Sturm und Drang...

Ah, Thursday. School is over by 11 AM, and I am now home from bi-monthly trip to Costco, where I bought a new printer. For some reason, two of my three printers expired within days of one another, and living without a fax machine is no longer possible. Fortunately, the HP OfficeJet I had eyeballed there earlier this month, before end of the month new influx of $$$ in bank, was now being offered with a $20 instant rebate, and, as I am teaching a class later this month and need to be printing materials faster than the one remaining printer, an Epson Photo 1280, can spit them out, I decided to buy it now, rather than wait for Microsoft to buy it for me with the promised $138 settlement. Did I mention that? I got this thing in the mail that said if I had bought a computer, printer, other peripheral or software after July something, 2003, Microsoft would send me up to $138. Well, yay. So I went hunting for the receipt for my baby laptop, the one I bought just a year ago January, after I moved, so that receipt had to be around here somewhere, right? After plowing through my file cabinet, I finally decided to just empty it out and reorganize it. So piles of school notes, old journals, and a heap of paid bills lived on my office floor for the better part of a week. And I did find it, only to find that my copier was dead, dead, dead, occasioning a trip to the library to photocopy everything so I can bug them when they don't send me the money. Besides, I got a rebate on my car insurance, $27, and Comcast Cable returned the $3.32 they billed me after I cancelled their service, so 1/4 of the printer is already defrayed. How sweet is that! Meanwhile, it is sitting here, still in the box, waiting for me to install it. Notice I am not in a hurry. New peripherals are always better ideas than realities. The only one that ever worked the first time I plugged it in was the mouse I bought to replace the one that died. Must get very mellow before crawling around on the floor under the computer desk with my flashlight, finding powerstrips and USB ports.