Dear laptop: please wake up.

So it turns out that in my laptop (a Dell XPS M1330 running Vista, in case you're interested), there is a video card. This video card is vitally important to keep the machine running smoothly, or indeed running at all.

And when this video card fails...it sucks. Because the video card failing means that the motherboard fries like bacon in a pan, and the machine won't boot at all, and perhaps your camera's memory card is full, and you cannot take any more pictures until you get the pictures transferred to someone's computer and burned to DVD. And then you're on the phone with Dell tech support, trying to convince them that yes, your warranty bloody well does say they have an obligation to fix it.

(The fun part, though, is when they look at your area code and say, "Hey, is that in Houston?")

(Close...but no cigar)

In other news...Maeghan the Canadian, Blase (Michigan), and I saw a production of Avenue Q a weekend or so ago. Mind you, it was in Turkish, and some things just didn't quite translate. For instance, in there's a song where Kate Monster exclaims over the mix tape that Princeton has made for her. In the English show, this song is aptly titled "Mix Tape." In the Turkish version, it was "Karaşık CD," which does more or less translates to "compilation CD" but somehow doesn't have quite the same ring to it. For rhyming purposes, the song "My Girlfriend who Lives in Canada" had been converted to "My Girlfriend who Lives in Texas" (much to Maeghan's dismay).

But it was still a good show. The pictures below are from Maeghan's Facebook, as mine are still trapped on my camera (grrr). Anyway! At Avenue Q (Maeghan, did you sneeze taking mine?):

Plus there's been the normal sort of tramping around. To, for instance, Galata Tower:

Or...dancing on the utterly interminable steps leading up to Galata Tower:

A passing Austrian tourist gave me a thumbs-up.

But it turns out that hotlinking to Facebook images is a pain, so expect this blog to be wee bit less photo-heavy until I can bully my way past Dell triage.