College And Computers

I’m typing tonight, on the beautifully backlit keys of a MacBook Pro, with lots of news to share. First of all, after much anticipation my financial aid award arrived from Marquette University; it left a cold pit in the bottom of my stomach. After submitting page after page of special circumstances forms and documentation of lay offs, moving expenses etc. my financial aid award remained unchanged. It was almost a blessing in disguise. I’ve since poured my energy into getting excited about Indiana University. I sent my enrollment verification earlier today and am more that ready to sign up for orientation. While it’s only 30 miles from my new home in Columbus, IUB is affordable, accessible and incredibly well-regarded, so I really can’t complain.
The other bit of news, which nearly led me to pull out great chunks of hair and then throw myself on the floor in a defeated mess of tears and overwhelmed, over-emotional chaos, is this: my lovely MacBook was diagnosed with a terminal illness. It’s had problems for a while now and I’ve put off taking it to our local Mac store because I feared what they may tell me. Well, good thing I was prepared for the worse – hard drive, battery, some undiagnosible issue that she simply termed “bad” or “serious.” At about three hundred dollars per problem plus the cost of additional memory I became overwhelmed pretty quickly. After lamenting my poor, well-cared for computer I put together a plan. I looked into financing a new computer, got my ducks in a row and went ahead with it. Wow, look at that – Mary doesn’t go to pieces, she gets things done. I am now the proud owner of the all new MacBook Pro! It’s beautiful, fast, light and did I mention beautiful? (It actually glows. We’ve used Macs forever and I’m still impressed every time I look at one). Of course I’m overwhelmed by the fact that I’ll be chipping away at the payments for the next 18 months, but I’d rather start dealing with financing this prime bit of technology now rather than during finals or the weekend before a stressful paper is due.
Other tidbits of knowledge that need to be imparted to the wider world – Bloomington, IN has a primarily gluten-free grocery store! I also made gluten-free cookies yesterday evening (the recipe for which I’ll post sometime soon) that taste good and, in my opinion, have a “normal” texture.