The Great Crash of '07

My computer died.

You don't know what a great tragedy this is until it happens to you. First of all, I'm a writer. ALL my stuff is on my computer. Everything. The books I sold, the books I didn't sell, the books I might finish some day, the book I'm in the middle of writing right now. All of that was on the dead computer.

Then, I've just started selling things on eBay. My computer died Saturday afternoon, shortly before the first of 23 items started to close. What a disaster. No access to watching them sell, no way to find out if the customers paid, no connection to PayPal to get their addresses for shipping. Disaster, I tell you! Devastation!

So I called my Prince. Yes, he is a chemist, as Faithful Readers know. But he also spent six years as a Computer Geek, crawling around on the floors of big government buildings in Washington, D.C., plugging their cables back into the wall for them.

Of course, as any Prince worth his epaulets, he came charging in on his white steed, volt meters and USB cables trailing behind him like flags at a Medieval Jousting Tournament.

Alas, the diagnosis was not good. The old faithful black box was well and truly dead. So it's off to CompUSA for us where I picked up this cute little sporty model from which I write to you now. This is an Acer 9410,a laptop. How cool is that? I can now go to Starbucks and pretend to be writing while I tinker with the backgrounds on MySpace! Just like all the Cool Kids!

Of course the data transfer was frightening and not quite perfect, but enough to get me going today. So it's back to work I go, eagerly anticipating my manicure appointment tomorrow because my nails are far too long for this keyboard. Which you would see if I weren't constantly correcting things.

After all the excitement died down and my life returned to what approaches normal for me, I'm happy and excited about the new computer. And even though I didn't need reminding, I have yet another example of why My Prince is My Prince.

Thank you, Steven. I love you.

Susan