Scribbles & Munch

      A little over a week ago, my laptop refused to turn on.
      It had been ailing for awhile, shutting down spontaneously and hesitating before restarting. It had also developed an identity crisis, believing itself to be a desktop instead of a laptop computer, and only working when plugged directly into an outlet. Yet despite these obvious symptoms, I was in stark denial: my trusty computing device was scarcely over two years old! My husband has the same computer, of roughly the same age, and he wasn't experiencing any problems. Whatever was going on must be a temporary quirk, I reassured myself.
     Until that day - Black Thursday - when it just refused to turn on at all.
     I was lucky, really: Apple said it was a manufacturing error and all the repairs and replaced parts were done for free. Otherwise, the cost would have been somewhere between $300 and $600, which is not how one wants to be stretching one's wallet during the holiday season. But taking my laptop into the "Genius Bar" was rather embarrassing. Why did it have to be MY laptop that broke down? I never do anything with it! I don't edit blockbuster movies, or write computer code, or work on complex astrophysics equations. Heck, I barely even visit "YouTube!" I check email, read comics, look up recipes, and write. And occasionally research the kind of bowler hat that was worn in the historical era where my story takes place. That's it.
      Now I'm starting to wonder if my laptop broke because it was experiencing ennui....
      This kind of behavior isn't limited to my computer usage. I don't use a smart phone, I use a clamshell that makes phone calls, and occasionally receives text messages. I shy away from GPS (this is partly because of the multiple, dramatic GPS failures in my life), and the MP3 player I use is a hand-me-down that's nearly 10 years old. Why? Because that's all I need. My father was a "buy a good product and use it until you wear it out" kind of man, and that's a value I happily embrace. But try explaining this to someone whose livelihood (and possibly their life philosophy) depends on promoting the Next New Thing, or a friend who seems to have the technological capabilities of the USS Enterprise* in their pocket, and it's amazing how stupid you can start to feel.
      Then, while my laptop was broken, my "whatever" attitude towards technology was brought into question. I was not without computer technology at this time: I still had an iPad mini (originally used for a business venture that fell through last year), and an older PowerBook G4 from when I was in graduate school (which my husband has nicknamed "Lazarus"). The iPad mini was good for browsing the internet and checking email, but even with an attached keyboard it was NOT going to accommodate Word in the way I required. Lazarus still had an old version of Word, but over time it had developed an unhappy glitch where I could type a whole sentence, and only the first half would appear on the screen right away. It would take a second or two for the rest of the words to slowly appear, as though a ghost were transcribing them for me. This was probably because my fingers were working faster than Lazarus' poor little microchip (I am a very fast typist, on a comfortable keyboard I average 90 words per minute). When I made a typo, or decided halfway through a sentence to change a word or two, these quick corrections became very slow. This put a serious cramp on my composition.
      And don't even get me started on the painfully sluggish attempts at Google Drive and similar cloud-based documents...if I had a dollar for every time I saw that spinny rainbow wheel of distress, I could probably have bought Christmas dinner for eighteen people.
      But great stories don't require computers, I told myself. Hell, the "Epic of Gilgamesh" was pressed onto clay tablets with the tip of a reed! I swore to myself I would not allow this to interfere with my writing: I would do as countless geniuses have done before me, and write on paper! And I did...a little. Not as much as I should have. Which led to embarrassment and frustration and gnashing of teeth. So apparently, I have come to rely on a certain level of technological comfort? And then I realized: I'm not a rebel, I'm too lazy to keep up with technology. And the feeling of stupidity sank in even further.
     My brother is a software engineer in Silicon Valley, so I called to tell him of my woes while awaiting news of my laptop's fate. I expected him to tease me, or offer some gentle prompting towards joining my generation for once. Actually, he told me something brilliant. He said, "Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. So if what you do with your life is read email and write stories, and your laptop makes that easier, then that's a good thing. But when we start manufacturing reasons to have more technology in our life, then it's not making our lives easier, it's changing our lives to suit the technology. And that's stupid."
      It may have been my imagination, but I think at that moment, there was a part in the clouds, and beam of golden light shone down upon me, accompanied by a harmonious sustain chord of singing.
      I got my laptop back yesterday. It's running as good as new, and I'm "happy as an angel...merry as a schoolboy," to quote a certain famous fictional curmudgeon of the season. I immediately starting typing merrily on my story, looking up recipes for Christmas cake and latkes, and updating my blog. Life is good. Life is easier with my laptop...because that's the kind of life I lead.

      Now I know a lot of you are trying to figure out what's going on with the pie situation. There will be two pie updates before December 25th, I promise. One will have photos, and one will not. The one with photos will be a Turkey Pot Pie, made with leftover Thanksgiving turkey (you all froze some, right?). The other will be Pear & Cranberry Pie with Gingerbread Crust, which I have made before, but will not be making this year, due to the presence of eight kinds of cookies, two other pies, a flourless chocolate torte, and a wild huckleberry trifle at my holiday table. Yeah. That's how my family rolls. But if you're looking for something utterly wonderful for a holiday dessert, and you don't need pictures, my pie recipe will be well worth the effort.
Stay tuned.


*NCC 1701-E, no less