Ouch, Jen. Ouch.

I wrote three blogs on Saturday that I decided were too mean, because in them I defamed my Prime-Rib-Birthday-Dinner-Stealing brother more than was necessary for my happiness and certainly more than he would have liked. On the off chance that someone out there who reads my blog happens to meet Paul and decide that his hideous and unforgivable behavior would make him unemployable/undateable/or otherwise unendurable, I decided not to post my rage, but infer it with the following fragments:

Laura not happy. Not happy, at all.

Paul evil.

Way evil.

Deserves torture.

Laura pacifist.

Paul survives.

The End.

On Saturday night, I went over to Jen's apartment because the two of us were too tired to think of doing anything else. The night before we had watched the last episode of MASH, which was good fun, although kind of depressing for me. Because I've run out of MASH and I have no other TV series to replace it with.

Sigh.

The two of us were doing what we usually do, using our computers and the wireless internet from some nearby business or dwelling. Jennifer was doing...something? I don't remember, Jen. I can't be your press agent. Sorry.

And I was, as usual, trying to figure out what the heck Best Buy changed when they had my computer for too long, a month or so ago.

Seriously--where the heck is my anti-virus?

They took it right off is where. Not working, at all.

So I decided I needed to get myself some anti-virus, right then, meaning internet download time. But the internet was not working.

When I had finally connected, and told Jen, she connected, causing the internet to no longer work for either of us. She disconnected, and it started up again for me.

"That is it," Jen said, and we went to Walmart for a router. That is how those kinds of things happen, with the two of us. One second we are complaining about the same problem we have faced a thousand times before, and the next moment we are solving it with as much determination and resolve as either of us possesses apart, made all the more strong by the combination.

We discovered Walmart associates to be no great help. I broke down and called Paul. He didn't answer, proving yet again how evil he is.

Jerk.

Anyway, Jennifer asked the Walmart lady how this thing gets hooked up. The Walmart lady gave the famous Walmart Blank Look which basically is a combination of "how the heck should I know" and a deer in the headlights saying "please, don't ask me."

She picked up the phone and asked several logical questions and listened to some fairly short answers. Then she turned to us and it got interesting.

"You hook the box up to the thing. And the thing into your laptop. No. The laptop into the thing, into the box, into the thing, into the laptop." A pause. "No. The thing into the wall into your cable into the thing. Your laptop. No. Hold on."

She turned to pick up the phone again even as the assistant manager, the man from the phone, rounded the corner and explained in mere minutes what the poor woman would have taken hours to try to clarify for us.

"There," she said. "Now keep your receipt, and if something goes wrong, just bring it back."

"Yes," I replied. "We'll bring it back and throw it at the assistant manager."

And with that, we went for food.

While waiting for our spinach artichoke dip and hot wings (me and Jen, respectively), we discussed the upcoming installation of Jennifer's technical equipment.

"It shouldn't be that hard." I said. "It shouldn't. That being said, anything could happen."

We could, for example, end up on the phone with India while we spell out our e-mail addresses by saying things like, "L as in Larry" repeatedly. And if you don't think that happens, ask Jennifer.

"But then it could make us crazy. I've had things like that make me crazy before. So it could make me crazy now."

"How would that be different than normal?" Jen said, burning me in a totally cruel, heartless, evil, cold, mean way that I completely did not deserve no matter how true it was and is. And no matter how funny it was.

So I laughed out loud, harder than I usually do, because Jennifer so rarely does that kind of thing and it is so funny when she does that it makes me wish she would more often, if it wouldn't be so detrimental to my mental well-being. Which is suffering already, if you ask Jen.

We spent the rest of the evening hooking up wires, unhooking them, re-hooking them, and waiting for something to happen that never ended up happening. Meanwhile, we read aloud to each other from the MASH novel. But it didn't help so much. I guess it was just to keep us both from getting angry. And eventually I broke down and left, telling Jen as I walked out to call Andy and wake him up because if there was anyone I knew that would know what the heck was going on it would be Andy. He's good like that.

As for Poor Jen and her wireless, it all worked out in the end, because I am using it right now to write this post. Mostly because I told her I was working on one and now she will be sad if I don't finish it so she can read it. Otherwise I bet it would be in my edit posts page with the three separate posts I wrote about the zoo and Paul being evil but didn't post because of that, yet still have referred to him as evil many, many times in this post so I may as well have done it anyway.

And if you have a problem with that sentence, I don't want to hear about it. Just go to sleep. Like I'm going to.

Just as soon as I drive home.