Of course, this means that I won't be able to attend the first night of the Festival. I've got mixed feelings about that; I'm a little peeved to be missing the theoretical paper presentations, which were traditionally held on Saturday mornings, but were moved this year for some unknown reason, but the kick-off concert of the year doesn't look like something in which I'd have been much interested, anyway. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy a bit of electro-acoustic music as much as the next guy. It's only when it starts to be combined with modern dance that I start to feel my shoulders knot. For the past several years, I've attended multiple concerts of this nature, and I have yet to find once piece that I've truly enjoyed; in most cases, I find myself staring, horror-struck, at a scantily-clad woman or group of women writhing as if in severe pain to the sounds of blaring, honking, or whining electronica. Thank you, no.

Unfortunately, I'm seeing that the "Detroit Dance Collective" is scheduled to perform at Friday night's concert as well. Looks like I'm inescapably destined to spend yet another evening with fingers pressed to temples.

I don't know how up for this hectic weekend I'll be. Even now, I've been feeling the pull of the bed nightly around nine o'clock; by six-thirty, I start to drag. (Thus, of course, the reason for less-frequent updating; if I can't sit upright, I certainly can't do it in the rickety old chairs we have in our office.) I have a sinking feeling that when those house lights go down for the evening concerts, my lids are also going to head southward. I'll have to make sure to alert Eric to be ready to put a hasty stop to any snoring.

I walked over to the machine. No disc icons appeared on the desktop. I tried the eject command anyway, and nothing happened except for a faint grinding sound. Upon trying to insert the desired disc, though, I met with resistance; something was in the CD-ROM drive.

I did a quick inventory of the juvenile computer area. Several of the CD envelopes turned up empty, just as I had feared they would. "Ma'am, I'm afraid that we're not going to be able to insert that CD," I sighed. "Somebody has jammed two CDs into the iMac." I turned off the computer and tried poking a little paperclip into the manual eject hole, but had no luck. The CDs were jammed in there as tightly as could be. Finally I put a little sign on the computer warning people against trying any games requiring CD's and reported the problem to Tech-Girl.

"Well, how do you crack open an iMac?"
"I'm really not sure that's the best way to go about this. Why don't we take it to a Apple repair shop?"
"I want to see what I can do first."

Days went by, and nothing changed. Try as she might, Tech-Girl couldn't persuade the little iMac to open for her; calls to the repair shop resulted in servicemen begging us to just bring the machine in for help. Daily, when I turned the computer on, the grinding sounds emanating from the CD drive seemed to be getting worse and worse, louder and louder, until...

I did another survey of the juvenile computer area. Even more CD envelopes were missing their contents. People were continuing to shove more CDs into the computer! I ran for the masking tape, with which I liberally covered the opening to the drive, knowing full well that the most enterprising of the children would let no tape stop them from attempting to play their favorite games. I told Tech-Girl. She insisted that help would soon be arriving via email from a friend of hers who "knows Apples." I sighed.

Any suggestions? I'm now of the opinion that this poor computer will probably end up in the garbage before too much longer.

Eric had something of an epiphany last night. "What about our old quilts?" he said with a sudden forlorn look on his face. "Can we still use them?"

"Sure, we can use them; they just won't cover the whole bed. You can use one on your side of the bed, and I'll use one on mine; it'll prevent cover thievery that way, too." A thought hit me. "Oh, and just think! When your mom starts up the 'What do y'all want for Christmas' chant this year, we can tell her that we need new quilts! Brilliant!" He agreed.

Frankly, though, I wouldn't care if I had to sleep fully-clothed, without any blankets at all (not that I've been using many for the past several days, anyway; I've been a veritable furnace, I have). I'd be in a big bed! I wouldn't need anything but the miles and miles of glorious elbow room. How marvelously decadent!

Anyway. I've spent the morning cropping little pictures of the wreaths, taking out the old carpet and mottled walls in the background to make the pictures look somewhat more attractive. They are gorgeous wreaths, I'll freely admit; my current disenchantment has more to do with the frustrations of trying to crop out the blue carpet showing through the holes in a grapevine wreath than with anything else. If you've never tried it, it's something I would definitely recommend avoiding. Consider this a friendly warning from one who would know. Not Fun. But at least I didn't have to deal with the public this morning, and on days when the schools are cancelled due to fog, that's quite a perk.

Last year I made my own wreath. I was thinking about doing it again this year. Probably, I'll nap instead. Yes, that seems more likely.