So here's the news on my pc. My motherboard is fried, and my old Pentium 2 chip is probably damaged as well. As I suspected, the culprit was that power surge in my apartment that happened on Wednesday night (10/23). I've never had a power surge in my apartment before, and it not only blew out my computer but the fuse in my apartment as well. I have a surge protector, but the techie said that the one I probably have was too small to handle all the devices that I have connected to it.

I think my hard drive is okay, but I'll find out today when I go to the shop.

I have two options regarding my computer.

1) Find a Pentium 2 motherboard and 233 chip to put in my old computer
2) Have a computer built from scratch at the computer place, and have my hard drive if it's still alive installed as a second drive, so I can at least get the data off the computer.

Option 1 is cheaper, and it will take time to find these very old components. Option 2 is a lot more expensive, but at least I'll have a new computer and my old data.

After much discussion with friends, both techie and non-techie, I've decided to have a new computer built. My PC is five years and is on its last legs, and this whole experience has taught me that I need a stable computer system.

Damn! I hate spending money though, unless I absolutely have to!!! It's been one thing after another for me these last three months. In early September, my new car window broke. Thankfully I was so close to my warranty that the dealer fixed it all for free. In early October my refrigerator broke, but it was old as dirt anyway and the building manager replaced it for free. And now in early November, the trusty but ancient computer dies.

I'm like thinking, is there anything else that I own that is old and is ready to break and is going to break in early December?

I'm kicking myself a little because I wish I'd taken my friend's advice last year, and bought a new pc last year when my computer broke the first time. He would have built a computer for me for free, but I've lost touch with him now.

Because I'm buying a new computer, I won't be buying a laptop till I pay the computer off which won't happen till the spring of 2003. I'm still intent on buying a laptop because I don't ever want to go without a computer ever, ever again.

I keep telling myself it could have been worse and really, I'm okay, but I'm still a little unhappy about this new turn of events.

This is totally trippy. I had some down time at work, so I started writing from the point of view of Cashani. In my story, there was a Great Species War where the humans decided to take over the land and wipe out all the non human creatures. After the Great Species War, Cashani and Bianti's tribe decided to kill all the half human/half non humans to appease the gods and bring prosperity back to the tribe and land. It was Cashani's ancestor who advised the tribe to kill the mutant humans.

I didn't know this until I started writing the story from Cashani's viewpoint. I'm like, no wonder Cashani totally wanted to kill Bianti when she found out that Bianti was part elf and part human. It was an ancestor thing.

My stories are always so complicated and I don't know how complicated they are until I start writing them. Simple stories are easier to tell. Why this happens is so unknown to me, because I don't try to make my stories complicated on purpose, because then you have to work that much harder. But I know I need to go where the stories take me, I just sometimes wish the road to the end was just a little straighter.

So I'm writing my "Crow Priestess" novel, and I'm doing something I've never done before. Usually, I start a story and tell it from the protagonist's point of view all the way through. All of a sudden I'm getting the urge to switch it to one of the other character's point of view. It's a first draft so I figure I can do anything I want right now.

I have about twenty pages, two or three chapters I think, about the main protagonist - Bianti. She's 18 years old, and part elf and part human priestess. Now I want to start another chapter from the point of view of her main antagonist, Cashani. Cashania is 50 years old, and is the one who forms the alliance among the other priestesses to murder Cashani.

Here's the start of the Cashani chapter.

Am I bitter about what happened? I suppose in a way I am. Bianti is still alive, and me? I float around in the dark, disembodied, and dead to everything but the memories of what I went through that fateful summer. Would I have done it again knowing that what I did contributed to not only my death, but the death of my whole tribe? Absolutely. I was supposed to be the next head priestess, and not some child barely out of diapers. I was the one who should have been chosen to be the spiritual leader of the tribe, and not some subhuman mutant. But you must judge for yourself which one of us was justified, which one of us was right? If you were in my position, I know you would have done the same.

If you haven't heard the inspiring story of Jake Porter's touchdown, check it out. Jake Porter's TD.

I heard the coaches interviewed on Jim Rome's The Jungle, and what they did was so amazing and heartwarming!