Last week I
wrote about living without my handy Kindle. I relearned how to buy a paperback
at the airport and life went on. Something far worse happened. My laptop went
belly-up. Now, that shouldn’t have been a big problem, except my desktop
computer is a massive-screen Macintosh that I use to edit home movies and my
wife uses for everything I can’t do. That means the machine is loaded up with
graphical, video, and photographic software. No Microsoft Office. Since
Microsoft no longer allows the Office suite to be installed on three machines
with a single license, we live without it on our Macintosh. The absence of this
ubiquitous app occasionally irritates me, my wife almost never notices. And it’s her
machine after all.
I use my
trusty portable computer four to eight hours every day, so this appendage is a life
necessity. I immediately ran to a couple of stores and eventually decided on a
new machine. Being clever, I decided to go home and buy it on Amazon to save a
few bucks. I get free shipping and I could read hard copy books I had bought
for research on my next Steve Dancy Tale. Except … it was just ahead of the
Labor Day weekend. Not only did the machine not get delivered, the holiday
weekend backed up deliveries so much they didn’t get it to me until Thursday.
Evidently, 2-day shipping is a highly elastic term.
Normally,
I’m relegated to the basement with my laptop. During this hiatus, I was regularly
upstairs asking my wife when she would be done with the computer. I paced
around with a heavy footfall until she relented and let me use her machine. I wanted to try Open Office, check email, see how many of my
books had sold, visit social sites, and generally get my computer fix. (I found
Open Office to be wonderful substitute for the MS variety, but misgivings about
compatibility with the next release kept me from working heavily on my next book.)
Then the big
day arrived—my
brandy new computer sat on my front porch. Now I can get back to writing … just
as soon as I get everything reloaded and organized to my liking.