So my Macbook has been getting slow recently. I’m actually surprised it lasted this long – despite every generation being better and bigger and faster, so far I’ve usually managed to push my laptops (all Apple, as my family’s been Mac-only since we got our first desktop computer around 1996) to the brink of their abilities in three years. The Macbook has now lasted me four, setting a new record!

It’s not that they stop working (my mom is still using my iBook G4, which is now 6 or 7 years old) but that apparently my habits are simply getting too much and things are starting to slow down to an annoying crawl: I usually have several little scripts running (like PodScrobble, TimeMachine, iAntiVirus, Caffeine, LaunchBar etc.) in the background while flipping between four to six different open programs (Gmail, Firefox, Socialite, VLC, iTunes etc.) at any given time.

When my burner broke (the first time I’ve ever had to use my AppleCare warranty, incidentally) a few months ago, the guy at the Genius Bar in the Apple Store noted that he’d never seen someone with so much stuff going on. That made me scale back, especially on the background processes, but only for a short while before all the optimization options became too tempting again… Oops?

I’ve also set up wireless access not just to the internet but also to an external harddrive which hosts my TimeMachine backup as well as iTunes library, which I assume is also using a lot of processing power. So yeah, I really only have myself to blame – but that doesn’t stop me from feeling that a smooth-running laptop is essential in my life.

I don’t have a car, don’t spend much money going out, generally don’t have a lot of expensive habits (chocolate, books and handmade stuff from Etsy are relatively cheap vices), so I’m seriously considering whether I can afford a new Macbook after Haiti, although I currently have no job lined up (and my iPhone 3G is also on the way out, battery-wise). I am so connected, so reliant on it – for entertainment, for information, for education, for friendship – that this seems like a luxury worth having.

(For the record: I’ve become a bit disenchanted with Apple in the past couple of years, but that’s mostly due to how they’re behaving with the iPhone – so while I might consider changing to an Android phone instead of a 4G, I don’t see myself using anything but an Apple laptop, at least until Apple reaches Microsoft-levels of evil.)

What do you think – do you use your laptop for as long as it lasts, or is this one area where new is not just shiny but necessary?

I’ve been sick and also planning my trip to London. I’m leaving tomorrow and will get to meet a number of dear friends as well as see some cool stuff, so I’m pretty excited.

On my list:
– a trip to Newcastle
– a cabaret show
– the Sherlock Holmes museum at 221B Baker Street
– a trip to Portsmouth
– the Shakespeare Globe

I’ll be staying at a friend’s place, so I’ll have internet – however, if I’ll have the time to do a proper post remains to be seen… 🙂 Also, if I post about London, it’ll be in my travel log.

The reason I’ve neglected to post properly here is family-related: My dad’s health troubles continue, with last year’s colon cancer making a reappearance as secondary liver metastases.

I don’t want to go into too much detail, respecting my dad’s wishes, but needless to say this is a rather stressful time for our whole family. I think all of us wish it was us, rather than Papi, who had to go through all of this – it’s doubly hard on him because he’s been healthy all his life and hates having others tell him what to do. And now there’s doctor’s appointments and an uncertain future.

Faith is definitely important in times like this. My dad’s trust in God is absolute – maybe even too much so, as it sometimes borders on fatalistic. The rest of us (well, my mom and myself – my brother is firmly agnostic) are naturally very much in the “take strength from God to fight this as best you can” camp… Acceptance seems rather premature. And hopefully we won’t have to get to that point any time soon!

But yes, obviously this has taken up a lot of my thinking. I am still reading my GReader (see the feed in the sidebar) but don’t have the mental resources to delve deeply into problematic topics. Luckily summer seems to have finally arrived, so I’m taking my mind off things by going for runs or walks, as well as watching mindless television (currently a lot of Masterchef Australia, which has the advantage of being aired 5 days a week).

I’d planned on doing another ‘issues’ post, maybe about feminism or intersectionality, but then, Thursday evening, I heard from my mom that my dad was in hospital. It seems he had a mini-stroke and couldn’t use his left arm anymore. My heart just about stopped. The past year has been absolutely crazy, health-wise, for my father. It seems that after 73 years of being pretty much healthy like a horse it was just one thing after another. Obviously this has taken its toll on him, and he’s thoroughly sick and tired of doctor’s appointments, so we all worry that he’s not taking care of himself the way he should.

I was pretty useless at work yesterday, and left early to go to the hospital and keep my dad company as he waited for the results of all the tests they’d been doing. Once again he’s been blessed (seriously, the stroke could have been SO much worse!) and was allowed to go home (where I spent the night) with some new meds and instructions for some additional tests.

But yeah, this once again brought home to me how close a family we are. We might all live our separate lives by now (my parents in a village half an hour from Zurich, my brother with his girlfriend in Basel, and myself in Zurich) but the connection, the love has not lessened one bit. Therefore in the past two days, there were a LOT of phone calls between the four of us, and my brother was really devastated at having to work Friday and Saturday (and will come up tomorrow). It’s not as if we were able to do anything, really, except some fetch-and-carry and making the endless hours of waiting pass a bit faster.

Still, the years of being a family unit, with all other relatives living hours away, have deeply embedded the sense that, ultimately, the four of us belong together. We might no longer share a flat (or even a city), but our parents have always made it clear that we’ll always have a home with them, supporting both my brother and myself in everything we do – and it feels only natural that in return, we want to be with them, especially when things are tough.