679 days, 8 hours, 14 minutes, 43 seconds

She wonders how many days, hours, minutes until she buys a new computer. Which is absolutely ridiculous. This 15.4" Fujitsu with such a great screen that she discarded her external monitors is precisely 251 days old, under warranty for another 114 days. There's nothing wrong with it, except for the generic port replicator that screwed up her sound system. Except for programs she's installed then discarded, leaving stray dll files around. Except for the fact that it boots but sometimes has problems loading its usual deluge of memory residents. She's scaled down her startup file. She ran disk doctor and win doctor. It's worked to perfection the past few days. If need be, she'll take this one back to ground zero, take the port replicator out of the picture, and reload the programs she needs. No reason it shouldn't last another 769 days, 8 hours, and 14 minutes. Giving her something else to look forward to.

679 days, 12 hours, 5 minutes, 29 seconds

She's found it -- the home she's always wanted. No nosey neighbors staring through their windows at her blinds always closed (this was at her parents' house), no one stopping her in the elevator to ask if she's still writing, no guard logging in every visitor and every package she receives. A developer bought up everything with plans for a mall, office buildings, high rise apartments, but she refuses to budge. It will take years before all that building gets done. In the meantime she's stocked up on food and water. Unfortunately, she doesn't own this so-called villa. Unfortunately, this is in China.

679 days, 13 hours, 23 minutes, 26 seconds

9745 steps yesterday. She came that close.

680 days, 13 hours, 43 minutes, 31 seconds

Two news stories, two or three days apart: a woman driving with her daughter in the car has ulcerative colitis and passes out from dehydration just as they're nearing a restaurant parking lot. The eleven-year-old manages to grab the wheel and steer the car into a telephone pole instead of oncoming traffic. And, in the second story, a teenager gets a migraine and passes out while driving: her eight-year-old sister grabs the wheel, her seven-year-old brother grabs the emergency brake, the car comes to a halt three feet to the left of a huge, blinding tree. She prints out both stories for her scrapbook. She has ulcerative colitis. She has migraines. She has no children. She's an only child.

680 days, 21 hours, 10 minutes, 57 seconds

It's Daylight Savings time, three weeks early. One hour closer to when Bush will leave office. She's overjoyed at writing this number down. Then she realizes it will only fall back again.

This year her computer made the change seamlessly. The little clock on the bottom showed 1:59 a.m., then 3:00 a.m. She was wondering if she'd updated the proper patch. And she thinks of how many years ago now, when she and her husband both stayed up to watch, and her computer cut in (what they'd now call instant message, she supposes), saying it was about to change the time, and asking her permission. Hell, she remembers computers where she had to manually set the date each day.

3:55 a.m. Her husband wakes in the bed two feet away from her, startled to hear her typing this much, at this hour. "Are you composing?" he asks. Composing. What a strange word. And one he's never used before. Musical. But then it turns dark, as if she's trying to compose herself.

This was supposed to be a quiet keyboard. And it's wireless. Unattached.

680 days, 21 hours, 14 minutes, 34.2 seconds

Sometimes she's slow to notice things. Like that the deck of cards she's playing solitaire with (on the computer, of course), has an astronaut on the back. Considering that she's still fascinated and frightened by the Lisa Nowak story, considering that she's written about this in two poems already, is it still fair to berate herself for wasting time playing solitaire? This is only one deck among many, though. Can't draw it every time.

681 days, 10 hours, 46 minutes, 18.2 seconds

Could it be there were two teachers – two reading specialists in the New York schools relocated to the Atlanta area who are going to court this week? This one's in Long Island. Told colleagues she belonged to a coven. That her husband was in a plane crash. That her son's fingers were caught in a VCR and severed. Taught students about the Salem witch trials. The principal, a born-again Christian, had children sing Jesus Loves All the Children of the World. She was only trying to put that in perspective. Not a word about Harry Potter. And this was only six years ago. This is totally crazy, she thinks. Then she remembers George Bush is also born-again.

685 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes, 42 seconds

Her worst nightmare: she woke up this morning to a computer that wouldn't boot. It sang out its welcome, then stopped in the middle of loading resident programs. So it's turn the button off, turn it on, off, on, off the port replicator, on (it loads one program this time), a call to her husband, off, on, off, on in safe mode (there's an "administrator" user here she never saw before), off, on, off, trying to get into safe mode again she hears a strange beep. And it boots this time. She runs a few programs, then puts it back on the replicator, holds her breath until it boots. A virus scan comes up empty. She runs one-button checkup and sees some registry problems Norton can't fix. But it boots again. She works for awhile, shuts down, takes it down to Starbucks. It's after one o'clock. She works. At three o'clock the after-school crowd comes in, teenagers who sit in the back, younger kids with their mothers. She's never seen it this crowded. The noise is deafening. She plays games.

686 days, 1 hours, 6 minutes, 46 seconds

So her husband and his brother and his brother's wife will head down to Florida over Easter, visiting their father and their other brother. Traveling a lot right now, she has the perfect excuse not to join them this year. Especially now that she realizes the airfare alone is costing him nearly $500. She tried to help. She found flights on Orbitz for nearly $200 less, but he couldn't make up his mind, wanted to check other places, and by the time he got back the cheap flights were gone (it said act quickly, only one left, but he refused to believe that). His money. Don't harp on it. Don't turn into the nagging wife. Don't turn into his father.

688 days, 3 hours, 50 minutes, 17 seconds

The woman beside her on the plane back from Atlanta doesn't seem to mind when she puts her coat then her computer on the middle seat, between them. They don't speak until the plane's landed on the tarmac (early) and has to wait before it can get to the gate. The woman asks first if she lives in New York, then says she used to live here, they moved to Atlanta a year ago. Her husband's building was destroyed in 9/11. He applied for a transfer just after that, but it took until last year. She's a reading specialist. The day she found out she'd been promoted to principal was the same day her husband's transfer came through.

She's coming back for a court case, the woman says. A student she taught in middle school seven years ago became a drug addict. Now the mother's suing her – not the school, her – because she taught the class Harry Potter and that was her son's introduction to first magic, then drugs. It was all over the papers seven years ago. The statute of limitations is about to run out. So now she has to spend a week away from her eight-year-old and her two-year-old. Six former colleagues have been called in to testify (two others have since died). And of course if she's cleared of the charges she'll counter-sue.

Stay tuned.

689 days, 13 hours, 1 minutes, 39 seconds

Slightly hurt books, the table at AWP says, selling them for $5 each, no matter what the cost. No matter what the damage, she thinks, not even walking over to take a closer look. This is in Atlanta, home of a Carter museum. But it could be Paris. It could be London. It could be Washington.

695 days, 9 hours, 52 minutes, 19 seconds

A performance artist, in town from London, is crawling Manhattan streets in a suit, knee pads, George Bush mask, and a sign saying kick my ass. Just wanting New Yorkers to feel good, he says. It calls to mind a Halloween parade over a decade ago. A man in a cart was dressed as Jesse Helms and a woman walking alongside him passed out rotten tomatoes for people to throw. It was her first Halloween parade. Clinton was president. Helms was about the worst people could imagine.

695 days, 9 hours, 59 minutes, 39 seconds

It's two o'clock and, if you believe her pedometer, she's taken 695 steps so far today. Not a very auspicious start to weight loss. There have been days when she doesn't even hit the 2,000 mark, and she's never yet made it to 10,000. Sort of a lame duck poet.

697 days, 6 hours, 34 minutes, 33 seconds

No matter what, no matter where, no matter when. It seems like her major computer problems begin after midnight. Long after her father's in bed. He said he was looking forward to retirement so that he could sleep late, but after a month or two he realized the whole day was gone by the time he got up. The whole day, by his standards. She needed to work late and sleep late, to prove her life wasn't his life.

Her husband's usually up until one or two. When she has problems like that he shoves toothpicks in his eyes and tries to help her. The last thing she wants is his help.

697 days, 7 hours, 0 minutes, 51 seconds

She pauses from work for a few minutes to watch her computer disk finish backing up, which still seems the most interesting thing she's done today.

697 days, 7 hours, 15 minutes, 52 seconds

George Bush even punched his father once, her father says. No way he could vote for a man like that.

697 days, 7 hours, 28 minutes, 36 seconds

Four years ago. December, 2002, to be exact. Or maybe November. Just before or just after her birthday (there was a blizzard on the day of that welcome party). She came home to find a message from her father on the machine. Upset not at what she'd written, but what a critic friend wrote about her poems. Most sensitive essay she's read, she told him. She has no right to write about his life, he told her. And she said it was her life, not his. But let's face it, they needed each other. Especially now, with his lady-friend dead also. Him in and out of the hospital. He still reminds her that reviewer should be shot. She still keeps him uninformed about her new work. It doesn't win his praise, anyway, he only knows success in terms of money. He clings to life hoping her novel's made into a blockbuster movie, like The Firm. Which reminds her that Billy Collins is Bush's favorite poet.

697 days, 7 hours, 38 minutes, 46 seconds

Some things are just naturally a waste of time. This new flash computer disk, for instance. Slowest damn write speed she's ever seen. She was up until 6:00 a.m. trying to cope with it, then lay in bed unsleeping. So okay, plan revised: use this for unchanging backup files, keep the old flash disk (too small for all her files) as her main daily backup. Over four years old now. She remembers the day he bought it for her – teaching, then meeting to plan a party for the arrival of a friend's adopted daughter, five or six now. Denting the car on the way. Then this disk wasn't the one she'd planned on buying. But it's served her, perhaps, better than the friend has. People's needs change. People's interests change. We have to set priorities. Sleep, for her, has never been one of them. Cursing every minute of work time sacrificed.

700 days, 22 hours, 50 minutes, 42 seconds

Seven hundred. That's what her blood sugar readings seem like tonight. Two hundred or seven hundred, one's as bad as the next. Before dinner and again at bedtime. The lowest possible dose, her husband reminds her. The lowest common denominator. Sometimes she feels there's just no use in counting.

703 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes, 6 seconds

The mayor decided alternate side of the street parking was in effect yesterday. After all, there were only two inches of snow. And the streets had to be cleaned. No room for wimps in this city.