I promised to be back and here I am again. Unfortunately, you can’t get rid of me unless something of great magnitude occurs – like the breakdown of a computer. Who knew? I’m sure there are many who didn’t miss me for the last few days, but to those who did, thanks for being such loyal readers and commenters.

This old broad has an affinity to doing things a certain way and when things get in the way of that, I kind of lose it. I’m truly an old school writer. I love using flowery words and filling the page with imagery. I also enjoy laughter and do so whenever I can, but being without your writing instrument is near to cutting off an arm or leg. You become totally useless. I took a long time to give up my manual typewriter. I still like the idea of using a rotary phone. I enjoy the simple things in life and computers are not simple things.

I’ve had this machine for about seven years now. My last one bit the dust at about five years of life. These things come with a planned obsolescence clause. I found a man who knows everything about these necessities and he added two more years of life into my current computer. Like I said, change is difficult for me, especially when I get used to something and comfortable with it. So when I locked myself out of my writing tool, I had no choice but to return to the same professional with my problem. “We have to wipe it out completely and start over,” he said. It will cost $150 and you can have it by tomorrow.” To me $150 bucks requires several hours of work or cutting down on the groceries for a while. I refuse to go buy a new one, because I’d be paying it off until it fell apart or I do – which ever comes first. So to make a long story short, I went for the $150 fix.

Now, after changing all my passwords (a normally four hour project for me,) I’m ready to dig in again. I now have a brand new computer with all the updates I need and passwords which are now in a notebook just for them. I’ll probably have to get one of those safe deposit boxes from the bank, but I’m sure I’d be there every day, because I never remember my passwords.

Oh for the good old days, when all we had to worry about was changing a typewriter ribbon and using white out to correct our mistakes. Of course our hands became black with ink and we might get high on the white out, but at least we knew our work wouldn’t come to a complete standstill. Hooray for technology. It corrects our mistakes and creates new ones. It gives us almost perfect copy, unless we forget to proofread. It saves us time, unless we need to take it in for repair. Technology is great, but give me an old Smith Corona manual typewriter. At least I could still read the keys on the keyboard. My computer is like brand new and it’s fortunate that I still know how to type without looking at the keys.

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