It happens from time to time; the effort it takes to avoid work just doesn’t completely pay off and, pigeonholed by those who expect nothing less from me, I end up fulfilling my commitments. I have far too much work this weekend to do much beyond this brief post.

    So I come to you, pockets filled with empty fruit snack wrappers and holy socks upon my feet, and I confess I’ve spoilt my wife by buying her no less than a new Macintosh iBook for Valentine’s day. I type upon it now, and while it is the least expensive permutation of Apple computer technology available to the American consumer (outside the iPod series of digital narcotics), it still represents a qualitative leap above my own laptop–especially in terms of raw style.

    I manipulated my parents into buying my baby sister one of these some months ago (Vicky is a student at University) and Heather admired it since. Her existing machine, a circa 1997 Dell Latitude laptop with a 6GB hard drive and a 266Mhz processor, was beginning to make alarming rattles at an alarming rate. I was alarmed!

    But I’ve made it right, and take some amount of pleasure observing my wife balancing this rounded, white, glowing machine upon her slightly distended and occupied tummy.