So.

For those of you who don't know and do care, I am beginning a Master's program in Library Science, through the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. It's an online program (referred to as LEEP, or will be once we get through the ten-day introductory session, which includes orientation, tech training and one course. And they do, in fact refer to it as "boot camp."

Before I can even get to Day One, I need to tell you that on Day T-Minus Two, my laptop fell into a coma from which it has yet to be resuscitated. After the weeping was over, I called up CompUSA, since it's still under warranty. (Yay!). However, the tech support line was unable to help me, despite their efforts. (Boo.) They said I could bring it in to any location to get it worked on (Yay!), but it turns out there isn't a CompUSA within 100 miles of Champaign-Urbana. (Boo.) So, I brought the useless plastic unaerodynamic frisbee along, hoping that the LIS Tech Support people could help. They could not.

I am not, repeat, not, thinking about the possibility that everything that I've put on my hard drive since I last backed it up onto Zip (which was longer ago than it should be) could be lost. The irony being that the damned thing went kablooey when I plugged in the Zip drive to back everything up. Take that, Alanis.

Anyway. The campus here is quite nice, and the weather today was bee-yoo-tee-full. I'm glad I brought my bike, although last night after I took it out of the car I had to struggle for twenty minutes with a wire coat hanger conveniently left in the car after my quick change escapade a few weeks ago to get the chain unjammed and re-threaded which resulted in hands that were black with grease but then you don't really want to hear about that do you? Ahem. I'm staying in the dorm, which is a bit of a shock. The room is very small, and I haven't had to share a communal bathroom since, well, the dorms my freshman year. We spent the day being oriented, techhed to speed, and expectationated. Not, overall, as bad as I expected (except for the take-this-microphone-and-spend-thirty-seconds-identifying-yourself ritual), and very few people have fatally annoyed me so far, which puts them ahead of most crowds. But I am very behind on readings, which I must work on as soon as I post this. Sadly, I had them all stored on my laptop (moment of silence), and the packets were all sold out today. God, I sound like Marvin the Paranoid Android. It's not really all that bad, but I'm keenly aware that things haven't really started yet, and there's a lot of work ahead.

One weird thing: the woman who coordinates the LEEP program talks very much like Jeanne Cavelos, which is comforting and strange at the same time.

That's all the time I can really allow myself to spend. Things are going great, Ma. Send Gummi Bears.