I fought the computer and the computer won.

I spent about an hour and a half on the phone today, first with Charter and then with Apple, trying to figure out why in the world our internet connection was moving about as slow as molasses in January - to use an over-used Southern expression. First I talked to a really nice guy at Charter, who ended up telling me that our megabytes and gigabytes were, in fact, running up to par, and the problem lay not with our internet service, but with our computer. He very helpfully gave me the toll-free number to Apple, where another very nice and very patient guy helped me figure out that we really didn’t know why our internet was so slow. We got stuck when I couldn’t remember Aaron’s password to get into Systems Preferences. He then emailed me some instructions that I was to follow to reinstall our Safari, which I assured him I could handle. As soon as we hung up, the internet went down entirely. I called it a day and went for a long walk out by the lake. When it comes to computer innards, I feel about as comfortable as a Republican sitting next to Al Franken at a dinner honoring Spike Lee.

Aaron is bummed today because he talked to a gallery who think they can sell only his representational work, something he did for about two seconds six months ago. They like his stuff, but the majority of his work might not be a good fit for them, sales-wise. I always feel bad in situations like this, because I don’t know that much about art or the art world, and I feel like I always end up saying stupid things along the lines of, “There, there. There, there.” I feel pretty useless. I always try to relate his disappointments to how I would feel if someone didn’t think my writing would be a good fit for their publishing house. So many people love Aaron’s work. I really believe that one day he is going to hit it big. When that day comes, I want a maid and a Lexus. In that order.