-- Friday, July 2, 1999 --

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12:25 p.m. The holiday has begun, whether you're ready for it or not. I most certainly am not; Igor most certainly is. He's jamming air in his bike tire as I type, he's already in his favorite turquoise Big Dogs, and most ominous of all: he's wearing deck shoes. The heaving hulk of the dreaded sailboat is looming in my future.

I can't swim. I don't know my right from my left. I am incapable of taking orders. He yells "We're doomed!" far too many times for any one fun outing. But it's the holiday and there will be fireworks and it's true that we never did open the bottle of champagne his editor sent to celebrate his big success with The Day After Roswell exactly two years ago this weekend. It is expensive champagne, and each time I want to show off and tell people about it, I have to climb up on a stool dragged over to where it's laying on top of the cabinets in a wine rack and take it down, blow off the dust, and read the label.

Trust me, it's one of them 'spensive ones, and maybe just maybe, not one of the ones that gives you a headache. When I test it, I'll file a full report.

And wouldn't you know it, but just when I thought I'd gotten the hang of this web stuff, it all flew apart yesterday. The cute icons, the new organizational scheme -- all to no avail. I can't crack the code with my free trial of HomePage and the days are ticking away and I have to make a decision and so, reluctantly but excitedly, last night I ordered GoLive 4 instead from Mac Zone. It was after 6 p.m., by the way, and I got the package before noon today. Talk about service.

This nervousness in switching programs and not buying a product that you've tried for 25 days, free, is not as weird as it sounds. Loyalty and rah-rah branding seems to be a big part of owning a Macintosh. You get very emotional when you play with itty bitty pixels all day long, pouring yourself into your programs along with your text. I fussed on the decision the whole time I was at the market last evening, worrying the peaches and picking through the sushi as if nothing else mattered.

I know, I know. Such a problem we should all have. Fresh sushi at the market? Who fusses when they're standing before a mighty pyramid of pink peaches? At beginning of the sweetest weekend of the summer? In one of the prettiest places on earth?

And now comes the biggest conundrum of all: on the one hand I have the Christmas-morning joy of a just-opened box of software, a big colorful box with a huge 828-page manual and another smaller one and a tutorial and a shiny disk just all squeaky new and promising. You could lose yourself for days on righteous days. Or. There's the sunny, expectant face of Igor, looking up from the spokes and rims and rigging and wondering when we're going to shove off.

It's a no-brainer, really. Loyalty, you know. Dive in!

Tomorrow -- just another fun day in Paradise.