Thanks, Morris, whoever you are.

Yeah, I stole some wireless today. But since I really don't like to take without asking, I thought I would at least say thank you.

There is this service that I use when I need TV that the networks decided I shouldn't have anymore, and that service needs green smiley faces. I don't really know why, or how it works in general, but everywhere I go I can only get yellow smiley faces, which are okay but not good. that means I need to reset something complicated that I wouldn't understand if the program creator himself stopped by, knocked on my car window, and explained it to me in the municipal parking lot in downtown Wabash, which is where I have been all afternoon.

You see, although the wireless in Roann is awesome, the thing I was trying to do would still have taken me three or more hours to accomplish if I had done it there, due to the yellow smileys. This cramps my style, because I don't usually sit in one place for that long, at least not without eating something.

So I went back to the car, and drove out to Wabash, back to the Parking Lot of Green Smileys. This is a happy place where, though I have less wireless bars than I do in an abundance of places, I get green smileys. I have never seen them anywhere else.

This meant that I accomplished one task, then I started work on another. This "work" is me watching a number ticker while I knit in a parking lot, by myself, wearing a coat so I don't have to keep the car running that whole time. Then my battery died.

Now, to understand what this means, you have to know that my computer is possessed, like on The Exorcist, only with a computer as the victim and not a person (unless you count my strife). With a cross (from Italy, blessed by priests, that I picked up at St. Francis' old house) and some water I figured would do for holy water since I am an Anabaptist and we don't have holy water at all, just the stuff from the faucet, I approached my computer in its first week home from Best Buy and managed to cordon the demon off inside the battery. I could just replace the battery now, but those things cost money, and I don't have it. Just the Yarn Budget--and I don't tap into that unless I'm getting wool.

Battery death plagues me, it is a pox on my otherwise flawless computer's life. The battery likes to hate me, my pain is its true fuel. As I cry out, alone in a coffee shop without the power cord, it laughs and stores that strength for later, to accomplish its own dark deeds like bringing up the Freaky Blue Screen or the Scary Window Seizure. Then it, alone in the heart of my laptop, laughs at me with a dark, cruel laugh like that monster made of black oil on Star Trek TNG, in the episode where Tasha dies. That's how evil the battery in my laptop is. So evil, not even the crew of the Enterprise can take it down without casualties.

I then went to the Wabash Library, where my computer refused to load any web page, anywhere, despite the fact that I was connected, well, to the internet. I had many, many bars. Battery. I mean, what else would cause that kind of cruelty?

I ran crazy diagnostics, more than I did last night at the coffee shop when I was pretty sure my computer wasn't to blame for the horror of not getting online, at all, even though I had brought my computer from home for that purpose alone.

For no reason whatsoever, the problem solved itself and I was able to look on Ravelry while the battery charged, or fueled its rage, whatever you believe. So I wrote a bit, looked at the new posts on some of the blogs I read (James, get with the program, man. We miss you out here). And, when I had reached a battery level that was acceptable, I unplugged and packed up.

So I went back to my parking lot.

Where I sit at this moment, thanking Mr. Morris and his green smileys and wondering what people would think if they saw me out here, knitting alone with a computer sitting in the passenger seat.

The only thing that could make this better would be some lunch.