8:58 p.m. Well I, for one, couldn't be happier. I've had one of those great computer days that we in the Macintosh community often brag about. Yes, the flowers are pretty, the birdies are singing, but most wonderful moment of all: I have hooked up a new printer with nary -- nary! a smidgen of trouble.

And! Here's the beauty part! It's printing away *as* I type my little heart out over here on another, equally demanding program. Just chug, chugg, chugging along. I am so proud of it. I am so happy.

Happy May! For your viewing and reading pleasure, I have unveiled, successfully I hope, some jazzy new designs. I say, if you can't get outside to garden because you've got to be in front of the computer all day long, well then -- you might as well bring the garden inside.

Thus the floral pink-and-green. I'm going to try something more cutting edge, as I interpret it, for June. For now, I hope I don't lose any hip and happening readers who take one look at the little buds of May and go careening away, keening for a darker ride.

I can do dark. Yes I can. I just choose to be insipid and fey because it suits me like a Joe Boxer bathrobe. You reach a certain age, you begin to clown around. You reach a certain age, you begin to see the joke. That's the age I'm reaching for.

1:09 a.m. Printing is still continuing, without *one* single* jammed page or missed moment. Of course, those ink-jet cartridges that cost an arm and a leg aren't going to last forever, but I'm even prepared for that: I've bought the kind you can refill, and by creaky, I'm going to do it. I'm going to squirt ink into them and I'm going to tell you all about it.

The printer in question is the dandy Epson Stylus Photo 1200, capable of making nice 11x17 comps and even printing in a quickie draft mode. Of course, it's supposed to make images that look like our old photos, with the proper million-dollar paper, of course. Even more incredible, and my mind boggles, is the fact that I can print out my own stickers, were I to be so inclined.

If you glance at my entry called "Obsession" you'll see why this is so funny, yet frightening.

Since I can go out on the web while the printer is running, I did: to check on the Elian raft on eBay. (That link now says that the item is "invalid" -- maybe it's changed again.) Seems as if there might be a problem. But meanwhile, I don't know what was more terrifying: the photo of the piece of wood with a tire at the end, or the idea that someone (bidder number 112) had bid $10 million dollars for it.

And while I was on eBay, I checked on computer monitors, so maybe I'll get one of them and maybe my luck with small, humble upgrades will hold.

So, ok. Printer installed and I hardly had to turn the machine off. Running as if it always lived here. I could take a photo of it in all its glory, but wouldn't you know it -- there's still the problem of one few ports and several too many cables, but ... you get the picture.

I even took a nap and the printer ran the whole time. I'm going to take a bath now, and run the printer. I can see a time when my life will be perfect now.

I wonder if Kinko's will miss me as much as I will miss it?