I Want...! But I'll Settle For...!

Well, well, well. Not only is it time for the next Round Robin Photo Challenge, but it's actually my turn to suggest the topic! That hasn't happened in over two years! For some reason my brain insisted that the theme for this time is "Gimme Gimme," and who am I to argue with my own brain?


I actually had no idea what I was going to post in connection with this topic, even as recently as this morning. Honestly, no clue. Then I remembered that I needed to go to Safeway and buy cold cuts for a pot luck at work. While I was there I took a few pictures of the store's most tempting case of edible decadence. I'll take one of each, please! But of course I didn't actually say that.


Sure, chocolate and stuff is pretty tempting, but there are other things I want much more than that, things that last more than a minute or two. Most of them are available at Best Buy. It seems I've been complaining for over a year now about the state of the keyboard on my laptop, the worn-away lettering that almost ensures that half the time when I try for an o or a u I type an i or a p instead. Best Buy doesn't carry the cheap roll-up keyboards, but there's a place on their shelves for a conventional one for $19.99. Except that they're usually out of them. Tonight they weren't. And I thought, given the "gimme gimme" idea, maybe I'd indulge myself, $20 worth. It's not as if I don't really need the thing!


Ah, but if I were to really give in to my greed, I could certainly do much better than a $20 keyboard. How about a slightly more ergonomic, wireless one? Only $69.99!



But heck, if I'm going to start spending more than a few bucks on peripherals, perhaps I should set my sights a bit higher. Have you priced laptops lately? I saw one for $599.99 that writes DVDs and has 160 GB of disk space. This one, for $50 more, has similar features. Heck, I'll take it! I don't need the one for $1,399.99. I'm not greedy. Well, not that greedy.

But of course I didn't actually buy the $649.99 laptop, or even the $599.99 one. When I sell the novel, or get a raise, sure, but not tonight. No, I bought the $20 keyboard and another $29.99 four-port hub, because I was out of USB ports again and the wires on my desk were a tangled mess.


So I've redeployed the wires and cords to be less messy, and for now I've got the new keyboard sitting on a towel on top of the laptop's worn-out built-in keyboard. It's wonderful to see letters again as I type.


I think the space bar is a little iffy, or maybe it's the height of the keys relative to my fingers that's throwing me off a little. And for some reason I keep getting thrown into a line above where I was typing, so that the new word gets typed in the middle of a previous one. I don't know whether that's a glitch with the new keyboard, or something I'm doing, or the old keyboard reacting to my pounding on the new one above it. Probably the latter. I'll work it out. If I have to, I'll move the laptop back so the new keyboard fits on the desk.

Now, there is one thing I want more than a chocolate cheesecake, a new keyboard or a new laptop. I want to sell the darn novels. Somebody gimme a contract already! Heirs of Mâvarin currently awaits printing so I can send it off to DAW. And I'm on chapter two in editing Mages of Mâvarin. Yes, I started over. Again.

Karen

Now go see what makes everyone else want to say, "Gimme gimme!"

Linking List

Karen - Posted!
Outpost Mâvarin
http://outmavarin.blogspot.com/

Carly - Posted!
Ellipsis
http://ellipsissuddenlycarly.blogspot.com/

Kerrin - Posted!
A New Day, A New Photo
http://kerrinsdailyphoto.blogspot.com/

Janet - Posted!
Fond Of Photography
http://fondofphotography.blogspot.com/

Vicki - Posted!
Maraca
http://mymaracas.blogspot.com/

Nancy - Posted!
Nancy Luvs Pics
http://journals.aol.com/nhd106/Nancyluvspix

Steven - Posted!
(sometimes)photoblog
http://sepintx.blogspot.com/

Brandon - Posted!
A Visual Experiment
http://avisualexperiment.blogspot.com/

Gattina - Posted!
Keyhole Pictures
http://gattina-keyholepictures.blogspot.com/

Suzanne - POSTED!
New Suzanne R's Life
http://newsuzannerslife.blogspot.com

Refrigerator magnets do not equal Gracious Living

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Show off your refrigerator magnets. Because you know you have 'em.

You mean like this? Well, yes, we have them, just a minor exhibit at the Museum of the Weird, so minor that we don't even keep them on display any more. John took them down when we got our new refrigerator last year. Fortunately for tonight's entry, he happened to find them in a box on Sunday, so I was able to pull them out of the box and arrange them on the refrigerator. My favorite one is the cartoon of Sam and Al from Quantum Leap, as drawn by my friend Sherlock - the same artist who drew my Mâvarin characters for me.

I strongly suspected John would not want the magnets left up on the front of our nice new fridge, junking it up. So I thought I'd see whether I could get away with putting them on the side of it instead. If nothing else, it gives the photo a more contrasting background. But no, John doesn't want them on the side of the refrigerator, either, near the open flames of the adjacent gas stove. Can't blame him for that!


And really, the fridge does look better without them. As John said tonight, "Refrigerator magnets aren't really part of gracious living." "Gracious Living" is something of a running joke with us. It was a term used on the cover of a trading stamp redemption book when I was a little kid in the early 1960s. It was probably a little silly for the competition to the S&H Green Stamp people to promise they could bring graciousness to the new suburban homes of the generation that begat the baby boom, but it fit in with the optimistic consumerism of the era. The Museum of the Weird is full of that generation's cast-offs - and yes, we really do aspire to gracious living. We're not there yet, but we're working on it.

Still, I kind of wanted to keep at least some of these on display somewhere. But where? There aren't a lot of metal surfaces in this house that don't have electronics inside, which could be negatively affected by the magnets. Just for fun, I temporarily stuck them on this vintage lamp on time of my computer hutch. Clearly, that's not going to work, either. At the moment most of them are stuck to the pole part of the same desk lamp. Sam and Al are stuck to the old Altar Bread can. That'll do for tonight.

Karen