March 10, 2003--Power to the people. Pardon any typos...my hands are still shaky from going through computer withdrawl. Last Wednesday I booted up my computer (a laptop) to do some writing, only to discover that it was running off the battery. It worked just fine on Tuesday night so, feeling the pain of those of you who might have ever worked help desk, I checked all the plugs, made sure the surge protector was working, etc. All the basics. The diagnosis? My power brick decided to conk out on me. It's over three years old, so I'm not at all surprised, but at that point I had about 25 minutes of power left in the battery. That had been enough time to download e-mail, skim through them, check other e-mail accounts, check the weather, but not respond to anything yet.

K'Tok was able to find another power brick, and had it Fed Ex'ed to my work. It was supposed to be "overnight shipping" but I guess we got the order in a little late, so it came on Friday. I was at work on Saturday, then K'Tok and I did a lot of errands and shopping on Sunday, so I'm finally getting around to writing again.

The good news about it was that instead of jumping up to check my e-mail every 15 minutes, I actually was able to put some significant work into sewing our Renaissance Faire costumes. I think I completed my bustle that day, plus started working on K'Tok's doublet. I have less than 3 weeks to finish two complete costumes, and I don't think I'm going to make it. At least I should be able to finish K'Tok's costume, and I'll go in one of my older costumes, but I still would have liked to have a new one. There's just something fun about going to Faire all dressed up! Though my favorite part is the challenge of taking a pattern and altering it to fit the image I have in my mind.

Finally, before I run to work, I have to say a BIG THANK YOU to those of you who have been purchasing books and other items from this site! I recently received a deposit from Amazon that covered over a month's worth of site hosting. Between that deposit and the commission not yet deposited from this sales quarter, you guys have helped with two months of site hosting already. That really means a lot to me, and I'm trying to come up with new articles for the site. I haven't been doing as much reading lately due to the aforementioned sewing, and I've been suffering some writer's block again, but it is very motivational to see that people want to help keep this site alive and free of outside advertising. So again, THANK YOU!

Time to finish getting ready for work...I try to write during my lunch break, so maybe my muse will kick me in the rear today....