Disk Error

I've been spending the last few days -- when not teaching, writing, parenting cooking, doing dishes, or being ill -- copying the contents of my 3.5" disks onto the hard drive of my Power Mac 8600.

Tonight I plugged that aging beast into the prim 15" Gateway flat-panel Kim just got to use with the Windows machine she's bringing home for work. It seemed wrong, somehow, even though the results were satisfactory. Here I am, typing away in front of a Mitsubishi CRT on the G4-Dual 867, wasting all that electricity and suffering flicker, when the Clinton-era machine in the other room is conserving, unwavering.

[NEWS ALERT: The late Clinton-era ZIP disk from Kim's dad is now behaving strangely as I write this, whirring and blinking.]

My sense of what is and isn't "appropriate" for a particular computer is only magnified by the exercise of copying old Word Perfect files taken originally from my Windows-deprived 386 clone or, in some cases, First Word files -- not that they are readable, exactly -- from my Atari 1040ST onto the hard drive of the 8600, so I can later transport the worthy ones to this George W. Bush-era computer for a purpose yet to be determined, most likely blogging.

There's something strange about opening a file from 1993 in 2004, precisely because eleven years doesn't feel quite that long ago in other arenas of daily existence. My students still listen to Nirvana and Pavement, the way I listened to Zeppelin in the 80s. NCAA men's basketball still looks a good deal like it did in 1993. And, from the standpoint of food culture, Tucson has only recently arrived in the place that the hipper portions of the Bay Area achieved in the early 1990s. But a file from back then, saved onto a computer where the mouse was still an accessory? It feels like entering King Tut's tomb.

ABB

It's astonishing the number of wire stories that have appeared in the past few weeks with quotes like this one:

"Anybody but Bush," said Charles Edwards, 50, of Falls Church, Va., who decided to vote for Kerry as he entered his voting booth. "I'd vote for the devil."

Personally, I don't think voting for the devil would be wise, given the two-party system in the States. But I'm starting to believe.

And that's dangerous. . .

Repeat after me: "He's going to miss the free throw. He's going to miss the free throw. He's going to miss the free throw."

Hopes and Fears

kdotdammit nicely covers the highlights of our day from a parental standpoint.

I did drive down to meet her at the River and Campbell Starbucks this morning -- even though I'm taking a break from coffee! -- to hand off the two My Little Pony movies we rented from Casa so that Susan could do her deeply appreciated thing. And then, since I was down there already, I went to the horribly depressing Wal-Mart on Wetmore in order to buy batteries for the twinkle star and a copy of The Wizard of Oz on DVD, since the one we rented was due back at Blockbuster. I should get a few stars myself for that latter task. Who knew that so many people, from 15 to 75, could all be on bad speed at the same time?

Dealing with Skylar's anxieties before the Manzanita Open House, it was hard not to smile at her obstinacy. Holding her hand over the seat belt so that Kim couldn't unbuckle her, grabbing onto the door panel, saying that she was "just going to stay in the car" -- pretty adorable, all in all, despite being emotionally taxing.

After the orientation, when the parents were led back to their children and we found Skylar happy as could be on the kindergarten playground, I realized how much her mode of fearfulness overlaps with mine.

I've always resisted doing new things out of fear. But when I finally get pushed enough to undertake them, I almost always feel right at home within minutes.

That applies to writing too, naturally. tommix and elizabeg's recent comments on the subject had me thinking about my relation to the process. I have such a hard time getting momentum. But once I have it, I'm hard to stop.

The difference between writing and, say, riding a bicycle is that, whereas the mastery of the latter activity "sticks" for most of your life, writing demands that you make new beginnings over and over.

But why should that inspire so much fear? If you've done it before, you should be optimistic about your ability to do it again, no?

I suppose the fear is that you won't be able to manage the next time, that the bicycle will keel over.

I better remind myself of the contrast between Skylar's mood before today's Open House and after it was over. It's fun to be new.