Wednesday's Words for April 30, 2014

I’m reasonably proud of myself, because I am an almost 60 year old woman who makes her living through this modern technology of computers and the Internet. Some women my age, whom I know personally, can’t tell a tweet from blog. They’re afraid to join Face Book because they don’t want anyone to know their business—or where they are or who they are.

They don’t care about keeping up or being in the loop, and that’s fine. That’s their choice, and they’re all happy—well, as happy as they can be, considering the fact that they are out of the loop.

However, I have to be careful not to become too proud of myself, because the moment I do...I get set down on my ass again. Case in point happened last Friday. I’d gotten up, begun my morning routine, and was minding my own business working away on my work in progress, when all of a sudden my monitor went black.

Now I should digress to tell you that this has happened as a burp three or four times in the last six months—the monitor has gone out and then come right back on again. These few glitches have been immediately followed by an error message that tells me the device driver quit, but recovered successfully.

So when this happened last Friday, I waited, confident that this was just another glitch. And I waited. Finally, I checked the connections—sort of—and even got down on the floor to ensure the darned thing was plugged in, under my desk, because the monitor light wasn’t even blinking. It was. Getting down on the floor is not something I do lightly, or easily. Getting up again is even more difficult.

There I was, with work to do, but no monitor, so I did what any reasonably-minded almost 60 year old professional author would do. I called my thirty-six year old daughter. Unfortunately, it was going to be an hour or more before she could come over and see what was wrong.

I turned off my computer, and went over to my husband’s computer. It didn’t take me long to install Dropbox on his machine. For those of you who don’t know, Dropbox is an online storage device. I use this back-up and have all my Lusty, Texas writing files in it (thank you for twisting my arm, Heather Rainier), and before my daughter could even arrive, I was working again. Boy, was I glad I could be working again!

My daughter arrived, and switched the monitors between our two computers. This would tell us if it was the monitor that was having the problem, or the tower. And...both monitors came on. Both of them. Came on. Like nothing had ever happened.

Me: Great! Ok, switch them back, please.
Daughter: I can’t right now, Mom. I’ll come back sometime tonight and do it.
Me: But...it’s not my monitor on my computer. It’s your dad’s.
Daughter: Oh, well. At least you have a monitor. Deal with it.

Actually my beloved had a very nice monitor, but it wasn’t my brighter, bigger professional author monitor.

While I had been working on my husband’s computer, I remembered all the things that I had not yet saved into Dropbox, files that I had put off uploading into it. There was my excel spreadsheet that I use to keep track of the words I’ve written, and all my picture files—the ones I use for my street team, and the ones I have of my heroes and heroines. So I proceeded to save everything else in that handy little online storage system. And then I went back to work, on my computer with my husband’s monitor. I multi-tasked as I do most days, bouncing between writing and housework. When it was time to nap, I napped. When it was time to make dinner, I did that.

Then my beloved came home—I’d been hopeful daughter would come in right then and restore my monitor, but no, she had to go right back to work. Imagine that! We ate, and then I went back to work, and my husband came in to use his computer. After a while, we actually spoke to each other.

Me: No offense, dear, but I hate your monitor.
Husband: So do I, now that I’m using yours. You can’t have it back, by the way.
Me: What do you mean, I can’t have it back? It’s my monitor!
Husband: I thought writers could understand simple sentences. I’m keeping this monitor.
Me: But I hate your monitor.
Husband: Oh well, at least it’s a monitor. Deal with it.

So I did what any reasonable almost sixty year old professional author would do. I went to the electronics store the very next day and bought myself a brand new, 27 inch professional author’s monitor. Daughter was very prompt in arriving to install it.

 If they’ve learned anything, those two, it’s that I do, in the final analysis, have my bottom line.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury