digital heaven for the obsessive-compulsive soul

02-15-00

I ended up with the day off work, after all. Sherrie came in yesterday for her check looking perfectly fine (grrr) and had no excuse for today. I spent this morning rearranging our front closet, sorting through stacks of music and various shit. Played tennis with John in the afternoon. The usual.

I played some phone tag, first with the woman who's setting me up with job ideas and then with a woman who might hire me. I called the company and was told to call another number in the afternoon. When I called that number, I reached the woman I needed to talk to, but it turned out I wasn't supposed to have been given her HOME number. And the guy who gave me her number was her husband. She was very understanding, and wants to interview me next week. This is a part-time clerical job for a small financial service, so I'd be back to pushing papers around and answering phones. I hate to say this, but I miss that. The dog job sounded so good, like such a great change of pace. Now I'm craving a nice bowl of paper clips and a copy machine. Maybe they'll have a shredder! Ooooh....

I went to print out my resume this evening and our inkjet cartridge is blasted. How exciting! That means we need to make a trip to the office supply store—always a treat. John and I both love going to the office store. This time, they happened to be out of the cartridge we need, after we sent a service rep searching all over the place for one. He was in a good mood, and we are always goodnatured with retail employees, so he went about his business and we did our usual "If I had lots of money" browsing through the store.

We got separated. 10 minutes later, John found me with a PalmPilot attached to my hand. O, to have a portable computer! After some joint drooling over the handheld PC's, we decided to pick up a cheapo Casio digital diary. I'm going to use it for now, and if it turns out to be a Very Good Thing, we'll think about getting a really cool one later. I'm sure if I like it at all, we'll get one for John the next time we're in the office store.

I spent an hour on the couch programming my new best friend, jizzing every time I figured out another function. "Dude! Look! London's blinking! Dude! Check out the backlit display! I changed the world time function! Dude!" Then I entered and saved half a dozen phone numbers, all of which I had memorized. Finally, it was time to experiment with the memo pad.

I've craved a palmtop or notebook computer for years now, for various reasons. It would be nice to have the computer with me when I teach, so I can store exercises for my students and keep track of their progress. I've also just really wanted a way to write my journal entries away from home. This memo function won't do me much good for the actual writing of the entry, because I haven't bought the "optional" PC communications hardware yet. It will do fine for recording particular things to remember, though. Random ideas pop into my head at random times. Most of those get lost between my car and my computer. Maybe now a few of them will survive my short-term memory.

Is it better than a paper journal and a page-by-page day planner? We'll see. Over the past few years, I've been really inconsistent with my paper stuff. The novelty of my new toy might just kick me back into the scheduling habit. I'll cross my fingers, just in case.