Poor, sad, broken Lappy

That's band-aid tape, covering up and reinforcing Krazy Glue (tape-reinforced Krazy Glue was the suggestion of the computer engineer who visited this summer). The crack goes all the way around the monitor frame, in what are actually two distinct breaks in the plastic. Chris has declared the fix to be temporary, and it's still wobbly and a bit iffy when you open and close the lid. And so I pretty well should just start keeping the laptop open and stop moving it around.

Between the rapidly-degenerating power cord, the cracked network card and this, I'm the less-than-proud owner of a non-portable laptop. The perfect accessory for the grad student who travels a lot.

Great. Now we need to figure out how soon we can replace this stupid computer. I already know that the answer is "not very soon," considering the fact that we're still slowly paying off this summer's travels. And have to figure out how to pay for flying out this Christmas.

(And now I'll stop ranting and raving and get some work done.)

(Trivia: the other items you see on my desk are Irmgard Keun's Artificial Silk Girl, my catch-all notebook, my pen, a bunch of European coins, and a photo of my family. You can just barely see a Boylan pop bottle right behind the photo.)