Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good

Hey, everybody. I just got e-mail from a worried blog reader who wondered what my absence here meant, and hoped I was okay.

I'm fine! Actually, better than fine, since we're leaving for another cruise on Friday. Yay!

I'm spending my time on Facebook these days because a) it gives me a sense of what my friends are up to and b) I get much more feedback there. If you're on FB too, please look for me. If you aren't on FB because you just never got around to it, think about joining: it's fun, and you don't have to spend vast amounts of time there. If you aren't on FB because you don't like it, I understand; feel free to shoot me an e-mail once in a while if you'd like to hear from me.

I'll still post long things like homilies here, although my new church -- which is having its own financial problems, and I'm praying won't go the way of the old one -- doesn't have me on the preaching schedule as often as the old one did. I'm only preaching about once a quarter now.

If there are any big publishing announcements, I'll post those here too.

Everyday nattering, though, is over at The Other Place.

Thanks! Be well, everyone!

Remember my noble resolve not to get another cat until after my sabbatical, when I'd be better able to handle vet bills on a restored salary? That lasted all of twenty-six days.

Today the Nevada Humane Society sent out an urgent appeal via Facebook for people to adopt pets: they're swamped with dogs and cats, and were offering reduced adoption fees: $5 for an adult cat and $30 for a kitten. And they were making dire noises about how animals would have to be euthanized if they didn't find homes. So, sucker that I am, I asked Gary if we could adopt a kitten now; sucker that he is, he agreed.

There were a lot of people there, adopting, which was heartening, because I've never seen so many animals in the building. The appeal had said they had "hundreds" of cats, and they weren't kidding: cat-cages three-deep, housing several cats and kittens each, lined the walls of each room and hallway, and that's outside the normal cat rooms. (There were also quite a few rabbits and other small mammals. We didn't even go into the dog kennels, but I'm sure they were similarly crowded.)

We walked around for a while, checking out the kittens. All of them were adorable, but we wanted a female, so that narrowed it down. (When we got Bali, we thought he was a female, until the fateful surgery, and by then we weren't about to return him.) We also wanted a cat we'd be able to tell easily from the other two; there were a lot of gorgeous all-black kitties, but we already have Bali, and we saw several very pretty kitties who were the spitting image of Figaro.

We also had fairly exacting age requirements: young enough to be accepted easily by the two grown cats, but not so young that early weaning would cause behavior problems. A lot of Bali's weirdnesses can be traced, we think, to his not getting enough time with his mom. I fell in love with a very spunky black-and-white kitten, but she was only four weeks old, and Gary said, "Nope. I don't want to go through that again." And there were other black and white females, but I thought it would be better to have a cat who didn't remind me of Harley.

I thought an orange cat would be nice; I've never had one, and there were lots of cute orange kittens. The problem was that they all seemed to be boys. "Why not ask if they have any females?" Gary said.

So I did, and a friendly staffer checked on the computer, and sure enough, back in one of the cat rooms, there was a four-month-old female who'd just been brought in today (after being spayed at Animal Control next door). The staffer took us to visit, and we fell in love with her, and because she's just at the cusp of when they define cats as adults -- although technically, they're kittens for the first year -- we only had to pay five dollars to adopt her. He told us that orange females are unusual, so that was another plus.

We named her Caprica. (BSG fans out there will recognize "Caprica Kitty" as a pun on "Caprica City.") She has incredibly soft fur and lovely spots; we think maybe there's some Bengal in there. Her purr fills the room. She's litter trained. She's curious and friendly, and has already given me head bumps. We think she must have had previous owners and gotten out or been abandoned; she's clearly been well cared for.

We're keeping her in isolation for a week or two, as we do with all new cats. She needs time to heal from her surgery, and we need to get her tested for FIV/FLV -- which NV Humane Society doesn't do, because it's too expensive, although she's had all her other shots -- and keeping her apart from the other cats will give everyone time to calm down and get used to the idea of being roommates. Right now, Bali's an even needier wreck than usual (he had fits the minute Gary got the carrying case out of the garage, even though it wasn't for him), and Figaro and Caprica are facing off on their respective sides of my study door, trying to suss each other out.

See? Facebook's useful after all! Also a lot of fun; I'm really enjoying it.

So now we're up to our full three-cat complement again. I thought that was the limit for cat ownership in the county, but the NHS staffer said no, the limit's seven. "You shouldn't have told her that," Gary said. Hmmmmmmm . . . .

Facebook: The Non-Essential Information Superhighway.

On the one hand, I now get what this is about. As I said on Facebook itself, it's the internet version of crack cocaine. In less than twenty-four hours, I've accumulated more friends than I have followers here on the blog, and I've reconnected with three old friends I haven't spoken to in decades. I also found someone (whom I haven't friended yet) whose friend list includes basically my entire high school class, including the guy who used to molest girls in band class by trying to stick his drumstick between their legs. That's a completely literal description, and it happened multiple times each class period. We later heard he was doing prison time for rape. I guess he's out now. I hope he's acquired some new hobbies.

Also, I've had some interesting mini-conversations with people. Facebook is fun. New items from friends pop up almost literally every second; you could spend all day there.

That's also the problem.

As I also said on Facebook itself, being there is a bit like standing on a skateboard in the middle of a freeway during rush hour. Everything's moving so quickly that you can't possibly keep up. Whoosh friend #17 has posted a link to a political article and whoosh friend #32 has posted a link to a funny YouTube video, and by the time you watch the YouTube video and come back, seventeen more people have posted and someone's sent you a message and someone you've never heard of wants to be your friend and whoosh friend #47's agonizing over which shoes to wear today and whoosh look at this gorgeous photo friend #4 just took and by the time you're done "liking" that and posting a comment about it, twenty-three more people have posted and . . . .

There's no downtime in this medium. There's no space for reflection. And status updates are limited to 400-ish characters, so you couldn't indulge in narrative complexity even if you wanted to.

No wonder so many of my students have the attention spans of ritalin-deprived fruitflies.

I spent entirely too much time on Facebook yesterday, and need to be much more self-disciplined today. I keep telling myself that I've gotten along just fine, for years, without minute-by-minute updates of who just bought orange juice and who's about to leave for a trip to Yosemite and whose kid just hit a homer in a Little League game.

But I'm also feeling more connected to a lot of people, including my old SF community in New York, than I have in a long time. So there really is an upside.

I have finally, God help me, cracked and joined Facebook. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the thing, but I got tired of being inundated with invitations, plus my sister and cousin are on it now, so it may be useful to stay in touch with them.

If you're on Facebook and would like to friend me, go ahead.

Happy June, everybody. It's been really chilly and windy here all day, with rain since late afternoon. We always need moisture in Nevada, but I gotta say that I'm craving warmth and sunshine.

I got a slow start today. I've hit a rough patch in the book, as I knew I would, and while I'm doggedly plowing ahead, I'm in "this is garbage and no one will ever want to read it and who am I kidding saying I'm a writer" mode. Every project goes through this phase, and I know that, but this one feels especially bad. That's typical too -- "this is the worst thing I've ever written, and more than that it's the worst thing anyone's ever written, and I should just give back the advance and take up finger-painting" -- but it's never fun, and knowing that I always go through it isn't, at the moment, reassuring me that I'll indeed come out the other end. Y'know how it feels when you're in the middle of a bad cold or a bout of the flu, and can't even remember what it feels like to feel well? This is the writerly version of that.

So, anyway, I moped around in the Slough of Despond for too many hours, and then finally got on the elliptical for thirty-five minutes, which helped. Then I took New Tiny Computer to the computer shop around the corner. They're going to update the browser (it's running an old version of Google Chrome, and I can't figure out how to load a newer one because I'm so clueless about Linux), and also order and install a new battery. The battery life on this thing will never be brilliant, but it's been draining when the machine's off, which seems excessive, and I'd like to be able to go longer than half an hour without an outlet.

The computer geek in the shop beamed at me and said, "Oh, this is a great little machine!" Another computer geek at work, who actually owns one herself, said the same thing. So I think I made the right decision, and even after I pay the bill at the computer place, the entire project will come in for less than anything I could get new.

Then I went to the dollar store and bought some ziplock bags for knitting supplies. Then I got my hair cut, so I now look much less like a sheepdog than I did this morning. Then I came home, actually cleared off two small surfaces in my study -- miles to go, but it's a start -- and used the ziplock bags to sort circular needles by size. I reorganized the bottom shelf of the knitting cabinet, putting all my needles in another of Mom's baskets and untangling-and-winding tail ends of yarn, which went into their own small shopping bag for future use as gift ribbon. In the process, I found another button for the button box. The study still doesn't look as if I did several hours of tossing and rearranging in there, but after a few more days of this, maybe it will.

Then we ate dinner, and then, finally, I sat down with the dreaded manuscript and plowed through today's editing-and-revision quota, loathing every word. Back when writers still used typewriters, one of my writing teachers, Marta Randall, said that she hit a point in the middle of every book when she wanted to insert a fresh piece of paper in the machine and type, "Suddenly the sun went nova and they all died." I'm so there.

Then I knit for a little while to cheer myself up, and now we're going to watch some TV. Maybe tomorrow I'll stumble across a sentence in my manuscript that doesn't make me want to cringe with shame and crawl under a rock. Y'think?

I'm blogging from a Starbucks on the new mini-machine. It wouldn't connect at work, but my regular laptop doesn't connect at work either. It connected fine here, which bodes well for travel.

I went to my favorite yarn store to look for buttons today, but she didn't have any. "I get my buttons at JoAnn's," she said, and told me how to get there. I think maybe I was there a million years ago looking for yarn and was disappointed in the selection, so I promptly forgot about the place.

Their yarn selection's indeed very limited, but their button selection's fabulous: an entire wall and a half of everything you could think of. After much agonizing -- and a consultation with one of the clerks -- I bought three large, red, asymmetrical buttons for the scarf. I'll post a picture when it's done.

I'll definitely be going back there. I had to restrain myself from buying far more buttons than I need at the moment. One project at a time!

I am going to start a button box at home, though. Fun!

I'm blogging on the new machine! It works fine. It even has Chrome pre-installed, although in an older version that won't let me use the apps store. It does everything I need it to do for a basic road machine, though.

Bad battery, but I'll just keep it plugged in. I'm happy!

Oh dear. That sounds obscene, doesn't it?

For lo these many months, I've been looking for a seven-inch technogadget -- something small enough to fit in my purse -- that will give me easy access to e-mail and the internet, especially Blogger and Google Docs. I wanted something ultra-portable and ultra-cheap for short trips (like Mythcon) and local coffeeshop jaunts, occasions when hauling my netbook around is just a bit more trouble than it's worth.

The obvious candidate would be a tablet, but I really wanted something with a physical keyboard (and without a pricey phone contract). I'd thought about unlocked versions of the Samsung Galaxy Tab or Dell Streak, combined with a Bluetooth keyboard, but playing with the tablets at local stores hadn't made me sufficiently enthusiastic to justify their price tags.

I love Google's Chrome browser and have eagerly followed news of Chrome-based netbooks, but the first ones being released are even larger than my current netbook, not to mention (as many people have noted) ridiculously expensive for something that's basically a smart terminal.

I really wanted a seven-inch netbook. ASUS used to make them, but doesn't anymore -- the smallest netbook currently available is 10.1", and I own one of those -- and I kept reading snarky articles asking why anyone would want a netbook now that tablets are here, anyway.

Keyboards, that's why. Some of us still type!

Tonight, lo and behold, I discovered on Amazon a pair of used ASUS 7-inch netbooks for $150, and after conferring with Gary, snapped one of them up. As he said, at that price, it makes sense to try the machine out. The customer reviews praise it for internet and e-mail, which is exactly how I plan to use it. Everyone says the keyboard's small, but so are my hands. The machine runs Linux, but I believe I can install Chrome on it (and if not, I'll still be able to get to gmail and Google Docs, which is what matters). If the thing sucks or completely doesn't work, I'll return it, but this may be exactly what I've needed. If it works, I'll have an upstairs desktop, a downstairs/deck netbook, and a purse netbook.

I'd still bring the 10.1 netbook on longer trips, especially if I'm working on resident files (the ASUS doesn't have much storage). But for cloud computing, this could be pretty nifty.

We welcomed our latest gadget today; she actually arrived half an hour early. I promptly hopped on and worked out for half an hour, burning 222 calories and going 1.7 miles, although I was only on the first resistance level (I have to be careful with that because of my knees). Later, Gary did a half hour too, going five miles an hour at level five and burning 300 calories.

We both love this piece of equipment (a Horizon EX-59, if anyone's curious). It's incredibly smooth, solid and quiet, especially for the price. I'm really delighted with how much Gary likes it: he's the Exercise King in the family -- avid hiker, former bike racer and marathon runner, the guy I can never work out with because I'm always eating his dust -- but he'd never even heard of ellipticals until I mentioned the fact that I enjoy the ones at my gym. He finds treadmills and stationary bikes boring and too limited, but he loves Elsie. So I feel like I actually taught something in the fitness arena, which is definitely a first. And this gizmo works both for my modest needs and his more intense ones: perfect!

The cats are somewhat less smitten. Figgy has sniffed cautiously at the thing and then wandered off, seeming calm enough. Bali raced in a frenzy through the house when Elsie arrived, finally got up the courage to sniff around her, and then zoomed off again in absolute terror (we aren't sure what sparked that, since we were watching at the time and nothing had happened; the machine was just sitting there). Poor baby! We'll just have to be extra nice to him until he calms down.

Noodling around Amazon, I discovered that Shelter is already available on Kindle, even though The Necessary Beggar -- published first -- still isn't slated for e-book release until December 2012.

The ways of publishers are strange.

In any case, Shelter's a great choice for an e-book, because it's a big heavy brick of a print book and would add several pounds to any piece of luggage, but it will add no weight to your Kindle at all. Magic!

Also, did you know that you can now buy Kindle books as gifts for other people? Recipients don't even need a Kindle to read the gift: they can read it on their PC, their iPad, or their Blackberry. I believe Amazon will soon be releasing Kindle apps for microwave-oven doors and digital watches. Surely you know someone who has a birthday coming up soon and would welcome the gift of a book that's weightless even though it's over 500 pages long?

Weightless books! The future has arrived! Get 'em a copy of War and Peace while you're at it! (Seriously: if I'd had my Kindle ten years ago, I might not be having back problems now.)

In other news, I'm glad to report that the anniversary of my dad's death went fine, mostly. I was a little foggy-brained, but that's business-as-usual for the week after break, and for several weeks after that. In fact, I'll probably be foggy-brained until the end of the semester (and maybe much longer; it may simply be a permanent condition at this point).

All right. Clearly I'm punchy and need to go to bed. Good night!

It's been a stressful week, not just for me but for almost everyone I've encountered. (Gary's remained imperturbable, but that's his great gift.) The general level of anxiety right now reminds me a little of what life felt like after 9/11: everyone was jumpy, uncertain, scared, and didn't know what was going to happen next. People right now are worried about their jobs, having health problems, and desperately trying to figure out if and how they can live on less.

Sunday at church we had a guest preacher who, homilizing on the famous "consider the lilies of the field" parable, airily informed us that we shouldn't worry about money, because God will provide, and then added that anxiety's "a sin." I like this guy; I really do. He's a sweet man. But it was one of the most pastorally clueless homilies I've ever heard. I actually went up to him afterwards and said, "C'mon: Nevada has the highest unemployment rate in the country. The state economy's a disaster. Are you really telling people not to worry?"

He didn't answer.

The anxiety-as-sin thing pushed my buttons, too. Well, actually, from a psychiatric standpoint, anxiety's an illness (which then contributes to other illnesses). Do you think shaming sick people makes them feel better?

In a tiny triumph of tact, I didn't say that.

Sigh.

None of this what what I intended to talk about when I started this post.

So, yeah, anyway: bad week. Today I sat down to take care of some chores I thought would take only a few minutes. First on the list was calling Verizon to see why Gary's cellphone had gone inexplicably dead.

I think I spent an hour with the customer-service rep. The phone number I gave her -- the one on the cellphone -- didn't match the phone's serial number, and I couldn't come up with any of the right answers to the security questions (even though I was using my standard responses), and, well, it was a mess. We eventually managed to figure out what had happened. Remember those phones I got Dad and Fran when they came here? When Fran left and Dad died, Gary took one, which we converted to a prepaid account. I thought we'd thrown the other out. Well, the discarded phone was the one on the account; Gary -- who never uses his phone -- had been hiking with the wrong cellphone in his backback, and only when he tried to use it to find me in a mall last week did we discover that it wasn't working.

The very patient customer-service rep programmed the defunct phone with a new number, and we started up a new prepaid account. Finally! A working phone! Yay!

Since I'd already spent far too much time with Verizon, I decided I might as well deal with all my wireless issues at once. The voicemail on my Blackberry has been on the fritz for a while -- I can't get into it and people can't leave me messages -- so I called Verizon back to get that straightened out. This was much easier to resolve than the other issue, thank goodness.

When I got into my voicemail, I had two old messages. The first one was a beloved voice saying, "Susan, this is your mother. Nothing important; I just called to chat. Bye, love." She left me that message a few months before she died. After she died, I carefully saved it, but when I upgraded to my new Blackberry, it vanished, even though the Verizon people had promised me it wouldn't.

Today I got it back, and (in tears) carefully saved it again. I'm terrified I'll lose it if I don't remember to save it periodically; it's my only recording of her voice. Does anyone reading this know how to back up cellphone voicemail messages?

When Gary got home from his hike, I filled him in on the Verizon fiasco. He shook his head, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out my father's phone, decorated with the familiar Winnie-the-Pooh sticker (which I thought we'd removed when Gary took over the phone). That made me tear up, too. "If you'd asked me," Gary said, "it would have been much simpler."

But I thought we'd thrown it out. I really did.

In less convoluted news, the new Kindle arrived today snd seems to be working fine. Let's hope that the third time's the charm and this one won't go wonky on me!

The other day I was listening to an audiobook on my Kindle, using headphones, when I felt two small electric shocks -- one in each ear -- and the book stopped working. This is deucedly strange, but to make a long story short, the entire Kindle stopped working, and I called Kindle support, and they said they'd send me a replacement machine. This is my second replacement machine, and you have to print out a mailing label for the one you're returning, and although they make it as simple as possible, it's still a pain in the neck, not to mention the inconvenience of being without the Kindle for several days.

So today I got the e-mail from Amazon.com saying that they'd shipped the new Kindle, which will be delivered tomorrow. Fortunately, I read the whole message, because they're not delivering it to me tomorrow. They're sending it to my sister's house in Philadelphia. I have her address saved on my account so I can send her gifts easily; the customer-service rep hit the wrong button and didn't confirm the address.

Gah.

So I shot off an urgent e-mail to my sister and then called Amazon back. This evening's customer-service rep apologized profusely (although she was also laughing very hard), and put a $15 credit on my account for the inconvenience, which was very decent of her.

Still: aaaargh!

I've always been one of the reasons the stereotype of "absent-minded professor" exists. Even at the best of times, I tend to be klutzy and forgetful (one of last semester's students noted on a teaching evaluation that I'm "accident prone," and that's true, if somewhat off-topic). But today I really outdid myself. I got to a job talk late because I went to two wrong rooms -- in two wrong buildings, interrupting two classes in the process -- spilled tea all over myself in my first class, and then told the students to have a good weekend.

Sigh.

Well, I do want them to have a good weekend, but saying that on Monday's just rubbing in the fact that the week's barely started, right?

Before I left my office for my first class, I downloaded Google Chrome and set it up with the same apps and extensions I have at home. When I returned to my office, the apps included two games that I swear, swear, I didn't download. (I promptly deleted them, since I hardly need more ways to fritter away time.) So either my computer's possessed or someone's sneaking into my office. Neither idea is reassuring.

Gah. Time to set up the computer so it won't come out of sleep without a password. Pain in the patootie, if you ask me. Not, of course, that it makes any sense that someone would break into my office to download games. There must be some other explanation. It's still mighty strange.

On happier notes:

I'm listening to an audio version of Kate Braestrup's Here If You Need Me and loving it. She's a chaplain for the Maine State Game Warden Service -- coolest! job! ever! -- and I highly recommend the book.

Weather permitting, which it looks like it actually might, we're going to San Francisco for the long President's Day weekend. I have a professional gig on Friday, visiting a class on "Philosophy and Science Fiction" at UCSF -- they'll have read two of my stories, which we'll be discussing -- and the rest of the weekend we'll see our friend Ellen and her family, and walk on the beach, and hike the Land's End trails, and eat good food. We have a hotel reservation and a cat-sitter. Now we just need good weather! This is a real extravagance, especially so soon before the Spring Break cruise, but it's the trip we didn't get to do over Christmas, and I think I need it. Maybe when I come back, I'll be less spacey.

Oh, and check out this cool photo. Behind the English building on campus there's a small manmade pond called Manzanita Lake. It's frequented by ducks and swans and geese that are fun to watch, especially when they have their babies in the spring (although the babies often get picked off by owls, which isn't fun, although necessary for the owls), and it contains concrete rings, mini-pools, whose function I don't quite understand. On my way home tonight, I looked at the lake and at the trees reflected in it, and I realized that the calmer water inside the concrete ring was reflecting the tree much more clearly. So I took a snapshot. Interesting image, isn't it?

Finally, have you all seen the happy news that dark chocolate is healthier than fruit? Of course, since the study was conducted by the Hershey Center for Health and Nutrition, there may have been some bias involved. But I had some dark chocolate after dinner anyway, just in case it's true.

Amazon reports that the e-version of The Necessary Beggar is available for pre-order, and will be delivered to your Kindle on December 31, 2012.

Dang.

Makes a great New Year's gift, and you can get your shopping done really early. (Won't the world have ended by then anyway, according to those funky Mayan prophecies?)

Today's good news is that my phone's working fine again, thank goodness. Going to the Verizon store to deal with BlackBerry issues is right up there with standing on line at the DMV.

On the less happy front, I've been incredibly and bizarrely weepy today: sobbing in the pool, breaking down during a meeting with a student (less embarrassing than it sounds, since this is a very kind person and someone I know well), and generally fighting tears while walking, driving, yada yada. I'm not sure what's going on; I mean, sure, I'm still grieving, but I wasn't thinking more than usual about my parents today. I've checked my records, and today doesn't seem to be the anniversary, or near the anniversary, of anything particularly painful. Since it felt a bit like low blood sugar -- although I've eaten my normal amount today -- I grabbed an extra power bar at work, and that seems to have helped a smidgen. I'm panicky about my continuing writer's block, but I'm always panicky about that.

I really, really hope this isn't depression. I don't want to go back on meds. I went off them six months ago (almost exactly) and have been doing fine, except that I can't seem to get my writing mojo back, which is one of the main reasons I went off. I'd expected it to happen by now, so maybe the panic kicked up a notch because it's been six months with so little movement?

Whatever it is, I hope it goes away. (Long-suffering Gary had to listen to me weep and whine when I got home, and that's no fun for him, either.) The very sympathetic custodian at work said maybe I'm getting sick. I hope not, but at least that would explain this.

Gah.

Well, the e-mail conversion process is still underway. Yesterday, Gmail imported both my AOL address book (an unholy mess) and my old messages: over 2,000 of them (!), most of which I deleted. I've also started unsubscribing from a lot of e-mail lists, primarily from retailers; this is something I should have done a while ago. I cleaned up the address book on my desktop and set up my phone with Google Sync. Unfortunately, the way that worked is that the old, unbelievably outdated and redundant address book wound up everywhere, overwriting the new, neater one.

Gah.

My poor little BlackBerry is now completely confused and won't show me mail from anywhere. In fact, it periodically tells me it can't even find a network. I suspect I'll have to take it into the shop.

I desperately need to apply this same dogged energy to my physical environment: my home and work offices are both almost as chaotic as the AOL address book. But at least I'm doing something, right?

Oh, and I've applied to be a test driver for the new Chrome Notebook, on the theory that you can't win the lottery if you don't buy a ticket. In fact, I've applied twice: the second time, I told them I'd just switched to gmail and also said that since I'm a gray-haired, middle-aged female professor, I won't be the typical twenty-something technogeek (they say they want a variety of users). Then I begged, shamelessly. Maybe the squeaky wheel will get the grease?

A squeaky-wheel analogy doesn't work at all on the internet. What would the equivalent be? Oh, heavens, please don't tell me I've become a spammer!

After more than fifteen years on AOL, I'm beginning the slow and no doubt torturous process of switching to a new e-mail address: spalwick (at) gmail (dot) com. Please update your address books!

Thanks!

I've caught up on some work this weekend -- which means I was justified in canceling the fiddle lesson and the hospital shift -- but I've also wasted some time.

My latest toy is Google Docs. I'm coming late to this whole cloud computing thing, see (although, come to think of it, blogging is a form of cloud computing). Last night I downloaded a free Blackberry app that automatically keeps all of my data backed up on the web, making the prospect of sudden phone failure a little less scary. I always tell myself I'm going to back everything up with my USB cable, but I never do. (My sister had to get a new phone after inadvertently dropping hers in the sink, which is what inspired this particular project.) After watching the app dutifully back up my BlackBerry last night, I asked Gary, "Hey, are there any, like, web-based word processors?"

"Google Docs," he said with a yawn. This morning, I checked it out.

I'm in love. Now the documents I'm currently working on can live on the web, which means that I can access them from any computer -- at home, at work, in libraries or computer cafes in other cities, in the houses of friends or family -- without having to worry about cables, thumb drives, the horrific possibility of overwriting a new version with an old one, and so forth. When I'm done with them, I can download them onto my desktop.

To be sure, this system isn't perfect. Google Docs can't handle WordPerfect files, so I have to download in another format (doc or rtf). Since WordPerfect's better about converting to other formats than from other formats, the easiest way for me to get the text back into WordPerfect is to cut and paste everything into a new WordPerfect document, which is, admittedly, a bit of a pain. But the ease of access -- and the fact that there's only one version of the file I have to worry about before downloading, rather than the plethora of backups I used to keep on home and work computers and thumb drives -- makes that hiccup worth it.

Unfortunately, my netbook's a bit big for me to lug everywhere (it won't fit in my purse), and I can't edit Google Docs from either my BlackBerry or my Kindle, although I can view them. On the mobile front, they can only be edited from Android devices or the infamous iPad, all of which are currently a bit too pricy and a bit too lacking in anything I'd call a real keyboard. So I'm going to be keeping my eye out for some sort of small, affordable clamshell device, basically a browser with a decent keyboard. As cloud computing grows in popularity, though, those should start hitting the market.

Playing Scrabble with my computer, I just used all my letters to make the word "flaxseed" across a triple-word score. That's 110 points, ladies and gentlemen.

Yeah, and that and two bucks will get me on the New York subway (or is it $2.50 now?). Time to go do some real work!

Staples had a shredder on sale yesterday for $29.00 (after rebate), so I got one. One of my long-term sabbatical plans is to get my filing cabinets cleaned out and organized -- there's stuff in there I literally haven't touched since we moved to Nevada thirteen years ago -- and that will include discarding ancient financial documents, so the shredder seems like a prudent investment.

Meanwhile, today the CrackBerry store had a one-day sale on the Tether program, which turns your BlackBerry into a mobile hotspot for your computer. This will be very helpful when I'm traveling with my netbook. You can connect the phone and computer via USB cable or Bluetooth, but Bluetooth eats up so much power that I'll be going the USB route. My Kindle recharging cable doubles as a USB. Very handy!

So I'm pleased. New gadgets are always fun, and now I won't have to worry about paying for internet access in hotels, airports, coffeeshops, etc. Unfortunately it won't do me any good on our Mexico cruise, since international roaming rates and cruise-ship roaming rates are both more than I want to pay, but it will be great the next time (for instance) we go to Hawai'i.

In writing news, today I talked to my editor about a new plot turn in the book. I was afraid it was too over the top, but he said it sounds workable. We had a nice chat. To my immense relief, he seems unconcerned about deadlines; his attitude is, "Give the book as much time as it needs." So I feel like I have a little more breathing room than I did before, although I still want to finish this project sooner rather than later.

Happy Winter Solstice, everyone! From now on, the days get longer! What a relief!