Sunday, July 9, 2000

2:19 p.m. Due to the fact that I have a wonderful husband, I was able this morning to pull my tattered shreds of self confidence about myself and carry on with some degree of pride. He took pity on me. He saw my plight.

He phoned the local Barnes & Noble, found out that they had a few Flash books, dashed on over there while I moaned and wrung my hands, and he was back in a flash with the all important critical information that I so desperately need. My hero.

And a good thing, too -- good old Macromedia wrote to me today with the unhappy news that the manual I've ordered is out of stock and there's no telling when they'll have them in again. And they are charging me $10 for the manual that should have been included in the price of the program, plus $5 shipping via UPS, and we all know that it doesn't cost that much to send the guys in little brown shorts to your house.

So, an all-around nasty state of affairs, but I'm in a much, much better place now, thanks to my beloved Igor. I will no longer bit with my mouth agape, my eyes looking straight ahead into the nothingness that is this program's interface when you don't know what you're doing. Now, I have three different tables of content, three different indexum, three different approaches to the mountain.

I will survive.

Unfortunately, they decided against the demo, so -- on the one hand, I can learn at my leisure. On the other hand, I just spent a bunch of money I'd rather spend on spiffy new sheets and pillowcases, thank you very much. And our refrigerator is making coughing and rattling noises and sighing noisily when we open and close it.

My iron also just died, which isn't too big a deal because I don't iron very much. My old iron was so old, it was aqua. It was also encrusted with permanent gibbets of melted nylon and rayon and acrylic and dacron. It wouldn't even consider spitting out any meaningful steam towards the end, and if I tried to fill it it would spew hot water all over the hand that held it.

So, for maybe the second time in my life, I went iron shopping. Oddly, our local supermarket has a small appliance section, and even more oddly, there were actually six different irons to choose from. I got the cheapest, smallest one -- a no name-ish brand that's racy moderne looking and light and jazzy and it only cost $9.99.

Sushi costs more than this iron, and I'll bet I have the thing for another 30 or so years.

Did I ever mention that I love to iron? I do. I have a perfect system, too, which I'd like to describe ... but how about I do it first thing in the morning, after I've had some sleep. Last night was very raucous and I'm pretty tired.

Plus, I can't wait to slide into the big pile of pillows with a nice cozy Flash 4 Bible. Happy trails to us all ...