And for email.  Said in a deep sing-song voice to the sad (read: hated!) tune from Oklahoma announcing “Pore Jud is Daid,” I’m here to say “My mac is dead.”  The hardware went kaput.  I backup regularly enough, but I haven’t in about a month.  I lost everything.  I had to take her in for data recovery and hundreds of dollars later, I’m hoping the photos and writing were recovered.  Now she’s in the hands of apple.  They’re putting in a new hard drive.  No applications.  No documents.  Clean.  And I feel like I have no real record of my life.  I’ve been stripped of things, of memories, of favorites, of simple applications acquired through friends.  At least I have email, a record of my world, an almost daily account of where my head was.  In combing through them, I ran across the following email titled, “Argentina” I’d sent to a girlfriend:

So it’s the season.  The clocks are literally turning, and people
everywhere are sniffling, smelling only of cough drop lozenges.  And
here’s what I’ve caught… the rejection bug.  I swear to God, every
date I’ve been looking forward to all week has canceled on me.

Tonight, I was supposed to see Spencer, the photog boy born in (gasp)
1980, who I had sex with last week.  Just got an email from him saying
he had to cancel.  No explanation, only a very curt, “I’ll call you
later.”

And then, even worse, DAN canceled.  Friday night he was going to
cook me dinner, but since he’s having a Halloween party Sat night, the
people throwing it with him are going to his place to decorate, so he
canceled to hang with them (they’re all married).

Can I just cry?  ‘Cause I want to.  I should host a pity party.  Me and
my big new zit would like to invite you to cry for me.

Email is better than a diary because you get all the same bitching, but it’s directed toward a friend instead of (over)analytics. As distraught as I was by the death of my computer, it was a welcomed break.  Yes, I logged on with Phil’s computer from time to time, but mostly I was forced to write in my red notebook again, and I realize how much I miss that, the diary writing.  The hand-written bitching, the noticing, the cramp in my hand from having to hold the pen just the right way so the ink doesn’t dry up.  I need to write more posts under the category “daily,” where I’m boring, where it’s lists or “here’s what I did today” summaries… because I care.  It doesn’t matter if it’s interesting to read.  I need and want to document it here, without some ultimate lesson, without introspection, just a here it is account.  And while I vow to back-up my system each week once I actually get my blank computer back, I also vow to write more in my notebook, to document their milestones, to remark on my own.  Including my escape from Argentina.