Cleaning Code

I gave up on erasing all the letters and stuff coming up on the page once I got to the second row of the keyboard. I'm only finished with the main portion, and I still have to clean the very top sides of the number keys of that. Still left are the function keys, the directional arrows, navigation keys and number pad. I went through twelve cotton swabs and three paper towels. The keys look far better, but aren't even close to new. It's really hard to get even cotton swabs between the keys, and that grime is stuck on there like glue. Buying a new keyboard would be an awfully tempting notion if I didn't like this one so much.

I hate getting new keyboards and breaking them in, or more appropriately, having them break me in. I absolutely must have an ergonomic keyboard or the index finger on my right hand starts twitching involuntarily from the awkward positioning of a regular keyboard. It's not pretty. So that leaves me with a very limited choice in keyboards. I'm not always fond of the noises some of them make or how hard or soft you have to press the keys. If I'm going to be using the thing as much as I do, I want it to be comfortable and as far from annoying as possible. It's an important matter. Since this one is working just fine, only dirty, I'll take the time to clean it up. Sometimes I make things so difficult for myself.

Someone needs to invent Gunk-Be-Gone. It could be used to spray down a gooky keyboard and not harm the electronic components. You could use it in your kitchen to get rid of all that grease and grime. And lord knows we all need it in the bathroom. It can't be toxic, and it must work on whatever you deem "gunk." Chalk this moment up to my little fantasy world where cleaning is easy, laundry is always done and my diet consists of cookies.

I really need to eat something. I skipped breakfast like a very bad girl, and I'm way low on my caloric intake for the day. I can be low, but this is too much. I'm going to eat and read. Maybe I'll be half done with my book by the time I have to check it out again at the library. It will give me something to do on the plane.

I decided it's about time I got some literature under my belt, since I haven't read much, if any, since school. It's not that I don't read. I read tons and tons, but I usually choose books other than what could be assigned in an English course. I've taken more to non-fiction the past year; still managing to fit in my usual fiction and the occasional Oprah selection if I hear it's a good read from someone other than O. I adopted that strategy after reading Jewel and not liking it at all. There is enough misery in the world. I don't need to read a whole book of it.

I managed to get through high school and two years of college without having to read Tolstoy, so I figured it's about time I did. I picked up Anna Karenina my last trip to the library. I've wanted to read that and War and Peace for years but never felt the fortitude to tackle it or was more interested in other books. I felt like I was missing out on something, just like I feel about not having read Moby Dick, so I decided it was time to put down the fluff and the fact and dig into the classics.

I'm a little less than halfway through Anna Karenina, and I like it very much, but it is going quite slowly. I typically read very quickly and have been known to read books in a single day on many occasions. Of course, I never expected to finish this one so soon, but it is taking even longer than any other book of its size. I think part of it is that I'm reading it as if for a class, trying to pick up every little hidden meaning and historical significance. The other reason is quite silly; it's all those damn Russian names. I breeze through the French words, since I took several years of French in school, but those Russian names are killing me, and they are repeated over and over again, because that was a common manner of speaking. And it's not just Yuri or Ivan, it's first and last names, and it's the last names that are the kicker. Most people would solve this problem by glancing over the name, but I have to stop and pronounce it every single time. It gets faster each pass, but it's still taking forever, and if a new character gets introduced, I have to start all over again. I don't know why I'm so anal about these names, but it is adding an unbelievable amount of time to my reading.

Despite the slowness of my pace, I still feel I'm missing a lot in the book and really only catching the story. I love a good story, and this is certainly one of those, but there's a lot more there than a simple story. I hate that I'm so out of practice in recognizing what's beyond the story. So on my very own, I'm doing a little research into history and finding what I'm missing in the book. Fifteen years ago, when I was supposed to be doing these things, I would have sighed and rolled my eyes, lamenting the misery of another stupid assignment. Now I'm doing it on my own with no grade as incentive. I really have it all backward, don't I?