Live from Maconia

I'm coming to you live, for the first time, from the O'Connor family iBook G4, where "delete" means "backspace", "right click" means "click on the other part of the same button and try not to punch anything when Windows commands don't appear to the right of the cursor", and "pay bills online" means "give Bank of America the same information 47 times, download Mozilla Firefox, give the same information 19 more times, and then give up and write a paper check for your cell phone bill".

My Mac exploits so far include putting all my music in one place for the first time in months, synching up my iPod with my Honda TTS software (and being only somewhat disappointed with the results), and downloading four new albums: Kanye West's last two, Talib Kweli's "Quality," and Supergrass's "Road to Rouen," all before Jill warned me that I'm not to purchase any new music this soon before my birthday.

Speaking of birthdays, Jill bought me a new overcoat yesterday, one whose sleeves are at least eight inches longer than my last one, and which extends a solid two feet lower, covering not only my ass, but my newly thawed thighs and knees. This will come in handy when I go back to work tomorrow through the foot-and-a-half of snow that God dumped on us today (though I'm not complaining, as I stayed in bed with my iBook, my iPod dock, and my other lover until after four o'clock this afternoon).

We spent yesterday in Worcester, watching the Holy Cross basketball team blow a big lead against Patriot League powerhouse Bucknell with Jill's dad and her cousin's son Riley. Every trip to Holy Cross reiterates my regret over not going to a school that cared about its basketball team. Holy Cross's high school-sized gym has two student sections, one of which wears purple "Tim's Tribe" t-shirts in honor of center Tim Clifford, while the other side wears "MVP Kevin Hamilton" t-shirts. They stagger their "let's go 'saders," "defense," and "asshole" chants for maximum penetration and wield signs like "Don't Panic," with a life-sized picture of Bucknell's Piniella-complexed head coach screaming at a ref, and "Classy Abe," with a picture of Bucknell guard Abe Titmus with two white girls (I'd love to know the story behind this one). The air was let out of the gymnasium gradually, as Bucknell mounted a comeback over the last eight minutes, during which time a horde of rowdy Pennsyltuckians made their presence felt.

On Friday night, we hosted Kate and Matt, enjoyed Jill's top-shelf cooking, and played three rounds of a DVD music game they brought called "Riff". Not a bad weekend.