I stepped into the future this morn­ing. I opened up my pack­age from Amazon.com, and found my birth­day present to myself, my new Kin­dle. For a long time, I poo-poo’d the whole idea of the Kin­dle. Books should be printed on paper and bound with glue and have pretty and col­or­ful and attrac­tive cov­ers to look at. And peo­ple should have copi­ous book­shelves on which to hold these books.

At the same time, I was secretly intrigued by the tech­nol­ogy and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the Kin­dle. Remem­ber when I went to Palm Springs all those years ago? I used to lug three or more paper­backs with me, some of which were parts of series, and after fin­ish­ing them, I would often drag myself out of my pool-side chair to drive to the Barnes & Noble in Palm Desert only to find that they didn’t have what I wanted. And I would be kinda pissed off. Well, those days are over with the Kin­dle. Seri­ously. This is not an adver­tise­ment. I’m not being paid for this. I love the Kin­dle. Now that I have one for myself and have seen how it works, I won­der why I waited so long.

When V and I moved into our cur­rent abode, we made a sac­ri­fice with space. There is no room here for book­shelves and a library. When I cleared out my stor­age, I “donated” dozens of paper­backs that I didn’t really want to get rid of, but in all real­ity, couldn’t keep any­where. Granted, I’ll have to repur­chase those books that I would like to read again, but I won’t ever have to move stuff around to find a spot to put them any­more — and feel guilty about doing so. They’re all stored on the device, and even if I remove them from the device, they’re stored at Amazon’s site and can be down­loaded again at a moment’s notice. I’m totally in love.

That said, I really do hope it hooks me up again. I loved to read and dis­tract myself from real­ity for a while. But with com­put­ers and the inter­net and YouTube and every­thing else vying for my atten­tion — and fuck­ing WoW, Jesus on the cross, Ennis is drag­ging his butt to get to 80, hon­estly — I won­der how effec­tive it will be. I hope so. And I hope that more col­lege classes allow Kin­dle ver­sions of their text­books to be used. OMG. Can you imag­ine? I’ve already seen a few listed, and it’s bound to happen.

This is the way of the future. I can’t wait.

1. “Numb” — Pink — Mis­sun­daz­tood
2. “Come to Me” — Bonnie Raitt — Luck of the Draw
3. «Ne viens pas» — Roch Voi­sine — Sauf si l’amour
4. “Can’t Stop” — Ozomatli — SXSW 2010 Show­cas­ing Artists
5. “I Turn to You” — Melanie C — North­ern Star
6. «Le bon­heur te fait de l’œil» — France D’amour — Les autres
7. “New Amsterdam” — Elvis Costello — The Very Best of
8. “Mon­day Monday” — Mrs. Miller — OMG where the fuck did I get this?
9. “Out and In” — Moody Blues — Time Trav­eller (Disc 2)
10. “Con­fide in Me” — Kylie Minogue — Con­fide in Me

OMG. I have a new e-mail domain, and I’m try­ing to set it up, and it just won’t work. I have set up e-mail accounts before, but this one just stumps me, and I’m pissed off. Much later…OK, so it’s POP, not IMAP. I’m not a techie!!! I’m a total wannabe. I swear to god.

I worked three days this week, and today I’m off. Whatever.

I woke up with V to go do my laun­dry, and 1) I went all the way down­stairs and across the street to the laun­dro­mat with­out my money (duh), so I pre­treat a few things with the soap that I brought with me, and 2) when I went back to get the money, I brought the soap back with me and left it at the apart­ment and then picked up my quar­ters, so 3) when I got back to the ’mat, I real­ized that I hadn’t put any deter­gent in the washer and was forced to buy the lit­tle boxes of Tide at the ’mat. What. The. Fuck.

I’m sick of this.

Hey Uni­verse, how about hold­ing up your end of the deal?

Sorry, G’ville, I can’t take it any­more. Your locals are so methy and cracky that I just don’t want to deal. It makes my soul hurt to see so many peo­ple who have given up. Your cli­mate is hot and dusty and dry. Your local cui­sine is lack­ing. Your local enter­tain­ment is … well, it isn’t. The Lodge was a clus­ter­fuck, and it’s a walk into town on a busy, two-lane high­way, and I don’t trust your dri­vers to be legally licensed and sober enough to stay on the road and not come careen­ing into me. I know you would like to con­sider your­self “awfully handy to the city,” but you’re not. I just can’t hack it any­more. I don’t think we’ll be see­ing much of each other in the future. We’re just not meant to be.

1. Une place sur terre — Liane Foly
2. Le coureur — Jean-Jacques Goldman
3. Adri­enne — Isabelle Boulay
4. Sur le même bateau — Céline Dion
5. Dis ce que tu as — Marilou
6. De sable et de rochers — Marie-Elaine Thibert
7. Cow­boy virtuel — Roch Voisine
8. Un ave maria — Lara Fabian
9. Je t’aime encore — France D’amour
10. Et la regarder — Lau­rence Jalbert

Et pourquoi pas ?

So, this week­end, we’re jet­ting off to the Russ­ian River to spend the Fourth of July week­end with the gays. Not exactly what I would like to do, but at this point, it’s all about com­pro­mise, n’est-ce pas? Last year, we camped, in tents, and it was freez­ing and messy with 15 other peo­ple. This year, we’ve got a cozy room in the Guerneville Lodge all to our­selves with no mess and no dirt. The group sup­pos­edly has near 30 peo­ple camp­ing in one spot. I just can’t han­dle that, and thank­fully nei­ther can V, and that’s why we’ve got a room. So we’ll spend Sat­ur­day after­noon and evening drink­ing with every­one, sleep in a pri­vate room, spend Sun­day and Sun­day night drink­ing and cavort­ing and what­ever, and then come home on Mon­day. What­ever. Compromise.

Gosh, what else. Life is soooo exciting.