I am in bed, my back killing me, but not with the same urgency as in the beginning of the week. We have a wireless system in the house now, and I am carefully negotiating the effects of the chimney, to be able to half lie in bed and still be online - through my son's lap-top. My own is too old for easy installment of the wireless link - and I have started talking to the department about a new one - lap-top that is. I am drooling over the Pentium IVs, suggesting both a Dell and a Toshiba to the department. I need something buff enough to play games and movies and to support the increasing graphic work I know I'll have to take on, since the department is less than subtly reminding me that my other main subject is art history, and I should be well suited to teaching visual communication. I already have a Dell which has followed me faithfully and with remarkably few problems all over for three years. It's a robust, serviceable computer, and I like the no-nonsense design. But it's also WAY more expensive than other, comarable computers. I haven't tried Toshiba, but this machine is highly recommended in the computer magasines, and they are good at making light-weight, smooth computers. Weight is important for me, the way my back is these days.

I know, I know, there's a whole lot of people out there shouting "If you are to spend that much money: GET A MAC". And I would, if there was an apple distributor within 40 miles from the College. No such thing, I am afraid, and I am not adventourous enough to want to learn how to use a new system right now. In 2-3 years, when I start thinking of updating this lap-top, we'll talk!

But in between having these sticky fantasies over technological items, I have re-structured the first five chapters completely. Chapter 2 has been butchered brutally, and put into the other chapters, and chapter 5 has been split into two chapters. I might do the same to chapter 3. So by now chapter 3 is chapter 2, chapter 4 is chapter 3 (a and b) and chapter 5 is chapter 4 & 5. Confused yet? Just wait until I mix chapters 6 - 12 into this.