Where are my Virtual Smelling-Salts?

My computer, upon being turned on today, proceeded to experience a seizure, and fall down in a proverbial swoon. After a system scan that took half and hour but produced no clue as to my laptop's ill-health, I rebooted, and my laptop emerged from her fainting spell perfectly willing to be as cooperative as she had been before. I suspect it had something to do with the fact that she has become used to having her rooms regularly swept and clean by the maid Window Washer trial I acquired, and my failure to buy the program before the trail period ran out must have left her rather distressed by the amount of clutter remaining in her harddrives. Oh well.

I've been reading like mad, and, for once, exercising regularly - by combining the two (reading while peddling away on the exercise bike), it has become easier to do both. I've already finished one of the books I am supposed to review for Green Man, and the last novel I have to read for Victorian Lit (that would be Mary Barton), and am now working my way through the textbook for my Hollywood Cinema class, a book about theatre, novels, and some cinema, and how they are related to the cultural left in the 30s and 40s. Some of it's interesting, but only a very little of it really has to do with the class. At least I'm reading it - many of my classmates have admitted that they don't even bother with it.

Also, I'm keeping my desire to write alive by reading my copy of The Canadian Writer's Handbook (13th edition). It's a wonderful tome full of hundreds of articles by Canadian writers on how to write, how to research, how to find inspiration...I've desided that if I spend a few minutes reading one article a day, I can get through it without having to wait while I read through all of the others books on my list first.

Now that I've withdrawn from NaNoWriMo, I can start writing Reading the Willow King anytime I please, and I think it will be soon. First though, I'm going to try and finish "Desert Muse", and pester my mother into reading the second draft of The Shining Empress.