Well, it’s been an emotional week thus far. And it’s only Wednesday.
Inspired by a flip through a friend’s yearbook (he’s four years older than I am, so the hair was quite humorous), I decided to take mine off the shelf. I hadn’t looked at them in a couple years and have been avoiding it lately. I don’t want to get suckered into going to the upcoming all-school reunion. That is not to say that graduates of all schools are invited, but that anyone who ever graduated from my alma mater (and no, it was not the mother of my soul) can attend. The town will be overrun with green and gold, I fear, and I will be hiding out in my studio on the North Side. Avoidance of chance meetings is key.
I don’t have enough distance between that time and the present to get all misty and shell out the big bucks to go to the reunion. Maybe I’ll go to the next one.

So, a flip through the old Lagoons revealed the following:
*I never smiled in high school until my senior year, after my braces were removed.
*I apparently spent all of my free time tweezing my brows, as they are virtually invisible in all photos in which I am not wearing stage makeup.
*I still hate every costume I ever had to wear in high school. Hate.
*Low-rise pants really do look better than the “traditional” cut jeans we were wearing back in the 90s.
* I don’t think any of the techies pictured in the yearbook is still in technical theatre, nor are the actors acting. But damn, did I have a laugh over that light board!
*Our sets look even worse in retrospect.
And, worst of all, my senior photo, printed in color, features my natural hair color. I thought I’d destroyed all the evidence!

Other exciting things:
Another trip to the Unemployment Office. I still have to generate more paperwork. And I have to go to the Social Security office to get a new card. They’re a necessary object in this process and I haven’t seen mine since college. I looked through my things in the garage, in the hopes that it could be tucked away in my high school wallet, but alas, no. I did find my expired passport, which will come in handy when I go to the Social Security office. It also means one less form to fill out when I want to renew my passport. Natural haircolor there too, but who really looks like their passport photo?

I dropped my laptop today. Well, let me rephrase that: it fell. I tripped over the cord and it fell to the floor, my poor precious irreplaceable computer fell to the floor, open, landing on its downstage edges. It is, as far as I can tell, fully functional. Thank god! However, it has a few largely cosmetic problems. The keyboard has shifted upstage right, so that the alt key is really clicky now. I think it’s too close to the upstage edge of its casing. The purely ornamental frame around the screen has opened in its seam. No, it’s not cracked open. The screen is fine. The seam just opened up a bit. And the little frame around the touchpad was askew, but I snapped it back into place. Luckily, the touchpad is as good as ever.
I can’t help but think that this wouldn’t have happened if I had a desk or a table on which to use my computer. I used to use a little stool, just the right size for my laptop, but my mother took it away and never brought it back. So, I’ve been using the ironing board instead. A bad solution, today’s events would indicate.
So, I called the lovely people at Sony Support. They were very nice. They told me, after several long holds, that my computer was still under warranty and it would be away for ten working days in turnaround for diagnostics and repair. Well, the thought of being without the computer for ten days made me nervous, but I was relieved that the extended warranty would come in handy. A largish sum of money was spent upon that extension. Then they transferred me to the repairs people. A different story was given there. The warranty will not cover physical damage and they estimated $300 in repair costs. I don’t have three hundred dollars and few prospects for getting three hundred dollars anytime in the near future. Well, maybe if the NY group would cough up my check… but I have other plans for that money. I’d hoped to use it to pay my phone bill, but its ETA is unclear and T-Mobile doesn’t take the idea of money. The swell thing about that situation is that it forces me to talk to my ex-boyfriend regarding the checks. I keep it strictly on topic, but it puts the kibosh on never speaking to him again.