Once upon a time we had one computer. We took turns.
And then the computers proliferated. Elwood found me a secondhand laptop so I could get out of the house to work on my dissertation. A boy bought himself a computer with his camp counselor earnings. The schools started requiring students to bring laptops. Maybe something similar happened at your house.
Although I posted enthusiastically about my laptop's return from the grave, it was not a lengthy return. It powered up, looked around, functioned briefly, and then flopped back into the grave -- disgusted, I assume, with the failure of the House Republicans to respond effectively to Trump's bananapants assertions about the rule of law. I am guessing that I could get a little more life out of it if I reseated the battery again, but opening up the case to reseat the battery every time I need to charge it is not a sustainable strategy.
I floated a wild and crazy idea. I said, "Elwood, what if we shared a computer again? What if we both used the dining room desktop? We could get a secondhand tablet for the times when one of us just wants to browse and the other one needs an actual computer."
We decided to give it a whirl, and it is going okay. Except. The dining room desktop sits on top of a vent. We do not crank the AC in our house. The thermostat is set at 84 during the day and 78 at night. Right now the compressor is working to bring down the temperature from 79 to 78. And I, my friends, am FREEZING. I backed up as far away from the keyboard as I could manage, and I still had to stop writing this post to get put warmer clothes on. I am bundled up in my robe, thinking about going back for warm socks. If this were a laptop I would get up and move to the couch, where the risk of hypothermia is negligible, but that's harder to manage with a desktop.
Maybe I could grow some extendable arms, like Mrs. Incredible.
Maybe I could go make myself some hot cocoa.
Maybe I could recruit a passenger pigeon to carry a handwritten version of this post to the good folks at Typepad.
Or maybe I could wrap up this post and go sit somewhere warmer.
In the winter at 10:15pm, the temperature in our house is coasting down from 68 to 62, the nighttime thermostat setting. Does it make sense that I am shivering? No. But I'm shivering anyway.
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