Bring Back the Quill Pen and India Ink, Please.

Less  than a month ago, I bought a new desktop computer, which for me is a big investment. I've used laptops and a netbook for ten years but  I was tired of replacing them every two years or so. I wanted something that  would be a workhorse, a  Percheron, not pretty but a plodder that wouldn't give up,

Right now I'm typing on my iPad mini. My Percheron has crashed once again, in the middle of a story that I prudently had saved the night before. With any luck, I'll be able to recover what I have written this morning, although luck isn't something I've had much of recently when it comes to this computer.

It  died and arose from the dead on Easter, which was only four days ago. The  process took most of the afternoon and I have a lunch date in another half hour so I'm delaying my call to HP support. At this point I'm ready to take the damned thing  back and make a more substantial investment in a Mac. Life is much too short for the joys of Microsoft updates for Windows 8.1.

Long ago I used a desktop that was so old that people laughed at it--but it worked. It was slow, it had few bells and whistles, but it was reliable. I'd give quite a bit to have that back in my iife, tiny monitor and all.

Meanwhile I am tapping this out on a miniscule keyboard in a font so small that I can only make out the red lines under my typos. It will take me longer to correct my mistakes than it has to write this . This isn't what I bargained for when I bought my desktop.

I was told that Windows 8.1 was  problematic but I had no idea that it would be unusable. Thanks a lot,  Bill Gates et al.. You suck.

Then UPS delivered the shoes I ordered online and waited over a week to receive--cheered me up, right? Wrong, so wrong...they had a clear plastic covering over the toes and the strap was floppy. What the hell has happened to Rockport? But fortunately they came via nordstrom.com and so they were easy to return.

But thank heaven for friends--Lei Anne and I had a long, leisurely, and delicious lunch that transformed my day. After enjoying pasta, wine, cannoli with a lady who is one of the most delightful people I know, I felt cheered up beyond belief. It helped me get through a demoralizing phone call with HP, in which I learned that my very new computer has to go back for repairs and I'm back to using my netbook. And it gave me the strength to take the iphone that my sister gave me to AT&T for activation, where I learned the name of a new Indian restaurant that is really, really good. Saffron Grill, anyone?

So in the immortal words of G.K.Chesterton, "I think I will not hang myself today."