there actually is a problem. Well, if my computer does crash and burn, it's good to know that I'll be able to recover any info on my disks... provided that they don't catch fire or something.

WILL BLUE CHEESE EVER FIND A HOME?!?!?!?!?!?

Quick post to share the bad news before I start getting ready for work -- about a half hour ago I got up and flicked on my monitor to be greeted by a blue screen and a message informing me of HARDWARE FAILURE and telling me to contact my vendor. That makes me sad. I've had this computer since '98, so I guess it may be about time for it to die... but fuck, it can't die -- it's my computer! And it's all I've got, so if it goes then I won't be able to do SC or come online or anything. Bah. I restarted the machine, and it's up now... and as far as I can tell I haven't lost anything, so at least that's good. Seems fine, too, but messages like that scare me.

I'm going to have it run a checkdisk while I get ready for/am at work (yes, I'm closing at the bookstore for the fourth fucking night in a row... and tomorrow night makes five) to see what's up, and then the rest of the week will probably see me backing up files or something. That may put a damper on my plans for SC, but if the machine holds up I'll try to get at least one new article posted in addition to those movie-related features. I may upload them sooner than Friday, just to make sure they get up before my system dies. 🙁

Alrighty, it's disk checking time.