My internet was out last night, along with the internet of a good part of Southern California. After beating my head against the wall and finally managing to get an answer via my iPad, which is a 3G model, I settled down for a quiet evening without instant communication with the outside world. Maybe I should do this more often. I watched some DVDs, knit on my...

I’m writing this on a computer I didn’t intend to buy. Earlier this year, the money I had originally intended to use to replace my laptop (which was going out of Apple Care), ended up going to do some work on the house that needed to be done. Life happened, we had the family crisis this summer and then I ended up getting sick for much of September and...