I've crossed the last line from where I can't return I was just getting caught up on some celebrity news over on Popsugar when I saw this funny quote from Victoria Beckham.

"I'd love to be Lady Beckham, it would be fabulous! It's just so camp!"

And I thought, camp - now that's a fun word. And I wanted to try using it randomly, but thought I better look it up first.

CAMP:

2 a : something so outrageously artificial, affected, inappropriate, or out-of-date as to be considered amusing b : a style or mode of personal or creative expression that is absurdly exaggerated and often fuses elements of high and popular culture -> a movie that celebrates camp

Might be hard to toss out randomly and really get the context right. I'm probably not camp enough for that.  | ¶ 5:01 p.m.

  when the lights go off you will understand Today I'm holed up in my room doing background research for another of my term papers. This one is for my "Global Political Economy" class and the assigned topic is "Can developing countries catch up to developed countries? Explain."

This is one class where the more I read, the more fascinating I find the subject area. I've never been terribly interested in economic matters, but approaching it from a more macro level, and recognizing how things in one area of the world affect things in another, I like that. To get some background on this topic I'm reading ahead in my textbook to the chapter called "The Two Faces of Development" which addresses the roots of inequality in the area of the global economy, and then the recognition of the problem by the more developed nations, followed by the efforts made to rectify things. Obviously we're nowhere near balancing out the unfairness in the world, but it's refreshing to read that efforts have been made and we're continuing to learn and trying to fix things.

I still don't know what side I'm going to take in this issue - I always have this idealistic side that believes that, duh, obviously the less developed nations have to catch up, it's only fair, but on the other hand, the mechanisms that keep the wealth concentrated in the hands of the richer nations are pretty sophisticated and hard to break through for these less developed economies. And how many rich nations are really willing to make it easy for them anyway..? Hmm. Back to my reading...  | ¶ 4:48 p.m.

  do you see the world through troubled eyes That's a photo of me from the Fox & Feather Friday night. Pat has a sweet digital camera and was taking some shots while we were there.

Man, I'm so beat. I had another late night of socializing with Scott and probably not enough sleep today. I dozed off for a few minutes in the car today, but I usually try and stay awake to keep my chauffeur company, so I didn't rest for long. Thank goodness for that extra hour we earned last night, though.

I got the royal treatment at Scott's with a spectacular dinner of beef tenderloin and cheesy garlic mashed potatoes, followed by a few too many glasses of wine and even some lovely spanish coffee. He was right when he said he'd perfected that recipe. Yum.

Today's drive home consisted of crazy gusting winds instead of rain. We were a little worried about driving conditions when when woke up this morning and saw snow on the ground in North Hatley, but the roads were mostly dry once we got out of the Eastern townships. When we stopped for gas somewhere between Ottawa and the Quebec border, though, the wind almost ripped the car door right off when I climbed out. It was pretty wild.

Unfortunately, despite a solid effort, Scott and Devin were unable to beat my computer into submission. After having enough knowledgeable people tackle this and still not have the issues resolved, I'm rather disappointed with TigerDirect. They're the online retailer who assembled this "barebones kit" and sold it as though the components are compatible, but they truly aren't. At least I can keep it running most of the time, but I will probably need to invest in another new motherboard soon. Kinda blows. I'm going to have to start thinking of creative ways to create income for myself pretty quick, here.

Tired student need sleep now. Deadlines loom...  | ¶ 11:10 p.m.

  you could mean everything to me I am safe and sound in North Hatley, in case you were wondering. After another late night of dancing and socializing with our new crime partner (Pat), Devin and I hauled our sorry asses out of bed after only a few hours sleep and hit the road for the four hour drive this morning. It rained the whole way, so it wasn't a terribly pleasant drive, but it was mostly uneventful.

I am here for several reasons: to visit my very good friend Scott, to get a little escape from Ottawa while I'm between school deadlines, and to have my troublesome computer poked and prodded by Scott. I'm hoping a second set of expert hands can resolve some of my issues once and for all. It's pretty intense for me sitting here listening to him and Devin get all geeky and talk tech in the next room while I relax in the livingroom looking out the ginormous windows at the peaceful Eastern township vista.

We made a nice stop in Lennoxville for lunch. It's always a bit strange re-visiting places you once spent a lot of time. We had lunch at Village Grec (yummy souvlaki and poutine) and took a quick trip into the SUB on the Bishop's campus, observing the renovations that have been made recently. It was a nice visit.  | ¶ 4:53 p.m.

  there can be miracles when you believe So I'm doing the preliminary work for my next paper and I'm having issues already. Here is the assignment:

Provide an annotated list of the top think tanks in Canada, their policy emphasis and inclinations, their budgets and the source of their money.

I figure it's good to clarify precisely what the assignment is first. So I'm trying to make sure that I understand what an "annotated list" is - a list with explanation and criticism? Then what a "think tank" is: is it different than a lobbyist? Seriously different? Because just doing some initial reading makes me think this is a pretty grey area. Maybe less so in Canada than the U.S., but I'm still going to have to be careful - will I be way off if I mistakenly include a lobbyist? And the next issue: who decides who the "top" think tanks are? Is somebody keeping a list out there with some rankings? How many should I include?

Okay, now you know what I'm tackling today. Feel free to share thoughts on this!  | ¶ 12:55 p.m.

  standing by the road with no umbrella, no coat Argh. Carleton was a little slow getting our exam schedule posted and it's finally up today. My schedule isn't great - first exam on December 6th and last one on the 21st. Oh, and classes start again on January 3rd, so that doesn't leave me much time to get my visiting done. AND I was just looking at potential flights and they're super-expensive when you're getting that close to Christmas. Don't know what I'm going to do now. I checked the price of Moncton flights to see if that option was cheaper and it really isn't. I think I'd prefer to go to Calgary anyway - guess I'll just suck it up and take the hit on my Visa. Eep.

Starving student need income.  | ¶ 7:56 p.m.

  tell it like you still believe Ooh, fun video with a good message.
  | ¶ 3:25 p.m.

  just one more ass that got stuffed in some jeans Ottawa awash in surplus cash

Ottawa is running a $6.7-billion budget surplus five months into the fiscal year, $2-billion ahead of where it stood one year ago.

This poses a political dilemma for Ottawa, but also appears to give Finance Minister Jim Flaherty more spending room to address provincial cries about a fiscal imbalance between Ottawa and the provinces and to deliver tax cuts.

However, it's also potentially embarrassing for the Conservative Party, which vowed to end the former Liberal government's practice of lowballing surplus estimates.

"Two good things are happening, I think. One is, that our budget predictions are on track and we're doing okay there," he told reporters after a speech in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. "Secondly, we're controlling spending, and that hasn't happened in Ottawa in quite a while. It makes a difference."

This is so annoying, this whole idea that if if happens to somebody else they're doing something wrong, but if it happens to us, it's because we're doing something right. How about you guys give us back our tax money then? That's the most insulting of all of this bullshit reform by Stephen Harper - "here's a lower GST rate, but when you're distracted by that, I'm going to tax your paycheque more". Good one, Stephen, you really fooled us.  | ¶ 8:41 a.m.

  you said that you had said all that you had to say Some observations on term-paper writing:

In class the other day, the dude in front of me had some notes from his tutorial where the TA gave tips for this paper. When I asked him about it, he told me that one thing he found out that he didn't know was that we needed to use at least five authoritative sources. It was like he had planned to use fewer. This baffles me a bit - I probably over-research so I end up with at least ten references, and usually review twice that number.

Sometimes, when you're running late on getting the work done (like me most of the time), you're more focussed on number of words than the content. That's not to say that I produce crappy work, but I'm constantly using the "Word Count" feature in Word to assess my progress rather than whether I've made all my points. Typically my papers still rock, though, it must be said...

I'm overly snack-ish today. Food is my friend.  | ¶ 12:40 a.m.

  in the midnight hour I can feel your power Somebody really needs to give me a scolding. I haven't exactly accomplished much this weekend - it seems instead that I continued rewarding myself for my reasonable performance on last week's midterms - with additional socializing, drinking and dancing.

Devin and I wanted to try an Indian restaurant, so Friday evening we headed over to Bank Street to visit "Light of India". We weren't so enlightened by the service we got at the Light, but the food was pretty impressive. Granted, it was the peak dinner hour, and people seem to eat late meals here, so the place was jam-packed with families and groups of friends. It only took us about an hour and a half to get our food..(!) I was getting a bit cranky, since I was famished before we even got there. But it all worked out okay in the end. We enjoyed some delicious butter chicken and beef masala, rice, vegetables and nan bread. Very tasty, and some leftovers to take home, too.

Next it was over to Elgin Street to find a happening bar. After a bit of driving in circles and not knowing where to go (that happpens fairly often to us - still figuring all that out), we decided to visit Hooley's, since I'd been there on Wednesday and thought it was a fun place. Turns out Friday is a fun night at Hooley's - there was some live music, some retro tunes, a fun crowd, and a good Cosmopolitans. Pat came over and joined us and we had a nice evening together. There's a follow-up story about visiting an after-hours bar, drinking Red Bull and then having early-morning poutine at Zak's, but I won't get into that...

It's gotten pretty nippy here in Ottawa. The fall weather is colder than I was ready for so soon - damn, I'm breaking out the sweaters already.

Saturday: with the early-morning crash time, the morning was spent sleeping. I thought about doing some research, felt guilty for not being more motivated, then we went out for a 5:00 p.m. "breakfast" at Perkins (it was nice to discover they have Perkins here - I always liked their breakfast). Pat and I went to a movie after that, so it was a nice low-key evening watching The Illusionist (love Edward Norton).

And today? Well, I was supposed to get some stuff done. But I kinda just didn't. So now I've got less than 48 hours to pull together an impressive paper on electoral reform. It may not be my best work, but I'll pull through somehow.  | ¶ 11:59 p.m.

  make this a new beginning of another life So I'm all about the retro music over here these days (as my Google Talk contacts know from my playlist). I noticed that people have these compilations of, for example, "Billboard Top 100 from 1987" and other years available as bit torrents, so I started downloading them. It's such a nostalgia blast to hear some of this stuff - like the music you used to listen to on the radio when you were thirteen years old and were really just beginning to appreciate it. 1987 was one of those years for me. It's cool, too, stumbling on songs you had completely forgotten about but love all over again when you hear them. I think my new-old favourite is this one "Meet me Halfway (across the sky)" by Kenny Loggins. Classic 80s ballad - and awesome.  | ¶ 4:42 p.m.

  give a little bit of heart and soul Funny Jon Stewart clip:

  | ¶ 11:41 a.m.

  only when I'm dancing can I feel this free My professors have been quite helpful so far in giving "hints" for midterm studying. Two of them have distributed sample questions that turned out to actually be on the exam, so that's good for the people who used the tips. I think my IPE midterm went pretty well given that we had a LOT of material to cover and even her review sheets didn't narrow things down tremendously. I only had to BS a bit - so that's why I think I got a mark in the "B" range.

My exam-writing style is to get in and out as quickly as possible. Especially with multiple-choice and short-answer questions, you know pretty quickly whether you have know the answers. My theory is that the longer you write, the less you know. So I was out of the exam the other day pretty quickly. But I decided to wait for my friend Pat to see how he did. Little did I know that Pat was the novel-writing type exam sitter. He ended up being one of the last ones out of the room - turns out he wasn't overly prepared for the exam, so he may have to be a tad more creative in his writing than me.

Anyway, we decided to have a de-briefing session over a couple pints. It's nice hanging out with Pat 'cause first of all, he's my age, and secondly, he's a local, so he knows where to find the good bars and restaurants to visit. We started at the Lieutenant's Pump (is it a Canadianism to pronounce it "Lef-tenant"?), had some beers and snacks, then strolled up the street to Hooley's for a bit more craziness. You'd have thought I learned my lesson the last time somebody ordered Jager bombs, but oh no - I had TWO. My body has been trying to process the speed-like effects of the super-caffeination (?) for the past 24 hours. Not smart.

Anyway, now it's time to get serious about my term paper 'cause it's due Tuesday and I have LOT of work ahead of me between now and then. Yikes. I'll be sure to post some exciting tidbits about electoral reform in Canada for you. Stay tuned, eh.  | ¶ 10:28 a.m.

  how many times have I tried to turn this love around Today's results:

(predicted only)

Research Methods: C
Global Political Economy: B

[I find it kind of fun to estimate these letter grades when they don't really have a lot of significance to me. Plus or Minus - what does it all mean anyway.]  | ¶ 4:03 a.m.

  sail away, sail away, sail away This take-home exam bores me. It's pretty challenging to write good prose when your topic is methodology, theory and hypotheses. Question One: "Explain the importance of research methods in political science, the characteristics and the process of the methods that can be used. What sources of information we need to research in order to achieve an excellent understanding of the theory we are building and the limits of the various sources of information."

*Yawn*. It's late.  | ¶ 2:11 a.m.

  with a taste of poison paradise, I'm addicted to you I hadn't heard much lately about the evilness that is Wal-mart, but with this article, my opinion of that company remains intact. Capitalism, eh. This is getting out of hand. Some snippets:

"...the scheduling changes, which have been rolled out in Wal-Mart stores around the country in recent weeks, are a sign that the retailer is acting on ideas outlined in an internal document that was leaked last year. In the memo, a Wal-Mart executive said it would find ways to rid its payroll of full-time and unhealthy employees who are more expensive for the company to retain.

Wal-Mart executives have recently told Wall Street analysts that the company wants to transform its workforce from 20 percent part-time to 40 percent. Recently, it was also reported that older employees in some stores who had back and leg problems were barred from using stools on which they had sat for years."

When super-immense profits become so important that we're treating people worse than animals, I take issue with it. This is intolerable.  | ¶ 9:17 p.m.

  now it's nothing but my way When I went to my Research Methods class this morning for what I thought was going to be a review class before the midterm Wednesday, I was surprised to discover that the midterm was actually a take-home, and it's due Wednesday, so we actually got the handout today. I must have missed the memo on that tidbit - saves me some study time, but instead I've got some essay questions to answer. He gave us a bit of guidance about our responses - something about using class notes only as a reference. I don't really get that - what's the point of making us buy and read a (pricey) textbook, but tell us not to use it on the midterm..? I suppose I don't really understand the intricacies of creating a take-home exam, though. We find that this guy's classes are hard to take good notes on because he's so often off on a tangent with his less-then-relevant "examples". I'll do my best to create some decent answers with what I've got.

I must keep studying now; we've covered a LOT of material for IPE (International Political Economy) and I'm making a ton of study notes. Next up: feminist theory and post-modernism.  | ¶ 10:09 p.m.

  all I need is time, a moment that is mine I did something yesterday that I haven't done in months. I went for a jog. It was easier than I expected; I'd plotted out a nice 3.5 km loop before I went and it didn't hurt too much. The consequence of that, though, is my body being completely drained today - I did some studying this afternoon and planned to lie down for a short nap but ended up being conked out for much longer. Ah well. Guess I'll be up late again tonight. Such is the schedule of the student anyway...

I should say Happy Thankgsiving to my people in Calgary. Since many of them were away last week, they're doing the family dinner today. I come from a family of travellers, you see: froo was here, Jame was at an f-ball tournament in Winnipeg, Mom & Dalt visited Saskatchewan with Keri and the kids. Gina was the only one home working! froo, post some pics of the feast for me, eh.

Today marks exactly six weeks that I've been in Ottawa. In a way it feels like longer than that, but in another I'm still not very settled here, so things are still new and confusing.

Mostly I don't have time to really notice the passing of time at this point - the academic deadlines are looming, so I'm hitting the books for real. Two midterms this week, then paper-writing. For my electoral reform paper due in less than two weeks, I'm attempting to recycle some of my writing and resources from my democratic reform analysis paper - I had covered electoral reform somewhat in that piece, so that works out well. Do you know that once you dive in, all these subjects actually ARE pretty interesting? I'm surprised to find myself enjoying Global Political Economy quite a bit.

I'm off to eat KD. No turkey dinners in Ottawa today! Or chicken.  | ¶ 7:00 p.m.

  the hardest part is when you're in it

When U.S. President George W. Bush announced Wednesday that he wanted the United Nations and North Korea's neighbours to take steps aimed at pressuring Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program, Bush indicated that he saw little distinction between an actual nuclear test by North Korea and its announcement of one.

"The United States is working to confirm North Korea's claim, but this claim itself constitutes a threat to international peace and stability," Mr. Bush said.

This doesn't make sense to me.

People, I have successfully tested a nuclear weapon. In my closet.

Does that make ME a threat?  | ¶ 2:49 p.m.

  tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies I think this situation demonstrates just how much of a stupid world we live in. Michael Ignatieff, and now the entire slate of Liberal leadership candidates, are being called "anti-Israel" by Stephen Harper. Why is it that we cannot criticize the actions of a fellow democratic nation? Why is it that any criticism of Israel becomes some huge affront? I get the sense that Israel is off-limits because of the danger of wading into anti-Jewish territory. Can a person not be anti-Israel without being anti-Jew? Why must be tiptoe around this issue?

I'm always suspicious of Harper when it comes to expressing an opinion like this. Is this his true opinion, or does he just feel the need to state a position in keeping with that of our buddies in the White House?

Obviously Michael Ignatieff is not a stupid man. He's new to politics so he gets himself in trouble for calling it like he sees it, but that doesn't make him unfit for the job. Not that I have an opinion regarding who should be the next Liberal party leader - I don't know enough about the candidates to have a position.

In an apparent effort to make amends, Ignatieff told reporters that while he is a friend of Israel he is a "critical friend of Israel."

He added that "where crimes were visited on Israeli civilians, they were visited on Lebanese civilians."

It just doesn't make sense that his observations on this recent dispute become such a story. Jeebus.  | ¶ 2:30 p.m.

  dontcha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me I thought this video was cute. But then I read some comments where people thought it was inappropriate conduct for a potential leader of the Liberal party, and maybe Canada..? I don't know enough about Bob Rae to really have an opinion about him, but he seems like a decent candidate to me. There's something to be said for experience and hopefully learning from your mistakes...

  | ¶ 12:48 a.m.

  wild horses, we'll ride them some day   | ¶ 2:02 p.m.

  are we stronger than we believe froo made it off to St. Louis this morning without incident. I bet you didn't know she was such a baseball fan that she would be flying down there to cheer on her team, eh.

Okay, for real, she's not there for the baseball.

It's for the shopping.

I had my first test of the semester today in Public Affairs Analysis. It wasn't really a midterm, just a "progress test", only multiple-choice questions. I think it went alright considering I didn't study terribly hard for this one. Next week will be much harder, though. Two REAL midterms, both on Wednesday - ouch. Those are in Research Methods and Global Political Economy. The "IPE" one (that's what the prof calls it) will likely be pretty tough, but I'm hoping since I've done variations on the Research Methods class before (in psychology and in politics at Bishop's) that it's at least a BIT of a refresher for me more than anything...

Tonight in my Canadian Political Institutions class we watched two Canadian political documentaries. I was a bit disheartened after seeing the theme was "watch two women try and get nominated in the 70s and fail". The first film was about Flora MacDonald, when she ran for the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1976 (Joe Clark was the ultimate winner). The second was about Anne Cools, a woman trying to earn the Liberal nomination for the riding of Rosedale in Toronto in 1978. Unfortunately, she was up against a man hand-picked by the Liberal establishment and had a pretty challenging fight. Since I didn't know the outcome of that one in advance, I was actually really rooting for her and was disappointed when she lost. I was interested to see over on Wikipedia that she's now a Canadian senator. Although I didn't like some of the other stuff I read over there.

In addition to studying for my two midterms next week, I've got a term paper to whip off anytime now for my Canadian Political Institutions class. I'm going to write about electoral reform in Canada and it's due in two weeks. Eep.  | ¶ 11:40 p.m.

  go ahead, be gone with it We had a spectacular day here in Ottawa. The weather was hot and sunny - perfect for a little sight-seeing - so we got ourselves out this morning and headed downtown. We got lucky and found a boat that was ready to launch for a cruise down the Rideau Canal. It was very cool to see the city from the canal and learn a bit about the buildings along its banks and about the construction of the canal itself. One interesting tidbit: Germany built its embassy at a time when they were concerned about being spied on, and were so concerned with bugging devices being implanted inside building materials that they imported every single part of the building from their homeland.

After the cruise we strolled into the Market and found another cool open-twenty-four-seven diner called Zak's, where I had the best poutine so far down here in the East. It was scrumptious, if not a tad on the heart-attack-provoking side (i.e. tons of cheese curds and gravy). Dee-lish.

Then it was down to the Ottawa River to visit Rideau Falls. That was pretty nifty to see, too. It was a perfect day to walk around the city observing the gorgeous red and yellow leaves on the trees. See more of my (and froo's) photos here. That set includes some pics from our homemade turkey dinner last night, although we had chicken instead of turkey. Did I mention we forgot to eat the cranberry sauce? We had so many yummy items (mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, carrots, broccoli, cheese sauce and sweet potatoes!), that somehow we missed the can of cranberry goodness. Oops!  | ¶ 11:18 p.m.

  life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone
froo's here and there's been some dancing.

Last night we went out to D'arcy McGee's Irish Pub (quickly becoming mine and Devin's regular haunt) for some beers and snacks. My friend Pat joined us (he's a classmate of mine) and the four of us wandered over to the market area to hit a dance bar. We discovered a little gem in the "Whiskey" (described over here this way: "If you can't decide between hitting a pub and going to a dance bar, solve your problems by trying this great combination hot spot..."). They played some fun retro songs and we boogied down on the dance floor for quite a while.

It was a lot of fun, even with the creepy hair-sniffing dude. You see, I was leading the pack when we decided to wind our way up to the dance floor. The bar was pretty crowded so I had a hard time squeezing by certain people. I had to rub up pretty close to one dude blocking my access to the dance area, and as I brushed by him, I felt him lean in and smell my hair or something. Since I had to keep moving, I didn't react, but I heard Pat say to froo behind me, "that was creepy..!", so I guess it looked as odd as it felt. Later, the hair-sniffer asked froo to dance, so she got to spend some quality time with him during the slow song.

It was a fun evening. Some more of my pics can be seen here.  | ¶ 3:40 p.m.

  when I was young it seemed that life was so beautiful It's a big weekend here in Ottawa - the second one in a row..! froo's flying out to cook us a turkey. Okay, in reality that's not why she's coming, but we'll be putting forward a joint effort on a turkey dinner at some point, so it's a good story. It's good timing - the weather is supposed to be decent, and the leaves have begun to turn some gorgeous shades of orange and red. We'll be taking in the sights.

I should also be hitting the books this weekend. Midterm season is arriving these next couple weeks, and I have a gazillion papers to get writing (that is, one for each of my five classes). I have to admit I haven't been feeling quite the level of engagement in my schooling so far that I would expect of myself. It's all going to come crashing down on me pretty quickly when I have to whip off some term papers on time (meeting deadlines has never been my forte). All of my profs have indicated very little tolerance for lateness on these. Eep.

My whole computer project has been a bit of a distraction over the past week. It's been slightly more complicated than I described in earlier posts, and things are still not perfect. Dunno why, but the BRAND NEW components don't seem to get along, and the latest symptom is random re-starting for no apparent reason. One sure trigger is when I open MSN messenger. So I'm sticking with Google Talk for chatting right now. The suspected culprit is an inadequate power supply. I'm hesitant to shell out for a new one immediately because it's been such a struggle to even get to this point that I just want to leave it alone and make do for a bit. Also, it's rather frustrating to keep spending money (a new power supply might be another hundred-ish, I'm led to believe) when I have no income in sight. Upgrading the computer has been a less-than-gratifying experience, for both me and Devin, who has been the guy handling all these issues.

Here's to a good weekend of turkey and poutine!  | ¶ 12:55 a.m.

  life's gonna drop you down like a limb from a tree Well, the update on the technology front is another near-disaster. This morning Devin realized that he had mistakenly overlooked my photo files when backing up the hard drive before formatting it for re-assembly. "Format" means wipe clean, in case you didn't know. All of my wonderful, memory-filled photos, gone.

Since Devin bought me the digital camera for Christmas last year, I've become something of a photo-taking / video-shooting obsessive, as many know, so I had quite the load of "memories" piled up for this past year, along with random odds and ends that I would have been sorely disappointed to lose.

So we spent the day anxiously downloading and waiting with crossed fingers for THREE different versions of disc recovery software to work their magic (it wasn't immediately so magical). I'm happy to report that my pictures and videos have mostly been recovered, thank goodness. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, the product that ended up working for us was "File Scavenger 3.0". I had to pay a small licensing fee (how do you put a price on these things, tho), but it worked quickly and efficiently.  | ¶ 1:19 a.m.

  godspeed Sorry for the disruption there, people; I was shutdown for technical upgrades. You see, my computer was getting a bit old, so on the advice of my technology advisors, I invested in a "barebones kit", which arrived last week. This consists of a new motherboard, processor, and computer tower (with flashy lights!), which meant some assembly and re-installation of lots of stuff. And well, you know these things can never go one hundred percent smoothly, so Devin (in-house IT manager) ran into a few obstacles along the way. Who knew that my hard drive would be incompatible with the new bios? The computer required a lot of coaxing along the way, but we're all up and running now. I haven't really given the machine any challenges to see just how improved the performance is, but I'm sure I'll notice a difference, given that the old one was getting seriously chuggy these past months. Maybe I'll be able to use photoshop while simultaneously surfing the internet and downloading TV shows..! This is huge.  | ¶ 12:19 a.m.

  they did it
...and it was spectacular.  | ¶ 3:10 a.m.