So I Had This Post…

Come on the road with me by subscribing to my feed. Thanks for reading!

…and it was a good post, filled with bright, colorful pictures taken with my new camera — a Canon PowerShot SD1300 given to me as an early birthday present from friends in Detroit. I was really excited to show off my pictures, not only because they were some of my best, but because they were of art and an incredibly touching artist I was introduced to in the Motor City. I think you would have liked that story, and we might have had quite the discussion on whether art really has a standard definition, or if it’s something that can only be defined individually.

As you can see, this is not the post I had planned. This is a post about not having a post.

My beloved MacBook Pro, whom you all know as Mr. K, has had some issues. Right now he’s in a coma and I don’t know whether he will survive. I’ve researched his illness and spoken with specialists. Some of them believe I may have attempted to kill him. I am innocent. You all know how close Mr. K and I have been. There’s nothing he could do, short of dying a final death, that would make me voluntarily go back to Windows.

Yet here I am, back with the whiner. Apparently, our divorce was not final.

So do you want an update now? How about now? Hey, could you hold on, I want to scan some things. Do you mind if I restart now? How about now? How about in four hours? Oops, there’s a new virus. I need to update virus protection. While I’m there, what about Java? Do you want a Java update? How about now? Oh, sorry about that pop-up ad; that one isn’t covered yet. Do you want me to check for an update?

Windows, especially on default settings, never lets you forget that its there. Ever. It’s the partner that won’t stop talking, even when you’re in the middle of work. If Windows were a person, it would be the sort that grabs the remote and spends hours channel surfing when all you want to do is sit down and watch a movie. It would be the one that opens the refrigerator door every few minutes looking to find something that wasn’t there five minutes ago. It would burn the breakfast toast, drop the kids off at the wrong school, add a red sock to a load of whites, and then complain about how hard its day was — and how it needs a whole new start to feel better again.

Mr. K, on the other hand, was uncomplaining and proficient. He went about his day quietly and let me go about mine. When we got together, we had some great times, especially when we were making videos. Mr K just made everything fun, easy, and comfortable. He was a wonderful partner — until he lapsed into a coma.

I’m anxiously awaiting word about the future of Mr. K, and trying not to grieve prematurely. My host in Ohio has very generously lent me her Compaq laptop, and I am super grateful even if I do feel like I’ve gone back to the most annoying partner ever. It’s better to be nagged than to be left computer-less especially since a laptop is, well, absolutely critical to a writing road trip.

I should know something about the fate of Mr. K today, and I’ll keep you updated. In the meantime, here’s one of the pictures I took in Detroit with my fancy-schmancy new Canon camera. I managed to email it to someone before Mr. K became a sleeping beauty.

This is not the work of the artist I was going to feature, but I did have several pictures from this Detroit neighborhood I wanted to share. This orange home, decorated with religious figures, old signage, and a moose is part of more than a block of such houses in Detroit called the Heidelberg Project, which was started in 1986 by Tyree Guyton. Guyton’s project has been controversial, and the city of Detroit has razed parts of it before, but his decorated houses and lawns continue to get visitors and gawkers on a daily basis.

Discuss amongst yourselves. I’ll be over here wringing my hands and patting my wet eyes with Kleenex until I hear whether Mr. K is to live or die.

Tagged as: Detroit, Heidelberg Project, MacBook Pro, Road Trip Notes