I’ve invested in Microsoft Office 2007 (thank god for student discounts, cost about €50 online). Of course, as soon as I buy it I hear that MS’s website are doing a beta Office 2010 as of today? I hate technological advancement. I’ve nearly had this laptop a full year and it’s probably already out of date. All the newest models are tiny little netbooks or whatever you call them. Anyways… I hope Office will serve me well. What made me end my long-term relationship with Works is the dissertation.

Smaller essays of 7 or 8 pages, some blocks of text and a few embedded images, Works handles that fine. But if you’ve got a file thats 30+ pages of text, and more with images… Works starts playing games. It likes to forget to keep your footnotes corresponding to the page (footnote four on page four is actually on page seven?). Likes to forget to keep them aligned properly (you can find random footnotes pushed into the centre when they should run from left to right). It’s second favourite game is Not Responding.

It freezes and for those heart-attack-inducing 30 seconds while it says “Not Responding” on your 30+ paged, 10-credit nightmare of a godzilla-sized essay, you really think it’s all going to go down the sinkhole. No USB back up will save you or your sanity at this point. Countless times this Not Responding thing has happened to me in the library reading rooms and I’ve had to literally bite my tongue and shut my eyes from the screen while mentally begging it to unfreeze so I can quickly re-save whatever paragraph I had re-written. Honestly, not fun. I’m hoping Word and I will make a good tagteam from now on.

In other news,  since my neighbour got robbed and broken into, I’m still sleeping with my bat by my bed. Dad insists all is fine, thieves don’t (“statistically”) strike the same area twice, and that he only got broken into because he doesn’t stay there at night a lot (spends a lot of time at his girlfriend’s) and if a thief was looking for a place to rob, he would notice that kind of thing. But it just freaks me out to think that a thief WOULD scope out this area and go, “Oh yeah, that house is always empty at night cuz the guy goes off in the evenings. Perhaps to his girlfriend’s house.” and maybe, “Oh, look at that house next to it. Yes. I can’t rob that house because it’s obviously always inhabited, or can I?”

In which case yours truly goes screaming apeshit and inflicts brain damage with a bat. My favourite phrase is “Don’t get scared, get angry.” Although I don’t always abide by it because fear can be stronger than anger. But if you’ve got something to protect, like a house… I mean, a female under threat is a powerful thing. I think most women have such a great sense of ownership and possession… a child for example, you touch a woman’s kid and you’d know about it. Maternal, lionness, this-is-mine, Beyoncé-Oprah feelings. You know? Strong. Like Beyoncé’s songs Ring The Alarm, Crazy in Love, Boyfriend.. she owns. You know Jay-Z is her man. It’s ownership and the protection of that… Hmmmm!