Tonight the creative juices are flowing. Alas, I can't think of a whole lot at the moment. I'm going to attempt a little covert free association (so called because you won't be able to detect when I'm doing it here, unless my slightly schizophrenic break with reality pops up and takes us on a tangent somewhere away from reality or east of Davenport, Iowa, whichever is closer).
(Potential psychotic break is sponsored by Mountain Dew Throwback. MAN this stuff is good!)
Dang. I had hoped that, by now, that bar-looking thing would have appeared on the right hand side of the screen. I love when it first appears, because it always makes me feel like I'm really accomplishing something. It's like an old friend encouraging me to keep going when the going gets tough, or like that gym coach we all had -not the big, fat guy whose armpits seemed sweat soaked even in December, but the average-sized guy who told you that you were going to do it this time.
He was right. The scroll bar is here. It's here! The thing popped up just as I was rounding out the last paragraph, but I couldn't slow down in time to let you know it was here. Not that I have slow reflexes, but I was distracted, momentarily, by what appeared to be a fruit fly hovering way over on the left hand side of the screen. You'll be relieved to know that it was, in fact, not a fruit fly but something in my eyes called a "floater". I can't tell you how many times floaters have led me to react with such precipitous force that holes in walls were created in my attempts to swat the would-be winged invaders of my domain. Anyway, the floater has now floated its way over to the other side of my left eye, so now everything important is clustered together. Spellcheck? Yep. Scroll bar? Got it. Floater? Floater? Now the stupid thing is floating back to the center of the screen, as though my vision were some kind of carpenter's level and the stigma wannabe is the bubble in the middle. Spellcheck isn't going to like this, I'll tell you. Too much interference. It's going to become pretty confusing when I keep asking it to check on the spelling of a weird occular anomaly that closely resembles a reversed ampersand.
I'm back from taking a five minute break from that last paragraph. Sorry. I should have mentioned that I was going to slip out for a moment to get something to drink. I'd have offered you something, but by now I assume you're drinking Mountain Dew Throwback . That stuff is good, you know. In a moment I'm going to wrap this up so I can proofread it. (I sure hope "proofread" is a compound word; spellcheck suddenly doesn't want to work. Note the irony.) In the meantime, I'll let you in on something I only share with my family and closest friends: lately I've been tempted to click on the "tilde" key. That's the one in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard. Mind you, I might not actually be so bold as to hold down the shift key at first. I think that would be rather presumptuous, don't you? What is that odd character that looks like a backward preceeding quote of a quote -the symbol which shares the tilde key? Anyway, the tilde key seems so mysterious -so downright foreign in a men-here-all-have-moustaches-and-all-the-buildings-are-at least-two-hundred-years-old kind of way. I think I want to click it, but I'm concerned that if I do, some foreign embassy will phone me and tell me to cut it out before I accidentally start an international incident or something. For all I know, the thing is benevolent. Maybe it doesn't mind being clicked every now and then. Hey, maybe it's hoping to be clicked. Since I bought this computer some time back, I've hit the "e" key some 9,117 times thus far. (I'm also obsessive-compulsive, but we'll save that that for another subject. Ask me about how I wore out my doorknob sometime.) It could be that the tilde key feels left out. Why not click on it? The worst that could happen is that the embassy will call me, asking me why I'm clicking their icon.
I'm going to do it! I don't mind telling you I feel a little nervous about this, since I've never been in serious trouble before. Here goes:
~
I did it! I've waited a long time to do that! If you'll give me a minute, I want to go look in the mirror to see if I look different, plus I'm so proud right now that I need to wipe my eyes. When I awoke this morning, I never thought I'd have accomplished anything so advanced as a tilde. I mean, it was just last week that I had finally mastered percentage symbol, and let me say right now that taming that little symbol is no mean feat. Now, at 12:04 Eastern time, I've broken new ground. The tilde has been clicked! I'm calling my mom and my brother to share the great news!
But first, I need to take a phone call.
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