Insect Eyes

My hard drive died on Monday. Strangely, I'd been having some anxiety about it, so I'd backed up a number of my important files on Sunday. Even though I hadn't done a system backup since March, my music, Photoshop files, all of my videos were saved. I lost six months of photos and 3 years of crap accumulated from living online. I didn't cry. I took my baby in to the Apple store and took the only available appointment 5 hours later. I told the Apple store guy that my hard drive was KO'd, but he didn't believe me. Half an hour later, he reported back to me that my hard drive was dead. I decided that this was excellent timing to start over. I renamed my computer, admitting that it was not the same machine I've loved all these years and started rebuilding.

While I waited for my appointment, I had five hours to kill in Bethesda (ick). I spent a good deal of time in Barnes&Noble. I picked up about six books, read the first chapter of each and bought the ones that I wanted to keep reading. At least, that was the plan, but I couldn't bring myself to read the whole first chapter of the crappy chick-lit title, Something Borrowed. I don't know why I even touched that one at all.
New Books:
Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho, the author of The Alchemist. I am considering letting it change my life.
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
The Double by Jose Saramago
The Story of O by Pauline Reage
I also started reading Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon by Chuck Palahniuk, which I bought from Amazon a couple of months ago along with a bunch of guidebooks.

Also new this week from eMusic:
The Mountain Goats- The Sunset Tree
Mirah- Advisory Committee
Destroyer- Destroyer's Rubies
Devendra Banhart- Rejoicing in the Hands

I have been craving Fall, so I've escaped there in music. I listened to Devendra Banhart a lot last winter, so I'm stimulating my sensory memory. Cold weather smells good. The past couple of days have been cooler and rainy-- I love it.



I've been keeping the music-related stuff on MOG. There is a really nice community of music lovers over there. Something I'd like to see is more integration of show schedules and calendars to the UI, 'cause I like shows. I also joined ReverbNation, but they haven't entered public beta yet, so it is difficult to tell how useful it will be.

Emily - MOG:

[Last] Saturday night, my good friends The Fake Accents had their CD release party at the Galaxy Hut in Arlington. It was packed...

Read more music-related stuff there. Also, check out Steff's awesome new photo blog, The Daily Sky, and Roxanne's travel blog, Roxanne on the Road.