2007-04-07

Snow fell this morning, just a flurry that only lasted a few minutes, but signaled the extent of the chill of the day. It looked so peculiar, sheeting down past the dogwood and redbud blossoms.

After Morning Offering, Jim cleared the driveway and walks for a customer who was having a party later today and then set out with Romi for Avalon. Romi wanted to help with our tractor. We had charged the battery and he wanted to get it installed and get the tractor working again. Meanwhile, Jim wanted to dump a huge trailer-load of branches into the side of Avalon’s feeder creek, where erosion is occurring. The technique has worked well at other vulnerable spots along our steep access road, and Jim is continuing the erosion control at this new place.

They came back, very satisfied with the morning’s work, with fast food for everyone! I had spent the morning on snail mail. I joined them and had a stretch with Jim, doing our mat exercises. Then Romi and I sat down to initialize my new laptop. Before we got far, both Romi and I noticed the high reflectivity of the screen. We could see ourselves as well as in a mirror. Ro says they make them like that because people watch DVD movies on their computers and the shiny screen shows truer colors.

The problem is, I never watch movies on my computer but I do use it all day, every day except Sunday in the week and my office is blessed with four windows, each of which is a yard wide and two yards high. The room is delightfully full of light. I now have a matte screen on my old laptop and still have problems seeing the screen on bright days. We talked and decided that Romi and Gary would go back to Best Buys and trade the machine in for a similar model with a matte screen.

They came home later most dejected. Best Buys did not have such a machine. They could not order such a machine. And they were charging us 15% of the cost of the computer for opening the box, even though I could not find out that I did not like the shiny screen until I got it out of the box. Best Buys will receive a complaint from me!

Romi looked around at the available models on several web sites and recommended that we go with an IBM ThinkPad, which is recommended on-line by many businessmen as being the most sturdy laptop available and which has a matte screen. We did that. Now I must wait for it to be shipped, delaying me further on the book and other creative projects. However I feel we made the right decision. That shiny screen would have bothered me from now on.

My stack of snail mail was reduced to about half a dozen actual letters and some thank you notes by the end of my day. I got tons done. This delay is a great opportunity to catch up on things and I shall continue to complete tasks which have been left undone of late while the new computer gets mailed out to us.

Romi took off for his own evening after that, while Jim and I had our bath and then a sweet and sensual date. We came downstairs at 8:30 or so and encountered Gary, who was just getting ready to have a bite to eat, so we joined him for supper and the Gaia Meditation, after which Gary took off for his girlfriend’s house. He had left his departure till late because his girlfriend has a young daughter and the daughter was having a sleepover at her house for her birthday. He wanted to avoid some of the noise!

Jim and I said good night after a great kitty-snuggle around 11:30.