Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Layering. That's the first thing I think of when I listen to this album. The senseless phrases that don't have to mean something necessarily, just sound nice, with the french horns and pedalsteels and trombones and saxophones and his smooth as silk falsetto.

This is the kind of album that romance is made to dance with.

To have a listen through:

http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/7989-bon-iver/

Cheers!

Missed Abortions and The Pursuit of Happiness

I never ever thought I'd be the emotional type, although clearly, I am. I mean, at least somewhat, on the inside. Most of you know me as happy happy Shani. And I am, really. I think I'm just at a loss at how to describe the experience of just being in a room, a dark room, that smells of goop and intimate parts.

I was supposed to be observing a pregnancy scan: 10 weeks, 5 days. My heart stopped when I didn't see a baby kicking and moving on screen, although I hope to God the mother didn't see it on my face. I tend to remain stoic, neutral and I tried to be that way for the entire duration of the scan, while the doctor poked and prodded. It was my first experience with a miscarriage, and to be honest, all I want to do is burst into tears. Maybe I might, and I don't know when it will hit me. I don't even know why I feel this way. 

I thought about me being on that chair, receiving that news. Would I have someone with me to hold my hand? Would that someone be holding my hand? Or would I be there alone, holding my own hand, like I always am? Would I feel like I had lost a part of myself, would I feel as if some part of me would now forever be missing? Would I cry or would I just maintain that stoic, neutral face, accepting circumstances with a grim determination?

Would I face God with the same sort of gritty realistic demeanour I put on every time I get some bad news? "Oh yes, throw another one at me why don't you. I'll be strong for You, in You."

Makes you question what is meant to be, what is isn't. This isn't the time or the place, when is the time or place? When will my miracle come for me? Questions of self-pity and anger all bubble together and empty out of your uterus, possible hope and futures bubbling out in little streams of consciousness that have changed the reaches of your universe.

This is more than school, this is life. I don't think I'm ready for it at all.

HALP MY CAMPUTR WAZ BROKEDED!1!1!!!!!!

So for those of you who don't know, this past week my computer basically got systematically destroyed with a most malicious virus. It truly isn't a tale for the faint hearted, especially because now I'm running Ubuntu. Me. Shani. It actually isn't that scary. At all. So far.

It all started a few weeks ago with facebook telling me on occasion that spammy links were posted, except the only facebook links I would click were youtube videos, so that was seemingly impossible. I just kind of ignored it, everything else seemed fine. But then, Monday morning, everything went black and then it told me I had errors on my hard disk or something and that I didn't have enough RAM, but to fix the errors I had to purchase the advanced module. Ummmm....what? Shit. Virus. What do I do? What do I do? I called my friend Berin up, who advised me to go to IT services. Except here, all tech stuff to do with viruses is done through the campus computer store. Long story short, they took my laptop for 2 days and I was out $130 or so by the end of it. Oh yeah, I didn't have this much money so I had to call my dad in the middle of the day close to tears for it. Stage 1 complete.

So then I kept on getting calls from the tech guy, let's call him Laul, saying that my laptop was being quirky and he wanted to reformat. By this time, MULTIPLE people had told me I was an idiot for paying someone and that they'd help out. Only one pulled through. I still owe Ken a lot of beer :P.

So, anyway, Laul kept on insisting that he wanted to reformat it and I kept on saying no. So I got it back from him and started gingerly playing around with it, seemed fine....kinda. But it wasn't. Every time I would search for something in google, it would redirect me. Freaking useless tech guys for the win. Started scanning with several different softwares, scans which take like 6 hours to run, maybe less, maybe more. All found stuff and got rid of it, but that virus STILL hadn't gone.

Frustrated, after a couple days, I started googling "viruses that redirect", and if you have some spare time, do it too. Turn out the google redirect virus is a bitch and a half, with a bastard on the side. Very malicious, impossible to detect. Hell, even programs that target it specifically weren't allowed to run in the same computer. So then the IT guy in my lab (not Laul) and I decided to do a system recovery, however, it would only allow me to go back to the 7th (the day the virus first exploded on my computer). And when we tried to do a system restore to the factory settings, well, long story short, we found out the virus had corrupted our backup recovery drive, but allowed a PARTIAL reformatting, so basically now I had no OS. That was the final "up yours" the virus gave me. What to do, what to do. No recovery discs in this province, and no computer. WHAT WAS I GOING TO DO ALL WEEKEND?

Two hours of stress later, Ken suggested Ubuntu. I had no idea what it was. Now I do. I went from not having a computer to have a computer and it was pretty awesome to have a computer, to be honest.  What a week, what a week, what a week. I survived with a smile and a swift kick in the ass.

What I learned? That people without computers go to bed at 9 pm because there isn't anything to do that isn't expensive. Trust me, 2 movies, 3 books, 4 beers later, it gets pretty up there.

Cheers!

Day 21: What Chaos in all its Structure Sounds Like....