Monday, July 8, 2013

Dear God ... Why Blog? Why Now?

Dear God,

I have no idea why I'm writing this blog ... other than to say ... You made me. Seriously, I'm following the inner prompt. Wow. "Inner prompt" Where did I pull that one from?

This is what happens when you overeducate a person. Especially when you overeducate a person in a wordy discipline in the Humanities. See? I didn't say "verbose." I caught myself ... but just barely.

"Inner prompt" sounds like some phrase from one of those awful self-help/yoga/new age/manifesting classes. (It's all running together these days.) Something like,

"Follow the inner prompt your spirit is sending ... and somehow this translates into huffing and puffing through alternating nostrils on a hardwood floor..."

Anyway, I keep hearing through readings and the like that I should blog, so I am. I have all these thoughts and obviously the world needs to hear them.

However, I have to digress to talk about the computer set up I'm on right now. I'm sitting in a Best Western (not the hotel of my best moments - more later) and blogging on the computer in the Business Center.

I'm here on a business trip with only my work laptop and blogging on my work laptop just feels wrong. Don't you think? I cannot bring myself to write about my inner prompts and nasal huffing on a work laptop. I just think, "They'll know! They'll know I have a personality and then I'll be out on the steets!"

So, my "inner prompt" leaves me with only one option: the great American ... hotel business center.

For starters, I just walked in from a stroll through the neighborhood that included a pitstop at Trader Joe's, which resulted in me carrying a TJ bag in through the lobby. As I sat down, I heard a swift knock on the door behind me. It was the front desk clerk asking me if I was staying here.

He was quite apologetic, but seeing it through his eyes, I can see how a woman in her frumpy, after-work, exercise clothes walking in with a grocery bag doesn't exactly scream, "Paying customer!" As I pulled out my room key, he backed away apologizing. I wonder how many people walk in off the street and try to use the computer here .... hmmmm.

That brings me back to the computer here, which is after all the subject of my first or second digression. Maybe my third? But I digress.

The browser on this computer is on lockdown to prevent you from watching porn mostly. At least, I think. Maybe they had too many people walking in off the street and had to change it. Anyway, lockdown means custom browser, which means not IE, not Firefox, not Chrome. It's some other cock-eyed browser chock full of off-brand icon buttons that look sort of like the major browsers but are just different enough to be disorienting.

Here's the thing - I am convinced that this custom hotel business center browser is actually NETSCAPE with a different spinning letter in upper right corner. Yeah, that's right NETSCAPE!!!

The younger you are, the more likely it is that you have no idea what I'm talking about here. Netscape was the early competitor to IE back in the very, very early days of the World Wide Web. So early that we actually called it the "World Wide Web."

Anyone who ever went to college in the 90s knows all about Netscape because it was loaded on every university computer in the library. And this was back when the computers were so big, they had to start building extra wings to fit them all in.

The longer I describe Netscape, the deeper the PTSD that started when I first sat down is getting. Wow! Memories.

The other most noticeable thing about the locked-down hotel business center computer is that the monitor is GIGANTIC! I think it's the biggest monitor I've ever seen that's not a TV. In fact, it might be bigger than my TV.

The weird part is that the resolution and the text are TINY and I can't change it because of the aforementioned lockdown. Warning: overeducated Humanities student at the keyboard!

As a result, the text I'm typing looks like tiny littly ants crawling across the screen while 60-70% of the screen is blank, white space. It's the stupidest thing.

They didn't even have to lock it down so strangers off the street wouldn't come in here to watch porn. They couldn't see what was happening anyway.

Alright, I think I have satisfied both God and the inner prompt. Good night!

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