So, my first-generation flat-panel iMac at home crashed this morning, for the first time in at least a year.  I’d rebooted the machine about three weeks ago, but only because of the move; unless I’m updating software, there’s never any reason for me to restart.  Needless to say, I was not expecting a kernel panic.

And, frankly, have never witnessed one like this.  The old 10.2 kernel panics were terrifying to behold:  the screen image would suddenly shatter and sort of melt, and there wasn’t any real sense of what was going on.  The 10.3 panics are eerily calm:  the screen greys out, from top to bottom, as if a shade were being drawn, and a soothing message appears on-screen informing you that the operating system has become unstable and needs to be rebooted.  I’ve only gotten a couple of those since upgrading to 10.3, but while they lack the sheer terror of the old schizoid panics, their very calmness instills a different kind of fear, as if your secretary were to call you and announce, in a too-even tone of voice, that the Department of Homeland Security wished to have a word with you.

This morning’s was something else entirely.  I’m still stuck with my dial-up connection, as Verizon hasn’t gotten its DSL act together for me yet, and so I passed by the computer on my way out of the room, selected “connect” from the modem menu, and went off to take care of something else.  When I returned, a minute or so later, my screen had turned into a PC, circa 1990—pre GUI, black screen, white pixellated text scrolling up and up and up, as if DOS had gotten caught in some mid-boot loop.  On the screen, the kernel panic info:

Exception state (sv=0×00337230)
PC=0×00337380; MSR=0×0001030; DAR=0×003373D8; DSISR=0×003373E0; LR=0×003373C8; R1=0×003372B8; XCP=0×003373E8 (Unknown code)

Backtrace:  backtrace terminated—unaligned frame address: 0×003372B8

Yes, I wrote the whole thing down.  Something about it seriously creeped me out:  the thing I love about OS X is that I can see the machine’s command-line guts if I want to, but I don’t have to.  I felt weirdly like my computer had suddenly opened its raincoat to show me something I most distinctly did not want to see.

Things that have been happening of late, or are happening in my immediate future, that prevent me from doing any substantive writing, a fact which is beginning to make me chafe a bit, but that ought to be ameliorated in the days to come:

– The last stages of a search in the English department.  I’m happy to report, however, that I was much less involved in this one than I ought to have been.  (Okay, so I’m happy to report it, but feel guilty nonetheless.)

– An absolutely amazing visit from Nalo Hopkinson, who gave a fantastic reading and held several sessions talking with students, including the students in my Race, Gender, and Science Fiction class, who now adore her.  As do I.

– A lovely housewarming party, which required a full day of shopping, cleaning, and gumbo-making, but which was absolutely the highlight of my last few weeks.  The most exciting moment of the event, however, was not exactly party-related:

– Many hours spent with plumbers and customer service managers in the new condo.  I came home last Thursday at about 9 pm to find a trickle of water, emerging from underneath a pile of R.’s boxed-up stuff and zipping across the garage.  In a panic, I moved all the boxes (which now appear only to have gotten damp on the bottom, thank goodness), to find that water was leaking from the base of the wall, where it met the foundation.  I called the 24-hour emergency customer service number (having been briefed that leaks constitute Genuine Emergencies), and the guy on call in turn called the plumber, but told me not to expect any response before morning.  Wrong.  The plumber showed up at 10.30 that night, looked at it, said “yeah, you’ve got a leak,” but decided that it wasn’t actively leaking any more, so he’d be back in the morning.  Friday morning, the customer service manager came around, pissed that the plumber hadn’t done the job the night before, and he and his crew cut into the drywall in the garage to attempt to figure out the source of the leak.  The plumber showed back up early that afternoon and ran a series of tests of this and that, still trying to figure out the leak’s source and how to stop it.  And in this came my favorite moment of the day:  at approximately 4.00 pm, the customer service guy comes up to me and says, “Uh, ma’am?  The contractor is going to cut a hole in your wall.” I have no idea what the look on my face must have been, but I said, in a slightly panicked voice, “But I’ve got forty people showing up here in an hour and a half!” The good news is that the guys conferred and decided that further demolition could wait until the next day.  The bad news is that I spent all day Saturday with the plumber, watching him cut hole after hole in my stairwell walls, which now, duct-taped together, resemble a Mondrian coloring book.  The better news, however, is that they seem to have fixed the leak, and the drywall guys should be coming any day now.

– A big pile of grading that I’m still not finished with.

– Preparations for this Thursday and Friday’s visit from the outside reviewers in our ten-year Media Studies self-study and review.

That’s the end of my whining.  I’ll be back in the swing shortly, I hope.

Mileage for week:  17 (was meant to be 11+)

Number of run days:  3

Long run for week:  10 (wasn’t specified; was meant to be a tune-up race)

Aches, pains, complaints:  Ay.  The 14-miler of last Sunday left me a bit more battered than I thought it would; I did three miles on Tuesday, and was seriously sore every step of the way.  To make things worse, I spent the bulk of this week significantly sleep-deprived, so that when I went out to do the 8 miles I meant to run on Friday, I could only manage to drag myself through 4.  My body just hadn’t had enough real rest time to recover from the last long run.  This morning, though, I met a guy from the college’s development office (or Institutional Advancement, as we’re now calling it, euphemizing our euphemisms) for a long run, the first that I’ve actually managed to do outdoors.  (Yes, yes, I know.  There are reasons, though they’re probably not good ones.) And I’ve made a remarkable discovery today:

Hills.

Yikes.  We met at the top of Thompson Creek trail, and ran 2.5 miles down the trail, and then 2.5 miles back up it, stopped briefly at our cars for some water, and then did the 5-mile Claremont Wilderness Park hill loop.  Several of the super-steep uphills were walked, I’ll confess, but less than I thought I’d have to walk.  The entire 10 miles, though, took about 20 minutes longer than I expected, and my ass now feels severely kicked.

But I’m planning on doing it again next week, with several extra miles of street-running tacked on to the front and back end.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’d heard this was coming about a week and a half ago, but like the Jewish taboo on pre-birth baby gifts, I couldn’t celebrate it until hard copy was well in hand:  I have a contract for my book!

I don’t have an estimated publication date yet, but at some point in the not ridiculously distant future, The Anxiety of Obsolescence:  The American Novel in the Age of Television will be published by Vanderbilt University Press.  I’m thrilled with the press, and particularly my editor, who is a dream:  Vanderbilt doesn’t really have a full line in my field, but she just liked the book so much she wanted to publish it.  And the press is asking for only very minor revisions.  And they have moved with lightning speed throughout the review process, as compared with other presses that shall remain nameless.

More details, no doubt, as they arise, but my readers here were so supportive and kind through the sucky period of rejection that I wanted you to be among the first to know.  Raise a glass with me this evening, if you get a chance—and thanks for helping me not give up.

So, for my first update on old business:  I’m entirely settled into the condo, though I’ve spent even less time there over the last week than I did before the movers showed up.  Things are almost entirely unpacked, with the exception of my workspace (yes, I know, should have happened by now, but “work” has taken place entirely in the office of late, so there’s been no great pressure to get that done) and the huge pile of miscellaneous stuff that has accumulated in the spare bedroom.  And the pictures:  I’m waiting for R. to come see the joint so we can decide together where the pictures should be hung.

Those last details aside, I’m in.  And I love the place.  It’s more spacious than it seemed it would be during construction, and it’s mostly really quiet.

Mostly.  The city yard, which is in the process of moving to another location, has a load of loud trucks that pass through around 5.30 every morning.  Which is, needless to say, annoying.  But which is blissfully temporary.

My only complaint at the moment, again, is how little I’ve gotten to be in the place.  I’m having a housewarming party tomorrow, and then plan on hanging out at home as much as I can this weekend.  But given that I’m still having phone-related difficulties, I’ll probably still have to spend a bunch of time in the office Saturday and Sunday, like it or not.

In the meantime, a bloggerly housewarming party:  new pictures in the gallery.

And soon, another reason to raise a glass…

So I arrived at work this morning to discover that an old class blog of mine got hit overnight with a cluster bomb of comment and trackback spam.  And, alas, it’s running on MT 2.6, so I’m having to go through and delete and close comments and pings manually.  And I’m grinding my teeth and feeling all smug for having moved to Expression Engine for this lovely blog here.

Only to figure out, when I zipped over here to post this comment, that I’ve gotten a much smaller pile of trackback spam here overnight as well.

Trying not to think about the dozens of other things I’m supposed to be doing right now…

(Oh—and reports on the new apartment, complete with pictures, coming shortly.  Once the tidying up around here is done.)