Miscellany

Every day is a new day but it isn't every day I get a new laptop computer.

Today is that day.

I'm still setting things up but I had to write something, anything to baptize my new toy. Of course I had to invite Nel over to share my joy as I opened the box, but she left before I got down to the real work of setting up bookmarks, accounts, favorite pages, passwords and registering all the software, most of which I will not be using. Evidently, Microsoft (there's nothing soft about it) doesn't just load the software on the computer now. You get a 60-day trial to play with what you already have before they pull the plug -- unless, of course, you're willing to shell out $149. I guess Bill Gates doesn't have enough money yet and he isn't making any money from the computer manufacturers who buy the software and load it onto the computers they sell, so he sticks it to the consumer -- one more time. I believe in free enterprise, but this has become onerous in the extreme. So, if I want to continue to use the program I have become familiar with and don't want to learn a new one, I will have to shell out another $149 before 6/30 to continue using the program. Just what I need, another thief picking my nearly threadbare pockets. Oh, well, I'll figure out something.

I still haven't figured out all the bells and whistles and now that I have wireless capabilities I will find someone who can help me figure it out (faster than me doing it myself with my work schedule) and take my laptop backpacking, hiking, walking and cruising restaurants and coffee shops (to drink water or juice of course) and bask in the sounds and scents of books, food and conversations. I am back in business and I'm mobile now.

The past few days have been weird in the weather sense. One day it's spring and the next it's snowing. The poor blossoms on the tree outside my window look bedraggled and sad hanging limply from their twiggy perches. The bright strawberry and cream of a few days ago has become aged and filmed over with the shadow of a capricious spring, one minute waving wildly in a screaming wind and the next drooping with the cold. The sky is a charcoal shaded blue-grey that alternately hides and reveals the mountains. The bark of the trees is riddled with wet seams like the water-dark ridges of a crocodile, the squirrel porn tree giving a craggy wet two-fingered salute to the nearly leaden sky. It is cold and quiet in the street, people huddled closer together as they fight the wind as they pass by, holding their coats and jackets tighter, pulling on gloves and hats down over their pinked ears. And there is more of the same on the way -- so says Weather.com.

I have nearly finished sending files to myself from the desktop computer to my new companion and there are still more bookmarks, links and pages to visit to store in the new bigger memory. At least now I have 1 GIG of RAM to cruise applications and Internet. I have finally arrived in the 21st century and I have a lot of writing still to do.

Now, if I can just remember not to keep reaching for the mouse...

I'll shut up now.